For Terence Blanchard’s 63rd Birthday, articles and interviews from 1995 through 2020

This post collects most of my encounters with Terence Blanchard, who recently added to his formidable c.v. the Artistic Director position at SFJazz. The announcement came a few months after the Metropolitan Opera staged his opera, Fire Shut Up In My Bones, following its 2021 staging of Champion. In the meantime, Blanchard has continued to add to his film scoring credits, recently played a weekend retrospective of his jazz activity at Jazz at Lincoln Center, and spent a good chunk of summer 2023 on tour with Herbie Hancock. You can read all about the maestro’s current activities elsewhere, but this omnibus post — with the transcript of a 1995 WKCR Musician Show, a 1997 DB Blindfold Test, a 2001 DB cover story (and interviews for the  piece with Clark Terry and Branford Marsalis), a 2015 piece for Jazziz and a 2020 piece for Jazziz — is interesting to scan. (I seem not to have a digital file of a 2009 Jazziz piece that touched on Blanchard’s excellent album Choices.)

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Terence Blanchard Interview for Jazziz– 2020:

When I last spoke with Terence Blanchard, in 2015, I asked him to discuss the synergy between the detailed, painstaking process of composing movie soundtracks and the no-holds-barred approach to improvising he’s projected during a 38-year career as one of the world’s most esteemed jazz trumpeters and bandleaders.

            “My jazz background allows me to think quickly on my feet in the film world,” Blanchard responded. “A given story contains various emotional components, and you see the limitless nature of music, how one idea, one through-line, can be expressed in so many ways. Some people think it’s limiting to stay within the context of the story, but it’s actually very liberating,”

            Testifying to Blanchard’s ability to contextualize narrative with notes and tones is an end-of-2020 c.v. containing 100-plus film, television and theater scores. Many were commissioned by Spike Lee, beginning with Jungle Fever in 1991, and including such high-profile works as Malcolm X, Four Little Girls, Bamboozled, Inside Job, Chi-Raq, and BlacKkKlansman, for which Blanchard earned a 2019 Oscar nomination.

            Most recently, Lee recruited Blanchard for Da 5 Bloods, a daring, sardonic Vietnam epic that proceeds to Blanchard’s vivid symphonic canvas. Shortly after its June Netflix release, HBO aired the audaciously noirish 8-episode Perry Mason, set in Jim Crow Los Angeles at the height of the Great Depression in 1932. Blanchard conjured a novelistic score to propel and signify on the twists and turns of a multi-layered narrative that features the title character as a PTSD-afflicted World War I survivor, reimagines his colleague Della Street as queer, and morphs his chief investigator Paul Drake into a Black man.

            Add to Blanchard’s 2020 credits two directorial debuts: Bruised, by Halle Berry, who plays the lead as a traumatized boxer; and A Night In Miami, by 2019 Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Regina King, a well-acted ensemble piece portraying the course of a 1964 encounter between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali Jim Brown and Sam Cooke in Malcolm’s motel room after Ali – then Cassius Clay – won the heavyweight championship of the world.

            “I love the grandness, the emotional quality of Terence’s scores,” says Kasi Lemmons,  who commissioned her fourth on the 2019 release Harriet, in which, under Lemmons’ direction, Anglo-Nigerian actress Cynthia Arivo inhabits Harriet Tubman’s persona. Lemmons concurrently wrote the libretto for Blanchard’s second opera, The Fire That Burns Within, initially staged by the St. Louis Opera in 2018, which is scheduled to open the Metropolitan Opera’s 2021-22 season.

            “Terence elevates whatever you’re trying to work on,” Lemmons says. “I told him that this was my version of a superhero movie, and that the soul and driving momentum of Nina Simone’s ‘Sinner Man’ felt very appropriate. I talked to him about ancestors. He understood it, like he always does. He nailed it.”           

            Perry Mason’s Executive Producer and primary director, Tim Van Patten — who served that same function for four seasons of Boardwalk Empire after directing 20 episodes of The Sopranos — was similarly enthusiastic about Blanchard’s intuitive mojo. “Terence was completely dialed-in to the tone of this show — the narratives and identified themes,” Van Patten, says. “I’d give him a few notes and say, ‘Go for it.’ I felt no ego at all. He created a forensic arc, where you could track the characters through his music within the eight hours. He did what we call end title scores that commented emotionally on each individual episode and gave a nod to the next episode. That’s complicated stuff, and it’s a lot of writing. I’ve never come across that before. It blew my mind. I was in the hands of a master.”

 

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TERENCE BLANCHARD: Tim told me, “We have to think of it like a long film with eight chapters.” The music had to take you on that journey as the episodes evolved. I didn’t want to do period music, which I thought would be too on the nose. Instead, I used elements from the early 1930s and tried to make them more contemporary. They found great locations, created a great look, the acting was amazing — everything was on point. All the emotional content was right on the screen. My job was to enhance it; there was no need to push any buttons or go deeper into anything.

JAZZIZ:  Perry Mason isn’t a “Black” show, quote-unquote. It’s not associated with a Black director or an African-American theme.

TB:  People probably think a Black composer may not be right for that project. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s such a daring approach to a remake of Perry Mason — it was logical to try something daring for the music in post-production.

How long did it take to write the score?

TB:  I started before Covid. It affected how we could record. For one thing, I probably would have had a big band, but instead I used five saxophones, string quartet, piano, bass, drums and myself. Normally we’d have a bunch of musicians play together in the room, the engineer mixes it and then sends it off. Instead, everybody did everything individually. We’d send their parts to an editor, who put them in ProTools and made sure everything lined up. Then we’d send that to a mixer. It was pretty arduous.

In distinction to your other recent soundtracks, you play a fair amount of trumpet.

TB:  Yes, on every episode I’m playing someplace. That wasn’t at all what I set out to do. But Covid limited the number of musicians I could use at a session, and I couldn’t be in the room with someone else if a lead instrument was needed – so I felt it was up to me to be lead voice.

A very different ambiance than One Night in Miami.

TB:  Initially I gave Regina King some Latin-based and blues-based demos. But she kept coming back to bluesy, jazz-based solo piano with a gospel influence. I immediately thought Benny Green would be perfect, and sent him thematic ideas. Once Regina started to hear where I was going, we got into more detail about what the piano should do improvisationally during specific scenes. There is the main theme. There is the Malcolm X theme that starts off when he’s praying, where I introduce the duduk. The main theme winds up being a more playful thing for Cassius Clay. With Jim Brown, it’s introspective; with Sam Cooke it’s fun-loving. There are a couple of other transitional groove-based things. I also generated some atmospheric stuff, and there’s a song in the front that I wrote with Tank and the Bangas and Keb Mo, the great blues guitarist, that Jim Brown listens to while he’s driving through Georgia. But the main focus of the score is piano.   

            I love that the film portrays these four African-American men expressing various modes of thinking that we experience in our community that are all very valid. In my mind, the score is another character — a character of unity, like the conscience of the characters. It’s right there with all the action, but it isn’t underscoring everything. It’s not trying to make huge statements. It’s another tone.

            It’s a different sonic approach from Bruised, where I use a lot of atmospheric tones, but most of the score is centered around cello, played by Malcolm Parsons, who is part of the Turtle Island String Quartet. I recently recorded an album of Wayne Shorter’s music with them and the E-Collective — we’re still trying to figure out how to release it. Since we couldn’t be in a studio, I sent things to Malcolm, he’d record and send them back. I’d mix them into my session  with everything else I had going on — rhythmic, sonic, harmonic — and send to Halle for critiques. It’s a brooding score, because Halle’s character is struggling through some dark elements to find herself on the other side of what she’s going through in her life. It’s very powerful.

For Da 5 Bloods you used a 90-piece orchestra, as you’d done some years before on Spike Lee’s Miracle of Saint Anna. Talk about your process.

TB:   It was like working on anything Spike sends my way. First I step back a second, because I’m captivated by what I’m watching. With 90 pieces, you have room to shape colors and tones that can constantly evolve and grow, and then diminish, and then grow again. At the beginning of the session, with 90 people sitting in front of you, there’s always this nerve-wracking moment, hoping that all the music is right. But then you get the incredible experience of feeling the power of 90 people play something you’ve written. By the way, young African-American musicians came from all over to be part of that session — some from Canada, some from New York, some from Mexico.

            Spike uses source music to cover the period and location, so I never have to worry about that, even though I may use some of those elements in the score. Here, the songs from Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On made total sense. I was thinking: How do I make this a grand story? How do I rise to the occasion? That opening sequence, where the helicopter is shot down, has so much information, it took me five days to score it — three days to plot it out on piano, the next few days to orchestrate it. That set the tone for the rest of the film. My job is to connect the audience to the characters themselves. For example, for the theme with Clarke Peters (Otis) and the woman he had the child with, Tiên, I bring in the duduk. The music shows Otis’ softer side — and actually a bit of his comedic side — when he sees the young girl and starts to drink the wine. Even though Tiên hasn’t said anything, we know what’s going on as soon as the girl walks into the frame.

How did Kasi Lemmons present Harriet to you?

TB: That she saw Harriet Tubman as a superhero, that it wasn’t a slave film — only in the first five minutes does Harriet deal with slavery in the form we normally see. The rest is about Harriet’s journey, how she became this incredibly strong woman on a mission to save all these souls. The first scene where she crosses the river is the one that informed me what the film should be.

            Everyone on Harriet felt we had to do 110%. During the shooting, whenever someone got weak or tired, we’d think: Harriet Tubman was a diminutive woman but her energy and spirit was boundless. We kept that in front of us as motivation. No one talked about anything extraneous. It was: “What are we going to do for Harriet?” People probably will refer to this film for many years. It may be used in classrooms to teach about Harriet Tubman. When you think about it on that scale, you can freak out a bit. The last time that happened to me was when I did Malcolm X for Spike. Everybody was a little nervous. Wynn Thomas [cinematographer] told me: “Look, we all want to do 150%, but if we want to do that, the best thing is to do our jobs.” That calmed me down. I thought about it during Harriet:  “Ok, let me do what I have been doing and focus on helping tell the story.”

Kasi Lemmons also wrote the libretto for your second opera, Fire Shut Up In My Bones, adapted from Charles Blow’s memoir.

Kasi told me she loved opera when I first worked with her on Eve’s Bayou; we talked about this opera when we spoke about Harriet. I’ve always loved her writing, and I knew she’d write something fantastic. Opera Theater of St. Louis brought Charles, Kasi and myself to St. Louis for a meeting. Kasi followed Charles everywhere, like a super-sleuth investigator, asking questions. So I knew she’d come up with ideas. When she started creating the imagery with Jim Robinson, the director, it set me thinking what I might do for the different characters. Now that it’s going to the Metropolitan Opera, we’ll meet again to make changes and develop some of the characters.

I’ve seen clips on Youtube that show a demotic, vernacular libretto. Does the score mirror that?

TB:   No, I wouldn’t say that. My composition teacher, Roger Dickerson, told me years ago that my respective experiences as a jazz musician and a film composer will probably come together in a way that I couldn’t yet envision. He said: “You should think about how to notate some of those things you do in jazz for the orchestra.”

            That’s what I thought about when it came time to write Fire Shut Up In My Bones. I tried to draw upon all my experiences as a musician — from jazz, from orchestras, from teaching — to hopefully create something a little different in the opera world. I thought about Benny Golson. I thought about all the great jazz artists who have come before me. I thought about some of the great classical voices I’ve heard. And I tried to write something that would have the flow of a jazz composition and the strong melodic content of great Classical American music. Puccini’s La Boheme is one of my favorite operas, and one thing that blows my mind every time I listen to it (which happens in old American musicals, too) is how the melody develops like the words do. How they’re so intertwined. I didn’t want my opera to sound like I was jerking off just to try to make a musical point. I wanted to marry the development of the melodic line to the emotional development of the words being sung. That’s more important to me than anything.

Is your process for opera and film similar or different?

TB: With opera, I might sit at the piano for a day, trying to find a rhythm that makes sense for a couple of lines. On films I have less time to flesh those things out. I’m sitting at my keyboard, surrounded by all my other colors and instruments.

Most of your development as a composer was not the product of formal study at an institution of higher learning. You were a working musician when you attended Rutgers.

TB: During high school, I studied with Dr. Bert Braud at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and then privately with Roger Dickerson. Both are brilliant and taught me all my techniques without opening a book. They gave me the rules and wrote out the lessons in a notebook. Roger was so adept at knowing what I needed to hear, what I needed to work on.

            When we did my first opera, Champion in Washington D.C., I flew out Roger and his wife. The second night, we went to dinner with friends; one of them asked him really intricate questions. Roger started out saying, “You know, four-bar phrases are the death knell of creativity.” I went, “Damn, I thought that was my idea.” Every time he said something I’d think, “Wow, I thought that was mine, too.” So I started to realize how much this guy influenced my life. He helped shape my thinking in all areas. Later, I read Paul Hindemith’s The Craft of Musical Composition, and found that everything Roger taught me was in that book! Roger said: “You were a kid, just 16 years old. So I figured out ways to give you the same information.”

In past conversations, you’ve described learning to play jazz by listening to one thing in granular detail, rather than studying a lot of different things. Was this your process in becoming a film composer?

TB:  The exact same thing. Denzel Washington took me to the premiere of Glory. Then I got the soundtrack, listened to it over and over, and started to break it down into core elements. Once I got one thing, I’d move on to another. Then I became a big fan of Thomas Newman’s score to Shawshank Redemption, and did the same thing. I listened over and over to the cue from the scene where James Whitmore hung himself. It’s simplistic, but very beautiful.

            I’m that nerd, man. My kids and my wife laugh at me. Even when I’m not working, if I’m not practicing or watching sports, I’m online reading about gear, or reading about processes, or reading about something – trying to learn and get better. I don’t have a team of people like some  others do. It’s just me. So I need to constantly fine-tune. Years ago, I saw a Magic Johnson interview where he said that, every off-season, he tried to add something to his game. I try to do that as a musician. After I finish Bruised, I’m going to get back into practicing. Because of Covid, I don’t have any performances. So I’ll have time to sit down and focus on some things. I’m excited.

You played piano before you were serious about the trumpet. Any remarks on your piano background and the impact of your father’s musical taste and character and personality on the way you function?

TB:   I started playing piano when I was 5 years old, because my grandmother had a piano at the house and I’d always try to find some sounds in it. Then they started me on lessons. In my house, we heard operatic music and classical music. So my early musical upbringing was based on a classical sensibility. The jazz that I heard was Oscar Peterson and Andre Previn on the Tonight Show or some televised production.

            My father was an insurance salesman. He was great with numbers, and would play little math games with me. He loved music, and he was a workaholic. That’s probably why I’m the way I am now. If my father wasn’t working on balancing the books from his insurance accounts, he was sitting at the piano, going through music he had to sing that weekend in church or at a performance. He was a one-finger piano player. He’d sing his part, then play the tenor part against what he’d sung, then play the alto and soprano parts. Essentially, he knew everybody’s part. I thought he was nuts. But later I realized that he had a serious passion for music. Sometimes he’d put on an opera: “Hey, hey, boy, come here; sit down, listen… Now listen to those strings. You see how the oboe comes in right there?” It’s almost like he was planting the seed within me to do opera now, without my even realizing it.

I recall a remark you made that your father and Roger Dickerson and Ellis Marsalis and Alvin Batiste gave you models for successful African-American men in that particular moment.

TB:   Nobody had money. Nobody was living a lavish lifestyle. But that didn’t diminish their passion or love for what they were into. They were men of integrity who worked their hardest to be the best they could at whatever they were doing. When I was young, that’s just who they were to me. I didn’t know any better. When I was around Ellis or Roger, it was the same energy as being around my dad, or my Uncle Rick, who sang with my dad, or a guy at my church, Osceola Blanchet, who taught operatic music to my dad and all these other Black men in New Orleans. Or being around Kidd Jordan, who was totally different than those dudes, but just as passionate for what he did as they were for what they did. They all appreciated each other. I feel blessed that those images in early life helped shape who I am.

Given the scope of your recent activity, do you feel very conscious about your status as one of a fairly small number of Black film composers?

TB:   I don’t want to ever be the guy who dropped the ball. Benny Golson, Oliver Nelson, all those dudes broke their backs for me to have this opportunity — even though they did it for me inadvertently. That’s the fear when I’m standing in front of a 90-piece orchestra. I’m not going to be the guy who’s unorganized, who seems like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

            I used to joke with Marcus Miller that we couldn’t be in the same room at the same time, because if the building blows up there’s two-thirds of the Black film composers gone. It’s an awful joke to tell, but it reflects the reality. And now, it’s not just about African-Americans, but also women — more people getting opportunities to score. They’re bringing different sensibilities, which is cool. I used to ask Miles Goodman about helping me learn more about film scoring, and he said: “No, I’m not going to work with you. Your weaknesses are your strengths. You’re going to bring something different to the world of film. If I teach you, you may wind up doing some similar things as I do. I don’t want that. Your uniqueness is what the film world needs.”

 

Terence Blanchard, “Blanchard’s Groove” – Jazziz 2015:

The origin story of Breathless, Terence Blanchard’s spring Blue Note release with his new group, E-Collective, dates to 2006, when Blanchard recorded the soundtrack he’d composed for Inside Man, the Spike Lee caper film in which Denzel Washington plays a hard-boiled old-school detective. He hired drummer Oscar Seaton for the session, and dug Seaton’s mighty grooves. Seaton enjoyed the process, too, and they agreed to collaborate in the future. Around this time, Blanchard, who lives in New Orleans, where he was born and raised, had a similar conversation with bassist Donald Ramsey, an old Crescent City acquaintance.

            Nothing happened right away. Blanchard attended to his duties as Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute and, after 2011, the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami. He composed more soundtracks, two Broadway shows, an opera, and music for several albums by the working quintet — in this period, either Bryce Winston or Walter Smith on tenor saxophone, Fabian Almazan on piano and keyboards, Derrick Hodge or Joshua Crumbly on bass and Kendrick Scott or Justin Brown on drums — that had been his default basis of operations since the early 1990s. Then, last spring, Blanchard decided to commit. He asked Almazan to join a plugged-in band with Seaton, Ramsey and guitarist Charles Altura, whom he’d heard on a YouTube clip with Ambrose Akinmusire, once Blanchard’s student at the Monk Institute.

            During the summer, Blanchard, 54, wrote a batch of danceable tunes built on funk, Afro-pop and hip-hop beats, with succinct melodies and enough harmonic information to facilitate improvisational flexibility. In October he brought E-Collective to New Orleans for two days of rehearsal, and embarked on a three-and-a-half-week European tour for beta-testing and refinement. In December, he reconvened the musicians in New Orleans for the recording.

            In February, Blanchard brought a modified version of E-Collective — Burniss Earl Traviss played bass; Kimberley Thompson played drums — to Russia’s Triumph of Jazz Festival for three weekend concerts at separate venues in St. Petersburg and Moscow. During the final, Sunday event, at Moscow’s International House of Music, they played five instrumentals from Breathless,  among them “See Me As I Am,” a funky-yet-plaintive 9-note theme with a stomping, work song feel; “Confident Selflessness,” which refracted Afro-fusion a la[i] Joe Zawinul; and “Soldiers,” a brisk blues over a skittery New Orleans groove. It was a compelling tour de force — freewheeling, experimental, kinetic — marked by balls-out, thematically cogent solos from the front-liners.

            The leader directed the flow with body language and transitional passages on laptop synth, and said his piece on a string of inflamed declamations that exploited his full-bodied command of the trumpet’s higher register and an ability to calibrate cries, shrieks and whoops precisely, sometimes unplugged, sometimes with real-time, foot-pedal-triggered processing. He danced his way through the rhythmic web in the manner of ’70s-era Miles Davis, bobbing and weaving, leaning back and bending forward, prancing left and right, forward and back.

            On Breathless, Blanchard contextualizes the instrumentals with a palpable narrative arc, mirroring such recent opuses as 2007’s A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem For Katrina) and 2009’s Choices. As on Choices, he conveys his core message via a soliloquy by Cornell West, in this case a meditation on Dr. Martin Luther King’s “prescient and prophetic” warnings on the enduring costs to America of economic inequality, racism and militarism. “You break the barrier at the highest level, break through the ceiling, even with a black man and a black woman and two impressive black children in the White House,” West intones. “But too many folks are in the basement — because they’ve never been concerned about the poor … nobody on his economic team.”

            Unlike its recent predecessors, Breathless features a vocalist, the New Orleans singer P.J. Morton, who opens the proceedings with an incantatory reading of Gene McDaniels’ cynical, demotic Vietnam-era lament “Compared to What,” his sweet, church-inflected tenor setting up a fierce Blanchard solo. Morton quiet-storms Hank Williams’ melancholy, posthumously issued ballad “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But Time.” His rendering of Blanchard’s despairing lyric on “Shutting Down” oozes plaintiveness, echoed by the composer’s long, piercing wails on trumpet.

[BREAK]

Blanchard’s bandmates, each young enough to be his child, returned to the United States on Monday morning, but he remained behind for a Tuesday concert with the Moscow State Jazz Orchestra at Spaso House, the official residence of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia. He took time off from fine-tuning the rough mix of Breathless to meet me for lunch in the restaurant of the opulent hotel next door to the concert hall.

            “At the rehearsals, I told the band I wanted groove-based music, to appeal to young people and get them more interested in playing instrumental music on a high level,” Blanchard said. “But I vacillated about how far to go creatively. Should it be more like Weather Report or more R&B-based? Then I decided not even to go down that road, but let it unfold as the guys played together — let it be what it’s supposed to be.”

            Blanchard was asked about the match-up of his no-holds-barred attitude to improvising and the detailed, painstaking process of composing movie soundtracks. The Internet Movie Database lists 58, including 13 for Spike Lee, among them Malcolm X, Jungle Fever, Four Little Girls and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. “Some people think it’s limiting to stay within the context of the story, but it’s actually very liberating,” he said. “The story contains various emotional components, and you see the limitless nature of music, how one idea, one through-line, can be expressed in so many ways. We try to tell a story throughout the entire show, not just on a particular piece. My background as a composer shows me how to develop my ideas, while keeping the content within that context.  I remember watching Betty Carter, who went seamlessly from tune to tune, not even giving you a chance to blink. It involved you in her world.”

            Through film, Blanchard added, “I’ve realized you’re trying to tap into a bigger purpose than the notes or the rhythm or the harmony.” He referenced aphorisms to this effect from Art Blakey, who employed him in the Jazz Messengers between 1982 and 1986 (“We’re all trying to find our grits”), and Cornel West (“We’re always trying to find our own truths”),  and also paraphrased John Coltrane (“You’ve got to learn how to become in tune to the universe when you play”). A tour with Herbie Hancock about a decade ago introduced Blanchard to Buddhist practice; he meditates and chants to still his mind.

            “You need to remove that chatter in the brain,” he said. “‘Am I good enough to do this? Should I be here doing this? Man, look at all the records I’ve listened to.’ When you start to play, you might have an idea — a shape — of what the solo should be. You’ve got to throw that away, or someone else will play something unrelated to what’s in your mind, and you’ll be fucked. I always tell myself to try to find my voice. Think in terms of a soulful calling — trying to express an honest emotion. Let it roll. Sometimes it’s through melody. I try to make sure the melodies are free and not bound by what’s happening harmonically. Sometimes I get caught up in what the guys are playing, and I stop just to let it hang.

            “The cry you hear is from trying to be heard, to get my point across. When are people truly going to learn that we’re all the same? You would think in our country, where we want to talk about American exceptionalism and being the best at everything, we would be the best at race relations — and we’re not.”

            Blanchard attributed his embrace of a no-safety-net attitude to private lessons with composer Roger Dickerson circa 1977-78, when he transferred from a prestigious Catholic high school to spend mornings in a public high school and afternoons at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. His classmates included Wynton and Branford Marsalis, who would facilitate his recruitment to the Jazz Messengers, and Donald Harrison, his front-line partner in the Messengers, with whom he would form the influential Harrison-Blanchard Quintet in 1984.

            “Roger told me to learn to listen to the music tell you what it’s supposed to be,” Blanchard said. “When you compose, these little ideas are screaming at you; your ego is telling you it needs to be something else, that it’s not related to what you’re writing.” To reinforce this truism, Dickerson taught a concept called “If I could tell you, I would,” which he had distilled, Blanchard found out a decade later, from Arnold Schoenberg’s The Craft of Musical Composition.

            “I teach it wherever I go,” he continued. “I have the students manipulate those words into as many sentences as they can, to show how many permutations one can create in what appears to be a limited set of circumstances. Then I take any musical theme they have, and run it up every degree of the scale or whatever key it’s in. All the intervallic relationships change, but the melodic shape stays the same. That proves that the shape, not the intervals, is the musical idea; they can create an entire composition using only their original ideas.”

            Moving in the fast company provided by the Marsalis brothers and Harrison also facilitated Blanchard’s development and spurred his work ethic. “I first met them after fifth grade, and when I saw them again, those dudes were playing their behinds off,” he stated. “I knew I had a lot of work to do, but I had a passion for it. My dad had put in a fake bar with lights that turned when you turned on the record player in it, and weekends, instead of going out, I’d sit home and play my Miles Davis records. I’d listen to one track over and over, first listening to the trumpet, then the saxophone, then the bass — trying to figure out what is jazz. But all of us were driven. Wynton and I made a pact that if we ever caught each other doing some bullshit, we needed to call each other on it.”

            Blanchard also cited the active influence of a cohort of African-American male role models, not least his father, Joseph Oliver, who sold insurance and sang opera locally. “Dad would practice his pieces at the piano, and when he finished, he’d balance his books on an adding machine on a cardboard table,” Blanchard said. “At NOCCA, Ellis Marsalis constantly talked about practicing and how much he had to work. He and Kidd Jordan and Alvin Batiste and Roger were my benchmark for being a successful African-American man in this country. They weren’t making money or getting stardom. They were serious about their craft because they loved it. That’s my orientation. I work hard at this stuff for no other reason than the mere fact that I love it.”

[BREAK]

“I’m looking for musicians who are inquisitive,” Blanchard said. That aspiration was evident throughout Sunday’s concert in Moscow, not least on Almazan’s “Everglades,” which emerged from Blanchard’s dreamy synth line that steered the composer into a Chopin-esque ballad upon which he created stark, forceful variations from which Blanchard piggybacked into a fiery, processed solo that incorporated mysterious overtones and echoes into the flow.

            “Sometimes in jazz, you learn a certain style and improvise within that style,” Blanchard said. “Well, Wayne Shorter said jazz means ‘I dare you.’ I want people who are willing to try anything, and then help me to learn from those things as they are learning.”

            If the band’s unconstrained approach to the raw materials reflected Blanchard’s leadership style, so did the inclusion of Almazan’s contribution, the latest in a string of pieces Blanchard has incorporated from younger personnel — Edward Simon, Eric Harland, Lionel Loueke, Aaron Parks, Derrick Hodge, Bryce Winston, Walter Smith III and Almazan — on the leading edge of 21st-century jazz expression.

            “I’d never really played in 5/4 and 7/4, and those guys did it well, so I felt like the one who was behind the 8-ball,” he said of the salutary effects of eliciting original music from younger partners, as Art Blakey did when he and Donald Harrison played together in the Messengers. “To develop a high level of expression, they have to write and have a place to perform it and work it out. Where better than in a band with people you play with regularly, whose rhythmic and harmonic sensibilities you trust? Hearing your compositions up against something else can be a wakeup call, but that only happens with guys who really are trying to find themselves.”

            In a sense, Blanchard said, he experiences this dynamic in meeting the varied challenges presented by film scoring. “I always say that my jazz background allows me to think quickly on my feet in the film world,” he said. He described his process on Inside Job, which includes old-school funk, atonal string music and remixes of the Sufi-based pop song “Chaiyya Chaiyya,” which Spike Lee appropriated from the Bollywood romantic thriller Dil Se.

            “Spike found the Indian song, and told me he’d use it for the opening and closing, which made it an element. For one area at the end, he wanted a string quartet. ‘Oh-kay! A string quartet it is.’ He decided to use a love theme I’d written as the main theme. I had to figure out how to make this very intimate sound that I initially heard into something more menacing. The Roger Dickerson experience was extremely helpful. It allowed me to see all those musical ideas in various forms.”

            Blanchard’s experience with Dickerson and his other New Orleans mentors is a key reason why he returned to the Crescent City from Brooklyn midway through the ’90s, as was his desire to be near his children after a divorce. “I learned a lot in New York, but every time I went home I’d remember why I was doing this,” he said. “Being in New Orleans kept my feet to the ground, reminding me every day of the guys I heard growing up whose dedication came from sheer passion.

            “Art Blakey and Dizzy Gillespie aren’t around to tell people any more. It’s up to us. We have to start saying, ‘Listen, this is how I did this, and this is how you can do this.’”

SIDEBAR

Title: Punchy Music

Terence Blanchard has recently been making his mark as a composer in Broadway theater, with credits that include the Chris Rock vehicle The Motherf**ker With A Hat and a revival of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. But no recent achievement gives him greater joy than his first opera, Champion: An Opera In Jazz, commissioned by the St. Louis Opera Theater, which staged six sold-out shows in June 2013.

Champion is a two-act, 10-scene account of the life and times of welterweight boxing champion Emile Griffith. (The libretto is by Tony-Award winning playwright Michael Cristofer, with whom Blanchard worked on the films Gia and Original Sin.) Griffith, who died in 2013, is best remembered for the denouement of his third title match with the Cuban boxer Benny “the Kid” Paret, who Griffith knocked out to win the championship in 1961, lost to in a split decision later that year, and defeated again in 1962, attacking his opponent — who had outed and mocked Griffith’s closeted homosexuality during the weigh-in — with such ferocity that Paret died as a consequence.

            Blanchard is no stranger to contact sports, having played Pop Warner football well enough in late-adolescence to be placed on an all-city team (“I was strong for my age”), before his father forbade further activity. “My dad sang opera, and it was very important for me to get through this,” he said. “When they brought me onstage to take a bow after the premier, Arthur Woodley, who plays the older Emile, grabbed me and said, ‘Your dad would be proud.’ I was like a little baby.”

            For Blanchard — who trains with former world heavyweight champion Michael Bentt, who he met during the early ’00s while working on Dark Blue, with director Ron Silver — boxing is analogous to jazz. “After you learn the fundamentals and proper technique, it all goes out the window when the bell rings,” he said. “It’s a chess match — out-thinking your opponent, being a couple of moves ahead. Michael never felt one of his greatest knockout punches; he was in a zone, and it seemed effortless. I feel that way sometimes on the bandstand, that I’m witnessing myself as the audience is.”

            He stated that high-level boxers feel the same passion for their sport as his own peer group feels for music. “I was in the gym with Virgil Jones, who trains [WBA super-middleweight champion] Andre Ward. I was hitting the heavy bag, and some trainers saw me. They didn’t know who I was. They said, ‘Man, you got a nice power shot.’ They don’t care. I’m not competing! It’s the same thing with musicians. If you go out and hear a kid who can play, you go, ‘Man, that guy’s got a good sound.’”

 

Terence Blanchard (Downbeat Readers Poll cover story – 2001):

 

By his estimation, Terence Blanchard has spent 12 to 14 months out of the last 18 on the road, primarily with his band, so his itinerary on this Friday doesn’t vary so greatly different from his quotidian routine.  The previous evening Blanchard interrupted his work on the score for “Original Sin,” a feature film starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas scheduled for early 2001 release, to board a late-night flight to New York; after a few hours sleep, he met a crew from “CBS Sunday Morning” to shoot street footage and interviews for a forthcoming segment.  Now he’s sitting in a stuffy van that is crawling crosstown through afternoon Manhattan traffic en route to the waterfront Long Island home of Clark Terry to shoot the photographs of the issue you have in hand.  Along for the ride are Robin Burgess, who is Blanchard’s manager and his wife, photographer David Bartolemi, who is doubling as chauffeur, Bartolemi’s 20-year-old assistant, a publicist and a journalist.  As we nibble takeout Pad Thai and Dim Sim, the discussion ranges from the “game face” that Sonny Rollins suddenly took on directly before the curtain rose on a Rollins-Blanchard Carnegie Hall concert several years before, segueing to complaints about journalists who pose sneak-attack questions, morphing to disquisitions on athletes who are and are not role models — as we approach Terry’s home, it concludes with a heartfelt critique on the manner in which jazz business inhibits the creative endeavors of musicians.

 

Blanchard’s performance fees are not insubstantial, but, with 29 films under his belt, he doesn’t tour out of financial necessity.  “There’s been a lot of question about my sincerity as a jazz musician,” he had noted the previous Monday in a phone conversation from his office in the New Orleans Garden District.  “For me, that’s a ludicrous question.  I could easily make more money just writing films, but I’m still out on the road.  I love playing music, I love playing jazz, and it will never be my choice to give that up.” 

 

This year’s release, “Wandering Moon,” reinforces that assertion.  It’s a de facto suite of Blanchard compositions that touch metaphorically on the alienation from family and roots that road life necessitates while emphatically celebrating the imperatives that keep him traveling.  “It culminates some ideas I set in motion a while ago,” the 38-year-old trumpeter says.  “During my shows, I’d play some of my tunes and then things by Duke Ellington or Wayne Shorter or some standards, and started to hear the deficiencies in my own writing style.  It was a wakeup call.  I realized that I needed to internalize other people’s music by playing it on the road for a while.”  Blanchard documented that search with “The Billie Holiday Songbook” (1994); the Grammy-nominated “The Heart Speaks” (1996), an interpretative collaboration with Brazilian composer-singer Ivan Lins on which Blanchard’s consonant, vocalized sound and romantic sensibility were fully on display; and the well-received “Jazz On Film” (1999), on which, with help from an A-list ensemble, he rescored and rearranged eight film music classics plus his theme for Spike Lee’s “Clockers.”

 

“It seemed to be the right time to get back to original music,” Blanchard remarks of “Wandering Moon”; as the “Downbeat” electorate noted, the album is a triumph.  Blanchard’s resourceful young working band (Brice Winston, tenor sax; Aaron Fletcher, alto sax; Ed Simon, piano; Eric Harland, drums), seasoned by authoritative veterans Branford Marsalis on tenor and Dave Holland on bass, interprets with a no-holds barred improvisational attitude the leader’s rhythmically intricate extended form compositions, replete with memorable melodies that define harmonic progression.  They take their cue from Blanchard, who seems able to execute any idea that enters his mind.  His instrumental voice denotes a man comfortable in his own skin, capable of articulating a vocabulary that encompasses a wide range of human experience.  Some have described the voice as dark; it could as easily be termed urbane, cerebral, erotic, lyric, immutably inflected with a blues sensibility.

 

“My favorite instrument in the world is the human voice, but I can’t sing,” Blanchard laughs.  “I read a quote by Maurice Andre where he talked about having the experience of not feeling the horn in his hands, like he was just singing through the instrument.  I’ve never gotten there, but my quest has been to get to the point where the instrument no longer exists…in a sense.  You try to get a vocal quality through the horn, the quality you hear when you listen to Miles Davis or Louis Armstrong.”

 

A decade ago, around the time when he was writing the music for Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever,” Blanchard took a hiatus from a successful career — he could look back on a four-year stint with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and co-leadership of the influential Harrison-Blanchard Quintet — to change his embouchure.  “I wasn’t developing technically,” he says.  “Emotionally and musically, I was growing.  I kept hearing ideas in my head that I wanted to play but couldn’t execute, and that was very frustrating.  My bottom lip was rolled over my teeth and I was cutting my lip.  Art Blakey’s whole thing was, ‘Don’t lie to yourself; just tell yourself the truth.’  When you lie to yourself, you’re covering up inadequacies, and you can’t grow that way.  Once I figured out what the problem was, I had the opportunity to fix it.  Then it was a matter of being diligent, staying on course, taking my time and being disciplined.  When I made the change, it immediately allowed me to open up my sound.  Technically I got to the point where I could play over the horn from low to high with a certain amount of ease.  That allowed me the freedom to explore more musical ideas.  Before I would put the time in but I wouldn’t gain the results I wanted.  Now there’s no excuse.  If there’s something I want to do, then I have to put in the time to develop the ability to do it.”

 

Putting in the time was never an issue for Blanchard, who learned about the aesthetic rewards of hard work from his father, Oliver Joseph Blanchard, to whom he dedicated “Joe and O,” a lovingly disputatious call-and-response tune on “Wandering Moon.”  Pere Blanchard, who died in 1998, was an opera lover who sang professionally in the 1930’s and ’40s, and continued to sing in the church choir and other groups long after he began to sell insurance in New Orleans for a small black-owned company.  “My father was a one-fingered piano player,” Blanchard recalls, “and whenever he had a performance, he would be at the piano all day.  He was a baritone.  He would play his part and learn it, then he would play the tenor part and sing his part against it.  I’d go out and play football for hours, and he’d still be at the piano when I came back.

 

“He loved the earlier jazz, people like Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines. He wasn’t interested in bebop and what happened after that.  He said, ‘Man, those guys play too many notes.  Listen to Pops.  You can hear melody there.’  I come from Miles Davis and Clifford Brown, and we would have musical discussions all the time.  He allowed me to have my opinion, and he wanted me to convince him that he was wrong!   Then, I started playing with Art Blakey, who was the last guy I expected to talk about Louis Armstrong, and Art would say, ‘Yeah, Miles and Clifford were cool, but Pops had a sound.’  That made me go back and research that music again.”

 

“Terence was always diligent,” says Branford Marsalis, who preceded Blanchard in the Jazz Messengers, and has been his friend since they — along with Wynton Marsalis and Donald Harrison — attended the New Orleans Center of Creative Arts in the 1970’s.  “He went to a predominantly black Catholic school called St. Augustine, which has a great marching band, but had a terrible music program.  They consistently had the best talent that the city had to offer, and did nothing with it.  At some point in his sophomore year Terence realized that the school wasn’t going to fulfill his needs.  So he quit, and went to a public school that would allow him to go to NOCCA.  In hindsight, that was a helluva thing for him to do.  He’s always been the kind of person to be honest enough to figure out the surroundings, and then be proactive about it.

 

“I think that Terence’s decision to change his embouchure changed him as a person and changed his musicianship.  There was a mild competition between he and Wynton, which is only natural — they play the same instrument and both want to excel.  Terence was willing to undergo two years of absolute misery for long-term gain.  For a professional working musician to decide to take a hit like that shows an enormous level of personal honesty that is rare even amongst musicians who make our living by trying to be relatively honest.”

 

After NOCCA, Blanchard decided to study at Rutgers, an hour’s drive from New York; there he studied with trumpet guru William Fielder and band instructor Paul Jeffreys, who placed the young trumpeter in Lionel Hampton’s band, in which he played for a year-and-half on weekends.  In February 1982, on Wynton Marsalis’ recommendation, Blanchard and Harrison auditioned for and got the gig with the Jazz Messengers

 

“I grew so much just in the first month,” Blanchard states.  “Wynton had told Art that I could write.  So the first thing Art said was, ‘I know you’ve got a box of tunes; pull them all out — we’re going to play them all!’  When you see someone like that apply their musical knowledge to newer compositions, the practicality of the process makes you want to reinvestigate all of your records.  Art made me understand that as long as I set my goals and worked towards them, I could do anything I wanted.  I got a chance to play with some great musicians who were my peers on a consistent basis; we grew and learned and made mistakes together, which was a great learning experience.  I got a chance to see guys get better, which motivated me.  Even though my embouchure was incorrect, my sound started to get stronger.  Plus we were playing with Art!  You’re in the Messengers, and you realize that this guy had listened to Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw…the list is endless.  Now he’s listening to me.”

 

Earlier, as the van was inching towards Clark Terry’s house, Blanchard looked back on his first encounter with the most recent member of the Downbeat Hall of Fame.  “When I was 17, Clark came to New Orleans to give a master class, and later I went to his show at the club in the Hyatt Regency Hotel,” Blanchard recalled.  “He remembered me from the school, called me up to play a tune with him, and I played his horn.  He was the first guy I saw play who really made me understand what I needed to work on in terms of technique and control.  I used to listen to records by Clifford Brown and Freddie Hubbard and even by Clark, and imagined people gyrating all over the stage to get those phrases out of the instrument.  The man barely moved, but he was so expressive and made it look so incredibly easy that I wanted to run home and pick up my horn and start practicing.  Then I really found out how difficult it was!”

 

After the outdoor portion of the hour-plus shoot — the old master and his heir posed on a backyard bench 20 feet from the Long Island Sound shoreline, engaging in focused conversation and extemporaneously playing “the Flintstones Theme” and “What A Wonderful World” for the “CBS Sunday Morning” crew — I grab a few minutes with Terry by the piano in his award-festooned living room.

 

“After you’ve been around as long as I have you can tell what a subject is or is not going to be,” Terry comments.  “I saw right away that Terence had something extra-special, because of his personality and his seeming ability to detect a situation that was musical.  Terence never broke tones.  It was always straight, melodic tones.  And even at the age when I first met him, he seemed to have a great knack for mellifluousness.  You could tell from the start he was already on the right track, and he kept developing.  Every time I have an opportunity to play with him, I’m amazed at how beautiful and fluid and professional he has become through the years.”

 

As Bartolemi and the TV crew pack up, Terry and Blanchard sit at the kitchen counter, near a basket with a world-class selection of hot sauces, exchanging hilarious ribald parables between mouthfuls of sandwich and sips of Dry Seck.  Then it’s time to pile back in the van to get Blanchard and Burgess to LaGuardia Airport for their 8 o’clock return flight to New Orleans; by 9 the next morning Blanchard expects to resume work on “Original Sin.”

 

“I would say that the vibration I get from Terence is that he is a trumpeter of genuineness,” Terry concludes.  “You can tell who are the name brands and who are the off-brands and substitutions.  He always would be recognized as a name brand, not an also-ran.  He’s a leader.  He has his own sound.  I can recognize him right away.  Now, you can have your sound and it can be a horrible sound.  But he has his own sound which is a marvelous sound.  He studied and worked hard.  If you work diligently enough and go through the right channels, all the beautiful things within you are capable of coming out.  Terence was smart enough or clever or gifted enough to choose the right channels, and you can’t hold talent down when it’s given the right nourishment.”

 

Interviews with Clark Terry and Branford Marsalis for Downbeat Cover Story on Terence Blanchard:

 

TP: Do you remember when you first met Terence?

 

TERRY:  He was in high school, and I don’t remember the exact date, I don’t even remember the school, but I remember this very interesting young man when I first met him.  You can tell after you’ve been around as long as I have, when you see a subject, what the subject is going to be or what the subject is not going to be.  And you could tell right away that he had something very extra-special, and he was going to be somebody that the world was going to know about.

 

TP: Was it his personality?

 

TERRY:  His personality and his seeming ability to detect the situation he was in right at the time.  He knew when he was in a situation that was musical and he knew when he was in a situation… For instance, if you’re being interviewed by people, some interviewers ask you dumb questions, and you can sense that; and some ask you questions that let you know right away that they know what they’re talking about and they’re there for a reason.  He could sense that.  He could sense real people from not too real people.

 

TP: He was telling me in the van coming up that you were playing at a club in New Orleans, and you invited him up on the stand to play a blues.  Which a lot of trumpeters have told me, that you’ve been extremely gracious towards them in sharing information.  And I know how many people you’ve seen or heard over the years.  Can you pinpoint any essential characteristic about his sound that you remember that strikes you or imprints itself when you think about Terence?

 

TERRY:  I come from St. Louis, and St. Louis was always known as a trumpeter’s town.  There was always something about the sound of most of the people who came from St. Louis that has a continuity and thoroughness to it — a purity.  If I can give you a slight example [PLAYS A PAIR OF TWO-NOTE EXAMPLES]…and broke the tones.  Well, Terence never broke tones.  It was always straight, melodic tones.  And he seemed, even at the age when I first met him to have a great knack for mellifluousness, which was a great thing for a young student to come by.  And he was always such a nice, sweet, gentle person, you couldn’t help but like him, and by just liking him and being able to talk to him more, he could find a lot of things he wanted to know and you could find out a lot of things you wanted to know about him.

 

TP: But having met him, you kept an eye on him ever since.

 

TERRY:  Oh, all the time, yes.

 

TP: How would you describe his evolution from then to now?  Obviously he’s more proficient on the instrument and more complete in what he wants to say.  But do you see it as a continuous personality…

 

TERRY:  Absolutely.  You called it right away.  You could tell from the start he was already on the right track, and he just kept developing.  He still is continuing to develop.  Every time I have an opportunity to play with him, I’m amazed at how beautiful and how fluid and how actually professional he has become through the years.  At the beginning, kids naturally lack a bit of professionalism because they haven’t been at it long enough, but as time goes on… And then, coupled with that, his writing is unbelievable.  I was just amazed.  I’ve run into a lot of good players who I’ve liked.  For instance, Quincy Jones.  I played Quincy’s first arrangement for him, and I knew that he had… He was the same type of person Blanchard was.

 

TP: Really.

 

TERRY:  Yeah.  Because when I first met him I was in Washington with Basie’s band, and he came up and said, “Mr. Terry, I’m a trumpet player and I want to play trumpet and I’d like to study with you.”  I was working until 2 o’clock in the morning and he went to school at 6 o’clock in the morning.  I said, “How are we going to do that?  You’re in school all day.”  He said, “Well, could I come in the morning an hour before school?”  I said, “Okay.”  So he came and he studied and you could tell that he was very gifted and very talented.  And then after a long wait, he said, “I can write, too.  Can you try one of my arrangements.”  So we tried it.  But it was horrible when we first played it.  I took it to Basie’s band and we played it and the cats laughed at it.  But I didn’t dare discourage him because I could tell the sincerity in this person just from looking at him.  When he came back he said, “How did you like my arrangement?”  I said, “Well, Q, you made a few mistakes, and you’re on the right track, and I can guarantee that you’re going to do it.”  I shudder to think if I’d have said, “Man, forget it.”

 

TP: Well, he’s the type of person who still might have…

 

TERRY:  He would have gone on anyhow.

 

TP: And you went to Europe with him in that band that disbanded, so that’s how much you thought of Quincy Jones.

 

TERRY:  Yes, the band for Free and Easy.

 

TP: What’s it like to play with Terence?  Out there, it sounded like you were on the same wavelength.

 

TERRY:  We are on the same wavelength.  He’s gifted and very easily involved in whatever the situation it is, whatever type of music you’re playing or whatever tune it is you’re playing.  We played two tunes there, and he said it had been years since he played them or he had never played…

 

[ETC.]

 

TP: Trumpet players, especially the younger generation, there are a lot of branches on the trumpet tree, a lot of stylistic influences, and people form allegiances to one sound they take off from or another.  If you hear Terence in reference to the older trumpeters, what vibration does he remind you of?

 

TERRY:  I would say that the vibrations I would get from him from the trumpeter of genuineness.  You can tell by name brands and off-brands and some substitutions.  He always would be recognized as one of a name brand, always of the name brand.  You would never suspect him to be a person who was an also-ran.  He’s a leader, has his own sound.  I can recognize him right away.  Now, you can have your sound and it can be a horrible sound.  But he has his own sound which is a marvelous sound.

 

TP: And you were also speaking with him about the Monk Institute, and students needing guidance so that they can all the vocabulary and then bring their feelings into it and say their own thing.  Following Terence, at what point would you say that transition started to happen for him in the way you remember his progression?

 

TERRY:  Well, it’s difficult to pinpoint that because I wasn’t around him every day and every year.  Sometimes, there were years between when I would hear him.  For instance, I was shocked when I heard the first soundtrack he made for Spike Lee on the movie.  I said, “This cat can’t do that.  He hasn’t been around long enough!”   But he had been around long enough.  He’s been studying, he’s been intense, and he’s been really involved all these years, and he had the ability and talent to do it.  He studied at it and worked hard at it.  He’s the type of person… If you work diligently enough (which is what we try to get out students to do), all the beautiful things within you are capable of coming out.  But you have to work at it in the right direction, and you’re going to have to have the right channels to go through.  For instance, if you go to the left instead of going to the right, chances are you wouldn’t develop the things that are there for you.  By going this way, they came out of you.  Had you gone the other way, you might not have been so successful.  So he was smart enough or clever or gifted enough to choose the right channels, and you can’t hold talent down when it’s given the right nourishment.

 

TP: You said St. Louis trumpeters are known for producing a very consonant, mellifluous sound.  How do you identify the characteristics of trumpet players from New Orleans?

 

TERRY:  New Orleans also is a very individual type of approach to sound, all the way back to Buddy Bolden.  They had marvelous trumpet players as far back as you can remember.  The father of Gerald Wilson’s first wife was a trumpet player, and he used to talk about how Bunk Johnson and people like that used to play.  All of them had a certain sort of way associated with New Orleans.  It might have been the gumbo.  Who knows? 

 

TP: Is there an impressionistic name you can give that sound?

 

TERRY:  Well, I don’t know how I would narrowly pinpoint that, because it would be taking a heck of a chance.  It encompasses so many things.  It’s like the cuisine of New Orleans.  There’s jambalaya, there’s etouffé, there’s red beans and rice.  So you might say soulful.

 

TP: You’re a pioneering educator, and he’s picking it up…

 

TERRY:  I can tell you on that point, those of us who have been involved in jazz education for a number of years are all very proud and happy to see a person of the caliber that Terence is getting involved to pursue the perpetuation of our craft, of jazz.  Because he is a marvelous person, his head is on in the right place, he’s not twisted, he’s not egotistical, he’s open-hearted, he’s warm, he knows how to communicate with youth, he knows how to get the best out of youth, and I think he’s going to do a great job in jazz education for years on, as he always has done, and he’s going to get better and better and better.

 

[PAUSE]

 

“Batch 37 Hot Sauce, 6.75 ounces.”  “There is a point where pleasure and pain intersect, a doorway to a new dimension of sensual euphoria, where fire both burns and soothes, where heat engulfs every neuron within you.  Once the line is crossed, once the bottle is opened, once it touches your lips, there is no going back.  Pain is good.”MARSALIS:  I’m hung over, hungry and grumpy.  Perfect state of mind.

 

TP: Now, this was not a record you had anything to do with producing.  You just played on it.

 

MARSALIS:  Terence’s record?  Yes.  I just played on it.

 

TP: You’ve known Terence for a good chunk of your life.  Here’s an easy question for a guy with a hangover.  How do you see his sound evolving since he came on the scene, since he emerged and entered the fray.  His sound and compositional from Point A to where he is now.

 

MARSALIS:  I think that Terence’s whole shit changed when he made this decision to change his embouchure.  There was like a mild competition between he and Wynton, which is only natural — they play the same instrument, and they both want to excel.  And Terence pretty much came to the conclusion that it would be impossible for him to change his trumpet playing unless he changed his embouchure.  Which meant that he was willing to undergo two years of absolute fucking misery for long-term gain.  I think that changed his outlook on a lot of shit.  I think it changed him as a person and it changed his musicianship.  It changed everything.

 

TP: Do you think it changed the way he hears things in writing as well?

 

MARSALIS:  Not in the way he hears things.  I think that growth changes the way you hear things in your writing.  And for a professional working musician to decide to take a hit like that shows an enormous level of growth and an enormous level of personal honesty that even amongst musicians who make our living by trying to be relatively honest is rare to me.

 

TP: Do you think that’s something that’s always characterized Terence’s personality in one or another?

 

MARSALIS:  Well, he’s always been a quiet person.  I was lucky enough to be his friend.  Because it’s not like you get to know him.  Like, some people, they throw up a wall of silence or mysteriousness, and some people throw up a wall of overwhelming friendliness — like they’re going, “Hey, great ta-see-ya, how are you?” when it’s really like “fuck you; you don’t get to know me, this is what you get to see.”  But Terence has always been real quiet and observant.  He observes.  It’s not like he puts you through a test.  But he waits a while until he lets people get to know who he is.  But since I’ve known him since high school, I’ve just always known him.

 

TP: What sort of trumpet player was he when he was 14-15-16?

 

MARSALIS:  Terence was great.  We used to hang out all the time.  We were always fucking around and being stupid.  That’s what I remember.  I lacked the sophistication at 14 to really be able to ascertain who was good and who was bad.  He was diligent.  I mean, he went to a school called St. Augustine, which is a predominantly Black Catholic School, and they have a great marching band.  To the unskillful and the uninitiated, they have an excellent music program.  Since most regular people deal in Pop terms anyway, the marching band is the only kind of music that they can grasp or comprehend, and they always had an excellent marching band.  Well, while having an excellent marching band, they had a terrible music program, and more often than not, most of the students didn’t find out that they were woefully underprepared in music until they got to college and were hopelessly overmatched, and some of them even quit, which was a drag, because they consistently, because they were a black school, had the best talent that the city had to offer, and did nothing with it.  Terence went to that school, and it was some time in his sophomore year when he realized that school wasn’t going to fulfill his needs — it just wasn’t going to make it for him.  So he quit, and he went to a public school that would allow him to go to New Orleans Center of Creative Arts.  I mean, he’s always been the kind of person to be honest enough to see… He’s able to figure out the surroundings, and then he’s proactive about it.  Once again, in hindsight, that was a hell of a thing for him to do.  I wasn’t thinking about it the way I thought about the embouchure change, because I was much younger.

 

TP: He said his father would always make him convince him, and he would do it, so he’d always have to be very honest with himself in those type of discussions.  What do you think it says about the jazz audience, or at least the ones who are fanatical enough to participate in the Downbeat Readers Poll, that Terence has made this sweep this year, has made that impression upon them, considering that he embodies a somewhat different approach to music than what’s been acknowledged in recent years.  Any ideas on that?

 

MARSALIS:  Well, it takes time.  It’s one of the things I think that’s difficult when you place Pop values on something that is larger than such.  For instance, they hire somebody to review a record, and they give you so much time to listen to the record and decide whether you like it or not.  Well, it’s entirely conceivable that you won’t really get the gist of the record for six weeks.  So the proper amount of time that it takes to digest really difficult music is never given before you have to make a determination.  Well, I think the same can be said about a musician’s body of work.  There are a couple of us… Like, my brother Jason, who I look to for musical advice, was always in love with the Harrison-Blanchard Quintet, and I was, too.  I think that’s one of the best bands I ever heard.  They wrote great songs.  The songs had a real modern bent to them.  The biggest drawback to Jazz of anything to me is that when the shit is really good, it’s a little, and sometimes a lot ahead of where the people are, or even where the musicians are at the time.  And people always have this overwhelming desire to latch onto shit that they’re already familiar with.  They want to hear shit that they know.  So in a time when Neoclassicism was in the air and everybody was playing music that sounded like it was in the ’50s, they were playing some real heady shit, man.  It was some forward-thinking, modern shit.  And I appreciate anything modern.  But people never got that band, never understood that band, and they never understood Wynton’s band.  What they understood is we were young and we wore suits.  Any sort of realistic assessment of the music at that time was left to us.  I always thought that it was a bad idea.  Because when Terence and Donald were approached to be on Columbia, and asked me what I thought, I said that it was a horrible idea.  I knew that Wynton was the star of the moment, and I understood that a record company that makes its living with Pop music would not be able to adequately ingest that many jazz musicians.  They could only focus on one…or two, but probably just one.  And they signed, and I think one of the things that happened to them is they fell through the cracks and got victimized by a lot of the attention that they paid to Wynton’s records.  Not that it’s Wynton’s fault.  That’s just the way it is; a lot of other people fell through the cracks as well.  But I thought it was a shame, because that was an amazing group of musicians and they had some really dynamic shit to say.

 

TP: Talk about the dynamics of Terence as a composer, what makes him a distinctive voice.

 

MARSALIS:  He’s diligent.  He’s always searching for the truth and he always wants to make himself better.  The Classical music and the orchestration and the music that he’s listened to for specific things has definitely changed the way that he plays.  And it’s changed it for the better.  He’s writing good stuff, man.

 

TP: Have you paid attention to his film work?

 

MARSALIS:  Oh yeah.  He’s one of the top soundtrack writers in the business.  I rank him right up there under Howard Shore.  But Hollywood is one of the few places left where one can, almost in the old sense of the word, still be victimized by the color of their skin.  The biggest problem with any business is that the business is only as good as the people who run it, and the average median thinking is what we can expect in any situation.  For instance, there’s Terence Blanchard and Stanley Clarke, and those are the only Negro writers. So whenever you have a movie that is done by a Black director or a movie with a predominantly Black cast, which makes it a “Black” film, and the film budget ranges in the $8 to $10 million, “Oh, call Stanley Clarke or Terence Blanchard.”  It’s not like they will sit down and watch a movie and say… The biggest problem with writing for film is that the people who make the decisions on what the music should be are usually the director and the producer, and they are rarely qualified to speak about anything from a musical point of view.  So their appreciation of an artist is limited to how well the movie did that they wrote the soundtrack for, or whether they wrote one or two things that the person found personally moving.  But it’s not like most directors can say, “I want this guy because his music is great; I have explored his body of work,” and blah-blah-blah.  So you’re dealing with people who have a very limited sense of understanding of music, so they come to it with a very limited sense of understanding.  They want a name.  They say they want to hear your reel.  Well, what they really want to do is see your reel.  They want to see what you’ve done.  And if you can find a way to do 5 or 6 or 7 movies, then you get another one based on that.

 

TP: It takes on a life of its own.

 

MARSALIS:  It becomes more like a regular business person’s resume.

 

TP: That said, what is it Terence does that makes him so effective as a film score writer?

 

MARSALIS:  He understands classical techniques very well.  He understands how to write for strings.  He understands how to write melodies that are mysterious and strong.  Writing melodies always has been a strong point of his.  In the Hollywood business, they’ve made a shift from melody writing, which you hear in those movies of the ’30’s, ’40s and ’50s, to background writing, where sometimes the idea of good music will be having a chord that goes on for five minutes.  So it’s just a matter of knowing when it’s a good time to do that or when you can sneak in a melody or two.  In Eye’s Bayou he threw in New Orleans rhythms a couple of times, and that gives him an added advantage that a lot of these other guys don’t have.  He threw in a couple of these New Orleans beats when they were walking.  He’s a bad motherfucker, man.

 

TP: He’s very slick and he doesn’t show it off at all.

 

MARSALIS:  Yeah, but he’s slick with content.  He’s not just slick.  A lot of guys have good technique, and they’ll write the same score all the time.  They’ll rip themselves off continuously.  There are a couple of Hollywood composers who are notorious for that.  One guy in particular who is very successful now has written the same score for the last ten years.  It’s amazing that no one seems to mind and no one catches it, but then I understand that we’re dealing with people who have very minimal taste.

 

TP: Well, they keep making the same fucking movie over and over.

 

MARSALIS:  Well, they do make the same movie over and over.  That’s for sure.  It goes back to what I was saying earlier.  People like the shit they’ve already seen.  They don’t want to be introduced to new idea or new techniques.  It frightens them.

 

TP: How do you see Terence’s film score work inflecting what he does as a jazz composer and an improviser?

 

MARSALIS:  I can’t say specifically, because they are so different.  But you can’t spend your time involved in a situation like that and not have it affect you.  It has to have an impact.  It just does.  Listening to Classical music the way I’ve started listening to it has changed the way I play jazz.  I can’t specifically tell you how and why…

 

TP: Does it have to do with detailing…

 

MARSALIS:  No, I don’t think it does, because jazz requires a tremendous amount of detail.  There’s just a difference in the sound and how… I know for a fact, for instance, that the way I play ballads now is directly a result of listening to music where there wasn’t a strict rhythmic pattern banged out all the time.

 

TP: So you feel more comfortable playing rubato at this point.

 

MARSALIS:  Yeah, for the entire song.  And understanding songs that start off soft and become bigger and bigger; they almost become orchestral in scope now.  Terence is working on some musical ideas now, which I think haven’t yet met fruition.  The idea of having songs based on themes, and all the solos and everything relate to those themes, and the themes are interwoven, and can easily come in and out of the songs…

 

TP: So more extended composition.

 

MARSALIS:  Exactly.

 

TP: Which could be a result of all the craft and apprenticeship filtering in to what he…

 

MARSALIS:  It would seem apparent to me that that’s what’s going on.  That’s what I would think.  Terence might disagree.

 

 

Terence Blanchard Blindfold Test – 1998:

 

While working six nights at Manhattan’s Iridium behind Jazz On Film, a new release on Sony-Classical featuring his rearrangements of film music classics for jazz sextet and string orchestra, Terence Blanchard is spending days (and an occasional overnight) writing the score for Having Our Say, a forthcoming film about the centagenarian Delaney Sisters starring Ruby Dee and Diahann Carroll.  When that’s done, he’ll go in the studio with vocalist Joe Jackson next week.  Somehow, the ever-gracious trumpeter-composer found 90 minutes to listen to 13 tunes (all-trumpet) in his hotel room, from which the following was culled.

 

“When you watch Ruby Dee,” Blanchard commented toward the end, “you forget you’re watching a movie, and get into her character.  That’s what happens to me when I listen to Bird or Coltrane or Monk or Miles or Dizzy, and it’s what I aspire to in my music.  It’s time for musicians in my generation to throw away the shackles of the past, to investigate some other areas.  Not much true exploration is occurring.  I think cats like Steve Coleman and Branford are working in interesting directions.  It’s hard to do.  Our challenge as musicians is to be honest with ourselves and reevaluate what we’re doing and where we’re going.”

 

1.  Dizzy Gillespie, “Africana,” from Gillespiana, Verve, 1961/1993), Gillespie, trumpet; Lalo Schiffrin, arranger.

 

It’s Dizzy, obviously, but I don’t know the tune or the arranger.  5 stars for Dizzy and the arrangement. [LATER] Lalo incorporates some elements that are distinctly like jazz big band and some are that are very orchestral; he only brings the trumpet in for certain big moments.  Dizzy sounds great.  He played with such command of his instrument.  It’s a good pick, because he’s playing unlike Dizzy, if you know what I mean, but you can tell it’s him by his sound and phrasing.  It sounds like they recorded everybody live in one room, and then you hear Dizzy playing over the band.  The sound is huge.

_________________________________________________________________

2.  Bill Dixon, “Summer Song/Three/Aurorea/Dusk,” (from In Italy, Vol. 1, Soul Note, 1980), Dixon, trumpet.

 

Is it Don Cherry?  Then I don’t know who this is. [LATER} He played something in the lower register which made me think of Don, but he has a bigger sound.  His facility made me think of Booker Little, but I don’t remember Booker making this kind of record.  I thought it was good, creative and interesting, but I must admit that it isn’t my cup of tea.  It’s hard for me to rate it.  You hear right off is that he really believes in this, and I can’t fault anyone for that.   I’m interested in the intent behind the music.  I believe there’s a lot of room for everybody to express themselves in various variations or iterations of this thing we call jazz.  

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3.  Ornette Coleman-Don Cherry, “Sound Manual”(#8) (from In All 

Languages, Harmolodic, 1987).  Ornette Coleman, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums

 

I want to have that!  As soon as you drop the needle it’s like, “Oh, okay.”  I always loved that band.  5 stars.  That was recorded in ’87?  Get out of here!  It’s obvious how they influenced Miles’ band.  Don had a way of reinventing lyrical lines; they aren’t in any specific meter, they’re freed up in time and space, and they flow.  Those guys were ____ renegades.  Just think about the time they were doing this stuff, the crowd of people they were surrounded by; they had to be brave to come out and do this.  I’ve never thought of them as free musicians, and I don’t know why people do.  They did what everybody wants to do in jazz.  Once you learn the language and understand how this music functions and operates, then you devise a platform on which everything you do is based on musically.  _________________________________________________________________

4.  Art Farmer, “Raincheck,” (from Listen To Art Farmer & The Orchestra, Mercury, 1962/1997). Art Farmer, flugelhorn; Oliver Nelson, arrangement.

 

It’s a wild recording; I don’t know the trumpeter or arranger.  Art Farmer and Oliver Nelson?  The arrangement threw me off; the harmonies and orchestrations, with the woodwinds and electric guitar, sounded a little bit like some West Coast stuff.  Art sounded great.  He hit all those notes right on the head, played them in tune and phrased them beautifully.  5 for the performance, 4 for the arrangement.

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5.  Freddie Hubbard, “Thermo”, (from Above And Beyond, Metropolitan, 1982/1999)

 

That was “Thermo.”  I remember busting my lips trying to play it.  Freddie Hubbard is one of the all-time greats in this music, not just a trumpet player but a great composer as well.  I did a gig with Freddie and Woody Shaw when I was really young.  It was wild, because nothing I played belonged to me — it belonged to one of them.  Every time I played something, “Whoa, can’t do that.” [LAUGHS] I always admired his facility, the weight of his sound and phrasing — right in the middle of the beat.  5 for the performance and 5 for the composition.  

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6. Wynton Marsalis, “Spring Yaounde,” (from City Griot, Columbia, 1991).  Wynton Marsalis, trumpet.

 

Obviously Wynton.  It’s nice.  Wynton has definitely developed his own sound.  He’s had that for a long time.  Anything he plays you’ve got to give him a 5.  He’s a serious technician, with a unique way of twisting lines and rhythms.  The composition I don’t feel as strong about; I’ll give it a 4.   To me subtext has always been his thing; you’ve always got to check out what’s going on underneath the melody.  I’ve known him since elementary school, and he and Branford and Kent Jordan all influenced me to practice and want to be better.  I’ll always appreciate knowing them for that reason alone, aside from just enjoying their music.

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7. Brian Lynch, “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face,” Spheres of Influence, Sharp-9, 1997). Brian Lynch, trumpet.

 

I don’t know who it is. [LATER] I knew it would come to me after a while!  I’ll give the performance a 5.  Brian has always been a good player; he’s been around and knows what he’s doing.  The arrangement was interesting, particularly the introduction, which I didn’t expect to go where it did; I’ll give it a 4.  Brian’s style is musically direct.  Art Blakey always used to tell us, “never speak down to anybody or speak over them; speak right to them,” and all the guys who played with Art had that right-to-the-point approach.

 

This was wild!  When you hear all of this, you realize the vast number of distinctive styles in this music of people playing the same instrument.  That’s always that fascinated me about playing jazz as opposed to playing Pop or Classical music.  There’s a readily discernible difference in all these guys, and we’re all playing the same instrument and the same three valves.

 

[-30-]

 

Terence Blanchard Musician Show (6-21-95):

 

[MUSIC: Blanchard: “Divine Order,” “Going to Mecca,” “Malcolm’s Theme,” “Poems,” “Don’t Explain.”

 

 

TP: I’d like to talk about your relation to different trumpet stylists when you were coming up as a trumpeter, and I gather Clifford Brown was someone you heard rather early on.

 

BLANCHARD:  Yes.  Clifford Brown and Miles Davis were the first people that I really paid attention to.  Clifford was the first.  I think the thing that caught me about Clifford was just his mastery of the instrument.  Prior to that I had heard trumpet players who could play high, I had heard trumpet players who could do little tricks.  But Clifford’s lyrical and rhythmical knowledge of music that he displayed on the instrument was very fascinating to me.  I remember listening to “Sweet Clifford” for the first time, and was totally amazed at his technique.  Miles Davis was totally at the opposite end of the spectrum for me.  The first time that I heard him play I was just taken by his purity, and his thoughts, his musical thoughts.

 

TP: What were the circumstances under which you heard them play?  At home?  In school?

 

BLANCHARD:  At first it was in school.  I went to the New Orleans Center of the Creative Arts, and Ellis Marsalis put on some of these records for me.  Prior to that I wanted to be a Jazz musician, but at this time there wasn’t any Tower Records, and the stores’ stock of Jazz product was very limited.  Most of the stuff that you could get at that time, you had to order.  So we weren’t really knowledgeable about a lot of things, and that’s where Ellis played a big role.

 

TP: What was your experience in Jazz before being exposed to Ellis Marsalis and that quite remarkable little class he had at that time?

 

BLANCHARD:  [LAUGHS] I knew about Louis Armstrong and I knew about some of the earlier musicians, like Earl “Fatha” Hines, because my father used to talk about Earl Fatha Hines and Pops all the time.  Of course, the popular people, the famous people like Dizzy Gillespie who you used to see on television all the time, and people like Oscar Peterson and Sarah Vaughan.  But as far as the modern era of Jazz, I wasn’t really up on that, people like John Coltrane, Clifford and Ornette Coleman.

 

TP: Had you been playing trumpet from an early age?

 

BLANCHARD:  I started playing trumpet in my fourth grade in elementary school, but I didn’t really take a lesson until my junior year in high school.  So I had the trumpet for a long time.

 

TP: Were you involved in second line type things in New Orleans?

 

BLANCHARD:  Not as much as I would like to have.  At that time, “when I became serious,” I started devoting all of my time to staying at home and studying and listening to music and practicing — because I had a lot of stuff to do.  I didn’t have a chance to play in some of the New Orleans style bands.  I did get a chance to play with some of the Jazz bands.  I played more of the modern stuff.  Dick Stabile(?) had a big band at the Fairmont Hotel, and I used  to sub for Emory Thompson all the time there.  There were a couple of other gigs that we used to have.  I used to sit with people at a club called Tyler’s in New Orleans (it’s closed now), and Snug Harbor, which used to be called the Farber(?) at that time.

 

TP: Talk about Ellis Marsalis’ mode of teaching.  Apart from the innate talent of the students, how did everyone come out of there so prepared?

 

BLANCHARD:  I think it was an effort of all of the faculty.  Ellis taught Jazz Improvisation and sight singing.   But we had a number of different opportunities.  We studied theory and analysis, we had different project classes where people would work on special things, depending upon what it was that you wanted to do later on in life.  We also had to be in the chorus, and we learned about breathing and phrasing and stuff like that.  So it was a number of different things.  We also had a performance class, where you were graded not only on your performance, but your critique of other performances.

 

TP: Terence Blanchard commented on Clifford Brown combination of virtuosity and tremendous lyricism, and it was never better illustrated on the Clifford Brown with Strings record, from which we’ll play “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man Of Mine.”

 

[MUSIC:  Clifford Brown, “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man Of Mine,” “Sweet Clifford”; Miles Davis, “Old Folks”]

 

TP: If you’d been in here with Terence Blanchard, who programmed that material, you’d have seen him singing the solos pretty much note for note, all of them, plus the tenor solos, doing the drum arrangements, and basically reminiscing about absorbing this music when he was a teenager in New Orleans and later.  Would you repeat what you were saying about Miles Davis right before we went on mike?

 

BLANCHARD:  What I loved about this band is that there were no wasted notes, not by anybody in the band, whether they were accompanying a soloist or whether they were out front. Everything seemed to be just right on.  It takes special musicians to be able to do that, because sometimes musicians wanted to be out front, their ego gets the best of them.  But these guys really seemed to play in tune with the music.  I love that band.

 

TP: There’s a quality of spontaneous composition and refinement of the arrangement going on all the time, it seems, with Miles Davis’ band.

 

BLANCHARD:  Yeah.  And see, the thing about it is there’s a large amount of control that the band has as a group.  Because anybody can step out and just play some stuff that’s melodically hip or rhythmically hip.  But it takes a lot of control to restrain yourself and be able to play what’s perfect for the moment, which may be different from what you intended to play when you walked into the studio or walked into the club that night.

 

TP: Or maybe right the instant before you started playing the solo.

 

BLANCHARD:  Oh, definitely.

 

TP: You made another comment about Miles which has been commonly made, which is that on the first note, he can play the one note, and you know it’s him.

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, that’s the thing I love about this music.  From the guys that I really admire and love and really appreciate from the very first note, you can tell it’s their music.  That’s the great thing about being with Jackie McLean for a week at the Blue Note.  You open the door in the dressing room… Jackie wasn’t even playing; I think somebody else was playing.  But you can hear the compositions and you say, “That’s Jackie McLean’s music.”  That’s a fascinating thing for me, because we still use all those same 12 tones.  People say you have to find something new, but I think you just have to be yourself, and I think that’s what those musicians were doing.

 

TP: Why is it so hard to play with the type of economy that Miles Davis played with?

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, I think it takes special musicians to be able to do that.  Because sometimes musicians can be a little selfish.  Let’s face it.  Sometimes our egos can get the best of us.

 

TP: Well, you’ve spent a lot of time perfecting your instrument, and you want to show your stuff off!

 

BLANCHARD:  [LAUGHS] Right.  You want to display your wares, so to speak.  I think what made that band so great was the fact that they could put all that stuff aside, and understand that playing as a unit… You say more by playing for the moment, and not trying to reach that peak or not trying to display that technical prowess on every song.

 

TP: Yet, getting back to technique, let’s say a few words about what specifically you would think technically about Miles Davis’ playing and Clifford Brown.  You had the chance to play next to Sonny Rollins a few years ago at Carnegie Hall and had the chance to play some of the things he’d played with Clifford Brown, like “Pent-Up House” and maybe “Kiss and Run” as well.

 

BLANCHARD:  The thing that I find interesting is that… Of course, everybody always talks about Clifford Brown’s dexterity over his instrument, which is very obvious.  He had a tremendous amount of control over his instrument, not only technically, but also with his sound.  But I think Miles gets slighted a bit when it comes to that.  First of all, he had a beautiful tone, and it takes a lot of control to be able to play with a beautiful tone like that.  And he had a great attack, which also takes a lot of technique and control.  He was no slouch!  I mean, “My Funny Valentine” live, he’s nailing some of those G’s and A’s [LAUGHS] up there pretty consistently on that session.

 

So I think both those guys were technically proficient in their own right, but had different styles.  That’s the beauty of the music, is that this music allows people to really express themselves in the way they see fit.

 

TP: Well, the next trumpeter up is Clark Terry, known for his impeccable technique and tremendous imagination in small groups, big bands, studios, reading, trumpet, flugelhorn, mute, everything for almost 50 years, and also as a teacher.  Your impressions of Clark Terry, first hearing him, etc.

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, Clark Terry was the first guy that I saw play live who really made me understand what it was I needed to work on in terms of my technique and control.  I used to listen to the Clifford Brown records, like I said, and I listened to Freddie Hubbard records and even Clark Terry’s stuff, and just imagined people all over the stage gyrating to get those phrases out of the instrument.  The first time I heard him play was at a hotel in New Orleans.  The man barely moved.  But he was so expressive through his instrument.  It really amazed me.  He made it look so incredibly easy that I wanted to run home and just pick up my horn and start practicing.  And then I really found out how difficult it was!  I mean, I’d always had a lot of respect for Clark Terry, but my love and passion for his genius just really grew from that point on.

 

[MUSIC:  C. Terry w/ Ellington, “Perdido” (1952); Freddie Hubbard, “Birdlike” (1961)]

 

TP: We listened to a tune that’s been a challenge to just about every trumpet player that’s come up in the last 25 years and more, Freddie Hubbard’s “Birdlike” from 1961.  I think Terence described that as a 21-chorus solo, though you might have been off by one or two.  And what a great solo by Clark Terry on “Perdido”.

 

BLANCHARD:  It was great.  I remember the first time I heard that.  I was in college, at Rutgers, and somebody was playing it over the loudspeaker system in the hall.  It drew me into the hall.  I ran into the hall, trying to figure out who the hell was that playing the trumpet.  It was an amazing thing. 

 

TP: He just goes right into the solo, and he keeps building.  Every time you think he’s upped the ante to the max, he comes up with something else.

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, the thing that amazed me about it was the fact that it was “hip.”  It was beyond the Swing Era to me.

 

TP: He quotes “Parisian Thoroughfare” at the end of the solo.

 

BLANCHARD:  He played a lot of ideas which were very contemporary for the period.

 

TP: Well, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie spoke of Clark Terry as a musician who was totally conversant with everything that was happening during the innovations of the mid-’40s.  Talk about Freddie Hubbard’s impact on the world of trumpet. 

 

BLANCHARD:  Freddie Hubbard scared me to death.  I saw him play live one time in New Orleans, and I was just totally amazed at everything that he did, harmonically and rhythmically.  He was definitely one of my heros.  I got a chance to meet him that night, too.  Actually he called me up to play; I was about 18 years old.  It was a great honor meeting him.  Plus I grew up listening to all the stuff he did with Art Blakey, and then the stuff he did on his own, Red Clay and some of the Pop stuff, Funk stuff.

 

TP: What happened when he called you up to sit in?

 

BLANCHARD:  Oh, he was totally cool.  What happened was, I was at a jazz band competition earlier that day, and the judges heard me play, and they took me to the club actually, and they knew Freddie and introduced me to him.  They told him about me, and he said he wanted to hear me play.  So he called me up and he gave me his trumpet, and he played the flugelhorn, and we played a blues.

 

TP: Put on the teacher’s hat again and talk about what Freddie Hubbard’s done and where he stands amidst the various trumpet styles of the period.

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, for me, Freddie has changed the style of the trumpet from the Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, and even Miles Davis period.  He came into the music with a freshness that was very different, and you could tell that he was very influenced by the saxophonists of his period.

 

TP: How does being influenced by saxophone players manifest itself in a trumpet style?

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, he played some things that weren’t really associated with the trumpet.  Some of those arpeggiated things he played, some of the more technical things he would do and some of the extended harmonic things he would do, and the rhythmical things all interspersed between those, weren’t really associated with the instrument.  It was associated more with the saxophone players of the period, like Trane, Sonny Rollins, people like that.

 

People don’t talk about this a lot with Freddie.  But Freddie and Woody Shaw, to me, had a very unique rhythmical concept to the things they played, and it had a very large impact on me.  That’s the thing I always noticed about him.  Sometimes Freddie’s phrases can turn on a dime, so to speak. Especially the way he played later on.  I heard him play at the Blue Note one night, and he amazed me, because as soon as you think he’s going to resolve a phrase one way, he turns and goes another direction.  Not only does it go in another direction in terms of ascending-descending, but also harmonically.  It was just an amazing thing to listen to, because he does that on tunes that are harmonically complex.  So it was more of a testimony to his genius.

 

I think people need to be more aware of that side of him.  I think sometimes Freddie gets labelled as a guy who is just technically proficient on his instrument, but I think he’s definitely created and developed his own style that’s influenced a lot of us.  When I listen to the record we just played… I’ll give you an example.  Once I played with Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw at Russian River Festival, and it was the most frustrating and the most enjoyable concert in my life.  It was enjoyable to be on the bandstand with them.  It was frustrating because everything that I played belonged to one of them.  Everything!  It was just amazing, because I didn’t realize it up until that point.  They’d play something, and I thought, “Wow, oh, that’s right; I got that from that record.”  Then Woody would play something and I’d say, “Oh, right, okay.”

 

TP: Back to square two anyway.

 

BLANCHARD:  I said, “Yeah, now it’s time for to start dealing with something else.”

 

TP: Well, I guess a lot of trumpet players had that reaction to Louis Armstrong when they heard his innovations in the ’20s and ’30s — “Where do we go from here?”

 

BLANCHARD:  Oh, definitely.

 

TP: Being from New Orleans, I’d think you’d have been aware of Pops from Square One.

 

BLANCHARD:  Not directly.  I was aware of Louis Armstrong, I was aware of who he was, but I really hadn’t listened a lot to his music.  I’d heard people in New Orleans playing in that style all while I was growing up.  But it wasn’t until I joined Art Blakey’s band, and I started listening to Art talk about Louis Armstrong…

 

TP: What did he say about him?

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, he just talked about him being a genius.  He talked about his prowess on his instrument, and how he had a really big sound, how he could really sing.  Art Blakey always talked about that.  He said Pops could really sing through his instrument.  I had to go back and reexamine Pops, because I kept looking at him from a social standpoint and not being comfortable with what I thought he represented socially.  But then I had to go back and reevaluate the period from which it was created and what he did for music, and how he really changed the course of music.  He’s still, to me, probably one of the greatest Jazz musicians who ever walked this planet, for a number of reasons.  First of all, not only was he able to really master his instrument, but he also had the ability to combine a lot of aspects that musicians have trouble dealing with today.  He was an entertainer, and he also was a genius musically.  The music stands on its own.  He didn’t water down his music for commercialism.  He had a way of incorporating all those elements together, which I think made him one of the greatest of all time.

 

[MUSIC: Pops, “Muskrat Ramble,” “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue” (1956)]

 

TP: Terence, your music publishing company is Joseph Oliver  Music, and I’d thought it referred to King Oliver, but you told me different.

 

BLANCHARD:  No, really it’s about my father.  My father, as I knew him growing up, his name was Oliver Joseph Blanchard, but when I became a teenager we found his birth certificate, and his birth certificate had it labeled as Joseph Oliver Blanchard.  That’s where the title comes from.

 

TP: Growing up in New Orleans, you mentioned hearing a lot of older musicians playing in that style.  Was that a major part of your musical development?

 

BLANCHARD:  Oh, yes.

 

TP: Talk about that a bit, and let’s talk about the culture of New Orleans and the continuity of this style of music.

 

BLANCHARD:  One of the things I loved about growing up in New Orleans was that everybody had some kind of appreciation for Jazz, whether they were really into the music or not.  Because you heard it all the time.  That was the big thing, to hear the trumpet call before the Second Line.  Everybody knew what was about to occur.  Or to see one of the Jazz funerals, when the band would split and let the body pass by, and then they would get into their thing of celebrating the passage from one life to another.  Or just hearing bands on Bourbon Street and the French Quarter.  When I was in high school, I always caught the bus or the streetcar to Canal Street, and then I would have to switch to a bus.  But sometimes I would walk up Bourbon Street, because they had 24-hour music, and I would hear a lot of guys, like Teddy Riley, who’s a great trumpet player, Emory Thompson is another one, Wallace Davenport.  I would hear these guys playing in the style of the music, and it really affected me, moreso when I started playing with Art and later on than it did at that particular time — because I started to reflect on my upbringing.  Because I used to sit in with those guys in the French Quarter all the time, and I learned a lot.

 

TP: How would the older musicians in New Orleans treat an eager young musician?  Were they salty?  Were they helpful and friendly?

 

BLANCHARD:  For me they were very, very helpful.  They would always encourage me.  I never really had a problem with anybody.  They always told me things.  They always pulled me aside and said, “Look, you need to deal with this” or “you need to check this out” or “I know you guys don’t want to hear this, but go listen to this style of music.”  That was always helpful for me.  Or they would do it on the bandstand.  Sometimes Emory would play me some tunes, and I didn’t know what the hell they were or what key they were, but it really helped me to develop my ears.  And just watching those guys, how they… I saw Emory one night, and he didn’t have a plunger mute, but he used a paper cup, and just to watch his technique with the cup, watching him make the horn speak, it was very unusual for me.  And I have a great appreciation for all of those guys, for the things that they contributed.

 

TP: Two aspects of New Orleans style playing that continue to have an impact on the music are the polyphonic ensemble playing we heard on the Pops tracks and the special rhythmic feeling of New Orleans.  Can you talk about those aspects of music-making?

 

BLANCHARD:  That’s one of the things I love about Pops.  When you listen to those guys play those ensembles it’s like a revival almost!  It’s a special thing.  It really gets you going.  The music is very passionate and very powerful.  But rhythmically that music has always had an identity all its own.  It has a heavy root on the fourth beat.  Everything seems to revolve on the fourth beat.  If you’re counting in 4/4, it’s 1-2-3-4… Whether they play it or not, you can hear where everything revolves around it.  Which makes it interesting, because everybody kind of knows what’s about to occur, and either you can go with it or you don’t have to.  The thing that makes it interesting is the arrangements sometimes.  You can hear it on “Muskrat Ramble.”  They would set up like they were about to play something on the top, and then they didn’t — which really adds an element of surprise.  I’ve traveled all over the world, and in other styles of music I can always hear the influence of New Orleans traditional music and other musics, which I think is great.

 

TP: A lot of the older musicians you heard on Bourbon Street probably had other interests apart from that music.  That was a functional thing, a way of making your living in New Orleans.  But I’d think a number of them must have been aware of the advances in the music from the 1940’s and ’50s.

 

BLANCHARD:  Oh yeah, they were very aware of that.  Those guys knew about everybody.  That’s the thing that was great for me, because I didn’t get a chance to talk to Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie at that point in my life.  I had those guys, and they were very helpful.  Willie Singleton was the kind of guy who wasn’t really a soloist, but he was a great trumpet player, and he would talk to me all the time about stuff.  It was interesting being around him, because I could hear him, like, read some Clifford Brown solos, and his sound and technique was just amazing.  He would talk to me about how Clifford phrased certain things and how he developed things, and he would actually play them for me.  Emory Thompson was the same way.  He talked to me about Clifford and Miles and the things that he observed.  He’d seen those guys play live, and he had talked to them about certain things.  Plus he was a great player in his own right, so he had a lot of knowledge about the instrument.

 

[MUSIC: Diz-Bird, “Bloomdido” (1950); Diz-Stitt-Getz, “Wee” (1956)]

 

TP: Terence, put on your analyst hat and talk about Dizzy Gillespie.

 

BLANCHARD:  With Dizzy it was a gradual thing.  I knew about Dizzy early on in my career, because like I said, you’d see him on television and hear him play.  When I started listening to his recordings with Bird, it blew me away.  He had the same impact on me that Clifford had, in terms of just marveling at what he could do with the instrument, the way he could phrase and just capture your attention.  The things that he played rhythmically with the trumpet were very unique.  I asked him about it, and he’d always make a joke, “Well, I was just trying to keep up with Bird.”  I said, “Well, you were doing more than just keeping up!”  When you listen to the melody of “Bloomdido,” it’s an amazing thing.  Those solos, and just the melodies themselves are a real lesson in bebop; just learning how to play the melodies correctly and how to phrase them correctly.

 

TP: Getting deep inside them is a lesson in and of itself.

 

BLANCHARD:  Definitely.  When you look at the tune “Confirmation,” it’s definitely a lesson in the Blues and how to deal with alternate changes on the Blues — because that’s basically what it is, with a bridge.  The thing that’s great about the Bebop era for me is that those guys played, for lack of a better term, a lot of notes, but all those notes still had meaning.  They weren’t notes for the sake of crowding a specific space with music.  When you listen to tunes like “Bloomdido,” all the things that Bird and Dizzy did, all of the notes had a purpose, and a lot of the stuff was very melodic.  That’s the thing that I think is really the genius behind that, that throughout all of it there’s still melody.

 

TP: We’ll move now to Thelonious Monk, one of the unique melodists in all of music.  Both he and Dizzy were very close to your former employer, Art Blakey.  There’s a story that in the Billy Eckstine band, when Art Blakey came in, Dizzy Gillespie danced out the rhythms for Buhaina, and Buhaina took off from there more or less.  Did Art ever talk about that.

 

BLANCHARD:  He never talked about that specifically, but he did talk about that band a great deal, and he did talk about Dizzy and Bird being in that band, and he talked about how much he learned from those guys.  He felt like he didn’t really have a lot together when he got in that situation, and those guys took him by the hand and nurtured him and helped him to really develop his craft.

 

TP: We’ll hear one of Terence’s favorite’s on Monk Plays Ellington, “I Let A Song Go Out of My Heart.”

 

BLANCHARD:  One of the things about this album that I really love is the fact, first of all, that Monk would take the time to do this project and express his appreciation for a person he obviously learned a great deal from.  The other thing is he did it in such a fashion that he’s still Monk.  He’s not trying to play like Duke Ellington.  He’s being Thelonious Monk playing the music of Duke Ellington.  When you listen to all of this stuff, that combination adds a uniqueness to the entire project that I think is quite wonderful — and very beautiful.

 

[MUSIC: Monk, “I Let A Song Go Out of My Heart” & “Caravan” Ellington, “Anatomy Of A Murder: Main Title”]

 

TP: At the end of “I Let A Song Go Out of My Heart” Terence said, “That’s bad!  We have to play another.”  You had the solos memorized, the bass solo, all the chords down.  The things you find out doing a Musician Show!

 

The Ellington soundtrack had a big influence on you, Terence, when you began your own scoring endeavors with Spike Lee for X and before that for Mo’ Better Blues.

 

BLANCHARD:  Not so much for Mo’ Better Blues, because I just wrote one piece of music for that.  [END OF SIDE, MISSED A BIT] …Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” so I could get a handle on both idioms.  The sad thing was that I didn’t really get a chance to use much of what I learned from either.  The first thing I learned from doing film is that the story really will tell you what type of music it needs.  But hopefully, I’ll get a chance to really stretch out, so to speak, in the future.

 

TP: You said as a youngster the reason you were able to sing the bass solo, the piano solo and the drum part simultaneously is because you were listening real hard to these records, trying to figure out what Jazz is.  I said, “Well, maybe that’s why it was natural for you to become a composer.”

 

BLANCHARD:  I never thought of that, but it’s probably true.  I remember when I started listening to Clifford and Miles, it just seemed that everybody around me at that time had more of a grasp on what Jazz was and they knew more about the music and really had a love for it.  I felt like I had to play catchup.  So I would go home and I would listen to these records all the time, and I would play them and I’d listen to just the saxophone, then I’d go back and listen to the same song and listen to the trumpet, trying to figure out, “Wait a minute; there must be some formula to this.”  The thing that was good about it was I’d started to understand how the instruments function in small groups, especially listening to Miles Davis’ band with Herbie, Ron, Tony and with George Coleman and Wayne Shorter.  That band really helped me develop my interest in composition.

 

TP: Talk about your early efforts.  Did that begin more or less with the Messengers, or the Harrison-Blanchard group shortly after?

 

BLANCHARD:  No, it started in high school.  I started writing some things in high school.  It was funny.  I remember the first time I learned about a minor chord with  major seventh.  I wrote a song very similar to “Chelsea Bridge,” which is kind of funny because I thought I came away with something unique, then I heard the record and I said, “Wow, that’s my song; wait a minute, it’s not mine…” [LAUGHS] But I started writing things at an early age.  One of them we recorded with Art Blakey.  It was a tune called, “Oh, By The Way,” which I think I had written as a junior in high school.

 

TP: We’ll hear some soundtrack music,.  We couldn’t find the CD of Shawshank Redemption, of which you think very highly , but we do have the soundtrack to Glory, composed and conducted by James Horner and performed by the Boys Choir of Harlem.  A few words about both soundtracks.

 

BLANCHARD:  They’re both very unique, obviously.  Shawshank I really love because I think Thomas Noonan is a very talented composer.  He has a wide range of emotional tone colors at his disposal with an orchestra, and I find that to be very amazing.  The score James Horner did for Glory was very unique to me, because given the subject matter I would probably have thought of a different style of music to go with the film.  But I really loved the music that he chose to go with the film, and I learned a lot from this score as well.

 

[MUSIC: Glory, “The Whipping,” “Charging Fort Wagner”; Coltrane, “Resolution”]

 

TP: Terence Blanchard was saying that as many times as he’s listened to this record, he’s never blase.  Terence was playing the drum part, the bass, singing the melody, and said this is how he gets every time he listens to Love Supreme.

 

BLANCHARD:  Yes, it has that power.  It draws you right to the music.  It’s very powerful.  The thing I always express to young musicians about it, one of the things that’s amazing to me about it is that people listen to John Coltrane’s music, and especially drummer will listen to Elvin Jones, and I think they miss the point to a degree. When you listen to Elvin Jones, he’s playing with a lot of intensity and the music is very emotional, but he’s not playing loud and he’s not bashing on the drums.  He’s playing with a lot of control.  But it’s the content.  That’s what draws the intensity out of the music.

 

TP: What do you think are the sources of Coltrane’s music from which he derived the intensity that really permeates all of his playing?

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, I think he started to come in touch with something within himself.  That’s the only way I can explain it.  You hear stories about how he became spiritually aware of a lot of things in his life, and I think that’s the thing that really comes out in all of his music, is that searching for the truth in life.  This album, and that particular cut, used to keep me up at nights when I was with Art Blakey.  We would finish a show and I’d be dead tired, and I’d go back to my room and say, “Man, I’m just going to go to bed,” and I’d mess around and put this on.  Next thing you know, I would listen to it literally until my batteries would wear down, because his music has such a power.  You hear exactly what he’s talking about when he says, “A Love Supreme.”  You just feel it immediately in his music.

 

TP: From that, we’ll go to Ornette Coleman from 1959.  Again, your first hearing Ornette Coleman, the impact it had on you, and the dynamics of the music.

 

BLANCHARD:  You know, I kind of fell into Ornette, because I was heavily into Miles Davis.  I was really listening to some of the later stuff Miles did, with albums like Nefertiti and The Sorcerer and that stuff.  The more I listened to that stuff and the direction they were going into, when I heard Ornette it kind of fell in place for me, because I could kind of hear where Miles was borrowing.

 

TP: Be more explicit about that.

 

BLANCHARD:  When you listen to some of the stuff with Miles, when Miles would play his solos, sometimes the piano would lay out and Miles would try to play very free.  They would manipulate the time, they would play beyond the standard swing patterns, or sometimes they would play different kinds of rhythmical patterns, and just trying to really free up the music harmonically and rhythmically.  When I started listening to Ornette I heard that right away; especially in some of the stuff he did with Don Cherry, I heard the correlation.  Actually it happened one night in New Orleans late one night, when I was in high school.  I was driving someplace and I turned on a radio station, and they played some Ornette Coleman, and I mistook the first couple of bars of the trumpet solo for Miles Davis.  I started listening closely, then I said, “Okay, this is somebody different,” who I wasn’t really aware of.”

 

TP: Two aspects of Ornette’s quartet music is the polyphony in the front line between Ornette and Don Cherry, sort of co-composing as they’re playing, interweaving in and out of each other, and also Edward Blackwell’s ability to play extremely clear drum patterns that buttress the music, that are almost African in a certain way but come directly from the drum culture of New Orleans.

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, there’s an interesting dynamic going on with that band.  Sometimes, when you listen to Ornette and Don Cherry just play the melodies, and the way that Ed Blackwell would play in between the melodies… There’s a certain language that they established with that band that was very unique unto that band that definitely influenced a lot of other people. Because some of that stuff was free.  And it’s interesting to me, because I consider Ornette’s music to be very free in one sense, and very beautiful and very traditional in another sense.

 

TP: Want to elaborate on that?

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, you definitely hear the traditions of the music.  You definitely hear the traditions of Swing and Blues in Ornette’s music.  But you also hear where he was dealing with some new things and expounding on those, and breaking out of certain traditions, and cutting new ground.

 

TP: Talk about structure in your music.  Do you set up everybody’s parts in your music?  Talk about your compositional process?

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, sometimes for the Jazz band I may come in with set ideas.  But what I’m learning to do now with the band that I have is not to do that as much.  Because I really respect the musicians in the band, and I give them a chance to bring something to the compositions.  For instance, on the title cut of the new album, Romantic Defiance, I wanted Troy Davis to do something very specific.  I wanted more of like a military kind of drum dirge, something built around that.  So I would tell him that, and I wouldn’t give him a specific pattern or anything, but that would be the instruction or pattern I’d give him, and he’d take it from there,  But generally, on most of the stuff, these guys bring a lot to the music.

 

[MUSIC: Ornette, “Peace” (1959); Joe Henderson, “Lazy Afternoon” (1968)]

 

TP: A few words about Joe Henderson.  That again raises the issue of people on other instruments influencing your style, be it instrumentally, compositionally, and so forth?

 

BLANCHARD:  Well, the thing I love about Jazz is that the instrument is one thing, but what you say with it is the thing that matters.  I get inspiration from all these guys.  It doesn’t matter what instrument they play. If they have something to say and something to offer that really touches me, I’ll listen and try to learn from as many people as possible.

 

TP: Some of the people whose music we did not get a chance to play this evening were Wayne Shorter and McCoy Tyner, and you’d also chosen Dexter Gordon’s version of “Body and Soul,” and Ben Webster and Harry Sweets Edison.  I know Sweets has been important to you.

 

BLANCHARD:  Definitely.  I’m really sorry we didn’t get a chance to listen to that, because he’s definitely one of the pioneers in the music.

 

TP: Finally, we’ll hear music from Romantic Defiance, the latest CD on Columbia.  You’ve recently changed format, and gone from a two-horn front line to performing as trumpet with rhythm section, which is a somewhat more challenging but I guess gives you more room to stretch out.

 

BLANCHARD:  It started when we did the Billie Holiday record.  When we went on tour with that we just had the quartet plus Jeannie Bryson doing the vocals.  I learned a lot from that situation, and I felt it was going to give me a chance to strengthen my chops and learn more about my instrument — and that’s exactly what it’s done.  So playing quartet has been challenging, but it’s also been a lot of fun for me.

 

For the eminent composer and pianist Anthony Davis’ 73rd birthday, the transcript of a WKCR Musician Show from Aug. 11,1993

In honor of composer-pianist Anthony Davis’ 73rd birthday, I’m posting the transcript of a WKCR Musician Show that he did with me in 1993, in which he presented music that influenced him in formative years and also his original music, including a number of selections from the original production of his opera X Manhattan’s City Opera (as you may know, the Metropolitan Opera presented a new production this year), which maestro Davis commented on. We’d previously done a Sunday Jazz profiles show in 1989, where Mr. Davis discussed his body of recorded work up to that point in detail, but I haven’t had a chance to transcribe it.

*******************

Anthony Davis, Musician Show (WKCR-Aug. 11, 1993):

[MUSIC: Anthony Davis, “Little Richard’s New Wave” – for Melissa Finley dance piece]

TP:   We have a wide array of music programmed – Ellington, Mingus, Monk, Cecil Taylor, a variety of operas, as well as your own music. The impact of Duke Ellington is quite evident in your small group and piano work. Have you been involved in Ellington’s from early on?

AD:   I think it started when I was a freshman at Yale. Actually, it first started with my meeting Leo Smith. Leo is a real Ellington junkie, became really interested and fascinated with Ellington’s music. I was totally a bebopper.

TP:   How do you mean?

AD:   When I was 18, I was completely…like most of the pianists today…I was a follower of Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner, and I was really interested in Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. So I was always playing with changes and writing tunes with changes, etc. Leo sort of introduced me to a lot of earlier music as well as more current music — hearing more of Cecil Taylor, etc. Then also, at Yale, I was fortunate to be there at a time when Willie Ruff, who is still there, had what’s called the Conservatory Without Walls. They started this off with a concert with Ellington. Ellington came to Yale and did a series of concerts. Also…

TP:   Was one of them recorded as The Yale Concert?

AD:   I think so, yes. What was really interesting, they had an Ellington Fellowship program, so they brought Mingus and many other artists associated with Ellington came up to Yale and performed. Mingus’ concert was famous, because there was a bomb threat in the middle of it so we had to abandon the building, but Mingus still played through the whole thing!

I met Ellington at a party after one of the concert. I was I guess about 19, and I was across the room from him. He looked at me. Of course, in those days I had this huge Afro, which I lost only recently. But I had this huge, wild Afro in those days, and he looked across the room and he pointed at me and he said, “You must be a musician.”

TP:   To which you said?

AD:   “Yeah.” I wasn’t really sure that was my life’s calling at that point. But after Ellington came over and hugged me and said, “You must be a musician,” I figured, “I guess I’d better be.”

TP:   He anointed you.

AD:   That’s right.

TP:   Please forgive the silliness of the question. But for you as a musician at that place and time,  and wherever you were at aesthetically, what was the appeal of Ellington’s music, and what did you learn from it, if I can put it like that?

AD:   Well, I think it’s profound in the sense that what you learn from Ellington is the idea of structure, the idea of creating forms that embrace both improvisation and interpretation by the improviser, as well as compositional form. Every composition of his has a unique structure, and that’s what was so fascinating to me. As opposed to when I looked like bebop music and its sort of formalized structure of 32 bars or 16 bars or 12 bar forms, where Ellington was always unusual and did so much with even expanding upon those structures. So I began to look at… I was fascinated with his suites  and more of his extended compositions, and it influenced me a lot. I remember starting to write suites when I was in college. I wrote a series of suites. One was called “The Left Hand Of Darkness Suite.” Then I wrote another one called “Madagascar Suite,” because I found out some of my relatives were from Madagascar, so I did a suite of music from that. I began to create compositions that had that… In fact, a lot of the musicians at the time used to joke with me and call me “Mister Medley,” because I was always making all my tunes into extended pieces, linking them together and tying them together.

But that was a lot of the Ellington influence – the idea of creating longer forms, longer structures, and also the idea of looking at influences outside of music itself. The idea of drawing upon…whether it be a book or a story or something you see, etc.

TP:   Ellington was extremely visual and always seemed to have a story to tell for almost anything he’d write.

AD:   Oh, of course. If anyone knows anything about Ellington, he was a painter, and all these different colors of blue that he… I don’t know how many titles of his pieces are different shades of blue. But the idea of his fascination with color and light. And you can see that in his music, too.

So that was a profound influence on me. And the idea of Ellington being really a role model, a model of someone who achieved a perfect balance of composition and improvisation… He became an important musical model for me.

TP:   In a sense, he’s the source of the three other musicians we’ll prominently feature. Mingus, Monk, and Cecil Taylor all draw heavily on aspects of Ellington in their work.

AD:   That’s definitely true. Mingus played in Ellington’s orchestra for a short time. But I think you can hear in Mingus’ music the influence of Ellington and Strayhorn, too, in terms of his harmonic idiom. I also have to say that Art Tatum was a profound influence, too, in terms of developing his harmonic idiom. Of course, with Mingus again, the fascination with the extended forms, the idea of expanding song form and making it into larger compositions, larger structures. I always loved Mingus’ music. It was another profound influence for me.

TP:   Before we begin with the programming, it must be mentioned that although Anthony Davis doesn’t perform so often in the New York area, this month you’ll be involved in a number of performances, both your own and as a sideman with long-time music colleague Ray Anderson in a few weeks at the Yardbird Suite. You performed last Thursday outdoors at Lincoln Center with a small version of Episteme, with Warren Smith, Mark Feldman and Mark Dresser. But this Sunday, at the Brooklyn Museum, in the Inspiration Series, you’ll be presenting a suite of works, both Monk repertory and material inspired by Thelonious Monk.

AD:   Yes, I’ll be doing a solo piano recital and I’ll be doing some Monk compositions and arrangements of Monk compositions I’ve done, and I’ll be doing some of my own music as well. So I am looking forward to that. I guess my first influence in “jazz” was Thelonious Monk. Hearing him I guess in 1965 first inspired me to become an improviser to begin with. Before I heard his music I was strictly a classical pianist. Hearing Monk, I became more interested in improvisation and composition.

TP:    We’ll elaborate more when we get to the Monk segment. But let’s begin the Ellington segment with “The Clothed Woman” from 1947.

AD:   It’s one of my favorite Ellington compositions. It’s not known as much as some of the others. As a pianist, I was very impressed with how modern Ellington’s playing is here. You can hear the expanded harmonic vocabulary he had — even though within a blues structure, and then there’s a stride section in the middle. Within that, he was a visionary, far ahead of his time in what he was attempting in terms of harmony. So I was always very influenced by that, and you can hear I think some of where Cecil comes out of — and other musicians, too.

I first heard “The Clothed Woman” live, when he performed at Yale. He did a duo piano version with Willie “The Lion” Smith. I think the stride theme was inspired by Willie The Lion. If you hear the style of it, it’s really inspired by Willie the Lion’s playing.

[MUSIC: Ellington, “The Clothed Woman”-1947; Ellington, “Koko”-1940; Monk, “Brilliant Corners”-1956; Monk, “Crepuscule With Nellie”; Monk Big Band, “Little Rootie Tootie”]

[END OF SIDE 1]

AD:   …trombone. So you really get a clearer idea of the stride influence on Monk’s playing, how his left hand worked, using the open fist, and then the kind of motion that he always has in his left hand, the harmonic motion that is in Monk’s music. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to take another Monk solo and orchestrate.

TP:   A for-instance? I’m putting you on the spot.

AD:   Putting me on the spot. Well, “Crepuscule With Nellie” would be really interesting to orchestrate. It might have been interesting to do a ballad, since orchestrated solos had always been up tunes – it might have been really interesting to do one of his ballads. It might have been really hard to play, because a lot of it is very free in terms of the rhythmic…

TP: And he played it differently every time. You were thinking of a different version of “Crepuscule”…

AD:   The versions are always different.

TP:   He played it a lot, as a solo piece, in the middle of sets…

AD: Yes, he could embellish it the way that he wanted. That’s some of the freedom in doing a solo thing. But I think it would be great to… There are different ways of orchestrating something like that. It would be a real challenge.

“Brilliant Corners” is an incredible composition. Again, the structure of it is interesting, and the way he uses the double time…the bridge is in double time. With Sonny Rollins, Ernie Henry and Max Roach, it’s one of the classic recordings.

TP:   The solos have a sense of inevitability to them, but completely personal to the improvisers.

AD:   That’s the thing. The best improvisers playing Monk are people who have their own strong voice, like Coltrane or Johnny Griffin or Sonny Rollins, and later Charlie Rouse, too, who is so linked to Monk – his ideas were so melded to Monk’s. To me, it’s just a brilliant performance by everyone on that. That’s one of the records I grew up with, too. I was doing a Monk concert several years ago at one of the tribute concerts they did up here at Columbia, and we were rehearsing with Steve Lacy and Charlie Rouse, Richard Davis was on bass, Blackwell was playing and Ben Riley was playing – they were alternating. We were just sitting down, what Monk tunes we knew, etc. It was fascinating for me, because of course Charlie and Steve Lacy know very close to exactly all the things Monk was doing, and I had a looser interpretation – I’d listened to Monk and a lot of it I learned from records. I was doing “Pannonica.” I’d listened to the record, and I remember Oscar Pettiford’s bassline. I said, “Well, Oscar played this bassline here” and they said, “Well, he played the wrong changes.” [LAUGHS] That was very funny for me, being a younger musician at the time, and having learned a lot from the records.

TP:   Some musicians today say that in playing Monk you almost have to do it right down to the fingering, that Monk’s music is so complete, it’s a world unto itself.

AD:   It definitely is.

TP:   Is Monk a life-long project? How far away from his style can you in interpreting Monk?

AD:    I think that’s a challenge. You could… There are plenty of people now who are trying to play the music pretty close to exactly what Monk did. I think one of the challenges is to invest your own personality into it, and to take it and explore playing Monk in your own way. An example is Monk playing Ellington, or hearing him play Fats Waller or something like that. It’s exciting for me to approach what I sort of investigate with my own ideas, too.

TP:   Can you speak a bit to the connection between Monk and Ellington, particularly in terms of piano style? Even Ellington commented on it at a certain point.

AD: Well, they’re part of a tradition. I’m not sure Monk was directly influenced by Ellington as much as they shared common influences. If you look at Monk’s thing directly, it’s more like Fats Waller, Count Basie, that side of it. Also because there were composers, and there aren’t too many great composers in this music – but they are two of the great composers. I think the way they approached the instrument was really compositional, with the idea of clarity of idea. So you hear a lot of common ground there, I think. Both of them had a sense of also the resonance of the instrument, in the left hand what kind of open voicings can be used, whether it be a fifth in the left hand, etc. — and how to really make a piano sound in terms of the harmonics of the instrument. I think that comes a lot from Ellington’s playing in the big band, as Basie did, too. I think Monk took that another step into the small group. So you can hear, I think, a lot of Ellington’s approach to the instrument, as well as other pianists like Basie.

TP:   Now we’ll hear a set that features Charles Mingus and Cecil Taylor doing variations on Billy Strayhorn’s “Take The A Train.” One is Mingus’ famous arrangement from Pre-Bird, in 1960, where he interpolates “Exactly Like You.” Then Cecil Taylor’s version from 1958.

[MUSIC: Mingus, “Take The A Train/Exactly Like You”-1960; Cecil Taylor, “Excursions On a Wobbly Rail”-1958; Mingus, “Open Letter To The Duke”}

TP:   Do you know the story behind “Open Letter To the Duke”?

AD:   I don’t know the story behind it. I like the musical structure of it, and also the fact… Actually I hadn’t heard that extended version before. I was always used to just the tenor solo and then into the head. It’s interesting, because it’s sort of through-composed; it goes from one style to another, and then it goes into the classic Mingus-Ellingtonian ballad style, ballad thing, which is really gorgeous – I always loved it. I love the way the piece sort of evolves, almost like a free association in terms of the form of the piece, rather than being to the standard ABA forms or AABA forms, etc. So I was always interested in it…one of Mingus’ pieces. You can see his indebtedness to Ellington, of course, and Strayhorn.

Mingus was a profound influence on my music, too. When I was in college, I had a band with George Lewis, among others. Gerry Hemingway was the drummer, and Wes Brown was the bass player, a guy named Hal Lewis was the alto saxophone player. We played our own music except for Mingus compositions. I transcribed a lot of Mingus pieces at the time. So we were playing “Peggy’s Blue Skylight.” I did “Meditations On Integration.” “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, then Blue Silk.”

TP:   The extended pieces.

AD:   Oh yeah. Well, they fascinated me. “Orange Was the Color” has such an interesting structure, like… It’s the weirdest way to write a 32-bar tune that anyone has come up with — 11-, 11- and 10-bar phrases. I find that a fascinating piece. A lot of his compositions of the period are sort of extended song forms. Even a piece like “Duke Ellington’s Sound Of Love” I used to do.

TP:   That was recorded in 1974 or 1975, so it was composed right around the time.

AD:    I used to go to Manhattan to hear the group with Don Pullen and George Adams. Jack Walrath I guess was playing trumpet. I was always very impressed with that group. I always liked Don’s playing a lot.

TP: Let’s discuss Cecil Taylor’s performance on the harmonic extensions of “Take The A Train.”

AD:   That was a great group with Earl Griffiths on vibraphone. It’s interesting, because when I formed my own quartet with Jay Hoggard and Blackwell and Mark Helias, that was one of our models for inspiration. Everyone, of course, compared it to the MJQ, with another great composer, John Lewis, the musical director. That was an influence as well, but we were also very interested in other combinations. Bobby Hutcherson and McCoy Tyner did a quartet record. Also, the Cecil Taylor-Earl Griffiths combination.

I was fascinated, because as a pianist, I remember when I formed the group I had been tired of playing with horn players, frankly, the whole role of the function of instruments in that situation, with the piano in an accompanying role and the bass and the drums all fulfilling a particular function within that setting. I found playing with a vibraphone very liberating.  When I began to write music for that group, all the roles could be shared in different ways. A piece of mine like “Song For The Old World” and some other pieces we did were…a lot of the principle of it was all the instruments sharing different roles of what the group would be. Who’s sustaining the rhythm, and who was the melodic interest. It might be the bassist as the solo and we were playing rhythms and stuff. Blackwell, of course, was a big inspiration. He was a fantastic, great musician, and really open to playing with younger players.

TP:   It must have been amazing to have a chance to play with him regularly at that formative period.

AD:   It was very exciting to me, because he was my connection to Ornette Coleman’s music, and he’d played with Coltrane as well, and he brought so much. A lot of my music was created with him in mind. In “Song For the Old World,” for example, the parade rhythms he uses from New Orleans and stuff… We spent a lot of time together listening to…and developing my own ideas as a musician. Working with him and Mark Helias, we developed a real rapport as a trio. Then with Jay, of course, it went to another level.

TP:  Mark Helias remained in synch with him until Blackwell’s death. They linked up so well together.

AD:   Playing in that group was the beginning of it, I guess. We did some wonderful music.

TP:   In terms of your own piano playing, did Cecil Taylor have an impact?

AD:   Oh, definitely. I guess I was very interested in the virtuosity of Cecil, and also the fact that he really thinks of the instrument as an orchestra. That fascinated me. Using both hands. So many of the bebop-inspired pianists were… I was playing once in a club in New Haven, and Leo Smith came to hear me. I was then about 20 years old. He said, “Whatever happened to your left hand.” Basically I was playing bebop; I was playing all this stuff. I said, “I can play with my left hand; there’s no reason I can’t improvise with both hands.” So I began to really get interested in that. And listening a lot to stride pianists as well, from James P. Johnson and Willie the Lion and early Duke and Fats Waller. As a kid, I listened a lot to Art Tatum and Erroll Garner. But I became really interested in the idea of really playing with both hands, and the idea of liberating myself from what had been where the bass is playing and takes the lower register, and then the piano sort of providing chords in the left hand and playing in the right. Cecil was very liberating for me in that. So when I first came to New York, I began to play in a lot of groups as a sideman without bass, because I began to get the reputation for playing with my left hand. I played with Leroy Jenkins and other ensembles with, like, violin, piano and drums. So my first time playing in Europe was playing music like that.

I was very interested in that whole approach, and the physicality of it. I think Cecil is a real innovator. I hope that sometime they do a Lincoln Center concert of Cecil Taylor’s music, too. Somehow there are a lot of holes in what they present up there in terms of looking at our history, and someone like Cecil I think is very important to look at, too.

TP:   Staying on this theme, the Lincoln Center program is focused on creating a repertory out of the work of the artists you’ve mentioned, and they’re giving importance to idiomatic interpretation. But what you’re talking about sounds more like the notion of an idiomatic extension.

AD:   I think one of the interesting things about this music is, it’s not dead, it’s not something that’s in a museum. It’s something that continues to develop and continues to change. It’s very interesting to me to hear the music evolve. It’s not enough to just do a Monk… It’s beautiful that it happens. To me, Monk’s music and Ellington’s music are a pinnacle of music, in the development of 20th century music. I think it’s important to represent that and to play those things. But I think it’s also important to realize that there’s still an ongoing revolution in music.

TP:   Revolution or evolution?

AD:   I think revolution, too. Some people talk about evolving. But the way music changes is never gentle or sweet or nice. There’s always animosity and friction and everything else. So I think “revolution” is more…

TP:   So to borrow the term, music is in a state of “permanent revolution.”

AD:   Right. Perpetual revolution.

TP:   One thing to be said for what they do… You had a chance to see Monk and you had a chance to touch Ellington. But today’s musicians don’t have that chance. I think it’s important to have a chance to…

AD:   Oh, of course. I think that’s beautiful, that’s great. But I don’t want them to deny the idea that people can do something else with that…

TP:   Or that someone who doesn’t do that is not per se “legitimate” within that context, which I think is an attitude that…

AD:   Or to assume that people who decide not to do that haven’t checked that out already. A lot of us went through a whole period… I went through a period about the same age, when I was in my twenties, when that’s all I was interested in doing – playing in the style-of. Playing Bud Powell compositions and Richie Powell compositions and Thelonious Monk compositions, etc. But I realized that part of my purpose in being here was to develop my own music and develop my own direction, not just to be a laboratory for the past but also to try to produce something new. I don’t mean to sound immodest or anything. But I think the idea of his music is to…and what you get from Charlie Parker and what you get from Thelonious Monk is the courage to experiment and to explore new areas.

TP:   Now it’s time to hear some of Anthony Davis’ own music. Was The Life and Times Of Malcolm X your first opera?

AD:   Yes, it was. X was the first.

TP:   Had you written much for voice before, or was this new to you when you were doing it?

AD:   I’d written a couple of songs. That’s about it. I’d written a piece called “Beginning of Light of Time Passing.” Part of that I’d written. I’d also done an earlier song that I never play any more. But X was really my first chance to explore it. But I’d been thinking about the form of opera for a long time. I first thought about that in college. Basically, when I started at Yale, I was a philosophy major. My interest in opera came from reading Nietzsche, really. I read his essays on “Birth of Tragedy” and his essays on Wagner, and I was fascinated by it. I said, “What is this form, opera?” I’d never seen an opera. I only heard elements of it, and I was I think initially repulsed by the whole form. But it encouraged me to explore it.

Also, I took from “Birth of Tragedy” the idea of the combination of what he looked at as the Apollonian and Dionysian outlook on art as something that I could apply very easily to American music, particularly to Afro-American music, and to looking at… I felt that Nietzsche’s answer for this ideal music that combines these forms was actually Jazz or African-American music, and then I began to think of the idea of creating music theater that embodied…that allowed freedom for the improviser within a structure that…sort of the Apollonian idea of structure and form. So I was fascinated by the idea of opera before I ever heard an opera. So I thought of myself as preparing myself to write this opera, even back in college, and that’s when I started writing suites and listening to Ellington a lot and studying that musically. Also, in school I studied Wagner and Strauss and the whole operatic tradition — mostly the Germanic tradition, actually, through taking a Wagner class.

TP:   The fact of X’s existence got lost in the shuffle a bit last bit in the wake of all the hoopla about the movie. The production was 1986 or 1987?

AD:   The New York City Opera produced it in 1986, and it was done in American Theater Music Festival in 1985.

TP:   And it’s in the repertory.

AD:   Right. It’s going to be done again in Los Angeles, hopefully, in 1995, and maybe in Michigan before that. So I’m very excited about that. Now the recording is out, too. It’s interesting, because we preceded the movie about 6 or 7 years. I remember seeing Spike Lee in the audience opening night of X at City Opera, too.

TP: I don’t recollect him mentioning that.

AD:   No, he hasn’t mentioned that!

TP:   But his movie stands by itself, I think.

AD:    Oh, of course it does.

TP:   We’ll hear a selection that you say reflects the influence of Mingus on your music. But perhaps we’ll hear a number of selections right now of X and some other music you’ve spoken about. Coming up is “Ella’s Aria.”

AD:   “Ella’s Aria” – Ella is Malcolm Little’s half-sister. This is when Malcolm was taken from Michigan to Boston. It starts out with a kind of ostinato that begins “Come with me, child,” then it goes into “My side of town they call the hill,” which is the more overtly Mingus-inspired part. I can talk a little bit about that.

But the opening section is in 13/8. That’s my other obsession, is in rhythm. I’m very interested in exploring… I like repeating patterns and rhythms, and especially odd meters and odd rhythms. A lot of that came when I studied South Indian music at Wesleyan University, and I was very influenced by the whole theory of rhythm.

TP:   You’ve done whole compositional series that are based on rhythmic cells, so to speak.

AD:   Right. This one is very simple. It’s actually based on an earlier composition I’d done in 1974, which is from… A lot of times in my music I steal from myself. In this case, I had a piece called “The Left Hand of Darkness Suite,” which was based on an Ursula K. Leguin novel. This section of the ostinato comes from…and some of the music that’s underneath “Ella’s Aria” is from what I call “The Left Hand of Darkness Theme,” and this is that vamp. But I adapted it and it became part of the opera. Then it evolves into this kind of F-minor section, which is definitely… I mean, it’s one of Mingus’ favorite keys, too. The whole F-minor/D-flat major thing is to… There are millions of Mingus tunes like that.

TP:   As I recollect, the staging of the opera was very fluid with action transitions moving seamlessly from one part of the stage to another. Were you writing with the staging in mind?

AD:   I think the fluidity was what I had in mind. I think the staging sort of followed that. That was the only way to do it, really. But I thought of it in that way. But also musically, because it was very important to me. I was trying to make a musical statement first. A lot of times people are confused and talk about the political statements that are in X. But I think my first purpose was to make a musical statement. I think the musical statement is actually more threatening to people than my musical statement. I think what the idea was, was the idea that I could create a fluid piece of music that goes in and out of…let’s say the African-American tradition, from blues structures, etc., to Mingus-style ballad sections, etc. – but all within my own musical language. And then, go in and out to other kinds of structures and forms in the same way that a Wagner opera evolves. And using the same kind of structure in terms of motives and repeating and recurring textures. And really adapting the idea of Wagner but making into a strictly American idiom. I think it’s a revolutionary thing, because what it does, it implies also that…it puts into doubt what the tradition of opera is. What I was trying to create is a tradition of opera that is uniquely American, and particularly African-American. That’s more threatening, because it’s really a concept of music, not just a political concept of dealing with subject matter that deals with an African-American experience.

[MUSIC: “Ella’s Aria”; “The Pool Hall”]

TP:   We have to end on the segue, but we tried to be as accurate as possible for the “Pool Hall” scenes, sung by Thomas Young, who also played Elijah Muhammad in the opera. “Ella’s Aria” was sung by Hilda Harris. From X: the Life and Times of Malcolm X, An Opera In Three Acts, music by Anthony Davis and an incredible, poetic libretto by Thulani Davis.

AD:   That’s for sure.

TP:   Were you working in tandem with her? Was the music first? The libretto first?

AD: Mostly the libretto was first. Some of the music, as I said, I had some structures that I was referring to in the piece. First of all, the Overture is based on my piano piece, “Middle Passage.” So a lot of the material that unifies the structure of the whole opera is drawn from the solo piano piece. Then, as well, in the work the Mecca music, for example, was an adaptation from a work called “A Walk Through The Shadow” that I had done. Actually a lot of that was written first musically, and then set to words — but then we went back and forth. But mostly we worked with libretto first. I found that the easiest thing to do and most liberating because she could really create a complete idea with the words. Also, we’d worked so much together at the Public Theater doing poetry and music together. So I was very used to her language and the rhythm of her language was easy for me to deal with in terms of setting music. We worked with my brother Christopher, who did the story treatment. First of all, we laid out a structure, an idea of a structure, and then I had some ideas about thematically what areas I wanted to get to – certain kinds of arrival points in the opera. Then I wanted to explore…then I began to set some of the words to music.

This whole section you just heard was really the jazz section of the opera, which was from Boston. It shows Malcolm’s transformation from Malcolm Little to Detroit Red – to becoming the hustler. Thomas Young plays the role of Street, sort of an amalgam of different characters, who initiates Malcolm into the hustler’s life. So basically the whole thing is, starting with Ella, sort of middle-class statements about what Malcolm should be and what Black people are in Boston, etc. “My side of town we call the hill.” It could be the South Side or Harlem, wherever a Black community is. Then Street’s character challenging those ideas, saying, “Well, come on; you’re just working for the white man; you’re just doing this.” Then Malcolm slowly being won over.

TP:   The question, of course, is why she brings Malcolm to the pool hall.

AD: That’s another issue. Ella doesn’t even appear in the movie, for good reason probably. But…

TP:   But in the opera she brings him to the pool hall, and then Street sidles by and starts to take him under his wing.

AD:   Right. A whole other story. We all have dramatic license on these things. Malcolm himself took dramatic license in the autobiography.

What’s interesting for me is this idea of transformation of Malcolm. This is really the first transformation in the opera. We basically structured the opera in relation to these transformations. That was exciting for me, and it was exciting to do musically, because taking it from the ostinato, from “Ella’s Aria” to this F-minor section that’s sort of loosely based on the changes of “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” which is very funny. People don’t think, “You don’t know what love is until you’ve heard the meaning of the blues. So I had all these little byplays and jokes musically that I like to explore. Then going from that into when Street’s music comes in, really using blues structure. I guess my models were Cab Calloway, also looking at the zoot suit part (“you need a zoot suit, conk and cap”) of course was Fats Waller, the original rapper, if know “Your Feets’ Too Big” and those Waller-Andy Razaf things. So I was very interested in that.

Also in showing the music’s relation to history — the fact that the music reflects the historical development and creating a social ambiance, creating a sense of time and place.

TP:   This is very difficult music, and the singers make it seem effortless. Did you know who the singers would be when you were writing the music, or did they have to audition on the music and show their proclivity for it?

AD:   In Ella’s case, I had music for Ella…

TP:   For Hilda Harris?

AD:   Not necessarily. I knew about Hilda. Hilda was actually one of the first people I tried to get to do it, but she wasn’t available. I had a wonderful person, Mariana Simpson, for the opera production. In the case of Street’s music, it’s a very interesting story. Originally, Street was going to be a bass, and Avery Brook was the original Street when we did it in the workshop in the Philadelphia. But Avery was so magnetic as Street, he just blew Malcolm off the stage! So we decided that Avery should be Malcolm. So when we did a later workshop and then we did it in Philadelphia, at the American Music Theater Festival, Avery Brooks played Malcolm X.

In the meantime, I was auditioning for the role of Elijah Muhammad, and Thomas Young came by to sing, and he sang Gounod’s “Faust” or something. I said, “Wow, this guy is an amazing tenor; why isn’t he at the Met? What’s happening?” Which, there are obvious reasons, racism probably at the top of the list. But I was really impressed with him. Then he said to me, “I’m singing tonight in a club in your building.” In Manhattan Plaza, there used to be a club downstairs, the West Bank. So I said, “I’ll come to hear you.” I couldn’t believe this guy is going to sing a jazz gig. I invited people to come. The director came, and Cindy Aronson, and my brother, and some other people. He did this set of Ellington and Strayhorn, and I couldn’t believe it. He’s one of the greatest jazz singers I’ve ever heard. Period. Up there with Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, you name it. Scat singing, everything – it was incredible. I said, “He has to be Street, too; we have to work it out so he’s Street, too.”

It worked out dramatically, because the idea of double-casting, of having that role of Street and Elijah Muhammad being the same person, making this connection between the antagonists in the opera, is consistent. Because one of the problems structurally in the opera is that Elijah Muhammad doesn’t show up until the second act. Now that avoided that problem, because all of a sudden we had the same person appearing as sort of this other father figure, the false father — the earlier false father and then the later false father. So it was an interesting structural decision to make. So he’s responsible for one transformation and then Elijah for the second.

So it worked out very well in terms of that – and Thomas was a brilliant actor, so he could pull that off. Also singing…it was a tour de force for him to be in the first half of the opera a great jazz singer and then in the second half to do his opera, the operatic, higher tessatura of opera singing. Even though in the jazz part, he did interpolate a high-D… I think people should know that he actually sings…that’s a glissando to a high-D, which is unheard-of in classical repertoire, let alone anything. He’s an amazing performer.

So I had to transpose Street. Originally Street’s music was in F-minor. I had to transpose it to C-minor. I said, “What key would you want to do it in?” I heard his voice and I said, “C-minor is a good key.” So I have this modulation that happens, and it goes into the other key. It worked out very well. But I decided to recast it in that key for him. So in that way, the music is really written for him. Then also the scat section; he put the scat section in there as well.

But he’s a phenomenal singer, and I’ve written other roles for him since.

TP:   Anthony has also written the operas Under The Double Moon and Tanya subsequent to X…

On the album of X you use a core of musicians you’ve worked with for many years under the title Episteme.

AD:   That’s from Greek. It means “knowledge” in Greek. It basically comes from Plato’s Republic. Being an old philosophy major, I was very interested in the idea of levels of knowledge, and episteme is one level of cognition. I used that as a title, because basically I was interested in having an ensemble that was for my experimental work, that could be any size from… I guess it refers to the Episteme concert, which was 3 pianos. So it’s gone from that to 10 pieces to an opera to…

TP:   What seems to have developed is a rotating pool of musicians who are familiar with your ideas and music, and so, given the exigencies of the life of a performer, there’s an ample pool to call.

AD:   Well, yes. And there are a lot of the musicians I’ve worked with over the years, like J.D. Parran, for example, and Pheeroan akLaff (the drummer), Mark Helias and Mark Dresser (bass players), Abdul Wadud. And then, there are some newer people like Art Baron, who is a fantastic trombone player who brought the whole experience of being in Ellington’s orchestra to it.

TP:   Herb Robertson is on trumpet, and also Warren Smith on drums and percussion. We’ll now hear another section of the opera, which is the end of the first act?

AD:   Yes, this concludes the first act. It’s “Malcolm’s Aria.” This is after he’s been arrested. He sings it in prison. He’s being interrogated by a policeman. If someone had seen the production, remember, he has his hands tied behind his back with a light focused on him. It begins with an improvisation with J.D. Parran and Gerry Hemingway playing vibraphone with a sort of pedal point improvisation that segues into Malcolm’s aria.

Malcolm is sung by Eugene Perry, a fabulous singer. In a way, I have the same relationship with singers that I have now with musicians – with Thomas, Eugene, Cindy Aronson, Hilda Harris I’ve worked with in a number of settings. It goes from opera to opera. Not just one opera, but it might be 3 different operas at different times. So in a way, I’m now working with them, writiing and conceiving my music for them vocally the way I would conceive something for J.D. Parran or something for Art Baron or something for Mark Feldman or John Purcell. What’s exciting to me, it’s the same process I would imagine Ellington went through where you have Johnny Hodges and you have Cootie Williams or you have Lawrence Brown, that you can create music that showcases their abilities. I do try to do that for the voice within my music as well as for the instruments.

[MUSIC: “Malcolm’s Aria”]

TP:   That was sung by Eugene Perry, the baritone who plays Malcolm X in the cast recording. Was he in the stage production as well?

AD:    He was the understudy actually at City Opera. He didn’t get to go on stage. In the new production they’re going to do in Los Angeles, he’s going to be the Malcolm. I’m very excited. He’s a fantastic singer. I worked with him as well in Under The Double Moon. He was Tarj, and then I created the role for him. We’ve worked a lot doing concerts, etc. He’s a great person and a really fine singer.

TP:   Coming up is a segment from Under The Double Moon. It’s the culmination of a long-standing compositional development, because you’ve been recording the music that comprises since the 1970s.

AD: Right. A lot of that music was based on my Wayang series of compositions, which were inspired by Balinese and Javanese music, particularly the gamelan music. I was interested in the idea of creating an opera or some kind of music theater work based on those compositions, and also with a science fiction theme. So I was interested in using science fiction with music, and the potential of that. I wanted to do something in my second opera completely different from X, because X was sort of this epic historical drama, more contemporary. I decided for my second opera to do something much more about fantasy and set in the distant future, in which the polemics of race are not so important, in a sense, but it’s still evident – it’s a multi-racial cast. In this opera, there are twins who have psychic powers. One is played by Ai-Lan Zhu, who is a wonderful soprano from Nanching, China, who played one of the twins. Eugene Perry played the other twin– he was Tarj. They’re being lured by a character named The Inspector who has come to their planet, which is called Undine, to recruit teenagers who have psychic powers, who can read minds, etc. They recruit them for a school that’s run by the Empress, who rules the 7 planets. But we don’t know quite for what purpose he wants the twins. Also, we discover that the twins find out where they have come from, who their real father, who turns out to be a transformed human who lives underwater, called the Gaxulta.

So basically, this enabled me to create my whole musical landscape of my own invention, and that was exciting. In a way, it allowed me to make my own rules. The music can make its own rules, and that’s very exciting.

In this scene, you’ll hear when the inspector finally convinces the twins to join him. It sort of starts out as kind of pseudo circus music I use that recurs in it. A lot of it is this kind of carny atmosphere, because the twins worked a carnival, and it’s now festival time in Undine, and at Festival time anyone is allowed to have sex with anyone else, so it’s sort of open-ended in that way. So the inspector is really intrigued by the festival. But he’s more interested in getting the twins on his side. This is Scene 2 of Act 2. Thomas Young is the Inspector, Ai-Lan Zhu is Xola, and Eugene Perry is Tarj. The libretto is by Deborah Atherton.

[MUSIC: from Under The Double Moon] – BEGINNING OF SIDE 4

AD:   …called “Middle Passage.” I’d done an earlier piano work, a solo piano piece that I wrote for Ursula Oppens, which was called “Middle Passage.” In this, I took the closing line from the poem, which is “voyage through death to life upon these shores.” So that’s the full title of the piece. Basically, it’s a setting of Robert Hayden’s poem for voices. What I’ve attempted to do was layer a lot of things, using, as I do a lot with repeating structures… As the poem is laid out visually on the page, you can see that he has italicized portions of the text, and sometimes I use that as repeating lines. Sometimes it’s the name of slave ships – Desire, Adventure, Tartar-N are all names of slave ships; the ironical names that slave ships have. Then the Middle Passage story culminates with the Amistad. The poem has a section about the whole Amistad incident. Of course, I’m planning to write my next opera, a big opera called Amistad, about the Amistad rebellion.

So this is a setting of the Robert Hayden poem and was done by the Chanticleer Men’s Choir.

[MUSIC: “Voyage Through Death To Life Upon These Shoes”– Nov.1991]

TP:   We’ll conclude with the first 7 minutes of a 14-minute suite for Monk that you recorded in 1978. That was a very fertile time for you. This is on Red Records. You were then recording for India Navigation, and I think for Sackville Records as well.

AD:   I made three recordings that summer. All these recordings were done I think within a month of each other. So I made three records. This is actually the first record I ever made. It was a solo piano record on Red. I was on the road with Leroy Jenkins at the time. We were doing a concert in Italy, and we had a day off in Milan, and they asked me to do this record. I was actually sleeping in the studio between takes, but I managed to make this record. During that time, I also did Song For the Old World for India Navigation, with Blackwell and Jay Hoggard and Mark Helias, and then I did Of Blues and Dreams with Leroy Jenkins, Abdul Wadud and Pheeroan. These were my first recordings. What happens in that case, you always have a backlog of material. I had material for days to record.

TP:   From what you’ve said, you were writing 7-8 years by this point

AD:   yes. The first group was Advent. It was named not for the Christian holiday but for the speakers.

[MUSIC: Anthony Davis, “Crepuscule: Suite for Monk”]

For the 79th Birth Anniversary of Lester Bowie, Transcripts of Two Musician Show Shows on WKCR in 1994 and 1998

During my 23 years as a host on WKCR, I had the honor of hosting trumpeter Lester Bowie on several occasions, including separate in-studio interviews with him and Art Ensemble of Chicago bandmates Malachi Favors and Lester Bowie, which I first posted in 2011. (https://tedpanken.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/a-wkcr-interview-with-lester-bowie-r-i-p-and-don-moye-and-lester-and-malachi-favors-on-lesters-70th-birthday/)

Here for the first time I’m posting the proceedings of WKCR Musician Shows that I did with Lester in 1994 and 1998, respectively.

Lester Bowie – Musician Show, WKCR, May 18, 1994:

[MUSIC: Lester Bowie, “Rope A Dope”-1975; Brass Fantasy, “Da Butt”; Brass Fantasy, “For Louis (by Philip Wilson)]”; Art Ensemble of Chicago, “Charlie M”]

TP: With me in the studio after an arduous… It seems to be a tough day for interborough traffic. How are you doing.

LB: Doing pretty good.

TP: When we were discussing the show, you gave me a long list. We’ll start with a pairing that seems as unexpected as you might hear at a Brass Fantasy concert — Bullmoose Jackson and Kenny Dorham. Bullmoose Jackson “Sneaky Pete” with Lucky Millinder, 1947.

LB: Bullmoose Jackson was kind of the music I listened to as I was growing up. I listened to a lot of R&B. Kenny Dorham represents the record that really turned me into jazz. That one, the record you’ll hear after “Sneaky Pete,” is the one record that really made me want to be a jazz musician. “Sneaky Pete” is sort of my background. This is what I came up hearing in the house.

TP: You said your mother liked this.

LB: My mother liked “Sneaky Pete.” She liked Bullmoose Jackson.

TP: You had a lot of rhythm-and-blues 78s in the house.

LB: A lot of 78s in the house. A lot of all kinds. We had Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Earl Bostic, a lot of that…

TP: Your father was a band director. Did he know the musicians? Did you get to meet them as a kid when they’d come through St. Louis?

LB: No. Actually my father wasn’t a jazz musician. He was a classical musician. He was a guy who would have been with one of the symphonies, had there been Blacks being hired or had there been some Black symphonies.

TP: What was his instrument?

LB: His instrument was trumpet, and he taught high school bands. He was a high school band director for 30 years in St. Louis.

TP: Was he your teacher on the trumpet?

LB: He was my first teacher, of course.

TP: How old were you?

LB: You know, the first time somebody asked me that, the first time I did an interview, I didn’t know. So I had to call my Daddy! I had to call back home, “Hey, when did I start playing?” Because I don’t remember. So he said he was giving me the mouthpiece in the crib. So we just the official age at 5, because he said I’ve been playing longer… I have no knowledge. I don’t even remember picking up the trumpet.

TP: So you don’t remember a time when you weren’t playing trumpet?

LB: No, I don’t remember any time when I wasn’t playing trumpet.

[MUSIC: Bullmoose Jackson, “Sneaky Pete”-1947; KD & Jazz Messengers, “Soft Winds”-1955]

TP: That Kenny Dorham solo on “Soft Winds” inspired Lester Bowie.

LB: That was a great period. We wanted to look like Art Blakey. We used to go around trying to look like the Jazz Messengers and everything. It was a great period.

TP: By “we” you’re talking about you and some like-minded teenagers in St. Louis in the 1950s, I take it.

LB: Yes. John Hicks and Oliver Lake and Philip Wilson and I were all in high school together, along with guys like Dick Gregory and Grace Bumphrey. We were really into that sort of sound in the 50s. We were all teenagers in the 50s. So that was the thing that was really hip.

TP: What did that sound mean to you at the time?

LB: It just meant something hip. Art Blakey and them were HIP. You dig? They had their thing, and it was just hip…and that means whatever that means. That was happening. They were hip. The people who were into that sort of thing were hip. Everything involved with that whole Art Blakey bag was hip.

TP: At this point were you trying to play this music? Did you have teenage bands? Were you working this stuff out?

LB: Actually, that’s why I chose this next selection. We always wanted to be jazz musicians. But at the time, in the 50s, I didn’t think it was possible. Everything was against me trying to be a musician. We weren’t encouraged to be professional musicians. Even though I had been a professional since 1955, I didn’t believe that I was going to be one for the rest of my life. So Art Blakey was sort of a dream. We wanted to be like that. That dream continued for many years afterwards. We wanted to play jazz, but the reality was that if we wanted to be around later to play jazz, we had to learn how to become professional musicians, and in doing that… The reality of the life of the music is what’s coming up next. This is Little Milton’s band. I think it was me playing, either me or Paul Serrano. I’ve played this solo so many times, I do believe it’s me.

TP: Was this from the 1960s?

LB: Yes, it must be early 60s, 1963 maybe, or 1962?

TP: When did you start going between St. Louis and Chicago? What were some of your early gigs as a trumpeter, “within the reality of the life in music,” as you say?

LB: I used to go down to Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas, with Little Milton.

TP: How did he hook up with you?

LB: Well, Little Milton was in St. Louis. St. Louis had a quite active blues scene. Albert King was there. Oliver Sain was the other… These were the three big bands, and there were other smaller bands. Ike Turner was there. So there were a lot of gigs, Ike and Tina and… Just a lot of gigs around town for musicians. And all the jazz cats worked with these bands. Albert King, you should have heard his band before Albert came out. Man, Albert King’s band was smoking. “Cooking at the Continental.” All of this Art Blakey wannabe song thing we were doing as blues musicians. But we were doing blues gigs.

TP: I guess that was the case for a lot of R&B bands in the 50s. Ray Charles had David Fathead Newman, Marcus Belgrave, Ed Blackwell…

LB: Well, you had to learn that first. When students ask me, “How do you become a jazz musician?” I say, “The first thing you’ve got to become is a pro and learn how to feed yourself with the instrument,” and then in doing that I was doing a lot of blues.

TP: So, “We’re Going To Make It” featuring Lester Bowie’s first recorded solo?

LB: I don’t know if it’s the first. But it’s an early one, believe me.

[Little Milton, “We’re Going To Make It”]

TP: Lester now thinks it may have been another tune by Little Milton that he took that solo on.

LB: It was something on that album, but I forget which one. We used to play it all the time. It’s representative. There used to be fights actually every night. We would do that tune last. By then everyone was drunk, and they’d say, “Well, we ain’t got a cent to pay the rent, but we gonna make it,” and the shooting would start. It would start with that one.

TP: A provocation.

LB: Yes, it was very emotional.

TP: Was Little Milton working a lot? One night stands or week-long gigs?

LB: no, we only did one night stands. We played in the South. Most of the winter we played Mississippi and Tennessee and Alabama and Georgia, Florida, and during the summer months we’d do more Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, northern Arkansas, places like that.

TP: was Little Milton the only band, or were you hooked up with Oliver Sain as well?

LB: Actually I was with Little Milton for a while. Oliver Sain was with Little Milton. Then Oliver Sain and Fontella, who was my first wife… I met her with Little Milton initially. They developed a band, the Oliver Sain Revue, and I went with them. Albert King was another band I was playing off and on with a lot.

TP: All the top St. Louis blues bands. What would you say your experiences in those bands meant to you in your later development as an improviser on the trumpet?

LB: I learned how to vamp my ass off! Boy, I know a lot of vamps. But actually, I learned a lot about show business, mostly about show business, and a lot about trumpet technically as far as playing for a long period of time. Like I said, those vamps, sometimes…like the end of that one we just played, “We’re Gonna Make It,” that might go on for 20 minutes. 20 minutes of doing that. So I really learned a lot about pacing, and I learned a lot about show business, both in the blues circuit and on the carnival, circus type thing.

TP: Did Little Milton was play the carnival circuit?

LB: We didn’t play those gigs. That was another circuit. There used to be some Negro revues. There was the Silas Green revue…

TP: That goes back a long ways, to the 1920s and early 1930s…

LB: Yes. I was with Leon Claxton. Leon Claxton had a Harlem and Havana Revue.

TP: What was the nature of that type of gig? What you’re talking about is a shared experience that a lot of black musicians went through before you in their formative years.

LB: I was really lucky. I came in at the tail end of a lot. The cats were really very nice to each other. We had a lot of communication between musicians. When I first came to New York, I was hanging out with Kenny Dorham and Blue Mitchell, Johnny Coles. The tail end of that whole chitlin’ circuit. I was very fortunate to come along at the very end of segregation. You see, in 1955 I was almost 15 years old. So I was right at the end of segregation and the whole chitlin’ circuit. I got to play the Apollo and the Royal Theater… It was a great time.

TP: The black hotels.

LB: All the hotels. All that sort of thing, yes. The circus, like I said, was a traveling road-show. We traveled all over the Midwest, the upper Midwest, and up into Canada.

TP: Was that one of your earlier gigs out of high school?

LB: When I was in high school I had a band, and we played a lot of parties and dances and radio shows and things like that when I was in high school. After I got out of high school, I went into the military, and in the military I started playing with blues bands a lot. Then after I got out of the military of course I continued…

TP: In the military, did you also do Army marching bands and stuff?

LB: no-no. I was a policeman.

TP: You were a policeman. Amiable cop.

LB: I’ll tell you what happened. When I got in the Service, the guy said there were no openings in the band. He said I could be in the bugle corps. But I had come up… I guess I’d been in concert bands, and I didn’t think bugle corps were that hip, so I didn’t want to be in the bugle corps. So I had the choice of being in the bugle corps, a radio operator, or a policeman. So I went for the one that carried the gun. That was the policeman. Sounded like fun to me?

TP: Did you ever have to use it?

LB: No, I never had to use it. Well, actually I was on a pistol team for two years. I was a pretty good shot. But I never got to shoot anyone.

TP: St. Louis, of course, is a city with a rich trumpet tradition, a tradition of brass instruments and teachers of brass instruments, and the trumpet players who came out of there are legion, from Dewey Jackson and Charlie Creath to Clark Terry and Miles Davis (from East St. Louis). Were you very aware of this tradition coming up in St. Louis?

LB: Well, you knew there were a lot of bad cats around that played, some really excellent musicians. You really had to have kind of an individual style. You had to be able to play a common language of tunes, but you had to have an individual style after that. You had to have your own sound to really be respected in St. Louis. There was a very diverse trumpet style. So we were very aware of that. We were aware of guys like Clark Terry who just come in and kill everybody. There were so many stories about Clark and about Miles as we were coming up that were just fantastic.

TP: Since we just spoke about Miles Davis, let’s play his “Bye, Bye Blackbird” from the 50s.

LB: Miles probably made more impact on me than anyone. I not only had a lot of respect for Miles’ playing, but just his whole ATTITUDE, the way he looked. I remember I saw this ad with My Funny Valentine, that polka-dot tie he had on… I went out and bought me a tie. As soon as I saw the album, I got me a tie just like that to wear to the gig that night. I was really into Miles.

I always say Kenny Dorham is what really turned me out into jazz, and his influence really turned me out to be a jazz musician, but Miles’ influence really made me an original. The things that I learned from him and through his music really made me want to become my own voice and really showed me how to become my own voice.

[Miles Davis Quintet, “Bye Bye Blackbird”-1956; Clifford Brown-Max, “Donna Lee”-1956]

TP: That’s Clifford Brown on what might have been his last public performance…

LB: Oh, it’s that one. Oh.

TP: That’s from Philadelphia, the night before they drove to Chicago and crashed on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. From The Beginning and the End, Columbia Records. [ETC.]

LB: Clifford’s articulation and his sense of time and his sense of melody… I guess his everything was just fantastic. If he had lived, there’s no telling what might have happened.

TP: We’ll now hear something from a forthcoming release by one of the many groups Lester works with. One thing I admire very much about Lester Bowie is your ability to keep 4-5 projects going almost simultaneously, which a professional — as you implied — has to do in contemporary music. We have the Leaders, Brass Fantasy, the Organ ensemble, various improvisational projects, the Art Ensemble of Chicago of course. Say a bit about the Leaders.

LB: The Leaders is a group that’s basically an extension of the bag that we’re playing just now. This is our impression of the Miles Davis and the Clifford Brown and the John Coltrane. This is our interpretation. Of course, we can’t do it like they did it. We don’t try to. What we try to do is to add how we relate to this idiom and update it.

TP: One thing that’s interesting about the band is that all the musicians, as befits the name “Leaders,” have worked in many different areas. How does the material get selected? Is there a musical director? Is it a collaborative situation?

LB: No, we don’t have a director. We just bring in music. Guys bring in music, we play it, we like it, and we just play it. Because the Leaders is the kind of group that you can trust damn near anything anyone does. If Kirk Lightsey brings in a song, it’s going to be a good song, and it’s going to be played well because we’ve got the people to play it well. So we don’t have too much of a problem selecting music. It’s just about getting some gigs!

This is a piece by Cecil McBee, who is one of the great unsung composers of our time. There are so many musicians who have so much talent that just isn’t heard, and Cecil is one musician who’s one hell of a writer. This tune is called “Slipping and Sliding.” It’s a real slow blues.

[The Leaders-“Slipping and Sliding”;

TP: Some material that anyone outside your inner circle hasn’t heard befor.

LB: They haven’t heard it. That was at the Winter Olympics this last year in Norway, and that was a concert that featured my quartet, which consisted of Amina Claudine Myers, Famoudou Don Moye and David Peaston, the vocalist you just heard; the Brass Brothers, which is a Norwegian brass band; and also a 65-piece choir. Singing is in David’s blood. He’s my first wife’s youngest brother. He’s Fontella Bass’ youngest brother. He’s the son of Martha Bass. So he’s been a great singer since he was a kid. I’ve been knowing him since he was 5 or 6 years old, and he was always a great singer.

TP: The Leaders hasn’t done a New York gig now for two years now, something like that.

LB: No one has asked us. We always play when we’re asked, but we’re not often asked to play.

TP: Speaking of the Leaders and the group we just heard, Lester became famous throughout the world as a member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, whose way of living, whose way of carrying themselves musically really served as an inspiration for several generations of musicians. In this next section, we’ll explore the antecedents of the Art Ensemble. We’ll hear music by Albert Ayler and Don Cherry, and the music of the “avant-garde” of the early 1960s. What was your exposure to that? When did you first hear Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Ayler, and so on?

LB: I started hearing about Ornette when I went to North Texas State, which was in 1961 or 1962. This was after the Army. That record he made in 1959 I started to hear in the early 60s. Just to say a word about Don Cherry: He is another one of the unsung heroes of the trumpet. Don has probably got more music in his big toe than most people have throughout their entire careers. He’s a consummate musician. He is music. He is a very musical person. And his style opened up not only myself but a whole generation of other players. He was the cat after Miles, the guy who came up with something different to say after Miles had said what he had to say.

TP: You responded to him right away? It immediately hit with you?

LB: At first, no. “What is this? This cat can’t play.” But then again, I said the same thing about Miles when I first heard Miles. “Oh, man, what is this? What kind of tone is that?” Then upon closer examination, and me maturing myself, I realized what happened. Same thing with Don. I think I first heard Don when I saw him. He came to St. Louis with Sonny Rollins. Then when I saw him, I got a good appreciation for him. Then I went back and listened some more, and it really opened me up. It just opened up all the possibilities of what could happen.

TP: You came to Chicago in 1965-66.

LB: I came to Chicago in 1965, after the Watts Riots.

TP: But apart from the AACM, there was a community of like-minded musicians in St. Louis. Were you linking up with them? Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake…

LB: As I said, I was in high school with Oliver. A lot of us were hanging around…we were the St. Louis bunch. Floyd LeFlore, Philip Wilson, John Hicks, Jerome Harris, Leonard Smith…a lot of musicians who were together. These musicians were later to become B.A.G., the Black Artists Group, just as in Chicago the Muhal Richard Abrams Experimental Band, which started in 1961, was later to become the AACM. Well, B.A.G., upon seeing what we were doing in Chicago, formed an organization which was very similar.

TP: Were these musicians inspired by the same… Were you pushing the envelope?

LB: We’d been pushing the envelope for a long time, even before that. We’d been pushing the envelope really all the time we were playing. What you play as to what you work is one thing, but what you did for fun… Hemphill and I and Oliver, we used to go out in the park and just play. This is long before I came to Chicago. We would go out and play. I first met Hemphill at Lincoln University in Missouri. We were playing some pretty advanced things then. We were always trying to play these sort of things, because we were pretty up to date, because the tradition that we grew up with was that you had to be up to date. You had to be able to say something different. It wasn’t enough just to be able to say something, even if you said it nearly as well as someone else did; you had to really be saying different to get some real respect. So we were always looking for other things. And once we found what they were doing in Chicago, it kind of confirmed the feelings we’d had all the time — Oh yeah, we’re not the only ones.

TP: When did you first find out about that?

LB: When I found out about the guys in Chicago… I moved to Chicago in 1965, and I did mostly studio work — jingles and blues sessions and a lot of bootleg R&B sessions. But I was getting kind of bored. I played with big bands, dance band type things and situations. A guy named Delbert Hill took me by Muhal’s rehearsal. And when I walked in that room and saw, like, about 25 of the weirdest cats you can imagine in one room, I thought, “This must be home.” Muhal told me to take a solo, and I took a solo, and everybody took my number. By the time I got back home, the phone was ringing. It was Roscoe. “Do you want to start a band?”

TP: What was your first experience with Roscoe Mitchell like?

LB: It was great. The first time we played this tune, “Afternoon In Paris.” I just remember how well Roscoe played this tune, but it was different! He played it really differently but really hip, but in a completely different way. He had all the changes and everything, but just a different way. So immediately I got a lot of respect for what they were trying to do. Because all these guys were really good musicians. They all had some different things happening.

TP: Let’s talk about the AACM from, say, 1966 to 1969, when the Art Ensemble packed up, went to Europe, and established itself. Were you playing primarily with Roscoe Mitchell? A lot of people in the AACM?

LB: I was playing with Roscoe. That was the base group. But I was also playing with the Experimental Band, and we were playing in a lot of different combinations. At one time, the AACM…we were putting on concerts every night, 6 nights a week. We were also doing festivals where we had other groups come in. We were doing festivals that would last 2 or 3 days — really like long festivals. We had one that was 72 hours long; I mean continuously 72 hours. So we were doing a lot of advanced musical concepts in a lot of different combinations. I played with Braxton, with Kalaparusha, with Muhal, in just about every combination possible. Because we wanted to play, so we got us a place and we presented ourselves 6 nights a week. There was so much music that was lost, it was unbelievable.

TP: It was an incredibly fertile. One of the principles was that everybody had to bring in new music, original music, creative music.

LB: Right. That was part of the requirements of being in the AACM, is to be a creative musician. That’s what it was about. It was an association for the advancement of creative musicians.

TP: But most of the musicians were doing other things professionally, as you were in the studio, or Ajaramu with Gene Ammons, or Muhal with Eddie Harris…

LB: Yes. But you had your dream of what you want to do, and then you have the reality of who you are and what you are doing presently — and if you want to continue to play music, you need a gig. I would be with the Art Ensemble one day and be with Jackie Wilson the next.

TP: This question may be too broad to answer. But what do you think it was about Chicago that enabled something like the AACM to exist? Other cites like St. Louis had strong organizations, but none of them lasted and held together the way the AACM did.

LB: Chicago is hip. I’ll tell you, even today, I think our most advanced audience, the place I think I’m best appreciated is Chicago. It’s the one place I can really relax and play damn near anything that comes to my mind, and it will be listened to. Chicago is a very advanced audience. I don’t know if it’s that they were trained that way. But we always had that kind of support, of some people who were very interested. Not necessarily by the thousands. There weren’t a lot of them. But the people who had a very deep interest in what we were doing, and we had an interest in having it happen.

TP: Was it having an audience and not having to play in a vacuum? Did it have anything to do with the way people accumulated musical information in Chicago?

LB: you have these circumstances which are provided by fate. You just have a certain amount of guys, certain type of personalities were brought together by Jesus, I guess you could say. And the music was strong enough in that it could survive. Because you don’t survive unless there is some strength in what you’re doing. Your music isn’t around, you aren’t around as a musician if you don’t have something to say. You just aren’t around in this business 20-30-40 years as a fluke. It takes a lot of concentration, and the music has to be able to withstand the test of time.

TP: Originally the Art Ensemble was you, Malachi Favors and Alvin Favors…

LB: Yes, and Kalaparusha. Roscoe had a sextet when I met him. He had a band already. But after I met him, the pressure got to be a little bit more. We started traveling. We started rehearsing every day. So the guys who couldn’t rehearse every day started to kind of drop by the wayside. Guys who had other jobs couldn’t really hang with us, because we got busy. We would take off and go to California, stay 2 and 3 months, and just rehearse 12-14 hours a day. So the personnel pared down. We went down to 3 guys. That’s when some of my boys from St. Louis started coming up. Leonard Smith came up, Philip came up, and then they got with us. That’s how it began.

TP: Joseph Jarman joined the group after Christopher Gaddy and Charles Clark, his very close friends and collaborators, died within 6 months or a year of each other.

LB: Yes, they both died and Joseph joined us. Joseph also had a very nice group with Christopher and Billy Brimfield, Fred Anderson. He was the other group. So we were sort of rivals, Joseph’s group and Roscoe’s group.

TP: Did you all hit it off immediately with Joseph Jarman?

LB: Oh yeah. You see, the AACM, everything just fit like a puzzle. We had guys from different persuasions, guys who played different things, guys who’d been with Gene Ammons to Jarman who’d done things with John Cage. We had all of this. But we all respected each other’s expertise in their field. You have to understand that all you can do in music is be you. You can only do your thing. You can’t really do anyone else’s thing. As much as I love Miles, I can never be a Miles Davis, or a Kenny Dorham — or anyone. I can’t be anyone! I can’t even be a Wynton Marsalis. I can’t be that. I can only be myself. And the only way that people can understand that is through listening to these aspects of the musicians’ personality.

TP: Let’s hear some music that relates to the Art Ensemble and some material that most people haven’t heard from the Art Ensemble. We’ll hear Don Cherry through his association with Albert Ayler, from the 1964 recording in Copenhagan, Vibrations, for Freedom Records initially. They recorded two versions of “Ghosts” on that session — we’ll hear one of them. Gary Peacock on bass and Sunny Murray on drums. Lester subsequently recorded “Ghosts” with a very different beat on another record.

LB: Yes.

[MUSIC: Albert Ayler-Don Cherry, “Ghosts”-1964; AEC-1968, “Carefree” and “Tatos-Matos”; John Coltrane-Wilbur Hardin; AEC and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonik in Bremen, 1993 – Charlie M]

TP: That symphonic collaboration is one of a number of monumental projects AEC has done with large ensemble…

LB: My latest project is Lester Bowie’s Hiphop Feelharmonic…

TP: Lester said that his playing during the 1967-68 period documented in the Nessa box was impacted by Wilbur Hardin.

LB: Every time I picked up the flugelhorn, I would feel this Wilbur Hardin thing. I always liked Wilbur Hardin. Actually, when we were playing “Carefree,” it reminded me of that. That’s when we decided to play the Wilbur Hardin piece. But Wilbur Hardin and Johnnie Splawn, who was another Philadelphia trumpet player…I really liked the way they played.

TP: In the 1970s, Lester spent time in Jamaica and in Nigeria, and broadened his musical palette.

LB: It not only broadened my sense of music; it broadened my whole sense of life. I went to Jamaica. When I got there and was in my hotel room, I had five dollars to my name and I didn’t know anyone in town. But I stayed two years, so it was a great experience. The Skatalites, a band I got to play some with in Jamaica… By the way, I’m going to make a record with them next week. So this whole concept of going around the world and playing with other musicians always was very appealing to me. Finally I decided just to one day go. No one was ever inviting me. You know, I never get invited anywhere. I never get invited… They have the kings of the trumpet, it had every trumpet player in town but me. They don’t invite me to festivals. I’m not invited to anything. So a lot of things, I just decided that if I really want to do them, I go myself. I went to Europe myself, I went to the Caribbean myself, I went to Africa myself — with little or no money.

TP: And a trumpet.

LB: And a trumpet. It helped. Because if I hadn’t had that trumpet, I’d have been long dead by now, I’ll tell you.

TP: Did you go to Jamaica for the express purpose of checking out the music and becoming involved in it?

LB: Naturally, when I go places, I always try to get involved with the musicians who are there. That is the entire reason for going. But there’s always a voice in my head. This voice kept saying, “Jamaica, Jamaica, go to the Jamaica.” I wanted to go to Jamaica. I didn’t see just being a starving jazz musician on the Lower East Side. I said, “If I’m going to starve, I just want to be on the beach.”

TP: How about your experience in Nigeria, and particularly with Fela?

LB: I also went there with no money. The Art Ensemble had just finished doing a European tour, and I took my money and bought a one-way ticket to Lagos. I had about $100 when I got there, enough money for one day in the hotel. I didn’t know anyone. A waiter in the restaurant suggested that I go to see Fela. I said, “How do you get there?” He said, “Just get in the cab; he’ll take you to Fela’s.” So I got in the cab. He took me to Fela’s. I pulled up in the courtyard of this hotel which he had taken over, because the authorities had burned his house down. A little guy runs up to me as I got out the cab. He says, “Who are you?” I said, “I’m Lester Bowie.” “Where are you from?” I said, “New York.” He saw the horn in my hand. He said, “Are you a musician?” I said, “Yes. I’m from New York.” “You play jazz?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, you must be heavy, then.” I said, “Well, you know, a little bit.” “Well, you’ve come to the right place.” “Why is that?” He said, “Because we’re the baddest band in Africa.” From then on I was just home. I went in and met Fela, and Fela said, “This guy is moving in with me.” So I was with Fela as his honored guest for the next 6 months.”

Fela was a very political musician. He has very strong political beliefs. He taught me what it would be like to be an African musician. It’s like being a chief. Fela had 8 wives when I was with him, and he eventually went up to 27 wives, and there were a lot of people… It was really quite an experience! I’d never experienced anything like it before. I came back and married one woman. That was it for me. Before, I always thought, “Yeah, I’m an African man; I’m gonna get me 2-3 wives, keep one on the road, one at home.” I went to Africa, stayed with Fela, saw all the problems he had with those women. I came back, I got married to one woman — I’ve been married to her ever since.

TP: That was the main lesson.

LB: Yes, the main experience!

TP: Any insights into the African way of music-making that are applicable to what you do?

LB: Well, the African way of music-making is the same way we make music. You just get together and you start playing. You start making up music. Basically, that’s it. You just get together and start playing and making stuff up. If somebody comes in and says, “Play this,” you play that. When I was there, I got to play with Fela, and I got to play with King Sunny Ade — I played with a lot of the Nigerian bands. It was a matter of “Just play.” It wasn’t a big thing, “ok, man, we’re going to get this part here, we’re going to do this…” It was just, like: Ok, you got your horn with you, man? Ok, try this, play this. That’s the way it is.

Same way with the art Ensemble or anyone else. People ask me about the Art Ensemble, “How do you rehearse?’ I say, “Like everybody else; we just go over and over until we get it right.” It’s the same as everyone uses.

TP: Let’s hear the Skatalites. This is “Dick Tracy”.

LB: Yeah, “Dick Tracy.” This is Tommy McCook and all the Jamaican guys. There are some killing Jamaican musicians. You had the indigenous Jamaican music, but you had this big hotel industry that had a lot of great musicians. Dizzy Reece is a great trumpet player who lives here in New York who’s Jamaican. Sonny Gray is another great trumpet player who was Jamaican. So I really learned a lot when I was in Jamaica.

[Skatalites, “Dick Tracy”; Lester Bowie Feelharmonic]

LB: That’s the first time on radio. It’s just for you, Ted. You and WKCR who have done so much fine work over the many years. You guys have hung in there, and we appreciate it.

TP: Well, you and your partners in the Art Ensemble of Chicago and so many musicians have been hanging in there for a lifetime, and we’re hearing the distillation of a lifetime of experience on the Musician’s Show, particularly with someone who encompasses as many musical idioms and ways pathways of self-expression of Lester Bowie, with a consummate sense of practical reality. I guess we have to answer a question from several listeners… When can people next hear you in New York?

LB: Actually, no one has asked to hear me again in New York. I don’t really know. As soon as someone asks, I’ll be glad to play in New York. I just finished at Sweet Basil’s, and they usually ask me every two years. So it possibly could be another 2 or 3 years before…

TP: It looked like they had a good week, though.

LB: They had a great week. They always do have great weeks. We always have great crowds. It’s not about that, because we draw well all over the world.

TP: Let’s enumerate your bands. How many entities is Lester Bowie part of at this point?

LB: We’ve got the Art Ensemble, Brass Fantasy, the New York Organ Ensemble, From the Root To the Source (which we still work occasionally). We work Brass Fantasy along with Root To The Source, which is the gospel singers with Brass Fantasy. The Leaders. The latest is the Hip-Hip Feel Harmonic. Next will be 500-piece orchestra. After that, 2,000. After that, 10, then 20, and then 100,000 musicians. At least.

TP: Will this be done in conjunction with an Anthony Braxton solar system piece?

LB: I think it will be done in conjunction with my retirement.

TP: Finally, and I can’t resist this. Mr. Bowie, is jazz as we know it… Never mind.

LB: Well, it all depends…if we know anything.

TP: How about the Art Ensemble and Brass Fantasy productions on DIW. Are those ongoing? Will a stream of recordings be flowing to your public?

LB: No. We did 9 of those records. They were mostly released in Japan. Whether or not they will get over here, I don’t know. The guy who was our connection with DIW is no longer with the company, and neither are we.

[Brass Fantasy, “The Great Pretender” – 1992]

[END OF PROGRAM]

*****************************

Lester Bowie (Musicians Show, WKCR, Feb. 25, 1998) – Sides 1-2:

[AEC, “Imaginary Situations”- 1989, DIW; Roscoe Mitchell Quartet, “Old”-1967; AEC, “Galactic Landscape” from Naked-1987; “Illistrum”–Fanfare-1973]

TP: Lester, you’ve been involved with Roscoe Mitchell musically since 1966. We’ve done shows on various topics, but never specifically on the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

LB: Almost 33 years.

TP: There’s a oft-told story by you of first encountering the AACM at a re hearsal of the AACM Big Band, and seeing 30 people in the same as “crazy” as you were, is how you’ve put it. Is that when you first met Roscoe Mitchell and Malachi Favors?

LB: That’s when I met all the members of the AACM. I’d been living in Chicago since late 1964, and I’d been doing gigs with Gene Chandler, Jerry Butler, and doing commercials and studio gigs — and I was pretty bored. There was this guy, Delbert Hill, who said, “Well, if you’re bored, let me take you over to Richard Abrams’ rehearsal. You won’t be bored there.” And I wasn’t. I went there and to meet so many… When you’re a musician, like myself, there’s usually a small group of you that always run together, that travel around and barnstorm the country and hang out and all of these things — 4 or 5 guys. But when I went in the Richard Abrams rehearsal, there was 30 guys, and all these guys are like berserk! These are like bizarre, eccentric personalities. But at the same time, they were working collectively for the collectively good.

TP: At the time, you were let’s say 25 years old, and already had a lot of experience. You’d been in the Army, you’d been on the road with various rhythm-and-blues bands, circus bands. You came up in St. Louis where your father was a distinguished music educator. You were immersed in jazz and different trumpet styles. What aspects of your backgrounded prepared you for the music you heard when you entered that room? Had you been hearing Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry?

LB: I’d been listening to everything, especially Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Trane, Miles… When I came up in the music, we always assumed that we had to learn everything that had existed, and at the same time create something else, something of our own. I think I read once that Jo Jones used to say that you couldn’t belong to the throng unless you sing your own song.

TP: I’ve heard that attributed to Prez.

LB: Prez? Someone said that. And that idea is what we kind of came up with. That’s why we came up with what we did. We had to come up with something different than Miles and Trane, and something different from Ornette and Cecil. So we came up with the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

TP: How would you describe what it was you did that was different?

LB: Technically, I think we infused different forms. Our freedom was not so much in the freedom of what people think of as free jazz. When we thought of free jazz, it meant we were free to play anything we felt like playing. So therefore, we were able to mix tempos, to mix timbre, to mix everything. To be able to associate or to relate to any form of music. To play one form behind another form, and to mix them both, to play them both at the same time, to play one backwards and to play one forwards. I mean, we were just into experimenting with everything that was laid before us. We were experimenting with all the music of Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, but at the same time we were infusing the music of Africa and India.

There’s my wife. She brought me here!

TP: the early records with Roscoe Mitchell…were you composing at the time, or was it mostly you fitting into his ideas about the shape of a performance?

LB: As far as composing, any improviser is a composer – so I’d been composing for years before that. Matter of fact, some of the tunes that I got famous with the Art Ensemble, some of the famous Art Ensemble tunes that I recorded were tunes that I composed when I was playing with Little Milton. You take tunes like “Zero”; it’s one I did when I was with Little Milton. It was an Art Blakey type takeoff, that sort of thing.

But at the same time, when I met Roscoe, I was playing everything I could. I just did everything I could. I was playing jingles. I was playing theater. I was going on the road. I was doing record sessions. I was doing blues gigs — and at the same time, doing AACM gigs. I’d be with the Art Ensemble one night and Jackie Wilson the next night. So I was just at that time playing as much music as I could, just to get as much experience and put as much in the memory banks as possible.

TP: When did you start to make that turn towards having the Art Ensemble approach to music being what you were going to do?

LB: Well, we already had that approach to music…

TP: What I mean to say is, as opposed to doing the gig with Jackie Wilson and doing all that eclectic activity, to make THAT be your commitment.

LB: I always wanted to be a jazz musician. Always. From the time I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a jazz musician. I never wanted to work Broadway or do commercials. I always wanted to be a jazz musician. But I understood at a very young age, that you had to be a professional musician first, and then if you’re lucky you can specialize. So I was being a professional musician. I was doing every gig I could. Man, I auditioned for James Brown three times. You know, I saw James on the plane. He came and shook my hand. I told him, “Man, I auditioned for your band three times.”

But I did every kind of gig I could. At the time with the AACM… You know, Hemphill and Oliver Lake and I had been hanging out for years before that in St. Louis, and as far as that concept or that way of playing, we had been doing that all the time. The way we play I believe is a natural outgrowth of the way you play after everything else has been played and you’re looking for something else.

TP: But there came a point when you and Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman and Malachi Favors, packed up, left Chicago, went to Paris, and laid down roots to function as the Art Ensemble of Chicago. I’m interested in the path from that apprenticeship process you’re talking about to a commitment to that entity.

LB: Once I met Roscoe and Malachi, that was it. We knew that that was it, I mean immediately, from the first time. The first time I met the Experimental Band… After I left that rehearsal, my phone was ringing by the time I got home, and Roscoe was on the phone. He said, “Ok, man, let’s get a band and let’s start rehearsing tomorrow.” I was in there rehearsing. That was the whole thing. We just rehearsed every day. We didn’t need a gig. We didn’t need a contract. We just rehearsed every day because we needed the music. And once we met each other and then saw what kind of music we had together, and saw that we had a unique form, we saw that this was the opportunity to fully devote ourselves to it. So you could say that when we left to go to Europe was when we fully devoted ourselves to playing the music of the Art Ensemble and nothing else. Before that, guys were working in hotels or whatever they could to make ends meet. But from that moment we went there, that was it.

TP: We’ll hear music from a forthcoming album by the AEC on Atlantic-Warner.

LB: This will be out in a few months, by the Fall. It’s a record we recorded in Jamaica. We had the recording project. We just had to spend this winter in Jamaica. That winter you had the big snow here in New York…well, we were in Jamaica making this record. It’s a rough job but somebody had to do it.

[MUSIC: AEC, “Via Tiamo,” “Grape Escape,” “Jamaica Farewell”]

TP: When we spoke before that set of music, we brought the Art Ensemble to France, where you joined a very dynamic cultural community, and you stayed there for almost two years, and things exploded for you. You must have made a dozen recordings.

LB: Yeah, we worked a lot. We were working 4 times a year in the States before we left, and we left for France, and when we arrived in France, after we were there 3 days we were working 6 nights a week. We had an entire theater at our disposal, called the Lucinaire, in Paris. That was our base, and from there we worked all over France and all over the rest of Europe.

TP: Do you recall the proprietor?

LB: I don’t remember. But the Lucinaire was a small theater that was just getting started also, and they were very much into creative music. When they heard us, they gave us the gig, 6 nights a week. We’d developed some sort of reputation before we got to Europe. It wasn’t like we just went to Europe and no one had heard of us. Joseph had made several records, I had made a record. Roscoe had made records — 5 or 6 records had been released before we got there. When we got there, we immediately were offered this job at the Lucinaire, and in three days we were working every night.

TP: Were you playing just as the Art Ensemble, or were you performing in conjunction with dancers, theater, and so forth?

LB: Eventually we did do things. We did a lot of projects with dancers, drummers, a lot of different people. But this was all the Art Ensemble. This was the Art Ensemble 6 nights a week.

TP: Talk in some detail about the larger picture in Paris at the time. There were so many musicians there at that particular moment, as documented on the BYG label, on America Records and so on…

LB: Paris was jumping, man. Paris was on fire – in more ways than one. I remember one time I was at this sidewalk café with my wife and a couple of kids, and this whole big van of police just exploded, and it went up in this ball of flames. I threw the kids in the truck, and we had to tear up two cars in the parking space getting out of the parking space, so we got away from there. But there was a lot happening. A lot of happening with students revolting, and a lot happening with the music. There was music all over Paris, and there were guys in Paris who had never been together before in the States. I mean, I never got the chance to hang out with Philly Joe Jones and Hank Mobley! These were my heroes. You’ve got guys like Philly Joe Jones and Sunny Murray, and you’ve got Cecil Taylor and Dave Burrell, and you’ve got Kenny Clarke, and you’ve got Memphis Slim. And you’ve got Max and Archie. There were just a lot of musicians over there, and we were doing a lot of projects together. It was really a very exciting time.

TP: The last few times you were up here, you came up once with Malachi Favors and once with Don Moye, and when you were here with Favors, the subject of your common military background… Except Moye, everyone in the Art Ensemble, had served a certain amount of time in the Army, and you treated the process of performing as a band with that kind of focus and discipline.

LB: Because of our military experience is the only reason we’ve even survived all these years, because we really know how to survive in the wild. We lived in sleeping bags and in tents for an entire summer in Europe. We had been thrown out of France, and we roamed Europe in tents, like gypsies, for four months or so.

But because of our military training, we were able to… We all had a common way of achieving an objective. The military teaches you, you want to move something, you put a man on each end of whatever it is you’re moving, and 1-2-3-lift, and you move it. You get things done. It really gives you a direct method of dealing with things. That’s what kind of fortitude and discipline it takes to really survive in this music, especially if you’re in the creative area of the music.

TP: What do you mean by the “creative area of the music”?

LB: Well, nobody likes you! It’s hard to find gigs. Everybody says you can’t play or you’re crazy or something, and what you’re playing… People don’t really have an understanding of what you’re doing, so you’re always in a kind of fight. It’s almost a military campaign just to survive. You pool your resources and you get these collective objectives, and you try to do these things. If we hadn’t had this sort of training, and we weren’t able to live the way we’ve lived… I don’t know many musicians who would even be able to survive in the conditions that we have survived in. I mean, we’ve lived in barns, man. We’ve lived in parked cars. We’ve lived in buses. I mean, LIVED there.

TP: You’ve gone years with no gigs.

LB: YEARS with no gigs.

TP: You said you got kicked out of France. I never heard that story before.

LB: Oh, you never heard that one. Well, we weren’t actually kicked out. The ultimatum was actually we should leave or we would be escorted to the frontier

TP: By the gendarmes?

LB: By the gendarmes. We had been in France about a year, and then this Radio Luxembourg did a program about us. We were not there. It was just a program about this. They said “These guys are revolutionaries, and these are the Black Panthers of the music, and they’re out to rape your daughters and take over your government.” They did this whole thing about the Art Ensemble being these big revolutionaries. The next day, we heard the dogs barking. The police were at the gate. What happened is, at the end of the show they say, “Yes…and by the way, these guys live in Saint-Leu- la – Forêt, which is this little town outside of Paris. So whoever the prince or duke of that particular fiefdom…when he heard we were living in…

TP: The Intendant as they said…

LB: “You mean they’re living here in Saint-Leu- la – Forêt? Get them out of here!” So the police were at the gates the next day. Our dogs had them, though. They could only get to the gates. And we’ve got military training. They only got the gates. They didn’t get to the house.

So we heard the dogs barking. They were at the gate. Then they came in and they explained that we had to leave, and if we didn’t leave they would escort us to the frontier. We said, “Well, we just happen to be leaving anyway,” which we had happen, because we knew the heat was on and we were ready to pull out. So we left in the next couple of days.

TP: I gather you had a bus, and that became your base…

LB: Well, we were the first mobile musicians in Europe – the mobile jazz guys, let’s say. We were totally independent of any of the jazz musicians. The rest of the jazz musicians, you had to have interpreters leading them by the hand, and taking them here, putting them on trains and putting them in planes. But we could speak the languages, and we had 4 trucks. We could travel anywhere we wanted to. If things didn’t suit us one place, we’d go someplace else. We were the Great Black Music Army.

TP: One challenge of doing a 3-hour on the Art Ensemble Show is that a favorite track might be 23 minutes or 14 minutes, and we don’t have time.

LB: Right.

[MUSIC: AEC, “Jackson in Your House”-1969; “The Key–Theme de Celine”; “Variations On A Theme of Monteverdi, First Variation”]

TP: That was the merest, sketchiest of representations of their actual output while in Paris. We’ll now move back in time a bit, and hear a track from an album that turned a lot of heads when it came out — Sound by the Roscoe Mitchell Sextet. It’s hard for me to think about this kind of music being made on the East Coast at this time. Maybe I’m projecting backwards, but it seems to me that a certain Midwest sensibility is involved. Can you shed any light on what that might be, or how you different, if at all, from what the people on the East Coast were doing then?

LB: Well, the East Coast, New York, is a marketplace. Not so much music is created here. Most of the musicians who have become famous came from somewhere else.

TP: It must be said that with Bird, Miles and Monk, a lot of that music was created here, uptown.

LB: You could say that. But usually, when music is perceived by critics to have been created in a certain place, it’s usually been created years before by these individuals. I’m sure Charlie Parker didn’t start playing like that when he came to New York. Same way with Miles Davis. We have to realize, music is created in a lot of places simultaneously. The whole story about the music moving up the river from New Orleans to Memphis to Chicago is mostly a fairy-tale. Music was being played in Spokane, Washington. It was being played in South Dakota. It was being played in Springfield, Missouri. Joplin, Missouri. Memphis, Tennessee. Kentucky. It was being played in Iowa. It was being played in Arizona.

One time the Leaders were doing a tour through Missouri, and we saw this old restaurant that looked like it might have been a country restaurant, so we figured we’d get some nice biscuits or something over there. So we went over there to get it, and this old farmer came up to us and he said, “You boys play jazz?” We said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, hell. You all know Duke Ellington?” We said, “Yeah, we know Duke Ellington.” He said, “He used to come through here all the time.”

So the music used to be in a lot of places. It was just sold in certain places. There were certain centers, publishing centers, recording centers, where it was sold. For instance, even in our particular instance, Hemphill and I were playing that music before AACM and BAG.

TP: When did you start playing with Hemphill?

LB: Hemphill and I went to school together. We were in Lincoln University together. I just went to Lincoln for a year. Hemphill had been going there for 8 or 9 years. He was one of those cats who was going to school for a long time. But we started hanging the. The next year, after I left Lincoln (Hemphill’s from Fort Worth), I went to North Texas State. Hemphill and another guy named Tom Reese were good friends of mine in Fort Worth. This was a long time ago.This was 1961, 1962, long before I went to Chicago.

TP: How does your analysis of New York being a marketplace, and other places not, apply to the music we hear on Sound, which sounds so distinctive and different from anything else that was happening then.

LB: Well, see, we in the Midwest, we really BELIEVED in the music. We were attracted to the music because of some sort of spiritual belief. I mean, we really believed in it. We believed in the POWER of the music. We didn’t care if we didn’t get paid. We didn’t care if we didn’t get any gigs. New York, you come and you’ve got to work. The rent is high. You’ve got to work. You can live in Chicago. You can live in St. Louis. You can live in Cleveland. And you can create music. You can find other people that really believe in it and that really do it. I think that’s the real difference. You have an economic pressure here in New York that you don’t have in other places. You don’t have the recording companies or the TV stations or the radio stations in Kansas City or in Springfield or Peoria. So you don’t have that sort of pressure. You’re kind of free to just create music.

When the Art Ensemble first started, we just went down in the basement and we rehearsed every day. Every day it would be 8 hours of rehearsal. No gigs in sight. But we rehearsed every day. It was just because of the belief that we had in the music.

[MUSIC: Roscoe Mitchell Sextet, “Little Suite”

Pete “LaRoca” Sims (1938-2012): A WKCR Musician Show from 1993 and a WKCR Out To Lunch Encounter From 1998

As part of my ongoing pandemic project to digitize and transcribe as many of my previously un-transcribed WKCR shows as possible during my tenure there from 1985 through 2008, here are the transcripts of two encounters with the great drummer Pete “LaRoca” Sims, who between 1957 and 1967, appeared on some of the most consequential recordings of the time, before a long hiatus — he earned a law degree and became a practicing lawyer — that ended during the early 1990s.

 

Pete LaRoca Sims (Musician Show, Nov. 2, 1993) (Side 1 &2); OTL (June 11, 1998):

[MUSIC: Sonny Rollins-Wilbur Ware-Pete LaRoca, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”-Live At The Village Vanguard-1957]

TP: Pete LaRoca Sims has been playing every Sunday night at Yardbird Suite with various musicians comprising a sextet. Most of the best-known selections from that date, with the exception of “Night in Tunisia” from the original album, featured Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones. Did Sonny spontaneously set up the other configuration?

PLR: I was called in, and did my part, and Elvin was there. It seemed to be that it had been preconceived. I didn’t get the impression that it was impromptu, but it may well have been.

TP: You said that this was your first gig out of the neighborhood.

PLR: That’s true. The first major jazz artist who I’d gotten a chance to work with. Previously, I had worked with my contemporaries. We had a dance band that did a good bit of work in and around the city, Harlem, the Bronx, etc. By something of a fluke, having sat in at a place in Brooklyn called Turbo Village, where Max Roach was working during the week… I sat in on a Monday night and I broke quite a few of his drumheads, and I called him up to apologize and offered to pay. He said, “That’s ok. Don’t worry about it. You might be interested to know that Sonny Rollins is looking for a drummer.” So needless to say, I called Sonny Rollins and was fortunate enough to get that job from which that record resulted.

TP: That led to a several-year relationship, on and off, with Sonny. You toured with him in Europe in 1959, which has been documented on a bootleg on the Dragon label.

PLR: There were just a few concerts actually. I don’t think there was another week’s work or anything of that sort anywhere, except that we did go to Europe for three weeks. All of it was quite enjoyable. There could have been more, for my money.

TP: On the Musician Show we create a virtual biography of the musician through the music they’ve listened to and the people they’ve played with. Since that was your first major gig, let’s talk about the events that led you to being on the bandstand – your history as a drummer and some of the experiences you had. How did drums enter your life? Banging on pots and pans as a kid?

PLR: Not quite pots and pans. But various parts of pieces of furniture around the house and things of that sort. I came from a very musical household, with a stepfather who played trumpet and an uncle who was something of an investor in jazz at the time and had a fine record collection that I pretty well exhausted, I think.

My first actual playing was in the New York school system, beginning in junior high school. It was a primarily symphonic orchestra that actually toured a little bit and went to I guess a couple of other junior high schools to play concerts. That continued through Music and Art here in New York, and City College, where I was in the orchestra, and a brief period at Manhattan School of Music, though I didn’t complete that.

TP: Any particular teachers you’d mention helping you a great deal, or was it from watching drummers on gigs?

PLR: Well, it was mainly from being around the music just about all the time, at least with regard to jazz. But since you mentioned teachers, there was one gentleman, David Greitzer, who was instrumental just in the way he spread his great joy in music and his love for the music in such a way as to enthuse the entire orchestra that he was teaching at junior high school. We all got kind of fired up. He had previously taught at Music & Art, as a matter of fact, and prepped us for the entrance exam there, and I think at least half our junior high school orchestra then went on to Music & Art, as a body just about.

Not too many other teachers. There was a Fred Albright who I was assigned briefly at Manhattan – a grand old man of drums he was when I came to him. Just working with him for a semester, doing exercises and things like that, was indeed quite memorable. But that’s the only part of formal training that I think leads to anything like the jazz work that I’ve been doing since.

TP: I take it you start working professionally, or least for money on local gigs, as a teenager? Or when did that start, and what was that like, and who were some of the people that you played with? And where?

PLR: We worked primarily dances, Friday and Saturday nights. One guy who might be known from that band…there are a couple… George Braith, who is a saxophonist, was in that band at one time…

TP: He plays together and he also plays that welded-together…

PLR: He designed his own horn. Braithophone I think he calls it. Barry Rogers, who became very well known as a trombonist in the Latin bands, was also in that band. Some other guys who I know still work in music, like Arthur Jenkins, a pianist; John Mayer, a pianist who I saw last week when he came into Sweet Basil. I don’t know remember all the guys. Phil Newsome… If you’re into Latin music and you were around during that period, you’d probably remember that period, you’d probably remember him. We all called him Cowbell Phil because he did that so well.

We were about 15-16-17 was about the time that… I guess it went on through the time that I went to Sonny. If that was 1957, then I was about 19 at that time. So I guess it continued until then. It was sort of broken up into two pieces. Hugo Dickens actually originated or established the band, and I came along and emphasized the Latin side, and we had a sort of dual situation going on where he was responsible for the swing side and I was responsible for the Latin. This was a time when I was primarily a timbale player. I didn’t play a set of drums at all. It was primarily standards. We did transcriptions from records, and got sheet music on for the Latin music, etc. We got a lot of work. It was a good band.

TP: You were also hanging out, I’d think, and checking out various drummers of the upper echelon…?

PLR: I think it was mostly records at that time. First off, I was playing a lot, so I wasn’t going around to listen a lot. Those were school years, and homework and things took over much of the rest of the time. I didn’t get really that close to traps until I think I was 17, and there was a band that was going to work in the Catskills to do a show. I said, “That’s great, but I don’t happen to have a set of traps.” They said, “We’ll get some for you.” I think the virtue that they found in me was that I could read music, and therefore I could probably cut the show – and indeed, that’s what actually happened. It was from that time I got familiar with a set of traps and then got some other work playing jazz type music, etc. But there really wasn’t a lot of it. I’m sure I played for 6 or 7 years before I ever seriously sat down to play a set of traps.

TP: The first track you’ve selected is an amazing solo album by Baby Dodds on Folkways. I take it you’d heard him through your stepfather’s collection…

PLR: my uncle’s collection, yes. At that time, it was a 10″ 78 that was just drums on both sides. In my experience, that was quite an anomaly. I haven’t come across that before or since. And I loved it. I loved his whole collection, but that was one thing that really struck me in particular. That was before I even played drums at all. That was before even junior high school.

TP: I believe you said that it sounded like a tap dancer.

PLR: I brought a tape of Baby Dodds playing a version of “Tea For Two,” with just him and a piano player who I can’t identify, unfortunately. But in that, it’s mainly drum solo, and what he plays in there is…you can hear – it sounds like a tap dancer dancing.

TP: Also, you’ve mentioned Tito Puente as your main influence on timbales. Were you going out to dances and hearing Tito Puente and so forth…

PLR: Yes, and Tito Rodriguez at that time was around and had a great band. I was mainly interested in timbales at the time, and that’s what I was doing. Puente was a great influence primarily in the way that he strung ideas together. The next idea that he would play would be built upon the last idea that he had played, and he constantly strung it out that way. Which was something that didn’t happen a lot in drums. Drums being a non-pitched instrument, we do different things. There are many familiar rhythms that are in the vernacular, both the Latin vernacular and the jazz vernacular. But that particular way of stringing ideas together was really unique with Puente, and I glommed onto it and have been using it ever since, without a doubt.

[MUSIC: Baby Dodds, “Spooky Drums”; Baby Dodds-Bechet, “Save It Pretty Mama”; Dodds-pianist, “Tea For Two”; Tito Puente, “El Rey Del Timbal”]

TP: Within the course of 15 minutes, we’ve outlined some of the sources of Pete La Roca Sims’ aesthetic on drums and timbales. You mentioned that Baby Dodds eschewed the sock cymbal, didn’t use it on these recordings. On timbales, that would also be the case. In both cases, we have drummers creating a broad dynamic range within a limited palette, so to speak.

PLR: Somewhat. Although I think the color…the metallic sound of the timbales actually adds color, so that you’ve got that to play with even though you don’t have something like the sock cymbal. And, as I was mentioning to you when we were off the air, Baby Dodds uses the press roll as a sort of…I don’t know whether he intended it as a substitute for the sock cymbal, but it does pretty much the same job of emphasizing the second and fourth beats, etc. – which I think is interesting.

TP: How much of an adjustment was it for you to operate on the trap drums? Did you pick it up quickly? Was it complicated?

PLR: As I said, the first thing I got a chance to do was a job in the Catskills, and it was an entire summer cutting a show. That will get you in shape. You’re playing for dancing and then you’re playing for dancers, including strippers, and you’re doing rim-shots and ka-boom-chas, as they said today, for comedians, etc. It’s a bit of everything, and quite a bit of experience.

TP: How long did you that?

PLR: Just the summer. It was the better part of 3 months.

TP: Pete Sims is leading a group Sunday nights at Yardbird Suite on Cooper Square. Also, in the last few years, we’ve had a chance to hear you with Mal Waldron’s group. It’s been exciting to see you developing a stronger presence on the jazz scene.

The first source you mentioned as far as jazz drums was Kenny Clarke.

PLR: It’s the question of time and how time is kept, etc. Kenny also I think de-emphasized the sock cymbal to some extent and instead put the emphasis on the ride cymbal. I think he was one of the first to truly do that. If you listen to Baby Dodds, the beat-by-beat emphasis is in the bass drum. Then, of course, there’s the press roll on the snare drum, emphasizing the off-beats. Klook, by putting it in the ride hand on the ride cymbal, I think sort of smoothed it out. Prior to that time, drummers and rhythm sections were playing pretty much like the Basie rhythm section wit the rhythm guitar and CHUNK-CHUNK, CHUNK-CHUNK, beat-by-beat. By putting it in the cymbal it just got smoother because of the bit of continuity of sound that a cymbal gives you. I loved it and adopted that immediately, and never did anything else.

TP: Did you ever see him in person?

PLR: I only saw him in person, as a matter of fact, the job with Sonny Rollins in Europe.

TP: There’s another bootleg recording from that period in which Kenny Clarke plays with Sonny, in a cathedral in Aix.

PLR: I haven’t heard it but I’d love to.

TP: We’ll hear a set of recordings featuring Kenny Clarke in the early 1950s. This one is from Kenny Clarke’s 2nd MJQ date from April 1952…

[MUSIC: MJQ, “True Blues”; Miles-Bags-Monk, “The Man I Love”-Take 2, 1954]

TP: I think that was my first Miles Davis album, and you mentioned it’s one that you listened to many times.

PLR: That and Miles Ahead were the two first Miles Davis albums that I had.

TP: You mentioned off-mike that your stepfather had played in bands with Monk before bebop, perhaps in the late 1930s, or around there.

PLR: Somewhere around there. I was mentioning that he was a difficult person to keep employed, because he wasn’t yet Thelonious Monk, bebop hadn’t yet quite happened, and the kind of shenanigans that he was into at the time were not appreciated by leaders of the dance bands that they were working in. The reason why you mentioned that particular take as having a little bit of hilarity to it is because of the lapse, the dropout in Monk’s solo, where Miles plays him a fanfare to get him going again.

TP: He plays “You’ve Got To Wake Up In The Morning.”

PLR: Right! [LAUGHS] There were a number of scenes like that, as I understand it, just from having listened to my stepfather talk about it

TP: You had a chance to play with many of the greats of the period, but you never had a chance to play with Monk.

PLR: Never had Monk and never Miles. I missed the opportunities. I had a lot of opportunities, so I can’t complain, but I sure would have liked to have had those guys, too.

TP: Among the trumpeters you’ve been using at Yardbird Suite are Jimmy Owens and Claudio Roditi; you’ve had Dave Liebman and David Sanchez; George Cables and Joanne Brackeen; other people as well…

PLR: Other people of like caliber.

TP: Next in the chronology will be Max Roach. You mentioned that the thing that most impressed you about Max apart from your overall appreciation was his working outside of 4/4 time, particularly the material in 3/4 that he explored in 1956. He did a recording for EmArcy that was all in that time signature.

PLR: Right. Plus, the main thing for me with Max is that he established so much of the bebop drum vernacular. He made it quite a bit looser, taking it away from just the timekeeping function that drums had pretty much before that, and dropping – as were called – “bombs,” which really has to do with punctuating what else is happening in the band, etc. And the way that it was done… First off, the front line, people like Bird and Diz and Miles, were playing new ideas that called for I think something new from the rhythm section, and Max was very much up to the job and did things that I think every drummer has borrowed a big portion of, if you play jazz.

TP: Were you able to check him out, observe him in the flesh early on? How important is it to see musicians in the flesh?

PLR: It makes a difference. I got to get good jobs working opposite some of these guys early on, so that I wasn’t so much going out and hanging out in the clubs just for the purpose of hanging out. If I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to work opposite them, I’m sure I would have been hanging out in the clubs. But as it happened, I was there. Yes, it’s important to see them in the sense that especially if you know the musician and there’s something that you really do want to borrow, a device you think you can use… Sometimes you have to see how it’s done; you can’t really tell it all by just listening. But I think the bulk of it was really from records. Jazz music was at that time the popular music… The dance music of that time was derived from jazz. The swing era was still going on. There were still big dance bands going around. So major stations here in New York, like certainly WNEW and I think maybe WOR, were having jazz just about 24 hours a day. There was a show on Sunday afternoon that had Frank Sinatra, for instance, for 4 to 6 hours or something like that. So to get to hear the music at that time was very easy. Today you have to seek it out a little bit and guys don’t play as often as you might like, so you have to get them when they’re there. But then it was really all over the place.

TP: The selection we’ll play to represent Max Roach is “Valse Hot,” from March 1956.

[MUSIC: Rollins-Brown-Roach, “Valse Hot”-1956]

TP: On the next session we’ll hear some sessions that Pete Sims played on as “Au Privave.”

[MUSIC: George Russell, “Au Privave”; Pete LaRoca, “Lazy Afternoon”-Basra; Sonny Trio-Grimes-LaRoca, “I’ve Told Every Little Star”-1959]

TP: I’d think the surname quandary of “LaRoca” and “Sims” is a constant source of confusion.

PLR: I’m afraid so. But I answer to both. It just doesn’t matter.

TP: In these next couple of sets, we’ll hear two drummers who meant a great deal to you when you started to be a professional jazz drummer, Philly Joe Jones and Arthur Taylor. A few words about what Philly Joe Jones meant to you, and his special niche on the drums.

PLR: Swing. Summed up quite neatly, it’s just plain swing. For my taste, no one ever swung like that before or since. It’s full-bodied, it’s full-out. No messin’ around. All of his cuts are crisp, and he knew quite a few of them. He obviously did some big band drumming, and he brings that over to Miles’ band, especially on “Two Bass Hit,” where along with Red Garland, who was also a big band piano player, it just makes for a dynamite rhythm section. I think that every drummer around was very much impressed by Philly when things were being made.

TP: Did you get to know Philly, watch him check him out in person?

PLR: Some. We were friends. Drummers never work in the same band, and I was working a lot. I didn’t work opposite Philly that I can remember. He was one guy that I had to go hang out in clubs in order to get to hear him. Of course, since I was working, that wasn’t a big deal because you sort of had entree to most of the clubs. But I had to go catch him. They were working at places like Café Bohemia, Birdland, etc. It was mainly just the propulsion, the non-stop, strong as it could possibly be form of swing that apparently Miles at the time was just lapping up, because song after song after song called for it, and the rhythm section that he had at the time – which of course included Paul Chambers – was giving it to him.

[MUSIC: Miles-Philly Joe, “Two Bass Hit,” – [END OF SIDE 2]“Gone, Gone, Gone”]Pete Sims, Out To Lunch, June 11, 1998:

[MUSIC: Pete LaRoca Sims, “Amanda’s Song”]

TP: That was Chick Corea’s “Amanda’s Song,” from Swing Time, featuring Dave Liebman and Lance Bryant on soprano saxophones, Ricky Ford on tenor sax, Jimmy Owens, trumpet, George cables, piano, Santi DeBriano, bass.

Many of you know Pete LaRoca Sims from his middle name – he appeared on many recordings of the late 1950s and into the 1960s as Pete LaRoca. His two leader CDs from then are both in print – Basra on Blue Note and Turkish Woman At the Bath, for Douglas, reissued by 32Jazz. There’s a 30-year hiatus between recordings, and Swing Time comes next. The band is part of a rotating group of top-shelf New York musicians who’ve been recording with Pete since 1993, and the current version is appearing this week at Sweet Basil – Joe Ford on soprano sax, Don Braden on tenor; Jimmy Owens on trumpet; Steve Kuhn on piano; Santi DiBriano, bass. There’s a variety of arrangements, all sparked by Pete’s unique and original and unpredictable drumming.

Let’s talk about the origin of this group. You were one of the most active and respected drummers in jazz. The business became a bit too much for you to deal with in some ways. You became a lawyer. And you began playing actively again – although I gather you never stopped – in the early 90s with this band.

PLR: I got a few too many strong requests to do Fusion, which I was not interested in doing, and it was happening that many of the main jazz stars were going that way. It seemed to be the trend at the time. At the same time I was trying to get work for the band that did Basra, and without very much success. The missing link that people usually overlook when they tell that story is that between the time when I was getting a lot of work as a jazz sideman and the time I went back to school, I drove a cab for five years. It was after five years of cab driving that I figured out, “Hey, something has got to change here,” and then went back to academics. Then in 1993, as you say, I got the good fortune to collect a bunch of guys, all great players, mainly resident in New York or just across the river in New Jersey. We did months of Sunday nights and Monday nights at various clubs, and sort of teased the book into good shape. Working one night a week you can’t keep a steady group, so that’s where the rotating roster of musicians came in. Fortunately for me, a lot of great musicians around New York know my book. So usually, if I’ve got to get a band together, it turns out to be a pretty good one, like now.

TP: Let’s talk about this band, and a few words about each of the players. Maybe the overriding theme can be what it take to play in a band led by Pete Sims?

PLR: I’ve been told by the guys that the book is difficult. That’s number one. There have been occasions when guys have come aboard and stumbled there at having to read. If you’re not familiar with the book, you’re going to have to read, and that has been a stumbling block for a few fellas. So the main thing is that they wish to and can play freely when we finally get to solos, and they can content with the monster book, is what it’s called.

With regard to these guys: Jimmy Owens and I are actually both Music & Art, though not at the same time, and he has a lot of orchestral experience, which is what you do at places like Music & Art. He brings a lot of lore. He didn’t have the 30 years off, so he’s been in a lot of great bands and he brings a lot of lore and experience with him, and it’s a pleasure to have him.

Santi DiBriano has been in the group off and on since 1993. He comes from a Latin background. Along the way, before I ever played drums, I was a timbale player. So there’s a certain relationship there with regard to things that happen in time.

Steve Kuhn is playing piano this time around. He and I go back. We were together in the first Coltrane group. We subsequently worked together with Art Farmer and Stan Getz. So we have a history. He also has symphonic training, orchestral training, and he brings that lore.

Joe Ford is the guy you get when you’ve absolutely got to swing. There’s got to be one guy who you know you’ll give it to him and he’s going to swing with it. Don Braden is a new fellow; this is his first time in the group. He’s doing famously, brings a different color, a different style, so to speak, as most good jazz players do, and fills it out for us. A great ensemble sound he brings also.

TP: The record has three originals by you, Dave Liebman has one, there’s the Chick Corea tune and some standards. Who arranged the “Four In One” that you played last night?

PLR: That’s Hall Overton’s, from the big band album with Monk. It’s a wild thing to do, with that 2-chorus ensemble of Monk’s piano solo orchestrated out. That’s why guys say it’s a hard book!

TP: You have a sheaf of Chick Corea compositions, which I know are manna for drummers.

PLR: They are – Chick himself being a drummer. And he was good enough, at a time that we were talking about material to arrange, he said, “I’ll send you some stuff,” and about a week later I got a 2″ thick package of tunes he hadn’t recorded, snippets he hadn’t finished working on… It’s just a gold mine, and the first thing that’s come out of it is “Amanda Song,” which is for a singer.

TP: You’re writing. On “Basra,” from 1965, there are three of your pieces. The next track we’ll play is an updated version of a song that appears on Basra. How far back does writing and band-leading go for you?

PLR: Well, in my mid-teens there was a fellow up in Harlem named Hugo Dickinson, who had a group. I was then at Music & Art, and I had heard about him. Somebody said he was looking for a drummer. He and I met, and it developed into a situation where we had a sort of dual leadership. Latin music, the Mambo and Cha-Cha-Cha were quite popular then, and sort of at the beginning of their popularity – this is that far back. So he was doing the jazz side, and I, then, being a timbale player, was doing the Latin side. That’s when I started bringing in arrangements for the band. Some were simply sheet music that you could buy in places like the Music Exchange. Others were transcriptions. We heard a nice arrangement and we liked it, so I’d take it off the record. And some were original compositions that I wrote for the band. It was a big band, a 13-piece band or something.

We got a lot of dance work. It was really a dance band. We got a lot of work, mainly in Harlem, but some places in the Bronx or Brooklyn – wherever the gig was. Hugo was quite good at getting jobs. It was enough to keep the band together. A lot of great musicians came out of that band. Barry Rogers, for instance, who went over to the Latin world later, started out… That was one of his first big hits. George Braith. John Mayer, who is now on the West Coast, a piano player. A lot of guys came out of that band.

TP: Talk about the transition from timbales to trap drums.

PLR: Actually I started as a kettle drummer at Music & Art, and actually earlier at Stitt Junior High School. The transition from that to timbales was not that great, in the sense that the technique is the same. They both use what drummers call matched-grip, meaning that each hand holds the stick in the same way, as opposed to military style where you have that rotating motion in the left hand. So that wasn’t a big hump at all.

But then I sort of shied away from playing jazz. Jazz ran through my house all my childhood. My Uncle, Kenneth Bright, was involved in Circle Records, which originally recorded the Jelly Roll Morton… They were six 12″-78 albums where he is a raconteur and tells stories and plays bits to exemplify what he’s talking about. That was first released by Circle, which is the company my uncle was involved in. He was enough involved in the jazz scene that he would throw a party, and Fats Waller would come by the house and play piano. I’m sure that Fats would go anywhere and play piano, but our house was one of the places that he went.

I loved it so much, and it looked quite complicated and quite different from matched grip, playing kettle drums and timbales, that I shied away from it for a very long. Finally… I remember it was my 17th summer, because I couldn’t drink legally, and some guys I didn’t know, but who knew my name and knew I could read, had a summer-long job in the Catskills – a show band. They wanted me to play the drums. I said, “Hey, I’d love to do it, but I don’t even happen to have drums. I play timbales.” They said, “We’ll get you some drums,” which they did. I had something like 10 weeks at a place called the Kentucky Club up in the Catskills, cutting shows and playing for dancers, etc. That was my first real experience playing traps. It wasn’t even really a jazz band.

TP: Sounds like a trial and error thing for you?

PLR: I knew about it.

TP: What were the biggest demands about going from clave to swing?

PLR: The first big problem is coordination. Because you’ve got all 4 limbs going. You’ll see a lot of young drummers sort of staring into the middle distance as they try to figure out, “Now, which comes next?” Ultimately, when you really start playing, when you know you’re playing reasonably well, is when that stuff becomes second nature and you stop thinking about it.

TP: Was there a drum sound in your mind’s ear when you start playing jazz on trapset? Were there drummers you’d absorbed and wanted to sound like in some way or other?

PLR: Plenty of drummers. Not a drum sound as such. But plenty of drummers. Baby Dodds was a first major influence. In my uncle’s huge jazz record collection, there was a 78 (and again, this is back there) of Baby Dodds, just Baby Dodds, playing solo drums on both sides.

TP: Incredible record.

PLR: Absolutely incredible! One of those that I wore out. A major influence. I find that he’s an influence still, having listened to that. It’s not straight bebop. Certainly it predates bebop. It was a guy really playing impressionistically in a very early style on a set of drums – a BIG set of drums with temple blocks and all kinds of things like that.

Other major influences? Max was a major influence, and what he did at the inception of bebop with Bird and Dizzy – that’s fundamental jazz vernacular for drums.

TP: You were up on all of this?

PLR: I had heard it all. My stepfather was a trumpeter, and he played jazz. Jazz was always going on in the house. And it was a time at which jazz was extremely popular. It was the foundation for the swing bands, the dance bands. That hadn’t quite died yet, although I think it really did take a turn to a different direction with Bird, because he with his wonderful contribution sort of turned the music into ear candy, ear music, and not so much dancing music. That’s when we started having not dance halls, but cabarets, nightclubs without even a dance floor, where people just came and listened to the music. Once again, when the people stopped dancing to jazz, we lost a lot of public. Because really and truly, people want to be the show. They don’t want to go and sit and watch somebody else – be a spectator. But nevertheless, with regard to the music, loving jazz as much as I do, I’m glad Bird did what he did!

Kenny Clarke was a major influence because of the way that he smoothed out, to my perception, the beat. Guys were putting a lot of emphasis in their hands on the second and fourth beat, along with the sock cymbal playing on the second and fourth beat. He kind of had the sock cymbal going but smoothed out that right hand. To me, that was a revelation, and I play like that today.

Philly Joe Jones for the musicality. He played bebop and he played it hard, but he always played something appropriate for what was happening in the band.

These are the guys. You learn from them. You learn things to do. I still find quite a bit of Philly in my own playing, because some of the things he did are just the best way and the easiest way to get from one place to another.

TP: Were you a kid who went out to hear these drummers? Were you listening on records?

PLR: Pretty much. It really started with my going out to hear Latin bands. As I was sort of coming of age and allowed to go out at night by myself, that’s the stage at which I was playing timbales. But when it switched over, actually I was playing quite a bit. So once I started playing jazz, which was the job at the Village Vanguard with Sonny Rollins when I was 19…once that happened, I was in clubs where there were usually two bands then. So I would be in one band I’d really hear these guys in the other band, which in many ways is the best way to hear them – it was really intense.

TP: So at the time of Night at the Village Vanguard you hadn’t had that much listening to jazz experience?

PLR: I hadn’t had that much playing jazz experience. I’d only played with my contemporaries in the neighborhood, the guys in Hugo’s band, when we were… After the summer in the Catskills. That gives me about two years of playing traps.

TP: Who were some of the hand drummers or Latin drummers you found particularly stimulating, who might enter the way you sound today?

PLR: Tito Puente as a great timbale player, and from whom I stole a concept that I still use today. I haven’t found a better one. The drums not having the advantage of harmony and melody, one way to sort of make your solo playing coherent is to take the last part of one musical idea, one rhythmic idea, and make it the first part of the next rhythmic idea. That comes from Tito Puente. And it works.

TP: Worked then. Works now. Anyone else?

PLR: Direct lifts? Not so much.

TP: I don’t mean direct lifts, but just general influences.

PLR: Everybody is an influence. Sure. You listen to everybody. In the rare case you listen to some guys for what not to do. But everybody is an influence. You let it all filter through.

TP: But when we cite the people you’ve played with, it’s a roster of pivotal figures in the development of jazz – Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, on and on. Let’s hear some music and talk about some of those people when we get back.

“Candu” was first recorded on Basra, Pete’s 1965 Blue Note recording. This version is on Swingtime…

[MUSIC: Pete LaRoca, “Candu”; Sonny Rollins-Pete, “Oleo”-Stockholm-1959]

TP: Let me read a list of some of the highlights of your c.v. between 1957 and 1964-65. Sonny Rollins. Tony Scott. The Slide Hampton Octet and I imagine other configurations – a significant band not so well known these days. John Coltrane’s first attempt to organize a quartet, which he eventually settled on later with results we know. Art Farmer. You played with Joe Henderson in your own band and other situations. Chick Corea became part of your working band for a while. An incredible roster, on the cutting edge of the time.

You referred to “missing link” in regard to someone before. Some people think of you as a kind of missing link because of your absence over 3 decades in the development of modern jazz drumming. A number of drummers have said this to me.

In any event, let’s talk about your experience with Sonny Rollins, who’s been known to be tough on drummers, though maybe not on you.

PLR: I didn’t find him to be tough on drummers and such. At the time, it seemed to me that he was not so much band-oriented. I’m coming out of symphonic background, and my first real work playing traps was in a show band, where you’re really expected to do certain things. Sonny really wanted to, at that time, follow his own nose, meaning he might change key in mid tune, he might change a tune in mid-tune. He would change the tempo in mid-tune. And he really just expected whoever was in the band to follow him, wherever he happened to go. If that’s what you mean… I didn’t think of it as being rough on drummers. He’s a very strong player, and when he set out to go from one place to another, it was kind of obvious what he was doing and not that difficult to follow along.

TP: Did this 1959 engagement end your association? He entered his hiatus following that.

PLR: There was really only the Vanguard, which was a one-week job, and I think the tour with him in Europe that included the Stockholm recording was 10 days-2 weeks, something like that. Other than that, there were really just a few concerts here and there. I think I might have had a half-dozen other nights playing with him at most over that whole two-year period.

TP: I’m sure the Vanguard gig opened eyes around New York. Did it open up work opportunities playing jazz for you?

PLR: I’m certain that it did. I think the next good job I got was for a longer period of time, with Tony Scott, who had a quartet at the time, a very nice quartet for a good period of that time, with Bill Evans and Jimmy Garrison. We worked for about 2 months solid at a place called the Showplace in Greenwich Village, which is no longer there. He had other people as well. It wasn’t all that.. It was just that two months with those two particular musicians. But it included a concert with Langston Hughes at Carnegie Hall for instance.

There was work. I was getting lots of work. Given the Sonny Rollins recording, which was Blue note, and the Jackie McLean recording…

TP: New Soil.

PLR: Yes, which was also Blue Note. I kind of fell into favor, as it were, with Alfred Lion of Blue Note, and he would often recommend me for records and the musicians would accept me. The same was true with Max Gordon at the Village Vanguard. He’d very often bring just a horn player to town and pick up a local rhythm section… Well, a local rhythm section in New York City, you’re not doing too bad. Max would often recommend me for some of those jobs. So I got to work a lot, and I think that’s how I got to play with so many fine musicians.

TP: Your experience playing with John Coltrane in 1959 and 1960.

PLR: Obviously a great experience. It was a great job in the sense that it started with 10 weeks on the same bandstand at the Jazz Gallery. Now, that’s unheard of today, but that’s… If you want to start a band, that’s a great way to go at it. We did 10 weeks, two weeks each opposite Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Chico Hamilton, Count Basie (the big band…it was really a great job) and Max Roach also. It was kind of fierce.

I think what had happened is that he had always intended, I think, to have the band that he ultimately ended up with. But all the guys he wanted weren’t available at the time that he got his opportunity to start. So I just had really the good fortune to get those first…it was probably 4 or 5 months, because we did those 10 weeks and then a tour around the Eastern Seaboard.

TP: What were the dynamics, the special demands of playing with John Coltrane.

PLR: A lot of energy. [LAUGHS] It’s kind of contrary, in a way, to my sort of natural bent. I’m not exactly a soft drummer. But I do like…or what I’ve developed into liking over time is to have my peaks of energy and then to come back down. Hopefully that allows a horn player to get his breath and think about it again; you don’t keep him at the top of his lungs constantly. But with John, that’s the way John played. He was always not so much necessarily at the top of his lungs, but certainly at the top of his energy. He never let that part come down. So it really was not natural, in a way, for me – but it sure was fun to do.

[END OF SIDE 1]

TP: …the material he recorded for Atlantic around that time, or was he looking for other things?

PLR: It started with the material from Atlantic, “Giant Steps,” etc. I think there might have been some earlier recordings for another label. “Equinox” I think preceded some of that music, the Atlantic period. “Mr. Syms,” I think, which people thought was me, but actually it was a barber of his in Philadelphia. During the period that I was there, he branched out into “My Favorite Things,” “Chasin’ The Trane”…

TP: He was playing “Chasin’ The Trane” in 1960, then.

PLR: He was playing the tune, yeah. And “Impressions,” that he did the long extended solo on. And “Inchworm.”

TP: So he was playing extended solos when you were playing with him.

PLR: Yes. Not so much a whole 20 minutes worth necessarily. But they were getting there. They were on their way to that. And he was getting to modal, as opposed to “Giant Steps.” In fact, we had a conversation about that. I really didn’t like the “Giant Steps” type stuff very much at all. Certainly for me, and I think for most drummers, our main device is harmonic rhythm. Meaning we go for the places where there are harmonic changes, where the chords sit down. In something like “Giant Steps,” the chords are just about note-for-note. So almost every drummer is going to play that the same way. BOOM TIT-TI-BOOM TIT-TI-BOOM TIT-TI-BOOM TI-BASH, BANG BANG. It’s going to happen every time.

TP: If they can.

PLR: Right. Well, ok, but it’s just a natural. And I’m not too partial to things where I sound like any other drummer! I just don’t like to do things that way. So the things where the harmonic rhythm was more disparate, more interesting, were the things that I preferred. I loved “Equinox.” I loved “Body and Soul,” his great arrangement of “Body and Soul” that I have since orchestrated to put into my own group, etc.

TP: Perfect segue. That arrangement of “Body and Soul” appears on Swingtime, and let’s get to it.

[MUSIC: Pete, “Body and Soul”; w/Chick-Gilmore-Booker, “Bliss”]

TP: I’m one of many people who initially thought it was either Chick Corea’s or John Gilmore’s recording, as I’ve seen both incarnations.

PLR: Interesting.

TP: Actually your entire output as a leader is currently in print – Basra for Blue Note, Turkish Women At The Baths, and most recently, Swingtime, which is the name of his current ensemble, which is performing this week at Sweet Basil.

When we were speaking before that set of music, Pete, you made a comment that you don’t like to do things the way other people do – it’s not your policy. Has that been an ongoing character trait – the principle of individualism.

PLR: I don’t know that it was a guiding light, but it turned out to be the turn that I took on a number of different occasions. I was asked recently by an interviewer, “What was the first influence that caused you to go out, outside?” I said, “Nobody ever asked me that before,” and it took me a few minutes to think. The one person who I came up with was Moondog, who is called a street drummer. He’s a very unusual character who I used to see around on the street both in Midtown and in Harlem. He’d be standing on the street wearing Army blankets, sandals, and carrying a long staff. And he happened to be a drummer, and wrote music – and I think he played the flute also.

TP: He has a record out recently.

PLR: It’s a reissue. He also did a concert at the YMHA that I went to, and he had a beautiful triangular drum, about 6 feet long, sat on the floor, and he straddled it. There was a head on one end and the other end open, and he played on the head with a maraca and on the wooden side with a clave – and played the most marvelous things. I think that kind of led my ear to know that things can be done differently and still be quite musical. Drums being what they are, a very repetitive instrument. We hold the beat down. We end up with the backbeat, which I’ve avoided like the plague because it’s just so repetitive and boring – though people love it. People are comfortable with it. It’s obvious. You can feel it. But I just tended toward those things that were more like Moondog, and you know, the great drummers who played things that were interesting, that you’d never heard before, and that made it exciting.

TP: I guess stretching out over 10 weeks with John Coltrane would have given you food for thought.

PLR: It really developed into following the lead from whoever was up front. That started with Sonny, though of course it was pertinent to Coltrane as well. I still do that. It’s not so much that I have a pattern in mind. That goes back to the issue of having to maintain coordination. If you’re really working at it, then there are certain things, licks that you would play that you’re going to be comfortable with and you know how to do. My approach I hope is different in the sense that I prefer to listen to what the soloist mainly is doing and do something that complements whatever it is that he’s into. How should I play the time behind a soloist who is playing that particular kind of phrase up front. That leads you. Because they’re always playing something different, so that leaves me to always be playing something different, and I always liked that combination.

TP: You also became involved in studying Indian music during the 60s, according to the liner notes.

PLR: Yes. Though it was more a general period of Eastern studies. I was also investigating yoga and Zen, etc., as many people were at the time – and Indian music, which was a big part of it.

TP: Did the rhythmic structures of Indian music have an effect on your concept of drumming?

PLR: Not very much. It came across as intensely beautiful but also intensely complex, and I couldn’t find a way to carry it along. Actually I’ve had a similar experience recently with Native American music. Many of the tunes that I’ve written are drawn from other folk musics, not necessarily jazz. I was looking for something that would be from the Native American vernacular. Once again, I love what I hear, but I haven’t found anything that I can take to make it swing. It’s been done. Jim Pepper did “Witchi-tai-to,” which was great. So I know there’s probably something out there, but I haven’t found it yet. It’s very difficult. They don’t use time in so regular a fashion. Some of the time, meter signs – if there were one – seem to be irregular. They’re not circular like a 3/4 or 4/4 even or 5/4. They seem to change, to my ear, in large part, based upon their language. In other words, they’re singing a phrase, and whatever music or rhythm they’re going to do takes the shape of that phrase, as if it were spoken. That’s the rhythm of the music. It doesn’t have to be circular. Nobody is going to improvise. It doesn’t need to be a recognizable pattern. I’ve found that in many folk musics. I may be mistaken, but I think in Greek folk music I’ve also heard that, where they use wild meter signs. But it seems to follow the spoken phrase, not necessarily conducive to something that you want to swing.

TP: You started off in Latin music, and much of the roots therein are Yoruba-Cuban music. Have you continued exploring those feels and does it inflect the way you play?

PLR: Not much directly. I would go a little further back than Yoruba-Cuban to just plain African. When I was a kid, I lived in Harlem, and I was going to Music & Art, which was then at 135th Street, and the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library was at 136th and Lenox Avenue. So these things were close by, and I spent a lot of time at the Schomburg Collection, listening to their records. That’s where I picked up the African elements of my playing. Then I got a chance to use them, of course, was I was playing timbales.

TP: When we break down Pete LaRoca’s influences, it sounds very complex, which it is, but there’s nothing daunting when you hear Pete LaRoca play. It’s endless swing, as the band’s apropos title, Swingtime, would indicate.

PLR: I wrote this for my daughter when she was 4 or 5, which is 25 or more years ago.

[MUSIC: Pete Sims, “Susan’s Waltz”]
[MUSIC: Miles, “Two Bass Hit”; Miles, “Gone”; Miles-PC-PJJ, “Billy Boy”]

TP: Next we’ll focus on Arthur Taylor, who you saw quite frequently during the late 50s.

PLR: Yes, late 50s-early 60s, and picked up a tip from him, actually, regarding the sock cymbal, which previously I had only seen played in only a rock-the-foot-heel-to-toe-and-back fashion. A.T. did it with just his toe, which bounced up and down, so to speak, on beat, and the heel never touched the pedal. That for me was a true find. It allowed a lot of flexibility as to how to use the sock cymbal. Or, perhaps what I should say is, it avoided the sort of locked-in motion of heel-to-toe, which is one of those things you can see drummers concentrating on getting it coordinated, and as long as you’re concentrating on getting it coordinated you’re not going to play anything that’s very loose. So it was a freeing-up device to learn from A.T. that, they, you can do it with just the toe, and there are then different things that involve balance and you get loose – for which I am forever grateful to A.T. It would be a pleasure to hear him play something.

[MUSIC: A.T.’s Delight, “Syeeda’s Song Flute”-1960]

TP: On the next segment we’ll hear a number of tracks from dates on which Pete LaRoca appeared. Alfred Lion called you fairly frequently. You played on several Joe Henderson records, including Page One, which debuted “Blue Bossa.” There are several Jackie McLean sides, Walter Davis, Jr., Sonny Clark…

PLR: Kenny Dorham.

TP: How did the relationship with Blue Note begin?

PLR: It was the Sonny Rollins date, which of course was the first thing I did. The next thing was Jackie’s New Soil, with “Minor Apprehension.” I guess Alfred was happy with the results, and I got into quite a few dates, including my date Basra.

[MUSIC: Art Farmer-PLR, “Tears”–Sing Me Softly Of the Blues; Jackie McLean, “Minor Apprehension”-1959; Joe Henderson-Andrew Hill, “Our Thing”-1963]

PLR: …when I was asked my name, and I said, “Peter,” I’d get a lot of “Ha,” etc., and I finally started making what I thought was a clever connection at the time – Peter meaning “rock” and LaRoca meaning “rock.” I sort of allowed myself to get stuck with it, and that’s how that name came about.

TP: It’s a catchy, recognizable name. You say “Pete LaRoca,” and it sticks in your mind.

PLR: The name has done its work well. People do not forget the name! If I had to choose, I did well with that one. Sims is my given name, and I’m just trying to be known as who I am without the 13-year-old cleverness…

TP: Sometimes the best inspirations…

PLR: Are when you’re 13 years old?

TP: This gentleman’s second question was: Where has he been since Night of the Cookers?

PLR: Right here, dealing with the vagaries of the jazz music business and the impossibility of getting the opportunity to work and be heard by people like your interested caller. I drove a cab for a while in order to survive. I’ve become a lawyer in order both to survive and to keep myself interested in life, etc. And now, at this particular juncture, I have this marvelous opportunity to have a band working and to indulge in music in a number of different ways again.

TP: Now we’ll get back to some other drummers, both from recordings with Thelonious. Roy Haynes is one of the masters in the pantheon; and also Frankie Dunlop.

PLR: Again, drummers don’t get to play with each other, so it’s only as a listener. With regard to Roy Haynes, I’ve always been fascinated by most particularly his left-hand technique, the very intricate and sometimes delicate things that he does on snare drum with his left hand, that I think are among the drumming marvels in jazz. The devices that he uses have a sort of military sound, which I think may be how he got his nickname “Sarge.”

Frankie Dunlap is a drummer I only heard in one context, and that was with Monk. I heard a number of other drummers with Monk, but there was something about Frankie Dunlap that has caused me to always think that he was just the ideal drummer for Monk. Monk was a little angular in his compositions and in his playing, and Frankie was a little angular in his drumming, and they seemed to go together quite well.

TP: It seems to me that your sense of the essential of being a drummer are boiled down into one word, which begins with an “s” and ends with a “g” – swing.

PLR: Yes.

TP: Talk about what comprises swing with a drummer. There are so many ways to do it. What’s that fine line? Is it something definable?

PLR: I personally would go back to Baby Dodds. I call it today CHANK-A-DANG. He wouldn’t have done that, I don’t think. But if you listen to his playing, that sense of TAK-A-TAK-A-TAK-A-TAK-A is there. CHANK-A-DANG is the same thing on a cymbal that has an extended sound, so it’s smoothed out a bit, as I’ve been talking about smoothing things out. To me, that’s the essence. I think that’s what Duke Ellington was talking about when he said “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” We didn’t have all the other versions and varieties and extensions of swing when he said that. So to me, CHANK-A-DANG is the heart of it. And there are then many questions as to on what part of the drums it’s actually done; one’s touch in doing it. The drums being such a forceful instrument, discretion in playing drums is always significant, and being able to play, for instance, soft and still keep the drive going. All of these things are the things that really, to me, comprise swing, and that’s what swing is about.

People have done other things, and other things are interesting. They are logically sound, or they may be commercially viable, or whatever the case may be. But they are not necessarily swing. A person can say that the absence of something is a form of that thing. That may be a nice, logical argument, like “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” But it doesn’t come down to making that other thing, or that non-thing the thing itself, in my estimation, at least not when we’re talking about swing. There’s one thing. It’s CHANK-A-DANG. It goes right up the middle, and all the trimmings that you can add to it are great. But it never changes its own identity.

TP: During your younger days you played a lot for dancers on those Latin gigs, and I’m sure that imparted a whole sense of what sort of feeling to have on the drums, though that was on timbales at the time.

PLR: Yes. And I think everything I’ve done since that time has been in an effort to stay away from music for dancers because, though it may swing…

TP: It sounds a little contradictory, on the face of it, to say that.

PLR: It may. But a drummer has a function. In addition to the aesthetics of it, and the music of it, and the expression, a drummer has the function of setting down the time. And the closer you get to dancers, the more firmly you are locked into that function and the less you do anything else, to today where most of today’s popular dance music also derived from jazz is based on the hand-clap, or, as a drummer would call it, the backbeat. Well, you don’t need a drummer to clap hands. There’s a contradiction in terms there. Basically, that’s what it comes down to. It’s swing, and I don’t think there’s that much doubt about it, though people raise many questions as to what it is.

[MUSIC: Monk-Roy Haynes-Griffin, “In Walked Bud”-1958; Monk-Rouse-Dunlap, “Rhythm-A-Ning”]

TP: [re “Bliss”]

PLR: That album began with a cover. I was given the painting, Turkish Women At the Bath, by Ingres, and asked to write some music for it. I thought it was a little outrageous, but one doesn’t say no when somebody offers you a record date. So I did, and this set of songs resulted, and “Bliss” is one of those.

[Pete LaRoca,” “Bliss” and “Basra”]

Hamiet Bluiett (1940-2018): Two WKCR Interviews — Out to Lunch in 1993; a Musician Show in 1994

Here are the transcripts of a pair of WKCR interviews that it was my honor to conduct with the master baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett in 1993 and 1994 — the 1994 encounter was a Musician Show, where Bluiett played and talked about the music that influenced him. The July 21, 1993 show was intended to publicize a club appearance by the World Saxophone Quartet, which was about to welcome James Spaulding into the mix. Bluiett was with me from noon to 1:30; Spaulding came up for the second half, the transcript of which appears in a recent post.

 

Hamiet Bluiett, Out To Lunch, WKCR, July 21, 1993:

[MUSIC: WSQ, “Masai Warriors Dance” (by Bluiett), Metamorphosis, 1993]

TP: I’m pleased to welcome to WKCR the great baritone saxophonist, Hamiet Bluiett, who also plays various clarinets and other woodwinds, who is appearing with the World Saxophone Quartet and African Drums this week at Sweet Basil. Welcome.

HB: Ok, thank you.

TP: Three members of the World Saxophone Quartet have been working together now for 17 years. After Julius Hemphill left, Arthur Blythe held that chair for a few years; it’s now held by James Spaulding, who will join us later on. How does the presence of a new member affect what the band does, and the approach. How do you work someone in? And how was he chosen?

HB: So far, the band has been very fortunate in that…by having Julius… Then, when it was time for Julius to leave, we were able to get Arthur. Then Spaulding. Each one was a person that we had in mind for doing the particular chair. Because Arthur brought in a needed ingredient that was needed at the time, and James brings in another needed ingredient that’s needed at this time. The basis and the nucleus of it, we have it. So we’ve used quite a few people, and we have some more people in mind who we’re going to get to. In terms of the group now, Sam Rivers, Branford marsalis, John Stubblefield, John Purcell, Kidd Jordan, and I’m missing somebody… Julius, Spaulding, Arthur, and there’s two other saxophone players that I’m missing who have been… Henry Threadgill and Sam Rivers. These are people who at one time or another within our 17 year existence — besides myself, David Murray, and Oliver Lake — have appeared with the group in one kind of way or other. John Purcell is the only one who has covered everyone’s chair, including mine. He’s played all of the parts.

It’s a lot of people. But we have… Spaulding, because of the homespun blues and the other sort of ingredients, and the effervescence, brought another kind of thing, which is good.

TP: He also has a broad range on the flute, which I think fits in very well with African percussion and African melodies.

HB: It’s all of that. Everything. The whole bean. We don’t try to replace a person. We learned that from Duke. The music has to fit around whoever it is that you’re dealing with. So we’re constantly doing new things. At the club now, instead of having Mor Thiam and Mar Gue, with Chief Bey, we have Chief Bey, Okeryema Asante from Ghana, and Kahil el-Zabar from Chicago. So the configuration with the African drums now is something totally different from what it was before, but like I said, we don’t try to get another Mor Thiam because that won’t happen no way. It’s that singular.

TP: You’ve been associated with Okeryema Asante in a number of situations over the years, particularly on your most recent release on Tutu Records, If You Have To Ask – and isn’t he on your old Chiaroscuro recording?

HB: No, he’s not on that. Chief Bey has been with me all the time. He’s on Nali Kola with me. But on the Chiaroscuro, it’s Chief Bey, Ladji Kamara and Michael Carvin. That’s a little bit different setup.

TP: What was the impetus for World Saxophone Quartet to start bringing drums and the African drum ensemble into its orbit? You were solely a saxophone quartet for many years.

HB: Well, after Julius, who was basically a composer, then it was time for us to do something else. I had really grown tired of just a saxophone quartet configuration. Because… You can just reinvent some kind of way. For me, after so many years, it was time to do something else, and African drum was a good way to still bring out the saxophones, and in my mind, moving ahead to the next level of rhythm section, if you want to call it that. So we decided to go forward or go backwards, both at the same time.

TP: And the group does do both at the same time. There are numbers on which the four saxophones play together in ensemble or different solos, and pieces on which the rhythm comes in. Everyone in the WSQ has their own thriving solo career, and everyone is internationally known as a leader. How often does the group work in a given year?

HB: Well, it constantly changes every year. So far this year, we’ve gone on a European tour that last 28 days. We played in Atlanta, Georgia, with the drums. We’ve hit in Boston. We’re on our way to do a record date in Milano at the first of September with Spaulding. I can’t think of everything. It’s not a whole lot, but it does wind up being enough. After being together for so many years, being creative, you have to do a lot of other things just to come up with some different ideas. We have an LP in the can coming out now that will feature Fontella Bass and some totally different kind of stuff.

So the group is growing in other ways. The quartet is not just a quartet. The quartet is a whole…how can I put it…lifestyle, identity, base, umbrella. You understand? We’re planning to get to some things where we use piano, maybe piano…not necessarily piano choirs, but different configurations to go along with us to show the saxophone in a sort of different light as the nucleus of music, as opposed to being somebody else as the base.

TP: The members of the WSQ are all based in the New York area, but everybody is originally from the Midwest or the West Coast. Is there any way in which where you’re from affects the type of music that you play or the musical approach you’re talking about?

HB: Of course. Let me put it one kind of way. You’ve got the Mississippi River joining up with the Missouri River, and everybody that’s in the path of the river is going through that kind of trouble. People that live in Colorado are not bothered with that, or if you live in upstate New York. So the land that you’re in has a lot to do… For instance, me, I have a certain sort of accent when I talk that is Midwestern as opposed to Southern. So there’s a regional dialect that goes along with what you do. In the Midwest, the music a lot wilder, but not necessarily free, because there’s a lot of wide-open spaces. Whereas here, in New York, in the city, things are much more… Like, you’ve got [(?)208th Street(?)]. [(?)208th Street(?)] for me is a cornfield. If you take the same distance and go somewhere from my house, you… I’m in the middle of wide-open spaces. So the way of looking at a lot of things because of that… I’m trying to take everything to be verbal, and experience…

David Murray is from California. People are a lot cooler, a lot more laid-back. There’s a whole lot of other stuff. Now they’re going through some other kind of things, but… And plus, from Texas. Oliver is from St. Louis, from Mississippi. Stuff like that.

I know for me, I’m heavily blues-based. Spaulding is from Indianapolis, Naptown, heavy blues-based — so it’s a different kind of thing. As opposed to being East Coast. But then again, you’re all in one piece of land, so it’s all similar, too.

TP: Did you come up playing a lot of those type of blues gigs as a young musician?

HB: No.

TP: What were you doing as a young musician?

HB: Trying to learn how to play music.

TP: What instrument did you start on, and about how old were you?

HB: I started on piano when I was about 4, and learned how to basically read music and what I was looking at. I’m still being basic now. When the hands started going two different ways, I said, “No, this is not the instrument for me.” I tried to do trumpet. That didn’t happen. Then finally I wound up on clarinet in maybe about the fourth grade or something like that. I’ve been playing it ever since. But I wanted a saxophone. But the saxophone I wanted, that I saw, that made me excited, was a baritone saxophone.

TP: Why was that?

HB: I don’t know. I just looked at it and liked it.

TP: Were you big enough to play it?

HB: No. It was about my size at the time. But it was just that kind of excitement. Now, why? I don’t even care why, because I wound up with it. You understand? So that was just the instrument for me, regardless of what anybody say. So I saw it at that age. I don’t even remember the age now. I didn’t necessarily like the way the guys who played it, played it, because I thought the horn was too big to have such a small sound. I always thought the sound should be…it’s a bigger horn… I’m from marching band country, and I’m used to hearing sousaphone players hit as hard as any trumpet player on the planet, with enormous, fat…you know, fat-man sound, not no little sound — and big. And trombone players. The horns with the sounds getting bigger, according to the size of the instrument. With saxophones, the thing kind of went the other way. So I said, “There’s a problem here.” So that’s been one of the problems of trying to deal with it. Until I ran into Harry Carney. Then I said, “Oh! Ok. I was right.” But I said, “Oh, I got a lot of work.”

TP: Did you run into Harry Carney on a record or did you hear the Ellington band…

HB: I’m talking about in person.

TP: Where did you hear him? Do you remember when?

HB: 20-something. 25, maybe something like that. It was outside of Boston. I was in the Navy at the time, stationed in Boston at South Annex. So we’re talking about maybe 1965, 1964. I had heard the band before that. But what I mean by heard the band… I have a way of talking where words mean whatever I want them to mean. But what I meant, I HEARD the band, meaning it really got to me, I was in a club, and I was about as far from him as I am from here to you. For those who don’t know, we’re talking about 5 or 6 feet. But then the band was angled in another way, but I was right up on top of him. I was the first person that you got to. The band hit. And I sat there, petrified. It was a music thing, though, because I loved it, but I said “Whoa!” because it put so much distance in between what was going on and what wasn’t going on, that I said, “Whoa!” I said, “Damn, Duke’s got two bands; he’s got a big band and Harry Carney.” That’s what it sounded like. It sounded like his band and Harry Carney, who sounded like a whole band by himself. Everybody in the band had these tremendous sounds, but he was like…

Then I said, “Whoa, it’s the horn.” I mean, it’s him, but… So I started really thinking about the instrument. Instead of wondering, then I knew. So I said, “Ok, let me get to work on coming from another perspective. It’s a completely different instrument. Most people play it like it’s a tenor. They’re still running over it. And it can run, but it also goes through stuff. So it’s an altogether different instrument.

TP: When you got out Navy, is that when you started on music as your profession, your avocation?

HB: Chronologically, it was like ’66, January. I was supposed to come out four years earlier, but I got extended for the Vietnam draft. So instead of me coming out in September, everybody after a certain date had to… Which was cool, because I bought a car and the same instrument I’ve got now. Things were real cheap. I was a musician in Service. Actually, that’s why I went. Because I got tired of not playing.

TP: A fair number of musicians did that.

HB: Yeah, some of them. You had to volunteer to be in the Navy anyway, and I didn’t want to get drafted. Because that was coming at the time. It was one of those times when to keep from going into the draft, you could go your own way – but you still had to do some kind of service. And I was not in school or anything. So I said, well, rather than be in the foxhole… So I took an audition, and they said I was good enough to be in the band. As long as you get through basic service, then you’re a musician. So I was already set up to go that way, so I made it on through. Which worked out real good, since I had to do some kind of service at the time.

TP: What other music were you listening to at the time you were entering the service and coming out of it that was pleasing to your ear and that you wanted to be getting with?

HB: Well, I always was listening to what you call jazz. So if we’re talking about that time in the 60s, I was listening to John Coltrane and a lot of other people — at that particular time. I remember listening to a lot of those things when he was heavily criticized, and Miles was criticized for having him, and a lot of people that jump up and down now, praising his name, talked about him like a dog. I always heard something in his playing that satisfied me. Not necessarily technically, because I’m not into that sort of mindset. Something has to satisfy me inside of my body some kind of way. I heard Miles say that. It’s really kind of true.

TP: You’re both from the same part of the country.

HB: Yeah, we’re from the same part of the world. So we’ve got another kind of way of feeling it. My way of looking at music is sort of like spiritual decadence. It’s spiritual, but I can’t get away from whatever is going on. So they both seem to coexist without me being in control, since I don’t run the world, no way.

TP: But maybe you do run the baritone saxophone. Let’s hear a few examples from recent recordings by Hamiet Bluiett, and then we’ll be back for further conversation.

HB: This is called “Children At Play.” I wrote it for Mama Geri at a child development center at City College. My grand-daughter was going to this child development center, which you would call like a daycare…what they call them. But the concept was Afrocentric, and it was children from everywhere, but the sort of freedom that they had in being able to do what they did always inspired me. Because I watched the way they would play, and they don’t play military, like everybody got to step. They go! It all works out! Everybody is GO! But they weren’t destructive. They just took off and did what they had to do. So I looked at it a lot, and I said, “let me write a tune,” and I wrote a little tune for it.

TP: This features Fred Hopkins on bass and Michael Carvin on drums, with percussionist Okeryema Asante, who is appearing with WSQ this week. The CD is You Don’t Need To Know If You Have To Ask, and it’s on Tutu.

[MUSIC: Bluiett, “Children at Play”; “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”-You don’t Need To Know…]

TP: I think when the general public first became aware of Hamiet Bluiett was via stints with Charles Mingus during the early 1970s. Where did Mingus hear you? What circumstances led you to Mingus?

HB: It was between Paul Jeffreys and Roy Brooks. Because Mingus’ love of Ellington… He had a big band at the time, and he needed a baritone saxophonist. He was having a problem finding anybody with a sound, and he was starting to even write some tunes. So fortunately, I had been playing with Sam Rivers, Olatunji and some other people… I got here in 1969. I hooked up with Mingus I think in 1972. By then, most of the musicians knew me and I knew most of them.

So I started in with the big band. Jon Faddis was in it; he was real young. A lot of guys. Real good band. Then later on, I came back and played with him… I might have been in the big band in 1971, but I came and started really working with him in 1972. That’s what it was. Yeah, something like that.

Mingus was like, for me… At the time I came in with Mingus, he was always being talked about real bad, being crazy and all that other stuff. So I had to go through all that, which was a problem, because it’s hard to work with somebody when everybody else has a paranoia or fear about him. Even though you may not feel that way, after you get through fighting it for a while, then it succumbs to you. I’ve seen people walk to him and do some horrible things, like put their finger in his mouth. Just a whole bunch of crazy, stupid type stuff. He would tell musicians things that he wanted to do, and they wouldn’t understand what he was saying. I think because they didn’t want to hear it. To me, he was ahead of where the cats were talking about. But whatever kind of problems he had with them before I got there, I can’t even speak about. You know what I mean?

And I had been sort of weaned on Mingus’ music, because my cousin turned me on to him years ago, and I went to “Better Get It In Your Soul” and a whole lot of stuff. I listened to his tone poems. I was one of them kind of musicians, coming up as a kid, that went to the music store and would browse and get all the stuff they was about to throw away and give away and whatever, and take them home and play it — and I found a lot of interesting music that way. Mingus’ music, as far as I’m concerned…or his direction of music… More guys are writing off of it now by opening things up, and things of that nature, the way he dealt with the paper and all that kind of stuff, than probably any musician. Which is why, after he’s dead, he’s getting all these accolades. Because that’s really true. A lot of cats are off of Miles, and everybody has their regimen. But Mingus has a whole lot, especially in the avant-garde type feeling things of this nature, and people who do a multi-media and all those kinds of things. Mingus’ music is extremely powerful as a progenitor, and one of the people who set up that whole idiom.

Now, therefore, saying all that, that means you’re working with somebody who got a lot of problems because they’re trying to do things that people don’t know what you’re trying to tell them and they can’t hear it no way. And you kind of hear, though, what they’re talking about, where he would take 2 or 3 melodies and play it at the same time. He would take two tunes and play them at the same time. So now, when we decide to run one line against another line, it makes much more sense because he’s already done that. A lot of people have. But it’s just the timing of it.

So it was like a blessing, in a way, and a curse. Because I needed someone to helpme get out and be known other than someone playing… See, with the baritone sax it’s an enormous problem, because all people want you to do is be in a supporting role – like the grandfather. “Go get your old Chevrolet and I’ll have a sports car.” Stuff like that. Or “Oh, Daddy, go back home; you don’t need to be out now.” So the baritone saxophone sort of is relegated to that role. It’s not a Billy Dee Williams, if you want to put a type of instrument… The women are looking for something different. Everybody’s listening for something different. So I beg to differ with all that. I know better. So the horn needed to be put out, and I wanted it put out in another way, and I didn’t see any sense in trying to go over the past music. It’s already been done.

The thing that I learned about… I’ve put all the musicians together at one time that I felt greatly, which was a lot of them! And one thing I’ve come out with is that they all did what they want to do and they all were original. So I said, “I need to do what I want to do, and be original.” So I want to emulate them, instead of imitating their notes and trying to steal their styles. I took it in that direction.

TP: a lot of musicians with that type of mindset were coming to New York in the mid 1970s, and you hooked up with three of them, and it became the World Saxophone Quartet. Can you tell me a bit about…

HB: How that got started?

TP: How that got started, and your early encounters with Oliver Lake, David Murray…

HB: Well, see, I knew Oliver Lake from St. Louis. I also knew Julius Hemphill. Because we started a group called the Black Artists Group. At the time period when I came out of the Service, everybody was playing piano, basses and drums and organs and all this. Being a baritone, again, I wanted to play every day. So we got hooked up in St. Louis, and this is going into… After I came out of the Service in 1966. So from 1966 into 1969, I’m talking about two-and-a-half years. I said, “I want to play.” So we got hooked up with this organization, and we started playing every day, regardless to who showed up. So that means you might not have nobody but one saxophone, two saxophones, three people, four people, and most of them were like instruments and drums. Bobo was part of it and all that. We did that a lot. Then if the drummer didn’t show up, we started playing by ourself.

This brought about another kind of music. I didn’t have a bass to adhere to, nor did I have a piano. Mingus and the cats…Gerry Mulligan and all them, had already broke the group down (Max and everybody) to drums and bass. We stripped away the bass, and just had drums alone. People would do this… Max had done his solos with Clifford Brown. But it’s not for an album. It’s just for part of a texture. We’re talking about this is the whole unit. So now we’ve got a different kind of configuration. We started doing that, and I found out that for the way I was hearing, I heard more. Because something of the old fashion of playing with a piano…I had never been… I can do it but it’s not my expertise. I don’t call it that way. That’s not where I really thrive. Then, if the drummer didn’t show up, we would play anyway. So we worked up… It’s a different kind of thing. Some people try to act like it isn’t. But it is. It’s totally different. Every situation has a different…it opens up to different mysteries and different beauties.

Then, later, when I came to New York… I was the first one out of the bunch to come. I came in 1969. The Art Ensemble went to France earlier, and I said “later – let me go to New York.” I said, “If I go to Europe, I’ve got to come back anyway. If I go to Chicago, I’ve got to go to New York.” So I kept looking at the equation. I still had to come back Dexter came back. Everybody comes back. I said, “Let me just go to New York.” So that’s what I did. I talked to Oliver Nelson. I asked him. He said, “What do you want to do?” He said, “Wait a minute. Before you answer. If you want to make money, get all your doubles and triples, bassoon, oboe, all the saxophones, all the flutes, all the clarinets, get all your horns together and go to California.” I said, “I want to play.” He said, “Ok, go to New York.” That was basically it. I went here.

TP: You knew Oliver Nelson also from St. Louis?

HB: Yes, he was from St. Louis also. So I asked him for some advice on what to do, to give me some sort of perspective. He gave me a perspective of what was happening on the two coasts. New York is about playing. I said, “Ok, good.” It’s more like a creative mecca. It really is.

TP: What was your impression of the scene when you got here?

HB: It was horrible, I felt. It had highs and lows. Uptown, the Club Barron was still here, going down bad. Count Basie’s, going down. Minton’s, going down. They were still in existence, but just a shadow of their grandeur, you understand, if you take it back to the players. I had come to New York to visit in the 60s, and just a shadow of THAT. Yeah, it was kind of bad, man.

Downtown, the only thing…. The Five Spot was going down. The Vanguard made it on through everything. Boomer’s was up and down. The scene was bad. Dexter and all the cats were going to Europe, Johnny Griffin, everybody. So I came in on a downward arc…

TP: But during this time, new musicians were coming, revitalizing the scene, finding new places to play.

HB: They were coming all along. But the thing about it, we started to come in and do some music in a different kind of way at the same time. Because there was this big split here between the so-called “straight-ahead” and the so-called “avant-garde.” It was real out at the time I got here. Which actually made it better, because it was wide-open spaces. I told you — 203rd Street for me is a cornfield. It was wide-open, so it made it much better for us.

After I played with Mingus and got out of the band, I sat around for a year and didn’t do nothin’. Then I said, “No, I want to start playing every day again.” Some of the cats were coming around, like Bobo and all of them; I think the Art Ensemble had come back from Europe. So we’re getting to about 1975 now. They worked at the Five Spot, which had revived itself and was on the Lower East Side. I said, “Ok, it’s time to go back.” That blended in to David Murray coming to town. Then the so-called “Loft scene,” which they gave a name to, hit. Because we were playing in lofts a lot, and that built a whole nother venue.

Now, the beauty, to me, of that music was it was a… I used to call it like trench warfare or front-line. Sometimes we would have rehearsals and concerts on the same day. Henry Threadgill, a lot of cats would do some massive and sometimes very intricate stuff right on the spot, and have to do it one time and one time only. That to me was very thrilling and very exciting. So people started coming from out of nowhere and everywhere to see this creativity happening in front of their face, because it’s very exciting. It’s very exciting when you see music go down like that. You’re watching it and it’s going down as you’re watching. You know it’s only for you, and that’s your flower. You can take it with you forever, because it won’t happen no more.

So this was going on a lot. Rashied Ali had his place, which I think now is what, Greene Street?

TP: 77 Greene Street.

HB: There was a lot of activity. Sam Rivers opened up a place, Joe Lee Wilson, the Tin Palace. So the whole scene was being revived…

TP: And it was all within 6-10 blocks of each other.

HB: George Coleman was coming out, finally getting a chance to get some work and get his recognition. So things were happening from a lot of different directions at one time. Eddie Jefferson was around a lot. There was a lot of stuff. Of course, Art Blakey and people like that never quit. They kept coming right on through.

TP: So within this ferment of activity, how does this lead to the saxophone quartet idea.

HB: Ok. During that time when these loft things were jumping off, Julius was here, I was here, Oliver was here, and David Murray. Ed Kidd Jordan came up from New Orleans on a sabbatical because he wanted to hit! He came in the middle of it, the summer of 1976, and it was the bicentennial summer. We were hittin’! We were going all the way through the summer, all the way through August. August had been a down month with nothing happening in the music. So now, quite naturally… You have all these festivals now; that’s totally changed.

[END OF SIDE 1]

…which the Dirty Dozen came out of. After they heard us, they formed their group. They wanted to do something different in the music. So they wanted for him to either come and get Sun Ra or Ornette. Luckiiy for us, neither one of them was formulated. So after coming and playing with us, he said, “Why don’t the four of you guys come down to New Orleans and hit with me?” So we went down, and we started this group that we called the New York Saxophone Quartet and played with a rhythm section. The place was packed, including Wynton and Branford, Donald Harrison, all these guys was like little kids. All of them were there, and old people up to 80 years. Mainly a 90% black audience, but with a lot of children, babies, old people all at one time. We started playing, and the kids started running through the audience like a wagon train. You know how they circle? So they had an aisle on both sides, and in the front and in the back, and the kids just started running. It was the coolest thing ever, because none of the parents acted like a fool and told them to stop. And none of the kids got hurt. And they ran and ran, and the people just sat there and dug the concert, liked what was happening, let us know that it was really going on, and the kids were energized, which is the way that they do — music makes them run.

So I said, “Whoa, look at this.” I went away and I said, “Look, we got something like this; we ought to keep this together.” I really can’t take credit for putting it together. But it was born that way.

TP: You have to grab the idea when it comes to you.

HB: Well, it worked so well, and we had been doing it anyway. So then we went and played in a club called Lu and Charlie’s on the same weekend, still in New Orleans. The first concert we did was with a bass and a drum — London Branch on bass and Alvin Fielder on drums. Then we went and played in a club. Then we got to New York, and someone approached us about playing in the Tin Palace, and so we did that. We called ourselves by this time the Real New York Saxophone Quartet, because we heard about a group… We didn’t even know there was a New York Saxophone Quartet, to be truthful. So we changed it to… Wait, the letter for that came later, after the writeup when we played at the Tin Palace. But the reaction to that was still real good. So we’re seeing how these people are frozen in their seat, and watching and looking and liking what we do. We never tried to get a job; all the jobs kept coming to us.

Then we were at Oliver Lake’s house one day, doing something. We were rehearsing, getting ready to go to the Tin Palace, and they called from Moers, Germany. Some group decided not to show up, and they needed a group. We were in the house rehearsing. They say, “Yo, what about the World Saxophone Quartet?” They say, “Ok, good, we’ll take them.” So we worked for them and we did a slight tour. It just kept growing and growing and growing. The four of us got together. It’s almost as if the spirits are saying “Stay together.” So it kind of worked like that.

TP: We’ll hear some of Bluiett’s music from another very recent release, recorded last October on Soul Note, titled Sankofa, Rear Guard, which I’ll bet refers to your remarks about the position of the baritone player in the band.

HB: Yes, it’s got something to do with it. It’s got to do with a lot of things, really. The avant-garde is the one that’s supposed to be in front, and my position is like to be actually behind, so as to push everything. Also sankofa is a way of looking back. So I am constantly going ahead, but I am also now collecting from what I’ve done. So I want to enjoy some of the things I’ve done as opposed to run away and not keep them. That means melodies in music, harmonies, time… There’s a lot of things I’m talking about anything.

TP: Ted Dunbar is on guitar, Clint Houston on bass, and Ben Riley on drums. Why this particular group; how did it hook up?

HB: I wanted to play with a guitar for a while, and I wanted a guitar player that was very knowledgeable and steeped in the blues — and Ted’s from Texas, so that’s no problem. Whenever you just quit thinking, he’s already into the blues. Clint Houston is a virtuoso on bass. So he and Ted can chase each other with these chord changes and things. Ben Riley because Ben never ceases to swing. That’s the thing, and the music should do that. Right? So it was time for me to get a rhythm section that when I say “let’s go,” they go. So it was that kind of idea. Then that’s the kind of support that I thought the instrument needed, because all these guys are such great musicians that they would be able to do whatever needs to be done. You get a lot when you get people of that caliber.

[MUSIC: Bluiett, “Nuttin’ Special”;
[MUSIC: WSQ, “The Holy Men” by Bluiett, from Metamorphosis; James Spaulding, “Song of Courage”]

********

Hamiet Bluiett, Musician Show, WKCR, Feb. 9, 1994:

[WSQ: “Nuttin’ Special”-1992, Sankofa: Rear Guard]

TP: What were your thoughts in organizing the music we’ll hear this evening.

HB: Let’s go back to the beginning. You talked to me some months ago about doing this show, and I think I spoke about, “What about baritone saxophone?” Then in the last couple of weeks,we’ve narrowed it down to about 100…

TP: We have about a 48-hour show. We can hole up with potato chips and coffee.

HB: [LAUGHS[ Yes, we have a 48-hour show. Hopefully tonight, what will happen is, you’ll get a chance to see the baritone saxophone from my perspective, with Harry Carney being the boss of the horn for me – chronologically as well as everything. But not everything. Then these other people, some that are main influences. During the time, when I was coming up trying to listen to the baritone sax, there was not much available. So I had to hunt. You could find a lot of tenor, trumpet, things of that nature.

TP: What sort of things were you listening to then anyway?

HB: Anything I could get my hands hold of. There was a lot of stuff with Gerry Mulligan during that time period for me, because of Columbia records, and I was living in the Midwest, in a small town outside of St. Louis, Missouri. So I’d have to go look for Gene Ammons or other… I mean, they could be found; I’m not saying that. But not as readily as I could do the Columbia Record Club or whatever.

TP: How about the jukeboxes?

HB: The jukeboxes were nice. They had things… “Tempus Fugit” was on the jukebox. Miles on that Cannonball recording, Something Else — that whole thing was on the jukebox. A lot of things with Gene Ammons, with Nat Adderley and people like that. Eddie Harris had a hit…

TP: “Exodus”?

HB: Right. Or something like that… “Exodus,” right, he had a hit with that – you’re right. Art Blakey’s “Moanin’” and Bobby Timmons’ songs. A lot of those things were jukebox hits. So I had a chance to hear a lot of music, now that I’m thinking about it.

TP: There were a lot of instrumentals in Rhythm-and-Blues at the time a specific saxophone sound.

HB: That’s true. There’s always been specific sounds to certain eras; whatever is most prominent, everybody jumps on it, shows them where they’ve got to go.

TP: When you started playing, what sort of gigs were you doing? Who were some of the first people you aligned yourself with, or the type of music you started playing?

HB: When I first tried to play in terms of being on a bandstand or whatever, I was playing what you would call rhythm-and-blues, and doing a horrible job at it on the clarinet, and was glad that the people didn’t shoot me within the 9 months or so when I was working on this instrument. So I started out playing rhythm and blues on clarinet, believe it or not, and playing with what we called hillbilly bands at the time, or different, when I went to the baritone… So it was on one end of the block, which was about a half-a-mile block – that was just a rhythm-and-blues band. On the other end was this hillbilly band. I played with both of them, with the baritone sax, which I wanted to play since I was 10 years old.

TP: What made you want to play it?

HB: I just looked at the horn and liked it. It was as simple as that.

TP: Because of the heft of it?

HB: Everything. I just looked at one and that was it. No other horn affected me like that. I left the trumpet and all that stuff, and got kind of excited. But when I saw a baritone, I almost went, you know, OUT. I said, “Whoa!” It put an indelible impression. I never forgot the instrument. It was years later before I saw another or become close to it, other than seeing one from a distance, in the movies or something.

TP: When did you seriously begin to start playing jazz, improvising? In your teens, a local situation, or after you’d moved on to other things?

HB: Well, it’s kind of what you call, what you call… I’ve been trying to do improvising all along. But I guess maybe by the time I was 18, 17 – sort of late on the track, if you look at it in terms of how things can be done now. But it was hard for me to get any of that kind of knowledge, or even be steered in that direction. So it took me a while trying to do things the so-called correct way, but fighting these internal feelings while doing it.

TP: How so? What were you fighting?

HB: I could play things, but emotionally I would be off. Something’s supposed to be cool, and here I am getting ready to jump and run. So emotionally, I’m in the wrong spot. I’ll give you an example. I took an exam to get…it’s like an audition to get a scholarship on clarinet. I played some classical composition, I don’t remember right now. Anyway, when I played it, I got all carried away and I felt real good, and I was just, you know what I mean, BURNING, I thought. When I got through the guy said, “That was sort of rambunctious of you.” So I had gone the wrong direction in terms of the whole temperament of the music. I said, “Wait a minute – but I felt it; so therefore, if I felt it, I’m not going to let it be wrong.” But I was wrong. So I said: “Wait a minute; that’s the end of that.”

So it taught me a lesson in terms of… I had the wrong temperament. So I waited all those years to try… Even trying to play jazz, it’s the same sort of problem – for me – to be put in the same sort of structure. The horn doesn’t let me do that. It doesn’t let me flow the same as a violin or a piano. I’ve got more sonic blast and going through stuff… It’s a different picture, you understand, in my head or how I see the instrument or feel it coming through my body. So… For a long time. Let’s put it that way.

TP: You stated that Harry Carney is the king of the baritone sax for you, and it begins really, in a lot of ways, with Harry Carney. When did you discover him, and when did you first hear him (a) on record and (b) in the flesh?

HB: Well, I’d been hearing him all my life. My mother was a Duke Ellington fan, a big fan, and my father was a Count Basie big fan. So all my life I’ve been hearing all this music. It’s not a thing… I don’t even remember. I can sort of remember a first time for Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman and some other people, but for him I really don’t. Because chronologically the age…like Louis Armstrong, I don’t remember not…

TP: Not hearing him. Part 2: You’ve mentioned there’s a big difference between listening to recorded music and hearing music in person. You said it was so striking, you even stopped listening to records for a long time.

HB: Well, music has a thing where it does something to the wavelengths of even what’s in the air, the room you’re in. So a lot of stuff is changed up. So it’s another kind of feeling. It can be eerie, you can like it, not like it – but it puts a whole nother thing on you. I found that to be missing. Also what I found to be missing… Maybe that’s it. The feeling of the person to really be missing in what I was listening for at the time. I found that the volumes would be… Some guys will have a large tone; the record made them seem smaller. Etcetera. Or singers or whoever.

TP: I believe you also mentioned hearing the Ellington band in the flesh and the impression that it made on you.

HB: Oh yeah. When I heard it in the flesh, then that was a different matter. I’d heard it before, but it was from a distance. This time I was in a small club outside of…in the Cape area, outside of Boston. I was sitting as far from Harry Carney like from me to you, so we’re talking 4-5 feet, 6 at the moment, but on the side of the band. Duke was on the other side of the band. So it was Duke on one side, Harry on the other, and everybody else was in the middle. The band sounded like two bands – it was a big band and Harry Carney. His sound was equal to the sound of the whole band, including the drums, Duke and everybody else. That froze me in place. In one way it was terrifying, but not as a musician. I don’t mean the term like the icepick murder is coming after you. I mean, it’s like WHOA – overwhelming. Maybe that was the word. Everybody had been soloing all night. Paul Gonsalves and the rest of the people. The band was superlative. I mean, it was BAD. So I’m sitting there, and the guys are playing their instruments, and this guy came out toward the end of the night, took a solo, played ONE NOTE – the whole place stopped. Nobody moved. The waiter. Everybody. BRRMMM… He went down, hit that bottom note, pop, and held that, and that was the end of it. Everybody started back to doing what they were doing. That was very impressive to me. Not only was it the note, it was just that it froze everybody.

I had that same experience happen, and they were all with Duke Ellington people. The next time it happened was with Jimmy Hamilton… No, the third time. The next time was Cat Anderson. Cat Anderson playing with Mingus. We did a tour in Europe. It was Mingus with Joe Gardner playing trumpet, I was on baritone, Roy Brooks on drums, and John Foster on piano. Cat Anderson. He did it. He played a note that was so soft and you could still hear it. It froze the place.

Jimmy Hamilton. We were in the Northsea, on a rooftop, playing with the Clarinet Summit and John Carter, and I was taking David Murray’s place on bass clarinet. He took a solo and did the same thing. Now, here’s people doing three different things, but both of them where everybody stopped at one time. Nobody moved. No waiters or nothing. And when they stopped playing and ended the solo, we were back to reality.

TP: One quality about Harry Carney that I think is applicable to your work is his role in the Ellington saxophone section in terms of defining the sound of the section. You’ve of course been the anchor of the World Saxophone Quartet since its inception almost 20 years ago. The first selection showcases the Ellington sax section. It comes from a 1946 recording on Musicraft. The saxophone-woodwinds section is Jimmy Hamilton, Russell Procope. Johnny Hodges, Al Sears and Harry Carney. This one is “Jam-a-Ditty”.

[MUSIC: Ellington-“Jam-A-Ditty”-1946; Ellington, “Sophisticated Lady”-1957; Ellington, “Work Song”-1944, Carnegie Hall]

TP: Harry Carney was featured towards the beginning of “Work Song,” but that really was a showcase for the trombone of Joe Nanton.

HB: I know, but it still shows an important function of how the instrument was used, and I wanted that to be highlighted as well. Harry Carney did more section work than he did soloing. That’s the other thing about up to when it came in to see how well the horn was incorporated in the harmonies. Because a lot of times, to me, it seems as if it was more melody than harmony in terms of the placement of the parts.

TP: He also played a fair amount of bass clarinet and also clarinet in the Ellington band.

HB: But the reason I’m focusing on baritone is because he seemed… I think maybe he started playing in 1919, so he’s one of the first people to even play it consistently. So that automatically gave him first place, for doing it longer than anybody. It kind of set the definitive tone of that particular idiom of dealing with the instrument – because they’re all idioms of their own.

TP: In the middle was one of probably thousands of versions of “Sophisticated Lady” featuring Harry Carney, one night in Carrolltown, PA., in June 1957. He showcased his circular breathing technique in particular.

The next baritone player in the pantheon is Basie’s baritonist of the 30s, Jack Washington.

HB: I didn’t learn about Jack until later, at least I was grown – 20-something. Then when I started going back and doing a lot of investigation and having to get my hands… Maybe I wasn’t quite that old. But it was somewhere in there, when I was in school or something. I got a chance to start investigating older Basie things that I’d heard but I didn’t realize who was on them. I’d heard a lot of Basie from a child, but didn’t know who was doing what at the time.

TP: What qualities make Jack Washington a special player for you?

HB: Sound. Execution. Another sort of pre-bop, if you want to call it, in terms of the years, sort of… Another way of getting around the instrument. He was just an excellent musician. It’s kind of hard for me to do the labeling, even though I did it a little bit.

TP: He recorded very few solos on Basie’s commercial recordings, but a number of airchecks feature his very strong soloing, and we’ll hear two such from 1938 — “Yeah, Man” from the Fletcher Henderson book, from Oct. 1938, with first solo by JackWashington, followed by Buck Clayton and Lester Young; then “Indiana” from September 1938, with solo order of Buck Clayton, Jack Washington, Dickie Wells, Basie, and Lester Young plays a clarinet solo.

[MUSIC: Basie, “Yeah, Man”-Oct. 1938; “Indiana”-Sept. 1938]

TP: We’ll now hear music by Gerry Mulligan.

HB: Like I told you, I heard a lot of Mulligan. It was easier for me to get. I heard Harry Carney, Charlie Fowlkes, and now we’ll get to Mulligan. Then Pepper Adams, who was on a lot of things by Gene Ammons and a lot of things that were available to me.

[END OF SIDE 1]

HB: …I liked it. I had a very strong attraction. I didn’t start playing it until I was about 19. And I never heard anyone play it that I liked until I got to Harry Carney. It was something about the sound that never satisfied me. Because I come from drum-and-bugle corps country, where trumpets had big sounds, trombones had bigger sounds, and sousaphones had bigger sounds than that. So it didn’t make sense to me why this biggest saxophone had a smaller sound than the smaller ones. I couldn’t understand it. It was kind of weird. And everybody I heard until Harry Carney sort of was like that. If it wasn’t real small, they were playing it like a tenor, so the sound was trimmed down to be more sleek. That’s just the particular instrument that I heard doing everything that I needed to hear it do. I hear more than just saxophone in terms of playing. I also think graphically and a lot of other stuff. Like the kind of sounds you get in electronics and whale noises and all that. I hear all those kind of things, and I see those possibilities in the instrument.

I’ve taken a little bit from everybody. The thing I noticed about Mulligan is that he plays the baritone saxophone very akin to the way Lester Young played tenor. It’s in that sort of vein. That’s still playing the baritone like a tenor.

TP: How is that so? As opposed to playing it with emphasis on the properties of the baritone?

HB: Well, who are you imitating? If you’re imitating Lester Young, who played tenor, then you’re playing the horn like a tenor, whether you’re playing trumpet or whatever it is. Because he got another thing out of the instrument. It’s sort of that approach, but it’s a different instrument. It’s like once-removed from there. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, because that within itself is great. You’ve got to be a genius to be able to do that. I don’t hear it that way. So that always kind of disturbed me. It took me up until maybe a few years ago to realize what it was that I personally didn’t care for, to be able to put a name to it and say this is basically what it is. And the way that the instrument is treated most of the time being a support. Maybe the closest thing we can get to would be a Clydesdale.

TP: Although these days, I have to say, there are some people that size who can move.

HB: I’m talking about even a way of movement. See, that’s what I mean. You have to move like a big person as opposed to try to be a big person moving like a small one. There is a difference. You can just see people. One comes along who is 6’5″ or whatever and big, as opposed to somebody walking down the street who’s 5’0″. They move totally different. They don’t move the same way. That just doesn’t work. So I’ll see the instruments that way, too. I don’t try to move like a tenor. That’s very rapid.

TP: How about when you play clarinet? How do you try to move then?

HB: That’s why I don’t play clarinet no more! I had to quit playing clarinet unless I play the low instruments. I found out… It took me a long time to find out that what was happening with me was my concept of pitch was lowering. So I really hear bass clef. I’m talking about personal notes that are inside of me, come from the bass clef and go up. But they have to be there. So when I was playing instruments that didn’t give me that, I had problems with it.

TP: The Gerry Mulligan session comes from a pianoless session from 1957, with Mulligan and Paul Desmond on the front line, with bassist Joe Benjamin and drummer Dave Bailey.

[MUSIC: Mulligan-Desmond, “Line For Lyons”-1957; Mulligan-Bob Brookmeyer, “That Old Feeling”-1956 (Crow-Bailey)]

[MUSIC: Bluiett, “Diane” – Sankofa-Rear Guard]

TP: A few words about your experiences with Mingus.

HB: I first joined the big band in 1972. He’d always been looking for a baritone player with a sound, so I was able to fill that void for him. It was an incredible experience, because there was no other vehicle for me to be like that anyway. No one else was using the horn. If they were using it, they were using it only in big ensembles. So I started out with the big band, then worked down to the sextet, then wound up with a quintet. I was in and out a couple of times.

TP: How did he find out about you?

HB: I’m not sure if it was Paul Jeffrey or Roy Brooks. At the time I was playing with Roy Brooks’ Artistic Truth as well as dealing with Paul Jeffrey, and both of them were with Mingus. I’m not sure which one. Plus I was playing with Sam Rivers’ Big Band, so along with me came Bob Stewart, Joe Gardner…that I can remember. And some more people. We’ve all… There wasn’t that much to do doing that time period, basically. There was a lot happening, but not many things; just a lot going on among a few.

TP: Did Mingus express strong preferences in how he wanted his solos shaped?

HB: no, the only thing he ever said to anybody was “The solo belongs to you, but the melody and all that stuff belongs to me.” So he wanted you to play whatever you had on the paper, exactly like he said he wanted it, and do whatever it had to be, then when it came time to solo that was your problem. The only thing he expressed maybe in the time we were together was try to get used to the New York long solos.

TP: What do you mean by “New York long solos”?

HB: Well, the horn players in New York, by the time they get to New York, by the time they get to New York, they’re not playing… They want to PLAY, really play. So guys take what I call long solos. They’re long for me. I don’t say necessarily for them. But maybe that’s the nature of the instrument I’m playing. Which makes me like beg away and do something else, and cool it for a second or something. But that’s why I just said New York long solos. You hear more of that here than any other place. It’s not bad. I’m not saying that. Except for me. It makes me put out more effort.

TP: The next baritone player is Leo Parker, who you greatly appreciate.

HB: Yeah, because Leo did some other things on the instrument. I thought he made the horn romp and really jump. He had an effervescent quality in his playing. He swung real hard, so that endeared him to me. But I didn’t really get to him until later, actually. I’d already been with Mulligan, Pepper Adams and maybe a lot of other people, whoever they are, in different bands, or Stan Kenton or Maynard Ferguson, Basie, whoever was around at the time. But it took me a while. And I was shocked when I saw this material and how good he was. But it did a lot in terms of saying, “Yeah, ok, I need all of it” – that this was part of it, too.

TP: This piece is Leo Parker in a sextet situation circa 1961 called Let me Tell You About It. Bill Swindell on tenor saxophone, John Burks, trumpet, Yusef Salim, piano, Stan Conover, bass and Purnell Rice on drums along with Leo Parker on baritone sax.

[MUSIC: Leo Parker, “Blue Leo”; “Goin’ To Minton’s”-Leo Parker-Fats Navarro, Jan. 1947]

TP: That leaping solo by Leo Parker really illustrated your remark about his making the horn jump and dance.

HB: Yeah, make it dance, that’s right. That was Pepper. We’re trying to run through this thing now. I’m basically trying to go through the people who were most influential in those formative years of listening to and being…

TP: one of the strongest and most respected baritone players from the beginning of his recorded career in the mid-1950s was Pepper Adams, who I know had a big effect on you.

HB: Oh yeah, I used to listen to Pepper over and over and over and OVER, on whatever recording I could, and I heard things that Gene Ammons had done that he was on also. So you know, he was rough company and taking care of business, so I had a lot of respect for his prowess on the instrument. Hard core.

TP: This one comes from a 1969 release on Prestige called Encounter, where Pepper Adams and Zoot Sims share the front line on baritone and tenor, with a Detroit-based rhythm section of Tommy Flanagan, Ron Carter and Elvin Jones, playing Thad Jones’ “Elusive.”

[MUSIC: Pepper Adams, “Elusive”; “I’ve Just Seen Her”-Encounter-1969]

TP: the next baritone player to step up will be Serge Chaloff.

HB: I don’t remember when I heard these, but I guess I was in my teenage years…maybe. I only got a chance to hear one record; maybe later on I heard another one. I was very impressed when I heard it. To me, he had sort of taken the so-called bop style; he played it more like an alto as opposed to a baritone, the way I heard it, because of his fleetness and the way that he ran over the instrument. Plus with a great sound from what I can remember. That was very impressive to me also at the time. I was thirsty for hearing anything. It was hard. I was going on this baritone sax search, I guess you would call it, without even calling it that at the time. By the time I heard it, he’d already passed.

[MUSIC: Serge Chaloff, “I’ve got The World On A String”-March 1956, Sonny Clark, Leroy Vinnegar and Philly Joe Jones; Basie-Charlie Fowlkes, “Counterblock”-1959]

TP: You mentioned that you listened a lot to Basie recordings with Charlie Fowlkes…

HB: I also got a chance to hear the band in person to hear how crackerjack he was on precision on playing parts, and had the sort of sound to do what it did to the ensemble. This was a great lesson for me, too, because that’s the definitive big band I guess you would call it kind of playing… That’s the definitive way of doing it. That’s the reason for bringing it in, because I didn’t want to omit the people who have played this instrument so many years, whether they’ve been featured as soloists or not. Because some of them have taken support role type jobs, and this is a master of that particular discipline.

TP: It’s hard to find a solo by Charlie Fowlkes in the Basie discography. Folks who know the discography better than I do call us at the station for Charlie Fowlkes solo flights.

We’ll take you to the hour with a track featuring baritone saxophonist Charles Davis, who is also well known for his tenor playing and alto playing, out of Chicago, who played with Sun Ra and did some two-baritone features with Pat Patrick on some of mid-50s recordings. Bluiett’s choice is from a Kenny Dorham recording for Time from 1960 with Steve Kuhn, Jimmy Garrison and Buddy Enlow.

HB: Charles I know personally. I met him after I moved to New York, and had only heard a few things up until that time. But when I talked to him, he spoke highly and most favorably of Leo Parker. That seemed to be his biggest influence, I guess, from being around New York and seeing him play a lot. I didn’t get that opportunity. But listening to Leo Parker, I can hear the extension of the influence that is in his playing. But he seemed to have given up baritone and moved on to tenor. But I think his lines and things seem to be better suited for that particular instrument anyway, the particular voice that he comes up with. But I like some of the things that I’ve heard in the past, and this is the record I used to listen to quite a bit because of the tenderness and character, which is something special, to me, to listen to.

[K.D.-Charles Davis, “Monk’s Mood”]

TP: Up to 1958-1959, Charles Davis had played extensively with Sun Ra in Chicago, and was paired off not infrequently with Pat Patrick. Were you aware of those two-baritone Sun Ra recordings when they were happening, or did you discover them later?

HB: I think I discovered them later. Because Sun Ra’s stuff is so extensive, I just heard what I heard. By the time I met Charles, I think he was in New York. This was what era?

TP: 1956. A lot of the Saturn LPs didn’t include personnel, but now the Evidence label has released 15 CDs thus far in an ongoing reissue project of the Saturn with complete discographies. The piece we’ll hear is “Reflections in Blue” from Sun Ra Visits Planet Earth.

[Sun Ra, “Reflections in Blue”-1956, Art Hoyle-Charles Davis-Pat Patrick, John Gilmore; “Pleasure”-Pat Patrick]

HB: Let’s make a comment on the telephone call we got. Tell them what it was.

TP: One caller, who said he’s a pianist who had played and jammed with Gerry Mulligan and Serge Chaloff suggested I convey to Hamiet his suggestion that he listen to Ernie Caceres, whom he favored for his dark, woody tone on the baritone because he has a unique sound.

HB: I’m glad his name is mentioned, because his name was overlooked, as will be many other people in a 3-hour segment. We have enough material to do a whole spotlight, like the 40-some hour showcase…

TP: Apart from that, the purpose of this show is for the musician to present a personal statement about things they’ve heard and been influenced by. We’ll hear now the baritone sound of another extraordinary multi-reed player, Nick Brignola, who on the release we’ll hear I think plays 10 different instrument — soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, clarinet, alto clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, alto flute and piccolo. This is from Time, a drummerless date with Kenny Barron on piano and Dave Holland on bass.

HB: I think everything you said was true, so let’s just go and listen t o it.

[MUSIC: Nick Brignola-Barron-Holland, “Speak Low”; Cecil Payne, “Slide Hampton”-1972; Sahib Shihab, “”-Jazz Sahib-1957]

HB: I left quite a few people out, but ones I like: Danny Bank for the hundreds of records I listened to him on in different configurations, like a lot of things with Oliver Nelson. Tony Scott, who is known more for clarinet, but I heard him…he used to play baritone for a while – it was real wild. That affected me, too. I was trying to get to “Cuber Libre,” which I couldn’t, and stuff I heard do Jay Cameron do with Slide Hampton when Slide had his octet.

TP: “Cuber Libre” is a Ronnie Cuber release from the mid 70s.

HB: Yes. Howard Johnson. Gary Smulyan is one of the newer, younger… John Surman. So there’s quite a few other people. The horn seems to have taken on another kind of significance that it didn’t have in the past. There’s more people soloing on it now maybe than was in the past, and not just playing support roles.

TP: I think Hamiet Bluiett is one person who’s raised a lot of people’s consciousness about the baritone sax with his own recordings over the last 20 years and with the WSQ.

Coming up, something by Charles Tyler, who played baritone and alto with great proficiency.

HB: He was a formidable baritone saxophonist. I thought he was more original on that instrument than he was on alto. Original in his style and the way he approached the horn, and the things that he did. Immense sound. Sound for days. That’s the thing I remember, and the amount of power, and what he brought to the instrument. I was sad to hear of his passing and stuff of that nature. But I’m glad that these few things are left.

TP: You recorded a solo baritone album around the time this one was done for India Navigation. This recital by Charles Tyler was recorded at WBAI, and issued by the Adelphi Jazz Line.

[MUSIC: Charles Tyler, “From St. Louis To Kansas City By Way of Chicago”-60 Minute Man]

TP: We’ll conclude a track featuring the musicians Bluiett will be performing with at the Village Vanguard next week, who are Ted Dunbar, guitar; Clint Houston, bass; and Ben Riley on drums. They play on a 1992 Soul Note recording, titled Sankofa: Rear Guard.

When we were discussing the show, you said it wasn’t just baritone players who influenced you. You mentioned Gene Ammons, Eddie Lockjaw Davis and John Coltrane as great influences on the way you play and why you play the way the way you play. A few words about those non-baritone players in your conception of the horn.

HB: I was influenced by a lot of different people. Count Basie for the way he drove the band. Duke Ellington for the kind of colors that he used. Some vocalists. I listen more to the musicians than anything else. Lockjaw because of the uncanny way in which he played saxophone. No one outplayed him, I thought. No one. He had a band with Johnny Griffin, and it was just awesome. He just kept raising the ante, every tune. And Griffin… It was just awesome. It was unbelievable.

John Coltrane for the sort of spirituality in the way he played. I could dig into the music and stay into it like an hour or so at a time. It really would be focused all that length. It was overwhelming to see to see the band take the whole audience and everybody with them at the same time. And his harmonic sensibility. Just everything about him. It was amazing.

I’ve always liked people with big sounds, big wind and big-throated. Not that I didn’t like the others, but I just favored those in comparison.

Gene Ammons for the kind of knockout punch that he had. His first note, that was it. After that, everything was gravy, but the first note would always just kill. Everybody else that even existed before he got there for his first note, that was like ho-hum.

I was always amazed at the abilities of these people to just command — demand and command so much with an instrument.

Like I said, for Carney, Harry Carney… I heard a lot of these people at different times. I’m going back more to listening to them in person. Because the records provided one thing, but the in-person feeling of what I heard was more important to me. The Basie band – the whole band. And hear the band with Ella and hear her sing, it would be just as powerful or more powerful than a whole big band, when they would do the things where she was scatting and the band would come in with the riffs. It’s just unbelievable. A lot of gospel music, listening to that kind of thing. The blues. Quite a bit. The more I think about it, the more I start digging up.

This first piece is called “John.” It’s dedicated to John Coltrane. It has a simple melody. And it was going through the era of Coltrane…it’s sort of a modal period. It conjures him up in my brain.

[MUSIC: Hamiet Bluiett 4, “John”]

A WKCR Interview with Bobby Hutcherson from 1999

Here’s another of my newly-digitized interviews from my WKCR years — with vibraphone immortal Bobby Hutcherson (January 27, 1941 – August 15, 2016), who was playing at Iridium that week with an all-star band of thirty-somethings. It’s a remarkably candid interview — no filter.

 

Bobby Hutcherson, Out To Lunch, WKCR, Feb. 25, 1999:

[MUSIC: Bobby Hutcherson, “Pomponio”]

TP: “Pomponio” is from Skyline, Bobby Hutcherson’s new release on Verve. It features Kenny Garrett, Geri Allen, Christian McBride and Al Foster, a band that six months ago or so did a week at Birdland in preparation for this date. This week Bobby is in residence at Iridium through Sunday with a quintet. He’s playing this music with Kenny Garrett, Renee Rosnes, Peter Washington and Billy Drummond.

Skyline is your first release on Verve, though you’ve done some guest appearance on Verve albums in recent years. There are strong liner notes by Stanley Crouch that position you firmly in the vibraphone pantheon and explain why you hold the status that you do. But probably because of space considerations, he didn’t go into some of your biographical particulars. So if you don’t mind…

BH: Sure.

TP: One point he makes is that the vibraphone is an instrument whose vocabulary was very much invented in jazz, and in the jazz lineage. It wasn’t that common when you were coming up. Why was it the vibraphone for you? What circumstances led you to it, and what qualities attracted you?

BH: As I was growing up, first… My mom was bedridden for the first four years of my life, so I was always… As a toddler, instead of going out and playing, I was always inside the house, listening to a lot of stuff. I had an older brother who passed away, but he was a schoolmate with Dexter Gordon. They went to Jefferson High School.

TP: They had the famous bandmaster, Samuel Browne?

BH: Yes. Dexter was in the marching band and my brother was a cheerleader at the school. After school they’d come over to the house and they would play records. I’m a young toddler… I have an older sister, and my sister started singing, and she used to sing… This is before I even started playing. She was singing in her trio, and in her trio was Sonny Clark. One time she gave a concert, I remember, in Pasadena, where I grew up, at John Muir High School, and playing bass was Oscar Pettiford. I remember Oscar Pettiford walking up to me before I was playing and saying, “don’t you want my autograph?” — and I said, “Yes, I do.” I didn’t even know who it was! I was still young. Then later on, my sister started dating Eric Dolphy, and Eric Dolphy was a good friend of the family’s — again, before I started playing. Then later, she started going out with Billy Mitchell, who was playing tenor saxophone in Count Basie’s Orchestra.

TP: Jazz is a family experience for you.

BH: It was a family experience. There was always a piano in the house, and I used to sit around and play piano for my own enjoyment. Then one day when I guess I was 13 years old, I was walking down the street in Pasadena. It was summertime. I walked past a record store. This is when they used to play the music, so that when you walked by outside, on the speakers you could hear what record was being played. It was the Giants of Jazz with Miles and Milt and Monk, Kenny Clarke and Percy Heath — and “Bemsha Swing” was on. I just turned right around, and walked right in, got the record, and went home and wore it out. I said, “this is how I’m walking; this DAY.” I said, “This is what I want to do.”

Well, I had grown up with Herbie Lewis. We were in the same grade, going to Washington Junior High School. All the schools that Jackie Robinson went to. As kids, you either tried to be in sports and do what Jackie Robinson was doing, because when you walked in the gym, here was all his records; or you tried to get into music. Herbie said, “If you get some vibes, you can play in my trio, and we can play school dances.” I said, “Oh, great.”

I worked for my dad, who was a bricklayer, and saved my money that summer, and I bought a set of vibes. At the end of the summer, I got the set of vibes. I went and showed Herbie, “Hey, I got a set of vibes.” Herbie says, “Great – because we’ve got a concert in two weeks.” I said, “Wait a minute. I don’t know anything about the keyboard.” He said, “don’t worry; we’ll play around three songs.” I said, “Three songs? How can I do this?” We’re playing a concert. Bobby Troup was the emcee.

We took a black felt pencil. He said, “Here’s what we’ll do. Since you don’t know what the bars are, we’ll take a number for the next bar that you hit.” Well, if we’re doing three songs, it got like 318, 319, starting from #1, and it had all these numbers all over the vibes. But we practiced so much, I got pretty good, looking for which note to hit next, looking for the number on the bars. Well, came the night of this concert, the first time I’m going to play, and the stage manager and he says to us, “Ok, kids, it’s time for you to go on. Oh, by the way, Bobby, I saw some marks all over your bars, so I took a nice wet towel and I wiped everything off — I know you’re glad I did that.” He says, “Now, you kids go out there and have a great time.” I said, “Oh, no. You didn’t.” He said, “Yes, I did.”

So we went out, and all my family, my mom and dad, they’re sitting out there, ready to be all proud for me, and the kids going to school… I hit about the first three notes, and then after that they started throwing rotten fruit at me. At that point, I realized, “You’re going to have to study; you’re going to have to know what you’re doing.”

TP: It’s not paint by the numbers.

BH: no, you can’t play the numbers. But I still keep the numbers… No. [LAUGHS] But that’s how it all started.

TP: Well, you obviously weren’t discouraged.

BH: No. We used to have these jam sessions at my house as I was growing up, with Herbie, myself… And there was a young man named Terry Trotter who used to come over all the time. Terry became Margaret Whiting’s pianist. Charles Lloyd used to come over all the time. H.B. Barnum, who did all the arranging for Aretha Franklin, he used to come over and he would play tenor saxophone, alto, trumpet, he would play a little vibes, he would play some drums. Everybody in Pasadena would come and park their cars in front of the garage, and we’d open up the doors and we’d play all afternoon. It became like a school. After school, go over to Bobby’s house and listen to the music. There would be all these musicians… Walter Benton used to come over. An awful lot of musicians would come over and play. That happened until…oh gosh, until someone set my garage on fire, and all the instruments burned up.

TP: That happened during high school?

BH: Yeah. I think somebody really didn’t like…

TP: Resorted to drastic measures.

BH: Somebody burnt my garage down. You know what was the thing? All the instruments were in there, the vibes, the bass, drums and piano. I remember… I looked out the door the evening when the fire started, and I remember seeing the fire and trying to call the Fire Department, and the telephone line is burning down. I remember running out to the garage and thinking, “Maybe I can pull my vibraphone out.” And the door was too small! I got the small end out, and I got the big end into the door and I’m trying to get it out the door, and this big wall of flames just came and said, “Get out the way; you can’t do it.” The vibes, the drums, Herbie’s bass, the piano – everything burned up in the fire.

TP: Then what happened?

BH: Whoo, how about me telling my father that the garage burned down? He was at a party that night. He came back, he and my mom, and I said, “Dad, the garage has burned down.” He says, “don’t worry. Did you lose everything?” I said, “Yeah.” He just held me. I thought he was going to be really upset and be mad, but he just held me. He says, “That’s ok. I have insurance. So we’ll go through the things in the fire and find every nut and bolt that’s in there, and we’ll claim it. We’ll get you another set of vibes, we’ll get Herbie another bass…”

TP: Several things are coming out here. One is that you were in an incredibly supportive environment, both in the community (except for the people who burned down the garage) with your parents and fellow musicians, and that music was in the air, almost as though you couldn’t help but absorb the essence.

BH: Yes. I think that fire instigated us to play all the more. As I think back… I haven’t talked about that fire too much. Sometimes I push that back in my mind, because it was real traumatic. Some of the kids were really… I always felt it was some of the kids at school who had done it. I felt that because of what we were doing… Everybody was coming over and listening to the music, and it was like…

TP: It was a positive thing, some people felt excluded…

BH: Yeah.

TP: It seems that Los Angeles… Should I play some more music, and then we resume a little later.

BH: Sure.

TP: We’ll hear “Tres Palabras” from Skyline, on which you play marimba.

[MUSIC: Bobby Hutcherson, “Tres Palabras”; Bobby-Abbey Lincoln-Marc Cary, “Another World”]

TP: We were speaking about your early years. One quality about Bobby Hutcherson’s improvising that grabs me every time is the total honesty, spontaneity and transparency. People often hold back on the radio, but Bobby was discussing a very traumatic event of his youth – the fire that burned down his garage and destroyed his instrument. We’ll put the fire behind us…

BH: Put the fire behind us.

TP: Let’s talk about your path towards becoming a professional musician, getting on the road, and coming to New York City, where you participated in so much history on numerous dates for Blue Note.

BH: What happened was, going back to my sister going out with Billy Mitchell… Billy Mitchell and Al Gray had just left the Count Basie Orchestra and formed their own sextet. After I’d started playing, Billy asked could I join the group, and play 4 mallets, and comp and solo, and take the place of Gene Keys, and go up to San Francisco and work opposite Charlie Mingus. I had never played 4 mallets before, but I said, “Of course I can – yes.” In the group was Doug Watkins, and Doug took me under his wing and showed me things to do. He was wonderful. I really loved Doug Watkins.

Anyway, we played two weeks at the Jazz Workshop, and then came back to Los Angeles. Billy came back here to New York, and Al and Doug stayed in Los Angeles. A couple of days later I got a call from Billy Mitchell, and Billy said, “How would you like to come to New York and open at Birdland? We will play opposite Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.” I was also in college at the time. I asked my mom. She said, “I want you to graduate from college; it’s very important.” I said, “Mom, I’ve got a chance to go to New York and play at Birdland.” She said, “Oh! Well, forget college. Go on to New York.” She said, “I have this dream that you’re going to go to New York – go ahead.”

So we drove here in Doug Watkins’ car, the car he was killed in when he went back out to California – in his black Peugeot. We drove here. We started out with a steak dinner, and by the time we got to the Lincoln Tunnel we didn’t have enough money to pay to get through. We were eating potato chips when we came through…

TP: Sounds like the old days of travel…

BH: I remember in part of the trip, Doug’s windshield wipers stopped working, and we were in a snowstorm in New Mexico. He had to reach around, put his arm around and work the windshield wipers to keep the snow off as he was driving. It was bitter cold! Oh, gosh…

TP: The vibraphone, the bass, everything is in the car.

BH: Yeah. We come to New York, and we open at Birdland. First thing is, that afternoon I’m setting up, and Pee Wee Marquette was… I’d heard him on records, but I didn’t know he was a midget. Pee Wee Marquette saw me setting up, I was just by myself. So he walks up to me and blows a big puff of smoke in my face, and he says, “Who are you?” I said, “I’m Bobby Hutcherson.” “What are you doing here?” “I’m going to play vibes with Al Gray and Billy Mitchell.” He says, “We don’t need you. Pack up your vibes and go.” I said, “Oh, Lord, is this what I heard about what New York is?” He said, “You heard me. Go.” I just waited for him to walk back out the door, and I kept setting up.

That night… In those days you heard that Pee Wee could make or break you. So it went like this. “Ladies and gentlemen, from the Jazz Corner of the World, Birdland, the Al Gray-Billy Mitchell Sextet, blah-blah, and with Bubba Hutchkins on vibes.” I said, “Oh, no!” Every night he would do this. But we had two weeks there. So on pay night, everybody would go over to the Alvin Hotel, which was across the street (it’s a parking lot now, I think). I’m in Al Gray’s room, and there’s a knock on the door, and I open the door, and a big puff of cigar smoke arrives. There’s Pee Wee. He says, “Say, Papa, you got something for me?” I said, “I don’t have anything for you, the way you’ve been announcing my name all week.” Al Gray says, “give him five dollars.” I said, “I’m not giving him a thing.” Al goes, “Give him five dollars.” So I gave him five dollars.

So the next week goes like this. “Ladies and gentlemen, from the Jazz Corner of the World, Birdland, 52nd and Broadway, the Al Gray-Billy Mitchell Sextet with Billy Mitchell, Al Gray, and Bobby Hutcherson on vibes” – because I gave him that five dollars. So everything started to change right there.

We went on from there and worked the Apollo Theater. Besides playing the regular show, we played the talent night where they had to drop this cheese-cloth, and they’d throw all the rotten fruit at the entertainers who would come out. I had heard about that. That was unbelievable! I’d never seen people get fruit thrown at them. This was unbelievable. And the people were screaming, going crazy.

I think the next gig, we went on to Chicago, the Sutherland Lounge, and we worked opposite Redd Foxx. They would not let me in the club while Redd Foxx performed, because I would go crazy. It got to the point where I didn’t have to hear the joke. All I had to do was hear the sound of his voice, and I would be on the floor.

Anyway, after about a year-and-a-half, the group disbanded. I didn’t really know that many musicians. So I started driving a taxi.

TP: So they worked steadily, around the country, touring for 18 months, and then you move to New York.

BH: Yes.

TP: Quick question before we resume the narrative. There aren’t that many stylistic antecedents for a vibraphone player, but a few great ones. You heard Milt Jackson first, there’s Lionel Hampton, Red Norvo, some others. Who were your models? All vibraphonists, or other instrumentalists as well?

BH: I’m going to tell you…I think I’ve told Tommy this. I really started listening to Tommy Flanagan. I think Tommy Flanagan… Tommy, if you’re listening, I love you. I just want you to know that I started listening to you to try to find another avenue, another way to come through the instrument.

TP: If you can, is it possible to describe the sound you were trying to achieve…

BH: I wasn’t really sure. I was just trying different things. I was just trying to be a part of. It was a situation, as I said, where I’m driving a cab. Herbie Lewis had moved to New York and he’s playing bass with the Jazztet. Grachan Moncur was in the Jazztet. So I started going over to their house and playing jam sessions as I was driving a cab. Now Grachan says to me, “I want Jackie McLean to hear you.” Jackie comes and says, “Oh, I like this.” He says, “I just met a new drummer in Boston; his name is Tony Williams. I’m going to bring him down, and we’re going to play at this club, the Coronet.” It was Grachan, Tony, Jackie, and Eddie Khan. We came in there. Everybody had heard about all these young kids playing at the Coronet Club in Brooklyn with Jackie. Alfred Lion, the owner of Blue Note Records, came in and says, “I want to record this; Jackie, I’ve got to record this.” After being at the studio, at Rudy’s studio, Alfred Lion came up to me after the first song that we recorded, and he walked up to me and said, “Bobby, how would you like to sign a record contract?” I said, “Whoa! Am I in the right place and the right time.”

[END OF SIDE 1]

TP: Jackie McLean was incorporating the sounds and ideas that you and Grachan Moncur were working with to get into what he calls “the big room” area of improvising.

BH: Yes.

TP: Had you been workshopping a lot of new ideas, experimental ideas in Los Angeles?

BH: You know how you can have your own personality, but if you get with someone else, another personality seems to come out of you and someone else… Well, that’s what started to happen. It got all of us together… We would be so silly — and be serious at the same time. But silly. I mean, we used to have comic books in our back pockets as we would come to rehearsals. So it would be really serious, but at the same time we’d be looking real serious, we’d be like, “this is the most ridiculous…”

What happened, besides doing those records then with Jackie, Grachan did a record with the same group – Evolution. In fact, this next cut you’re going to play, “The Coaster,” Grachan replaced Jackie with Lee Morgan, and Lee Morgan really played different on the original recording of Evolution and on “The Coaster.” I guess that’s really why when I did this last record with Verve, I wanted to remember those days.

[Bobby Hutcherson, “The Coaster” – from Skyline; “Little B’s Poem”-Components]

BH: Not a bad group.

TP: That recording featured four pieces by you and four by Joe Chambers; another album, Dialogue, comprised entirely compositions by Joe Chambers and Andrew Hill. It’s interesting that these Blue Note recordings became a forum for the ideas of other composers.

BH: The Dialogue album was my first album for Blue Note, and it was at a point where I wasn’t writing. All I was doing was working with other people. I was just trying to complete the circle. I didn’t really understand the situation, that in order to complete the circle (or complete the sphere), playing, and playing with other people, practicing, working on soloing…theories and stuff like that… You really start to complete the circle of music, or the sphere of music, by writing. Because then you’re really writing in your diary. This is what happened to me; this is how I feel today; this is the recipe for what happened today; this is the recipe for how this day went for me. Along with the routines that I went through to try to enrich my life.

TP: Did the recordings you did for Blue Note during the period when you were living in New York… Because then you moved back to California and formed a working quintet with Harold Land which was amply documented. Does it reflect the work that you were doing in New York as well? The performance situations, the gigs. Or do the albums more reflect a for-the-studio situation?

BH: I think it really reflected what was going on in New York. When I first came to New York, I’ll say a lot of my writing on the first album had to do with my still ties with Pasadena. This greenery, the relaxation type situations. Joe Chambers coming, as we met each other and started doing things together, it became a situation of looking into the sculpture of new things developing along with the renaissance that was going on, and the new people going on, and along with the fight for the Black people in the country. It was very common for me in those days to get in a cab and I’d be going to a rehearsal, and I’d be coming from 165th Street and Woodcrest, where I was living in the Bronx, and come past 125th Street and come past the Lenox Hotel, and Malcolm X would be on the steps in front giving a speech, and thousands of people would be standing there. The cab would stop at the red light, and even though I only had another 15-20 minutes to get where I was going, I’d tell the cab driver, I have to get out here; I’ve got to go listen to Malcolm X for a moment. I’d go over and listen and then get back in another cab, and then go on to rehearsal. It was a situation of that cabaret card, that police card that you had to have, which stopped an awful lot of musicians from working in nightclubs, and all the people playing in lofts in those days where you could hear all this writing. Everybody was writing music.

TP: So the recordings you did with Sam Rivers or Andrew Hill or Freddie Hubbard also reflected gigs that were happening at the time.

BH: Yes, a lot of it. Then, at the same time, I renewed acquaintances with Eric Dolphy, who was back here at the time, and we started rehearsing and doing things. I started doing gigs, playing here, at Brooklyn College, or we would go to Pittsburgh…Crawford’s Grill, on the Hill in Pittsburgh and play…

TP: Playing the type of music that was on Iron Man and Out To Lunch?

BH: Exactly. Going to Washington, D.C., and playing the Bohemian Caverns.

TP: Then you returned to the West Coast and formed a well-regarded group with Harold Land, who I guess you knew from your younger days in Los Angeles.

BH: Yes.

TP: Can you speak a bit about that band and your musical production during the 70s? I hear it as you blending the experimentation of the 60s with a look back to the fundamentals you’d come up with.

BH: When I went back to the West Coast… I got busted for some grass here. They took my hack license, my taxi license away; they took my cabaret card away – and scared me half to death. I decided to go back to the West Coast for a second and just regroup. So I went back and started working with Harold Land, and then I started getting calls: “Bobby, are you going to come back?” I said, “Yeah, I’m going to come back again and play.” The Slugs thing was starting to happen…no, it wasn’t starting; it had BEEN happening – but I wanted to come back. I always loved playing in Slugs. So I told Harold… There were some things happening over in Europe. I said, “Let’s form a group, come back to New York; I’ll call Joe Chambers and we’ll get a group together and we’ll start playing some music.”

At that time, it seems to me as though we stopped playing linear type things, and started playing a lot of intervals of 4ths and 5ths and 2nds, and tunes that went into that category. That was a change. That caused… Different combinations cause different things to happen. So that was a change in the sound, because of…solo-wise… A lot of the solos were constructed in 2nds and 5ths and 4ths and neighboring tones. I don’t want to get too technical. But that’s what started happening, and started the sound to change.

TP: With Woody Shaw there’s another evolution…

BH: Woody, yeah. Woody was playing different intervals. Woody was playing a lot of 6-intervals. Woody was playing more pentatonic scales. Our group was using pentatonic scales, but using different intervals, and Woody was using more of the pentatonic scales with a lot of the major VI in his. I didn’t use too much of the major VI.

TP: That was a very fruitful partnership, and you did a lot of records, though not all of them are around these days.

BH: Yeah. I used to go over to Woody’s house all the time, and we would start talking about what we were working on. Woody was always talking about the pentatonic scale that he was working on. It’s funny how all of a sudden there’s a style of playing that starts blossoming out of that.

TP: You’ve been at the center of several transitions. Then around 1980 or so, it seems you begin to go out as a solo voice with groups that elaborate your conception, and the co-led groups fade away. It seems for the last 15-20 years, it’s been Bobby Hutcherson’s sound. Is that more or less accurate?

BH: I went through another transition of the theories that I was working on. For a while, I started working on a lot of piling chords together, right next to each other, so it would be like a cluster, and it would become really hard to figure out what was the scale. I used to think a lot of times when I used to work with Eric Dolphy… He would say: “Now, Bobby, on this tune, this scale in this tune doesn’t end until it runs for 2 octaves, and every note is different.” I said, “Oh my goodness, what…” It was really different.

TP: You seem to have incorporated everything you learned, but also stepping back into the tradition in a personally meaningful way.

BH: Yes. It’s like taking some things, throwing them away, bringing them back. It’s just like sitting there and making something. I might say, “Ok, I want to make an old-fashioned apple pie. Do I get these new modern ingredients?” No. You have to use just some plain old apples and some sugar…

TP: Food is always the best metaphor.

BH: [LAUGHS] If that’s what you want, that’s what you’re going to have to put in there. It’s a great reservoir, if you can look and say, “Ok, on this I have to do this; and on this one, I’m going to try this.” To reach back and say, “Ok, this time…” Situations like not only that, but to say, “On this one, I have to play behind the beat; on this one I have to play on top of the beat.” If you want this situation to happen, you have to go from playing on top of the beat and slide into playing behind the beat, to get this feeling. And to think about those things as you’re playing is… It’s tough!

TP: Are you thinking about that consciously now, or is it a more organic thing?

BH: Exactly. You want it to be like it’s just a natural thing to happen, instead of it being a technical, mechanical situation. You want it to be just part of breathing. It’s almost a situation of there is no tempo. There is only feeling. There is only action and reaction. There is only You.

TP: On that note, let’s Bobby Hutcherson play “I Only Have Eyes For You” from his new Verve release, Skyline.

[MUSIC: Bobby Hutcherson, “I Only Have Eyes For You”]

TP: This Verve recording is one of the first in some time where you’ve had a decent budget and preparation time. A few ideas about your intents and purposes in putting it together.

BH: A lot of thought about each person. A lot of thought about music is not the image; it’s the reflection – and the images are the people involved and the love and friendship for them.

TP: We’ll conclude with a track from 30 years ago that you spoke off mic. You talked about trying to transcribe it some years later, and being in a totally different head space. This is it. It’s called “Visions,” originally from the 1968 date Spiral, which came out about ten years later, with Harold Land, Stanley Cowell, Reggie Johnson, Joe Chambers.

[MUSIC: Bobby Hutcherson, “Visions”]

A WKCR Interview with Han Bennink From 2000

A few weeks ago, I began a project of converting as many of the interviews I did during my 1985-2008 tenure on WKCR from cassettes to digital format, adding to the 100 or so I’d transcribed over the years. This 2-1/2 hour interview with Han Bennink came from a week where the Dutch master was playing in quartet with Dave Douglas at Iridium — a lot of information contained therein.

 

Han Bennink (Out To Lunch, WKCR, Sept. 23, 2000):

[MUSIC: Bennink-Dave Douglas, “Cherokee”-Serpentine-1996]

TP: Dave Douglas was the trumpeter, and Han Bennink on trapset and…

HB: No. I only played snare drum and clogs. No hi-hat, no bass. Only snare drum, brushes and clogs.

TP: Han Bennink and I are here for hopefully 3 hours. We have a wide array of music that brings us from 1964 to the present. Han Bennink is performing at Iridium with the Dave Douglas Quartet this week, with Misha Mengelberg on piano and Brad Jones on bass.

You were just describing to me your first visit to New York, which was 40 years ago.

HB: It was in 1960. I worked on a ship called the Maasdom(?—6:01) to play commercial or dance music for the passengers. Then we were about 5 days in Hoboken. At that time, I went to the Village Gate. I saw the John Coltrane Quartet. He was totally obsessed with “My Favorite Things.” The second set was Aretha Franklin playing an upright piano and a microphone in between her legs – and a drummer. It was just fantastic. Opposite the street was a joint called Caffe Ruffio, and I saw Steve Lacy there for the first time live. We’re now very good friends.

TP: You’ve recorded with him on a number of occasions.

HB: Yes, but he lives in Paris, as you probably know, and I see him often… Well, I actually saw him and his wife in Chicago on the 3rd of September.

TP: How does New York now impress you vis-a-vis 40 years ago?

HB: I am not a big city guy. I live very sort of lonely, like a monk, in a stable in Holland, like this sort of ivory tower. Here, somebody gave me a flat to live in, and it’s very nice for me. It’s opposite Central Park, so I can go bird-watching. After this enormous rain, the park was so fresh; it was really beautiful to be there. But for the rest, I am not a big fan of big cities. But most of my concerts are in big cities, and I’ve been traveling now for 3 weeks. I actually do 24 gigs in 27 gigs. I am so proud of that. But I have to travel for that a lot. And the last week is just fine; now I can go walking to Iridium. It’s only 45 blocks. That’s nothing for me. I like to walk. And back also in the night. So that’s cool.

TP: Forty years when you came here, you were playing on a ship, dance music. That’s how you started professionally as a drummer, isn’t it, playing swing music, dance music.

HB: Yes, my father was a studio drummer. Rein Bennink. He also played clarinet in Benny Goodman’s style, and very good tenor in sort of Coleman Hawkins’ style. So the first drummer I ever heard was Gene Krupa, playing with Benny Goodman, “sing, Sing, Sing.” My father also had a band where he played for the Army. I refused to go in the Army (but that’s another thing), but I still played for them when I was like 17 years old. So I started doing these gigs with my father. But besides the band, we had singers, acrobats, and sometimes a nude show or whatever. So I’ve been doing all that sort of shit, really.

TP: Who were the drummers you patterned yourself after? By the 1950s, Kenny Clarke had moved to Europe…

HB: Kenny is my absolutely favorite. I saw him a couple of times in Holland, because he was working with Pim Jacobs Trio with a female singer, Rita Reys. Rita Reys was sort of well known. She recorded in New York with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. I think it must have been around 1957. Then I was sort of teaching at the conservatory later, and I invited Kenny to do a master class. So I really did know him and his wife, who came from Rotterdam – she was Dutch. They lived in Montreuil, in Paris. Kenny set…it’s a black premier(?—10:42) still on the music school there. He was an amazing drummer.

TP: Say some more about his qualities and his place in the pantheon.

HB: The first time I saw him was in the Concertgebouw. The Phineas Newborn Trio was playing there, and Kenny was playing, Oscar Pettiford was playing there. Lee Konitz was playing there. The Concertgebouw is actually built for classical music, so it’s very boomy. When I saw Kenny playing for the first time, it was a shock for me. I was listening to a very tiny little radio at 12 o’clock under my blankets. We had Willis Conover from Luxembourg, and he had a jazz program. So I listened to music always fearing to control the button… But when you see the guys playing live, that’s another thing. It just sounded so amazing. And his brushes playing! I loved his brushes playing. And the feeling for the rhythm. It’s so light. It’s so up. It’s always dancing. It’s never draggy. It’s amazing.

TP: Who were other jazz drummers you paid attention to during your formative period?

HB: I’ve seen Philly [Joe Jones] a couple of times. Beautiful.

TP: Did he come over with Miles Davis and you heard him then?

HB: Yeah, and I saw him later with the group Dameronia that he was leading. An amazing drummer.

TP: But that was later.

HB: Yes.

TP: You were already a professional.

HB: Oh, yeah, professional. I am never a…

TP: Well, you certainly are. Over 40 years…

HB: Yeah, yeah, but it’s just such a heavy word.

TP: Anyway, describe his impact on you.

HB: It is hard to say. Enormous control. I was sort of aping the American drummers. But I come from Europe. It’s a completely different cultural background also. But part of the background, of course, is this jazz music. When we were young, we were listening either to Little Richard, Bill Haley, or jazz music – and that was about it. But now it’s hip-hop or rap or whatever.

But it’s very hard to say what it actually meant to me. For example, seeing Elvin live… And later on when I was playing in the Gato Barbieri band in Europe, we were traveling all over Europe, and it was the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine, the Gato Barbieri group (I was in that group with Lonnie Liston Smith and Mtume and me on drums), and the other group was Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. So I met them all.

TP: You’ve been playing drums, I’d guess, since you could pick up a pair of drumsticks, given your father’s profession.

HB: yes, more or less.

TP: So I’d guess that seeing these great drummers and the different ways they got sound from the instrument, you’d be a quick mimic – see what they did and get that feeling.

HB: Yes, trying to get that feeling.

TP: You had a reputation among American musicians.

HB: Well, in 1962, it went like very quick with me. I started playing with Rene Thomas, but later on with Johnny Griffin, of course, and Don Byas, and Ben Webster lived in Amsterdam, and Dexter of course, and Wes Montgomery and Clark Terry and all those cats.

TP: They’d come through, you’d be the drummer, and they liked you because you could swing.

HB: Yeah, that’s right.

TP: When did you and Misha Mengelberg meet?

HB: I know Misha since 1960.

TP: What were the circumstances?

HB: Misha had a trio, and he was very much into material by Thelonious Monk to play. It was sort of strange in Holland; they were more interested in a fluid style like, say, Oscar Peterson or that thing. If you did Monk, that was really outrageous. At that time, I was at the Academy of Art in Amsterdam, and I brought all those records to our lessons, like “Misterioso” and all those pieces. So it happened to be that Misha was looking for a drummer, and it was in Utrecht in a jazz club called Persepolis. I played with him, and since we’ve been playing all the time. It’s an incredibly long…

TP: 40 years.

HB: Yes. Amazing. So strange. I think the only people who could say that in the music were Duke Ellington and Harry Carney.

TP: Maybe John Lewis and Connie Kay… There are a few people, but not many.

HB: Yes, it’s amazing. And in daily life, I practically NEVER see Misha. Maybe I’ve been at his place a couple of times, but not for food.

TP: So you don’t socialize. You just play.

HB: Not so much.

TP: I’ve read in press clippings his describing a famously love-hate relationship.

HB: Yes, but Misha is a big liar also.

TP: He’s a big liar?

HB: Yeah-yeah-yeah.

TP: What does he lie about?

HB: About everything. But on a very high level.

TP: Perhaps we can hear how that manifests at Iridium this week as the Dave Douglas Quartet performs.

HB: It’s a brilliant quartet. It sounds very good. I am very happy to play. Especially with Brad. It’s for me the first time to work with him… Because we’ve been playing with Dave in a trio and I’ve played a couple of duo gigs with him. I played last year in Italia, in the Dolomites 1,800 meters high. So I know Dave. But to be with Brad is really nice.

TP: We have cued up a duo between Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink from ICP 031, I think.

HB: It’s old, maybe 9 years or something like that.

TP: It’s an improvised duo?

HB: Of course.

TP: We’ll probably have to cut out, because it lasts 33 minutes and 42 seconds…

HB: It’s beautiful, but it goes much too long.

TP: I’ll fade out when Han Bennink tells me to.

HB: Cool.

[MUSIC: Han-Misha Excerpt-1991; Dexter Gordon 4 with Han, “Scrapple From the Apple”-Feb. 5, 1969-Amsterdam Club Paradiso]

TP: You couldn’t have a better aural illustration of Han Bennink’s scope and the history that he encompasses in his tonal personality. I’d like to speak a bit about your experiences during the 60s with some of the American jazz musicians you mentioned – Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster. How long did you play with Dexter Gordon?

HB: I played a couple of years with him. Not years… he lived in Copenhagen and he came on and off to Holland for tours, like for 14 days. I used to do gigs with him, and I loved playing with him. He was also a very, very good singer. But at a certain time, he was working for an amount of money and I was working also for a certain amount of money, but my money was so less that I asked the promoter if he could pay me a little bit more. That was not possible at that particular time, so I left actually. It had also to do with the fact that at that time I was playing with Willem Breuker and Misha and Peter Brotzmann and Evan Parker. So I was still doing time gigs, time playing, and trying to swing as hard as I can, but also the other improvisation stuff that doesn’t have to be time. It can be but it doesn’t have to. So my real interest at that particular time was already on the other side.

TP: I’d like to talk more with you about that evolution. But you also played with Ben Webster, you played with Sonny Rollins…

HB: Sonny Rollins – fantastic! He’s my still living big example. What a guy. Amazing. I talked about Pim Jacobs already. He actually died. But he had a television jazz program, what was called Jazz Scene. Because he had the money and the power to invite people to come from America. Like, Donald Byrd played there, and Wes Montgomery, and Johnny Griffin – but also there was one thing with Sonny. Pim was not playing at all. It was his brother, Ruud Jacobs, who was playing the bass. So it was actually my favorite setup, like Sonny Rollins live at the Village Vanguard with Elvin and Wilbur Ware, or Pete LaRoca. So we did play maybe for a week or so. It was just amazing. Amazing. I recently received a letter from him while he was performing in Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. I tried to keep in touch with him, but he was too busy and all that. I was very emotional, like, hearing him… But two days later, there was a big letter from him on my doormat. I am very proud of it. My big wish is to play once with him again, really.

TP: As you said, you were playing time gigs, swinging gigs, and also with the nascent…

HB: But now I am doing exactly the same with the Dave Douglas Quartet. We have let’s call it places in the rough, like with golf, but we have also straight gigs, or time – but that has to swing. There was a time with the so-called “new music” or “free music”… “Free” is such an incredibly weird title. “Free music.” Does it mean that you have to pay for it? Or what is free? Anyway, if a drummer is playing more a pulse than a meter… After a while, I found it to be boring. Because when I like to hear something interesting, you can also put your drumkit in a hailstorm and you can hear all sorts of sounds. But when it comes to tempo, I like to play rhythms as a drummer. I think that’s actually what a drum is made for – to play rhythm and to swing the band, rather than this plink-ploink stuff. I do that, too, but not all the time. I have a short counterpoint for that. Not too long. I also like a meter. And when it is a meter, it should swing – or at least trying to swing, like Kenny or Philly Joe or Roy Haynes.

TP: So Kenny Clarke and Philly Joe Jones and Roy Haynes are in the back of your mind regardless of what the situation is.

HB: That’s all history. Right? Or Baby Dodds, or Zutty Singleton, or Ray Bauduc. All those people. Fantastic.

TP: When did the notion start to form of playing in different, or playing just with sounds if you wanted to just play with sounds?

HB: When I was just coming from the art school I started to listen to Albert Ayler. I saw the Albert Ayler Quartet in Hilversum with Sunny Murray. I borrowed my drumkit to Sunny Murray. Gary Peacock and Don…

TP: You loaned Sunny Murray your drumkit for that record with Albert Ayler.

HB: Yes. I saw Don there, and sometimes I played with Don with the Peter Brotzmann Trio. But that was like a shock, to see that in 1964. It was amazing.

TP: You were oriented to swing and bebop. How did it strike you when you first heard that music?

HB: Of course, I wanted to do that, too, and I started listening to the New York Art Quartet with Milford Graves and Roswell and John. So I got very much into that, and by the time I recorded with Willem Breuker for our own label, the New Acoustic Swing Duo, I was playing and was interested in playing tablas, mringdam, balafons and gongs. I had a whole van full of that shit. Really! Bells from everywhere. It was like a little museum. I needed so much space on the stage that it was a bit odd for Misha. Misha was sitting all the time in the corner and I was banging around. Now I am reducing myself tremendously. I just like to go like Marcel Duchamp, only use a couple of sticks, or a matchbox with two matches, and still play the shit out of it.

TP: Do you see analogies between Duchamp’s approach and the way you approach music?

HB: Actually, I am an artist and a painter, and I come from the art school. So I am still looking and looking. I don’t have much time to paint or to do art, because my heart and my desire is in playing music and I have to travel so much for that, so by the time I’m home I really have to rest before I start to do another drawing, I like to practice very, very long. There is less time. I have my diary and I make even the new record sleeves, something like that…or CD sleeve – sorry.

[MUSIC: Misha Mengelberg solo, “Ik Hab Een Turqoise…I have a Turquoise Cap”-Buzz Records; Misha-Han duo-1992; ICP Orch, 1997, from Jubilee Varia]

TP: That duo entered more orchestral sections. The ICP Orchestra has been existence in one form or another for over 30 years, as is the label ICP – Instant Composers Pool.

We’ve heard Han Bennink with Dexter Gordon, in duos with Misha Mengelberg and Dave Douglas over the first hour. The next segment will present music by the Clusone Trio, a group which I guess gave you in your late forties or early fifties…gave Americans their first consequential exposure to Han Bennink, who had been highly visible to an international audiences for many decades. Clusone emanates from ICP Orchestra. I’d like to step back to the 1960s, and discuss the gathering-together of like-minded musicians looking for new ways to express themselves, to shape form, to find their own voices within a European context.

HB: Well, you had in Germany Peter Brotzmann. He started his own label, actually a half-year before ICP started. ICP was at that time Willem Breuker, Misha Mengelberg and myself. In England, people like Evan were very busy, and Paul Rutherford, and Derek Bailey of course, and Steve Beresford…

TP: In the 60s, Steve Beresford…

HB: Yeah, yeah…

TP: John Stevens was doing it then.

HB: Yeah, of course. John was playing, and Trevor Watts.

TP: How did you find each other?

HB: It comes by playing on a festival or whatever. You just meet somehow. There’s no special reason for it. For example, I am not the type at all who comes out of his house or say, “Now I go to London to see what’s happening there.” No-no…

TP: You’re a working musician, and in the course of your work you encounter people and make associations.

HB: Yeah, that’s right. Peter Brotzmann had a bit more facilities in Germany – because Germany is simply bigger than Holland is. He invited Evan Parker and Derek and Paul Rutherford, and then it started working.

TP: I think my earliest document of ICP is a record John Tchicai did with you around 1970.

HB: Yes, that’s ICP 004. It’s called Fragment. It was Derek Bailey, John Tchicai, Misha and myself.

TP: I should have brought the LP>

HB: Wow. Well, you brought so many already.

TP: All CDs. But let’s talk about ideas evolved. It seems people from each country developed different ways of organizing sound, and developed distinctive personalities that merge when the individual musicians come together.

HB: Mmm. We always were sort of compared to the other European countries a bit tasteless. We were doing everything… Like, for example, in England in improvised music at that particular time it was absolutely forbidden to go into a blues or a march or whatever. We were absolutely tasteless in that sense. We took everything. That has a lot to do with Willem, of course, as a composer, and of course Misha. They were both writing for bigger groups. We were doing theater pieces, musical theater — still in 1974. Then Willem Breuker went his own direction and Misha stayed like ICP.

TP: How would you describe the difference?

HB: Still I love to play with Willem as an improviser, but I don’t like to play like a fixed program, in a way. It was a bit too static, in a way, probably for me. But nevertheless, I admire Willem tremendously, and all our work, all our CDs are coming via BVHaast, and distribution is done, and we have the same fantastic manager in ICP and Willem Breuker in the sense of Susanna von Canon, who has been doing this wonderful work for us. So it’s nothing like enemies at all.

TP: I was trying to get to the aesthetic direction more.

HB: Willem liked to have a band and travel with a band, and the feeling of those… ICP, for example, our band now is Mary Oliver on viola, Tristan Honsinger on cello, Ernst Glerum on bass, and we have Ab Baars for reeds, Michael Moore for reeds, Wolter Wierbos for trombone, Thomas Heberer on trumpet, Misha and me. All of those people personally can fulfill a one-hour solo program. So in the end, they are all solo players. But somehow, the chemistry in this band is so well. They like to work for each other, and that is amazing. So the setting is already different, compared to Willem. We have, of course, a lot of material, but Misha just makes a program like, say, 5 minutes before the show, and then we’re waiting, looking for the sheets… I can’t read notes, so for me it’s very easy. I have it all in the head. Sometimes it happens that I am the only one who knows about all tunes by Misha — I can sing them. “How was that going?”

TP: Are some of the things ICP plays now thing Misha wrote in the 60s?

HB: For example, in the group with Dave for this week we play many old compositions from Misha. But also Herbie Nichols material, which is of course very nice, and some Monk pieces.

TP: Even Ellington. I think you were playing “Happy Go Lucky Local” to conclude a set at Tonic recently.

HB: Yes, with the ICP Band. But I am very quick moving from the Quartet to ICP.

TP: Sorry. You were talking about Dave Douglas; I was talking about ICP. Talk about what in the broader cultural milieu of Holland in the 60s influenced you towards incorporating theater and absurdism in your presentation. Misha Mengelberg has talked about being influenced by the Fluxus movement.

HB: Yes, absolutely.

TP: John Cage, Nam June Paik – those kind of people.

HB: Misha is, of course, older than I am, and he was doing some Fluxus movements. For me, I was very interested and reading about it, but I was in the art school… I met later on Wolf Vostell via Brotzmann, because Brotzmann was also a Fluxus member, and then we had a very good friend and Fluxus member, Thomas Schmidt, in Berlin. I met Josef Beuys and I played at his opening. So it’s not so much to say. It just happened.

TP: It was part of the milieu in which you existed and functioned.

HB: Absolutely, too, when we played in 1969 in Berlin, we played for the heavy left-wing student movement – Rudi Dutschke and all those cats. Peter was very much into that. I am not interested in politics at all. I can play for all parties, but I don’t like to play for fascists and rednecks. But for the rest I am very flexible.

TP: Was Misha political in the 60s?

HB: You should ask him. Yeah, I think he was, but not so heavy than all the other…

TP: Less so than in England or Germany with many of the musicians. Let’s talk about the affinities by which Clusone Trio was established out of the ICP Orchestra.

HB: The Clusone Trio…actually we had an invitation to play in Clusone. Clusone is in the north of Italia, near Bergamo. At the time we were invited to play, it was a quartet. There was no name for it. The quartet was Michael Moore, Ernst Reijsiger, the cello player, Guus Janssen, and me. Those are all fantastic players. But somehow it was set-up…actually thesame set-up that I work in this week… It was a jazz set-up. But Ernst was dealing with the cello, so there was no bass. But it was a real jazz quartet. I like actually a bit more space. I love to play with Guus Janssen duet. He’s most of the time playing with his own brother. But I love to play with him. He’s a very good composer and a very skilled piano player.

So Guus went out and we carried on as a trio, the Clusone Trio, and it became very, very successful. We traveled to Australia. We were playing in Vietnam. We were playing in China. We were playing in Burkina-Faso. We were playing in Mali, and all over Europe. It was really very nice. I know Ernst since he was 12 years old, and then he came to me already. So I had a relationship with him. Ernst was sort of responsible for getting Michael to Europe, so that was cool. And Michael’s interest in pieces and…

TP: He comes from a background not so dissimilar to yours, with a father who is a music teacher…

HB: Yes, his father is Jerry and he’s a very high-rated teacher in Eureka, California.

TP: So I guess it was a superb chemistry.

HB: Yes.

TP: And I guess the group disbanded maybe two years ago.

HB: Something like that.

[MUSIC: Clusone 3, Irving Berlin repertoire]

TP: We were speaking of the ICP Orchestra as it developed during the 80s, when it, as one of the clippings I read from Misha Mengelberg put it, it began exploring repertory, and specifically repertory by the composers who were his great influences in the 1950s, Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. Had did this transition happen, from the raucous, more open-ended, theatre-composition from before.

HB: I think Misha actually is more interested to write his own material, but somehow I think he had an invitation for the radio to do a whole Herbie Nichols set-up. Because we always have to a little bit force him in the direction to put up or to come or play this older material. I think it was an invitation from a radio station, and it was the ICP Orchestra plus George Lewis and Steve Lacy.

TP: George Lewis was exploring electronic music and AI in Amsterdam at the time.

HB: Right. He was busy with his improvising robot. But of course, with us he played the trombone, thank goodness.

TP: The track we’ll hear features another trombonist, also appearing in town this week with Archie Shepp, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille, and Grachan Moncur at the Jazz Standard. It’s Roswell Rudd, from a record titled Regeneration from 1982 on the Soul Note label, with Steve Lacy – both were involved with the music of Herbie Nichols and Monk during their formative years in New York. Also Misha Mengelberg on piano, Kent Carter on bass, and Han Bennink. What do you recollect about the album?

HB: This record was also an idea by our friend Filipo Bianchi, and of course, we knew that Roswell played with Nichols and there are more compositions of Herbie Nichols also, so we brought it together.

TP: On Herbie Nichols’ original recordings, the drummers were Max Roach and Art Blakey – also Dannie Richmond. Did you hear those recordings when they were out?

HB: Of course. I have them all. I particularly like them with Art Blakey. I have two 10″ he actually made for Blue Note, and a bigger one, a normal one with Max. But I prefer the ones with Art Blakey. Maybe it’s with the type of his piano playing… Personal taste.

TP: Herbie Nichols in his writing orchestrated for the drums.

HB: Yes.

TP: The feeling of the drums, and sometimes the parts were specific. In your interpretations, do you hew to that?

HB: Of course I hew to that. On one album for Blue Note, he wrote these fantastic liner notes. Of course, Misha, who brought me the whole idea of Herbie Nichols… When you play that stuff, I think you have to stay as close to what’s actually meant with the particular music at that time. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense to me.

TP: For you it’s all an aural process? Do you have the sort of memory where you hear something and it imprints itself… Do you hear like that?

HB: Oh, no-no. I can’t tell you nothing what I am doing. I cannot do that, because it’s music and it’s no words. When it was music, if it was language, so I could write a book and you could go from page to page what I am actually doing. But it is not. So I have to do it tonight again, and hopefully tomorrow again, and after tomorrow. But there are no words for that to me. I cannot declare my music.

TP: I wasn’t trying to break down your technique. I was thinking of the way music enters your mind and comes out.

HB: Yeah, but it’s completely abstract how that works. I can tell you nothing about it.

TP: So it’s as organic as language.

HB: Yes, I guess.

TP: I guess you’ve been doing it since you start learning language, so it’s organic as language.

HB: Yes. Well, you dive in the middle of a swimming pool and you try to reach the sides, and there’s nothing more to tell. I throw myself into a musical situation, and I have to…

TP: If you’ll use the analogy of being thrown in the swimming pool, then hopefully you’ve learned how to swim.

HB: Absolutely.

TP: You’re not diving in without a thorough background.

[MUSIC: Rudd-Lacy-Mengelberg-Carter-Bennink, “Blue Chopsticks”; ICP Orchestra, “Spinning Song”]

HB: Dutch Masters was made in an awful little studio in Milano, really, with a terrible drumkit, and I had to sit in a drum booth that was horrible. Horrible circumstances.

TP: Sometimes beautiful pearls emerge from the ugliest surroundings.

HB: Oh, yes. For example, listen to Bird at St. Nick’s. It’s one of my favorite albums, and the circumstances there must have been horrible – so much noise.

[MUSIC: Rudd-Lacy-Bennink, “Hornin’ In”; ICP Orchestra, “Bospaadje Konijnehol”; “Mooche Mix”]

HB: Many people are not playing in our band any more. Our band has been changing all the time. I think now we have the best band there ever was.

TP: Why is that?

HB: It’s so well balanced. I’ve been learning a lot, so… I have a name that I can play sort of loud. But in the ICP Orchestra I have to behave, because now I cannot play louder than, for example, Mary Oliver who is playing violin, and in pieces where the sections are playing things, has to be heard. So I am reduced to lots of brushes work. That makes you a good brushes player.

TP: You said “reduced.”

HB: Yeah, sure. My English is sometimes a bit short.

TP: Now the ICP Orchestra has been performing the repertoire it has for 20 years; it’s an established fact, and a few generations of musicians have come up hearing it, some of whom are playing in the band. How does that affect their approach to the music once they’re in the band?

HB: It’s not easy to play in that band. Well, it’s Misha’s band. Misha is writing for it. But I am also responsible to bring in new people. Because I play with a big variety of people, so I actually brought everybody in except Thomas Heberer, the German trumpet player – he came via Misha. But for the rest, I brought in all. There’s nothing more to say about it; it just functions fantastic. We all love to play in that band. We do a lot music-wise. It’s not an ego thing at all. We just go for it in a positive sense.

TP: I’ll raise a question that we were discussing when the music was on? Does ICP play much in Holland?

HB: We never play in Holland. We play, say, 5 or 6 times a year in Holland. We’d love to play more. But it’s expensive to have 9 people on the road, and then the possibilities in Holland… Everybody from abroad thinks, “Wow, Holland is a mecca of improvised music.” It probably is, but the possibilities for us to play are very small. Also, we live in a very small country. In that country’s network, say like 15 clubs where you can perform, and maybe we can perform in 7 of those clubs. When you do that round once or twice a year, you’re done. You have to go to Germany or france or England or America. But then you must have a name that people like to have you as well.

TP: And you have to establish a tonal personality that people recognize and want to hear.

HB: Absolutely.

TP: Which Han Bennink has been doing all his life.

HB: I do my best.

TP: you travel around the world, more than ever.

HB: More than ever.

TP: You know musicians everywhere, and you cover every area of music. A lot of older musicians now, from different ends of the spectrum, James Moody to Andrew Hill, say that the quality of musicianship among young players now is the highest it’s ever been. They’ve never seen it quite like this in terms of what they can do and their openness to many times of music. What’s your sense of that.

HB: If you think in the sense of instrumentalists, a skilled player, there are many, many skilled players, and not only in our music but also in classical music. When I was performing in the Lincoln Center, I was passing by Juilliard School of Music, and I was surprised at how many people from Asia were carrying a violin and coming out of that school. So I think there’s a hell of a lot of competition in certain musics, and probably also in ours. I train myself a lot, more than ever. But I think exactly what Kenny Clarke said to me. “Well, you must have enough technique to explore yourself so you can make yourself…” Like, having lots of technique like a Buddy Rich, or other technique like, I don’t know, Roy Haynes or someone like that – those people have their personal touch and personal tuning for drums, and personal sounds. So it comes to a person rather than to an overall technique. But they are very skilled. Nowadays people can play… And standing on their head, for example. Well, I’ve seen it once. Don Byas standing on his head, playing saxophone, “Body and Soul”, upside-down, also backwards.

TP: He played the tune backwards and was standing on his head.

HB: Yes, and standing on his head. In a bathroom of the Hilton Hotel. It was a party. The Dizzy Gillespie band was there, and Don came from Amsterdam (because he was based in Amsterdam) to see that. He did all those sort of tricks. He was an amazing player.

TP: There’s a certain component to what you do that’s lost on a CD. You have a visual aspect. You’ll play the telephone…

HB: That might be true, but you don’t miss it in the music.

TP: I sometimes have to close my eyes when I see you play, so that I can focus on the musicality of what’s going on. The visual stuff can be distracting.

HB: Yes, but it is still based on the music and the musical possibilities – what’s going on at that particular moment in the band. When there’s nothing happening, there is for me no reason to leave the drum chair and play in the hall, because it means nothing. But when there’s a musical tension between Misha and me on stage, then I can leave him alone and I can leave him PERFECTLY alone, because he can take care of himself probably better than I do in music live. So then it is a reason for me to do something else. But when the music is not happening, I can’t do it. It’s sort of static. For example, when I have to play in a club like where we play tonight, that is more like a jazz club set-up – when you’re behind the drums, you are behind the drums. You can hardly move because of the little space. I like actually for myself halls not too big, but a space on stage where you can move a bit. Because for me, playing on the floor, on a wooden floor, or not even on a wood floor, is exactly the same for me as playing on a drumkit. Some drummers stay…or they want a 50″ bass drum rather than that high. I don’t have belongings in that at all. I am just pleased with two sticks, and that’s it. I like to make the best and the weirdest music out of that. That is my goal.

TP: Doesn’t matter what the drumkit is.

HB: Doesn’t matter. I’ve been playing on pizza boxes, carton boxes, pieces of wood, drumkits falling apart, broken drumheads, broken drumsticks – all sorts of stuff.

TP: You do that in your sculpture as well, no?

HB: Yes.

TP: A lot of it is with found objects.

HB: Yes, objets trouvees.

TP: We have two more duos before you leave. This is the most recent of many duo collaborations you’ve done with Derek Bailey over the years. I guess it goes back to about 1968 or so. On Incus?

HB: No. I did the first thing with Derek on ICP. It’s ICP 004. I think it must be 1969.

TP: Again, Derek Bailey’s vocabulary is now an established fact of the music, over 30 years. Back then…I don’t know, perhaps it wasn’t totally new; there’s nothing totally new. But in some sense it was, because of its electronic nature. Again, how does that familiarity with your partner’s vocabulary change the nature of the interaction? And this is not a live encounter. Here, you’d tape something, send it to the other…

HB: Yes.

TP: …tape a response, send it back, a response gets taped, and so forth and so on.

HB: Right.

TP: Just to use the word “free’ in the commonly accepted sense of free improvising, these people are all shaping utterly personal vocabularies that no one else is using. How does that familiarity then shape the responses?

HB: I don’t like it for myself when it’s static or fixed. And I know exactly what you mean. I was playing in Tonic not long ago, and Derek was staying there for a whole month, and I saw a concert he did with Blood Ulmer. I have to say, when you hear the guitar sound you recognize Derek immediately. I think that’s an incredible pro. You recognize Miles. You recognize Thelonious Monk. All great players. Also Derek. But in a way, it’s already done… “Oh, that’s Derek then.” But I’ve been recording now with a Punk guitar player from the Ex, Terrie Ex. His real name is Terrie Hessels. He is not into certain technique or overtones or this thing at all. He just starts moving. He’s more like an action painting, in a way. The sounds that’s coming from this sounded to me different from Derek in a way… Well, you can’t say from Derek that it’s not fresh, because he plays always fresh. But you know that sound now. So for me, it was fresh to hear the other approach from Terrie coming to it. Because when you play with Derek, you never know what he is playing, but you know that particular sound. But the other… That’s different with Terrie. So in a sense, when you play longer and longer, you have to run, otherwise the time is eating you. You know? And there’s not much time. The grave is yawning, as we say in Holland. So you have to keep running. That’s why I’d like to leave the studio and walk it off.

[MUSIC: Bennink-Bailey- “Duo#3”–Fragile (Incus 34); Bennink-Eskelin, “Let’s Cool One” from Dissonant Characters]

For the 83rd Birthday of Maestro Saxophonist-Flutist James Spaulding, Two WKCR Interviews from 1995 and 1993

I’ve been digitizing and transcribing interviews from a number of radio shows that I did on WKCR during the 80s, 90s and early 00s. Here are the proceedings of a pair of shows with the singular alto saxophonist and flutist James Spaulding, an Indianapolis native who was a fixture on some of the more venturesome Blue Note recordings of the 1960s and on several of Sun Ra’s late 50s Saturns, who made a terrific series of CDs for Muse records between 1988 and 1994. At the top is a Musician Show from August 1995; it’s followed by a briefer appearance on Out to Lunch in July 1993.

James Spaulding, Musician Show, August 9, 1995 and Out To Lunch, July 21, 1993:

[MUSIC: Spaulding, “Song of Courage,” “Public Eye”]

TP: Before we move back in time, let’s talk about the present. There are a few engagements coming up in the next few weeks.

JS: This will be the Jazz Legacy group, Larry Ridley’s organization of musicians – Charles Davis, Virgil Jones, Frank Gant on drums, and myself. That’s the 21st of August at Jazzmobile on 122nd Street here in Harlem. Also, on the 27th of August a tribute to Bird at Tompkins Square Park – Lester Young’s birthday. Also, I’ll have my own quartet at Visiones on the 18th and 19th, plus a few Mondays with the David Murray Big Band.

TP: Anyone who’s ever heard James Spaulding play would conclude that you listened seriously and with much intensity to Charlie Parker as a kid, and on our first segment we’ll focus on some compositions of Bird. But first, let’s take it back. You were born in 1937 in Indianapolis. So you were coming of age at the time when bebop hit. Tell me about your intro to music. Your father was a guitar player.

JS: My father was a professional guitarist. He actually started the Original Brown Buddies orchestra in the 1920s, the late 20s, and he formed a small group that traveled around playing college concerts, dances mostly. Later on, Bob Womack, his friend, a drummer…they put the two groups together and later called the group Bob and the Bobcats. This carried on through the 30s, and I was born in 1937, so I came through the Swing Era.

TP: It was mainly a regional band around Indianapolis.

JS: Yes, just a regional band, and the first integrated band actually that began to have white musicians and black musicians play together – to start doing that at that time. 1937, on to the 40s and the 50s, and my father stopped playing quite early, because more children were coming on the scene… I was the third of seven. Large family, and economics weren’t that good, so he had to stop playing and take something steady.

TP: What was his name?

JS: James Spaulding. The 2nd actually. I’m the 3rd.

TP: Was he an improviser?

JS: Yes, he improvised and sang also. He did a little singing, and he booked the gigs. He did a lot of the business things that were happening for the band. Did a little traveling upstate. I think he told me he went to Troy, NY with the band when they traveled around. He never did come to New York. He always wanted to come here.

TP: is he the one who gave you the early musical training?

JS: He’s the one who brought the records home. He said, “Listen.” He brought home the Charlie Parker records. “Shaw Nuff” was one of the early ones. ‘Mohawk” with Dizzy and Bird. I was 10 years old when I heard Cab Calloway. I told you about that one. Then Charlie Parker came on the scene when I was 10 years old – listening to those recordings. Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins. Man, the big bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

TP: These inspired you to play?

JS: Yes, the Charlie Parker record, “Shaw Nuff,” really inspired me to play.

TP: When were you able to start hearing music live?

JS: Well, he used to take me around to bands that would come over in our neighborhood and set up right out there in the park and play. He would take us to concerts where guys were playing at the Indiana Theater. I saw Billie Holiday at this theater, and Lester Young. George Shearing was there. I believe it was called the Indiana Roof. I don’t think it’s open any more. He exposed me to music. He also wanted me to be a prize-fighter. He used to take me to the gym to work out. Which I didn’t have eyes for having my chops get mashed in. But he was a fight fan. He loved boxing.

TP: When did you start doing the little gigs? I take it alto was the instrument.

JS: Alto was the one. I got some gigs. I learned how to read in high school. I was able to develop my eyes so I could get through some of those charts, and I was reading quite… Actually I was reading before I got into high school, in grade school. I taught myself how to read through the charts. He would take me over to some of the older musicians around town and let me sit in and read some of the arrangements. I remember I got hired for a gig, and my father went with me to kind of chaperone me – because I was 10, 11 or 12, something like that.

TP: Indianapolis had a thriving musical community. A lot of great musicians from there. J.J. Johnson, the Montgomerys, Slide Hampton.

JS: Man, it was something.

TP: You were a little younger than them, though.

JS: Right. Leroy Vinnegar. Carl Perkins.

TP: Were they around?

JS: No. As you say, I was quite younger. Slide, Wes, all the brothers. Freddie and I had a chance to sit in with that group when they were working at a club called the Turf Club in Indianapolis.

TP: That’s Freddie Hubbard, who’s a year younger than you, and who you worked quite a bit with over the years.

JS: Yes. Freddie and I started off learning Charlie Parker tunes. I’d go over to his house, and he would come out to where I was stationed in the Army, out at Fort Harrison Army Base out there when I was in the band, and he’d come out and sit in with the band. He was playing then! He was up on his instrument. He was an executionist. At that age, at 17, which is how old he was when I first met him at a jam session.

TP: So you hooked up after high school.

JS: Yes. I was in the Army and Freddie was still going to high school. He was about ready to graduate from Arsenal Technical High School there in Indianapolis. He graduated, and came on out with us when Larry Ridley formed a group called the Jazz Contemporaries. We worked around Indianapolis at George’s Bar and the Cotton Club… Larry booked a lot of these gigs. He had that business sense about him to take care of these things, while we just enjoyed the music.

Yeah, Indianapolis was happening, man. Clubs all up and down Indiana Avenue. You could just walk in one club and out into another club. Just take your instrument. If the guys knew you, they would ask you to come up and play something with them.

TP: Who were some of the older musicians who were in Indianapolis? Slide Hampton talks about a piano player named Earl Grandy.

JS: Earl Grandy! Yes, he was fantastic. He just passed not too long ago, I heard. He was blind, and he was an inspiration to a lot of the musicians. He would show them changes and different things on the instrument. He played right up to his passing. It’s a great loss.

Jimmy Coe is still there, and there’s Pookie Johnson, a tenor player. There are a few more musicians there. But it’s no work there now. Nothing is happening there at all practically. I think they have one club, and it’s called the Jazz Kitchen. Wallace Roney and his brother performed there not too long ago. They said they had standing room in there. Two shows, two sets, and it was packed. I’m working on going down there with a group perhaps.

TP: Slide also talked about a ballroom run by the Ferguson Brothers, who booked a lot of big bands, so that bands would start their tour in Indianapolis. Was that still happening when you were coming of age?

JS: These brothers had real estate, they had a little money, so they were able to set up these places and get musicians come in through Indianapolis. Charlie Parker came through there once, I remember. I was too young to go see him. I remember seeing the posters on the lightposts, “Charlie Parker’s in town.” He was down at the Sunset Lounge, Sunset Café at the time. You could go down and try to listen through the door in the back, but it was very hard to hear. Yeah, I remember when he came into Indianapolis, man. It was quite a day.

TP: I guess it was whenever Bird came to whichever town it was.

JS: Wherever anybody flocked, man. Everybody loved him so much. He was such an inspiration to so many musicians.

TP: Bird was really your first inspiration, then? You hadn’t been checking out, say, Johnny Hodges or Benny Carter, and then changed. You heard Bird and it just hit you.

JS: Yeah, it just hit me. I listened to the rest, but with Bird playing, it was just…I never quite recovered.

[MUSIC: Bird, “KoKo”; “Mohawk”; JATP (Bird-Prez-Roy) w/Ella, “How High The Moon”-1949]

TP: You remember hearing that “How High The Moon” record when you were 13 or so.

JS: Yes, I was about 13.

TP: Before “KoKo” had records like “Red Cross” and the Jay McShann records come to Indianapolis? Were they popular?

JS: They were, yes. “Red Cross” and “Buzzy” and “Donna Lee.”

TP: I take it you checked out everything as it came along.

JS: Yes, as much as I could. My father would bring those records. I’m so glad he did, man. I would have missed them.

On “Mohawk,” I just love that melody. I just asked Dad, “Play that over again.” That and “Shaw Nuff” were my favorites to listen to.

TP: Charlie Parker wasn’t the only saxophonist you were paying attention to. As a musician in school bands, you weren’t going to be able to play Charlie Parker’s language. Was there any tension between the requirement of playing “legitimate” or needing rudiments, and then the flights of fancy that would come to mind from hearing Bird?

JS: I was very fortunate to have a music teacher at Crispus Attucks High School, where I attended – my first year of high school. He was into jazz, and he would ask musicians if they would want to stay after school. He would stay there with us and work with us to learn to read these syncopated bebop tunes, like “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” Count Basie’s things they had these stock arrangements on. We formed a little group called the Monarch Combo with Melvin Rhyne. I think Virgil Jones was in the band. There was Curly Hampton, a cousin of Slide Hampton. We just learned how to phrase and how to play that music the way it was coming over on the record. We tried not to copy, but tried to stylize our playing as much as possible with that. And Mr. Brown (Russell Brown), he would stay there with us and work with us. I don’t if any other high school teacher was like that.

TP: So Russell Brown was the bandmaster at Crispus Attucks H.S.?

JS: Right. He was the bandmaster. And like I said, I had taught myself how to read good enough to get into the freshman band and the senior band, and then I got into the orchestra my first year of high school with Mr. Newsome, and I played the flute. I taught myself how to play the flute well enough to get into the string orchestra at school. That got me into the woodwind quintet. I played flute with that group, and we played concerts and…

TP: Is that the classical repertoire you were playing?

JS: Yes, we played classical repertoire, European pieces. We had played the dances around Indianapolis with this Monarch Combo group, which we would rehearse after school, and Mr. Brown would be our guide and our teacher. We sort of developed out of that, and we stayed around Indianapolis doing a lot of background playing for singers that would come into town, like Bull Moose Jackson (you remember him?), the tenor saxophone.

TP: Playing the blues behind Bull Moose Jackson.

JS: Yeah! He was something else, man.

TP: So you’re playing wind quintets on the flute, the blues behind Bull Moose Jackson, playing Charlie Parker tunes in the woodshed, doing all this…

JS: Yeah, all this music. All this happening. You start growing more and more, until I went into the Army in 1954. I got out in 1957, and went to Chicago.

TP: You mentioned that Tab Smith’s “Because Of You,” recorded in 1951, was the first solo you memorized.

JS: The first solo I ever memorized was “Because Of You.”

TP: He projected a different tone or timbral quality than Bird. Talk a bit about your sound on the alto, and developing it.

JS: I just tried to… I kept hearing Bird all the time, and I wanted to try to get as close to that sound as possible. Then I heard Tab Smith with his sound; he had a sweet, nice alto sound. And Johnny Hodges also…I listened to him a little bit, too, and was inspired by his playing. But Tab was right there and the music was right there, so I just said, “Let me just learn how to play this piece.” That was the first piece I ever played without reading the music.

TP: That became your feature…

JS: That became my little feature piece.

I first heard Illinois Jacquet at JATP, doing “Flying Home,” that exciting piece. Louis Jordan, “Open The Door, Richard” was one… Oh, he played so many pieces. He used to have me knocked out, man. It was so beautiful to hear this music played. And it still is. It’s still fresh to me every time I hear it. It’s a stone gift.

TP: Tab Smith, “Because of You,” with a Chicago-based band – Sonny Cohn on trumpet, Leon Washington (formerly with Earl Hines) on tenor sax, Lavern Dillon or Teddy Brannon, piano; Wilfred Middlebroks, bass; Walter Johnson, drums.

[MUSIC: Tab Smith, “Because of You”-1951; Louis Jordan, “Buzz Me”-1945; Illinois Jacquet, “Jet Propulsion”-1947]

TP In this first hour, we’ve taken James through learning the alto saxophone and flute and your experience at Crispus Attucks High School with Russell Brown, and playing a wide range of music during those years. You were also influenced by big bands, which, as we mentioned before, came through Indianapolis with some frequency.

JS: Oh yeah. There would be big bands that came through a lot, that would come in our neighborhoods and play right out there in our playground – set up a community thing. Like the earlier Jazzmobile. They got fed and the whole thing…

TP: Were there local big bands?

JS: Yes, we had the local big bands, they also…and bands that would come through and work at a major club there, and then come over and donate the music to the community.

TP: Where did the bands stay when they came through Indianapolis? It was a pretty segregated city, I take it.

JS: Yes, it was. They would stay at the Y. And a lot of the musicians would stay with musicians who were in Indianapolis – they would spend the night or whatever, stay there with the families. In fact, Teddy Wilson would come by my house and jam with my father and some more musicians who would come to town.

TP: So you met Teddy Wilson, had dinner with him and so forth?

JS: Yes, he would sit there, and the guys would be jamming and we’d sit there and listen to them. It was quite exciting.

TP: You mentioned that your father brought home a lot of records – Ellington’s records, Cb Calloway. So you were hearing big band music from an early age, both live and on records.

JS: Yes.

TP: Did you know how to pick out the different soloists? As a kid, did you identify the sounds of Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney…

JS: Yes. I’d get to learn their sounds, to identify their sounds as well in the context. But those records, man, that was it. I’m so glad. My mother, too. She was very supportive, a very spiritual, church-going person. In fact, she just turned 84 this past June, and she’s going strong. She would always encourage me to keep playing and practice. She was very encouraging.

TP: Did she play music herself?

JS: No. She just sang in the church. A very spiritual lady.

TP: Let’s hear a short set of big band music, then we’ll review James Spaulding’s experience during the latter 50s as a working musician in the Chicago area. Unless there’s something else you’d like to say about Indianapolis.

JS: There was the Camp Atterbury, an Army base there, and the guys from the base would come in and support the music, and go from club to club at that time. That was one of many things that were going on up and down Indiana Avenue, as they called it. That was a strip. Like 52nd Street compared to that…but not quite… We had quite a bit of turnover; there was quite a bit of action going on during that period. There was a place called the Cotton Club, and there was a Savoy, and I told you the Sunset Café where Bird played. There was the temple, where John Coltrane played one of his last concerts, I believe.

So from 1954… I was in the Army band, and I did a lot of big band stuff there and combos. I was in Special Services actually at the time, so I got a chance to just play in the marching band, the dance band, they had a jazz band and had a little jazz combo. We’d play on campus and I would go off-campus… That’s how I met Freddie Hubbard, at this jam session at the Cotton Club.

[MUSIC: Ellington, “Take the A-Train”; “Sophisticated Lady”-1957; Calloway, “Minnie The Moocher”; Basie, “L’il Darlin”]

TP: After your got out of the Army, you went to Chicago, but first talk about your Army experiences.

JS: I was in Special Services. I had that set up before I even went in. My father had it arranged. I had to take these tests; I had to pass the exams. As I said, it was a good thing that I’d learned how to read. It was so vital. You had to sight-read some parts. So I got the gig in the Army! From there, after I finished basic training… Six weeks, I was in Fort Linwood, Missouri, then they shipped me to Fort Ord, California, and I continued band training out there. This was 1954, 8 weeks out there, then I came to Indianapolis to Fort Harrison, which is a few miles outside of Indianapolis. I was able to commute back and forth.

TP: What sort of functions did you do in the Army band?

JS: There was the Army Finance Center, which was not too far away from where we were stationed, where we had our housing. We would do our regular thing of marching…what do you call that thing before closing down… Anyway, we’d play over at the Army Finance Center, work there during the day with the jazz band. Then at night, sometimes we would go to the NCO club and play music for the non-commissioned officers there. We had some good musicians in that band, and we would jam and play charts and play arrangements. Going back to my being able to read, that also really helped me to continue to play.

TP: A lot of musicians found the Army a great finishing school, because you’d play all the time.

JS: Oh yeah. It was a great help to a lot of guys. A lot of them just in there 20 more years, and got a retirement thing. I wanted to get out. I wanted to go to Chicago and go to New York. I wanted to venture out some more.

TP: You mentioned meeting Freddie Hubbard when you were stationed outside Indianapolis.

JS: Yes. I went to one of these jam sessions that they’d have every Saturday afternoon, I think it was, and there I met. We just got together and started rehearsing tunes. I went out to his house and met his mom. Man, she could cook. Oh God, could she cook! He’d come by my house. And we’d go out to the Army base and play with the Army band members. Slide Hampton would come out there, too, bring his arrangements and test them with some of the guys out there.

TP: At that time, he’d just joined Buddy Johnson (55-56), and then on his way to the Lionel Hampton band. He was here last week, so I’m up on Slide’s career.

JS: He’s such a tremendous musician. He’d bring his arrangements out there for us to play, and that was always a treat every time. We’d go over to the Army Finance Center and play, and we’d give him a few dollars to come out there.

TP: What was Freddie Hubbard playing like at 17-18 years old?

JS: He was definitely influenced by…he was listening to Clifford Brown and Miles mostly. Those were the two trumpet players he’d really taken to. We’d work out learning Charlie Parker tunes, so we could go out and play together. Especially with Wes Montgomery and Buddy and all those guys, you had to be up on some tunes!

TP: Were the Montgomerys still around Indianapolis at this time?

JS: Yes. They were playing regularly at a club called the Turf Club. They’d have jam sessions every Saturday afternoon also. We’d run out there and jam with them. Then we’d run back into town to the Cotton Club and jam at George’s Bar; that would last from 5 until about 9, when the regular band would come on. We did a lot of playing.

TP: Was Wes Montgomery’s style fully formed by the mid 1950s?

JS: Oh, definitely. He went on to record with Cannonball. Was it Cannonball who brought him in…

TP: His first recordings were for Pacific Jazz.

JS: Pacific Jazz. I recorded with them. I did one of my first recordings on an album with Larry Rice.

TP: Let’s bring you to Chicago, which was a big center for jazz during the 50s, with a lot of great musicians – a self-contained scene unto itself.

JS: Definitely.

TP: Talk about what drew you to Chicago.

JS: What drew me to Chicago was Johnny Griffin – his records. When I first hear his record, I was in the Army, and I said, “I’ve got to meet this guy.” I had to go to Chicago and hear this man. His speed and his dexterity. God! He played the tenor like you play the alto. He did play the alto at one time.

TP: But made it sound like a tenor.

JS: Yes. I went to Chicago and I finally met him. I met his mother. I was working a day job there that my cousin had gotten me. And I met his mother there. She told me where he’d be, and I went to see him at this club called the Flame. I saw Lester Young there, too. It was off 63rd and Cottage Grove.

TP: There was a strip of clubs there.

JS: Yes. McKie’s Lounge, and the Cotton Club right across the street, and around the corner, down the street (I think it was Cottage Grove), there was the Flame. Later it burned down.

TP: Went up in flames.

JS: Yeah, it was strange. But I saw Lester Young! Johnny Griffin was there first. I went down to see him, I met him, and told him I’d like to come by and just talk to him. He said, “Ok,” and gave me his phone number. So I got a chance to hang with him for a few times.

TP: In Chicago, you affiliated with Sun Ra, and the records you’re on by him are much prized. How did that come about?

JS: It was a jam session at the Pershing Lounge, at a place where you’d play until 10 o’clock in the morning. You’d go down there and just jam. I was jamming, and I met Pat Patrick and John Gilmore, and Pat approached me and asked if I would like to make a rehearsal, that Sun Ra liked the way I played. I said, “Ok.” That’s how it started. I went to this rehearsal, and Sun Ra wrote out a piece right in front of me – wrote out my part and gave it to me.

TP: What did the part seem like to you? Was it congruent with your style?

JS: I was able to read it enough to get the gig. But it was so different from everything else I had been trying to play or learning to play. Especially the improvisational aspect of it. He asked me to play. I didn’t see any chord changes. That’s what made me see there was something else happening beyond what’s on the paper. Pat would say, “Don’t worry about that; just play.” That started some other wheels spinning. I stayed with him off and on for a while, and we went on some… We went to Indianapolis, as a matter, with the band! We went on a couple of concert tours around Chicago and different places. But we mainly stayed there at Pershing Lounge. That was like a home base for most of the musicians.

TP: The Pershing Lounge had a long pedigree in Chicago, as a place where Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins played in the 40s and early 50s in the ballroom. Ahmad Jamal played downstairs…

JS: Downstairs, in the basement. So we were down in the basement, kinda like, with this breakfast jam, they called it, and we’d go down there and stay until 10 the next morning. Guys would straggle out. We’d go and have breakfast and talk. There was a lot happening.

TP: The next track features Sonny Stitt, who was very popular in Chicago as well.

JS: Oh, yes. He and Gene Ammons used to get together and lock horns. I saw them together in Chicago once. It was very exciting. It was like a shootout corral. The guys would come in the door, and look at each other, stop and pull out their instruments. The crowd was already there, waiting, so it was like a big drama thing. So when they got on the stage, Sonny had his fans and Gene Ammons had his fans on one side, and it was like back and forth, and they would solo and do the fours… It was tremendous, man.

[MUSIC: Sonny Stitt, “My Melancholy Baby” (Hank-Freddie Green-w. Marshall-Shadow Wilson-1956; Johnny Griffin, “Chicago Calling”; Gene Ammons, “Canadian Sunset”; Coltrane, “Dexterity”; Sun Ra, “Hours After”-from Jazz In Silhouette]

TP: We’ll now move into some of James Spaulding’s more far-reaching recordings of the 1960s, when he became a favorite of New York’s hip audience, some of whom are calling and sharing their memories. You returned to Indianapolis from Chicago for a bit, and moved to New York in 1962. Anything else to say about Chicago apart from your experiences with Sun Ra?

JS: I forgot to mention Jerry Butler, the Iceman, that was one of the first recordings I did before Sun Ra. I played a flute solo on one of his pieces, called “Lost.” I just remember that. That was back in the 60s.

But Chicago was…everybody was going to New York, I guess, before the end of 1959.

TP: George Coleman and Booker Little had left, Frank Strozier…

JS: Everyone was moving on to New York. But Chicago was very helpful, very inspiring, to go there and… I’m glad I went to Chicago instead of going to New York. Everybody said I should have come to New York first, but I think I made a better choice.

TP: Because it was more relaxed, you could get certain things together?

JS: Yeah, I could relax. Plus I could use my G.I. Bill to go to the school there, the Cosmopolitan School of Music on Wabash Avenue. It was down the street from Roosevelt University, upstairs there. Frank Strozier graduated from there. Bobby Bryant, the trumpet player, he graduated from there. I studied with Bobby Bryant. He helped me out a lot with the chord changes and stuff. He’s out in California now.

TP: Then your path to New York.

JS: Well, I went home and charged my batteries. Michael Ridley, Larry’s brother…we both came to New York together with 50 cents between us, in his car. We landed here, and I called up Freddie, and he called his brother Larry, and I’ve been here since.

TP: What were your first affiliations in New York?

JS: Actually, I just stayed with Freddie. I was trying to find some work, trying to find a place to live – that whole thing. Making these little gigs. Worked in the Time-Life Building as a messenger. Until Freddie called me for this Hub-Tones date. In 1963 I got married. Then things started opening up for me. I have two grown daughters now.

But Freddie called me in 1963. He was working with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and they were traveling. In fact, when I was up in Canada, when I met Cab Calloway, I was telling you…

TP: That happened a little later.

JS: We worked in this huge place, right across from the Notre Dame, in that area. Cab was up there singing “Hi-de hi-de ho,” and I went backstage to meet him and talk to him about his experiences. That was about a week. My wife and I had a little honeymoon there. That was the first experience with him. I told him how I’d listened to his records when I was 5 years old. He was laughing; he enjoyed that.

TP: you’re on quite a few of these Blue Note recordings, some of the most venturesome of the 1960s, like The All Seeing Eye, Wayne Shorter; Bobby Hutcherson’s Components…

JS: Yeah, right after Hub-Tones, which was the first date I did. Right after that, I was getting calls to come in and record with everybody. Duke Pearson was the A&R man during that time.

TP: Right. You’re on Sweet Honey Bee.

JS: Yeah, he was the A&R man, bringing in a lot of cats.

TP: If you’re working on a Blue Note record by Freddie Hubbard or Wayne Shorter or Bobby Hutcherson, did that mean you were also gigging with them? Were these working groups or set up for the studio?

JS: Freddie’s was the group that I began to work with after he left Art Blakey, and we started working with Joe Chambers, Ronnie Matthews and Eddie Khan on bass – a quintet. It was Freddie’s first working band. We did a few gigs around… We never did go out of the country. We kind of stayed around the area. We did a few things in Philadelphia, went up to Boston and did a couple of things. It wasn’t working that much, but at least we had a chance to tighten up before we did that Breaking Point album.

TP: We’ve been listening to jump bands, bebop, Gene Ammons and Johnny Griffin playing very straight ahead. But we listened to John Coltrane’s “Dexterity,” which you said had a big impact on you, as did Coltrane’s music in general.

JS: When I first heard Trane, it was in Chicago on that recording. It was a different label. But that “Dexterity” inspired me a lot when I first heard it, when I heard John Coltrane. I’d never heard of him before. I heard Johnny Griffin. But when I heard John Coltrane, that took me into a whole nother thing. His structure, his whole phraseology, his whole approach to the music was so unique and so HIM. You could identify him so well – his individuality. It stood out so profound.

TP: Had you heard Coltrane by the time you were Sun Ra?

JS: No, not yet. It was before I left, right around the end, around 1958 or 59, I heard that record. Then I had to hear him again. I came to New York and he was at the old Five Spot. It was so crowded that night, I was standing on my toes trying to see him. Freddie Hubbard brought me down there that night. And Birdland. That’s when I saw Dexter Gordon on one of those Monday night jam sessions they had. Lee Morgan was conducting the jam sessions, with Dexter up there cooking and Curtis Fuller. Freddie took me to that session also. I was a little nervous about coming to New York anyway. Freddie had to kind of pull me. “Come on, man, get your horn out and play some.” I said, “No, not yet.” He’d encourage me. “Come on, play, man.” He was a great inspiration to me. He still is. Everything looked like… All the clubs were closing down at that period. From 1963 on down to 67 or 68, clubs were closing, everything was changing. The scene was changing quite a bit.

TP: The music was changing, too.

JS: Yes, it was. Quite a bit. It was maintaining… It’s still here. Everything is still here. We listen to all these old cuts; all this music, when I hear it now, it still sounds fresh. There’s just so much that we can get from it. When you listen to it and you understand where it’s coming from, I think you appreciate it more. Know its origins, and reaching back and doing some research on it, and I’ve been studying and reading more books about the music and about the different artists who made those contributions, and those who weren’t as well known as others that made contributions but never got the recognition or the financial thing. It’s all out there. It’s all here with us, and I’m just happy to be part of it. I’m very proud to be part of this music. I look forward to doing some more writing for the big band with David Murray; I’m writing some stuff now for his band, and I’m hoping to rehearse it down there on Monday nights at the Knitting Factory.

It’s all connected. The name of my group is Linkage.

TP: One thing we can say about the music of the 60s is that the protagonists were all rooted in the sort of music we’ve been hearing on this evening’s show. Coming up are a few highlights from James Spaulding’s recordings for Blue Note during the 60s.

[MUSIC: Spaulding-Freddie, “Hub Tones”; Freddie-Spaulding-Mobley, “Outer Forces”; Wayne-Spaulding, “Chaos”; Bobby Hutcherson-Spaulding, “Little B’s Poem”]

[MUSIC: Spaulding, “Bold Steps”-1988]

TP: Any memories from any of the Blue Note dates we heard? How about The All Seeing Eye? Any memories, or is it vague to you?

JS: It’s sort of vague. I just remember the music, Wayne’s writing on that date, and the excitement of having this material, beginning to get into our own and be able to express ourselves in the way we were doing in that time, in the 60s, when so much stuff was happening, so much energy was circulating. Going to the studio, we just couldn’t wait. Everybody couldn’t wait to get there and set up and do what we had to do. It was a wonderful time.

TP: One question someone asked you over the phone, and which I was asked to ask you by a guest earlier today: With all the recordings that you contributed to as a sideman, were you ever offered to record by Alfred Lion?

JS: Yes, he asked me to record. He wanted me to get into a commercial vein of the music. With all respects to Lou Donaldson, who I love and enjoy his playing… He wanted me to do some stuff that Lou was doing, the Alligator Boogaloo kind of thing… He wanted me to put some stuff out there on the jukebox that would push records, and I didn’t have any material like that. I wanted to play some bebop. I wanted to play some straight-ahead music at the time. I was working with Freddie and time went by, and we never did come to any agreement on that.

TP: You spoke of the impact Coltrane had on you during the 60s…

JS: All the saxophone players are influenced by Trane, I’m sure – they still are at this time. Every time you hear him it’s always something new. If you play it once, you have to play it twice, and then you have to play it again. Because each time you’ll hear something fresh and new. His own personal approach is what made it stand out so much.

TP: Did you know Coltrane at all?

JS: I saw Trane in Chicago at McKie’s Lounge. Elvin was on the gig. Jack deJohnette was also on that gig. I walked up to him, just met him and talked and said hello. He was waiting for Elvin to come in and start the set. The place was packed. The second time I saw him was in New York at the Vanguard. I talked to him after the gig, and got his phone number, and he invited me out to his house. We were going to get together. I wanted him to show me some things. He was such a nice cat. Such a beautiful individual.

TP: It’s a common story among musicians that you could approach John Coltrane and he’d invite you to his hotel room or to his house, and spend time with you.

JS: He was just a regular person and very approachable, and you could ask him questions and he’s talk to you and make you feel comfortable.

TP: Did you have any aspirations to play the tenor sax?

JS: I played the tenor sax in Chicago for a while, and I played tenor sax in the Army for a while. I had some gigs, but carrying the alto…I had the alto and the flute… You know how Sonny Stitt would carry all his instruments. I tried to do that, but it got a little heavy.

TP: Being a triple threat was a little too threatening.

JS: Playing one instrument is a job!

TP: We’ll hear “Hipsippy Blues,” something you requested by Hank Mobley, who was another associate of yours. You were on Slice Of The Top with him, and he was on Freddie Hubbard’s Blue Spirit date.

JS: Hank was a beautiful cat. I can’t say enough about his musicianship. He was an incredible musician. He gave you all he had. He really was involved and committed, and you could hear it in his instrument, in his writing. He wrote so MUCH stuff. I want to do a tribute to him on one of my next record sessions. I was trying to get Joe Fields and Don Sickler to set something up for that, pick out some of his unknown cuts to record. He had such a tremendous contribution to this music and to the alto saxohone.

[MUSIC: Spaulding, “Hipsippy Blues” and “Down With It”]

 

James Spaulding on Out To Lunch, July 21, 1993:

TP: How did you come to be the latest member of World Saxophone Quartet? You’ve been working with David Murray’s Octet for a number of years now.

JS: Yes, it was David Murray who told me about the possibilities of becoming a member of WSQ, and Hamiet Bluiett was instrumental in calling me for an engagement out in Albuquerque, NM, with Jayne Cortez and Bill Cole. After that, they called me about a gig in Boston. It was December 11, up in Boston, the first day after we had that horrible rainstorm. That was my first engagement with the African drums also.

TP: Your experience on flute I’d think would fit in very well with the African drums. Last night you were playing wooden flute as well as regular flute.

JS: Yeah, we were definitely going back to the ancients in terms of sound and instrumentation, reaching back to the ancestral connections with roots, and basically being inspired by the great music that’s still coming through from the great continent of Africa, and different parts of it, from the time when great civilizations were born, jumped out – so instruments and music also followed. Here we are today, extended from that.

TP: In your early career, you recorded with Sun Ra, who was so involved in bringing out that kind of material, including one of his most famous albums, Jazz In Silhouette. How did it come about? You were originally from Indianapolis.

JS: Right. I got out of the Army… I had three years in the Armed Services, with the Army bands, doing marches and concerts. I got out in 1957, and I decided to go to Chicago and go to school on the G.I. Bill – Cosmopolitan School of Music. It was a great school. They introduced jazz and different studies outside of the normal curriculum. One day I was going out jamming. Jam sessions were happening all over Chicago. I met John Gilmore and Pat Patrick, and at the jam session they heard me play, and they said, “Listen, man, how would you like to make a rehearsal with Sun Ra?” I said, “Sun Ra. Sure. I’ll be there.

TP: Did you know who Sun Ra was?

JS: No, not really. I just heard his name mentioned a couple of times. So I made it to this rehearsal, and there was Sun Ra, sitting at the keyboard, writing out arrangements, giving parts out. That’s the first thing that amazed me. I said, “Wow, this is terrific.” So we ran down the parts, and he told me to play. I said, “Play? Play what?” I didn’t see any chord changes or anything. He said “Just play! Don’t worry about it.” So I played, and Sun Ra said, “Ok.” He liked what I was doing. I was quite nervous, of course. He started calling me for gigs in the Pershing Hotel. At the time we were playing in the basement for what were called breakfast shows. We’d stay there until 7-10 in the morning, playing. People would come down from their jobs, gigs and have breakfast, and musicians would come in and sit in. Sun Ra would have this tremendous book of music. Oh, God, all kinds of music, from dance music to concert stuff. He was complete. I’ve never seen a musician with so much energy and so much imagination.

TP: Were you rehearsing 6-10 hours a day, every day, as a number of the musicians have said?

JS: Yes, we’d rehearse quite a bit. He was serious. It could get hot. It could get quite hot in there sometimes.

TP: That was a very talented group of young musicians who’d been well-school through high school and/or the Army, like yourself, which I think is a characteristic of your generation. Very well-schooled either through the education system or the Armed Services or whatever, but with a real hunger for new horizons, new dimensions in music.

JS: Man, this was a whole new experience for me to play in this band. It opened up my sense of direction in terms of playing free, getting rid of the barlines, and the structural, scientific parts of it. I said, “Yeah, that’s it” later on. It took me a long time to digest this. Here, I’m coming out of Charlie Parker and thinking swing, and the structure things that were already mapped out. Being with this band, it just opened up another area. “Oh yeah, this works.” So as I developed with that band, I started incorporating that information with my information, and I started expanding that knowledge. I was starting to see where a lot of the free playing of this music was coming from. Improvisation! The raw improvisation that was coming, and it was the most natural! I said, “Yeah, this works.” So Sun Ra was very instrumental for inspiring me, and there’s nothing but good things I can say about this man and his inspiration to all of us.

TP: Could you say a few words about your upbringing in Indianapolis, where the scene was thriving at the time you were coming up? Was saxophone or clarinet your first instrument? And when did you start playing?

JS: Actually, the trumpet was – the bugle. My father bought me a little bugle, and I was around the house blowing with that. Then I picked up a little trumpet in grade school, and I was messing with that for a while. Then my father would bring home all these records. He was a musician himself; he was a professional. Guitar. He was manager of the Original Brown Buddies of the 1920s to 1940s. Another organization took over. But he formulated that band actually. He would bring home all these records – King Cole, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, everybody. I was only 5, and I would listen to this music, and it just got into my system right away.

The wonderful part about it is that my father was able to let me listen and make up my own mind about the music. He didn’t force it on me. He didn’t make me practice. He saw that I was going to get into the saxophone. Now, when I heard Charlie Parker, I said, “Yeah, Dad, I want a saxophone; I want an alto. Charlie Parker. I got to do this. This is the greatest thing I ever heard in the world.”

TP: Do you remember the first Charlie Parker record?

JS: It was “Mohawk” with Diz. Now, “Shaw Nuff” was the one I really liked the most on this 78. Later I listened to more and more, and I said, “Yeah, this is great.” At the time I was with a band, a young group of musicians in Indianapolis who called ourselves the Monarch Combo. We’d play all the teenage dances around Indianapolis. Bull Moose Jackson would come to town; we’d play behind him. Johnny Ace – we played behind him. We played for all the dances. Man, a lot of things were happening in Indianapolis. Clubs. We’d go and sit in. We’d go out and sit in with Wes Montgomery and his brothers out at another club. Freddie Hubbard and I got together at a jam session. That’s how I met Freddie, at a place called the Cotton Club in Indianapolis, at a jam session. I was in the Army at the same time, see. I was stationed at Fort Harrison in Indiana at the time. It was like a job. I had a car; I was driving back and forth from the base back to Indianapolis. So I used to bring Freddie with me out to the Army base, and he would sit in with the Army band. We’d do concerts at the Army Finance Center. It was a lot of music and activity. It was incredible.

TP: The 50s is called a conservative time in histories of jazz, but on the grass roots level it was one of the most open times ever, because musicians were able to glean experience in almost every area they’d need to access to make their way later on as independent-thinking musicians.

JS: Yeah, and you could take instruments home. Now you can’t take the instruments home, I heard, I found out. I asked this little kid next door, “Where’s your instrument? You said you play the trumpet – where is it?” “It’s in school.” I said, “School is closed. You don’t have an instrument?” He said, “No.” I always brought my instrument home. I’d go in the band room, sign out a flute. I taught myself the flute by signing out the instrument. I could bring it home and practice it. I brought it back in good shape. The instruments weren’t that good. I had an old raggedy, beat-up clarinet that I learned the clarinet on. We had those kind of opportunities. We had places to go. We could go to the Y; we could go swimming, play ping-pong, all kinds of activity at one time. All this is gone now! Today in Indianapolis there’s no place for youngsters to go where they can be supervised by people who are paid to do these jobs. So we see all these kids now standing on corners. There’s nothing to do. There’s no space. No places to go. So the music is being deliberately cut off.

TP: Did you enter the Army as a musician?

JS: Yes. I went to Special Services. My father made sure of that. This was 1954, right after the Korean War conflict. I went out to California… First I went to Fort Linwood, Missouri, for basic training for 8 weeks, and then went out to California, Fort Ord, for band training, and I was out there with the band. You had to prove yourself to be able to read. If you weren’t able to read they would put you in clerk-typist school or some other occupation. I had to bone up and get ready, because these guys, everybody could read – marches and the concert pieces you had to do. Learn how to march in formation and a lot of other stuff.

TP: That’s another rather common experience of musicians from your time, that experience in the Army bands and really getting their music together in that environment.

JS: Yes, it was very important to have that knowledge. The discipline, first of all, to be able to read. I had that discipline, fortunately, from my father, who was very gung-ho on all of us. I came from a family of 7. There were 7 of us. We had to be on our toes. My fathe was very strict, and my mother was very… She was in our corner. She’s a very spiritual woman, who was into the church. She kept us aware of our integrity, our values, kept us closely together. And we’re still together, except for one brother who was killed in an automobile accident in California. He was only 40. That shook everything up for a minute. I lost my father in 1975, when he was 70. Everything continues. Everything keeps moving on, and you keep learning, you keep growing.

TP: You have a series of records for Muse, all very different programmatically in terms of personnel. Let’s now hear a selection of songs from these first two. The first is a dedication to Thelonious Monk, titled Brilliant Corners, with a mix of young and veteran musicians — Wallace Roney, Mulgrew Miller, Ron Carter and Kenny Washington.

JS: On the first record I did a tribute to Duke Ellington. I had the same idea for Monk. The musicians took care of business on the dates. I was very pleased with it. Monk? What can I say?

TP: Did you hear Monk on records in the 50s?

JS: I heard Monk on records, right, in Indianapolis. Then I came to New York and met all these people, Max Roach and all these people. It was a whole beginning for me. The inspiration was unlimited.

[MUSIC: Spaulding, “I Mean You”; “Caravan

Two Interviews with Roscoe Mitchell from 1995 on WKCR, and a 2017 Downbeat Feature

n 1995, I had the opportunity to interview the master saxophonist/woodwindist/composer Roscoe Mitchell on two separate occasions on WKCR. Although the transcripts have been up for a number of years on the Jazz Journalists Association website, http://www.jazzhouse.org., the occasion of Roscoe’s 71st birthday on August 3rd offered a good excuse to post the proceedings here as well. On the first session, he came to the station with pianist Amina Claudine Myers, his friend since the mid-’60s; he came solo six months later. Ahead of these in the sequence below is the final draft that I submitted to Downbeat of a feature piece on the maestro in 2017.

 

Roscoe Mitchell, DB Article, Final Draft:

In spring 2014, not long after Roscoe Mitchell received a $225,000 Doris Duke Artist Award, ECM founder Manfred Eicher wrote a congratulatory letter to the iconic woodwindist-composer. Eicher proposed to Mitchell, then represented on ECM by three albums under his leadership since 1999, and by four with the Art Ensemble of Chicago since 1978, that they should start thinking about their next project.

Not long thereafter, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art invited Mitchell to present an on-site concert in September, in conjunction with its second-half-of-2015 exhibition The Freedom Principle: Experiments In Art and Music, 1965 to Now, mounted to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, of which Mitchell was an original member. Beyond the realm of notes and tones, Mitchell contributed several paintings and his percussion cage, a “sculpture-instrument” comprised of dozens of globally-sourced bells, gongs, hand drums, mallet instruments, rattles, horns, woodblocks and sirens that CMOCA positioned on an installed stage alongside the percussion setups of AEC colleagues Joseph Jarman, Famoudou Don Moye, Lester Bowie and Malachi Favors. It was Mitchell’s second AACM-related event in Chicago during 2015, following a March concert with cellist Tomeka Reid, bassist Junius Paul and drummer Vincent Davis documented on Celebrating Fred Anderson, on Nessa Records, whose catalog tracks Mitchell’s evolution since 1967.

Although Mitchell “didn’t even have an idea what music I would do” for the CMOCA event, he nonetheless contacted ECM. The end result is Bells For the South Side, a double CD featuring four separate trios embodying a 40-year timeline of Mitchell’s musical production—James Fei on woodwinds and electronics and William Winant on percussionist; Craig Taborn on piano and electronics and Kikanju Baku on drums and percussion; Jaribu Shahid on bass and Tani Tabbal on drums; Hugh Ragin on trumpet and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, trombone, piano and percussion cage. On some of the ten compositions, the units function autonomously; on others, some with Mitchell performing and some not, he assembles them in configurations ranging from quartet to full ensemble.

Mitchell, 76, sat amidst half-packed suitcases in his downtown Brooklyn hotel room, a few blocks from Roulette Intermedium, where, the night before, he’d performed with a new edition of trio SPACE, a unit whose initial iteration, between 1979 and 1992, featured multi-woodwindist Gerald Oshita and vocalist Thomas Buckner. Joining Mitchell and Buckner was Scott Robinson, whose arsenal included such bespoke items as reed trumpet with two-bells, a slide sopranino saxophone, a contrabass saxophone, and a barbell. Robinson elicited authoritative lines from each instrument, complementing and contrasting Mitchell’s own sometimes circularly-breathed postulations on sopranino, soprano, alto and bass saxophones, intoned with precision along a spectrum ranging from airiest subtone to loudest bellow. Buckner triangulated with micronically calibrated wordless shapes, timbres and pitches.

Mitchell’s next stop was Bologna, Italy, where, four days hence, he’d participate in the latest instantiation of the ongoing concert project, Conversations For Orchestra. The title references the transcriptions and orchestrations of improvisations that Mitchell, Taborn and Baku uncorked on some of the 21 pieces contained on Conversations I and Conversations II (Wide Hive), from 2013. As an example, Mitchell broke down two treatments of “They Rode For Them,” originally rendered as a bass saxophone-drums duet. “I took myself off bass saxophone and reinserted myself as an improviser on soprano saxophone,” he said. “I used Kikanju’s very complex drum part, giving one percussionist his hands and the other percussionist his feet. In New York, I took the bass saxophone part and featured bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck as an improviser.”

On site in Bologna would be one-time Mitchell student Christopher Luna-Mega, who transcribed and orchestrated the improvisations on “Splatter,” and current student John Ivers, who, on “Distant Radio Transmission,” in Mitchell’s words, “transcribed the air sounds the soprano is making with these gradual shifts of pitch, and then the real notes involved in that, and then transcribed those for strings, and orchestrated it for the string section.” The interchange not only satisfies Mitchell’s predisposition “to put my students in the same space I’m in when I’m working,” but is congruent with Mitchell’s “studies of the relationships between composition and improvisation.” He continued: “It’s a new source to generate compositions from. I have these transcriptions and can do what I want with them, so it removes the element of ‘What am I going to write?’”

A similarly pragmatic attitude towards the creative process informed Mitchell’s approach towards generating material for Bells For The South Side. He referenced the Note Factory, an ongoing project that debuted on the 1993 Black Saint sextet recording This Dance Is For Steve McCall, and scaled-up to octet and nonet on Nine To Get Ready (ECM-1997), Song For My Sister (Pi-2002) and Far Side (ECM-2007). “Because the Note Factory was big and didn’t work all the time, I’d keep working with different elements of it—a quintet concert here, a trio there,” Mitchell said. “That keeps everybody engaged with the music, so it’s easier when I get the opportunity to put together the larger group. I enjoy long-lasting musical relationships with people. It takes time to develop certain musical concepts.”

Few musicians have known Mitchell longer than Shahid and Tabbal, with whom Mitchell founded the Detroit-based Creative Music Collective along AACM principles after he relocated from Chicago to a Michigan farm near East Lansing in 1974. Colorado-based Ragin joined them in Mitchell’s Sound Ensemble a few years later; Taborn entered Mitchell’s orbit on a mid-’90s tour playing piano with James Carter opposite the Art Ensemble. The Fei-Winant trio coalesced after Mitchell joined them on the Mills College faculty in 2007 as the Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition; neighborly proximity has allowed ample rehearsal opportunities, as is evident in the uncanny mutual intuition they display on Mitchell’s epic For Trio: Angel City (RogueArt).

Baku, a Londoner who plays in noise bands with names like Bollock Swine, had contacted Mitchell before a January 2013 engagement at London’s Café Oto with Tabbal and bassist John Edwards. After inviting Baku to sit in on the second night, Mitchell decided to pair him with Taborn for the Conversations sessions 10 months later. About a year earlier, Mitchell first played with Sorey (whose teachers include Mitchell’s AACM peers Anthony Braxton and George Lewis) when he was invited to play duo with the younger musician at a Berkeley house concert. “He sounded so amazing playing solo, I thought, ‘Now, what am I supposed to do with him?’” Mitchell recalled. The answer came that July, when Wide Hive recorded a Mitchell-Sorey duo encounter, with Ragin augmenting the flow on several numbers.

Three years later, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Mitchell assigned Sorey to perform in the percussion cage on “Bells For The South Side,” while having Baku open the proceedings by dancing with Favors’ sleigh bells and ankle bells. The journey continued via the following sonic roadmap, tracing a route along vocabulary signposts Mitchell had heard each musician deploy: “Kikanju is joined by interjections of the hanging wind chimes found on the blue rack of Joseph Jarman’s percussion setup, then is joined by short bursts of rolls on the piccolo snare drum, gradually adding cast iron bells whose pitch will be used to construct a melody for piccolo trumpet being played at the far end of the exhibition space. This melody should develop gradually, starting with long tones, with silence in between the melody consisting of more than one tone. This section should end with a cued gong attack that should be marked, ‘Let Ring.’ Inside each of our percussion setups, we have bells of all different sizes that we can swing, and they will continue to swing and ring on their own. They start very small, and gradually build up to the great big bells. Then the sound of the trumpet, and at the end, under my percussion setup, you hear this huge school-bell with a handle on it.”

“Prelude to the Card Game,” a Mitchell-Shahid-Tabbal trio, is the latest in a series of card compositions Mitchell first developed during the 1970s. In them, he provides material on a set of six cards that fit together to be configured in different ways, whether overlapped, side-by-side, or out of numbered sequence. The intention, Mitchell said, is to help inexperienced classically trained improvisers “to avoid making the same mistakes—that is, following, or being behind on a written piece of music.”

He continued: “Each time the information comes up, it’s done a different way. If you play something I like, I can store that and bring it back, say, when I’m running out of information. By then, you’re in another space. Suddenly, we have an important element—a musical composition. That’s counterpoint. I can take your idea and put my own take on it and bring it in another way. Where we had one thing going on, now we have two. If what I’m doing registers to you and you want to put a different take on that, then we’ve brought three different things.

“Every moment is different. If I can remain aware of what’s happening in the moment, it’s helpful in constructing an improvisation. For instance, I might have done something really good last night, but if I try to do the same thing the next night, it might not work. An improvisation should never be a situation where there’s only one option. To me, improvisation is trying to improve your skills so you can make these on-point compositional decisions. That takes practice.”

“Panoply,” which “deals with different sound textures,” features Fei on alto saxophone, Winant on xylophone, Ragin on trumpet, and Baku, Sorey and Tabbal on drumsets. It is also the title of the Mitchell painting on the back cover of the booklet jacket.

“The art came from my mother’s side of the family and the music came from my father’s side,” said Mitchell, whose father sang professionally until he developed problems with his vocal cords. “When I was growing up, one of my uncles created a kind of comic book structure of myself and my sisters and our friends, where we met all these different people from different planets. He used a crayon and ink, and then he’d put the crayon on the paper and then scrape it and mix colors. My other maternal uncle made a lot of my toys and stuff growing up.”

Asked if his creative process involved synesthetic elements, Mitchell responded: “If you’re an artist, sometimes you just make a choice which way you want to go. You’re using the same thought patterns that create painting and music and writing.” In this regard, Mitchell mentioned early AACM colleague Lester Lashley, who played cello and trombone on Sound, the 1966 Delmark recording that vaulted Mitchell into international consciousness. And he mentioned Muhal Richard Abrams, whose paintings were also on display at the 2015 CMOCA exhibition, as were Anthony Braxton’s graphic scores. Mitchell met Abrams in 1961, not long after he returned to Chicago from a three-year stint as an Army musician during which he developed from acolyte to well-trained practitioner prepared to follow Abrams’ dictum of self-education..

“Muhal was painting then, and we talked about painting a lot,” Mitchell said. “Even now, when we get together, we may go to a museum. We always had a sketch-pad with us. I enjoyed sitting in front of the canvas and trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I still try to keep something going on. I do a lot of drawing, and right now I’m working on a sculpture out of pieces of trees that were cut down at Mills—this thing I call the Cat. It’s a two-faced sculpture—one side, to me, has a male image, and then, when you flip the head around, it’s more of a female image. I made glasses for it, so you can display it in several different ways.”

It was time for Mitchell to finish packing, check out, and catch his flight to Bologna, but he took one more question: Considering the time he devotes to teaching, composing, traveling and art-making, how does he sustain his gargantuan chops on the array of instruments on which he continues to perform as a virtuoso?

“I’m not doing so well with that right now,” he said. “I’m longing to get back to practicing six-seven hours a day, like the old days, when all I did was play and I had a real embouchure. There’s an old phrase, ‘catting on the pass.’‘Oh, you got red together, so here’s red, here’s red, here’s red.’ I’m trying to get out of that. I want to get past the point of practicing just to get my embouchure back together. I need to practice consistently until I can get to a point where I can start learning.

“As we live longer, people don’t want to be categorized. I think the best thing, what I always encourage my students to do, is to study music, not categories, so that you can seek in any musical situation you’re in. Certainly be aware of everything that has happened in music, and study that. But strive to study the big picture, which is music.”

[—30—]

Roscoe Mitchell & Amina Claudine Myers (WKCR, 6-13-95):

[MUSIC: RM/M. Favors “Englewood H.S.” (1994); RM New Chamber Ensemble, “Oh, the Sun Comes Up, Up In the Morning”]

Roscoe, having just heard the two recent releases, a few words about each of them, the continuity of the ensembles, the ideas behind each CD.

ROSCOE:  The New Chamber Ensemble, Pilgrimage is dedicated to Gerald Oshita, who was a member of our original trio, which was Space.  The New Chamber Ensemble, you could say, is a continuation of that work.  Gerald passed, and we dedicated this record to him.  On this record there is also a composition by Henry Threadgill with a text by Thulani Davis entitled “He Didn’t Give Up; He was Taken.”  For the pieces that we’re going to be doing Saturday we’ll have joining us also two members of this ensemble.  Thomas Buckner will be performing with the S.E.M. Ensemble, which is an 11-piece chamber orchestra, in a piece that I wrote entitled “Memoirs Of A Dying Parachutist,” a poem by Daniel Moore.  We’ll also be doing a trio piece for piano, saxophone and baritone voice, with the members of this particular ensemble.

In the 1980’s, apart from your work with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, you were working concurrently with the Roscoe Mitchell Sound Ensemble and the Roscoe Mitchell Space Ensemble, and sometimes combining the two.  Would you talk a little bit about your concepts for each of these groups in terms of the words “sound” and “space” as separate and converging intents.

ROSCOE:  If you’ll remember, back in 1966 my first record to come out on Delmark was titled Sound.  This is the where the name for the Sound Ensemble came up.  Over the years, though, we’ve worked in different combinations with both of the groups, either doing large pieces, which you will find on that CD on Black Saint, Roscoe Mitchell and the Sound and Space Ensembles.  Sometimes we would tour with both of these groups, and we would do pieces with one group and pieces with the other group, and then combine pieces.

If I could talk about your question on the scope of the music, I don’t really see that much difference from one to the other.  I’ve always tried to work in lots of different areas with both groups.

In the Sixties, when Sound came out, Amina, were you… I know Roscoe played in some of Amina’s ensembles in Chicago in the 1960’s.  At that point had the two of you met?

ROSCOE:  Yes, we had.

AMINA:  Yes.  Actually I played… Roscoe did an all Duke Ellington concert, and had me doing vocals, and he did another concert where I played and sang.  But he never played in any of the groups that I had organized.

ROSCOE:  Except the group we had at the Hungry Eye.

AMINA:  Oh, yes.  That’s right.  That organ group!

ROSCOE:  We had a hot group at the Hungry Eye.  The first time we had Gene Dinwiddie with us…

AMINA:  That’s right.  Kalaparusha, Lester Bowie…

ROSCOE:  …and Lester Bowie, and then we went to Kalaparusha and Lester Bowie and Ajaramu.  I mean, we had one of the hottest organ groups that you wanted to hear back in those days.

AMINA:  That’s right.

ROSCOE:  That’s when they had the music up and down Wells Street, the Plugged Nickel, the Hungry Eye, and so forth.  All those clubs were there.  It was like a miniature New York or something.

AMINA:  That’s right.

What was your impression of Amina’s music when you first heard it, Roscoe?  Do you remember the circumstances?

ROSCOE:  I was always knocked out by Amina’s music.  At that time, in Chicago, the organ was starting to gain more presence on the scene.  Jimmy Smith had come out with that record, The Champ, and so on.  And in Chicago there were a lot of organ players then.  Baby Face Willette was there, Eddie Buster… So in Chicago at that time, there was music almost every night.  So I always knew where to go.  You could go out every night and play with somebody if you wanted to, and this is what I did.

Where were some of the places you’d go out to play?  Would they be on the South Side?

ROSCOE:  Yeah, a lot of them were on the South Side.  There was the Wonder Inn…,

AMINA:  McKie’s.

ROSCOE:  …McKie’s, and then there were clubs that were further over toward the lake.  I can’t remember the names of all of them…

AMINA:  The Coral(?) Club.

ROSCOE:  Yeah, and then that club they had down on Stony Island…

AMINA:  Oh, yes.

ROSCOE:  …and one on 71st Street.  There was a lot of… See, I came from that kind of a thing.  I mean, when I grew up in Chicago, not only did I listen to the same music that my parents listened to; I could go right outside of my house and go down the street, and they’d be playing there.  My parents and all of us, we all listened to the same music.

What was that?

ROSCOE:  That was a wide variety of music.  Whatever was popular was on all the jukeboxes.  I mean, those were the days where you could go to a jukebox and there was some variety in the music on the jukebox.  I mean, now you go to a jukebox and it’s all the same thing.  But whoever was popular.  I mean, when Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Williams had that hit out, that was on there.  James Moody’s “It Might As Well Be Spring” was on there.  I mean, just to give you… It was jazz pieces, popular pieces; whatever was popular at that time was out.

Were these clubs hospitable to young saxophonists coming in to sit in?  In other words, were there jam sessions at a lot of clubs?  Were you able to get gigs at some of these clubs with the local musicians?

ROSCOE:  Well, that was my musical upbringing.  I always went out and sat in with people, so I got to know different people.  Like I said, I could go out and play every night.  Then it was also at that time when the licensing for the clubs was getting changed.  If you had a trio there, it was one price for a license.  If you had anything bigger than a trio, then it was a bigger price for a license.  So a lot of house bands were working, and people would come and sit in and stuff like that.  Because it was right on the verge of the era where people were starting not to have as much live music, and the disk jockeys were starting to become popular in the clubs.

Were you playing alto saxophone all this time?  Was that your main instrument back as a teenager?

ROSCOE:   I started on clarinet, then in high school I played baritone saxophone.  Then later on I went to alto, and so on and so on.

A lot of the musicians in Chicago who came to prominence went to DuSable High School with Walter Dyett, but you went to Englewood High School.  Tell me about the music program there.

ROSCOE:   Well, that’s where comes this next CD.  I was very fortunate in Englewood High School to have met Donald Myrick, who is a founding member of the AACM.  He is also a founding member of Phil Cohran’s group he headed, the Afro-Arts Theater, which later on became the Pharaohs, which they did also record under that name, and then after that became members of Earth, Wind and Fire.  Now, like I said, I know that DuSable had Captain Dyett, but we had Donald Myrick at Englewood High School.  And I was fortunate to meet him at that time, because he was already playing the instrument in high school, and he kind of like took me under his wing and, you know, started to show me about music.

I’d like to talk a bit about your gradual transition from being let’s say a talented apprentice on the instrument to becoming a person for whom music was a life.  Did you always see music as your life?  Do you recollect when that started to happen?

ROSCOE:   Well, I know I’ve always loved music, and like I said, it was always in my family.  Through an older brother, I got really introduced and really very interested in Jazz, because he had all of those old 78’s, and we’d spend a lot of time just listening to them.  “Hey, come over here, sit down, let’s listen to this, let’s listen to that.”  So yeah, music has always been in my life.

Then, when I was in the Army, I started to function as a professional musician twenty-four hours a day, and I was in the Army for three years.  So when I came out of there, yeah, I was pretty much on the track to being a musician.

I gather that you were exposed to a lot of interesting music when you were in the Army, stationed in Europe.  If I’m not mistaken, I recollect hearing you talk about hearing Albert Ayler play in Germany maybe…?

ROSCOE:   I was in the band in Heidelberg, Germany.  Sometimes we would go to Berlin along with the band from Berlin and the band from Orleans, France, and Albert Ayler was a member of that band.  We’d come together and do these big parades in Berlin.  But at that time, when all the musicians got together, there were a lot of sessions and different things.  So when I first heard Albert at that time, I didn’t quite understand what he was doing, but I did know that he had an enormous sound on the tenor.  I remember that once someone called a blues or something at the session, and I think that for the first couple of choruses Albert Ayler played the blues straight, and then when he started to go away from that, then I started to really kind of understand what he was doing.

But I have to say that, as a musician, when I was in the Army, when I first heard Ornette Coleman, I didn’t really fully understand what he was doing.  When I got back to Chicago and met Joseph Jarman, he was already more advanced than I was in terms of listening to Eric Dolphy… As a matter of fact, it was John Coltrane who brought me back into that music with his record Coltrane, which has “Out of This World” on it.  That was when Coltrane started to go away from the regular chordal pattern and use a sort of a modal approach to the music.  When I started to hear that, I said, “Wait, I’d better go back and listen to Eric,” and then I said, “I’d better go back and listen to Ornette,” and then I started to fully understand.  That was like about two years as a musician being able to understand that music.

Talk about the beginnings of your relationship with Joseph Jarman.  I gather that you and he and Malachi Favors were all at Wilson Junior College, now called Kennedy-King.

ROSCOE:   Yeah, it was Wilson Junior College.  Also Jack De Johnette was there, because we played a lot in those early days.  Jack was known around town as a pianist, but he always played drums, too, because he was very talented.

Wasn’t Steve McCall the drummer in his trio?

ROSCOE:   In Jack’s trio?  I don’t remember at that time.  I know it was Scotty Holt.  Steve might have done some things with him.  But it was Scotty Holt, the bass player.  So we were all there together, and that’s where we first met.  And of course, Muhal was always the person who brought everybody together.  He had his big band rehearsals down at a place called the C&C every Monday night, and we all started to want to go down there and be a part of that.  This is what brought everybody together to where people started talking about, “Oh, yeah, let’s put together an organization where we can kind of control our destinies a little bit more” and so on and so forth, and this is where the thoughts for the AACM originated.

What was your first contact with Muhal like?  What was your impression?

ROSCOE:   Well, Muhal always impressed me… Now, he was a guy who would always help out anybody who needed help, and everybody would always come over to his house, and at the end of the week he would still have a piece for the big band!  I don’t know how he did that, but he did it! [LAUGHS] For a while, all I did was, I’d go to school, and then after school then I would go over to Muhal’s house.  Sometimes I wouldn’t get home until 9 or 10 o’clock at night or something like that.  And that’s what a lot of us did in that period.

Amina, you weren’t originally from Chicago.  You came there from Arkansas.  But when did you get to Chicago?

AMINA:   In 1963.

Did you immediately find the AACM at that time?

AMINA:  No.  I went there to teach school.  I taught Seventh and Eighth Grade music.  I really wasn’t thinking about playing.  And I went out with a young man one time, he was a photographer… He was really a photographer, but he liked to play the hand drums.  Unfortunately, he had no rhythm, none.  But he would go up on the West Side and sit in, and I went there with him one night and played the organ, and the leader of the group fired his organ player and hired me.  Then I went from there, and started working with a guy named Cozy Eggleston.  While working with Cozy, Ajaramu, the drummer, heard me, and we formed a group together.  He was the one that brought me into the AACM.

Talk about your background in Arkansas.  Had you been playing piano and organ since very young, and in church?

AMINA:  Well, I started playing the piano… I was taking European Classical music around 7, and then I started playing in the church, leading choirs and co-leaders of several gospel groups in my pre-teens, all the way up through college.  Then the organ was introduced in the early Sixties.  I was playing the piano in a club, then the organs came in, and then I started playing in the churches, playing church organ.

So you were playing both in the church and jazz as well?

AMINA:  Yes, I was.

Talk about your early exposure to Jazz.  Who were the pianists who inspired you in the type of music you were trying to play?

AMINA:  Well, first of all, I was doing Rhythm-and-Blues and everything.  And a young lady when I was in college came up to me and she said, “I have a job for you, but it’s playing in a nightclub.”  I’ve told this story so many times.  I wasn’t even thinking about playing in a nightclub.  I said, “Girl, I can’t play no nightclub.”  She said, “Yes, you can.  It pays five dollars a night.”  And as I have said so often, we called her “the black Elizabeth Taylor,” because she looked just like Elizabeth Taylor.

So I went down there and got this job playing.  I copied all of the… Because I was singing.  I always sang and played at the same time.  I copied all of Ella Fitzgerald’s “Stomping At The Savoy,” note for note.  But like Roscoe was saying, the jukebox there had Ornette Coleman, Lou Donaldson, and Ornette’s music was very popular.  I always liked it.  It sounded strange, but I liked it.

But a lot of the piano players from Memphis, Tennessee, used to come to this hotel which had a room in it…  The club was in the hotel.  So I picked up a lot of things on piano from the pianists that would stay at the hotel.  They played at the white country clubs in Little Rock.

Who were some of the pianists you heard then?

AMINA:  Charles Thomas.  He’s in Memphis now.

He played a week at Bradley’s in New York a few months ago.

AMINA:  Oh, a few months ago.  I heard that he had been this way, but I didn’t know when.  A young man that’s passed away now, Eddie Collins.  There’s a young guy that’s on the scene now, his father is… I can’t think of his name.  He’s from Little Rock now.  He’s very popular.

So this is how I learned.  I started picking up things on the piano, trying to learn how to play “So What” and things like that.  But mainly I was copying Nina Simone, Dakota Staton, Ella Fitzgerald.

What was early impression of the AACM after you got to Chicago?  What was your first experience like?

AMINA:  Well, I was very apprehensive.  Because Muhal had those charts!  I thought they was… I said, “Oh, my goodness.”  There were about two or three piano players on the scene, and I was hoping I wouldn’t be called!  Because reading the music, it looked so, so difficult.  I was more or less shy.  Believe it or not, I was.  I was hoping I wouldn’t be called to play.  I would worry all while I was up there at the piano!  I was worried about playing the wrong note.  Because the music looked very difficult to me, and it can be.  But Muhal was very patient and very encouraging.

Then when we started organizing smaller groups, we all did things.  Like, Roscoe and all of them were inspiring.  I never felt… You know, I felt that I belonged and that I was, and I realized that I could write, and that I had something to say.  Because you know, Roscoe used to walk around with this big tall top hat, it was about five feet high tall!  He was painting, Muhal was painting.  They were doing all these things.  It was very, very creative.  So it was like a beehive of activity, and I was inspired.

It sounds like Chicago was a place where you could really actualize anything that came to mind through the work you were doing and put it out there, and it would generate new activity, and it just kept going and going.

ROSCOE:  That’s true.  Because we were very fortunate to be in a spot where there were so many people that were thinking the same way.  It was also very inspiring.  Because I remember going to different people’s concerts, and then the way I would feel, I’d be so excited that I felt that I wanted to go home and try to really work hard for my next concert.  And so on and so on.  You would always be inspired… it was just a great time, a great learning time for music, and you didn’t have to be quite as rushed as, like, for instance, if you had been in New York at that time, where everybody is over here and over there, you know, trying to do this and do that to make some money or whatever.  I’m not saying anything about New York.  I’m just saying that it was easier to get a bunch of people together there, at that time, then it would have been in New York.

AMINA:  Mmm-hmm.  It was.  It was.

Well, New York seems a much more competitive, cut-throat type of place in many ways.  Considering the AACM has stayed together and the relationships have remained over thirty-plus years, it’s testimony to the bonds that formed during that time.

AMINA:  Right.  Because of our foundation there.  I don’t think it could have happened here because it’s too spread out.  There’s too much… You have to work so hard to survive here.  It was much more relaxed in Chicago.

But I don’t exactly get the sense that in Chicago it was so economically wonderful for the musicians in the AACM, but I guess it was maybe a little easier to live.

ROSCOE:  Yeah, that, and then… Well, we’re an example to the world of what musicians can do if they put their resources together.  I mean, not only did the AACM exist.  I mean, of course, we started it off… The way we got things going was, we paid dues, and we saved our money, and we had our programs for the children in the community, and then we would do our concerts.

AMINA:  We had a training program.

ROSCOE:  Yes.  Then we also went on to an idea beyond that.  We thought, like, “Hmm, well, why don’t we encourage people in other cities to do a similar type thing, and then have exchange concerts and things like that.”  I mean, we also created work for musicians, in a way.  We’d have musicians come up from Detroit, which later became the B.A.G, the Black Artists Group…

AMINA:  St. Louis.

ROSCOE:  I mean, St. Louis.  Sorry.

You were going back and forth to Detroit also, I guess.

ROSCOE:  Well, Michigan is where I started the C.A.C., which is the Creative Music Collective.  We followed the same format that we had laid out in the AACM.  I mean, we did our concerts, and then we’d bring different people in to play.  It was like creating employment.

Roscoe, it sounds like you and Malachi Favors formed an instant bond from those days in junior college.  And he was a member of your original ensemble, even before the first Delmark recording.  A few words about that relationship.

ROSCOE:  Well, he was also at Wilson Junior College with us.  It was Threadgill, Malachi, Jack De Johnette, Joseph, John Powell, and a bunch of other folks.  Yes, Malachi was in some of my earliest groups, that’s true.  We did form an immediate bond.  Although we don’t always agree on everything, we do at least agree on music, you know!  So that’s kept us together through all of these years.

Talk about your earliest groups, before The Sound was recorded.  Were you basically working toward the areas that you explored on Sound in those groups in ’64 and ’65?

ROSCOE:  Well, like we were talking about before we went on the air here, we’ve got a record way back there with Alvin Fielder and Fred Berry, who is a trumpet player that used to play with us, Malachi and myself, which is a very good record which we might release sometime.  But then even before that, Gene Dinwiddie, who I don’t know how many people know of him now, but he went on to be a member of Paul Butterfield’s band for a while; and then Kalaparusha was playing with us a lot in those days.  The other night I was playing in Chicago at the Hot House, and a guy came by with some photographs from that period, thirty years ago, with Lester Lashley on there playing cello, and this other drummer that we worked with out of St. Louis — at that time his name was Leonard Smith, and now his name is Fela(?).

In those days, that’s all we did, was play.  I mean, we rehearsed every day.  When it was warm, we went to the park and played every day.  I mean, Chicago was that kind of place.  When I was growing up there, if you went to the park, you could always find Curley out there, a saxophonist, playing.  And a lot of guys that were really trying to learn how to play and stuff, they would go out there and hang around him.  So these groups and the AACM, I mean, they all evolved out of this kind of philosophy.

Amina, what did having musicians available like Roscoe and Kalaparusha and many others do for your writing with your various groups, Amina and Company, in the mid-1960’s?

AMINA:  Well, everybody has a different style and approach.  For instance, Kalaparusha was playing with us for quite a while.  We traveled together.  I had this little electric piano, and I would watch how he voiced his chords with the clusters and things.  And just observing the scores and hearing the music, I saw that the mind was free to create whatever you wanted to create, and that it would work, you know, if you believed in it, and it would have a meaning to it.  I noticed this with all the music, with Muhal… Everyone was different, but yet they were unique within their own.  Of course, my background was mostly just Gospel.  I never studied technically.  So basically, mine was I guess a little bit more simple.  I didn’t know anything about chords or anything like that really.  I just had some of the basic things.  So I just had to observe and listen and watch.  I’d see what Muhal would do… I just picked up what I could.

I guess later, when you worked with Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons, the chords probably came into play a little more.

AMINA:  Yes.  They didn’t believe in having music.  Sonny Stitt would rehearse something, and then three months later he would call it.

ROSCOE:  [LOUD LAUGH]

AMINA:  I remember “Autumn in New York,” he rehearsed that, and then I forgot all about the song.  But he said, “‘Autumn In New York,'” and just started playing it before…!  They didn’t… So it was like you had this on your mind.  See, I didn’t know anything about going to the stores and buying sheet music.  I was very naive, believe it not; very naive.  In doing Gospel music, we never used any music.  We picked up all the songs off the radio.  There was no such thing as buying music.  You know, I was from a little village on the highway, and the quartet singers would come through, so I mean, we never saw music — you just picked it up from what you heard.

So therefore, with Sonny and Jug… Jug did have a few little tunes he wrote on the chord changes on occasion.  But basically, they wanted you to hear it up here.  You had to hear it.  They said, “Use your ears.”  Especially Sonny Stitt.  He would always say, “Use your ears.”

Roscoe, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons are really synonymous, in a way, with a certain sound of Chicago.  Were they a big part of your early experience as a saxophonist?

ROSCOE:  Yeah, of course.  And Nicky Hill was also a big part.  I mean, a lot of folks don’t know about Nicky Hill.  He was also a great saxophonist in Chicago.  There were so many people!  I mean, Clarence Wheeler was a great saxophonist.  There was a guy when I was growing up named George Fullalove(?), who was a great saxophonist.  And this guy that I just told you about, Curly; I mean, he’d go out in the park and he’d be out there six-eight hours a day, standing up there, running scales and arpeggios all day, all day long.  We’d just go out there and sit and listen to him, and he’d tell us about this and tell us about that, and show us different things and stuff like that.

Chicago has a very rich tradition in music. I mean, there are so many people that you don’t even hear about that are totally great.

And it’s been that way since the turn of the century, since the Pekin Theater was built on 27th Street and Michigan Avenue in 1905.

ROSCOE:  Exactly.

A center of show business and black artists.

[MUSIC: Amina, “Jumping In The Sugar Bowl” (1986); Roscoe, “Walking In The Moonlight” (1994)]

“Walking In The Moonlight” was a composition by Roscoe Mitchell, Senior.  Was your father a musician, a working musician?  Obviously he was a lover of music.

ROSCOE:  Yeah, he was a lover of music.  He was a singer, you know.  Not only was it the jazz artists who were real popular in those days, but the Popular singer was also very popular; Nat King Cole, of course, comes to mind…

Did your father know him from his younger days in Chicago?

ROSCOE:  Yes, he did.  My mother went to school with Nat King Cole.  They remember him always going to the church to practice the piano and stuff all the time.

Nat Cole’s father was a minister…

ROSCOE:  Yes.  And… Oh, what was I saying…?

I interrupted you.  Sorry.

ROSCOE:  Yes. [LAUGHS]

Your father was a singer…

ROSCOE:  Yes, my father was a singer, and he was one… I guess you could group him into the group of singers that they call crooners.  He also used to do a thing where he would imitate instruments, you

Would you say you picked up your earliest musical inspiration from him?  Did he get you your first instrument?

ROSCOE:  Well, I would say that my father always wanted me to be a singer, you know, because that was his first love.  I think my brother is the one who got me interested in the instrument.  I always loved music.

Well, you have that rich baritone.  I’d imagine you could have gone somewhere with it!

ROSCOE:  Yeah.  But it was my brother who was largely responsible for me starting to know about people like Lester Young and Charlie Parker and so forth.

A number of the older musicians in Chicago who people might not necessarily think of as being involved in the AACM were early members, like Jodie Christian, the pianist on Hey Donald.

ROSCOE:  Yes, he was.  Jodie was my idol when I was in high school.  I mean, I remember Lester telling a story about Jodie and a group he had with I think Bunky Green and Paul Serrano, and it might have been Victor Sproles or somebody on bass — I don’t remember.  He remembered they came down to St. Louis, and they were so great that the people just said, “Oh, they’ve got to stay a few more days,” so they cancelled their whole program and kept them down there.  All those people were just a great inspiration to me.  Like I said, in Chicago you could just go out and see these kind of people, like, all the time.  So there was always something to keep you thinking about something.

Eddie Harris, who is working at Sweet Basil…he and Richard Abrams were actually partnering on a workshop orchestra that eventually became the Experimental Band.

ROSCOE:  That’s correct.

Muhal, of course, worked with Eddie Harris’ groups in the late 1960’s and early Seventies.

ROSCOE:  Yes, he did.

Now, Eddie Harris is someone who was very much concerned with sound and explorations in sound in similar ways to what you have been doing.

ROSCOE:  Of course he is.  I mean, Eddie Harris is the only guy that I really know that really has ever done anything with the electric saxophone and all of these different kinds of things.  He has always been right on the edge of creativity all the time, I mean, with all the different things that he invented, and his books, and he’s got the ability to be extremely experimental or just walk over here or something and get a big hit — as a Jazz musician!  You remember when he came out with “Exodus,” I’m sure.  He was always a great inspiration to all of us.  I was just in St. Louis, I don’t know, a few months ago, and I was very lucky that Eddie Harris was playing at the hotel that I was staying in, so I got to see him and listen to his music again.

Amina, in Little Rock, where you settled I guess as a young adult, there was a thriving musical community as well.  Two musicians prominent on the scene today who come to mind, although I don’t know if you were there exactly when they were there, are Pharaoh Sanders and John Stubblefield.

AMINA:  Well, when I was in college I met Stubblefield.  His group came over to play.  We had originally hired Arthur Porter I believe is his name.  His son, Art Porter, Jr., is now very popular on the scene.  Art Porter couldn’t make it so, he sent Stubblefield’s band.  We clashed the first night, but we’ve been very good friends ever since then.  Pharaoh wasn’t there.  He had moved by the time I got there.

Tell me about the music that you’ve composed for the concert on June 18th.  It’s original music commissioned for this concert.

AMINA:  Well, I’ve been commissioned to write a composition for a chamber orchestra of 12 pieces, the S.E.M. Ensemble, directed by Petr Kotik.  Then Roscoe and I will be doing a duet, along with other duets he’s doing.  This will be original music also.

Roscoe, you mentioned that your Army experience sort of catapulted you into being a professional musician.  In the Art Ensemble of Chicago, I think everybody but Moye spent some time in the Army.  It seems to me that that experience must have had a big impact on the Art Ensemble’s being able to forge their path during the difficult days of the late Sixties.

ROSCOE:  Well, you learn how to survive in the Army, that’s for sure.  And it’s true, I met great people in the Army.  Like, another guy out of Chicago, Reuben Cooper, was in the Army with me at that time.  Lucious White, who is Joseph Jarman’s cousin, who is an excellent alto saxophonist and bassoonist.  When I was in Heidelberg, Germany, Nathaniel Davis’s group had won the All-Army competition, so they came and stayed with us for almost about a month or so.  I would go around with him and he’d be playing… I remember one time we were down at the Cave 54 in Heidelberg, Germany.  There was a great Danish saxophonist there who was in Germany at that time, Bent Jadik, and he’d always be down there kind of running over everybody, and then when Nathaniel Davis came down there that night [LAUGHS], we saw Bent Jadik kind of perk up a little bit!

Like I said, a lot of really talented musicians that were willing to share some time with me and show me different things like that.  Some people may have had a bad experience in the Army.  Mine wasn’t that bad.  I mean, I actually came out of there knowing something about music.

Talk a little about that three-year sojourn in Europe with the Art Ensemble.  What was your impetus for going over there?

ROSCOE:  Well, we had been all over the States.  We were very adventurous, you know.  And I think that we’re responsible for a lot of people that go over there now.  Because people weren’t really going over there, you know.  We went over there and carried the banner of the AACM.  We started playing at this club, it was a small theater really, in Montparnesse, called the Luciniere(?) Theater.  We played there four nights a week, and sometimes we’d have enough at the end of the gig to go get ourselves a cheese sandwich and a beer.  But people started to know about us.  And this is how people became interested in us in Europe.

Also Steve McCall was over there at that time, Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins, Leo Smith was there.  But not only them, there were all these people from New York.  I mean, Paris was alive with music then.  I’ve never seen Paris like that as I saw it in the late Sixties.  There was always music all the time.  This guy who put out all those records, Jean-George Caracas(?), did this big festival.  He was supposed to have it in Paris, and at the last moment they wouldn’t let him have it at the Mall de Mutualité, so he had to change everything around, and he had it in Amiges(?), Belgium.  This was like a grand festival, with a whole week, two different stages, one shut down and the next one kicked right up, and so on.  He had all kinds of music there.

Then after that was that whole rich time when we did all those different recordings.  I got a chance to record with Archie Shepp and Grachan Moncur and Sunny Murray and so on and so forth.  I mean, there were concerts almost every night.  Every day everybody was at the American Center, playing all the time.  I’ve never seen Paris like that.

Well, the records bear that out.  There’s a real sort of fire burning through all of them collectively.

ROSCOE:  Exactly.  I mean, Cal Massey was there.  I was hanging out with Hank Mobley, Don Byas, so on… I mean, I couldn’t have asked for a richer experience as a young musician at that time.

One musician who both you and Amina have both mentioned as being right there, and who was at the beginning of Roscoe’s musical explorations, is Henry Threadgill.  In the next set we’ll hear compositions by him on which Amina and Roscoe perform.  In Amina’s case, she’s featured on organ on a song entitled “Song Out Of My Trees,” the title track of a 1994 release on Black Saint, with Ed Cherry on guitar, Henry Threadgill, alto saxophone, and Reggie Nicholson on drums.  Then from Roscoe Mitchell’s new release on Lovely Music, Pilgrimage, the Roscoe Mitchell New Chamber Ensemble, we’ll hear “He Didn’t Give Up; He Was Taken”, music by Henry Threadgill and poetry by Thulani Davis.  This is a quartet for baritone voice, Thomas Buckner; violin, Vartan Manoogian; alto saxophone, Roscoe Mitchell, piano, Joseph Kubera.

Amina, a few words about the piece we’re about to hear.

AMINA:  Well, on this particular piece, Henry started hearing things for organ.  He’s always coming up with various combinations of instrumentation.  And it seems like the organ started coming back on the scene again, so I was glad to see that.  It was very interesting playing this particular composition with Henry.

ROSCOE:  I’ll have to say about Henry, he’s a great musician and a great inspiration.  I’d like to start off by saying that.  Because Henry was also there back in Wilson Junior College Days.  My admiration of him as a composer… I mean, he just completely overwhelms me every time I hear something by him, because I’m always inspired by what he’s actually writing.  This piece that we do on this record is a text of Thulani Davis about a guy who was homeless, but despite all of that he didn’t give up, he went on, he was taken, he had a purpose.  This piece grew out of a concert that happened in New York at Town Hall, where we had the New Chamber Ensemble and Henry Threadgill’s group both doing separate pieces and combined pieces.  So he wrote this piece for the New Chamber Ensemble at that time.

[MUSIC: Threadgill-Amina-Nicholson-Cherry, “Song Out of My Trees” (1994); RM New Chamber Ensemble, “He Didn’t Give Up; He Was Taken” (1995)]

In summing things up, I’d like to talk about current events, current projects.  Roscoe, you’ve been living in Madison, Wisconsin, and using it as your base.  How many groups are you working with now? Are you  teaching…

ROSCOE:  For the moment I’m not teaching.  The different groups that I’m playing with right now:  Of course, the Art Ensemble is one.  The Note Factory is another.  The New Chamber Ensemble is another.  Then, I do different variations of different things.  I had a concert in Chicago last Saturday with Matthew Shipp, Spencer Barefield (who is a member of the original Sound Ensemble), Malachi Favors, Gerald Cleaver, who is the new drummer (and an excellent drummer, I might add) that I’ve been working with out of Detroit, and of course myself on woodwinds.

I’m a composer also, so depending upon what someone is asking for, the size of the ensemble or whatever, I’ll write for that also.  Then of course, don’t let me forget, we just had the record come out with the quartet with Jodie Christian, Malachi Favors and Albert Tootie Heath.

You also appear on a recent recording on Delmark with Jodie Christian, a couple of very strong pieces.

ROSCOE:  Yes.

TP:    You’ve always incorporated extended techniques on the different saxophones, but it seems that your use of circular breathing has really been entering your compositional formats in the last decade.  Can you talk about the aesthetics of circular breathing, what it allows you to do?

ROSCOE:  Well, if I look at Frank Wright, for instance, and the kinds of things that he was doing in the early Sixties, which I was very impressed by, what I can do now is go back and reflect not only on that situation, but other situations musically.  Just his approach to the sound, for instance, I’ve studied that, and now I can extend that through circular breathing.  That’s what it allows you to be able to do.  It also gives me the opportunity to be able to put more, longer phrases together, and the opportunity to explore when notes really come at you very fast and continuous for a long time.

With me, it’s an experiment.  Everything is an experiment.  So when I’m out with one of my groups, it takes us at least a week or so playing every night before we really start to get up there, and then it gets so exciting that after a concert is over you can never sleep at night.  So sometimes I’ll have a glass of wine and it will calm me down.

But to me, it’s all an experiment.  The fun for me is going out and having the opportunity to explore these different ideas that I have in my head.

Of course, I listened to Roland Kirk all the time when he was alive, and I was totally amazed by what he did, because not only did he circular breathe; he was able to play several instruments, you know, out of his mouth and some out of his nose, and so on and so forth.  Now, there’s a guy who really had control over that.  If you think about circular breathing, it’s a very old tradition.  I mean, the aborigines used it, the Egyptian musicians used it a long time ago. I became interested in it through Roland Kirk, and I had to think about it for about a year before I was able to do it.

In regard to everything being an experiment, the Art Ensemble of Chicago must have been an ideal vehicle for workshopping ideas on a consistent basis, night after night, week after week, year after year.

ROSCOE:  Of course. I mean, I think that’s the thing that keeps people going, is the opportunity to explore music.  I could never be one of those musicians that just plays the same thing all the time, because that’s never been my interest with music.  The thing that’s always fascinated me about music is there’s so much to learn, and I like to try to keep myself as much as I can in the forefront of that learning process.

Amina, same question to you as I posed to Roscoe: The different situations you’re working in, current projects, etcetera.

AMINA:  Well, right now I’m doing a lot of Blues, Gospel, Jazz and extended forms of music solo piano.  Hopefully, I’m trying to organize pipe organ work in Europe, various parts of Europe.  They have expressed interest in that.

Talk about the dynamics of that vis-a-vis working with the Hammond or various electric organs.

AMINA:  Well, of course, with the electric everything is right there, right at the touch.  With the pipe organ you’re dealing with the air.  The sound is so vast, it’s like… You work at it more, but the rewards are so much greater with the pipe organ, because there’s phenomenal combinations, and the size of the pipes, you get all the different kinds of sounds.  You can’t beat it.  I mean, the Hammond, I would say, would be, as far as electric organ, I would prefer that.  If I had to play the electric organ, it would be the Hammond B-3.  But pipe organ, there’s just no comparison really.  It’s very thrilling to be able to play that.  I would like to do more with that.

Originally I had done some work with voice choir with the pipe organ, so hopefully I can continue to do that.  I’m just working now on Gospel, writing Gospel tunes for the solo performances.

So it’s primarily solo.  You don’t really have a working band…?

AMINA:  Oh, yes, I have a trio.  Well, I do a lot of trio work.  Right now I’m getting calls for a lot of Bessie Smith material and the trio format.  The solo piano and trio formats.

On the next set we’ll hear separate duos by each of you with Muhal Richard Abrams, who has been such a great inspiration for both of you.  I know I asked you for some words about him before, but maybe we can conclude with some comments about you, the AACM, and your relations with Muhal Richard Abrams over the years.  Roscoe?

ROSCOE:  Well, like I said before, Muhal has like always been a mentor, not only to me but so many other musicians in Chicago.  I think it was through his efforts of keeping that Experimental Band going where all these people could get together; it provided a place where all these ideas could come out.  Like I said, this was where the ideas for putting the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians came about.  We were interested in controlling our own destinies, because we’d read the books and seen what happened to people who were out there on their own.  I think they didn’t really treat Charlie Parker that well, or Coltrane.  I think Charlie Parker had maybe one European tour or something in his life; I don’t know what it was.  But those kinds of things made us want to reassess the situation and try to band together, so that we could create self-employment for ourselves, sponsor each other in concerts of our own original music, maintain a training program for young, inspired musicians.  These are the kinds of things that have kept us going throughout the years.

AMINA:  Muhal is really my spiritual brother.  I think we must have known each other in a past life.  You see, Muhal, he never stops creating.  He constantly inspires me.  He’ll push without pushing.  He’ll say, “Okay, Amina, you need to do this, you need…”  So he’ll always find ways to encourage me to write and to create and to do things.  He’ll bring up some ideas.  Because he knows the things that I can do sometimes that I don’t even think about doing.  So I mean, he’s very inspiring to me.  I didn’t know that he was coming to New York; I don’t know if he knew that I was coming.  But we have been in close contact since being here.  As I said, he’s my spiritual brother, and I appreciate all the things that he has done to encourage me.  He still does that.  Not that I depend on him, but I can look to Muhal for any type of assistance, musically or whatever.  And he has inspired a lot of people, and people love him because of that.  I certainly do.

[ETC.]

[MUSIC: Muhal-Amina, “Dance From The East” (1981); Roscoe-Muhal, “Ode To the Imagination” (1990)]

Roscoe Mitchell (Ted Panken) – (12-5-95):

[MUSIC: “Songs In The Wind, 1&2”]

I’d like to ask you about the genesis of the Roscoe Mitchell Chamber Ensemble.  You and Tom Buckner have been at least recording together since the late 1970’s, and you’ve known each other now for at least thirty years, I gather.

Yes, that’s true.  We met in California in the late Sixties.  That’s when we first met.  We started performing together when we put our group together, Space, with Gerald Oshita.

Tom Buckner was up here a few days ago, and described hearing the Roscoe Mitchell Quartet, I believe it was, several times in the Bay Area in the mid-1960’s.  What were your first impressions of Tom Buckner?  What was he into at the time you were out there?

Well, let’s just say that when this group came together, I was putting focus on composition and improvisation.  And Thomas Buckner interested me because he was an improviser when I met him.  I don’t know if you recall any of his earlier recordings with Ghost Opera, but it was a group that was from the West Coast that used improvisation in their music.

I first met Gerald Oshita when I was in California in 1967.  He was playing in a group with Oliver Johnson and Donald Raphael Garrett.

All of these people were improvisers at that time, and this group came together to study improvisation and composition as they relate to each other, and that tradition continues today.

When did Kubera and Manoogian start to enter the picture?

I met Vartan at a concert of Joan Wildman at the University of Wisconsin.  We were playing together on a composition by Joan Wildman.  I think we struck a chord from that very beginning, and we decided that we would go on and try to do some work together.  I think our first performance was on a concert of Vartan’s at the Eldon(?) Museum in Madison, where we performed the composition, the duet for alto saxophone and violin entitled “Night Star.”

You’ve been involved in maybe four or five simultaneous ongoing projects over the last number of years, it would seem to me.  This ensemble, with Joseph Kubera, Vartan Manoogian and Thomas Bucker, that’s performing Thursday; the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which has been a primary interest for a quarter-century and more; the Sound Ensemble; the Note Factory.  Are compositions written or structured for specific musical units, or are they mutable, adaptable to different performance situations?

Well, certainly you can transpose a composition so that it will fit, you know, any situation you want it to fit.  Usually how I start off on a composition is first I have an idea, and then I figure out how to get that idea down.  Then a lot of times you are given the size ensemble that will perform the work that you’re writing.  So it’s determined by lots of things.  One composition, “Nonaah,” started off as a solo piece, and has ended up being played by larger ensembles, quartets, trios, so on and so forth.

We could probably do a nice 90-minute presentation on various examples of how “Nonaah” has been formulated.

Yeah, people have done that.  There’s a young woman in Madison, whose name slips my mind right now, who did her dissertation on that piece, along with some works by Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, I believe.

When was “Nonaah” actually written or conceived?

In the early Seventies, as a solo piece, like I said.

Putting together a solo piece, does it come from your explorations of the instrument?  Does it come from a more conceptual framework…?

Well, let’s look at it.  One part of “Nonaah” is set up so that it has wide intervals.  One of the thoughts that I had when I was composing it, I wanted to have a piece that was played as a solo instrument that would give the illusion of being two instruments, and with the wide intervals like that, you can get that, because the instrument sounds different in the lower range and the mid range and the high range, and then there’s also the altissimo range, of course, which sounds different from any of those other registers.  So if you construct a melody that moves in that way, in taking advantage of the intervals, then you will achieve that goal at the end.  And that was one of the thoughts that I had when I was constructing the composition.

But then, of course, after that, you use that same basic formula to structure other movements of the piece.  So for me, I guess, I am at the point now where if I needed to do anything in that particular system of music, I could do it, I feel like I could do it, because I have built the vocabulary related to that structure.

I saw the Art Ensemble of Chicago perform in Chicago on December 1st, and you were performing on soprano, alto, tenor sax, and you had the bass saxophone as well, although I don’t think you got to play it…

No, I didn’t play it, actually.  I just brought it along, because it was going off to Jamaica where we’re going to be for the next month, and I guess I just kind of forgot to play it.  I mean, a lot of times I don’t really get to instruments, but I like to have them there if I’m moving in that direction.

What determines which instruments you’re playing at a particular time?  Your main concentration over the last number of years seems to be with the soprano and the alto saxophone.  It doesn’t seem like we get to hear you always on the tenor, but when we do, it seems like you’ve really been putting a lot of work or thought into a particular area.  Has that been happening lately?

Well, I mean, what determines what sounds I get to is, like, a lot of times I’m trying to just move different sounds around, and then whatever I hear that can add on to the structure I’m working on, I’ll select the instrument based on that.  So this is how these things get determined.  Unless, of course, there’s a specific composition which calls for a specific instrument.  Then that would be played on that instrument.

How long has multi-instrumentalism as a way of getting to the plethora of sounds that are at your disposal been a major preoccupation of yours?  Did that begin with your exposure to the AACM and that group of musicians?

Well, I think that, like, in the late Sixties I wanted to explore other sounds.  But then, if you notice, in the history of the music, before the Bebop era, in the larger bands, a lot of the woodwind players doubled.

Tripled.

Yeah.  If you see some of those pictures, they had quite a variety of instruments that they played.  I think the music at some point moved to where it was a one person, one instrument type focus.

With smaller combos, sure.  I mean, Harry Carney played baritone sax, bass clarinet and clarinet, and Jimmy Hamilton…

And so on, yeah, sure.

But in terms of your preoccupation, you weren’t really coming up in Chicago in an environment where that sort of multi-instrumentalism was a common thing as such.

That’s true.  But I think my fascination with sounds drew me toward that.  For instance, the Art Ensemble is an outgrowth of a quartet of myself and Malachi Favors and Philip Wilson and Lester Bowie.  When Philip left the group, we were drawn more to percussion sounds.  That was because we didn’t really have anyone that we thought could come into the group and function in his place in terms of the type of melodic structure that he dealt with.  So that drew us more into percussion.

It just kind of added on to my fascination with the exploration of sounds.  I mean, sometimes I don’t really hear like a scale per se.  I might hear one note, and then the next note with a whistle, or a whistle with kind of a wind instrument, or a whistle and a bell.  There are so many different possibilities to explore.

When did your obsession with the saxophone begin?  When did it become evident to you that music was going to be your life?

Well, I guess I kind of knew that in high school.  And I was fortunate enough… If you remember the record, Hey, Donald!, that’s dedicated to my friend Donald Myrick, who went on to help establish Earth, Wind and Fire.  Donald Myrick was an excellent musician when I met him in Chicago, and he was a big motivation for me — you know, to see someone, one of my peers actually doing that.  So I guess I kind of knew it then.  And I had an older brother who had many, many 78 records, and he would get me to sit down and listen to them, and that really…

What kind of records were they?

Oh, you know, all of the old ones — J.J. Johnson, Charlie Parker.  Everything was on 78 then.  Billie Holiday…

In the late 1940’s, early 1950’s?

Yes.

Who were the people who really caught your ear first as far as stylists, specifically as saxophone stylists?

That’s hard to say, because I liked different stylists from different records.  If I were to look at the tenor saxophone, I’d look at like our history of many styles.  And this is how the tenor is represented in my mind.  And then I always listened to, you know, the same music that my mother and father listened to.  So it was a wide variety of music.

What were they listening to?

Oh, everybody listened to everything that was popular then.  It could be a popular song or… Oh, and it was always on the jukeboxes, too.  The jukeboxes actually had a variety of things that you could select from.  For instance, when James Moody’s “It Might As Well Be Spring” was popular, everybody listened to that, not just a select group of people from here or a select group of people from there.  Everybody knew about that.  Everyone knew of that duet with Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Williams.  You know, whatever, whether it was a song by Nat King Cole, or even when Johnnie Ray had his hit, “Cry.”  All of these different things were common knowledge.  So for me, I had a wide variety of music to select from.

Did your choice to pick up a saxophone at an early age… How old were you when you first began playing?

Oh, I was a late starter on saxophone. I mean, I started clarinet first when I was 11 years old.  That’s late-starting.

How was that inspired?  Through your family or through school?

I guess mostly through my older brother, Norman.  I was always interested in music, and I used to sing a lot when I was younger.  But I guess mostly influenced by him to want to go on and actually pursue an instrument.

What was your first more or less formal tuition?  Was that in high school or in the elementary schools?

That was in high school. I started clarinet in Milwaukee, at I think it was West Division High School.  I don’t remember the teacher.

Did you further that in high school in Chicago?

Yes, at Englewood High School.

I’m sorry to keep putting you all the way back in the Fifties, but there are some things I’ve been curious about for a long time, so I’m taking the opportunity.  Were you playing in a lot of teenage combo situations, gigs for money and so forth then, in high school…?

Well, no, not that much.  I mean, we had our regular obligations that we did in high school, with the concert band, and I was also a member of the dance band.  I think that I started to function probably more as a professional musician when I was in the Army, from 1958, I believe it was, to 1961.  So by the time I got out of the Army, it was pretty much solidified that I was going to be a musician.

I gather that the Army was a real mind-bending experience for you musically, and you were exposed to many different ways of playing music.  I think one account I’ve read has you encountering Albert Ayler in Germany in the early Sixties.

That was a big influence on me.  Because at that time, I was aware of Ornette Coleman’s music, but I have to say, even as a musician at that time, I didn’t fully understand what Ornette was doing.  The thing about Albert Ayler, when I first met him, one thing I knew about him, I knew basically what was happening with the saxophone, and I knew he had a tremendous sound on the instrument, and that lured me in to want to try to figure out what it is that he was doing on the saxophone.  I remember once there was a session.  They were all playing the Blues, and Albert Ayler, he played the Blues straight, like for two or three choruses, and then started to stretch it out.  And that really helped me.  That was kind of a major mark for me musically, just to be able to see that that could really be done.

Again, referring to interviews, you’ve described being impressed at that time by Sonny Rollins, by Hank Mobley, by Wayne Shorter — I think those are the three names that come to mind in terms of playing in a style.  Were you playing tenor, alto…?

I was playing alto.  I mean, in the dance bands I played baritone.

So the multi-instrumentalism started there.

Well, you could say so.  I mean, my first encounter with the saxophone was baritone in high school.  The guy who was playing baritone in the dance band graduated, and I was moved up to that position of playing the baritone.  But I think the alto was the saxophone that really caught my interest.

Describe the ambiance of being in an Army band in Germany, in 1959, 1960, 1961.  The regimen, the musicians, and the off-base scene that was happening in Europe at that time.

Well, that was a really good time to be where I was in Germany.  I was in Heidelberg, Germany, which is the place of the famous Cave 54.  Now, that was a club where most of the local musicians would play in, and everybody that was coming from out of town would play there.  There were a lot of sessions there.  Some of the people that you’ll know now were there.  Karl Berger was there, Albert Mangelsdorff was there, Bent Jadik (who when I was in Denmark at this time I didn’t see him, but I was talking to the guy at the music store, and I asked about him, and he said he was still around).  Many things happened there.  Then Nathaniel Davis stayed in our barracks.  He was in a quartet that won the All-Army competition, and they stayed with us for a while, and they were going around Europe playing.  And then names that you don’t know.  Joseph Stevenson, who was a Sergeant, who now I’ve heard is a Warrant Officer, was a great musician, an alto saxophonist and composer.  Many, many people.  William Romero.  Just a lot of people that made influences on me.  I mean, there was a guy there, Sergeant Mitchell.  Palmer Jenkins, a tenor saxophonist.  So there was a lot of music and a lot of opportunity to learn.

I gather in the Art Ensemble, you, Joseph Jarman, Malachi Favors and Lester Bowie, all had Army experience.  Lester has stated that that experience helped you survive as a unit on your travels and travails particularly in Europe in the late Sixties and early Seventies, and in the years before that in the States.

Well, that’s very true.  I mean, no one has ever done anything for us.  We’ve always done everything for ourselves, in a way, so far as the Art Ensemble is concerned.  I don’t think the Art Ensemble gets any recognition now.  And we’re still going on, and still doing concerts, and still filling houses, and everybody tries to act like we’re not doing that.  So yeah, I guess our Army training did help us get to this point.

A lot of discipline entailed that I’m sure was retained and is retained in the way the Art Ensemble functions.

Yes, that’s true.

When you got back to Chicago after the Army, what sort of scene did you find?

Well, that was when Muhal had the Experimental Band there… In ’61 Muhal Richard Abrams had the Experimental Band.  It met once a week, and it was a great opportunity to go down and meet all these great musicians, and get a chance to really be in a big band that was rehearsing.  This year at the Chicago Jazz Fest Muhal put together that band as closely as he could for a performance there.  It would be great to do more things with that band.  After I had been in Israel and heard everybody sounding the same, and then got back and I was in a band where everybody sounded like themselves, it was a very interesting phenomenon.

You’re talking now about 1961?

I’m talking about Muhal’s big band.  Everybody in there sounds like themselves.  They don’t sound like anybody else.  They all have distinguishable sounds, their ways of phrasing, their different ideas about music… I think this is one of the things that stimulated me over the years, to be fortunate enough to be associated with people like that.  So that was a great experience.  That band was rehearsing every Monday night, and I would have to say that that band was the place where started the thought, you know, of the AACM — to actually put together an organization that would function in promoting its members and concerts of their own original music and maintain an educational program for younger, inspired musicians.  These things we carried on from there, as you know.  Like, when the Art Ensemble went to Paris and we carried the banner of the AACM.

At that time also you encountered a number of musicians with whom the relationships have maintained for three decades and more.  Malachi Favors at Wilson Junior College at the time, Jarman, I think Henry Threadgill was around then…

Threadgill.  Jack De Johnette was there.

Braxton before he went in the Army.

Yeah.

And Jack De Johnette at that time I gather had a piano trio with Steve McCall on the drums.

Yeah, he did.  But he was starting to play drums then.  Because he and I used to play drums and saxophone all the time.

So was there a lot of interplay and experimentation and workshopping amongst you, working with different ideas and so forth?

Well, you could say that Muhal’s place was like the meeting place for people.  We’d kind of all show up over there, and then Muhal would be bothered with us, you know, for that whole week, and still come to the rehearsal on Monday with a composition for the big band.  Amazing.

So Muhal’s place was really sort of the clearing house where all these ideas could come together and be formulated.

That’s right.  And we studied music, art, poetry, whatever.  It was like a school.  It was a school.

Talk a little bit about how your first band that recorded, which recording I believe will be issued for the first time on Nessa… A 1964 recording which I think you mentioned last time…

Yeah, I did mention that.  I still don’t have a release date on that record.  That was an early quartet with Alvin Fielder, Fred Berry, Malachi Favors and myself.

Was that quartet performing all original music by you, or was it a more collectively oriented thing?

The music was mostly by me.  I remember on that one tape there’s a piece by Fred Berry also.

Are there any pieces that you wrote at that time that you still perform to this day, that have lasted?

Oh, certainly.  There’s many.  We still perform “Ornette.”  I still perform “Mister Freddie,” which was recorded on a recent Jodie Christian disk.  We intend to perform “Sound” again.  To me, any music that you do is just a kind of work in progress, so to speak.  So you can at any time go back to that work and extend it or… As for me, I mean, some things that I did with “Sound,” for instance, become more interesting to me now that I could apply maybe circular breathing to those situations, and do something, I don’t want to say more, but do something different with it in the way of expanding it.  So to me, it’s a work in progress.

The Art Ensemble’s Friday night Chicago concert concluded with Malachi Favors’ “Magg Zelma,” but before that you performed “Ornette,” if I’m not mistaken.

“Mister Freddie,” I think it was.

At any rate, I’ve given Roscoe Mitchell the third degree now for about half an hour, so we’ll give him a break right now and play some music.

I thought it was a talk show!
]
[MUSIC: Pilgrimage, “He Didn’t Give Up; He Was Taken” (1994); R. Mitchell Quartet, “Hey, Donald,” “The El” (1994); Art Ensemble of Chicago, “The Alternate Express” (1990).

The next set of music focuses on Roscoe Mitchell with some musicians who played a very important role in his music of the 1980’s, Detroit-based Jaribu Shahid and Tani Tabbal, Hugh Ragin was part of some of your quintet music, and Michael Mossman is another trumpeter who was involved with you.  I’d like to talk about that aspect of your music-making in the 1980’s with Michigan- and Wisconsin-based musicians.

If you look at Michigan, there we had the CAC, which is the Creative Arts Collective, which is a group that followed the same basic fundamentals as the AACM in its structure.  It was a group of musicians that came together; you know, we did our own concerts, we had our small groups and things inside of that larger group and we had concerts for them.  We also brought in musicians from Chicago and New York to do concerts.  We had the help of the Abrams Planetarium on the Michigan State University campus; they let us use their hall for concerts…

This was in the Sixties, the Seventies…?

In the Seventies it was, yes.  So this is another ongoing work in progress, my work with the Detroit musicians.

Do you recollect your earlier meetings with Jaribu Shahid and Tani Tabbal?

I was living in Michigan at that time, and that’s where we met.  Jaribu Shahid and Tani Tabbal weren’t there at that time.  It was Spencer Barefield, one of the musicians who I saw the other night at the AACM 30th Anniversary, Dushan Moseley was there, and other Michigan musicians, William Townley… Guys who…we had put together an organization that, like I was saying, was similar in philosophy to the AACM — for that purpose.

I guess interplay between the AACM and the Detroit-based musicians goes back to concert exchanges in the 1960’s, when Chicago musicians would go to Detroit to present concerts and vice-versa.

That’s true, but that was largely due to John Sinclair, who at that time was the leader of the Detroit…God, what was it… It wasn’t the White Panther Party then.  It was another name.  Then he went on to be the leader of the Rainbow People in Ann Arbor.  But they had their own newspaper in there, and they had like maybe a whole city block there, where they had places for performances, for musicians or artists to come and be involved in the program that they had there.

This group developed in some very interesting ways, and I guess was the kernel for several offshoot groups — the Note Ensemble and various editions of the Roscoe Mitchell Sound Ensemble.  I’ll repeat a question I asked earlier:  In working with these particular groups, what are the dynamics of each of them that impact your writing or arranging or structuring of sound for either the musicians or the overall ensemble?

Well, I’m hearing different things for different situations.  Like you said, those groups can be broken down, because I’ve worked with different varieties of those groups.  But the Note Factory is getting closer to I guess this grande sound that I’m hearing.  That’s why we have like the two basses and the two drums and piano and myself as the bare bones of it.  Eventually we’d probably like to have two pianos, and then I’ve thought of a couple of other horn players to go with that sound — it would probably be Hugh Ragin and George Lewis.

You recently were on a record of George Lewis, in acoustic duos and interactions with the Voyager computer program.

That’s true.  We also did a concert at IRCAM this last summer in June, which was a concert at IRCAM for the Voyager program.

[MUSIC: Mitchell/Ragin/Tabbal, “Fanfare For Talib” (1981); Note Factory “Uptown Strut” (1987); Bergman/Buckner/Mitchell “Looking Around” (1995); Mitchell (solo) “Sound Pictures #3: Solo For Winds and Percussion” (1995)]

Our thanks to Roscoe Mitchell.  One final question about solo performance.  Your solo work on record goes back to the 1960’s, and continues to this day, I gather, with some frequency.

Yes, that’s true.  I’ve always been interested in solo playing as one of the options.

What’s attractive to you about solo playing?

Well, one thing I can say about solo playing, if you’re listening to me, and I sound like an orchestra and not a saxophone, then I’m successful to some degree.  When you’re playing with someone else, I guess you can always blame them for messing up.  But if you’re playing with yourself, then you have to blame your own self.  So it’s a challenge, of course… Well, it’s a challenge playing with someone else, too.  So to me, I just see it as one of the parts that make up the whole picture.

Is there a process of trying to transcend the saxophone, whatever limitations there are in performing it?

Well, I think everybody does that when they are really successful at whatever it is that they are doing.  You actually do transform the instrument that you’re playing.  I mean, the instrument is just the vehicle by which you are able to transmit the sounds.

[MUSIC: RM (solo) “Nonaah” (1976)]

ROSCOE:

For the 75th Birth Anniversary of Peter Kowald (1944-2002), A Memorial Piece For The Village Voice, A WKCR Interview in September 2002, An Interview Conducted at the 2002 Vision Festival, and a Review of Several Kowald CDs for Downbeat in 2002

I was very fortunate to have had an opportunity to speak with and write about the great German outcat bassist Peter Kowald during 2002, the year he passed away in New York City. For Kowald’s 75th birth anniversary yesterday, I’m posting an obituary that I wrote for the Village Voice in their jazz issue of 2003, the transcript of a WKCR encounter conversation I had with Kowald and saxophonist Assif Tsahar in Sept. 2002, nine days before Kowald’s death, and a review column of Kowald CDs that I did for Downbeat earlier in 2002. At the bottom is an interview that I conducted with Kowald at the Vision Festival in May 2002 — it was for a prospective radio piece on the “avant garde” intended for Studio 360 for which I also interviewed Derek Bailey, Fred Anderson, and others.

*************

Peter Kowald Obituary, Village Voice, 2002:

“I lead the life of a traveler who goes to play for the people, opens his hand, gets some money, comes back home, and goes to the next one.” – Peter Kowald, September 12, 2002.

In the mid-‘90s, the late bassist Peter Kowald-–a man Butch Morris says “could drive for 24 hours and only stop for gas”–spent a full year at home in Wuppertal, Germany. His intention, Morris speculates, was “to lock in on who the Kowald was in his body.” He kept his car parked, and rode only his bicycle. At his house, he presented concerts with world class improvisers, collaborated with various Pina Bausch dancers, held workshops with local amateurs, and made forays into spontaneous form-sculpting with a “conduction” ensemble. Befitting an abiding passion for all things Hellenic, he fell in love with and married a Greek artist. Then he returned to the road, and broke up with his wife. He flew to New York in 2000, bought a 1968 Caprice station wagon, and, accompanied by French filmmaker Laurence Jouvert and a small crew, spent 10 weeks circumnavigating the United States in a succession of self-booked one-nighters.

Not long after they returned, Jouvert made the documentary Off the Road, an account of Kowald’s musical and conversational encounters in more than a dozen cities across America and various points along the highway. Meanwhile, Kowald, who had established himself as an important figure in the New York improv scene through his frequent visits over two decades, purchased a Harlem pied-a-terre to solidify his base.

The final week of this robust 58-year-old’s life was entirely characteristic. On Thursday, September 12, 2002, a few hours after joining me on WKCR to publicize an upcoming series of New York events, he flew overnight coach to Italy for a pair of weekend concerts. He returned to New York on Monday. On Tuesday, he made a recording session and worked at Triad with saxophonist Assif Tsahar and drummer Hamid Drake. The next night he worked downtown with saxophonist Blaise Siwula and guitarist Dom Minasi. On Friday he would play at B.T.M. in Williamsburg with trombonist Masahiko Kono, guitarist Kazuhisa Uchihashi and drummer Tatsuya Nakatani. He was scheduled to perform on Sunday at CBGB Lounge in trio with White Panther blues poet John Sinclair and Loisada saxophonist Daniel Carter, and then with Last Global Village, an ensemble comprising three Chinese flutists, Korean cellist Okkyung Lee, vocalist Lenora Conquest, and percussionist Ron McBee.

After the gig at B.T.M. Kowald began to feel unwell. On the ride home, he asked Kono to drop him off at the East Village apartment of bassist William Parker and dancer Patricia Nicholson. There he expired of a massive heart attack.

*
Had Kowald been an actor, director Rainer Fassbinder might have cast him to play proletarian everyman Franz Biberkopf in his epic film Berlin Alexanderplatz. Burly and attractive, with close cropped hair, Kowald moved with the deliberation of a butoh dancer and parsed his words with precision honed during youthful work as a scholar of ancient languages and translator of Greek poetry into modern German. He was a utopian, a pragmatic activist, a skilled organizer who learned the art of institution-building in the fractious milieu of radical ‘60s German culture.

At last year’s Vision Festival, Kowald worked the food stand, constructing two-dollar cheese sandwiches with the meticulousness of a master sushi chef. We can trace the existence of this annual event to his friendship with Parker, which began with a chance sidewalk encounter in 1981. Within a year, Kowald brought Parker to Berlin to play with heavyweight European free improvisers in concerts organized by FMP, the do-it-yourself grass-roots German music collective co-founded by his old friend Peter Brötzmann, to which Kowald had contributed mightly for more than a decade. In 1984 he received a government grant to live in New York for six months. He brought with him a 50,000-mark stipend from the millionaire painter A.R. Penck, with a mandate to make something happen.

Acutely aware that New York’s outcat community would mistrust his motives, Kowald reached out to Parker as a liaison. They held meetings to plan the logistics of the first Sound Unity Festival, settling on the FMP payment policy of $100 per musician, including bandleaders. In 1988, again using Penck’s money, Sound Unity spent $1000 to rent the Knitting Factory for a week, and played to packed houses every night. This did not escape the notice of proprietor Michael Dorf, who established the Knitting Factory Festival the following year. In response, Patricia Nicholson launched the Improvisers Collective, which in 1996 evolved into the Vision Festival.

“Peter would stop by a place that an American musician would walk past 20 times, and get something started just by being personable,” Parker says. “Especially black musicians, it seems you’re fighting all the time. You get worn out. You can lose your perspective if you’re not on top of things. But Peter was always probing and looking for signs of life wherever he went.”

*
Wuppertal is an industrial city of 350,000 in the Rhine Basin, the home of the Pina Bausch Tanztheater and the birthplace of Engels and German Communism. During Kowald’s formative years, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s electronic studio was a half-hour’s train ride away in Cologne, while Wuppertal’s own Galerie Parnass presented Nam June Paik’s first one-man exhibition and new work from Joseph Beuys. Saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, who had come to Wuppertal to attend the local art school in 1959, worked as Paik’s assistant, and accompanied him on Fluxus happenings in southwest Germany and the Benelux countries. Brötzmann urged Kowald, a teenage tubist, to learn the bass, preaching Paik’s liberating dictum: “the space is completely open, you can use any material, any ideas–everything is possible.” They began to play on a nightly basis in Brötzmann’s basement studio.

During our WKCR encounter last September, Kowald spoke frankly about the no-holds-barred milieu that framed his formative years. “The mood was, `Okay, we can change the world tomorrow morning; there is a movement, we are not alone,’” he said. “Then you take a saxophone or bass, and do what you want–don’t worry what the teachers told you. I learned bass autodidactically until I was 26. We played in Berlin, and Rudi Dutschke, this famous student revolutionary, was in the second row. Grand times. I am happy I was in my twenties when I grew up in this climate, and that we always knew our enemies.”

Like most German radicals born in the aftermath of World War II, Brötzmann and Kowald came from educated, middle-class families in deep denial about the recent Nazi past. Brötzmann remembers that Kowald’s father had flown in the Luftwaffe and was an educator of the deaf, and that his mother was a housewife.

“Peter’s mother never forgave me for leading her son on the wrong path,” Brötzmann says. “But after the war we never got answers for the question, ‘Why did you do that?’ We had to look for our own answers and raise our own questions. We in Germany had problems with our fathers’ generation, and that’s why our rebellion was so strong and why our early music was such violent stuff, much more violent than in other European countries.”

Spurred by solitary investigations, encouraging encounters with passing-through expats like Steve Lacy and Don Cherry, and a few months on the road with Carla Bley, the young firebrands deployed American out jazz as a symbolic weapon, in Kowald’s words, to kill their fathers. Then they tried to kill the stepfathers, who proved to be unconquerable.

“Growing up in the `40s and `50s, it was very difficult to sing a German song, because it always carried this smell of Fascism,” Kowald said. “I saw that blues musicians and Jewish musicians related to their own tradition positively. My Greek wife loved her songs. But I never used my own culture in my music. I was always interested in what the other cultures had to say, and I took it all from there. When we started to improvise, our stuff clearly came from from jazz. But later we decided to do it the European way–not play Classical European music, but also not copy American jazz. Of course, looking back, I have to say we took a lot from saxophonists Albert Ayler and Pharaoh Sanders, and bass players like Henry Grimes, Gary Peacock and Reggie Workman.”

Lacking the virtuosity of early influences like Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, and Maarten Altena, or the force-of-nature blues anima of Fred Hopkins and Parker, Kowald functioned as a self-described chameleon, as comfortable playing in blood-and-guts trios with Charles Gayle and Rashied Ali or Floros Floridis and Gunter “Baby” Sommer as conducting extemporaneous musical dialogues with Tuvan vocalist Sainkho Namtchylak, body artist Ellen Z, or dancers Kazuo Ohno, Min Tanaka, and Jean Sasportes. His time wasn’t great, and he focused more on process than content. Nor was his vocabulary cliché-free; as he perfected his own novel techniques–like detuning his E-string and chanting low, gutteral tones over long drones in the Mongolian manner, or sticking the bow in the strings and rocking it to elicit seesaw overtones–he tended to use them regardless of context.

Somehow Kowald made his collaborations work. “Peter was looking to be a universal world musician,” Parker says. “He had what I call the X-factor, an ability to infuse the tradition of jazz bass in his playing and personalize it. He wasn’t coming out of jazz, so to speak, but he could play in all the styles, and added his idea of sound to the bands he played with. He always talked about wanting to play the blues, and I’d tell him, ‘You don’t have to be bothered with that; you are who you are, and whatever blues is there, it’s there.’ There was restlessness about him, and it seemed on all his journeys he was searching for something. I don’t know exactly what.”

There was something archetypally German about Kowald’s wanderlust. He was a nomad, a road warrior, a wanderer between the worlds–he hit the road not to escape his contradictions, but to confront them. “Peter was very social,” says Morris. “He wasn’t afraid to talk to anybody. If you said, ‘Hey, Peter, let’s go to Morocco and walk to South Africa,’ he’d say, ‘let’s do it.’ The adventures and the information he could get were right in line with his searching. Just to be on the way someplace satisfied him deeply. He could see that this music belongs everywhere.”

************

Peter Kowald-Assif Tsahar (WKCR, 9-12-02):

TP: Peter Kowald is one of the avatars of European improvisation, beginning in the early 1960s. You and Peter Brotzmann came up in Wuppertal, a city which also serves as the home of the Pina Bausch Dance Company. As you’ve told me, Nam June Paik was living there, and you came under his influence. Since then, Mr. Kowald has created a staggering vocabulary of extended techniques and ways of attacking the bass and creating dialogue out of those techniques. He’s one of the giants of that way of making music.

KOWALD: Shut up. [LAUGHS]

TP: Assif Tsahar is a generation younger, 33 years old, from Jaffa and grew up in Tel Aviv in Israel, and has been resident here for ten years. Peter Kowald is now a part-time New York resident, and has been for how long now?

KOWALD: A year-and-a-half. I found a place here now, and I’m going back and forth.

TP: Peter Kowald made an impact on New York as far back as the mid-1980s, when the Sound Unity Festival happened on 2nd Avenue and Houston, when you helped bring together what was a somewhat fractious community of improvisers into an extremely successful festival. It seems to me that this laid the seeds in some ways for the Vision Fest. So this is not New York’s first experience with Peter.

The two of you have developed a close musical simpatico over recent years. Deals, Ideas and Ideals is from 1999. How did you meet?

TSAHAR: Peter came to town, and he was staying with William Parker, who is his very close friend. Back then I was working on the Vision Festival maybe, the first year or so…

KOWALD: We met earlier, before.

TSAHAR: Yes, before. It was the Improvisers’ Collective. So we met there, and then I asked Peter if he had the time to play, to do a session. We played, we had a very good time. He was very supportive. One of Peter’s best qualities is that he has very good insights into the music; he’s very supportive in that way. That was the beginning. We played in the first Vision Festival. He played in the group I was playing in with William Parker and Susie Ibarra, and we’ve kept it up since then.

TP: This goes back to when? ’95 or so?

KOWALD: Somewhere around then.

TP: Assif, as a saxophonist coming up in Israel, how aware were you of the stream of music that developed in the ’60s in Europe…

TSAHAR: I was aware of the musicians. I was aware of some of the music. Growing up in Israel, more depended on what we could get, and those were very hard to records to get there. I knew of Globe Unity, so I knew of Peter from there — and Brotzmann. But I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about everything that happened there. I had more knowledge of what was happening here, just because that’s what we could get in the record stores. So I knew of all the things like Cecil Taylor… When I got to New York, I didn’t really know what was happening. I knew William Parker because of what he did with Cecil, but I didn’t know all the current things happening at the time in New York.

TP: But it’s the ’80s when you’re forming your musical aesthetic and sensibility. Was there a community of out players in Israel at that time, or were you operating in isolation? Are you operating with a peer group?

TSAHAR: It was pretty much in isolation. A very good friend was a piano player, Daniel (?). He came with me here. We were working together. Basically, we were almost it, along with a few others. A drummer, Egal (?), who also lives here now. We were kind of working together. There were five, maybe six people, and that’s it. Now it’s growing, I think. There’s a lot more awareness of it now in Israel.

TP: How frequently does this configuration play, the trio or augmented, of Peter Kowald, Assif Tsahar, and Hamid Drake, the drummer from Chicago?

KOWALD: We actually do play quite a lot in Europe rather than here in America, and we have a couple of tours. Like, every two months we have a tour or a couple of gigs together. So we’ve played quite a lot in the last one-and-a-half years, in fact. We had a tour in Israel last year…

TP: 50-60 performances in the last couple of years?

KOWALD: Maybe somewhere in there.

TP: That would seem to be a situation that would generate a lot of new music and a lot of ideas and new directions. How has the band evolved from the first meeting?

KOWALD: The trio is more organized that way, that we just improvise, and we don’t really use, or only rarely, any thematic material. But the quartet with Hugh uses the pieces. But then, the quartet doesn’t work that often. Only a couple of big festivals when they invite us. And we have rehearsals for the pieces. So the music is a little different between the trio and the quartet. the quartet sounds more like the structure of you have a theme, and then you have the solos and you go back to the theme, and the trio is completely open.

TP: Do you find in trios like that you tend to create compositions from a blank canvas? How do you sustain freshness in a situation like that?

KOWALD: I would say there are a lot of routines in a positive way, like things we bring… Like, we have a bag on shoulders, and in the beginning of the evening we pull out things, things we know, things we have in a similar way done before. But then also, new stuff is happening each night. Especially I find that the relationship with Hamid and myself has really developed over the time. It’s interesting, because he likes to go into rhythmical things, and I like that, too, but then I kind of seem to be the person who always takes him out of there again to go somewhere else. Then Assif is using the two instruments, the saxophone but also the bass clarinet, so we have different textures in the horn section. And then the bass is the bow and the plucked, like the pizz stuff, so it’s a different thing… The pizz stuff with Hamid is more of a free rhythmical thing, and then the bows goes to the bass clarinet. So there’s a lot of songs coming from different parts. Hamid sings, he plays the hand drum, and we have pieces where I sing and he sings. So there’s a lot of different textures.

TSAHAR: I think the group is interesting. When we were touring in Israel, because of Peter being from Germany and Hamid being a Sufi, who have a strong connection also to Islam, and myself being Jewish, it was very interesting. I think that comes off in the music. We come from different places but have a very strong meeting place. What comes together is actually very strong, but we all come from like different direction, but really meet in the middle. I think that interestingly works… It’s also socially like that. It also works out in the music like this.

TP: A number of Israeli musicians who have made an impact in New York, but in less open form situations, have all had quite a bit of exposure to North African and Arabic music. It’s part of their vernacular growing up. It’s unavoidable.

TSAHAR: Yes. It’s actually the stronger… It’s actually what we listen to. People think about Klezmer music when you think about Jewish, and actually when you listen to Israeli music, Arabic music is a much stronger influence.

TP: Now, what do you think that imparts to you that allows you to intersect with the broader realm of improvising, whether within jazz or a pan-improvisational manner? Is it that you’ve internalized these very complex rhythmic signatures, or certain scales that correlate to melodies…

TSAHAR: I don’t know. I can’t comment on that.

KOWALD: I would say for myself that in many ways I am playing a traditional European instrument. But I learned it autodidactically before I studied it. I played with Brotzmann ten years before I started to study the bass. I was autodidactic in the early years. Between 16 and 26, I was autodidactic. Then I studied classical European music, but it was kind of schizophrenic, because all the things I had to study in the day, I didn’t want to do at night. A lot of the things I did at night were forbidden in the day. So it was a real parallel thing, and the influences I had were rather not the classical European music, and the bel canto sound, as I used to call it, for the bass, and the classical European sound… I wanted to avoid that. I wanted to go into other aesthetics, and I took from all kinds of music. I tried to copy singers from Tuva and Mongolia and African music, and of course, it never worked on the bass, but then what came out was something… I was closer to the aesthetics of “world music” than of European aesthetics. That broadened the techniques, too. I had to find a way to put my finger on the instruments so it would make these kinds of sound I wanted to have.

TP: All the time. Have it not be an accident, but a systematic vocabulary.

KOWALD: Yes. And then I really tried to transform sounds and aesthetics of the pygmies onto the bass, and some of it worked, but of course, it’s not pygmy music. But suddenly I found out that the bass harmonics in a certain position with the hands do certain things which nobody does except me — but I got it from the pygmies.

TP: Can you relate what you were doing to the cultural milieu during the 1960s, the arc of the culture up to ’68 and the aftermath of that? Baader-Meinhof is happening…

KOWALD: Oh, yes. I can actually go back a little earlier. Because when I grew up in the ’40s as a little boy, and in the ’50s in Germany, it was very difficult to sing a German song, because everything had been used by Fascism and Hitler. So we didn’t sing our songs. It was very difficult. So I saw that every blues musician or every Jewish musician somehow related to his own tradition in a positive way. I used to have a Greek wife, and she loved her Greek songs, but I didn’t love my German songs. Then I became a traveler somehow. So I tried to be… I was always interested in what the other cultures had to say, and so I took it all from there. I became somehow a traveler from the beginning. But I didn’t ever use my own culture into my own music. Of course, there was Brecht and Weill and Eisler who were relatively modern people out of the last century, but in a way, their music was a bit of a tradition to me — or it became a bit of a tradition. But it was very difficult to sing a German song because it had always this smell of Fascism in it.

TP: It would seem that with Brecht and Weill and Eisler there’s a certain attitude or sensibility toward the material that becomes correlated through the years to what you were doing.

KOWALD: Well, the ’60s came… That was your question. Then the whole political movement came, and then there were two Germanies, East Germany and West Germany, and then we had all the sympathy for the East because Brecht was there, and things were discussed in a very different way — and some of them were not discussed, of course. But we were all left wing people, and we were part of this revolutionary thing that started in the mid-’60s, and then we had ’68 in Berlin and Paris and here in America, too, and in Italy and Japan… Many people don’t know that in Japan there was a very political thing happening in the late ’60s. We said, “Okay, we can change the world tomorrow morning — let’s go.” I was a little younger then. Brotzmann is three years older, and he was so confident when he was very young, in his early twenties. He knew what he wanted. He knew what he didn’t want. So I was kind of following him a little bit, in his shadow. So we played in Berlin, and Rudi Dutschke was in the second row, this famous German student revolutionary. So that was all part of it, yes. It was great. It was wonderful. Grand times. And I am happy I was in my twenties when I grew up in all this climate and always knew our enemies, so to speak.

TP: But you’ve mentioned to me that you were sort of imparted the notion that anything is allowable by Nam June Paik, who came out of the Fluxus movement, which in and of itself was an apolitical entity…

KOWALD: Well, it was not apolitical at all. But it was very open in terms of material, yes. Peter when he was only 20 was an assistant for Nam June Paik, certainly projects he did in Wuppertal, because we had this fantastic gallery all the time that would invite all these people in the early ’60s. Peter was a great painter and artist all the time also. He was much more advanced as an artist when he was in his early twenties than as a saxophone player. But then he decided for the saxophone. And I think he discussed a lot with Paik about these questions, about what is art today and what does it mean, what can we do in Art. I remember Peter saying that Paik told him, “Now, don’t worry about anything; you can do anything you want to do; the space is completely open; you can use any material, you can use any ideas — everything is possible; don’t worry about nothing; do what you want to do.” So that was the ’60s, which had all this air about this whole thing, and “okay, now we change the world tomorrow, we can do anything, we are able, there is a power there, there is a movement there, we are not alone” — and then take a saxophone, take a bass, and do what you want to do, and don’t worry about what the teachers have been telling you. [LAUGHS]

TP: Taking this broader political and cultural theme and applying it to the area you’re involved in, which is a specific way of translating sounds into vocabulary and narrative and creating this pan-national dialogue: How do you start reaching out and finding your peer group throughout the European Continent, which is sort of developing in parallel. While you and Brotzmann are talking to Paik, Derek Bailey and Evan Parker are developing what they’re doing in England, and Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg are doing what they’re doing in Holland, and people are dealing with different things in France and Italy. And eventually, the Globe Unity Orchestra forms, which seems to be an effort to incorporate these strands. Talk about your initial forays towards finding this peer group and embracing it.

KOWALD: Well, in a way we were very local in the beginning. We started to play together in ’62, I think. But I was 17, and had to be home… I had to go to school in the morning, so I had to be home early at night. [LAUGHS] My parents were pretty strict about that. Then we just started to play, and we had this little basement place which was a club, and sometimes on the weekend bands played. Gunter Hampel came by, I remember. Different people. But we during the week, we just came played for ourselves with different drummers at the time. Every Tuesday and every Friday we went, and then after one-and-a-half years, the first person came to listen. Nobody wanted to listen to us. They said, “Brotzmann can’t play, and why do you play with this guy, he can’t play — you have to learn other things.” After one-and-a-half years, the first person came.” We felt quite isolated in the beginning.

Then in the mid-’60s, Carla Bley came, Paul Bley came, Mingus came with Dolphy, Coltrane was there with the quartet in this club in Cologne. So we could see different people. But I think very important for us was when Carla came, and we sat in that night. She had a quintet with Steve Lacy and Mike Mantler and Aldo Romano and Kent Carter, and then she left…

TP: You and Brotzmann sat in.

KOWALD: We sat in on night. I think there’s still a tape of that.

TP: How did that feel?

KOWALD: Well, I was a little boy who was over-impressed by everything, and Brotzmann was much more “Let’s go into it and do it.” Carla liked him very much, and Steve also actually, and Steve encouraged us, and said, “Go ahead; this is good what you are trying to do there.”

TP: What was Brotzmann trying to do?

KOWALD: Well, he played alto… The drummers we had, they were always still playing time. Then I think Aldo Romano in this constellation, and maybe a few months earlier, when the Paul Bley Trio came, I think it was Barry Altschul… They were the first drummers who didn’t use time, who used more of an open pulse or free…

TP: This is ’65 and ’66.

KOWALD: ’65 and ’66, right. Then these records came out on Dutch Fontana, and then of course, Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity came over on ESP Records. That was about the time when Carla was around, and then she asked us for a tour…she asked actually Peter to play a tour with her the last year, and she had planned to bring Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, but somehow it didn’t work out with them, and then Peter was actually very nice and said “I’ll only do the tour if Peter Kowald is coming also.” Then I was 22 years old, and I did a three-month tour with that group. That was a big experience for me in many kinds of ways. I did a lot of mistakes in all kinds of ways, but still…

TP: Were you playing her compositions on that tour?

KOWALD: We had compositions, but…

TP: And then taking them completely apart every night.

KOWALD: Yes. But the context was more like a free context. We had the compositions in the beginning, but then all the improvisations were free, and without changes, without time.

TP: Were you ever involved in situations as a younger player where you needed to deal with form all the way through your improvisations and were satisfied with that course? Did you come across those experiences, or were you always wanting to shatter form, as it were, within every performance?

KOWALD: Well, in the early years with Brotzmann, we still played compositions. We played Ornette Coleman compositions, we played Mingus stuff, we played Coltrane stuff…

TP: That’s what you cut your teeth on.

KOWALD: Yes. But we didn’t really use the changes any more. We freed ourselves and never really stuck to the changes and stuck to the bars, the whole clear form. But then, on the other hand, I did very strict things. I played the tuba also at the time, and I played with Earle Brown and Morton Feldman, and we recorded Cage pieces… There’s a record of this. So I did a certain amount of stuff of reading Contemporary Music and notation. That was the most formal thing I, in fact, did. It was very interesting, because they were themselves there. Earle Brown was conducting his own pieces and Morton Feldman was conducting his pieces. That was really interesting. But that was the most formal thing in fact I did while I improvised freely. We basically went to free improvisation.

And I think after the Carla tour was exactly the time when Globe Unity started to be. But Alex didn’t know us, because we were about 40 miles away from Cologne where they were, Manfred Schoof and Alex Schlippenbach. But then they heard us one night, and it was just when Alex was writing his composition “Globe Unity,” and he included the whole trio into his Globe Unity Orchestra. Finally there were two bass players and two drummers, and Peter was added.

TSAHAR: One thing I’d like to add, and see if Peter agrees with me or not. The free improvisation, there is something very natural about it that almost every musician goes through. Then, when they go to school, it almost makes you feel like they’re taken out of it. My first experience of music was free improvisation, was taking the instrument and playing, and then doing it with a friend of mine. I think there is something about that that’s very natural. It’s probably also what they were trying to do, without so much of the thinking that this is a revolution.

KOWALD: Well, I have to say that in Europe it was clearly forgotten. Improvisation wasn’t used at all any more. If you go back to Bach and Mozart, they could do it, and people like Messaien could do it, but in Europe as a method of working for music it was forgotten. But then Stockhausen came back and said, “Okay.” He gave a little advice, “Hear what you want to play and then play it.” He had very open pieces. But that was the same time we started to improvise, but our stuff came from Black American music, very clearly. It came from jazz. But then there was maybe a little step which I would call a healthy way of killing our fathers. I mean, I love jazz. I still love it. It’s the main music I’ve been listening to in all my life. In some way, I’m proud of it now, over these years. But we had a point in Europe where we said, “Okay, let’s do it the European way.” We don’t want to copy American jazz any more. We don’t want to play Classical European music, but we don’t want to copy American jazz.” Like, a lot of bebop players in Europe had done that for years. But looking back on it, I still have to say we took a lot. We took a lot from Albert Ayler, we took a lot from Pharaoh Sanders, talking about saxophone players, and I took a lot from all the bass players, from Henry Grimes, Gary Peacock and Reggie Workman. I will play a bass duo on the 15th November with Reggie Workman at Roulette, and I am very happy that he agreed to it. It’s part of a bass duo thing I’ve been doing with European bass players. There are 3 CDs out now, but more are coming. We are planning for one with William Parker to come out, and the concert with Reggie Workman will be recorded also.

TP: There are different attitudes to the form question. Someone like Dave Holland, a contemporary of yours, in the 1960s was playing with Derek Bailey and John Stevens and spent the ’70s playing totally free music with Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton’s structural music, and then he made a decision that he didn’t want to exclude closed form, that he liked both of them. He felt that without structured forms you couldn’t necessarily springboard to the next step, that they contributed to his creative development. So you’re coming from a similar milieu, albeit he’s English and he’s German, but reaching two very different conclusions. That’s not to make a value judgment, just to show how two very different ways of approaching an instrument and an aesthetic can emerge from similar set of circumstances.

KOWALD: Well, I would say that the (?), of course, is quite a different one. But what I find is that the music we have been doing found a form, too, but it is as a very organic, natural form. I am very interested in… When I work with younger people it is always my theme: How clear can the music be? How clear can improvisation be? Is it just this process of what I call a cold spaghetti music, where everything just glues and sticks to each other and goes on and goes on? Or is it possible to have a more intuitive, formal consciousness about when you improvise? I am very interested in people who play with a formal consciousness. Maybe that is the European mind a little bit related to the mind over here. But I find that a certain element of being clear and making decisions also, which is somehow a formal thing, is very important to me. I think, in a way, I feel that I am respected over here, too, because I have that. Even when I play a solo, I mean, it’s completely open, but I have formal sections. I have sections in there, and people understand that. People understand that a formal background without it (?) so much from. But the difference from Dave Holland is that it is not a pre-given form. The form is coming while you do it. And Dave Holland and many other people like to work with pre-given forms. That’s just the difference.

TP: Peter Kowald has also contributed to the stream of out jazz through working with drummers like Rashied Ali, through working with drummers like Hamid Drake, working with saxophonists like Charles Gayle and Assif… There is now and has been for at least 20 years that component to what you do.

KOWALD: I would say, yes, the saxophone trio with a saxophone trio and a drummer…

TP: Where the bass functions as a bass.

KOWALD: Well, that’s one side of the extreme. And then to play completely European, free improvised music with the young people, where you sometimes don’t make a sound for minutes and think all the time, I like that, too. That’s the other extreme. My whole pendulum has been those two. I love to do the more jazz quality stuff, like we do with Assif and Hamid, but I also like to have that improvisation. Then also I work with Sanko, the Siberian singer, who gave me a completely new value since the early ’90s because her voice is from this Tuvan Shamanist breath and overtone harmonic music section. I went to Tuva with her twice on the Trans-Siberian train. So that is another leg I am trying to stand on.

TP: Assif, you’ve played with a number of bass players. What are the qualities that Peter Kowald brings to this real-time encounter, this collective improvisation that distinguishes his instrumental personality from his peer group?

TSAHAR: Well, it’s exactly what he said now, because his pendulum is so vast. So we don’t get locked so much into one thing, one area, which is very common to do. So it’s very easy when we’re playing with Peter. It’s both ways. He keeps it as a compositional thought from beginning to end, and also keeps the variety going. Because it’s very easy, let’s say… I mean, I love those Sam Rivers records; it’s a good example. But in some ways, it always stays within that jazz vein. But in some ways, when I play with Peter, even though if we go there, and go somewhere that’s in the jazz vein and in the swinging tradition, it will always go out of it and go into different places, and always have the possibility of going back into it. That’s why I love the experience of playing with Peter.

TP: Peter Kowald is leaving for Italy. The life of an improviser. You’re going to Italy for maybe one night, two nights…

KOWALD: I play two days in (?).

TP: Come back here.

KOWALD: Come back Monday.

TP: Come back Monday, do a recording, play this gig at Triad, do some other gigs during the week… I’ve been watching you create a schedule, and is Einhoven on the way from Frankfurt… The troubadours.

KOWALD: Yes. The everyday life of a traveler who just goes there and plays for the people, and opens his hand, gets some money and comes back home, and goes to the next one.

TP: Very much in the medieval European tradition of the traveling troupes, the caravans. The modern-day troubadours.

KOWALD: Well, in fact, Botticini(?), the great bass player, he had a bass that he could take the neck off, so in the horse coaches he could travel, and then he did the gigs at the clubs!

TP: We don’t have time to go in tremendous depth into recent work… We have cued up a CD called “Aphorisms: 26 Looks On a Situation” with saxophonist Floris Floridis, and drummer Gunter “Baby” Sommer…

KOWALD: He’s from East Germany. We were not allowed to play together for a couple of years, but we played secretly in the late ’70s and early ’80s. But in the early ’70s we were not allowed to play together.

[PAUSE]

KOWALD: [after Kowald-Barry Guy duo] …It means “The Silence of Marcel Duchamp is Overvalued.”

TP: And why is it overvalued?

KOWALD: Well, it is something that Josef Beuys said. Josef Beuys was an artist of the area where I grew up. I really liked him in my early years, and he was very influential to me. Just to say it in short, he not only did his artwork for which people know him over here, but he also tried to put art in a social context in a new way again — again, something as a result of the ’60s also. He was very out there in the ’60s for us.

TP: Something that was antithetical to Marcel Duchamp, the idea of putting a context on anything.

KOWALD: He did a project which he called “The Silence of Marcel Duchamp has Been Overvalued,” and I thought it was really interesting because I liked Marcel Duchamp so much, too. Then Beuys said, “Okay, but let’s look what does it mean. Do we take certain things too seriously? Don’t we have to act in another direction now?” The ’60s again. Right? Actually, the Barry Guy record has all titles which are related to Art, which are actually sentences. Paintings used to be on the record, on one side, on the other side four pieces which are related to certain artists. Barry likes art very much. Then he decided for I think… Anyway, I decided for Beuys and Marcel Duchamp.

TP: The previous piece was a duet between you and Sanko, the Tuvan throat singer to whom you referred. An incredible sound. It catches your attention. Even Peter Kowald, who’ve heard this record and played with her hundreds of times, is sitting across from me… If you can visualize a totally attentive expression where no motion is possible for a moment until they reach the next moment.

KOWALD: These aspects… We are talking about Josef Beuys now, who on the one hand is an artist who comes very much out of my context, but he also has worked on the Celtic stuff. Or the Cayuta(?) piece, when he came to America, where he didn’t touch American ground, but was carried off the airplane and carried with an ambulance into a gallery so he wouldn’t touch American ground, and then spent a week with the Cayuta(?) (they didn’t know each other, and they became friends during this week), and then Beuys left again without touching American ground. It’s very interesting, because he worked with very old cultures, and he includes… When he came the first time to America, he wanted to talk about the old America, and the Cayuta(?) was the symbol for that. Then Seinko carries in her voice a thousand years — and maybe more — of musical knowledge that hasn’t changed much in that area. In Tuva and Mongolia, the music has remained similar. Then she carries that thousand-years-old knowledge and puts it into a contemporary context. This is wonderful and very interesting to me.

TP: This actually would connect you with a strain of European modernism that goes back to James Joyce and Ezra Pound and Picasso. Pound would use pre-Biblical language, Joyce recontextualizes Homeric myth, Picasso deals with African sculptural forms. And here you are using a similar process in this manner of making music. If there’s a narrative in the music you make, what would be the closest analog? Would it be vocabulary? Would it be the visual arts? Is it shapes? Is it colors? Because the words “narrative” and “vocabulary” are often used by musicians, but it’s obviously an abstract vocabulary.

KOWALD: I believe that artists and the way that we play music is a very similar process in many ways. I think a beautiful thing in the music (and some of my artist friends sometimes express jealousy about this) is that we do it in groups often, most of the time, and the artist is most of the time alone in a studio…

TP: You mean that music is a social even a social process.

KOWALD: Yes. Well, art is a social process, too. But then the artist usually works alone in the studio, while we work in a group on stage and in a direct way. The music is going out, and it’s right there. The artist works for months maybe, until the product is ready. But I believe certain questions are very similar, certain questions of how do you free your language, how do you work with form. I talk a lot with artists about this question of form and how to change… Once you have been doing it for years, the change gets smaller. When I was young, I thought every month something new came into the music. Now it is changing much less. Artists have very similar problems. That is classic with them. And artists sometimes have a more, like, formal consciousness, because they work on form for months; when they do a painting, for months they work on the form of the painting. Our form kind of develops organically and it’s right there when it’s just been developed.

But then you come also back to the question of form with Seinko from Tuva, the singer. What is interesting about her is she brings all the qualities of her culture, of her voice, all the Shamanistic breath techniques, all the overtones and all of that, but she left what I call the local song. She doesn’t bring her local song any more. She says, “I don’t sing my song any more. I put my stuff into an open context, so I can play with you or I can play with Evan Parker or Ned Rothenberg,” whomever she plays with. So she left the local song. But she still brings all that knowledge and all the thousand years with her. That’s a beautiful thing. Then suddenly, because the pre-given form, the local form is not there any more, the form is completely open, and we just all can work together. People from China, from Africa, from Tuva, from Israel, from Germany, we can work together instantly without even discussing the matters. That’s really good. That’s really what I call the Global Village. I have this group called The Last Global Village. We are actually playing at CB’s Gallery on the 22nd. We are playing with… [LISTS PERSONNEL] We don’t prepare the music. We don’t rehearse it. We just get together. And most of the people don’t know each other, have never played with each other. And it works, because we don’t arrive with a pre-given form.

TP: That brings me to another question. What do you observe your audience to be? And how has that audience evolved over the forty years you’ve been playing? Who do you find coming to the concerts? How do you think they’re receiving it? Are they involved-enthralled in the process of the music-making? My main response to hearing this kind of music is watching the interplay as it occurs from moment to moment. It’s not so much what’s being played as how I am perceiving taking shape in real time. Other people may have a different perspective. How do you perceive the process with your audience?

KOWALD: Well, the audience has been the same in many ways. There are little festivals in Europe where the same people come together every year to listen to basically the same musicians — the big family. That’s fine. But then, in the last few years, I see many young people coming. Also I play for a lot of artists, like for the art openings, and then you have an audience which has never heard this music. So what I tell in these workshops sometimes, the young people, what for me is important… We’ve talked about form now three times already in this little hour here. We talk about the believing and the love of it. This is important to me. I’m sometimes a little critical about some European players who do it so cold, in a way, with so much thinking and so much formal consciousness. I don’t mind the form at all, and I said that before. But I also believe that you need the love. You need to believe in what you are doing. If I don’t believe in the moment what I play, how can the people down there believe it? That’s what I try to tell the young people. Don’t just think about material. Just do that. Practice, check out the forms and do the work, but also try to come in contact with yourself. This is an esoteric term you read all over the place.

I remember this very young dancer of Pina Bausch who lived across the street, and we used to meet in the coffee house in the afternoon sometimes. He was 22, a French guy, Francois Durer(?), a fantastic virtuoso dancer, and Pina let him do all these little solos in the pieces. And then one afternoon he told me, “Listen, I know I’m a good dancer, but I haven’t found it in HERE yet.” And then he pointed to his chest. I found it really wonderful that a 22-year-old virtuoso dancer, a great artist already, understood that still he had to look for something inside. This is what I’m talking about. “If you don’t believe what you are doing,” I tell young people all the time, “how can they believe it? How can the audience believe it?”

That’s what you were asking about the audience. The audience believes it if you believe what you are doing, if you are in it, if you open your soul, if you open your heart. That’s the aspect people don’t talk about enough sometimes. I think in Black America people talk about it much more than in Europe. That’s I think an important point also to the question where I said I have this pendulum between, let’s say, Black American Jazz and very formal European improvised music. I think the music meets the heart.

TP: Assif, you’re from a generation for whom playing free music is almost another option for vocabulary. Last year I went to Cecil Taylor’s orchestra workshop at Turtle Bay Music School, and there were people who could play the music extremely well and lucidly. But in talking to some of these people, they might play bebop here, and here we’ll play this way, and here we’ll play a dance gig. There were all these options, and free music is one part of the craft of being a musician in 2001. It seems generational, that people with that attitude can embrace this music with extended vocabularies and extended techniques and tabula rasa playing as a genre of equal value to others. Maybe it has to do with the way education is presented now. Not to ask you to speak for your generation, but for you is this an operative thing?

TSAHAR: Well, it exists. Things are more formalized and more clear, and there’s more awareness that one is using certain techniques in a certain genre. Also, I grew up playing actually bebop on guitar, not on saxophone, so I had an experience of growing up and then being freed out of it. Because everything was done, there’s more awareness of what are the things that we’re doing. But in the end, the difference is of being a musician or being an artist, I guess. So for me, I’m trying not to think about it. I’m trying just to think about where I am, how I play, where do I find myself, and not think about playing like… If I find myself thinking about, “oh, I sound like…” Which was always with me. I think, “Oh, if I sound like Coltrane,” that’s not a positive thing. That’s a negative thing. That’s…

TP: Well, for a while you want to emulate a sound, and then move away from it, no?

TSAHAR: Well, I think that’s from the beginning, a certain awareness. I might have enjoyed it more in my earlier years, “Oh, wow, that’s cool.” But I was always aware this is not what I want to do, this is not where I want to go. I want to feel like I have no shadows chasing after me. Because all these thoughts of style and mentors, which could be like living mentors or dead mentors, are kind of shadows covering what I really want to do. So I’m trying to surpass them and not really… They only will get in the way, in a way. So being within a style thing of, “Oh, I’m playing free” or “I’m playing inside,” all those things, in a way, interfere with what I want to do.

But it is all there, because it’s all part of what I listen to, what I grew up with… You asked in the beginning how does Arabic music influence my music, and a lot of people ask me about Jewish music, and I say that for me I play Jewish-Israeli music if I want or if I don’t want. It’s like what I grew up listening to. It’s in my sound even if I don’t like it. A certain type of Arabic singing… Like, playing out of tune for me was the easiest thing ever…

TP: Microtonal.

TSAHAR: Or microtonal, if you want to be more intellectual about it. But it’s the way I heard people singing. The tone, the pitch always shifts and moves. It’s never like a very specific thing. That’s how I hear. That’s how I play. Because that’s what I heard growing up.

TP: Peter, you said before we went on mike that you could discuss some of the extended techniques you use on bass in the duos, say, with Barry Guy. And it’s interesting, because in some sense there’s a creative tension between the elaboration of these very specific techniques that comprise your sonic identity, and transmitting the heart and love and soul that is your ideal, the imperative for why you do it.

KOWALD: Well, there are different steps. On this CD here is Barre Phillips, who was a little bit my teacher in the ’60s when he came to Europe. He had studied with Fred Zimmerman here in New York. I met Barry Guy later, but then when I went to London in the ’80s, often I stayed at his house. We would drink until early in the morning, and then he would go to a studio and record this Mozart symphony which he hadn’t looked at. He went completely unprepared to the studio, and he could do them, and they all got these awards. So he is a fantastic classical player, too.

But now I want to talk about the third person, Martin Aaltena, who did something to me which really helped me a lot. He broke his arm in the ’70s, and he had it in plaster, so he knew he wouldn’t be able to play for two months. Then he put the bass neck into plaster, too, and then he started to play concerts like that. There’s a record out where there’s a photograph of the bass neck in plaster and his arm in plaster. I thought he had a courage which I don’t know if I’d have had to really go out and say, “I have to forget everything I’ve ever learned and do something completely new.” So he started to stick bows into the strings and made all this sound. The sounds he made were completely sounds that didn’t have to do at all with bass techniques he knew. He just wanted to spend the two months playing the bass, even with his arm broken, and he did that way. But also, all the sounds which came out really freed him from everything he had learned, and it helped to free me. Because I was kind of theoretically… I didn’t want to break my arm to do the same thing, but okay, let’s try really to put the hand on the bass in a way like I’ve never done it before. Then all these sounds come out which you don’t know where they come from. Then you have to combine. You have to combine your aesthetic will, maybe, something you have in your head and something which comes through the music you listen to, to combine with this how to put your hand on the instrument. If those two aspects get into a balance, then I think it’s really interesting.

TP: I’d like to pick up one other trope of this conversation, which is the relationship between your musical expression and the visual arts. So much of your music seems to be generated, performed, and perhaps even done in that context. You’re contemporaneous with German painters like A.R. Penck, Baselitz, Kiefer, painters who made an international impact in the ’70s and ’80s. I’m not trying to suggest any affiliation, but merely to note that their work was operating in parallel to you. Were there convergences?

KOWALD: I always like to hang out with the guys and discuss everything, and with the artists you often hang out and discuss… With the musicians, too. But then we discuss the methods, and discuss how does this function and how does this work. Well, artists don’t have an instrument. They have a very open way to use material. I have a bass. Of course, I could do other things, and now all the young guys do this electronic stuff, in order to have maybe a more free equipment to work with. But I was always quite a purist. I wanted to do all these things just on the bass. But then, artists have a lot of freedom. Many people do videos, installations… I just saw a documentary a couple of weeks ago in Germany. They are very free in terms of material. I think musicians can learn from that. That’s one thing I definitely have to say. But then our social thing is…I really don’t want to miss it. To go with Assif and Hamid on stage, and the three of us, and that smile, and then we just go, and we don’t know what the next minute will bring us. That’s the most wonderful thing to do.

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Peter Kowald Review Column (2002):

“I sometimes like to be like a chameleon,” Peter Kowald said last May, five months before his death. “I like to change color related to the person or the group I play with. And it means that I don’t have a function any more. I am just a bass player, which means that I make sounds on the bass like other people do on the trumpet, on the koto, on the gu-cheng or on the pipa.”

Born and based in Wuppertal, in Germany’s Ruhr Basin, Kowald brought that fluid aesthetic to innumerable extemporaneous encounters with a global cohort of speculative improvisers. Deploying a vivid, original tonal personality that blended tropes from jazz, Euro-Classical, and Mongolian and Pygmy folk traditions, he was as comfortable navigating discursively conversational duos as the complex terrain of hardcore free-improvised jazz.

Kowald is both chameleon and functional bassist on APHORISMS (Ano Kato 2015, 44:17, 4 stars). True to the title, Kowald, Greek reeds and woodwind virtuoso Floris Floridos, and innovative Dresden-born drummer Gunter “Baby” Sommer improvise 26 pithy vignettes from a veritable lexicon of extended techniques, parsing essences with precision and nuance, merging singular vocabularies into a collective sound that transcends instrumental gymnastics. Outcat trombonist Conrad Bauer, a multiphonics maestro who like Sommer was a pioneer of jazz in the GDR, joins Kowald and Sommer on BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH (Intakt 079, 52:46, 4 stars); they perform eight brief narrations with similar rigor and timbral scope, before stretching out for two vigorous extended blowout improvs that sustain compositional thought and variety from beginning to end on a minimum of thematic material.

Theme-solo-theme structures spur the intense interplay of OPEN SYSTEMS (Marge 28, 72:42, 3-1/2 stars), a sprawling, ritualistic recital by a first-time-out quartet of Kowald, post-Ayler saxophonist Assif Tsahar, bravura trumpeter Hugh Ragin, and drummer Hamid Drake. Convened in Paris in the spring of 2001, the unit only occasionally meanders, blowing with heat and wit through Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman” and four Tsahar vehicles that conjure up the apocalyptic feel of 1969 BYG record by, say, Archie Shepp or the Reverend Frank Wright. Kowald chants low, gutteral tones in counterpoint to Drake’s muezzin’s call on “Heart’s Remembrance,” an open improv, and presents an idiomatic Ayler homage entitled “Fathers and Mothers.”

Kowald once noted that he and saxophonist Peter Brötzmann – his mentor in early ‘60s Wuppertal — deployed radical jazz as a symbolic weapon to kill their fathers. After encouraging mid-‘60s encounters with expat American avatars like Steve Lacy, Don Cherry and Carla Bley, the young Germans set to work at eliminating the stepfathers; in Kowald’s words, “to do it the European way.” FOR ADOLPHE SAX (Archive-FMP Edition 230, 50:25, 3 stars) reissues a rawboned, to-the-barricades 1967 trio album on which Brötzmann blows with primal violence, Kowald bows resourcefully and dynamically, and Swedish drummer Sven-Åke Johanssen jabs and pummels ametric texture out of the drumkit, setting an expressionist template for several subsequent generations of the young and restless on both continents. Dutch energy pianist Fred Van Hove, Brötzmann’s cusp-of-the-‘70s partner in a trio with Han Bennink, joins the unit for a strong, though predictable disk-concluding track recorded at Radio Bremen.

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Kowald at Vision-Fest (5-27-02) – (Peter Kowald):

[START PETER KOWALD AT 43:56, ABOUT THE EURO]

PETER KOWALD: …it’s about making a castle against the poor people. Like, America is a castle, and then Europe is another castle now. I guess in Asia there are castles, too. So it’s like a castle to defend certain things, certain standards.

TP: I know what you’re talking about. [ETC.] We’re in the boiler room of the St. Patrick’s Church Community Center, where the Vision Festival is being held… [ETC.] Peter Kowald, bass player, master of extended techniques…

What is your sense of the term “avant-garde” and how does it apply to what you do, to the projection of your musical personality?

[45:18] KOWALD: Well, the first thing I have to say: In Europe we don’t use that term so much. And it has been used in the last century…well, at the beginning of the century for artistic movements like Dadaism, Surrealism and stuff. Actually, it is a military term. As we know, the group in front. The group in front which may be in the most dangerous place, the most risky place, and also which can make decisions — or does make decisions which the people in the back don’t do. So that has been modified for art movements in the last century. The way we use it, or the way it’s used here in New York about this music we all are playing, it’s a way we wouldn’t use that any more. Somehow, the term smells a little bit in Europe. It’s a little old-fashioned.

TP: That leads to a question I was going to ask. If there’s a difference between the conception of the avant-garde in Europe and the American notion of what the avant-garde is.

[46:24] KOWALD: So I believe what it meant and what it means is that there’s a movement or a group of artists who do something new, something different from what has been before. And I guess in the ’60s the term came up for this music very strongly, and there has been a lot of breaking up of traditional matters. And so, it has been used now 50 years later…no, 40 years… Ornette Coleman’s “Free Jazz” came out in ’62, no?

TP: ’60.

[47:04] KOWALD: Okay. 40 years later. I would say that’s a good moment, Ornette Coleman’s “Free Jazz,” which was definitely what at the time people would call avant-garde. It was breaking many, many rules, and trying to really open up the whole question of form. That’s what we maybe have to say first. Breaking up the form was what the whole goal was. Because all traditional musics, all over the world, they have a form. The Inuit singers or Indian Raga or African drum music, all this has form, however open or tight it might be. And I think the ’60s movement, what we relate to the term “avant-garde” now to what we are playing has completely opened up the form, which was not only the case in this music but also in contemporary art and… Remember Nam June Paik, the Fluxus artist, he came to Wuppertal in the early ’60s, and Brotzmann was his assistant for a moment, and Paik had said, “Now you can do anything. It’s completely open. Anything is possible now. Don’t worry about any tradition; don’t worry about any traditional form — anything is possible.” And that was maybe for us Europeans to think, “Okay, now the free…what does the free mean?” It basically means, in the first place, free of a pre-given traditional form, like bebop was and like a raga is or any other music has these forms. Free of a form. But of course, Ornette Coleman and Max Roach and the black musicians in America meant it also in another connotation of, well, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were around at the same time.

TP: Now, the Inuit musicians and the musics of India and the drum music of Africa, you don’t see this pattern of breaking up the form in this manner. These days it’s more that you see people who have mastered these forms intersecting with other people, creating this giant hybrid of vernaculars and cultural expressions. Why was the notion of breaking form so appealing to you at that moment?

[49:20] KOWALD: Well, I have been thinking about this a lot, in fact. What we might see in the ’60s…it started, and now it’s really obvious: That you could go all over the world in a plane in 24 hours, which means in one-night-and-day unit. Or you could have a CD or record at the time from any music of the world. I mean, there might have been very remote corners where you wouldn’t have something, but now everything is there. Everything is to our disposal. And at that time, at that exactly at this moment when this happened technologically, basically, that happened. The form broke open. So the traditional forms… They are still there, of course, and they are still very strong and they will stay. But exactly at that moment, the question came up: What does traditional form mean? Because traditional form is always a local form. But going around with a plane in a one-day unit means that the question of local has changed. And I believe that it’s very much connected, what I’m talking about now, that we can have information about all parts of the world, about all cultures, about all musics, about all art forms. We can have that now. We can discuss it. We meet people who play instruments who come from very different… Like, I play with Sanko from Tuva, and Tuva in the ’60s wasn’t even…nobody really knew about it here in the West, and now everybody talks about Tuva and the music there. So, so much has happened in these forty years. Which means that the local forms are still there, but they don’t have their importance any more. Or, they have it for the people who live locally. We all live locally, we have to say, too. But at the same time, there is a big exchange of all cultural values and traditions and all that is there. People call that the Postmodern maybe. I don’t know if I would like to use that term, in fact. But everything is there. Everything is to our disposal. We can use everything.

[51:30] So breaking up the form in terms of avant-garde, it meant — and Cage has said — that we can use any noise, and any noise is valued. And a saxophone player in New York, he would play saxophone in a way that would make certain screams, as we know, and certain noises. So noise has been with instrumental improvisers included, too. Noise was not excluded. So as Nam June Paik has said, anything is possible. We can include anything.

TP: You mentioned Nam June Paik twice, and in doing so you’ve touched on the next question. To what extent did artistic forms, cultural forms other than music — or politics — inflect the musical personality you’ve come to evolve?

[52:30] KOWALD: I mean, I grew up in Germany, and that’s why I talk about it. And I met Paik when I was 20. So he was very influential to me, in a way, through Brotzmann somehow. But also I was closer to the visual arts at the time, because I played the bass, and I played with Brotzmann, and I was 17 when I started to play with him, etc. But we didn’t grow up with the music like people here did. I was not Albert Ayler’s bass player at the time. What happened here, we watched really what came out here, the records when they came over here later — ESP and all of that. We really watched that and listened to it. But we were not here. We were in Wuppertal, Germany, which is a little town, and we were the only two people playing that kind of music at the time — or trying to. So we didn’t grow up with the music. So our connection with other art forms was more natural at the time. It was usually visual art, and then Fluxus was very important; it started in ’62-’63. Which again, the movement of Fluxus was about everything is open and everybody can what he or she wants to do.

So transporting this or transforming it to the question of playing the music: We tried to say, okay, we don’t want any tradition. We reject our own tradition in the sense of not playing Classical music, Classical European music, not even contemporary music in a sense, which is something which follows the classical music in the 20th Century. But then again, not what many Europeans had done before, learned the jazz licks and learned jazz and tried to copy or being with American jazz… We said, “We don’t want to do that either.” So that was our way to say, “Okay, we play a completely free, improvised music now.” And somehow, of course, Albert Ayler and Coltrane and Cecil Taylor and Ornette helped us to make these steps, and they were actually very influential to us in the beginning. But then also, we thought, okay, now we’ll try to have some European music which is just coming out of improvisation and no pre-given form.

TP: In the process, the most committed, adept improvisers developed specific identifiable vocabularies. Someone can tell you from William Parker from Barry Guy and so forth and so on. And you’ve evolved these vocabularies over many years. Has a music which was born from the idea of there being no form or the abolition of form become a formal entity unto itself, and how then does the music develop and advance within such a situation?

[55:36] KOWALD: Well, the pre-given form… Of course, in what we call now the avant-garde of this jazz music or post-jazz music…sometimes it has form and makes forms. But what I call the free improvisation doesn’t have a form — or a pre-given form. But each piece, of course, which is improvised, as a solo, as a trio, as a quintet, will have a form when it’s finished — has a form when it’s finished. Form is not something pre-given, but form is something which turns out to be in the process of playing. But this is basically a situation which is very open, open in the sense, too, that… And that’s what I love to talk about, too. I have played with a lot of people from different cultures. We all have. But I always looked for the question what the other cultures have to say. So from Sanko to Charles Gayle, or from a Japanese koto player…a Chinese koto player is in my group now, ..(?).., who is in my group in Germany now. to Pamela Z(?) from San Francisco, who uses body contact mikes. I like to play in other spectra. But that’s also part of the openness, too.

In a way, I sometimes like to be, as a bass player…like to be like a chameleon, which means I like to change color related to the person I play with or to the group I play with. Which means as a bass player I don’t have a function any more, like, up until the ’60s the bass player had. And still, sometimes, in a groups with saxophones, drums and bass, of course, I still use the function…I have the function of a bass player in that group, too, when I play with Rashied Ali. But in other times, I don’t have a function as a bass player. I am just a bass player, which means that I make the sounds on the bass like other people make it on the trumpet, on the koto, on the gu-cheng or on the pipa. And that means we are all individuals now. The openness is there. The openness… As I said, we can travel in one day to any part of the world. We can have music from everywhere we can listen to, and we can play with people who also live behind the local forms and just say, “Okay, we are open now, too.” We still use our aesthetics. Sanko, the singer, is an example I like to use often, because she is so obvious. She’s using the shamanistic breath techniques, and she is doing the overtones like in Tuva, but she opened up the form and she doesn’t sing the local song any more. And when we do that, then we can play together immediately, without any discussion. We don’t have to prepare anything.

TP: This is a very radical idea.

[58:45] KOWALD: Well, it’s an idea which sometimes… I don’t want to exaggerate, but sometimes I feel it could be a beautiful little model for how this world could function. Because of course, the forms… We need form, and that’s why many people also sometimes come back to it more than in the ’60s. Many musicians have gone back to pre-given forms — to compositions and to playing time and to playing chords sometimes. But all that is possible. All that can be included. We don’t want to exclude anything any more. Not the noise, but also not the sound. So we can include everything. And that’s nice. Because I believe if you look at it socially, politically, psychologically, everything that is excluded will be a problem later on. So we can include everything. Then when everything is on the table, then we can make our choice and say, “Today I eat the apple” and tomorrow the orange and then the day after the grapes. We can make the choice when everything is on the table. But everything has to come on the table first. And when it’s on the table, then we can make the choice.

TP: Now, this attitude, it doesn’t seem to me, was possible 40 years or, or 30 years ago, even. But now it seems a commonplace to say this. Why do you think that is?

[1.00.16] KOWALD: Well, that has to do with that the world got smaller, in fact, of course, and it has to do with attitudes of… We all travel more than we did in the ’60s. In the ’60s we had an old car, and went from Germany to Belgium, which was five hours. Of course, some musicians traveled at the time, too, but they were much less. And now everybody travels all the time to play concerts wherever in the world. Wherever people ask me to play, I go. Or if I were to invite a musician from wherever, I ask them to come.

So that’s part of that. But also the information has gone… I don’t look at television any more, but what they give you on television at least it’s a sign what could be possible of what we see from other cultures, what we see from other parts of the world. Television in Germany and in America and in the Western world don’t use that. But there are so many possibilities to get information. But then there’s so much information that we have to make choices again. We have to make choices all the time, because it’s too much. And then, okay, we made the choice to make free improvised music with a network of people between Asia and… Maybe there are people in Africa coming soon. I played with people in Africa who understood what I was talking about. Because they wanted to teach me their rhythms, which as a German I never would be able to learn, even as much as I would try. Then at some point, they said, “Oh, you play what you play and we play what we play,” and so we played together. That was a step into… Still people who were very related to their traditional form said, okay, you can do what you do and we’ll do what we do. That’s a step into that freedom you’re talking about.

[1.02.35] TP: You were saying just before that you will travel wherever anybody asks you to play, and you’ve been doing something like this for about 40 years in one form or another, and you’re 58 years old. How have you sustained your intensity and commitment?

[1.03.10] KOWALD: Of course, I have sometimes a longing for being in one place more. Now I have two places, because I am in Germany, as I used to be, and I have a place in New York now, too. So basically I have two legs I’m standing on now. Well, I don’t like so much to teach. I do these workshops sometimes, and I like to talk to younger people about this music, and maybe give away something I’ve learned over the years. But basically, I love to play. So I don’t want to be really a professor at a university and stay in one place. My family…my children are big and have children themselves, so I am completely free to travel. And that’s what I love to do — travel and play. Just play with anybody… Traveling is the biggest thing…it’s a little hard. But to play with as many people as I like to play with and who like to play with me.

TP: Derek Bailey kind of rejects the notion of performance as artistic activity. He refers to it as playing, which implies a workaday attitude. That he is a musical artisan, in a certain sense. If you were to use that general typology of what it is you do, would you characterize yourself as an artist? An artisan? Both?

KOWALD: Well, I would say that at the moment I play, I mean, this hour or two hours of a concert on a stage… Usually it is on a stage. But I prefer the little cafe, the corner of a little cafe; that’s my favorite place, where there are 50 people and everybody is in reach, really. That is my favorite. But this hour of music for me is a special moment, I have to say. I wouldn’t call it a holy moment, but a moment of great concentration. All I can give to the world is that hour, the music in that hour. So when I play with people in a situation where people listen to this music, and not just at home or in a rehearsal space or in any place, just playing… It’s a different thing, playing for the public, I feel, and playing for non-musicians. This is a special moment, and this is still what… I don’t care if you really call it art, but I believe it’s my art, yes.