Curtis Lundy Musician Show (May 29, 1996):
[MUSIC: Pharaoh Sanders, “Africa” – Pharaoh-Lundy-Idris—1987; John Hicks Trio, “Pas de Trois” – Hicks-Lundy-Idris–1987 (I’ll Give you Something To Remember Me By]
TP: You’re from Florida, the home state of the great bassist Sam Jones and many other musicians. Let’s talk about your origins in music.
CL: I started really dealing seriously with music, I guess you could say… When I was in junior high school, I played snare drum at the time in the concert band.
TP: This was in Miami?
CL: This was in Miami. Southwest Miami. I don’t know how many of your listeners know anything about Miami, but Southwest Miami is… When Hurricane Andrew came through there, it was the part that was most devastated. I’m thankful that my family was all right through that experience. But that’s below the Coconut Grove area and places like that.
TP: Is your family musical?
CL: I guess you could say that…
TP: We have to give your sister Carmen Lundy a plug; she’s beginning a week this evening at Sweet Basil, through Sunday. But where did it come from? Parents? Family? Natural inclination?
CL: I think it came from my mother’s side of the family, with the deep gospel tradition that was in our family, and just the love of music of all kinds. I had a couple of aunts who played piano, and an uncle… Basically, all of my mother’s siblings knew something about music, just because of the love of music and the praise that they would give the Creator for giving them the life that they had.
TP: Were you absorbing music through them?
CL: Yes.
TP: Were they giving you tips or lessons? Or just hearing the ebullience of it?
CL: Just hearing it, and being in the environment almost on a daily basis. If not actually being in church, just being overwhelmed by my mother’s ability to be such a great singer and not go at it from a commercial point of view. That’s something that was striking to me also. But my grandfather also played a little guitar. My mother and most of my aunts had a singing group called the Apostolic Singers, and my grandfather would manage the group. They used to do concerts with people like the Staples Singers and people like that, when the Staples Singers were still singing exclusively gospel music. That experience, being around…
The accompanist for the group would change once in a while. I remember they had this one cat who was…I could tell that he was… I thought he was kind of from Mars at the time, because I was about 6 or 7 years old, and he was trained in the jazz and classical tradition. When he came to play with my mother and her group, I was like, “Wow, this cat is playing some different stuff!” I’ll never forget it. His name was George. I never knew his last name or anything. But he was bad. My mother and all of the other singers in the group really dug him because he played some different stuff. He would be like Hicks coming in and joining a gospel group. He was that kind of cat. I still remember that. He left that kind of impression on me.
TP: Any records of jazz particularly that you heard as a youngster before taking up snare drum in that concert band? When did you first become aware of it?
CL: I heard boogie-woogie piano music and some stride stuff, because my aunt would play some of that stuff. But actually, it was almost taboo to play that in my grandfather’s house. So whenever he wasn’t there, they would sneak and cut a few tunes…
TP: Because it was the “devil’s music”?
CL: So to speak, yes.
TP: So you came up in a very intensely religious environment.
CL: You could say that. Yeah, you could say that.
TP: The Spirit was there.
CL: The Spirit was there. But it was cool, because my people were realists, too. They would allow us to experience life on life’s terms, but at the same time they never let us lose the focus, which in my formative years proved to be very good for me, and later on in my life and to this very date has shown to be something that I can draw on as a reserve for my personal strength to move to whatever direction I’m trying to move in.
TP: Let’s jump back to junior high school and the snare drum. What was the musical program like?
CL: Actually, I had a great junior high school band director. His name was Mr. Valentine. He was on the same level as…you know, when cats out of Chicago talk about Captain Dyett and DuSable and all those schools like that… Well, Mr. Valentine was that level. He was a great musician, and his family…his father was also a great musician and composer and arranger. Mr. Valentine was the kind of cat that whatever… If somebody missed a note or missed a beat or anything on any instrument in the band, he could pick the instrument up and play what was supposed to happen. He would let them know in no uncertain terms, “don’t let it happen again or else somebody else is going to be sitting in your chair.”
TP: What sort of music did he have you play?
CL: We played symphonic music and we played march…a lot of Sousa stuff and things like that. We were one of those bands that would go those band competitions. The State of Florida is kind of famous for that.
What happened was, the turnover in the band… I joined the band when I was in 7th grade, I think. Every year, the new class would get a chance to audition for the band and to start preparing themself musically. What would happen, we would have to play some of the same music during the interim of those periods, because they had to get a chance to learn some of the music that we were already playing. I kind of got bored with doing all the time, so what I used to do was start improvising on the music…
TP: Were you past the snare drum at this point?
CL: No, I was still playing the snare drum. Because I dug the snare drum. Whenever I would improvise… We used to have a little crew, me and a couple of my partners, and each section would do something — what we would call “making it funky.” But Mr. Valentine was a disciplinarian. He didn’t go for that, to put it lightly. So I ended up getting kicked out of the band. But I think that was a good lesson for me — to show me that it takes discipline to deal with music, too. Even though I was a pretty good section player, he had to teach us a lesson about the discipline of music, and I’m glad that it happened, when I looked back at it, because later on in life I realized that was important for me.
TP: What led you to the bass?
CL: Well, after I got kicked out of the band, I think that next year… Christmas was coming up. All of my friends were getting little motorcycles and minibikes and stuff, so of course I wanted one, too. So my mother told me, “Forget about that; what’s your second choice?” I always loved music, and at the time Motown was really happening and all of that stuff was going on. I guess I had felt some kind of probably resentment toward the snare drum because I’d had a bad experience with that with the band. I always liked the rhythm section and I liked the bass, and I asked my mother for a bass. So she bought me an electric bass, and I just started learning how to play on my own, and learning all the tunes of the time…
TP: What did you do? You listened to the records and the radio, and just listened to the basslines?
CL: Yeah, I listened to James Jamerson. I listened to all the stuff that was happening then, in particular cats like James Jamerson, Bootsy, I really dug Willie Weeks. Cats like that. Cats who could really play the Fender, but also, as I found out later on, those same guys also knew something about the instrument and about the upright, so their approach to the electric bass was very rhythmic as opposed to playing a lot of notes. They really understood the function of the bass, and that was important to me.
TP: Talk a bit more about that function of the bass that they understood. That seems to have been imbibed by you from the very beginning of your playing?
CL: It was. I always felt that the bass…if you would look at the anatomy of the body, the bass is the heartbeat, along with the drums… But if I were to break it down, the drums are the heartbeat but the bass is what makes the blood flow through the veins. That’s the approach to the instrument that I enjoy. For me, listening to those kinds of bass players, I understood that the function of the bass was not to get in the way, but also to be tasteful and to accent the beat. That’s something that I always liked and I always try to do when I play, even to today. Because a lot of bass players sometimes, I think, get away from the function of the instrument — and that’s very important.
TP: It’s an interesting point, jazz music being a music of personalities, and many bassists having personalities just as strong musicians…how to articulate that personality while remaining true to the function of the instrument. This perhaps is a question for later, but since we’re on it, how do you deal with that?
CL: I allow myself to let the music dictate what I play, as opposed to forcing it. I’m the kind of person that if I find…if there’s a hole that needs to be filled, I try to fill it properly, but I also try not to overflow the glass, so to speak. It’s a very fine line between those two. But when you look at people like… I think one of my best examples (now in hindsight, I think about it) of someone who could do that would be Israel Crosby. He knew how to keep the glass full and not overflow. That was the approach that… I tried to steer myself in that direction.
TP: It’s time to get to our first musical segment. We’ll keep in mind that in our narrative, Curtis has taken up the electric bass and he’s practicing to James Jamerson and Willie Weeks and Bootsy as a teenager in Miami.
This set will focus on music by Paul Chambers, one of your personal musical heroes. We’ll begin with a piece titled “Visitation” from a 1956 recording he led for the Jazz West label – the Paul Chambers Quartet with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Kenny Drew on piano, and Philly Joe Jones on drums.
[MUSIC: Paul Chambers 4, “Visitation”-1956; Sonny Clark Trio, “Two Bass Hit”-1957; PC, “Easy To Love”–1956 Jazz West; Sonny Clark Trio, “Tadd’s Delight”–1957–PC & Philly Joe]
TP: What brought you to the acoustic bass?
CL: I think around my 9th grade year, I would venture… Even though I was kicked out of the band, I used to go back into the band room, and I started seeing these instruments in there, this bass fiddle in there, with all this dust on it. I would just play around with it then. It wasn’t really in good shape. And for some reason, at the time, the orchestra part of music in my junior high school was not happening, I guess for the lack of people who were interested in playing string instruments or whatever. But the first time I ever heard the instrument, I really dug it. But I didn’t really get a chance to start dealing with it until I got to high school in tenth grade. I was playing football at the time…
TP: You were a defensive back, right?
CL: Right. Actually, linebacker and defensive back. Something kept pulling me toward really dealing with the music. I guess the fact that for me, teaching myself how to play the electric bass and starting to learn how to deal with reading music and stuff like that… I started working a lot from the age of 14 on up. I started getting quite a lot of work, playing.
TP: What sort of work?
CL: At the time, Miami Beach was still the place to be, “the playground for the stars” and all that kind of stuff. I had put together a band that basically did top-40 stuff and different things, a lot of Donnie Hathaway stuff, things like that. We had a pretty good band, and we would get a lot of calls to work on Miami Beach. At that time, it was quite lucrative because the scene was still happening. I don’t think it was so much the money that motivated me, but just the fact that the art… For some reason, I related to the art of the music more than I did the financial expectations that some people look at.
TP: You learned quickly. You started at 13; by 14 you’re…
CL: Yes, I was working a lot.
TP: So in high school, you’re on the football team, and in the school band…not in the school band, but instead working on various gigs…
CL: Yes, I was working a lot playing the electric bass. But at the same time, after football season was over… There was a group in my high school called the Killian Singers. This group was basically a pop vocal music group that was based in our high school. My sister was part of that group, and some really good singers at that time. They asked me if I wanted to play the bass. I think at the same time, if you played football in Miami you also had to run track and you had to do that kind of stuff to stay in shape for football. So I was also running track, and I didn’t feel like lugging my electric bass to school every day to play with these singers, because to me, they were doing this kind of corny…what I felt at the time was corny pop music… I don’t want to call the titles off, but some things that really hit my main nerve — let’s put it like that. But still, once in a while, they’d come up with some hip stuff. I happened to look in the closet once again, and there was an upright bass in there. So I thought: Listen, maybe I’ll try to play this bass and learn how to do this. That’s when I first started really wanting to get serious about it.
After that, after my sister saw that I could pretty much get a tone on the instrument, she started playing a few records around the house. At the time, Freddie Hubbard… “Red Clay” and all that stuff was happening. That’s really some of the first stuff I started listening to, that kind of stuff, CTI stuff, things like that, until I started doing some investigating on my own.
TP: Well, Ron Carter was on some of those dates.
CL: Yeah, exactly. I heard that, and I said, “Yeah, I like that.” So I started really trying to get serious about the instrument then.
TP: Did you study with someone?
CL: No. I kind of taught myself for a little while, and actually I taught myself until I went to college. Then I hooked up with one of the greatest classical bassists that’s probably alive today, Lucas Drew, at the University of Miami. He was my teacher. I spent a lot of time with him. Not as much time as I could have. But I spent enough time with him to understand two or three different things that are really important: #1, that the instrument is an instrument of nobility, and that you need to take it very seriously; #2, the fact that he felt I had some natural inclinations toward the instrument; and #3, that he respected this music that we call jazz.
I’ll never forget one of the main statements he made to me. He was pushing me towards the classical vein and learning that music, and that was great. But for some reason I felt I needed to tell him that I wanted to be a jazz bassist. He said, “Well, all of the great bass players can do this.” That put me right in the place I needed to be.
TP: That includes Paul Chambers, whose music we just heard. There are stories of his ability to go into a situation like that and read something down and play with great virtuosity…
CL: Exactly.
TP: Did you discover his music around this time? Is this when you started exploring records, and getting a bit further into it than the contemporary CTI albums?
CL: Definitely. Around this same time I started… The first cat I really got into was Ray Brown. Then one day I got this Miles record with Paul, and I think for about 6 months straight I just listened to that.
TP: Let’s talk about the stylistic dynamics and approach to the bass that have affected you and so many other bass players similarly.
CL: Well, first of all, his tone is remarkable. His intonation is flawless. His ability, as you said, to go into any situation and not overshadow anybody in the same way, say, someone like Art Blakey could do. Be the ultimate sideman but also step to the forefront and demand attention from the listener, not just the musicians. That’s important to me. Today, I feel that a lot of musicians…this is just how I feel, so you can take it for what it’s worth… A lot of musicians play musicians for musicians, and they don’t play music for the people. That kind of bugs me. Because the music is for the people; it’s not for the musicians. Paul and the people of that generation played that way, to me. It’s a very formidable approach to the music, to have somebody know that it wasn’t the musicians that were important, but it was the listener, because without the listener, there is no music.
In terms of Paul’s prowess, there are so many things that, as you said, myself and other bass players have been able to get from him. The first thing is that, even if he never took a solo, he was a great bass player because of knowing his function in the rhythm section. He was just very special.
I look at music, and I guess life itself, in two categories. There are certain people who are gifted and then there’s people who are talented. Paul was one of those who was gifted. A lot of people search their whole life to do things the way that he did them on the instrument — and whatever instrument it is, not just the bass. He was gifted.
TP: He was 21 and 22 on the tracks we heard earlier, laying down timeless musical statements.
CL: Exactly. I felt that if I would try to deal with that approach, I wouldn’t miss that far off the mark, and that’s what I try to do still to this day.
TP: While attending the University of Miami, I gather that’s where you began to encounter a number of people who would be significant to you today. Was Bobby Watson there at the time?
CL: Definitely. There was another cat who’s here on the scene, Benjamin Brown. When he came to New York, he was working with Dizzy a lot. Ben spent more time, very seriously, with Lucas Drew (the teacher I was talking about), and really got a lot of the things I should have gotten, and that today I’m still dealing with and working on. I really respect Ben a lot. He’s an excellent musician, a great bass player, and a good friend, too. He looked out for me. A few things that he could throw my way, he did at the time, when we were coming through. He kind of inspired me to let me know that a cat from way down in Miami could come to New York and make it. So he was an inspiration.
Also, Bobby, of course, was there. And there was a trumpet player who has since passed on, bless him. His name was Caesar Elie. He came to New York once or twice. He had a few personal problems. But he was a great trumpet player. By my taste, he was the best trumpet player I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s a shame that he won’t be heard any more. But he was everything that a lot of these cats out here would like to be. He was all of that. I met him, and Bobby and I had a band with him in it with another cat who’s down there now named John McMahon, who was a tenor player who sounded like Trane back then. Now he’s playing a lot of piano. There were a lot of cats who just were great musicians. I was fortunate enough that they felt I wanted to know the music and learn the music enough, and they gave me an opportunity to play.
TP: In a certain, it seems you were really going against the grain. This is the mid-1970s, and fusion and disco are at its peak, and the electric side of the instrument…Jaco Pastorius, also from Miami…
CL: Well, he’s from Fort Lauderdale, but he was there at the school. As a matter of fact, I studied with Jaco on the electric bass. I never stopped playing the electric bass. As a matter of fact, my first record date in New York was with Bobby, playing the electric bass on this Roulette record. I was scared to death, because it was the first time I got a chance to play with Billy Hart. I think Billy Higgins was also on the date. Roland Prince. It was a good date. That’s actually the first time I came to New York; I was still playing electric bass. But once I got here and I saw all these cats working on the upright exclusively, that was it for me. I was like, “Ok…”
TP: By ‘against the grain’ I mean not so much playing the electric, but sticking with the idiom of jazz in the tradition. There must have been economic temptations, among others, to do otherwise. Or not?
CL: Yes, there were. But at the same time, the band that I talked about that Bobby and I had (and my sister also) with this trumpet player who I mentioned, we played all of that stuff. At the time, it was kind of hard not to play “Mr. Magic” (know what I’m saying?) and all that kind of stuff. So we had to do that. But we also would go ahead and stretch out and play some things. We tried to make the musical mix somewhat also pleasing to the ear, but at the same time challenging to pay. To me, music also needs that challenge. I need that personally to keep driving me.
TP: The subject of the next set of music will be Oscar Pettiford. We’ll hear tracks from the two small orchestra dates he recorded for United States in the mid-1950s.
CL: After discovering Paul and being wiped out by him, I said, “Well, where did he get this from?” I started looking into it, and I found out that Oscar Pettiford was a source of his inspiration. So of course, I had to look into that. Sometimes, as a musician, when you find a cat who blows you away so much, you say, “Maybe let’s try to find somebody who can spoon-feed me a little bit.” I tried to do that with Oscar, and it was like, “Let me go somewhere else.”
But seriously, Oscar was once again a complete musician — an arranger, composer, and all those things. I wanted to investigate Paul’s inspiration, and I think I found it with Oscar. It was important for me to understand his function in the music, and during the timespan in which he lived, the importance of his life and what he gave to the music.
[MUSIC: OP, “The Gentle Art of Love”-1956; OP, “Tricotism”-1956, Lucky Thompson and Skeeter Best; OP, “Sunrise” (Gigi Gryce, arrangement)-1956–In Hifi]
CL: As Dizzy I think said in these liner notes, at this time there were two geniuses of the bass (he felt) — that was OP and Blanton. Oscar for me really took the art of playing the instrument as if it was a horn to that level in terms of improvisation. Of course, Blanton was in the forefront of that, but Oscar really showed the capability of the bass as a solo instrument. That was important, if not for anything else, to show the bass players of that time, I think, to explore the instrument for all the musical qualities it offers, and I believe it was important for that to be heard. Also, by the same token, he was a great rhythm section player, and knew the function of the bass. That always impressed. There are bass players to this day who are wonderful soloists, but that’s the way they play — as if they are waiting for their solo. When I hear… No matter how good a bass player is able to play the instrument as a soloist, if he doesn’t play the function of the bass, I really… I have respect for him as a soloist but not as a bassist. Because that’s what the instrument is about.
TP: In Miami at the time you were coming up, there was another bassist who is one of the great soloists and great composer and function player – that’s Israel Lopez, Cachao, in Latin music. Was that another element of your musical experience coming up in Miami?
CL: Yes, it had to be. At that time, Latin music was starting to grow there, of course because of the influx of Cubans coming over. Being based in Miami, it was important to understand that type of music. I was fortunate, because at the time I had a steady gig that I think lasted two years at a place I think called Leisure Den, and at the time Cachao was working a block away. The drummer who was on the gig was this cat named Diego Abora(?—38:51), whose father played with Miles, and he was a very good drummer. He asked me one night on the break did I know Cachao. I said, “No, who is he?” He told me who he was. He said, “He’s working a block away.” So on the break we walked down to this club, which was a disco club, and there was this disco band playing. Latin disco band; they were playing some Latin stuff. Cachao was playing bass. The way they had the band set up, he was in the middle of the band, and he was burning, playing whatever he needed to play. But what really wiped is in the middle of one of these disco dance tunes he pulls out the bow, and takes this unbelievable solo. From then on I was a Cachao fanatic. Once again, he understood the function of the bass. Because right there, he was making people dance, which is another art that the music has moved away from but which I believe is important, too — to make people have that kind of feeling.
TP: He’s also a master of tumbao as well as the strings – he works them simultaneously.
CL: Yes. He did everything that I thought somebody could do with the bass that night. So from then on, on all of my breaks, I would go down and listen tohim. It proved to be a good experience for me, teaching me how to play that type of music also.
TP: What brought you to New York?
CL: Actually, the fact that I kept reading these record liner notes. I said to myself, after I’d made the decision that I wasn’t going to become a professional football player, that I was going to be a professional musician, New York was the place where all the great musicians were… My aspiration at the time was to play with the best musicians in the world, and they were in New York. After my sister came to New York and then Bobby came to New York, it was like everybody was leaving and I was the only one still there, so to speak. A lot of cats who I went to school with, like Hiram Bullock and Pat Metheny…these cats were coming to New York and making it. So I figured I could give it a try, too, and I came.
TP: What was step one?
CL: Step one was learning that you have to have your own voice, and I think that’s something I learned from listening to Paul and Oscar, because even though I loved them, I still wanted to say something — or learn how to say something, which I’m still working on — that represented what Curtis Lundy was about and where he came from and what he stood for. That was step-1. I think I was able to start to approach that by just dealing with the sound of the instrument. At the time I came to New York, I didn’t particularly like a lot of the stuff that I heard sound-wise. I liked what musicians were playing, and bass players in particular, but they didn’t get the sound of the bass that I thought was important. You have your exceptions, of course. But as a rule, I thought there was a void for that, and I tried in my own way to fill that void.
TP: Step 2?
CL: Step 2 was learning how to fit in any situation that was called for me musically, because at the time I came to New York, which was in the late 70s, the avant-garde music was still prevalent and even though I come from the swing tradition, I learned very quickly that you have to learn how to play all types of music here. I learned a lot from that experience, playing with people like Beaver Harris, the Reverend Frank Wright, people like that, who were a little bit to the left but their music still required discipline and knowledge of the instrument.
That was step 2, and I guess, if I can precede you here, step 3 was learning that life ain’t fair, heh-heh, that you have to take what’s given you and work it to your best ability to move forwards, to go to the next level.
TP: Next we’ll hear from a musician who often expressed his view that life is not fair, and expressed many views in an impassioned and individualistic way — Charles Mingus. Your first exposure to Mingus’ music.
CL: The first time I met Mingus, I was at a concert I think at Avery Fisher Hall. I think Bobby was playing with Art Blakey at the time, so I was allowed to come in and hang out with the cats. I saw Mingus, so I immediately ran up to him and asked him if he could show me anything about the bass. He said, “I don’t talk before I play.” Even though he said it in a demonstrative way, as only he could do, I felt good about him saying that to me, because it showed me how serious he was about the music. Then I heard him play some piano, and it showed me how musical this man was and how much he put towards learning about the shades and the colors of the music.
I think the first time that I heard Mingus was hearing “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” and I knew this was an important figure in the jazz community. I started following him then.
TP: Mingus’ main inspiration compositionally was Duke Ellington, and Jimmy Blanton on the bass. So “Mood Indigo” from 1963.
[MUSIC: Mingus, “Mood Indigo” – 1963; Ellington–Blanton, “Jack the Bear:-1940; Ellington-Blanton, “Sophisticated Lady”-1940; Ellington-Ray Brown, “Pitter Panther Patter”-This One’s For Blanton]
TP: On the next set you’ll be hearing a taste of Curtis, some different situations. But first, a few words about Ray Brown, who you credit as your first jazz bass influence, and Jimmy Blanton.
CL: I think that Ray Brown’s approach to the instrument is formidable. His sense of timing for me is important, because it showed me how to play, first of all, within the trio setting. A lot of the time, I guess before that, I was listening to a lot of horn bands, but I got turned on to Ray Brown playing with Oscar Peterson, and I started wanting to know more about who Ray Brown was recently. Then I found this record with Duke and Ray playing this tribute to Blanton, and then I went further and found out who Jimmy Blanton was. Ray Brown is still, to this day, one of my biggest influences, I would say. As I said before, although I try not to sound like one person in particular, I think Ray Brown is an important ingredient for every bass player to have as a part of their total sound and total approach to the instrument.
TP: Before we discuss Jimmy Blanton, I’d like to speak with you about playing the different functions. As an instance, how you might vary your approach within a trio as opposed to playing in a band with horns, for instance, just to start?
CL: We can go a little further and talk about duo playing.
TP: A big part of a New York bassist’s job.
CL: Exactly. I believe that to really understand the function of the bass, you’ve got to go all the way back to that. I’ve been fortunate to play in those type of settings with people like John Hicks and other pianists on the scene — but mostly I like to work with John a lot. He and I have a musical rapport that works for me. Also, John is so knowledgeable about the music that I’m always learning and being challenged by playing his compositions. Also, he’ll always dig something up that I should know. That’s one of the reasons why I love John so much. Without being overbearing about it, he’s always teaching. He’s always teaching me in particular about the history of the music and what I should know, and also playing the way that he plays influences me to learn more about the whole spectrum of music that I should be aware of — and it’s important.
For the bass, learning how to play in a duo setting makes you a stronger player in other settings. Because there’s no drums, and you have to know where the time is all the time, and you have to keep that support there. That’s important. I always tell bass players, “As much as you can, just play duo,” because it teaches you how to be a supportive instrumentalist, but at the same time it shows you how to play within the harmony and the textures of the music to a point where it’s a full sound — and that’s very important.
TP: Let’s talk about a trio — say with John Hicks and Idris Muhammad or Victor Lewis. Then what do you do differently?
CL: I let the drummer be more concerned with the beat and I am concerned with the rhythm, as opposed to duo playing where I’m concerned with the beat and the rhythm.
TP: That’s the nature of the dialogue with the drums that’s part of any rhythm section.
CL: Exactly. So it frees me up to be more rhythmic, but at the same time to interplay with the drummer in terms of different types of motifs we can get into musically just from the bass and the drummer’s point of view. It’s challenging to go from that setting to the trio setting, because it loosens you up, but it also helps you to understand that function is still there to be a part-of.
TP: Moving away from Professor Lundy’s incisive lecture on bass function, let’s move to a few words about Jimmy Blanton and his pathbreaking approach to the bass.
CL: The first time I heard Blanton, I couldn’t believe that he was doing the stuff that he was doing on the bass, and when he was doing it. It was unheard-of on that instrument at that time for somebody to be playing it like that. I was talking to you earlier about the fact that I’d heard the Sun Ra interview on this station, and how Sun Ra was saying that somebody had told him about Jimmy Blanton, and he missed getting Jimmy Blanton to play with him by two days. I’m serious. He went to St. Louis, I think, to go and see Blanton, and Duke had just got him two days before Sun Ra got there. That was interesting to me.
But Blanton, once again, being the predecessor of Oscar Pettitord, showed the bass as a solo instrument. He also showed that there were no limitations to what could be done on the instrument if you really studied the instrument and approached it from that point of view.
TP: And he was working without an amplifier.
CL: Exactly. His sound, once again; his approach to the instrument; and his understanding of the function within the band.
TP: How about Mingus’ bass playing?
CL: Mingus, I believe, again, was heavily influenced by Jimmy Blanton. His approach to music, not just the bass but his approach to music, was important for me to understand as a bassist… At the time I was learning how to start writing music and really how to become a composer and arranger at the same time. He was important for me because he was doing all of these things, and out of all these people we’ve played besides Ray Brown, I could see Mingus. That was important for me. I could see him play.
TP; What’s the value of seeing a musician play vis-a-vis just hearing him on a recording?
CL: Because you get a chance to see… It’s like a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player. It’s one thing to talk about Dr. J and hear the legend of him, but you can watch him and see how he does it, and watch the nuances of the way he approaches his game. It was the same thing musically. I got a chance to see how Mingus approaches his game, how he approached the instrument, how he approached music as a whole. The same thing with Sam Jones, Ray Brown, Ron Carter, people like that. It’s an invaluable experience to watch these people do the things that you are aspiring to do as a musician, and be able to see them do it. It gives you a better insight on how you can also do it, and do it in your own way.
Walter Bishop once said to me that there’s three different levels that usually happens with a musician. Imitation, assimilation, and innovation. Most people deal with the first two. Very rarely do we come up with innovators. I feel that in particular Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford and Paul Chambers are the innovators on that instrument. There are others who I believe did things that are very formidable, such as Slam Stewart. Ray, and Ron also. But in terms of being an innovator on the instrument, I really would stick with those three.
TP: What’s the nature of Oscar Pettiford’s and Paul Chambers’ innovations?
CL: I think for the time that they played the instrument, and the timespan that the played the instrument, they took it to the next level. Because if you notice, in the Blanton style of playing, he really didn’t…I’m not saying he couldn’t… But at that time, and for the style of the music, the way he played the walking bassline was not really…the way that evolved into the way Oscar Pettiford played the walking bassline, and then how Paul played it… There were different choices of how to do that.
TP: Are you speaking of the phrasing?
CL: The choice of notes, the phrasing, and the types of music the played in the idiom…the context of the type of music they played in at that time.
TP: Now it’s time to hear some recordings Curtis has played on over the years. We’ll begin with something you did with Betty Carter, with whom so many musicians have really received their polishing-up, so to speak. Her role has been similar to that of Art Blakey, Horace Silver and people like this over the years. I guess her band is where you met John Hicks. How did you come to that gig?
CL: As I said before, I was playing with some guys who were playing, for lack of a better term, avant-garde and free music. Every chance I’d get in some of those bands, I would swing, and for some reason they seemed to like it. I guess the word got out. At the time, there were more jam sessions and open places for musicians to sit in. So the word got out, and I got a call one day… I was actually down to like my last, and I got a call one day from Jack Whittemore, who at the time was booking everybody. He had a stable of some of the greatest performers in this music. I got a call from Jack, and he said, “Curtis, Betty Carter is looking for a bass player and she’d like to hear you and see if you can play her music.” I was nervous. I went over to her house. John was there, and Kenny Washington was there, and we played a few charts. She took me to the side and said, “there are some things you need to work on, but I kind of like your sound, and I think I might be able to do something with you.”
TP: What do you think the things were she thought she had to do with you at that point?
CL: Enhance my ability to really understand what it was to play behind a singer – number one. Help me to relax and learn how to enjoy the music. And make me practice.
[MUSIC: Betty Carter, “Tight”—Hicks-Curtis-Kenny, The Audience with BC-1979; 2 from Whatever Happened to Love-Khalid Moss, Curtis, Lewis]
TP: You’re currently working with Betty Carter. You’re leaving town with her tomorrow, and you’ll be performing Monday in New York at the Pierre Hotel.
CL: I enjoy every chance I get to work with Betty. It has seemed to work out over the years that once in a while she’s in between bass players, in between discovering some new cat, and she calls me because I think I understand her approach to the music and her concept of what she wants to do – and also the theater that’s involved. There’s a visual aspect. Betty was one of the first people who helped me to understand that the music still had to have drama and theater to it. That’s an important part of how you lean towards playing with her, in note choice and interplay with her.
TP: We’ll speak a bit less and fit in more music as we wind down to 9 o’clock. We’ll hear more Paul Chambers. This is from Jan. 18, 1959 date by Jackie McLean, one of two sessions that comprise Jackie’s Bag – “Fidel.”
[MUSIC: Jackie McLean-D. Byrd-Sonny Clark-Paul-Philly, “Fidel”-1959; Tina Brooks-Blue Mitchell-Kenny Drew-Paul Chambers-A.T., Back To The Tracks-1960]
CL: Partly the reason why I chose those two selections is to show Paul’s impeccable time and his sense of harmony in terms of note choice, just to show how… I made the comment before how some bass players play like they’re waiting for their solo. Paul never did that. He shows you how great a rhythm section player he is, and his sense of time is absolutely great. I always respected and admired that about him, just the fact that he was such a virtuoso on the instrument. But he understood, once again, the function. So that was special for me to hear him play like that, not just on those dates, but…
I often tell people, when you look at some of the major recordings of the early 50s going into the 60s, and if they’re classic recordings, a lot of times you look at the lineup, and Paul is playing bass.
TP: For the last set, the tracks will feature two Florida-born bass players, Sam Jones and George Tucker.
CL: First of all, George Tucker was a bass player that a lot of people kind of slept on, as far as I’m concerned. The first time I heard him, his sound impressed me and his ability to play great time and be a very supportive accompanist made an impression upon me. Of course, Sam Jones was one of the all-time great bass players as well. I didn’t realize George Tucker was from Florida until… I remember meeting his sister one time, and I asked where he was from, and she told me Palatka. When I was a kid, we used to go through Palatka on some of our church meetings going through Florida. I had the experience knowing one of the oldest men ever in America. I think his name was Pop Crosby. He was 116 years old, and he was from Palatka. So I had a connection with that city.
TP: He was 116 in the early 1960s?
CL: Yes. He told me stories about slavery and the end of it and all that kind of stuff. He was a very heavy man, and it’s just a coincidence that George Tucker also was from Palatka.
Sam Jones, as I said, was one of the bass players who I had a chance to see when I came to New York. He was such a beautiful and warm person, which I think is a personality trait. A sense of feeling and family that people who come from the Sun have, and they’re able to share that with you.
TP: a few words about his playing. Sam Jones was an almost universally admired bass player.
CL: I think that’s because of the warmth that he exuded from the instrument and from his personality as well. He made you feel welcome when you were in his company. He was a beautiful person. I really cherish the times that I was able to be in his company. Of course his playing made me realize that the tradition that I wanted to play in was still alive as well.
TP: A talented composer as well, and the track we’ll hear is I guess the first of his composition that got some recognition, with many to follow. It’s from the 1960 Cannonball Adderley album, Them Dirty Blues, and it’s called “Del Sasser.”
[MUSIC: Sam Jones-Adderleys-Timmons-Louis Hayes, “Del Sasser”; Stanley Turrentine 5-H. Parlan-G. Tucker-Al Harewood, “Summertime”-1961]
TP: Apart from working as a busy bassist on the New York scene, you have another career as well, directing a choir.
CL: The name of the choir is the ARC Gospel Choir, and I was fortunate enough to meet and be influenced musically and otherwise by a man named Mr. James Allen, who is the Executive Director of the Addicts Rehabilitation Center. I came to know him when I was going through a struggle in my life, and he helped me to understand that I could use music and my knowledge of music to be grateful for what the Creator has given me, first of all, but also to help others to see the light towards moving to higher planes of acknowledgment and understanding of how precious life is. Consequently, when he found out some of my musical abilities, he allowed me to start working on arrangements and working on directing the choir. I’ve been fortunate to have that as a kind of focal point for me right now in terms of understanding and working on harmonies and different things like that. So it’s been a blessing for me, and it’s very special.
Working with the choir has helped me to understand what my function can be as a leader also, because it’s a very challenging position to work with these people in particular, who are overcoming substance abuse, and are really getting in tune with themselves again. It’s very special.
[MUSIC: ARC Choir,“Jesus Wash”; Hicks-Curtis-Idris, “Hold It Down”]
Today Is The Question: Ted Panken on Music, Politics and the Arts 