For Drum Master Ignacio Berroa’s 64th Birthday, Uncut Interviews From 2014 and 2008

To mark the 64th birthday of the great Havana-born drummer Ignacio Berroa, I’m posting interviews that I conducted with him in 2014 and in 2008. The latter interview was conducted over a leisurely breakfast one morning during the Dominican Republic Jazz Festival, where Berroa was performing with a group that included the great conguero Giovanni Hidalgo, who contributed to the conversation. The earlier interview was conducted in May 2008 live on WKCR, to publicize a gig at the Jazz Standard.

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Ignacio Berroa (Dominican Republic, Cabarete, Nov. 7, 2014):

TP:   Since you have a new recording and you’re performing your repertoire tonight, I’d like to know something about what you’re going for as a bandleader and composer in presenting it.

IB:   What I try to convey as a bandleader and as a composer… I am not a great composer actually. I composed one tune on my previous album, Codes, “Joao Su Merced,” and on this one I composed one called “Laura’s Waltz,” which I dedicated to my granddaughter. It’s a 3/4; a waltz.

But the message that I tried to convey in both my albums, and in the next album that I will do, is always to mix the music from my heritage with the music of my passion. That’s why the name of this album. Since I was a kid, as you can see in the liner notes, I fall in love with jazz, and I always want to be a jazz player. But coming to the United States, I figured that I have to do something that will be interesting. First of all, I didn’t want to be a Latin drummer, because not too many people to compete. The main reason why I left Cuba was because I always wanted to be a jazz drummer. But in order for me to be different from the others, what I figured was to mix my rhythms, the rhythms of my country with the straight-ahead of jazz, which, in my opinion, and as we know if you check history, have a lot of in common—because everything came from Africa. So rhythmically speaking, we’ve got a lot of things in common. The only thing is that in jazz they swing the notes, BING, BINK-A-DING, BINK-A-DING, and we might do BING-BING-PA-BING, BING-PA…— This is a triple feel from the Africans. [SINGS IT] On top of that… You can superimpose. [DEMONSTRATES ON TABLE] That’s it.

So for me, rhythmically speaking, it is easy to understand where we’re coming from. So mixing both cultures is what has made my drumming interesting. That’s the main reason why I became Dizzy Gillespie’s drummer for ten years. I always tell people… I don’t like to talk about myself because it seems like I’m bragging. The way I see it, and the way it is, in the history of American music I am the only drummer from another country (you can correct me if I’m wrong) that played with the master and the creator of bebop for ten years. Sometimes, when people try to pigeonhole me into that “Latin drummer,” I always tell them, “Well, but Dizzy Gillespie didn’t play salsa.” So I was with Dizzy Gillespie playing world music, if we want to call it that way, but I had to play a lot of straight-ahead. And if my ass was sitting in that chair for ten years, it means that… Dizzy was dizzy but not stupid. So he knew what he had in that chair. That’s what I always try to combine. That’s what differentiates me from other drummers.

TP:   Was that concept in place when you got here?

IB:   That was something that developed. When I arrived to New York, I didn’t know the meaning of “yes.” I had a great mentor. Mario Bauzá was my mentor. Mario Bauzá was the first one who told me, “Ignacio, in this country, what they pay is for originality. If you become another one, you are another one; if you become a clone of Art Blakey, you are Art Blakey’s clone. Or you are Philly Joe Jones’ clone.”

So I found my way to incorporate… As a matter of fact, I remember very clearly when I started playing with that… Dizzy used to play a tune called “School Days” which was a shuffle that he used to sing, and one day while we were playing “School Days,” I was playing the shuffle, and then suddenly, at some point, I started playing the Afro-Cuban clave. While keeping the shuffle, I put the clave. He turned around and he looked at me like I was crazy. But he kept singing because the beat was going on. He loved it. The only thing I did afterwards was changing that pattern from the cowbell to the cymbal. That was the beginning for me, when I said, “Wait a minute; I am going to start going for this.”

TP:   Dizzy must have been very supportive of all that. He must have loved that.

IB:   Dizzy was in love with Afro-Cuban rhythms. Very simple. It was Mario Bauzá who turned him on to that. It was Mario Bauzá who encouraged Dizzy Gillespie to move to New York, because Mario Bauzá met Dizzy in Philadelphia while Mario was playing with Cab Calloway. He met Dizzy at a jam session. Back then, musicians used to stay in Philadelphia to hone their skills before moving to New York. Mario met Dizzy at a jam session, and it was Mario who told Dizzy, “You are ready; go to New York; and when you go to New York, you call me.” It was Mario who put Dizzy Gillespie to Cab Calloway’s big band, because Mario was about to go do the band with his brother-in-law Machito. It was Mario who told Cab Calloway, “this is the guy that I met here,” and that was the famous phrase… Cab Calloway didn’t like Dizzy. Cab Calloway used to say that Dizzy played Chinese music. But Mario kept pushing, and when Dizzy proved that he was able to play the first trumpet book, Mario left and Dizzy stayed with Cab, but they became friends. It was Mario who put in Dizzy’s mind all the Afro-Cuban thing, and then it was Mario who told Dizzy in 1943 or 1944 [1946], when Dizzy said he wanted to do something new, Mario was the one who told him, “Why don’t you hire this conga player who just came from Cuba?”—that name was Chano Pozo.

TP:   Did Dizzy work with you on swing rhythms, or did you have it together?

IB:   No. I had it together, but then I learned about the language. Dizzy taught me… I learned a great deal with Dizzy about the language. The same way that I am never going to be able to speak English without this horrible accent, Dizzy told me about the language—about articulation, about phrasing. When he was doing a phrase, where to hit the bass drum. He said to me, “I’m playing a phrase, A-BEAT, BEAT, BEE-DO-BE-DU, BE-DA-BA-DOO-BI-DI, BEE-BAHP-BE-O—OH-OH. He said, “When I stop there to breathe, that’s where, in this language…”

Of course, another thing that I did and I am going to do until the day that I die, I continue listening to the masters. So I learn every day. Every day that’s something that I am going to do as long as my mind continues working.

TP:   Who are the American masters that you listen to? Who are the Cuban masters that you listen to?

IB:   Cuban masters? Anybody. From Los Muñequitos de Matanzas… I got that background because my father was a musician (violin). He’s still alive, but he’s 85 years old. He retired. But I grew up in a house where I used to listen to Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, Abelardo Barroso, La Sublime(?—10:17), (?) Gonzalez, Jose Fajardo… All those Cuban bands, that was in my house, and that was on the street. On my way from my house to the school, somebody would be playing in a jukebox in the court of my house Muñequitos. So that was in the air. My mom was crazy. In the house, the radio was always on. But dad was a musician. My grandfather was a musician.

TP:   So your path was not unlike Gonzalo Rubalcaba or Paquito D’Rivera, whose fathers were musicians.

IB:   More than that. Gonzalo’s father and my father… You want to know something very curious? You’re going to have to pay me for this. [LAUGHS] The first job that my father had as a professional, in a charanga band in Cuba, the pianist was Gonzalo’s dad. You know what? This is something that if you go to Cuba or if you want to go to Miami… From that era, there are just two guys alive. Gonzalo’s dad and my father. When those two guys die, there’s going to be nobody to ask about that era. Because those guys are the only ones alive—Gonzalo’s dad and my dad.

TP:   Who are the American drummers you listened to?

IB:   My first idol was Max Roach. My notebooks in Cuba, they used to say… I wrote in all my notebooks, “Max Roach, Max Roach, Max Roach.” He was my idol. That was the first bebop album I was exposed to, was the Max Roach band with Clifford Brown and Harold Land. So I listened to Max Roach while I was in Cuba. But don’t forget, I grew up in an environment that Cuba and the United States have no relations, Americans were our enemies, playing jazz was promoting the music of the enemy, and there were no more record stores. The second album that I had was Miles Davis, Four and More. So from Max Roach, I jumped to Tony Williams without listening to Jimmy Cobb, Philly Joe Jones, Blakey… It was Max Roach, Tony Williams, then later I was able to listen to Relaxin’ by Miles Davis, and then I was able to listen to Philly Joe Jones. It was like that.

But then, after I arrived in the United States in 1980, I had the opportunity to check out everybody. Then I said, “Now I’m going to do my homework the way it’s supposed to be.” Then I discovered Baby Dodds, Chick Webb, Papa Jo Jones. I did my whole homework. Also drummers that unfortunately were not very famous. One of the drummers who inspires me the most is a guy who used to play with Dexter Gordon, Eddie Gladden. He was one of the most inspiring drummers for me. I loved Jack DeJohnette. I love every drummer. If I have to pick one, my idol—Roy Haynes. He is my idol. When I grow up, I want to be like Roy.

TP:    On both records, you use a very expansive sound palette—electronic wind instruments, synthesizers.

IB:   Yes. It’s just that I want to do something different. It is a matter of taste. Some people are curious, and some people criticize that. I have learned in my 61 years that you cannot please everybody. We are in 2014, and it is an era where we have been using synthesizers for a long time. I remember being in Cuba when we were able to hear My Spanish Heart, and on all those Chick Corea albums he was using a lot of synthesizer. So I wanted for this album to have that sound, to have the EWI or the Yamaha MIDI control. So that’s going to be… To me, it gives a fresh sound, a different sound, but with the Afro-Cuban flavor behind. That’s what I want to get on this album… You miss the electric guitar. I don’t want to do another album that sounds… With all due respect to those purists, those people who think that mainstream jazz has to sound always like this, and Latin Jazz has to sound always like this. But I’m looking for something else. From my point of view as a drummer, what has to be happening is while you’re playing behind that. That’s what has to be happening. The way Miles Davis used to say, “When I put a band together, the first guy I look for is the drummer.” If the drummer is happening, the band is happening. So my conception is, I can have 5-6 guys for three organs, five guitars, two bassoons, three oboes, but I’m playing with Giovanni and we have that motor running, that’s the main thing.

TP:   Giovanni made a comment when you went off to get the record that he was waiting to get some drums, and that, as a conga player, he sees the drums as kind of his…did you say piano or orchestra?

GIOVANNI HIDALGO:   I was saying that I like to play drums, too. For me, the drumset is the piano of the percussion, and the conga player ….(?—18:26)…. That’s it. It’s exquisite like a great perfume, the drumset. That’s vast. You have to divide yourself not in four. In five. Because you’re playing four different things plus what you have in your mind—that’s five things in one.

TP:   How often are you able to perform live with this band?

IB:   Now that I have a new album out, I hope I do more. Unfortunately, I don’t work as much as I think I should be working. One of the things, in my opinion, in the 34 years that I have been in the United States, we drummers have always been seen as second-class citizens. We cannot be bandleaders. It has always been like that. I’ll give you a good example of the way people overlook drummers. When you hear people talking about the bebop era, everybody mentions Dizzy, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk. You almost never hear somebody mentioning Kenny Clarke. Why? Because we drummers are the guys who are sitting behind there to make everybody look good, and we drummers don’t have the capacity of being bandleaders. I hope some day that will change, because that’s not right. If you check history, the drummers that were able to make a career with the bands: Blakey with the Jazz Messengers, because he brought to those bands Lee Morgan, Freddie, Wayne, all the great musicians that we know. Elvin Jones, a little bit, with his Jazz Machine.

TP:   Tony Williams.

IB:   Tony for a while. But the only drummer that you might think of who was able to keep a band running for a long period of time was Blakey with the Jazz Messengers. It is hard for drummers. So nowadays, people, promoters at festivals…people who are in charge of festivals, they would rather hire a quartet by an upcoming piano player than the Giovanni Hidalgo Quartet. They see Giovanni as not what they call the “front line.” But nobody thinks how that front line will sound with a good drummer or a good conga player behind. So we have also the right to be a bandleader. This is my second album. The way life is, some people are going to like it, other people are not going to like it. But I see a lot of things out there in the festivals that are not as good as Giovanni’s band or my band or Dave Weckl’s band. It is always they think, “You are a drummer,” and when you are a drummer… Actually, I remember when I recorded that album for Blue Note, thanks to Bruce Lundvall. A lot of people in the company didn’t want to sign me, because from their point of view… And I agree. I’m not holding this against them, because in the end, this is a business. They told Bruce Lundvall, “Drummers don’t sell.” Thank God, Bruce Lundvall thought that the music on Codes was worth it for them to make an album. And do you know what? Codes sold very well—for jazz.

But it is a mental thing. Bill Stewart? He has to be sideman. But now, if Bill Stewart wants to go out with his band? No. I would like to work more. I don’t know if I am going to convince promoters, because that’s out of my hands. I don’t know if booking agents might want to sign me. When I released Codes, it was nominated for a Grammy. It was an album with Blue Note Records. I had my story behind playing with Dizzy, with Chick, with everybody. I called every booking agent in the United States, every reputable booking agent. Nobody took me. I don’t think Jeff Tain Watts works a lot with his band. We’re drummers and that’s the way they are seen. They are drummers.

I hope for the future generations, even after I die, that this conception will change. Because when you go to see the Roy Haynes Quartet, man, that’s a hell of a band. I think that what we have to change is the conception that because we are drummers, we cannot be bandleaders. That’s wrong.

TP:   Stepping away from the injustice of it or the need to do it…

IB:   I like that word, “injustice.”

TP:   Whatever the word… Do you do a lot of clinician work?

IB:   Yes, and I would love to do more. Because students need to know about their history. It is very important to know about the history. People need to know where the rhythms came from, our heritage. They need to know that the slaves were brought from Africa, that the slaves were not just brought to New Orleans but to the Caribbean and Brazil and to Peru, and that’s why all the connections exist, rhythmically speaking. People need to know. Even Cuban guys. Last night at the restaurant, my bass player, Armando Gola, who is a young guy, he doesn’t know about the history of Cuban music. He didn’t know where the danzon came from. He didn’t know where the cha-cha-cha came from. He didn’t know where the son came from, which is the foundation of the music that we have for years been calling salsa.

Another thing that I want to teach people is the conception of Latin Jazz. Because when you talk about “Latin,” you’re talking about a huge continent called Latin America that begins in Mexico and ends in Tiera Del Fuego, down there in Argentina. But when you hear Latin Jazz… I tell people, “Do you know that each of those countries has their own rhythms, their own identity?” Do you know that Mexico has a national rhythm? Do you know that Peru has a national rhythm? Do you know that Colombia has a national rhythm? Chile. Brazil, of course, is the only one that everybody knows. But each country has their own rhythm. Puerto Rico has its own rhythms. Haiti has its own rhythms. So I don’t hear many people playing Latin Jazz with any Venezuelan-Peruvian-Mexican influence. Everything is congas, an instrument that was created in the island of Cuba. Those patterns came from there. And the timbales…

So why Latin Jazz? Very simple. Because in the ’40s, when everybody started playing at the Palladium, when Tito Rodriguez, Machito, Tito Puente, the Latinos who used to go to dance at the Palladium were just two groups—Puerto Ricans and Cubans. So the Americans used to say, “Let’s go to the Palladium to check the Latinos.” That’s how the name Latin Jazz came…

TP:   I guess Cuba had the big entertainment infrastructure, which helped develop the music as well.

IB:   From my perspective, it’s very simple. The geographical location of Cuba is what gave Cuba the advantage of having more rhythms. Why? Because it was the biggest island. It was the island that needed more slaves. And the Spaniards brought slaves from different groups. So the Arara, the Abakua, the Congo, these different cultures were forced to live together. Everybody had their rhythm. People that didn’t like each other, and they were forced to live together. So that atrocity led to the rhythmic richness that we have today. Puerto Rico was a smaller island. Puerto Rico was the last island in the Caribbean that got into the slave trade. When Puerto Rico got into the slave trade, it was the tail end. So Cuba, because it was the biggest island and they needed more labor, they brought more people. So in other words, in my opinion, the island got lucky.

Second thing. Their position geographically. When someone was coming from Europe to perform in Venezuela, to perform in Argentina, to perform in Peru, Cuba was at most a stop. They had to stop in Cuba to refuel, to get food. So Enrico Caruso was coming to perform in Argentina. Caruso would stop in Havana, and he would perform in Havana, because he had three days to stop in Havana. That gave Cuba the advantage over the other islands as far as musical development. Because it was the biggest island. They needed more of the slaves for the sugar, for everything they were doing in Cuba.

TP:   Also, a lot of the American jazz musicians came there in the ’40s and ’50s, after World War 2.

IB:   I’m talking from the origins. Then, Cuba is 90 miles away from the United States, so a lot of Americans going to Cuba. So definitely, the geographical position of the island is a key role on the development of the music in Cuba. We got lucky, because if the island of Cuba had been off the coast of Argentina, that would have been our ass!

TP:   So playing with Dizzy didn’t just teach you swing rhythms, but also to bring in all the national rhythms of Latin America. I’m assuming you had to play those specific rhythms in the United Nations Orchestra.

IB:   This is another thing that I want to clarify. A lot of people relate me with Dizzy to the United Nations Orchestra. I started playing with Dizzy Gillespie in 1981.

TP:   I understand that. I’m only following up on your point about every country having its own rhythm…

IB:   Yes, and in the United Nations Orchestra, what Dizzy wanted to do was to bring together that that’s what we need to do.

TP:   I guess my point was to ask if that influenced you as well. He schooled you on American swing, and I wondered if he influenced you in that regard.

IB:   No, I think I already was into that. I think that my encounter with Dizzy was meant to be. We were supposed to run into each other, and exchange ideas, and the United Nations Orchestra was something that was supposed to happen, and luckily, it happened, because he gathered the greatest musicians from the different countries. He had Giovanni, he got Airto, he got Danilo Perez, he got me, he got Arturo Sandoval, he got Paquito, Moody, Slide Hampton. That’s also what I’m trying to do nowadays. I’m trying to mix the music and play also with other musicians, with American musicians, and see what happens. Because when you play just with a musician that knows your music, that’s very easy. That’s what I tell people. Some people don’t like that I came to the United States, and that I play straight-ahead and that I want to play straight-ahead. Oh man, you should play Cuban music. No. Why? I wanted to compete. There is nobody… How many people am I going to compete with here in the United States? The late Steve Berrios. Who else? I arrived in New York in 1980, and I’m going to compete with Steve Berrios? So I came all the way from Cuba to compete with one guy? It makes no sense. I want to compete in the good sense of the word. Compete. Learn. I want to compete with my heroes. I want to see what they have done. That was the challenge.

TP:   It’s like, in writing, Joseph Conrad or Nabokov, who were born and raised in another culture, and wrote great novels in English.

IB:   Yes. But if you come from a country…

GIOVANNI:   What he’s saying is the truth. Because the first one to come to New York and Puerto Rico to bring another area of the songo was Ignacio Berroa. In 1980, and from that year until the end, that was because of him. That was another approach, another vision to the drummers. You never saw that before. We are in 2014, and he’s still right here.

TP:   The only drummer I can think of… What Willie Bobo did on Inventions and Dimensions was pretty remarkable, I think.

GIOVANNI:   Bobo was William Correa, a Puerto Rican guy, but he was with the Cubans… Amazing. When Tito Puente, him, Patato, they did the Puente Percussion… Boom. It was an explosion. I am telling you, to be brief, still, when you put all of those recordings… Ignacio came…

TP:   I think Art Blakey’s drum records in the ’50s raised consciousness.

GIOVANNI:   Blakey was ahead, because he was using… Remember this album with Kenny Dorham, Afrodisia? It was Patato on congas. This album from Max Roach, Supercussion—that was Patato on congas.

TP:   Blakey would have three percussionists, 2-3 trap drummers—he did a few of those for Blue Note.

GIOVANNI:   Amazing. He did one with Charlie Persip, Blakey, and Papa Jo Jones. But ….(?—37:09)….. all that time over here, and he is one of our mentors, and one of our examples forever, how to play the drums approaching with the Latin, with the Jazz, with the Afro. The rudiments for that… I’m telling you, always what he said before, Cuba, Puerto Rico… It’s amazing. He’s amazing. Even for me. I’m still learning. Like, I’ve been playing since I was 3 years old, but I’m still learning, and it’s never-ending. In the world of drums, which is the leader of percussion, with sticks and with the hands, that’s another beautiful thing… Like I said, deep. Very vast, and so…how you call that… Hovering or…the flowing…

TP:   Flowing.

GIOVANNI:   Flowing. You know what I mean? Now much better, because now… I’m going to agree with what Ignacio said, because it’s the truth. We’re in 2014, and I believe… As far as I am concerned, many of those young drummers are good ones, but I believe they are missing something. Like I do always, Ignacio and myself, we don’t forget the pioneers.

IB:   The tradition.

GIOVANNI:    The tradition. We don’t forget the analog. Ok? The digital era is so good, but if you forget the analog, if you forget the pioneers, forget about it. Stay at home and forget about it.

IB:   So we were talking about going to universities, and I was saying that. Universities meaning… That’s an interesting conversation that we were having yesterday. For example, universities… We all know that we are facing economically difficult times, but for example, certain universities, in the same way that you go to any major university in any place in the world, and the Classics department has 96% money, and the 4% goes to the jazz department, even though in the jazz department… It is rare to see a jazz department bringing a drummer for a residency, for a master class, because universities are more concerned about bringing this guy who is going to teach the students about harmony, the voicings, this-and-that… But you have to put your things in rhythm. So what I mean is that there should be a balance, and heads of jazz departments in different universities, have to be aware, “Ok, this is the budget that I have; I am going to bring this guy, this guy, but I am also going to bring Ignacio, Lewis Nash…” Because those guys have something to say that is going to benefit all the students. When I go to universities, the most important thing I request is that everybody attends my clinic. I tell the guy, “I want every jazz musician in my clinic.” Because I am going to tell them about the history. I am going to tell these guys who write music, the arrangers, when you’re going to arrange a piece of music, you have to know about the clave, you have to know… Based on the style of music you’re going to write, you need to know about the articulation, how you’re going to phrase, how you’re going to do… [SINGS THEME OF “EVIDENCE.”] If you’re going to play that as Latin rhythm, before you sit down and open Finale or whatever on the computer, you need to know about that.

TP:   Last year I did a piece for Jazz Times where I talked to 10 musicians from Cuba about their formative years. Almost all of them told me that in the conservatory, in ENA and the regional schools, Cuban folkloric music was treated the same way as jazz—both were out of the curriculum.

IB:   All those guys are younger than me, except for Paquito.

TP:   I wanted to ask you about your musical relationship with Gonzalo. You played with him…

IB:   Ten years.

TP:   Haven’t you played during the last decade?

IB:   Actually, no, I didn’t. I played with Gonzalo until we recorded the album Paseo. Paseo was the last album that I recorded with him, and then we toured that album, and then after that… I think I stopped playing with Gonzalo in 2006-2007, when I recorded my album, Codes, and then I went on my own. I think that in 2008 we did a short tour in Europe as a trio.

TP:   But I wanted to ask you about that partnership. It seems to have taken music forward.

IB:   Things happen for a reason. Gonzalo is ten years younger than me. I was a very good friend of Gonzalo’s brother, Jesus Rubalcaba, who passed away. We went to the same school together, and when I left Cuba, Gonzalo was in his teens. We played for the first time in 1996 in Puerto Rico, at the Heineken Jazz Festival, by accident. I was playing at the festival with Tito Puente’s Latin Jazz All-Stars, and I was also playing with Danilo Perez Quartet. Gonzalo was performing there, but the United States denied a visa to his drummer at that time. I was living in Miami, and the guy from the festival called me and said, “Ignacio, do you have any problem playing with Gonzalo Rubalcaba?”—because of the political situation. I said, “Ask him if he has any problem playing with me. I have no problem playing with Gonzalo. I live in Miami, but I don’t care. Music is music.” In fact, in 1995, I did an instructional video, and I invited Changuito to the video.

Anyway, we played as a trio, Gonzalo, Eddie Gomez and myself. Then I think the following year Gonzalo moved to Miami, and he called me, and that was the beginning of our ten years collaboration. It was something I’ve always called “love at first sight.” We started playing and we clicked. We’re coming from the same background. Even though I was ten years older than him, he brought me to his level, the way he sees music. That was a challenge for me, because when I recorded those albums with Gonzalo, I was already an old guy. It’s like when Roy Haynes recorded “Question and Answer” with Pat Metheny. So it was something very special, and I think that something beautiful came out of that. Paseo is an album that everywhere I go, when I teach at universities, everybody comes to speak to me about Paseo or Supernova. All the kids remember those albums. So it was a very special collaboration, and I hope that some day people may want to see that again. But aside from that, Gonzalo is one of my best friends.

TP:   And he is the producer of your record.

IB:   He is one of my best friends. I am very happy. I think it was something that was meant to happen, the same way that I think my encounter with Dizzy Gillespie was meant to happen. In my mind, there is no doubt that there is something external that has to do hold the things together. Ok, you’re going to meet this guy, you’re going to meet this guy, and you’re going to go… The same way that Parker and Dizzy met. I don’t want to compare us to Dizzy and Parker, but you know what I mean?

TP:   People cross paths.

IB:   Crossed paths. Exactly. That’s what I’m trying to say.

I was saying at the beginning that the people in the industry, booking agents, promoters, I think they should be more open-minded and realize that I’m a drummer, but that doesn’t mean that I just have to be a sideman. People also have to be open, like… I’m Cuban. I think that’s not an issue now, but it was an issue for years. I’m Cuban, but my taste playing straight-ahead has been proven. Some people still always try to box me or pigeonhole me. “Oh, Ignacio. Latin. He’s the king of Latin.” It’s hard for them to accept, “Man, Ignacio came here and he became a great straight-ahead… Ignacio came here and absorbed our language. Ignacio did his homework.” In the same way that I would be proud if Blakey would have gone to Cuba, and end up playing in Cuban bands. I’d be happy. Because someone, a foreigner, came to our country and absorbed our music, and became so good that he’s playing with all the Cuban bands.
[END OF CONVERSATION]

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Ignacio Berroa (May 22, 2008) – (WKCR):

[From Codes, “Matrix”]
TP:   Ignacio Berroa is performing Friday and Saturday at the Jazz Standard with a quartet, featuring pianist Robert Rodriguez, bassist Ricky Rodriguez, and saxophonist Ben Wendel.
Over these performances, will you be performing primarily music from this record?

IB:   Pretty much, and also some new music that we have been playing, planning to do the second album, but I don’t know yet when I’m going to do it, or which company I’m going to do it with. We’re going to be playing mostly the music from Codes and some new material.

TP:   Is this your first album as a leader?

IB:   My first one. I haven’t done any.

TP:   A long time in the making. You’ve been a professional musician in the U.S., and before that in Cuba, for what, 40 years probably.

IB:   Oh, man, for a long time. I started my professional career in 1970. I left Cuba in 1980, with the Mariel boat lift. In fact, this coming Monday is going to be my 28th year since I arrived in the United States.

TP:   Congratulations.

IB:   Thank you. I feel very happy about it. It took me a while to do an album, even though a lot of people always were encouraging me about doing my own project. My friend Dizzy Gillespie was always asking me about, “When are you going to do your album?” But I didn’t feel I was ready to do what I really wanted to project in an album. I always tell people who ask me, “It would have been very easy for me to do another Latin Jazz album in the early ’80s, and have Dizzy Gillespie as my guest artist.” It would not have cost me a penny; I mean, it would have been a success.

TP:   Why didn’t you do it?

IB:   Because musically speaking, I was not ready. I was not ready to do… I’m the type of person that, you know, I don’t like to do something that I’m not going to feel proud later on. So musically speaking, I think I was… Maybe it is in my mind, but in my opinion, I was not ready, because I didn’t want to do another Latin album. Unfortunately, a lot of people have the vision that when you are from Cuba, from Puerto Rico, what you have to play is just son montuno, cha-cha-cha, because you are a Latino. My passion since I was a kid was jazz. I always wanted to be a jazz drummer, and my mission is to mix Afro-Cuban rhythms with the jazz language. Believe me, Ted, back in the early ’80s… And I was struggling with a lot of things. I left Cuba in 1980. My wife at the time and my kid stayed behind. The Cuban government kept them for many years. I was in a new country where I didn’t speak the language. So I had to support my family in Cuba, deal with all the new situation—it was very hard. So my mind was not in the right frame in order to say, “Ok, I am going to do an album that I will be proud of.”

TP:   You were trying to survive.

IB:   I was trying to survive, and I was trying to keep my family in Cuba, dealing with the Cuban government, trying to allow my family to leave the island—which they didn’t for four years. So it was rough.

TP:   With this recording, you’ve assembled some of the finest musicians in the world, American, Puerto Rican and Cuban, to perform with. Gonzalo Rubalcaba, whose group you’ve been part of for many years…

IB:   We’ve played together for ten years.

TP:   Edward Simon as well. David Sanchez and Giovanni Hidalgo. A slew of high-level Cuban musicians like Armando Gola and Felipe Lamoglia, who you played with in Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s quartet. But you assembled them differently within the framework of your compositions, and each tune has its own identity, so it’s evident that you put a lot of care into making this, and into the sounds you put forth.

IB:   Sure. It wouldn’t be possible without the help of all the great musicians who participated in the album. But yes, it took me a while. I really thought about it. It was a long process about realizing what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do the tunes, to make the arrangements, which were made by Felipe Lamoglia. It took a lot of time, Felipe and I getting together, and me explaining to Felipe what I wanted, the way I want to phrase the melodies—like what I did with “Matrix.”

TP:   So you conceptualized it and he executed it.

IB:   Exactly. Most of the arrangements were done by Felipe Lamoglia. The only thing that I did was tell him, “I want to play ‘Matrix’ this way; the melody has to go like this; we’re going to do it this way.” The same with “Pinocchio.” Things like that.

TP:   Listeners may be curious about aspects of your formative years. You said you became a professional musician at 17, 1970, in Cuba, and you always wanted to be a jazz drummer.

IB:   Mmm-hmm.

TP:   During the years when you would have wanted to be a jazz drummer, there was sort of an official proscription from the Cuban Government, I think…

IB:   You said “sort of”? You weren’t there! [LAUGHS]

TP:   I wasn’t there. Being tactful doesn’t work sometimes. First of all, how did the interest gestate? Are you from a musical family?

IB:   Yes. My father used to play the violin. My father also is a jazz lover. So I was lucky that one day my father came to my house with two albums, one by Nat King Cole and the other one by Glenn Miller. I was 10 years old, and when I heard the music, I fell in love with that music. It was like love at first sight. Glenn Miller, “Moonlight Serenade,” Nat King Cole singing “When I Fall In Love.” When I heard that music, something got me. I said, “that’s what I want to do.”

The rest was very hard. There is something that I always like to talk… Some people have been asking me about writing a book, and it is about my generation from the ’70s, the musician generation… For us, it was very hard. These days a lot of people see that in Cuba they have a jazz festival, and there has been a kind of openness now for the music. I should say, in my opinion, that happened after 1980. But in the ’70s it was very, very hard. It was prohibited to play jazz. I remember, for example…just to give you one example…playing at the Radio and TV orchestra, and the conductor… We’d be playing an arrangement that had 16 bars of swing, and I remember seeing the conductor from the podium saying, “Ok, guys, those 16 bars, we’re going to play cha-cha-cha.” Because it was playing jazz; it was playing the music of the enemy. The way my generation was raised in Cuba was that Americans were our enemies, and playing their was music was trying…they were trying to penetrate our ideology…their ideology through music. So that’s hard it was for my generation. We had it very hard in the ’70s. That’s something that a lot of people don’t know.

TP:   You’re 5 years younger than Paquito D’Rivera, who’s written about this in his autobiography. Are you from Havana or somewhere else?

IB:   I’m from Havana, too.

TP:   What were your steps in learning the drums? And I’d also like to ask if folkloric music was part of your upbringing…

IB:   That was also prohibited in the ’70s, because it had to do with the Yoruba religion, and anything against the Communist ideology was prohibited.

So I am a self-taught drummer. In Cuba, in my days, everything was a classical training formation. I went to the National School of the Arts, where I studied percussion. I had a great teacher who studied here in New York in the ’40s with Henry Adler. But you’ve got to take this into consideration. There were no drums. Playing popular music was prohibited. Any kind of popular music. Jazz was the music of the enemy. Playing bata drums and Yoruba things was something that was not within the Revolution ideology, so it was also prohibited. The religion was prohibited—kind of. People would…

TP:   People went underground with it.

IB:   Underground. Very underground. If you want to do something in Cuba… People who practiced the religion openly were like in ostracism. You were not able to go to the university. You were not able to travel. You were nobody. I really admire those brave people who really practiced the Yoruba religion very openly in the late ’60s and the ’70s.

TP:   As far as your identity as a trapset drummer, were you listening to people for models? Were there people in Cuba…

IB:   No. I was lucky. Don’t forget, before Castro took power, Cuba was a very prominent country, very close to the United States, and a lot of people who were jazz fans had albums… Like I said to you, my dad came to my house with a Nat King Cole and a Glenn Miller album.

TP:   So you had albums to listen to, and models.

IB:   The young musicians, we had to go to the old musicians’ houses and listen to the albums, so we had some information. But also, the most important thing is…what I always say is this is what saved our life…was the proximity of Cuba to the United States. Just 90 miles from Cuba to Key West, so when the weather was good we were able to listen to the radio station coming from Key West, and some people also were able to see some TV shows. So that’s what kept us informed of what was going on.

I never had any drums lesson. I’m a self-taught drummer. The only people I was able to listen to was on albums… To give you an example, my first exposure to modern jazz was Max Roach with Clifford Brown. So Max was my first influence. Then I was able to listen to an Art Blakey album. From there, the jump went to Miles Davis, Four and More—Tony Williams.

TP:   Well, you did pretty good.

IB:   [LAUGHS] Yeah! I was listening to those albums every day, and play the drums by myself, and also I had no drumset—there were no drums in Cuba. So it was very tough.

TP:   As a young guy were you seeing relationships between what those drummers were doing… Max Roach was influenced to a certain degree by Haitian drums and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Africa had been to Africa. Did you discern correspondence in the patterns…

IB:   Yes, I knew that since I was there, and I knew that American musicians like Dizzy Gillespie were very much into Afro-Cuban music. So yes, I was able to hear it immediately.

TP:   Were you in contact with any of the Cuban musicians and a little older who became the first wave of post-Castro jazz musicians that Americans knew about, such as Chucho Valdes, or Emiliano Salvador (who they didn’t know so much about), or Paquito…

IB:   Oh, yeah. We used to play… Sometimes we used to do jam sessions, on-the-ground jam sessions. I remember in 1977-78, there was a club in Havana called the Rio Club. It used to be called the Johnny’s Dreams. We were allowed to play jazz just Mondays. So I was in contact with those musicians, and also with Emiliano Salvador. We played together in the same band from 1975 to 1979—for four years.

TP:   What was he like? Americans don’t know so much about him.

IB:   Emiliano Salvador, in my opinion, was a great piano player. He was my favorite piano player. Chucho is a great piano player. For my taste, Emiliano was my guy—let’s put it that way.

TP:   What was the difference for you?

IB:   The difference for me at that time is that Emiliano sounded more like McCoy and Chick Corea. He sounded more to me like a New Yorker. Back in the days, I remember it was Emiliano who introduced me to my favorite drummer, Roy Haynes. It was Emiliano in 1975 who told me, “Ignacio, check this guy out.” I don’t know how he got the recording. Probably through the guitar player, Paolo Menendez, who was American, and he was able to come over here, to this country, while living in Cuba, and he used to bring some records. Emiliano told me one day, “Ignacio, check this guy out.” So Emiliano was to me, and for a lot of people in Cuba back in the days…he was the guy. We always have this thing, “who’s the best?” It’s not a matter of who plays more. Who’s the best?

TP:   It’s your taste.

IB:   For my taste, Emiliano Salvador was the guy.

TP:   I know Enrique Pla was the drummer in Irakere. Was that an exciting band for you? It’s very influential on the way Cuban music sounded subsequently.

IB:   Irakere was a great, great band. It was a band composed of the best instrumentalists in Cuba at that time, and it was a big influence. Also, I have to say it was only band. It was the only band that the Cuban government allowed to do that. Also, in my opinion, Irakere was a band that they wanted to play jazz, and they had to put in the percussion in order to cover what they really wanted to do. Because with no percussion, there would have been no Irakere. But those guys back in the day, Paquito and Arturo and Chucho, what they really wanted to play was straight-ahead jazz. That was their passion. That’s what they wanted to play. But Irakere was a very influential band in our life. Like I said, the greatest musicians, the greatest instrumentalists in the ‘70s were in that band. It was also the only band that the Cuban government allowed during that period.

TP:   You just mentioned 1975-1979 playing with Emiliano Salvador, and during those years is when Dizzy Gillespie precipitated the Havana Jazz Festival…

IB:   1977. It was not a jazz festival. What happened was… For some reason, a boat that left New Orleans…

TP:   It was a cruise ship, I think.

IB:   Some musicians were on it… I don’t know how that cruise ship stopped in Havana for two days. How? That’s something that we have to ask the Cuban government and the American government.

TP:   Well, whatever it was, Dizzy Gillespie came in, and I presume you met him around then…

IB:   I didn’t meet… I want to straighten this out. I didn’t meet Dizzy Gillespie that day. I was lucky that I was able to get a ticket to see the concert. It was one concert in 1977. Dizzy Gillespie played. The late Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines also played. I don’t remember who else. I was able to see Dizzy with his quartet—Mickey Roker, Ben Brown on bass, Rodney Jones on guitar. I remember that when I left, when the concert was over, we were standing on the sidewalk and I told my friends, “Well, I can die already; I saw Dizzy Gillespie.” I don’t know how that was arranged.

Then in 1979, it was the big Havana Jam, where Bruce Lundvall, who was the President of Columbia… I also don’t know how that was arranged through the Cuban government. They did those three days, Havana Jam. But the first time we were exposed to Dizzy Gillespie was in 1977, when he did that concert. I was not able to speak to him. I’m still trying to learn how to speak English, so you can imagine that 28 years ago… As I said to you, when I arrived into this country, I was not able to say “yes.” So I met Dizzy Gillespie officially the day that Mario Bauza introduced me to Dizzy Gillespie, here, in New York.

TP:   In 1980, you left Cuba under not-luxurious-conditions to come to the United States…

IB:   For them, back then, I was a traitor. I left Cuba because I always wanted to leave the island. I was always looking for freedom, and I want to play jazz, and I was not allowed to do that in my country. But I also have to add to this that even… I always tell this to people. Even if Cuba had been a free country, I was coming to New York anyway, because the musicians I wanted to play with were here. So I would have come here anyway.

TP:   So you came here through the Mariel boat-lift…

IB:   It was the Mariel boatlift, when 125,000 Cubans left the island. I landed in Key West, and from there I went to a camp, Indian Town Gap, and I spent 36 days there going through the process. By that time, the American government realized that Castro had sent a lot of spies. So after 36 days at the Indian Town Gap in Pennsylvania, I came here to New York, where I have family. I had an aunt who was living here… She left Cuba in the ’40s. So I was lucky to have my family here; they were very supportive. So the first time I went to Miami, I went there as a musician.

TP:   So you became an American professional musician in New York.

IB:   This is my town. I was born and raised here in New York.

TP:   What sorts of things were you doing early? Latin Jazz and Salsa, or…

IB:   It is hard for me to remember. The first gig I did with my good friend, the late Mario Rivera, who was a great musician. He had a band called the Salsa Refugees, and I think that was my first gig. That band was composed of the late Hilton Ruiz, Andy González, Jerry González, Steve Turre and Mario Rivera. Then I started playing with a band called Tipica Novero(?—30:18), where I was playing timbales. That was the first time in my life I played timbales. I never played timbales in Cuba. I never played percussion in Cuba.

TP:   You never played percussion in Cuba.

IB:   Ever. In my life. No. Also, don’t forget, I was a rebel, and I wanted to be a jazz drummer, and that was the music that was prohibited. I was reluctant to play other things. Which I regret. Also, the first time I started playing congas, I realized that my hands hurt a lot. I said, “No-no-no, this is not for me.”I didn’t want to have any callouses on my hands. I like my soft hands.

TP:   So you moved from Cuba into a very different pan-Latin community, New Yorkers but also people from different parts of the Afro-Caribbean region.

IB:   Yes.

TP:   What was that like for you aesthetically? Did it have an impact on your way of thinking about music?

IB:   No, not at all. Well, I put things into perspective, and I said, “Well, this is a different ballgame now—you have to adapt.” I like baseball a lot. You have to adapt now to this new league. Believe me, I was very happy to be here. My main concern back in the days was that the Cuban government had my family as hostage in Cuba and that I didn’t know how to speak English. It was terrible. I always tell people, “Can you imagine if I take you now to Beijing and I leave you there and say, ‘now you’re going to live here.’” It was terrible.  I don’t want to remember that. It was terrible being in a city, in a place where people were around you, talking, and you didn’t know what they were saying. I also remember that my friend, Andy González, Jerry González, they were very helpful back in the days.

But musically speaking, it expanded my horizons. I said, “Wow, this is something else.” Because I was living in a small pond, in Cuba, and then suddenly I was in the ocean, where you see every kind of fish! So it really opened my mind. It made me conscious of what I really wanted to do.

TP:   Andy and Jerry González had played with Dizzy around 1970, and I guess they were really getting into their own concept of hybridizing jazz rhythms with Afro-Cuban rhythms, which I imagine must have had a great appeal to you.

IB:   Oh, yes. I was very attracted to their approach to the music. That’s something they always tried to do, and I said, “This is what I want to do playing the drums.” But also, I have to be honest. I want to play straight-ahead jazz! That is my passion, and that’s what I’m here for.

TP:   Straight-ahead jazz means something a little different now than it did 25 years ago. Straight-ahead jazz means incorporating timba rhythms, 7/4, 9/4, as well as 4/4, and you’re someone who probably laid down a little bit of the information that helped some people do that.

IB:   Yes. But still, for me… I am going to be 55 years old in July. For me, my passion is playing straight-ahead swing—DING-DING-A-DING. Swing.

TP:   Not 7/4, not…

IB:   No. That’s my life.

[MUSIC: “Joao Su Merced”]

TP:   Hearing that brings up something we were discussing off-mike, that over the last 20 years, rhythms from Cuban popular music, from timba, have become part of the jazz mainstream, 7/4, 9/4 and so on, and your remark was, “I like that, but I like to play straight-ahead,” and also that in African music and Cuban music odd meters don’t really come into play.

IB:   Yes, that’s my opinion. I have never heard any bata or any Yoruba percussion rhythms playing 7/4 or 11-by-5 or… Probably I am getting old. I really respect and admire all the musicians who like to play those odd meters. But in African music, I don’t think there is any 11-by-something or 13-by-something. In Yoruban religion, I have been in a few ceremonies, and I have never seen anybody playing something for any saint in 11-something. Everything is 12/6. That’s what it is. I think that there is so much still that we can do with those meters.

Also, my theory about this is: I don’t talk in 11/4, I don’t walk in 9/4, I don’t walk in 6/4. So everything is like a 4. Everything has to swing. I haven’t found yet where those odd meters swing. That’s just my opinion. But in Afro-Cuban music, not odd meters. You don’t hear any… Now it is called timba, which I remember in the ’70s. That is not a new word. In the ’70s, when someone used to play with a popular band, like Van-Van or Ritmo Oriental or Conjunto Rumba Havana, if you asked me, “Hey, Ignacio, what is Tony doing?” my answer to you would be, “Oh, he’s playing timba; he’s playing with a timba groove.” That was in the ’70s. But when you listen to that kind of music, when you listen to timba, you’re not going to hear odd meters. The first thing that we have to keep in mind is that it is dance music, and the only people who dance with odd meters are countries where that music is the popular music, like Bulgaria for example. But in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, the Caribbean—no odd meters.

TP:   When did you join Dizzy Gillespie?

IB:   I joined Dizzy Gillespie in 1981. August…

TP:   You played with him pretty much until…

IB:   The story is, the first time I played with Dizzy Gillespie was by accident. That was in December 1980, when his drummer at the time got stranded in Boston, and Mario Bauza heard me playing in a rehearsal at Mario Rivera’s house, and he was the one who called Dizzy and told him about me. So by accident, I played with Dizzy that night, since his drummer got stranded and he called Mario and I went there and played with Dizzy. But I joined his quartet in 1981. Then I had to leave the band, because I had no status in the country. It was very hard for marielitos to travel. I left the band in 1983. When I became an American citizen in 1986, he called me back, and I was back with his quartet… Back then, it was a quintet with Sam Rivers on tenor. That went on until he died, doing his big bands, the 70th Anniversary Big Band, the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Big Band, and then came the United Nations Orchestra. Most people think that I started playing with Dizzy with the United Nations Orchestra, but it was way before.

TP:   What things did you learn from him? He was almost as eminent a teacher as a musician, in terms of conveying information to further his concepts.

IB:   I learned a lot from Dizzy. We should blame him for this terrible English that I speak. He taught me… [LAUGHS] I learned a lot from him about the jazz tradition. I also learned a lot from Dizzy about the human aspect. But I learned a lot from the jazz tradition.

TP:   Was he very hands-on in showing you information?

IB:   He was a great human. Yeah. He was always teaching people, everybody, and always wanted to learn also. Dizzy used to call my room when we were traveling. He used to call me at 1 a.m. to talk about rhythms. I’d say, “Dizzy, man, I’m sleeping; come on, let’s talk tomorrow.” He was always into that.

TP:   A night owl. Through much of the ’90s, you were part of Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s bands.

IB:   Yes, I started playing with Gonzalo. After Dizzy passed away, I played for a while… Tito Puente put together a band called The Golden Latin Jazz All-Stars. I think that band went on for four years or so. Then in 1997, I started playing with Gonzalo. We played together for ten years. First we were playing as a trio. We recorded his first album for Blue Note, Inner Voyage, then came Super Nova, and then we recorded Paseo as a quartet. That’s when he hired Felipe Lamoglia, and we played as a quartet for a while. Then, when I did my album and I went on my own, I think it was time for me to do my thing, and he also wanted a change, I think…

TP:   Talk about the collaboration. The band evolved greatly during that time, and it could go from great complexity, complex polyrhythms, to elemental swing.

IB:   Yes. Gonzalo’s music is very complex. So the point for me was to make those complex things look easy. We talk about it. He knew what I was able to do. He was very hard on me. The stuff that he wrote for me, he make my life miserable, but he knew that I was able to do it. For example, that record Paseo is one of the greatest things that I have ever recorded, as well as one of the most difficult, or the most difficult thing that I have recorded. The thing is to make that look easy. But still, as much complex as it is, you can hear…

TP:   The music breathes.

IB:   Exactly. The Cuban music is there.
[MUSIC: “Woody ‘n You”]

For the Pianist Junior Mance’s 88th Birthday, a Long WKCR Interview From 1991

Pianist Junior Mance, a professional for some 70 years, who played with everyone, turns 88 today. I had the opportunity to host the maestro for a WKCR Musician Show in September 1991 — here’s the full transcript of our conversation. A lot of Chicago history contained herein.

 

Junior Mance Musician Show (WKCR, 9-18-91):

Q: Junior is from Evanston, Illinois and came up in the Chicago environment. I’d like to know a little bit about your beginnings on the piano.

JM: The very beginnings? Well, when I was five years old… We had this little upright in the house, and my father played for his own enjoyment, not professionally or anything like that, but when he would come home from work he’d sit down… That was during the days of stride piano. He even took lessons. And when he wasn’t around, I just started fooling around with it, until I got caught one day.

Q: What did they do to you?

JM: Nothing. He was flabbergasted! In fact, what floored him, I asked him if I could take piano lessons. That was later, though. I started formal training when I was eight.

Q: What did that consist of? You had a teacher and…

JM: I had a teacher, yes.

Q: So I take it that you picked up pretty quickly on the piano. You had a proficiency…

JM: I guess I did. I wanted to play the piano, you know. I used to hear him do things, then when I was home in the daytime I’d sneak over to the piano when my Mom was in another part of the house doing something.

Q: Were you listening to records then? Or was it primarily just through your records and practicing?

JM: There were records, yeah; you know, the 78’s. My father was an Art Tatum fan, as all piano players are, and he was a bigger Earl Hines fan. In fact, Earl Hines’ band back then used to work around Chicago quite a bit, they worked the Grand Terrace in Chicago — and they used to broadcast. This was before they made a lot of records, you know, or records were played over the air. But all the bands would broadcast live from wherever they played.

Q: And the Grand Terrace was a major center. All the bands who were in there would broadcast to the West Coast particularly.

JM: Yeah. And all through the Midwest. Fletcher Henderson and Earl Hines especially. Those were the two mainstays.

Q: So from a very early age you were hearing the best in piano, particularly the style of Chicago, the cross between the Blues piano thing, what Tatum and Earl Hines were doing, and the Big Band sound as well.

JM: Mmm-hmm.

Q: Did you go to hear the bands in person, or were you too young?

JM: I was too young. Occasionally… A few years later they started coming to the Regal Theatre, which was like the counterpart of the Apollo Theatre here. They had shows every week, and usually a big band. I remember the first big band I heard in person was Duke Ellington at the Regal Theatre, and the next one was Count Basie, and my father took me backstage to meet Count Basie when I was about 10 years old.

Q: Then the bands went around by railroad, and Chicago was and still is the railroad center of the nation, the crossroads, so many of the bands would come through Chicago and stay for extended periods of time.

JM: Right.

Q: When did you first start becoming active on the Chicago scene and do your first work for money? I won’t say professionally…

JM: Oh, when I was about 13 or 14.

Q: Tell us about those gigs. What was the nature of them?

JM: [LAUGHS] Actually, the first gigs, I remember there was this saxophone player who lived upstairs over us in Evanston. A good saxophone player. He never went out on his own; he always had a day gig. But he played very well. He played like Illinois Jacquet’s style, so he worked all the time; you know, the cat would come home from work… And he had a lot of gigs in what later became known as roadhouses, the places out on the highway that had a band, usually three pieces — saxophone, drums and piano. I don’t know why the basses were so absent then. They were around…

Q: Money, I guess.

JM: Yeah, I guess so. So I remember, oh, I guess I must have been somewhere between 10 and 13 — this guy’s piano player must have been sick and couldn’t make the gig. So he called everybody he could, and everybody was working, or else he couldn’t make the gig, you know — so he asked my father could he take me on the gig. And he was one of my father’s close friends, and my father trusted him, you know. So I went on the gig with him, and he taught me how to comp that night. A different style than what they do now, you know; it’s what they call (?)boonsen(?) — CHUNK-A, CHUNK-A, CHUNK-A-CHUN… That night he stuck to tunes, mostly Blues tunes or tunes with “I Got Rhythm” changes. And I was fascinated. So after that, whenever he was home, you know, I would bug him, like “Teach me some more of that!”

Q: And he would? He was forthcoming?

JM: Oh yeah, yeah. So then when I was about 13 or 14, I worked a lot of gigs with him, especially in the summertime, when I wasn’t in school.

Q: What was his name?

JM: His name was T.S. Mims.

Q: And was he playing mostly in Evanston, or…

JM: Well, the Chicago area. But strangely enough, not right on the Chicago scene, like where Jug was working or any of those places. This was mostly, like, out on the highway or out on the outskirts of town. And he was really a good player. He’s still alive. He’s in his eighties, around my father’s age now.

Q: Of course, Gene Ammons was the first musician with whom you first emerged on the national scene and did your first recordings. What were some of the events that led you from working with T.S. Mims on the various roadhouse gigs on the outskirts of Chicago to working and subsequently recording with Gene Ammons?

JM: Well, as time went on, you know, all the time I was in high school, I worked gigs myself. I would work with… Well, we would get gigs, guys my own age; we’d get, like, the school dances (which we got paid for; that’s why I consider that professional) and things like that. But I was working more in Chicago with a lot of Chicago musicians. I remember one guy when I was in my teens was George Freeman, who is still around, a guitar player, Von Freeman’s brother. I worked a lot of gigs with him.

Q: Were these mostly on the South Side?

JM: Right. Yeah, I did a long commute when I was young.

Q: That’s a long ride, straight down, north to south!

JM: Yeah, it was an hour each way. At that time. It’s shorter now, though, I think. Transportation is more modern now. I also met Leroy Jackson at that time.

Q: I can remember seeing him with George Freeman five or six years ago in Chicago as well, so that’s a partnership that’s lasted a long time, I guess.

JM: Yeah. And we had… Oh, man, there were so many good musicians around there that people never heard of. They just either faded away or got into bad habits that took them away, you know. I remember names like Elick Johnson, who was a tenor player. Oh, man, if he was around today, he would be, you know, right up there with the giants.

Q: He’s spoken of by many.

JM: Nicky Hill was another one.

Q: Again, what was the nature of these gigs? For instance, were they up on what was happening in modern music?

JM: Yes.

Q: Was everybody up on Charlie Parker in 1944 and 1945?

JM: Yes.

Q: Talk about how that music sort of came into the consciousness of the young Chicagoans.

JM: That was funny. I remember this was right after I graduated from high school. I was 16 at the time, and I was working a gig in Waukegan, Illinois, which is even north of Evanston — Jack Benny’s home town. So I was working there with a band that was pretty much an R&B band, but a good R&B band — it was really good. No names that you would know, but a pretty good one. And that was the type of gig we played, what they called floor shows in those days. We had like a tap dancer, a Blues singer, a shake dancer, etcetera. So one night during the week, business was kind of slow, and these two young guys came in and asked could they sit in. So the leader let them sit in. And it was a music I hadn’t heard before. But it, like, blew me away. I said “Wow!” I really dug it. And the two young guys…one guy, I don’t know if you ever heard the name Henry Prior…

Q: Who was nicknamed Hen-Pie, I believe.

JM: Hen-Pie, right. He was an alto player who sounded just like Bird, like Charlie Parker. And the other guy was a trumpet player named Robert Gay, they used to call Little Diz — which his name speaks for itself; he sounded exactly like Dizzy. These guys were around our age, too. They just wanted to go around and go out and play, and they didn’t care who they played with.

In the meantime, the band leader was telling me, “Man, don’t listen to that noise. That’s not music. That’s noise.” And I said, “Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, okay.” Next day, man…! [LAUGHS] We exchanged phone numbers. So that’s when I got into listening to records. I went and bought every Charlie Parker or Bud Powell record I could find! Which then, it was pretty well new in Chicago, too, but as they came out, word spread like wildfire among the musicians, like, of my generation: “Oh, there’s a new Bird record out.”

Q: One thing, though, is that Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were briefly with Earl Hines…

JM: Right.

Q: …and then were raided by Billy Eckstine.

JM: Mmm-=hmm.

Q: And Earl Hines, of course, was based in Chicago, although I don’t know how often that band actually played. My impression is that was more of a touring band.

JM: Oh, no, they played. That band played in a club called the El Grotto, I think. That was their first (?).

Q: On 64th Street and Cottage Grove.

JM: Yeah.

Q: But I take it you never got to hear that particular edition of Earl Hines’ band. That’s a very famous band, but it never recorded.

JM: No, I did get to hear them then. Then I was sneaking into clubs. In Chicago at that time they didn’t check ID’s like they did later.

Q: A sort of wide-open type of town.

JM: Right, heh-heh, like the TV show The Untouchables; most of it took place in Chicago!

Q: That aura remained indeed. But did you have sort of distinct impression that listening to them left on you at that time?

JM: Oh, man, do I! Yeah, they just blew me away. It was just a phenomenal band. It was the direction I wanted to go in music. If Earl Hines wasn’t the piano player, I would have begged for the gig in that band!

Q: [ETC.] What was your first contact with Gene Ammons, who again, you did your first recordings with?

JM: I left this R&B band in Waukegan that I was playing with shortly after that, and I started working with a big band in Chicago — this is while I was in college, too. The band was called Jimmy Dale. It was led by a guy named Harold Fox, who was a tailor who specialized in musicians’ uniforms and band uniforms. And Harold had the most fantastic band book of anybody. Because his way of doing business was he would trade the bandleaders a whole set of suits for their band in exchange to copy some of the charts. So we had a book which was about as thick as three or four New York phone directories! And we had everybody’s music. We had, oh, the Billy Eckstine band, the big band music, we had some of Dizzy’s stuff, we had a lot of Stan Kenton, some Duke, some Basie…

Q: How many pieces was this band?

JM: Oh, let me see. We had five trumpets, four trombones, five saxophones and three rhythm.

Q: Any names you’d care to bring up who performed…

JM: Well, Jug was in that band. Not always. This was after he made “Red Top.” But Jug was very fond of big bands, too, and this was a fantastic big band. And Gail Brockman, the legendary Gail Brockman, who was a trumpet player who was in Billy Eckstine’s band. This was a guy, oh, Dizzy and Miles and everybody looked up to him. Gail and Freddie Webster were like two people who never got their complete due, I think.

Q: Of course this had to have been after Jug had left, after Eckstine had disbanded…

JM: This was after Eckstine broke up. This was like 1946 and ’47. Lee Konitz was in the band. Gene Wright. Who else was in the band? Some of the names people won’t know. But everybody else in the band was just as good as they were, too. They just didn’t…as I said, didn’t get out. Hobart Dotson was another in the band.

Q: Of course, a legendary teacher in Chicago was the bandmaster at DuSable High School, Captain Walter Dyett, who might have produced half of those musicians…

JM: Oh, man, did he! Yeah. Well, Gene was one of Dyett’s disciples. Benny Green, the trombone player. Johnny Griffin, Nat Cole…

Q: All the Freemans.

JM: All the Freemans, right.

Q: Dorothy Donegan…

JM: Dorothy Donegan, mmm-hmm. Elick Johnson, the guy I mentioned, and a lot of others who played just as good but never, you know, made it out there.

Q: Anyway, this is how you really first encountered and got to know Gene Ammons, was with the Jimmy Dale band?

JM: Right. The first night that I was with the band, and Jug played the gig right after… In fact, Jug offered me the gig with him. And both of us, like, were in and out of the band. When Jug wasn’t working, we’d work with this big band, with Jimmy Dale.

Q: So things were very busy. Lots of things were going on in Chicago, and of every sort, really.

JM: It was, yeah. Those were the days, you know, when the New York musicians used to look forward to coming to Chicago. Because I remember with Jug, we had like a home gig in a place right next door to the Regal Theatre called the Congo Lounge. And the bands used to come in and… See, in those days the hours for working were like 10 to 4, and 10 to 5 on Friday and Saturday. And the Regal was like the Apollo; at about 11 o’clock at night the guys were off from work, and they’d all file down from the Congo, man. That’s where I met so many of the main musicians.

Q: Let’s talk about that after we hear a set of music featuring some of these Gene Ammons sides from the late 1940’s on which Junior Mance appears.

MUSIC: “Blowing The Family Jewels,” “When I Dream Of You,” “Pennies From Heaven,” “Cherokee.”

…that last was Sonny Stitt, from a series of tracks by Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons in the ’78 period, when the tracks were short and everything had to be very compressed. Do you feel that having come up through that has affected the way you play today?

JM: No, I was glad to get out of that. Because they kept constantly reminding you in the studio to keep it under three minutes, not go over three minutes. And they didn’t want three minutes. They wanted not over 2 minutes and 50 seconds at the most. Two and a half minutes was perfect for them!

Q: Well, many a masterpiece was created in that time, but I can certainly see your….

JM: Well, it was good in a way, because it really taught you, like, how to really say a lot in a short space of time.

Q: Not waste a note.

JM: And not waste a note. Exactly.

[ETC.]
[END OF SIDE 1]

As far as employers go, Prez was probably one of the best. Sometimes we’d work a week, and not work for maybe the next three or four weeks. But Prez would take care of us, both Leroy and I, because both of us were about 19 at the time, and we were the only two in the band… Oh, and Jerry Elliott, the trombone player who was from Pittsburgh. We were the only three who weren’t from New York. The other guys had pads in New York or families there. And we all stayed in the same hotel where Prez stayed. And Prez took care of us. Prez saw to it that we ate every day and that we had spending money — and wouldn’t let us pay him back! He died with me owing him a lot of money. He just never would let us pay him back.

Q: What was it like being on the stand with Lester Young? Was it a similar format every night? Would he change it up all the time?

JM: As far as changing up, I guess he changed it up all the time. Because it wasn’t really like… He wasn’t a show-businessy type person. We’d get up there and it was almost like a session, like a group of guys get together and let’s play something, you know. And after a while, you forget who the leader is. And he’d play… He never played a lot of solos…I mean a lot of choruses. He’d play three or four choruses, and then maybe everybody played three or four, then take it out. Most of the bands then, people of the stature of Prez, weren’t based on charts or arrangements, unless you had a big band. Because of Prez’s reputation itself, people came there to hear Prez. They didn’t care what was around it, you know. So everybody got a chance to play.

And Prez had a philosophy about letting everybody play. When we went on the road, he would really let everybody stretch out. Because he said…I think one night he said… I don’t know, somebody didn’t want to solo on a certain tune or thought it was too long, and Prez said, “Look, I want everybody to play, because everybody might not like me, but they might like one of you.” After that, everybody played.

Q: A few words about Gene Ammons. When we were off-mike, you quoted a comment Frank Foster made about him.

JM: Well, Frank was talking Gene’s big sound and the way he swings. So Frank said, “One thing about Gene Ammons, he hit one note, and immediately the beat and swing would begin and the note would just fill up the whole room.” Which is true. Jug had a tone as big as ten saxophone players!

Q: What was it like going out with Jug in a small group at that time? You talked about him trying to establish his…

JM: Well, I joined the band after he made “Red Top,” which was his big hit; after Billy Eckstine’s band broke up and he recorded for Mercury, and “Red Top” was his big hit. And the band worked a lot. That was before I was with them. When I joined the band, “Red Top” was still popular, it was still his mainstay, but it was beginning to tail off a little bit. And he had a lot of other good Chicago hits. Because we worked a lot in Chicago. In fact, the union brought us up on charges, because one night we had five gigs…

Q: Oh, no!

JM: Yeah, heh-heh. And Jug’s car… One of them was in Gary, Indiana, the third gig, and the car broke down and we couldn’t get back to the fourth gig! So the club-owner took Jug to the union.

Q: How did it get resolved?

JM: They fined Jug $500. What saved us, we had a drummer at the time from Kansas City named Ellis Bartee, who was just out of the Lionel Hampton band. So we’re all sitting there, the whole band is down there, you know, and we figure we’re all going to get fined. So they ask each one of us, “Well, you guys know better. Why did you follow him in doing five gigs?” Now, that was a stupid question. If anybody offers me five gigs in one night and I think I can do it…

Q: Those are questions you’re not supposed to be able to answer.

JM: Yeah. So Ellis Bartee, who was very quick with it and he could come up with a quick answer, he just told them, he says, “Well, Mr. Gray…” Mr. Gray was the President, Harry Gray. He said, “Well, Mr. Gray, I’m just here from Kansas City. When I came here from Kansas City, all I saw was the name Gene Ammons all over everywhere, because he’s the most popular. So I just figured, well, that’s the man to be with. I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to work five gigs in a night.” But they all laughed, the rest of the boys laughed when he said, “All I saw was Gene Ammons. I figured, well, that’s the man to be with, and that’s who I wanted to be with — so I got the gig.” So that got us off the hook. That sort of made them laugh a little bit. But Gene got fined the $500. Plus I don’t know what happened between him and the promoter. The promoter lost money or had to refund a lot of money. They were all dances, five dances in one night!

Q: Were there a lot of dances in Chicago at that time?

JM: At that time, yeah. There was the Pershing Ballroom, the Parkway Ballroom, the Savoy was still going then, and even a lot of places on the West Side. One of the gigs we were supposed to do was on the West Side, the last gig was on the West Side. We never heard from that guy. He just kept quiet. I guess he found out what happened.

Q: One other person you worked with I’d like to ask you about is the young Sonny Stitt. Were you working with his small group, or was that “Cherokee” we heard just put together for the record?

JM: We were both with Jug at the time, and the record date came up, and he got Art Blakey to make the date.

Q: Of course, he was one of the great virtuosos on all of his instruments at that time, particularly alto and tenor.

JM: Right. Well, alto was his main instrument.

Q: What memories do you have of working with him?

JM: Well, Sonny used to come and sit in with us at the Congo, too. He spent a lot of time in Chicago. He lived there for a while. And he used to come and sit in with us almost every night. A lot of cats used to come into the Congo almost every night and just sit in with us.

Q: Out of the Regal Theatre, as you were saying.

JM: Yeah, but I mean even other than the Regal. A lot of the local cats who could really play. Ike Day was another one who used to come in.

Q: Tell us a little bit about Ike Day. He’s one of the legendary drummers…

JM: Right.

Q: …who it’s commonly said Art Blakey would check him out, and Max Roach…

JM: Oh, everybody. Jo Jones gave him a set of drums. Ike was a genius, really, one of those young geniuses. I remember seeing Ike sit in with the Basie band when he was 16. He couldn’t read music. He played the book like he had been in the band all the time.

Q: He just had it.

JM: Just a natural. He had such a natural sense of anticipation, and hands that were just unbelievable, and could swing. And he was a teenager. He died very young. He was about 24 when he died.

Q: He had tuberculosis, I believe.

JM: Mmm-hmm.

Q: He only made one recording, I believe, with Gene Ammons, and you can barely hear him on the recording…

JM: I wasn’t with him then. I didn’t know about that one. I think I heard something about it…

Q: Can you give us some idea of what his sound was like, an analogy to another drummer, or describe it in some way?

JM: I guess, now that I think back, he sounded a lot like Big Sid Catlett, who was always one of my favorites, too.

Q: And from Chicago as well.

JM: That I didn’t know.

Q: He studied with Jimmy Bertrand, one of the great show drummers in Chicago in the 1920’s.

JM: Yeah. Well, Big Sid was the drummer… That explains it, because most of the drummers in Chicago could do more than one style. They could do anything… Like, Big Sid played with Louis Armstrong, and then turned around and made a record with Dizzy and Bird, and it sounded like he belonged there on both.

Q: And plus, do the big band material as well…

JM: Exactly.

Q: I guess he played with Fletcher Henderson at the Grand Terrace…

JM: That’s right, yeah.

Q: …amongst others. One person talking about Ike Day said that he had an incredible dynamic range, that he was very sensitive to sound and hearing the whole kit and using the whole kit.

JM: Yeah, he played with the whole band. He wasn’t just… You know, like some young teenage drummers, they want to stand out. No, Ike was a musician. Ike was a player.

Q: You referred to Art Tatum as probably your main influence on the piano.

JM: Everybody’s main influence! [LAUGHS]

Q: You’re going to hear a set of Art Tatum music. And you mentioned to me that “Elegy” was the…

JM: That’s one of my favorites, yeah.

Q: A few words?

JM: Well, the music speaks for itself on that. I just heard it, and it just blew me away. Because I had heard the Classical versions of it as well, and then when I heard Art Tatum’s version, I didn’t want to listen to the other versions any more.

[MUSIC: “Elegy” (Keystone Brdcst., 1938), “Fine and Dandy,”

“All The Things You Are”; Ahmad Jamal, “Raincheck,” “Poinciana”]

Q: You said that you used to work with Israel Crosby at a very famous club on 55th Street in Chicago called the Beehive. You were house pianist there for a while?

JM: House pianist, right.

Q: How long did that happen?

JM: Well, I was there for a little over a year. In fact, the day I got out of the Army I got home, and… I don’t know if this guy saw me on the street, but he heard that I was home, a drummer, a guy named Buddy Smith who is no longer with us. But Buddy had the gig there, and he had Israel on bass and myself.

Q: The Beehive at that time was one of the main places where people would come in from out of town and use the rhythm section.

JM: Right, exactly. That’s where I got to play with Bird for a month. They booked everybody for four weeks, which was great, too.

Q: Who were some of the people you played with there?

JM: Coleman Hawkins was the first one in there, and he was there twice during the time I was there. Charlie Parker I mentioned. Lester Young. That’s when I first met Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis; also he was there.

Q: As a solo?

JM: Yeah. That was long before the days with Griffin.

Q: I was wondering if that was around the time he was working with Basie.

JM: I think in between times. He had been with Basie, and then he was on his own, and then after that he went back with Basie again.

Q: What do you remember about working with Coleman Hawkins?

JM: Oh, it was wonderful. Basically, working with him it was pretty much the same approach to the music as working with Bird. Like, they both had this thing… They knew every standard in the world, you know, and they would call a standard, and if I knew it, I’d say, “Yeah, I know that. What key?” And both of them… Bird’s phrase was “Make it easy on yourself.” And Coleman said something to that same effect. He said “Wherever you want it.” It didn’t make any difference to them what key you played it in?

Q: Would Coleman Hawkins generally play the same repertoire every night or would he change it up?

JM: No, he’d change it up. He went through all the standards. Of course, he had to do his hits, you know, like “Body and Soul” — he couldn’t get away from that. “Body and Soul” and “Stuffy.”

Q: Would he play a set solo on “Body and Soul” or would he make it different every night?

JM: He played pretty much the solo he did on the record, yeah. Because people… The solo was as famous as the tune, because people could hum that solo along with him.

Q: Another musician who played at the Beehive was Wilbur Ware.

JM: Wilbur Ware, yes. After I left there, Wilbur worked there a lot. I forget…let’s see, what did Israel do after that? I think Israel joined Jamal after I left, and Wilbur probably came in then. Not immediately, though. I think Victor Sproles was there a little bit before Wilbur.

Q: Well, Israel Crosby, of course, is one of the great rhythm masters in the history of the bass.

JM: That’s right. He was years ahead of his time, too.

Q: Talk a little bit about him and what he did that made him so special.

JM: His lines, his bass lines, the notes that he would choose — the clever things he did to fill up spaces. It’s what a lot of the bass players are doing nowadays, which is like the thing to do now. But he did it… He was ahead of his time. He was somewhat like… Well, Prez was ahead of his time. That’s the way Israel was.

Q: And you’d probably heard him on records with Teddy Wilson.

JM: I’d heard him on records with Teddy Wilson. And Israel was getting on in years then. Israel had played with Fletcher Henderson’s band and Benny Goodman’s early band, so he wasn’t…

Q: A spring chicken.

JM: Yeah. But he was just so many years ahead of his time. And playing with him was such… You never knew what he was going to do, but he would do something that wouldn’t get in your way; in fact, it would enhance you. He was the kind of bass player, when you play with him he keeps a smile on your face. Because every time he does something, the piano player’s face would smile, you know!

Q: You’d just listen to him throughout the set and you’d be very happy.

JM: Wilbur Ware was like that, too. Wilbur Ware and I worked at a place on the South Side with Buddy Smith again, and Johnny Griffin and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson. We must have worked there for a couple of years.

Q: What place was that?

JM: Cadillac Bob’s, I think it was called?

Q: On 71st Street, was it?

JM: Not that one. No, that’s the new one. This one was between… Right down the street from the Pershing. This is between 63rd and 64th on Cottage.

Q: Busy street.

JM: Oh, that was the thing. Man, that whole area was saturated with a lot of Jazz. The Ground Propeller, the Cotton Club, and all those clubs along 63rd.

Q: All of them had music.

JM: Yeah.

Q: I heard one drummer tell the day he got out of the Army he started walking down 63rd Street, and it took him I think three days he said before he got…

JM: Yeah! [LAUGHS] Because there was so much good music, and it was all Jazz, say starting from about South Park all the way over to the lake practically.

Q: And that’s about a mile-and-a-half or two miles.

JM: At least, or two miles, yeah.

Q: A few words about playing with Charlie Parker. You did say that he’d play a lot of material and make it easy on you. I believe he played at the Beehive about a week or two weeks before he died.

JM: If he did, I wasn’t there then.

Q: What was happening the week that you worked with him? Was he in good form, in good health?

 

JM: Excellent form. I tell you, he kept me awake! Boy, there was just so much music, listening to it…

[ETC., THEN MUSIC BY JUNIOR: “Emily,” “Jubilation,” “Miss Otis Regrets,” “Yancey Special”]

Q: Next we’ll hear some sides recorded by Dinah Washington during your time with her. She was from Chicago originally? Did she go to DuSable? I’m not sure.

JM: I think she went to Wendell Phillips, the rival of DuSable. I think. I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure she did. I don’t think it was DuSable.

Q: At any rate, she had local fame in Chicago…

JM: Oh yeah.

Q: And she was a great church singer as well, in Chicago’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church.

JM: Right.

Q: I guess Dinah first worked with Lionel Hampton.

JM: Mmm-hmm.

Q: Lionel Hampton seemed to have picked up a lot of musicians out of Chicago.

JM: A lot of them to pick up!

Q: How did the gig with Dinah Washington happen for you?

JM: She just called me one day. Actually I was called to do a record date with her. That was the album that had “A Foggy Day” and “I Let a Song Go Out Of My Heart.” So after the date she asked me if… In fact, I was working at the Beehive at the time. And she offered me the gig. That’s when I left the Beehive.

Q: She must have been working quite a bit at that time.

JM: She was working a lot, she was paying good, and then you know, she lived in New York at the time, and it gave me a chance to…

Q: Get back there.

JM: Yeah. I wanted to be in New York a lot.

Q: That’s understandable. So it seems like you were going back and forth between New York and Chicago about half and half then, from the time you…

JM: Oh yeah. With the exception of the period between 1951 and 1953, when I was in the Army, I’d say between ’47 or ’48, when I was with Jug… I dropped out of Roosevelt after a year-and-a-half, because the gigs got heavy then — and I knew what I wanted to do, you know. Then I moved to New York permanently in ’56, when Cannonball formed his first group. Cannonball and I were in the Service together also.

Q: Where were you stationed?

JM: Fort Knox. Fort Knox, Kentucky. Cannonball and Nat. Curtis Fuller was there for a while, too.

Q: It must have been quite an Army band.

JM: Oh, it was, yeah. Yeah, we had a ball.

Q: Did you play a lot during those couple of years?

JM: Yeah, I did. I wasn’t supposed to be in the band, being a piano player. But Cannonball pulled some strings and got me into the band as a typist. [LAUGHS] I knew how to type, and they needed one to do the administrative work for the band, so on a technicality I got in.

Q: Was there a piano on the base?

JM: Oh yeah! Well, there were three bands there, the 36th Army band, the 3rd Armored Division band, and the 158th Army Band. But see, to get in an Army band, the piano player has to be someone who can also play a marching instrument. And I couldn’t play a marching instrument, although they tried to teach me! One day they gave me a bass drum, and said, “Okay, Mance, try to play this.” It wasn’t a long march I had to do. This basic training company was coming in at the end of their training; they were coming out of the woods, out of bivouac. So to give them a little spirit, you know, we’d meet maybe a distance equal to about five or six blocks before they got to the barracks, about a half-mile, say, and we were supposed to play for them. So where we had to meet them was at the bottom of a hill, and I had the bass drum on a windy day! So we’re going up the hill, and if you can imagine this, this would be how the beat of the drum went: BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM..BOOM..BOOM…BOOM… So between the wind and not knowing what I was doing on this bass drum, the tempo got slower and slower. So one of the snare drummers, another cymbal player, ran over and said, “Mance, you’re gonna have the guys crawling, man. They’re tired already and we’re going up this hill. Give me the bass drum; you take these cymbals.” I said, “What am I supposed to do with these?” “Just hit ’em.” He didn’t tell me how because he didn’t have time. So I didn’t know, man. I just reared back and got a good lick and went, “WHAM!” Anyway, you saw guys scattering everywhere getting out of our way. They didn’t know what that noise! [LAUGHING] So then the band director told me, “Mance, just carry them under your arm!” So that was the only time…

Q: Back to typing.

JM: Yeah. The band always played for the Kentucky Derby every year, too, in Louisville — twice I went to that. But I had to have an out to get there, so I had to be in the marching band. So they let me carry the cymbals under my arm both times! And once we got inside Churchill Downs, I was on my own then.

Q: I hope you won some money.

JM: You know what? I made one bet on something like the second race or something like that, and won enough to, like, really hang out the rest of the day at the Derby. It wasn’t a lot, something like $40 or something, but in the Army back then… This was 1951 or so, and…

Q: That was good money then. A week’s salary.

JM: Right! So I had a ball. I didn’t bet no more after that. I just tasted, and looked around and watched the races and hung out. You know, there’s a lot to do at Churchill Downs rather than just sitting there and watching the races. It was a nice outing.

Q: Well, let’s hear some of these Dinah Washington sides. We’re going to start with “Our Love Is Here To Stay” from In The Land Of Hi-Fi, Dinah Washington with Hal Mooney and His Orchestra, featuring Cannonball Adderly and Junior Mance, arrangements by Hal Mooney. Then we’ll hear something from the famous session Dinah’s Jam, which you were telling a story about — Dinah brought in a bunch of hard-core fans.

JM: Right. She had it catered. She invited about fifty of her closest friends, who were like real Jazz fans, not just people who liked the music. And there was a Who’s Who musicians there. So she had it catered, and what happened was we would play and… And it was in the studio. It was a live date, but in the studio. During the playback after each tune, while we were listening, people would help themselves to drinks and food, it was buffet style, and the drinks put them in a good mood… And it was really one of best record dates ever made, as far as enjoyment. There were no pressures, nothing was rehearsed. Most of the stuff on there is like first take. And the audience was just enthusiastic. Fifty people sounded like five thousand. It was just a small studio, but they were really into it.

[MUSIC: Dinah Washington: “Our Love Is Here To Stay,” “You Go To My Head.” Teddy Wilson/Sarah: “When We’re Alone,” Teddy Wilson, “I’ve Got The World On A String,” “Fine and Dandy.”

Q: Teddy Wilson, as you mentioned at the top of the show, is one of your very earliest influences on the piano.

JM: Right.

Q: Do you recollect the early sides you heard of his? Were you familiar with the sides we played?

JM: Not really. At the time, you know, I was about eight years old. Teddy was young then, too. Teddy was a teenager. Teddy was one of those people that got out there young, when he was in his teens. But I remember my first piano teacher, his idol was Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson. Teddy had just published a book of his piano solos, and that was one of the early things that my teacher gave me to learn. And then my father started buying Teddy Wilson records, so my father liked him, too.

Q: Of course, Teddy Wilson’s two primary influences, I guess, were Art Tatum and Earl Hines.

JM: Oh yes.

Q: We’ll move now to some Earl Hines material. Earl Hines, of course, was at the Grand Terrace while you were coming up in Chicago. I guess he was in Chicago after the War as well, when he had the El Grotto.

JM: He had the El Grotto.

Q: He did run that club, right?

JM: That’s something I don’t know. He may have, because he was there all the time.

Q: Did you get to know Earl Hines?

JM: Yeah, but later. Later I met Earl and I knew him.

Q: Any words about the Fatha?

JM: Oh, a wonderful man. And a great player!

Q: It seems that later on his life his pianism developed and developed and was featured much more.

JM: Well, after the big band. But even during the big band he was a great player. He could play then.

Q: But later, of course, he recorded all those wonderful albums…

JM: Yeah, where he’s doing solo or trio.

Q: We’ll hear the Earl Hines band featuring Billy Eckstine.

JM: I want to hear those. They are nostalgic for me.

[MUSIC: “Jelly, Jelly,” “Stormy Monday Blues,” “Boogie-Woogie On The St. Louis Blues.”]

Q: Junior, you said that’s one of the tunes you learned note for note when you were a kid.

JM: Yeah, that, and the other one was “After Hours.” Oh, there was one more, too. In fact, the first Jazz tune I ever learned was “Yancey Special” as a kid.

Q: Well, and you’re still playing it.

JM: [LAUGHS] Them habits are hard to break!

Q: Were you playing a lot of stride piano when you were a kid? Was that how you first really got your chops?

JM: Not really. I used to marvel at the stride piano players. But I have small hands, and I couldn’t… I’d miss notes when I do that.

Q: Can’t hit those intervals…

JM: Yeah. That’s why I was glad when Bebop came in. Even now, though, even now occasionally when I do solo piano, I’ll try, even though I can do it a little bit. See, most of the stride piano players could play tenths. Like, Art Tatum could walk tenths like a bass player walks single notes, you know. And I could never even… Even now I can’t reach a tenth on the piano.

Q: There’s a story, probably apocryphal, about Earl Hines, that he had had surgery to cut the webbing…

JM: Oh yeah. That wasn’t true. Boy, that tale went all over the world, too. But that wasn’t true. Because doctors said if you do that, you can paralyze the hands.

Q: We’ll move now quickly to one of the very famous groups that Junior worked with between 1959 and 1961, the Johnny Griffin-Eddie Lockjaw” Davis tenor tandem. Actually, that was ’60…

JM: Yeah, it was more ’60 to ’61, because I was with Dizzy until ’60.

Q: Well, it seems like a long time because there are so many recordings by this band. It just recorded prolifically!

JM: [LAUGHS]

Q: How did that hook up for you?

JM: Well, Jaws and I knew each other from the Beehive when you worked there, and…

Q: Of course you knew Griff from Chicago.

JM: Well, Griff I’ve known all my life. He was from Chicago. They got their group together while I was still with Dizzy. Then I left Dizzy to form my own trio, to go out on my own, so to speak, not necessarily a trio… I had made that first album, the one with Ray Brown. So I wanted to test the waters for myself. And like all new groups, you know, times get hard. Then I did some gigs with Johnny and Jaws, and made a deal with Jaws. Jaws said, “You can work with us, and if you get a gig with the trio, go make that.” And it turned out during the time the band was together, I made more gigs with them than I did with my trio. And we were in the studios all the time.

Q: You recorded a lot of Monk’s material…

JM: We did a whole album on Monk called Lookin’ At Monk.

Q: Was Monk another musician whose music you were very much involved with? Or was that the first time you’d really started grappling with Monk?

JM: No, it wasn’t the first time. I’ve always been a Monk admirer. I think because we have the same birthday. I’ve always been very fond of Monk’s music. Probably more so now.

Q: Another point in common is that you both really developed a lot of your style by listening to stride and blues piano …[ETC.]

JM: Could be.

[MUSIC: “Tickle Toe,” “In Walked Bud”]

Q: “In Walked Bud,” Monk’s variation on “Blue Skies,” I think.

JM: Yeah, the outside is “Blue Skies”. The channel is a little bit different. [ETC.]
I enjoyed this. It’s a real nostalgia thing for me, too, to hear some of the other things, like the Earl Hines things.
[ETC.]

[-30-]

For Danilo Pérez’s 50th Birthday, an Uncut Blindfold Test From 2001 and a WKCR Interview from 1993

Best of birthdays to Danilo Pérez, pianist-composer-educator-humanitarian, who turns 50 today. I’ve posted the uncut proceedings of a DownBeat Blindfold Test that we did in 2001, and the transcript of a WKCR Musicians Show that Danilo did with me in 1993, around the release of his eponymous debut album. I’ve also linked to DownBeat features I’ve written about Danilo that were published, respectively, in 2010 and 2014.

 

Danilo Perez (Blindfold Test – Raw Copy) – (3-29-01):

1. John Lewis, “One! Of Parker’s Moods,” EVOLUTION II (Atlantic, 2000). (George Mraz, bass; Lewis Nash, drums) – (5 stars)

Man, it’s like the blues told by somebody who really was there. Ain’t nobody… He’s got a classical sound, too, but it’s jazz. I only know one guy who can play like that, with quoting some Bird things — John Lewis. Man, that’s BAD! Is that John? What record is that? [The latest.] Oh my goodness, you would have got me. But the sound is a vocal sound, man, in his playing, and minimalistic to the end, with so much clarity. I wish I could one day play half that good man. Check that out. He’s just so clear. The sound. [And you know the tune.] This is Bird, “Parker’s Mood.” 5 stars definitely. This is just so clear. I hit it! That was a great example of clarity and right to the point. The phrases are all…it was all clear. The phrasing, man. It was the piano being played, but I could hear the humming, the vocal quality to the music.

2. Michel Camilo, “Night In Tunisia,” THRU MY EYES (Tropijazz, 1997) (Patitucci, bass; Horacio Hernandez, drums) – (3-1/2 stars)

[AFTER IT’S OVER] Wow, that’s definitely “Night In Tunisia.” There’s a lot of energy on it. Sometimes it didn’t flow as good for me. It reminded me in parts of somebody who I met in Panama many years ago; just a couple of parts, not everything, but he had a couple of things that remind me of one of my heroes, but he wasn’t as flowing as I was used to hearing him playing — Jorge Dalto. It definitely wasn’t Emiliano. There were some parts where I couldn’t tell really who it was. It was a nice version of “Night In Tunisia.” It was a nice combination of lines with… It was a great attempt to say certain things, but it didn’t… 3-1/2 stars. [AFTER] It didn’t flow as well for me. He was actually trying for something different in this. I couldn’t recognize Michel. He was trying some different stuff, and that’s probably the most positive thing about it that he was trying some different stuff. He wasn’t doing the octave runs and all the things that are Michel’s trademark. He was doing something totally different, which I feel is the true essence of jazz.

3. Jorge Dalto, “Avenida Buenos Aires,” LATIN JAZZ: LIVE FROM SOUNDSCAPE (DIW, 1981/1997) – (4 stars)

That sounds like Jorge. It’s one of those rare occasions where he was caught up in a very open sound, very improvised. He’s got traces of a lot of history there. I really enjoy it. I have to give it 4 for the tuning of the piano! But wow, it’s so beautiful. You can hear the whole Pan-American approach to the piano. He brought a lot of dimension to this. When I was listening to this, I could hear New York and I could hear also Los Andes. He managed to play in a way that gives you an organic ride from New York City, with that element of energy in his playing, and kills, too, all the way to the Indians and playing the little flute sonata, which was a part that he did. Right here you’re stopped in the traffic from the airport to Manhattan! He was storyteller, man. Wow, amazing.

4. Joe Zawinul, “Two Lines,” WORLD TOUR (Zebra, 1998) – (4 stars)

This has definitely been influenced by Weather Report. There’s no doubt about it. Let me keep listening. I can hear that whole Joe Zawinul-Wayne Shorter school, definitely. [AFTER] Definitely. That’s one of the newest groups. To me that’s the essence of being a creative force, to be able to stamp. You can hear the stamp right there. We were just so spoiled to the Weather Report thing, but he’s trying definitely for new things on this one. You can’t help but to think on the great group that he had with Wayne Shorter and Jaco and the group that they put together. Just because that has been such an inspiration on how to make a sound; really, the sound he gets from the keyboards is masterful. It’s different than he used to, but still you can hear that voice in there. I would definitely give 4 stars to the Master Zawinul.

5. David Kikoski, “Water,” ALMOST TWILIGHT (Criss Cross, 1999) – (John Patitucci, bass; Jeff Watts, drums) – (4 stars)

This reminds me of Joey Calderazzo a bit. But it’s got some rhythm things, really interesting stuff. I can recognize the drums — Tain definitely. And Patitucci? The piano reminds me of Joey a little bit. Oh, do you know who that could be? That could be my brother, Kikoski. That’s it. That’s what it is. I know Dave a long time, and he’s a truly underrated musician. We’ve come a long way together. Yeah, that’s the sound I was hearing. It’s got that McCoy thing, that Herbie thing, but it’s definitely Dave; I can definitely hear that rhythmically. I haven’t listened to him as much as I used to. He changed, too, a lot. There’s some nice stuff he’s mixed between Herbie, floating the line with the pentatonic stuff, and he’s making some real interesting rhythmic stuff, mixing up the Latin thing and different rhythms — really open playing. Four stars. Oh my goodness. I said, “I KNOW that sound.”

6. Barry Harris, “I’ll Keep Loving You,” I’M OLD FASHIONED (Alfa, 1998) (George Mraz, bass; Leroy Williams, drums) – (5 stars)

It’s somebody who knows about Bud! It’s not Bud, but somebody who knows about that shit. Nice recording. In the progressions, a lot of the runs he plays… This sounds like an original to me, but with the standard vibe. It’s really well-done. How he got to that minor-VII flat-V reminded me a lot of the way Barry Harris would do it. You almost got me because it’s a recent recording. The piano sounds so good! I’ll definitely give 5 stars to this. I know this tune. Is it Dizzy’s? [AFTER] Oh, that’s very nice. Yeah, he put something else on that one. It’s the way he got to that chord and the mastery of the idiom. He’s playing it from the heart. That’s HIM. The sound of the instrument is a very fresh, new recording. Is that relatively new? It sounds so beautiful.

7. Kenny Kirkland, “Chance,” KENNY KIRKLAND (GRP, 1991) – (5 stars)

That’s an incredible coincidence! [In the first second you said…] That’s Kenny. That’s what I was listening to when I woke up, this tune. This is amazing, man. I haven’t listened to that record since it came out. And this morning I just took it out, and as I was listening, I was crying. There was something spiritual about it. The whole tune, the whole record… What he’s doing with the harmonies, they are very unpredictable. They’re coming out of that school, that Herbie-Wayne type of writing. Not writing tunes, but compositions really. A great influence to me in the way he played the piano. He had no barriers or borders. He encompasses the whole history. I remember so many amazing moments when I started hearing him live, with his energy and rhythmic ideas and the interaction between them in the band with Branford. He’ll be remembered forever. And it’s an incredible spiritual awakening that this morning I got up thinking about him, and you played that, and that’s what I was playing. That’s deep. I miss him. I really do. I miss his power. 5 stars. The only recording he left as a leader, but it encompasses a lot. A lot of ground. A great inspiration for us.

8. McCoy Tyner (solo), “Sweet and Lovely,” JAZZ ROOTS (Telarc, 2000) – (5 stars)

McCoy Tyner. There’s only one guy who can play like that. I’m trying to think of the tune. [SINGS MELODY] Where do I know this tune from? Jon Hendricks taught me a lot of these tunes; we used to play it with the repertory. Because I didn’t know any of this very well. Ah, it’s “Sweet and Lovely.” Art Tatum did a version of this. It’s great to hear McCoy play solo. [McCOY MAKES A RUN] Oh my goodness. I don’t know how to say anything that hasn’t been said. When I hear that, I can hear the true essence of African drums and the true essence of Afro-American piano being played. It’s like coming out of that school, like Monk, for example, that even if they play a scale or a device used by classical musicians, like Debussy, whole-tone or whatever, it doesn’t sound Classical. There is an African-American sound. His own unparalleled sense of time. He’s in really top form here. McCoy is one of the guys who makes you struggle trying to figure out what he’s doing. His thing is like you can’t really figure it out. He’s a force, a powerful force when he plays piano. That’s why I say you feel on this piano a bursting of energy coming out. Definitely 5 stars. It’s so great hearing McCoy play solo.

9. Emiliano Salvador, “Preludio Y Vision & Nueva Vision,” NUEVA VISION (Qbadisc, 1978/1995).

Another out of tune piano. [AFTER HORNS ENTER] Emiliano Salvador. This is a classic. This is the band with Arturo and Paquito. This is one of the big influences. I did a record called “The Journey” and I dedicated one tune to him. Man, it’s so great, the way you had McCoy, and you can hear the influence of McCoy in his playing. I don’t know how he got it, man. He was from Puerto Padre. But truly understanding of the essence of jazz. You can hear it in his music. He’s one of my favorites as far as coming from Latin America and mixing up all this… That’s Bobby Carcasses singing. This is a classic record. It’s a model for everybody, called “Nueva Vision.” [AFTER] Paquito told me many stories about him, about how he was able to play swing on drums and really understanding jazz element. He was able to cross over from Latin to Jazz in an incredibly organic way. For me he has been a big influence, and for me, this is a record that should be on your shelf. Another thing I was going to say is that he really understood the essence of how to mix worlds in a very organic way. I can hear a Woody Shaw influence in there, and McCoy definitely, and Paquito said even Roy Haynes on his drumming. And nobody understands how he got all of that. It’s unfortunate how he never got to play or never got known among the American artists. He was ahead of his time, playing different meters, too. He was into that. A big-big influence.

10. Edward Simon, “Colega,” EDWARD SIMON (Kokopelli, 1995) (Simon, piano; Mark Turner, tenor sax; Larry Grenadier, bass; Adam Cruz, drums) – (5 stars)

That’s Mark Turner. The way it started at first, I thought it was the whole school that we developed with David, the whole way of playing the bass against the rhythms and all the harmony. There’s just one more cat that I think it would be… Oh ,that’s my brother, Ed Simon. He dedicated this tune to me. It’s called “Colega.” There’s a whole school of playing the bass and the clave and all of that. Really, I’m so honored that he did that for me. I think I heard this once or twice a long time ago when it came out. [Do you know who the bass and drummer are?] [LISTENS FOR LAST 3 MINUTES] No. Oh, Larry! That’s my people, man! Sorry. Totally killing! It’s been a force in the whole crossover thing with being able to break and bridge all these stereotypes about Latinos playing straight-ahead, and I’m proud of Ed for being so honest about what he does and being all about the music. A true inspiration. We came out together and I love him dearly for all he does. I don’t listen to him as much as I used to, just because he’s such a strong force in his music that I want to keep focusing on what I am doing. But I am aware. And as soon as he started playing, I knew it was him. Ed Simon is part of the whole force of Latinos breaking and reaching up to play straight-ahead. He’s just so in-tune with the music. There’s a lot of honesty in his playing. I’m biased because I’m a good friend, but I really admire him. He happens to be a great source of inspiration. For Ed, and especially for that tune, 5 stars! I have to write something for him, too.

11. Uri Caine, “Stain,” BLUE WAIL (Winter&Winter, 1997) (James Genus, bass; Ralph Peterson, drums) – (4-1/2 stars)

This is an interesting mixture of new and old there. An interesting mixture of what is reminiscent and moving forward that is interesting to me. I recognize a blues essence, a blues sound, and I am trying to figure out… [LAUGHS] It’s great to see that… See, that’s like playing with the sound of the blues… There’s a rhythmic language that reminds me… There’s one guy who can do that, who has that language — Marcus Roberts maybe. No? Another guy is maybe Joey Calderazzo. [AFTER] Oh my goodness, I didn’t get it. The drummer sounded a little like Tain sometimes. Somebody in that vein? Somebody I know very well probably. I wasn’t paying attention to him. I was just blown away by the piano. One thing I appreciate about this is that there was a mixture of reminiscent and moving forward. Very interesting. I was really stimulated by the traveling. Definitely 4-1/2. There was a Kenny Kirkland influence there, of course, in the beginning actually

12. Papo Lucca/Sonora Poncena, “Cappucino”  ON THE RIGHT TRACK (Inca, 1988) (Chick Corea, composer) – (5 stars)

You’re trying to trick me, but you ain’t gonna trick me with this, because that’s my hero. Let me make sure before I say it. Oh, huge time! If it’s not Papo ,I don’t know who it is. That’s a very unusual recording, and I don’t know it. But that’s one of my mentors. He was a big influence in the beginning. He’s the guy who introduced me to all the new tumbaos and montunos he was doing, but also mixing it up with… You can hear he’s taking from jazz here and there, listening to Oscar Peterson. I don’t know the tune. It’s interesting. It’s great. I recognize the sound and the voicings with the horns. He’s got a very peculiar way of harmonizing. I owe him a lot. The way he plays the time, it’s a very huge… It’s deep. He sounds in control all the time, too. Very mature playing. I think he’s truly an underrated musician. I’ve got to give Papo 5 stars. That’s my man. It’s a tricky one, because it’s got that Papo sound, but also because of Chick’s tune there is this contemporary environment for him that you usually don’t hear Papo play in normally. That’s where you’re trying to trick me!

13. Eliane Elias/Herbie Hancock, “The Way You Look Tonight,” [Eliane Elias, SOLOS AND DUETS (Blue Note, 1994)] – (5 stars)

I hear Herbie Hancock. They’re going for a journey, man. They’re going for a ride. I don’t know who the second pianist is yet. I heard at Birdland the other day someone I haven’t listened to for so long, and this reminds me of that — Eliane Elias. [You did it!] Yeah? Just to feel that sound and the personality coming through. I’m blown away. This is beautiful. They took a journey, they took a ride together. When you hear music like this, what can you say? They’re just taking you for a ride. Wow! This is a great lesson in duo piano. I’m really proud of her. And obviously, as you know, Herbie has been an influence on all of us. I didn’t get that there were two different persons at the beginning; it sounded so integral. That’s the beauty about music, when it’s connected. It could become a one (?) dimension. They discovered a lot of places in that. I don’t know this recording. Wow, it’s beautiful. I definitely want to get it. But I heard her at Birdland one night recently, and she was totally in control. Such a beautiful player. Beautiful music. The technique with the essence of music becomes one. You’re not aware of how much she can play. It’s just music. And Herbie, what can you say about him? Herbie is like a river, an endless amount of ideas and creativity.. And when you think you know what he’s going to do, he’ll trick you, he’ll turn it around. I admire him a lot. He’s definitely an incredible inspiration. I feel strange giving a rating to this stuff. This wouldn’t even belong in 5 stars; it goes beyond that! I This is some really beautiful playing. Amazing.

A lot of the tunes… On radio in Panama, they didn’t announce the tunes. I didn’t learn English until I came here, so a lot of the tunes I know by the sound or by the melody, or I know it in Spanish. I’ve learned a lot of lyrics hanging out with Roy Haynes. He knows a lot of tunes. Sometimes, when I’ve played certain melodies, he’ll say “that doesn’t go like that; the lyrics go like this.” It’s been an incredible experience. Being around Jon Hendricks, too. They taught me a lot.

14. Marcus Roberts, “Groove Until You Move”, IN HONOR OF DUKE (Columbia, 1999) (w/Antonio Sanchez, drums; Jason Marsalis, perc.) – (5 stars)

Two years ago I had an incredible experience in Seattle, playing at the Jazz Alley opposite Marcus. That was a great week for me as sharing. A lot of these guys are very serious and loving with the music, and sharing… That’s definitely the sound. I remember that sound. I don’t what recording it is, but there’s a blues quality to it, there’s a Latin tinge to this, a connection to the sound that has that same feeling as the other piece you played me — the past and the future. [Who is the drummer?] That’s coming from our school, the way we plays time, so that’s got to be Antonio. It’s the way we deal with the rhythms. Oh, that’s the record he did with him. It’s definitely killing. Marcus’ association with Antonio came from that week. It was an incredible week. That was the first time I used Essiet, and Marcus would be there listening every set. He’d never heard me before. He was very giving; he just cracked me up. I learned so much in that week. He’s calling me mid-day, “What you doing?” “I’m practicing!” He was very competitive that whole week in a very healthy way, in a way that was about love. I remember him at the end of the week saying “We brought a lot of gumbo for you guys, but you guys brought 200 pounds of rice-and beans.” He was so funny. That’s totally killing. I can her the sound of the blues with the Latin… The whole history. That connection with the Latin tinge. That’s one thing that should be clear by now, that Latin Jazz shouldn’t be Latin Jazz like just another thing, that there is also Latin Jazz. When Jazz is called “Jazz,” it already implies having the Latin tinge. 5 stars.

15. Eddie Palmieri, “Dona Tere”, VORTEX (RMM, 1996) – (5 stars)

I’m hearing Eddie; it has Eddie’s energy on it. That humor in his playing, too. If it’s not Eddie, I don’t know who it is. Is that Conrad Herwig playing trombone? And Donald and maybe Brian Lynch. Killing! It’s a very unusual Eddie, though. I’m so used to hearing him live with the electric, and it’s great to hear him play acoustic. And there’s a laid-back feeling, too, very relaxed. also, he’s playing more harmony than normal, and he’s doing so many different things, where he’s keeping one hand going and the left hand going… Wow! It’s great to see that he can change. He’s been doing something different, definitely. There is a subtle quality to Eddie’s playing here that I don’t usually appreciate when you hear him on the electric piano. Really beautiful. The way he created a sound between Monk and his McCoy kind of voices made it definitely a recognizable sound. The way he orchestrated horns, too. The way he plays also traditional things — six, then all of a sudden a four-four thing, then back to traditional tumbao. I think the star rating for Eddie doesn’t really belong; he’s a star by himself…! You can’t give Eddie… Especially the fact that he’s trying to do something new, that he’s going for something different. But since we have to…5 stars.

 

————

Danilo Perez,WKCR Musician Show (6-9-93):

Q: You’re playing at Bradley’s this week with a quartet that has two different configurations, two different saxophonists.

DP: Yeah, we started on Monday with David Sanchez on tenor, and then Larry Grenadier on bass and Dan Rieser on drums. And today through Saturday, Mr. George Garzone on tenor.

Q: Now, he’s an associate of yours from Boston for a long time.

DP: Right.

Q: And a lot of your career in the United States has been located… It’s been sort of a center of operations for you.

DP: In Boston, yeah. Just because I moved there… That was one of my first places I moved to. But actually, I’ve moved so much that New York also has been… I’ve been around here a lot.

Q: I’d like to talk a little bit about your record [Danilo Perez [RCA]) before we get into the Musician Show aspect of playing music that’s influenced you and giving a window on you as a musician. There’s a wide range of material that goes from your origins in Panama to the work in Jazz that you do today. Tell us a little bit about how you came to the selections on the record.

DP: Actually, the record represents my influences that I’ve had from since I was a child, from my father singing, playing me boleros and Latin music, to Dizzy Gillespie, you know, and to Paquito, to Tom Harrell… I chose the tunes to represent every part of America, like South America, then you’ve got Argentina, you’ve got Brazil, you’ve got Panama, then you’ve got Cuba, and then you’ve got North America which his a… If there is a name for the record, it would probably be “This Is My America” or “Interior Caribe,” which is a way to look in at Caribbean things, but knowing that in the… You can see it. You have to really listen to and hear that it’s being influenced by Caribbean. You know what I’m saying? I mean, it’s not so obvious.

Q: When you were coming up as a young musician, were you exposed to a broad range of Caribbean music, or specific styles in Panama?

DP: Oh yeah. The first thing I learned was the clave, the percussion. My father gave me the bongos when I was two years old; at three I was already playing bongos. And I started playing Classical music when I was eight years old. But my training with my father was mostly old Cuban records, Sonora Matancera, Papo Lucca, Peruchin, until I was like 16-17. But at the same time, there was a neighbor of mine in my neighborhood, who used to play records by Freddie and Stanley Turrentine. And I didn’t know who they were; I was just enjoying it every time he played it. So I didn’t know what was that. But since I was like 7 or 8, I’ve been listening in a way, very partial, but also a little bit of that…

Q: Is your father a musician?

DP: My father is a singer, yeah. And he used to sing around. Actually, I got him out of being retired to go back and sing so I could play with him!

Q: What kind of bands was he…? Was he fronting bands as a singer?

DP: Yeah. Latin, Boleros, Salsa. My father is what is called, like, a sonero, which is sort of like an improviser, because he improvised mostly words and melodies on his part. So it’s a little bit jazzy, the concept. It’s like a Benny More type of thing, sonero, you know.

[ETC.]

Q: …we’ll hear “Alfonsina Y El Mar.” Forgive my pronunciation.

DP: No, that was great. This is a tune written by a woman that…you know, it’s sort of like a love story. She killed herself walking through the sea. She was a great writer, Alfonsina. And it’s a very famous and very historical tune in Argentina. So I thought it would make a great representation of what South America is.

[MUSIC]

That was “Alfonsina Y El Mar,” from Argentina. It’s a composition by Ariel Ramirez and Félix Luna. You could hear that we… That’s the mood of the record, you know, which was a really low-key, really relaxed and meditation type record…

Q: A smoldering mood on your record.

DP: That’s right.

Q: We’re speaking with Danilo Pérez on the Musician Show. Again, Danilo is at Bradley’s this week, and I guess beginning tonight it’s the quartet that features George Garzone on saxophone, Larry Grenadier on bass, and Dan Rieser.

DP: This is a quartet that’s been working now. We’ve been working together for two months now, so we’re trying to get that group type of vibe.

Q: Is it the same sort of variety of material that’s on this record?

DP: Definitely. And we do also a lot of, like, standards but arranged in a different way. Last night James Williams was there, and he was happy. He’s a great cat. He was, like, “I’m leaving after this tune because I’ve got to go home” — and he stayed all night, man. So that was a real compliment.

Q: Is he someone that you ran into in Boston?

DP: Well, James and I…you know, one day when… Donald Brown was my teacher at Berklee, and a couple of times James gave me a lesson when he subbed for Donald. And there has always been like a really great vibe from that; you know, you have a little school going on there, which is great — Mulgrew and Donald Brown… I learned a lot about the music just seeing him play, and then getting to talk with him and asking him questions and stuff like that.

Q: We’ll next get into a set of Latin piano, and I take it this is the music that you really cut your teeth on…

DP: That’s the music that influenced me since I was probably four years old until I was 14, 15 years old.

Q: You were playing Classical piano. Were you also playing gigs where you did things besides Classical?

DP: Yeah, I started playing a lot… You know, it’s a funny story, because I used to play bongos with my father, and one time the piano player, who used to make the arrangements and was a great friend of my father, he’d get up and ask me to come and play so he could hear the band. And then I sat in and played, and I was really working… That was kind of new, those tumbaos that he was playing. And everybody in the band was like, “Yeah, stay there!” From then on I started playing piano, yeah.

Q: Would you say the piano and the drum is related in any way?

DP: Oh yeah. Well, see, because I started playing percussion, I relate to the piano. In Latin music, the piano is a very percussive instrument, and you have to play like a conga, like the timbales, like the bongos — you’ve got to know all of that to really… The piano actually is like a guajiro(?); it’s doing the work of the tres. And you’ve got to try to imitate the string sound [CON-KI-CON, CO-CO-CON-KI-KI-CON…]. You don’t play so much, you know, looking for chords to play. You’ve got to make a groove going on and just, like, you know, kill it. It’s like Funk, you know; it’s like playing…

Q: The whole rhythm section is really that way, because the bass in Latin music is very drum-like.

DP: Yeah. Everybody has to have this feeling for… You’ve got to know what the timbales does, what the conga does, what everybody does, how to phrase, and then how to really play your tumbao, your guajiros, you know.

Q: And the rhythms of each genre are very specific rhythms.

DP: Right. The bass is doing… The basic thing that it comes from is from the son montuno. That’s the base of everything. And the bass used to… In the old times the bass used to go like PUM-PI-PUM, BE-BE, PUM-PI-PUM, BE-BE-PUM-PI-PUM, and the piano was GUM-TI-GUM, DUM, GUM-TILI-KON-KON, GUM-TI-KON-KON-KON… [CLAPS AND SINGS RHYTHM] Then by the time the pieces started to get more contemporary, and they said, “Don’t play so much,” they’d say [SINGS RHYTHM, LEAVES OUT BEATS], and then more and more it was starting to get more mixed… We’re going to get there with how do you mix all of that son montuno with different…with guarachas…how it’s starting to take it from all different sequences for different rhythms, and to get to the point now which is actually playing 6/8, which is the African thing on 4/4, what they call songo(?) now.

Q: Is this very easy to apply to your playing in a jazz situation?

DP: Well, at first it was difficult, because the way we phrase is the way we talk. The Latin musicians, the Latin… We speak very, like, “oh-yeah-man…” [RAPID FIRE] — that’s the way kind of we phrase. We phrase like POP-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA, PA-PA-PA, PA-PA-PA-DE-DE-DE-DUP-PA-PA. And the Jazz music is a language…the brothers don’t speak like that. They talk, “Hey, man, what’s happening, man, you know, hey, cool.” And that’s the way they play. They slink through the things, like VROOM, DU-DE-DE-LADLE, DU-DU-BUDDLIE-DU-LADLE… They slink, while we go PA-PA-PA…

Q: More behind the beat.

DP: Right. And it’s not perfect. That’s what makes it so beautiful. It’s the way they talk. So that still takes me a while to get used to when I’m playing. I learned a lot with Dizzy, and with Jon Hendricks. He started to teach me a lot about how think as a singer, and then trying to phrase that way, so I don’t sound like I was always on top of the beat.

Q: We’ll talk more about Dizzy Gillespie and your experiences with him later. But let’s talk about each of the pianists who we’re about to hear on this set.

DP: All right, we’re going to start with Papo Lucca. Before Papo, I was checking out Lino Frías, who was the pianist for the Sonora Matancera, and Eddie Palmieri when he got that famous thing, “Puerto Rico,” then Peruchin, “Bilongo”.

We’re going to start with Papo, because Papo for me made the transition from Latin piano to kind of like… That’s when I wanted to learn his solo. Because he sort of took Bud Powell, a little bit of Bud Powell, a little Bebop lines, and put it into Latin rhythms. Until that time I never heard anybody doing that, really, playing lines on… So after I heard Papo, that’s when I started to think, “Where did he get that from?” Then people were telling me, “Yeah, you’ve got to check out Bud Powell,” and that’s how I made the transition.
Now you’re going to hear a famous solo Papo Lucca did, “Sin Tu Carino,” with Ruben Blades, one of Ruben’s beautiful hits.

[MUSIC: Papo Lucca/Ruben Blades: “Sin Tu Carino”; Eddie Palmieri, “Puerto Rico”; Peruchin, “Bilongo”

“Bilongo” was with Peruchin on the piano and Richard Egües on the flute. That usually has a vocalist, but they did an instrumental there. If you notice the similarities between Latin pianists, they’re all playing percussion — that’s real important. The other thing is that you hear the octave is very predominant. I’m not so sure why. But one thing is to try to imitate the tres, because the tres is tuned in an octave, how you get that octave sound. The other reason was at that time also there was no electric pianos, so it sort of built up from the same concept that McCoy had to play like fourths so he could get a big sound, that could be heard. So Latin pianists developed that way of playing so they could themselves, that they could be able to hear… And that developed the octave playing.
You hear a lot of, like, rhythms going on, like KA-KA-KA-KA-KA, K0-KI, KO-KI, KO-KI…[SINGS BASIC RHYTHM]. You hear that in the three of them. You hear Papo, where he put a little bit of blues on it; he was running, like, some blues chords on it. Eddie’s left hand is very different from everybody else, because he’s doing like IN-CHIN,IN-CHIN, CHIN-CHIN-CHIN-CHIN, in the (?) beat, and the bass going TUM-DE-DE, DE-DUM, DUM-DUM-CHIN-CHIN-CHIN-CHIN-CHIN-CHIN… — all beat. And then the right hand is going [REPEATS FIRST RHYTHM] That’s really hard to do and to make it feel right. So that was Eddie’s trademark.

Q: A few words about Peruchin and his meaning in the piano continuum.

DP: Well, Peruchin was like the virtuoso of Latin… He brought the piano to another level, because he played the piano so well. He was a trained conservatory virtuoso, you know — and he plays the piano. So people would be dancing and stuff like that, and when the piano solo came, people would stop dancing and come to listen to him because he was so amazing. He wasn’t the… Usually on the piano solo, things get… people get talking. He was a show-stopper every time he took a piano solo. I remember my father told me, like, people would just go to listen to him, just to hear his piano solo, because he… I mean, he had like… He was one of the first ones who started doing embellishment, like playing over the tempo and then going [SINGS BLAZING PIANO RUN] — that kind of stuff over the piano. I mean, he had such a technique, that it was so easy… So people would be dancing, and when Peruchin came and played a solo, people stopped and would go around the piano and hear what he was doing. He was like the favorite… My father said that every time he was playing, he would go to see him just to see his solo, be with him playing his solo.

Q: Did Peruchin stay in Cuba after 1960?

DP: He was in Cuba for a long time, then he moved to Panama. He was in Panama also… I don’t know where else he was. I mean, he did like a little tour. But I know he was in Panama for a while, because he developed a little school in Panama of people playing like him. In those times in Panama, there was a lot of Cubans… Benny More used to come a lot, Perez Prado used to come a lot to Panama. So there’s a guy in Panama who plays just like him, like Peruchin, you know; he got everything from him.

Q: Who were your teachers as far as piano goes?

DP: In Panama? My teacher was a woman from Chile by the name of Cecilia Nunez. And then the records.

Q: But you learned the rudiments and the technique of piano, and then learned the vernacular music, so to speak, by yourself.

DP: Yeah. There was nobody really teaching me anything, you know, like how to do things. You just bought the records and listened to them.

Q: And you had a good critic in your father.

DP: Oh yeah! My father actually made me transcribe the piano solos, you know, like Papo, Peruchin… Peruchin was too hard for me to transcribe, because those octave things were so difficult…

Q: What was your father’s training? How did he get started in music? And what’s his name, by the way?

DP: My father is Danilo Pérez. He never really had a training, like a conservatory or anything. But he grew up in a family where they all…like, they were singers and trumpet players. So my father grew up and played with the best bands in Panama, like played with Armando(?) Bossa, which was one of the best bands around Central America, Latin America. He played with them, he played with many, many bands. Actually, he was a self-taught musician. And he just has a… This kind of music for him is, like…

Q: Natural.

DP: Natural. That’s it. The clave and the sonero and improvisation… Just the jumping around and, you know, improvising, that’s second nature to him.

Q: And he’s still playing and you’re now working with him.

DP: Yeah. Well, sometimes we get together and play.

Q: You’ve got to bring him up to the States.

DP: Yeah, we will. We will. I’m planning to do a record, actually, because I want him to do… We want to do some stuff together.

Q: [ETC.] The next set will start with something by Peruchin from a recording called The Incendiary Piano of Peruchin, with the great Cuban drummer Guillermo Barreto, who died a couple of years ago, Cachaito on bass, and also a percussion section. Tell us about what we’re going to hear.

DP: Cachaito is another guy who also changed the bass. He is Cachao’s nephew or his son, I don’t know. Cachaito is related, I know that. Tata Güines is probably one of the innovators of the congas. You see people like Giovanni Hidalgo coming out of the Tata Güines school, you know. Guillermo Barretto also is one of the pioneers of playing the drums, and you know, bringing the percussion into the group. So what you’re going to hear is a set-up for many of the things that are happening right now in the Latin thing, and I am happy that they are putting it out on the records right now, because people can see that there is a tradition to this, and it’s not like they just got together… There’s a whole tradition to it.

See, Peruchin was an innovator, too, and also an innovator was Perez Prado. Perez Prado to me was to Latin music what Thelonious Monk was to Jazz; kind of like really crazy and had a concept, and went for it.

Q: I’ve been listening to Benny More’s recordings with his band in the late 1940’s. You hear bits that sound like the vocabulary of Ellington or the Dizzy Gillespie band, and then it goes into a whole different place.

DP: Yeah. Well, that’s the street vocabulary type of thing. Because he used to sell fruits on the street, and then in order to sell the fruit he had to say “Mango with papaya with…”, and make it go together… How do you say it when they go together, like the rhythm… I don’t know. You say “Papaya porque atawaga(?)” or something like that, things that go together with the ending. He used to do that. All the fruits. Mango, papaya and all the things he had, and improvise on all of them, you know. And that’s how he got his sonero. And there is a guy right now doing that, Gilberto Santa Rosa, who took a lot of stuff off him.

But Benny More… And the music at that time, because of the political situation in Cuba, he was very, very much together. If you hear some old recordings, you’ll hear, like, for example, Fernando Alvarez singing with a string group, and it sounds like the same kind of strings that were accompanying Charlie Parker and Strings. You hear a lot of similarities, even in the kind of tunes, the boleros… They have some harmonic movement that also the Jazz tunes, the standards had at that time. Havana, Cuba, was a really open island, so you had musicians back and forth…

Q: Everybody was coming in, so there was a lot of interchange.

DP: Oh yeah.

[MUSIC: Peruchin: “La Mulata Rumbera”; Sonora Matancera: “Besito de Loco”; Peruchin: “All the Things You Are”; Sonora Poncena: “Nica’s Dream Mambo”]

Q: That was quite a set you programmed.

DP: Uh-huh! You liked that, eh?

Q: Papo Lucca.

DP: Yeah, that’s one of the giants. They’re all giants in their own… You see how they take one thing and make it their own thing. You see Papo playing changes. There’s definitely some influence there, the way he voiced the chords also. He took that, you could tell he took that from the Jazz idiom in the way he played the changes on “Nica’s Dream” with Sonora Poncena.

Q: Each has their own way of playing tumbao.

DP: Yes, definitely. Each one of them… You have to do a lot with the accent, where they accent the…where they hear the upbeats, and where you hear the off-beat, too, and the way they play the left hand. Usually people here in America don’t pay attention to the left hand. They do basically the same thing with the left hand and the right hand. And there is more to that than just… You’ve got to kind of hear the different percussion and the different…the conga, the clave, to make the left hand be playing kind of like something else, but implying other…you know, implying the whole rhythm section.

Q: So in a sense, the tumbao implies giving the instrument the quality of the drum.

DP: Exactly. I mean, the drums, not really. The percussion. The bongos, the campana, the sensero(?), the timbales, trying to hear all of that. If you leave Papo alone or Eddie alone with that, they’ll groove you to death! Because they’re playing so much little things. Not like KON-KI-KON-KON-KOO…it’s not just that any more. It’s like [SINGS COMPLEX  RHYTHM] You’re hearing all of that.

Q: And it’s all on the piano.

DP: It’s all on the piano. It’s all on the piano, man, by itself. And every time it’s different. People think it’s always the same. No, every time it changes. [MIXES TWO RHYTHMS THAT HE SANG] You know, it changes. But you have to really know and pay attention to really hear this. So what I would like to play, you know, is how the three of them that you just played influenced me into getting my own…

[ETC.]

“Besito de Loco” by Sonora Poncena featured Lino Freires(?) on piano. He did not have a solo, but you could hear the tres. I mean, he was a very, very swinging piano player.

Another pianist we’re missing, I know the people that are listening are going to be… There’s a bunch of them that we’re missing. But these are the ones that influenced me the most. Rubén González, which I couldn’t find any tape or anything; it’s hard to find. But he was the pianist for the Aragon Orchestra for a long time. He actually influenced Papo Lucca very much. He’s actually probably Papo’s big influence.

Q: Now we’ll hear a selection on which you perform, again on which the audience can hear how you’ve been influenced and created your own way….

DP: Yeah. I took all the things from Papo, little things from Eddie, and mixed it up with the Jazz thing, with the changes thing. And how I started playing tumbaos, in this sort of like KON-KI-KON-KI-LE-KONKA, I say KOM-PI-LE-KOM-PI, KON-KI-LE-KON-KI… It’s like more off-beat. Once you hear it two or three times, you know after the fourth time who is playing the tumbao. Because tumbaos are very personal if you really work on it and try to get your own tumbao. So this is a record with Charlie Sepulveda, his first recording, “Tid-Bits.”

[MUSIC]

Q: …David Sanchez, tenor saxophone; Arturo Perez and Danilo Perez trading off on electric and acoustic piano.

DP: Arturo was playing electric and I was playing acoustic piano. But you could hear the… Like, the original way of playing tumbao like that was… [SINGS RHYTHM], and I say [SINGS MODULATED RHYTHM], with the 6/8 also in-between and the off-beat. Instead of going KIN-KU-KO-KIN-KI, I say KIN-KU-KO-KIN-KI, KU-DU-KO, KI-KI-KI, and you actually get like one beat, a little bit more. It sounds like I am off, you know!

Q: [ETC.] We’ll now move into the music of Bud Powell and Dizzy Gillespie, and show some ways how Latin rhythms were integrated into the jazz idiom. Danilo had some first-hand experience, of course, having played with Dizzy for about two years…

DP: Three years.

Q: …and having studied Bud Powell’s music. When were you first exposed to Bud Powell?

DP: When I was 18 years old. I think it was 1986. That was the first time that I heard Bud Powell. It was with that record, Live At Massey Hall, with Dizzy and Charlie and Max Roach and Charles Mingus. It was incredible, man. I mean, when the piano solo came, I couldn’t believe somebody could even just go… I mean, he just killed it. I mean, after Dizzy and Charlie played, it had to be somebody like Bud. He just killed it. I mean, he was playing phrasings like Charlie was playing, [SINGS LINE]… It was incredible. And that was the first time. Then I started getting, you know, most of his records. I’ve been trying to find the original… You know, the things you’ve got there, I’d like to have the original LP’s…

[END OF CASSETTE SIDE]

Q: …a classically trained pianist and a competition winner and so forth. Have you been able to go back to some of his sources and some of the earlier Jazz piano styles at this point?

DP: From Bud, you mean, or from somebody else?

Q: Well, before Bud, the people he was listening to.

DP: Well, there’s a lot, like Dizzy told me… Basically, a lot of the training he got, actually… I mean, the way he practiced, Dizzy told me, he used to play… He liked Bach a lot. He was a Bach maniac. He practiced a lot of that to get that fluidity. Actually, when you hear him playing the lines also, you can hear… I mean, I can hear The Well-Tempered Clavier, you know, the way he played. I could hear Monk, too. He definitely was influenced by Monk. I mean, to me. I don’t know if I’m maybe wrong…

Q: I think that’s true.

DP: There is this thing… I think he was very influenced also by…. I don’t know who he was influenced by, I’m not so sure, but Charlie Parker, definitely… The way he phrased in the piano was very new to the way everybody was phrasing. He was really phrasing like a horn player, actually.

Q: On this set, we’ll hear Bud Powell and Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. For you, coming out of a Latin experience, does it fit very naturally into that concept of playing?

DP: Well, if you think about it, they have the same principle, which is rhythm. The rhythm is quite different, in a way, but they’re rhythmical. They say, DU-BA-DU-DU-DOOM, DU-DIDDLE-DIDDLE, DU-BE-DAY-DA-DEEDLE. And in our Latin, we were all based actually in rhythms. That’s what is so appealing right away, the way they play the rhythms. It’s really interesting how they phrase.
What I said to you… What is hard for us is to really learn how to lay back. We have a hard time with that. I mean, I find myself having a hard time, because the way that our music is, it’s so on top that we have a hard time to lay back. So that’s the first thing we’ve got to learn. But as far as the concept, playing rhythms, it’s pretty… It’s not the same playing the Latin and also playing that, but the principle of playing the rhythm and make it swing and making grooves like you just heard Pappo do, and Eddie and those guys is the same principle, which is very African, where the rhythm is really important.

Q: Let’s hear one of the most famous performances in the history of Jazz, Bud Powell’s “Un Poco Loco”…

DP: Oh my God!

[MUSIC: Bud Powell, “Un Poco Loco,” 1953 (Blue Note); Monk, “Evidence,” (Griffin-Malik-Haynes, 1958.]

There are many reasons why these records should be played and should be a part of your library, definitely. But one of the things… Like, first of all, you hear… Like, the thing that attracted me the most to Bud was, of course, his concept of playing, but the lines, the way he wades into the chords like a horn player, and the phrasing, that was really appealing to me the first time I heard it. I said, “Man, that sounds like a horn playing on the piano.”

And then when I heard Monk, I mean, the way he played was completely contrast. He played like a composer, you know, and he’d build up a tune. The thing that was so appealing to me there was that when I tried to sit down and copy Monk, it would not sound right! Because I had to sit down and transcribe not just the melody and the rhythms, but the harmony, the way he voiced the chords, you know. Because he may call it E-flat, Major 7th, but that’s a… I mean, there’s thousands of ways to play E-flat Major 7th — and Monk got his own way to play that chord. And I was so inspired to see that…I mean, he… There has been arguments for many years about, you know, his technique and, you know… But I think Monk’s technique is killing. Because the way to play like him, you have to learn how he gets that sound out of the piano, and really sit down and work on it, while if you want to play like somebody else, usually it’s more or less the same type of way, usually the touch and… People like Bill and many great pianists had a great touch, but they always related to the Western tradition. But with Monk, he just brought… It was like a Varese-ian type of thing. He just brought the usual sound, man… And really, if you want… I mean, for me, if I want to try… You know, I’ve been checking out Monk more and more now, just because he don’t play… I mean, you take his melody part, [SINGS “EVIDENCE”: BONK-BEH-BERRRWW!!], and then he’s playing like shapes and colors and, you know, like he’s playing… I mean, he’s playing so advanced that you could see and hear on the records… When the sax player finished, they were going, “Yeah!!” and when he finished playing, they were going, “Ahem, ahem.” I mean, they had no idea what was happening!

I mean, he was so just so advanced. The way he played over the tune, he was playing his composition. He didn’t really blow over the tune. He’d make another tune out of his tune and put in like a B section and a C section and an interlude, and you could hear…kind of like an orchestrator, you know. Which I think he got… To me he got kind of that from Duke, I mean, definitely that kind of concept, like playing chords and then playing, like, a suddenly abrupt line — VRROOM, and then RING-RING-RING. Like playing colors, you know.

He’s amazing. And I could that influence in many people. Like McCoy. You can hear definitely McCoy influenced by Monk on Live At Newport, where he plays a blues there, and you could hear he’s definitely… And then Chick and then Herbie… Man, everybody’s been influenced by Monk, just the way he plays — it’s amazing.

Q: His musical world is so complete unto itself.

DP: It’s complete. I mean, you have to learn the melodies because… Actually, the thing also about Monk is the rhythm in the melodies. If you check out Rumba Para Monk, that Jerry Gonzalez did, you can hear that… I mean, those rhythms really work well with the clave. For some reason, he got like the clave. I mean, it was always there, in all…mostly all his tunes. And you could definitely put Latin rhythms to it. So that’s another attraction to me in Monk, his concept of displacing the rhythm. Instead of going, like, POP-PE, he goes POP-PE-E-A-PO-PE… You think that’s the downbeat. That’s not the downbeat sometimes. That’s your beat. He’s another bar ahead, or… Even in “Blue Monk” you can hear it. That tune, when I heard it first, I said, “Something’s wrong with that.” Or even “Jackie-Ing.” You hear that… [SINGS REFRAIN OF ‘JACKIE-ING’] He knew… I mean, I don’t know…

Well, you said it while we’ve been talking about it. His work was complete, very complete. It’s not just like harmonies and then E-flat Major 7th and then a melody, and then you play Monk all your life. No, you got to sit down and work, check how he voices. He’s really something else.

Q: What did Dizzy Gillespie say to you about Monk that you can remember during your time with him?

DP: Well, Dizzy told me one thing… Because I asked him about Bud and Monk and all those guys. He said that the first time that Monk would play around, they were all like kind of, you know, “This guy’s crazy, man.” I mean, actually that was his device. And then the more they got to hear him… Actually, he taught Dizzy a lot. I mean, actually the Minor 7th Flat 5 chord was taught to Dizzy by Monk. That’s why he used it everywhere, after he practiced with it… You can hear it in the intro of “Round Midnight” at the coda, you can hear it on the end of “Con Alma,” you can hear it in “Woody’n’ You” — you could hear that Minor 7th, Flat 5 chord all over. Because that was what Monk taught him.

But he said… I mean, the way he played was like a little kid, you know; it was like a humorous thing. And I said, “Well, you got that, too.” And he said, “Well, I guess we all got it then!” But you see, there is a humor and there is, like, a happy feeling…

Q: With Monk it always seems like he’s discovering something every time he plays.

DP: Discovering, right! He always comes up with something you never expected. And the way he’d get to the stuff, you’d say “How the hell did he get there?”

Q: Danilo Perez worked for several years with Dizzy Gillespie.. [ETC.] Dizzy Gillespie system of music was also complete unto itself, and I think this was made very clear to people who maybe didn’t realize it, during that week at the Village Vanguard, when Slide Hampton brought the band in and did the arrangements. Because the arrangements were so idiomatic and so true to the spirit of Dizzy Gillespie, that they really brought out that flavor in a lot of ways.

DP: Yes. Well, that’s a really great band, man. It’s fantastic. I wish sometimes, you know, when I heard… The experience I got sometimes is that people sometimes, you know, don’t relate…you know, the media, the audience in a certain way… Because was always, like, a funny and human and very humorous…and sometimes they… I mean, Dizzy, every time that I remember when he put his trumpet in his mouth, he just played music, man. I mean, he may be laughing and dancing and stuff, but I mean, don’t confuse that… When he put the trumpet up, he always played; he got deep into the music and played great, man. And sometimes they… You know, there’s a certain thing about looking at Dizzy like a humorous… You know what I mean? But, no! He was dead serious.

The thing about Dizzy was not just the musical thing, which is a gift, and I think he’s definitely one of the geniuses of this century, but his humanity. The whole time I was with him, I never saw him… A couple of times I saw him mad, but I never saw.. Dizzy was a great human being. I mean, really uplifting all the time.

Q: Well, one thing about Dizzy Gillespie, among his many musical qualities, was that he really was the first American musician to codify Latin rhythms into a Jazz structure, and brought Chano Pozo over from Cuba. He always had an affinity for the Latin sound and Latin rhythms, and taught it to many American musicians.

DP: Right. Do you know who got him into that, the first…?

Q: Mario Bauza.

DP: Yeah, who got him the gig. So Mario is actually probably the guilty one for that Carnegie Hall concert… Mario also got him his first gig with Cab Calloway, playing with Cab Calloway’s band.

Q: But he had his way of assimilating it and bringing it into…

DP: Because if you hear him playing Jazz, his rhythm is very interesting. So he was really drawn into the rhythm aspect right away once he heard Latin music. I think Chano, of course, brought a lot of the traditional thing then.

Q: Well, let’s hear a location recording from the Salle Pleyel in Paris in 1948, the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band in full flower. This features a lengthy duo between Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo on “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop” by George Russell.

[ETC., MUSIC (Oscar Peterson/Dizzy Duo, “Con Alma)]

As Danilo mentioned a little while ago, we could spend a couple of days with Dizzy. Indeed, WKCR has done so several times in the last few years. But the music we’re playing during this show, the music that’s influenced Danilo and so many other musicians, is so vast and the scope of these musicians I don’t think is always appreciated by contemporaries…

DP: Right.

Q: It takes a long time. They think, “Well, he’s great,” but I think it’s sometimes hard to realize how complete and how deep the scope was of what certain musicians were doing while they were doing it.

DP: Right. Like, Dizzy, he got that rhythm…the rhythmic aspect with the melody, and the harmonic also… He found the weirdest notes to put in a chord and make it work. That’s a concept. I mean, he was a conceptualist. It’s not about notes or anything. He was playing a… I mean, the way he would shape his solos was just amazing. So free, at the same time so strong. He had all the ingredients for anybody from any kind of culture to just go and fall in love with that. Because he knew how to play… [SINGS DIZZY LINE]…you know… He’s got that freedom to… like, waving like a snake. That’s what I thought of when I first heard him. It sounds like a bunch of snakes, you know, rolling through the chords.

It’s funny, because sometimes when I… The first lesson I remember I got from Dizzy was, like, “Don’t play so many notes in the chord.” And I’d say, “Wow.” And he’d say, “You know why?” I’d say, “Why?” He’d say, “Because then I weave my thing into it.” You know, it was so obvious. That’s when he mentioned to me to approach the piano in a way like Monk does, or… But he kind of taught me that with the piano you can fall into the mistake of playing too many notes in the chord, and instead of playing two, play one… And then when you open up, it really makes a balance. You know, just balancing out, like an orchestrator.

Q: Well, that’s the quality you mentioned in Monk also, of playing a complete composition within the improvisation and always discovering something.

DP: Mmm-hmm.

Q: Dizzy played long, bravura, complex passages, but they always had a function…had an end. Everything was done for a reason.

DP: Right. And even if it wasn’t related to the chord in that moment, for example, it was related to the idea that he played before or the one that he was going to play. You know what I’m saying? I mean, he was always aware of what he’d play and where it was going, and the shape of the stuff that he was…

Q: Well, I think in retrospect, that may be one thing that Miles Davis learned from Dizzy Gillespie, was how to find the right note and how to play with the incredible economy that he was so famous for, as well as the rhythmic thrust. And we’re about to hear one of Miles’ thousands of performances that we could hear to elaborate on that point. You wanted “All Of You” from the 1964 Philharmonic Hall concert.

DP: Oh, this record… I wore this record down. Well, this record, when I heard it… The pleasure of being a musician that can create and make people get into your boat and just disappear for a while… I mean, those guys really went in a boat. This was actually the first time I heard Herbie Hancock play, and he had all the ingredients that I really like from all the things that we just heard, from the Latin rhythm aspect, the Swing, the complex ideas, the feel of the chord, you know, the Classical approach… He is one of my major influences, definitely. [ETC.]

[MUSIC]

DP: They breathe together, man. They’re all playing, and nobody’s getting in the way — I mean, to me. And it’s just exciting to me to see how they all became a one mind type of thing, you know. And Herbie’s things here… Like, the comping is so beautiful, and the way he voiced the chords, and the space, and the rhythm that he got with Tony — I mean, he’s just amazing, man.

Q: When did you first hear these recordings?

DP: To tell you the truth, the first time I heard this was… The first time I really got into… Which I am really behind on material, but I’m doing my best! But it was 1986. 1986 was the first time that I really got to it. Before that was all the other things we have been talking about. And the (?) had a couple of things from other people, but never…

Q: Is that when you came to the States?

DP: Yes.

Q: Let’s do quickly your biography, say, from leaving Panama to now.

DP: Okay, a quick biography. I started with my father playing percussion, but music wasn’t my life. It was electronics. I was studying electronics until I was 18. By that time I did a lot of things in the music world in Panama, but it was never…nothing really… It was not going to be a career or nothing. I never had a dream to play with Dizzy or be doing what I’m doing.

When I got here, I got a scholarship to go to Indiana and play Classical Music. Then I heard Chick Corea playing Jazz and then playing a Mozart concerto, and I really liked the Jazz part — and I really didn’t know what he did. So that was actually the first thing. Then I got actually my first recording. And I had already heard Papo Lucca playing before, which I was really into what he was doing. Then I made a transition, man. I said, “That’s what I want to play. I want to play Jazz.”

Then actually, my first year I was at Berklee, I met Donald Brown, which was definitely a big influence on me, and Herb Pomeroy, and also a little bit of James Williams who I got to meet. Then came the gig with Jon Hendricks, who was like my teacher. He’d say, “No, no, no. This is about Swing, about Thelonious Monk, about Bud Powell, about Horace Silver” — and he just changed my whole thing around.

Q: So you’ve had very good teachers and people to train you.

DP: Oh, yes.

Q: And you’ve been very fortunate, or fortune as the result of ability, in terms of people you’ve come in contact with who have shown you how to focus…

DP: Oh yes. Donald Brown recommended me to Jon Hendricks, and I worked with Jon Hendricks for two years. And that was my school to learn the basics of what the music really meant. And he was there with them, so he knew exactly what was happening, and he knows exactly…

I heard Herbie on My Funny Valentine in 1986. That’s like seven years ago now.

Q: Well, I know that if you studied with Donald Brown and James Williams, you would have been listening to Phineas Newborn!

DP: Oh, yes. Definitely. They’re coming from definitely that school. But listen, I haven’t really got into now… But I’m just getting into in the last couple of years more and more music of this. I listen to it a lot and I sit down, and I think that it’s just great. I mean, it’s a problem in this period that it just… It’s never a problem to get related to it right away. Definitely, Donald Brown and James, you know, Phineas Newborn! I’m just getting into Phineas, into Erroll Garner now. I want to really study those traditional things so I can apply that with my background in Latin rhythms and bring up some fresh ideas. But I don’t believe in just going from what I know right now. I have to go back. Erroll Garner is another favorite of mine, and also Phineas Newborn — the double-hand thing that he does.

And also the Classical aspect, bringing Classical music into Jazz. The thing you’re going to hear is “Lush Life” by Billy Strayhorn. The intro he does in that is the “Sonatine in F-Sharp Major” by Ravel. Which shows you that there was no limit to what the music really was…I mean, it is. There’s just two kinds of music, good and bad. And he does the intro of Ravel, and then goes into “Lush Life,” and you don’t even know that he did that. I mean, fantastic.

[MUSIC: P. Newborn, “Lush Life,” A World Of Piano, 1961; K. Jarrett “All the Things You Are,” (Intro)

DP: That intro — oh my God! You could hear a whole bunch of stuff at once, man. I can hear also that he’s improvising; you could hear it natural… And that’s really hard to do, to get to that creative point. The way he plays, I mean, I could hear danzones. Actually, in a way there’s a Latin influence, you know, in the way he’s playing subdivisions… It’s really hard to get, you know. And the way he was playing rhythms and playing the theme. Because you hear the theme almost the whole time, but you’re hearing it turned around all the time. Wow.

Q: So both those pieces really showed very creative ways of incorporating a Western Classical background in Jazz…

DP: Exactly.

Q: …and doing it in an idiomatic manner.

DP: Exactly. I mean, you hear Phineas using Ravel, and it’s just so beautiful the way he slipped through that and just getting to the theme of “Lush Life.” You couldn’t even tell; he’s just so beautiful.

Q: Well, I think if there’s one thing our program has demonstrated, Danilo, it’s that Jazz has so much more scope than is immediately apparent to people, and keeps revealing new depths, new layers. And we’re seeing with you a pianist Classically trained and dealing with the tradition of Latin piano without even much exposure to Jazz until the age of 19 who is able to perform with Dizzy Gillespie, Tom Harrell, Ray Drummond and many other artists, and perform idiomatically, and deal with the music. And the music that you’ve selected really shows the broad range of sources that goes into creating Jazz music.

DP: You know, there is two things. For me, it is very important, that assimilation of music… And to see somebody like Dizzy, who was one of the founders of this…you know, importance to the fact that there is just two kinds of music. He never really pulled any type of things that… Actually, the things that he even didn’t like, he always told me, “You can learn from that, too. Even if you don’t like it, you can learn from it. Because there’s always something to learn from.” And I always try to keep that in my mind, and I always will. You know, just Phineas and all those guys, that’s something nobody’s got to force you to do. Since I heard that, I just say, “Wow, I love this. This is amazing. I mean, this is great. It’s coming from another planet.” I don’t know from where, but definitely coming from another planet, it’s so beautiful, and this music… It’s as great as hearing Vladimir Ashkenazy playing Chopin, or hearing Mauricio Pollini playing, or Vladimir Horowitz playing Scriabin. It has the same depth. And that’s what I’m looking for, is how deep…how good and how… — the vibrations, you know.

There is always something to learn from everything. Definitely, nowadays, I think there are a lot of Jazz musicians that recognize that. Especially Dizzy started recognizing that before. A lot of them recognize the fact that, you know, if you bring out different elements from another culture, it will enhance what you’ve got. Because that’s what Jazz really has been, has been changing.

And the beautiful thing about all the things we are listening to is that they all have their personality. You know, Bud had his own, Monk had his own personality, and when we listen to Dizzy he’s got his own personality, and even the early works, like… We have a lot that we didn’t play that are favorites of mine. Chick developed his personality, McCoy developed a personality, Bill Evans developed his personality. They all developed by studying really hard, and disciplining themselves to what came before. And I think Latin music, like Papo Lucca and Eddie Palmieri, they all have the personality. That’s why to me they are really important, all of them.

[MUSIC: Danilo Perez, “Serenata”]

This is a composition of Carlos Franzetti. It’s a mixture of danzon, and in between you can hear a little bit of Ravel, and also a little bit of Monk in between, just a really tiny bit, but you can hear it definitely in the back — and the Western influence with the Latin rhythm.

For The 89th Birth Anniversary of James Moody (1925-2010), A DownBeat Feature From 2000, three Uncut Interviews with Moody, and Interviews from Six of his Colleagues and Associates

It’s the 89th birth anniversary of James Moody (1925-2010), the brilliant alto and soprano saxophonist, flutist and humanitarian, whose 65-year career in the jazz business took numerous twists and turns, all of them linked by Moody’s unending quest for knowledge and self-expansion. In 2000, DownBeat gave me an opportunity to write a feature piece on Moody, for which I conducted three interviews, all of which are included below the article, which comes first in the queue.

* * *
Compact, bearded, owlishly bespectacled, spotlit stage-center at Avery Fisher Hall, James Moody is bending back, blowing on his tenor saxophone with a vengeance as he bobs and weaves through the jagged changes of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Birks’ Works.” Moody screams in the horn’s higher register, roars gutturally through its lower depths, displacing the rhythms with dazzling panache, shaping an elegant, soulful statement that caps a succession of spot-on declamations by an honor roll of Gillespie disciples — Jimmy Heath, Jon Faddis, Paquito d’Rivera, Slide Hampton, Kenny Barron. They, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and a packed house that spans about five generations and comprises a living rainbow coalition, are helping Moody celebrate his 75th birthday.

In 1996 Moody recorded Young At Heart [Warner], a lyric recital of songs associated with Frank Sinatra; as the applause and whoops wind down, educator David Baker takes the stage to deliver an eloquent encomium that explains why the title is so apropos to Moody’s persona. Baker notes that Moody is the paradigm of a man who is “ageless, perpetually young,” that he never stands still, that “unlike many musicians who develop a personal style early in their career and perpetuate it, his vision keeps evolving.” He praises Moody’s avid predisposition to exchange information with his peers, and mentions that he is an incessant practicer who continues to follow a lifelong dictum to learn everything he can from any source. Concluding, he observes that Moody sustains an open, humane attitude to all comers, regarding “everyone who crosses his path as a child of the Creator.”

A quick scan of the program bears out Baker’s claim; the material, representing Moody’s 54-year musical journey, reflects the span of his quotidian repertoire. He showcases his dry, minimal vibrato soprano sound on a modernist Gil Goldstein arrangement of Henry Mancini’s “Slow Hot Wind,” a showpiece of his most recent album, Moody Plays Mancini. He addresses the ’60s with John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” and Eddie Harris’ “Freedom Jazz Dance,” and reprises a pair of iconic hits, “Last Train To Overbrook” and, for perhaps the fifty thousandth time, “Moody’s Mood For Love,” replaying his iconic improvisation with utter conviction. And he dives head-first into a challenging admixture of Gillespiana, with “Things to Come,” “Manteca,” “Con Alma” and “Emanon,” tunes that, like Moody, reveal new layers every time you hear them.

“Moody is way into altered scales, different kinds of harmonic devices, use of fourths, of pentatonics, of compound scales, of bitonals,” says Todd Coolman, Moody’s bassist of choice since 1984. “He’s aware of every so-called advanced harmonic device, he has them in his ear and he can play them. At the same time, if you want to play a blues in B-flat, he can play the traditional vocabulary as well. At heart, I think ultimately as a tenor player he just wants to be a singer of melodies.”

“I remember saying to Diz one time, ‘I wish I would have gone to school and studied music,'” Moody had recalled the previous afternoon in the sitting room of his hotel suite, the crepuscular light illuminated by gigantic bouquets courtesy of Bill Cosby and Peter Jennings. “Diz looked at me and said, ‘Moody, you ain’t dead.’ That lightbulb went on. I immediately went and bought some music books.”

Over the course of three conversations, that pithy anecdote was the only personal reminiscence I could elicit from Moody about the man with whom he toured incessantly between 1963 and 1970 and who featured him as the primary tenor soloist in the first iteration of the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra from 1946 to 1948. “There are people who elaborate, and it really amounts to nothing but a hill of beans,” Moody says. “Then there are people that say it was a relationship that I will value as long as I live, because of its importance and profoundness.”

Fittingly, Moody opened the concert with “Emanon,” a medium-tempo Gil Fuller blues that Gillespie recorded for Musicraft in 1946, on which, with one 16-bar solo, Moody established himself — along with Dexter Gordon, Teddy Edwards, Wardell Gray, Lucky Thompson and Sonny Stitt — as a pioneer in translating the vocabulary of bebop to the tenor saxophone. “Moody’s ‘Emanon’ solo was very exciting to all the saxophone players around Philadelphia,” Heath recalls. “It was different than any blues solo that you had heard, similar to what was coming out of Charlie Parker. He had the bebop sound. The way Moody accented was much faster than other saxophone players; when he played an eighth note or sixteenth note line, the accent was always on the AND, the one that was off the beat, which gave it a different kind of float.”

Moody recorded “Emanon” five years after his Uncle Louis, who was in attendance at the concert, presented him with his first saxophone, an alto; although he could read music, he was playing by ear at the time. The son and namesake of an itinerant trumpet player whom he did not meet until the age of 21, he spent his early years in Reading, Pennsylvania, and came of age in Newark, New Jersey. His mother was a jazz enthusiast, and the youngster absorbed her collection of Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie records, supplementing them with pioneer deejay Martin Block’s offerings on New York’s WNEW radio. A devotee of Lester Young (not to mention Georgie Auld and Ben Webster), the 16-year-old Moody attended a Count Basie concert at Newark’s Adams Theater expecting to hear his idol, only to be confronted with the virtuoso tenor tandem of Buddy Tate and Don Byas. Two years later his mother supplemented the aspirant’s arsenal with a tenor saxophone, an act which proved prescient once Moody enrolled in the Air Corps that year.

“I was at Basic Training Center #10 in Greensboro, North Carolina, where three-quarters of the base was Caucasian and one quarter was Negro,” Moody relates. “The Air Corps was segregated (German prisoners-of-war could go downtown and eat, and I couldn’t), and they wanted the Negro part of the base to be self-sufficient, which meant they wanted you to stay on your side. I was being trained to be a soldier, and they wanted to have a Negro band. They said, ‘Has anyone here got a horn?’ I said, ‘I’ve got one.’ They said, ‘Send for it.’ They didn’t ask if you could play it. So I sent for my tenor, and luckily for me I was able to get in the band — if it had been a regular band, I wouldn’t have been able to cut the mustard. As time went by, they had the musicians from the official Air Corps band come over and help the ones that needed the help. I appreciated their help. Dave Burns and Linton Garner, Erroll’s brother, were in the band; so was Pop Reeves, who I think wrote some arrangements for Benny Goodman.”

Sometime in the spring of 1946, not long before Moody was due to be discharged, Dizzy Gillespie, in the middle of a long string of Southern one-nighters, played a concert at the base. By this time Moody had listened “over and over and over” to seminal Parker-Gillespie sides like “Hot House,” “Shaw Nuff” and “Salt Peanuts,” and was a convert. “Dizzy told me and Dave Burns that he was going to form a new band when he got back to New York, and told us to try out for it, which we did,” Moody relates. “I didn’t make it, although Dave did; Walter Fuller, the band director, said I didn’t play loud enough. I had a gig, though. I was working at Lloyd’s Manor in Newark on weekends, and my pockets had the mumps. A couple of months later I got a telegram from Dave that said, ‘You start with us tonight at the Spotlite.’

“The first night I was there, Thelonious Monk was the piano player, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke and Milt Jackson were in the band. Clark Monroe, the manager, was a Negro, so he was probably fronting it; he dressed well and took care of business. The club was very small, and it was jammed every night; all the different people I’d heard on the radio — Coleman Hawkins, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman — would be in the audience. It was a thrill sitting there playing the music. Dave Burns showed me the line of ‘Things To Come’ just before the gig, and I played it. It was a breeze; I could read a little bit, and with time I learned to read more and more.

“We’d go on the chitlin’ circuit, what they called Around-The-World, the Apollo Theater in New York, then the Royal Theater in Baltimore, the Howard Theater in Washington and the Earle Theater in Philadelphia. If you could make it in those theaters, you could make it anywhere. Then we went on tour down South with Ella Fitzgerald, which was a drag, because you couldn’t eat in restaurants and the bus driver, who was Caucasian, had to get sandwiches for you. We played dances where there would be a rope down the middle of the hall, with Caucasians on one side and Negroes on the other side; some places had two dances, the first maybe for Negroes with White spectators, and then a Caucasian dance with no Negro spectators.”

In October 1948, Moody took an octet of Gillespians into the studio and recorded ten sides, including “The Fuller Bop Man,” “Moody’s All Frantic,” “Tropicana” and “Tin Tin Deo.” The latter two featured Art Blakey and the legendary drummer Chano Pozo, with whom Moody roomed a few times while with Gillespie in Los Angeles. “Chano had a couple of bullets in him, and some nights when he was playing he would feel good and some nights he wouldn’t. He’d tell me, ‘Moody, feel here,’ and I could feel the bullets. One time Chano cracked me up. You remember the phrase people used to say, ‘Boy, that’s some deep shit’? Chano came to me looking real perplexed, with his face kind of frowned-up, and he held his hand up high and said, ‘Moody, Moody, what ‘deep shit’?’ People were saying, ‘boy, that’s some deep shit,’ and he was looking for some deep shit somewhere. I tried the best I could to explain it to him. I’m telling you, it was funny, man.”

At a certain point it became apparent that Moody was embroiled in some deep shit of his own. On the interminable bus rides with Gillespie, he relates, “I’d be in the back, with the hoot-hounds, talking with Dave Burns; the pot-hounds rode in the front.” By 1948, he was drinking to excess, “just drug and everything — my uncle, who was living in Paris, told my mother to send me over for two weeks to cool out. I stayed for three years.”

Ensconced comfortably in his uncle’s Paris apartment near the Eiffel Tower, Moody began to blossom into the voice that defined the first stage of his career. He free-lanced around Europe at his leisure, hung out frequently at the Club St. Germain, where he once jammed with Django Reinhardt, and interacted with the likes of Don Byas, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, and Bill Coleman. He got married, had a daughter, and moved to an apartment across a courtyard from Sidney Bechet. He recorded over 90 sides for a variety of labels, producing statements on a series of ballads, blues and bop tunes that remain models of melodic invention. These include a remarkable spring 1949 session with Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron and Kenny Clarke, four tunes with Charlie Parker’s working band under Max Roach’s leadership, and an innocuous Fall 1949 session in Stockholm with charts by Swedish saxophonist-arranger Gösta Thesalius on which, using a borrowed alto saxophone, Moody improvised a solo on “I’m In The Mood For Love.” It became an instrumental hit, and in 1952, when King Pleasure recorded Eddie Jefferson’s lyric to the solo, “Moody’s Mood For Love” entered the realm of legend, imprinted in public consciousness like Coleman Hawkins’ solo on “Body and Soul” and Illinois Jacquet’s solo on “Flyin’ Home.”

“When I play a song, I don’t know the lyrics,” Moody claims. “All I know is the melody, and if I like the melody, I’ll play it.” Enough people liked the melodies Moody conjured during his European stay that savvy associates back home urged him to return to capitalize on the interest. “I wasn’t going to set foot on American soil again, because I was pissed off from what had happened to me in Greensboro,” Moody relates. “But I figured I’d come back, make the money, and then go back to playing in Europe. When I got here I said, ‘I was born here; why should I let them run me away from where I belong?’ That was it.”

Moody formed a septet, four horns and rhythm, commissioned arrangements from John Acea and Quincy Jones that captured the ambiance of Thesalius’ charts, hired the ur-hipster Babs Gonzalez as his band singer, and began a grueling regimen of touring through all corners of ’50s Afro-America.

“We worked all the time,” Moody says of the band that influenced the sound of Ray Charles’ seminal ’50s unit. “The only time we were off was traveling to the next gig. In the wintertime we worked in the northern cities and in the summertime we worked in the southern cities. Like my mother would say, everything was bass-ackwards. I did all the driving; I didn’t trust anybody else. After Babs Gonzalez left, I hired Eddie Jefferson to sing with the band, not knowing that he was the one who wrote the lyrics. I told Eddie, ‘I’m going to make you the manager, you’ll have a clicker, and after you get finished singing you go and keep clicking the numbers as the people come in.’ It was the same old shit as before I left, but only smoothed over with whipped cream.”

Perhaps in response to the pressures of incessant road life, Moody became increasingly dissatisfied with his playing during these superficially successful years. “The way I came up musically was wrong, I think, from the standpoint that I thought improvising was spontaneous,” Moody reflects. “I was playing by ear, and I thought you just did it; I didn’t realize that you had to practice changes. I started drinking, because people were saying how great I was, and I couldn’t play crap. It’s like I was flying an airplane but I didn’t know what the route was. If you don’t know the changes, you’re skimming.

“My music thing started changing later, when I started trying to find out about chords and theory. I’m 75 years old, and I haven’t reached my peak chord-wise, because I’m still trying to find out how to play the changes. See, the young cats come up and they learn this from the very getgo; I mean, they can play the hell out of them. The musicianship is much better with these younger musicians. They have the books and the teachers; if you feel like you want to learn something, you can learn it, from the bottom up. If you get a good teacher, you can play real quick. If you have a bad teacher, you’ll still be scuffling, years upon years upon years.”

After a six-month dryout, Moody returned to the road for a lengthy U.S. tour on which he spent the endless bus rides not drinking, but learning the ABC’s of harmony in intense sessions with band trombonist and chief arranger Tom MacIntosh. He disbanded for good in 1962, played a succession of three-tenor gigs with Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, and finally replaced Leo Wright as reedman-flautist in Dizzy Gillespie’s quintet, the chair he held for the remainder of the decade. Newly armed with harmonic knowledge, augmented by intensive study of John Coltrane’s harmonic system, Moody brought his playing to new levels of complexity and abstraction, never losing sight of melodic underpinnings or the necessity of a humorous overview. In 1973, recently married and with a young daughter, Moody moved to Las Vegas, opting for the security of a steady job in the reed section of Hilton Hotel house band. In the ’80s, after a stint with Gillespie bandmate Mike Longo’s group, he resumed the freelance life of a solo artist; since 1985, he’s toured with a series of quartets and made the guest star appearances that jazz giants make in their golden years.

“Moody started off with a gift, and he developed it,” Jimmy Heath says. “As an ear player, he was already extremely advanced; right now, he’s one of the greatest players who ever lived. I admire his tenacity and focus. If he hears you play a lick or a sequence that he hasn’t heard, he’ll ask you what it is, and once you show it to him, man, Moody takes it into his own style and elaborates on it, turns it inside-out, and does everything possible with that idea to make it his own.

“Over the years, Moody has become so free — not in a random fashion, but a scientific freedom — that he can do anything he wants with the saxophone. His sound has gotten real smooth and mellow with his old age, like wine. It’s not harsh and brash. It’s very soft until he wants to imply these certain emotional hollers or screams. If he wants to play in a bluesy fashion, he can do it. If he wants to play in a straight bebop way without the blues or just the changes, he can do it. He has true knowledge. He is in complete control.”

“Moody is constantly searching for things that are new to him, trying to find different things to do and say,” remarks Kenny Barron, who was 18 when he first played with Moody at the Five Spot, and two years later was recruited by Moody for Dizzy Gillespie’s band to replace Lalo Schifrin in the piano chair. “It’s never ending with him. Behind all of that, there’s still his sense of fun. One minute he’s playing all these strange fourths, really looking for it, but on the other hand he plays these real humorous things. That’s what gets me, along with his energy, and the fact that he’s constantly trying to improve.”

“I need to practice!” is how Moody sums it up. “You play one horn because you like its sound, then you play the other horn because you like its sound and you want to play certain things on it, but then you play the other horn and you like ITS sound and you want to play certain things on it…finally you want to play everything on everything. So you start trying to do that, and when you look, it’s time to go to bed. Then you get up and try something else; you look, and it’s time to go to a gig.”

Asked if music keeps him youthful, Moody concludes: “Let’s say the biggest secret is God. The next secret is my mother was 86, and my Uncle Louis is 86. And not to say that you always get to do what you want, but when you’re doing something that’s fairly like what you want to do, it makes everything in your system work fairly well. And my wonderful wife, Linda, who keeps me going. Being in love helps. When you don’t have that, you kind of fade away. When you do, you kind of want to stay in.”

[-30-]

* * *

James Moody (3-31-00):
TP: In all the biographies I’ve seen it says you were born in Savannah, Georgia, came to Newark at a certain point and got a saxophone when you were 16. How old were you when you left Savannah?

MOODY: I was only born in Savannah. My father played trumpet, and he was playing with a circus band. We were living in Reading, PA., my mother and I. My father was with the band, and he didn’t come back to Reading, so my mother went down to Savannah to look for him, because that’s where his mother and father were. He wasn’t there. And while she was there, I was born. She recuperated and came back to Reading. I didn’t meet my father until he was 21. His name was James Moody.

TP: So you’re James Moody, Jr.?

MOODY: No, I’m just James Moody. And I was raised in Reading, Pennsylvania and Newark, New Jersey.

TP: Was the time you got the saxophone your first exposure to music? It couldn’t have been…

MOODY: No, it wasn’t my first exposure to music. The point is, I was exposed to music on the radio and of course my mother playing records. I’m thankful that she liked jazz, because she liked, like, Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, like that — Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey. That’s the kind of music she played, and that’s what my ears became acclimated to. I’m thankful for that, because the other music was that doo-wop music, and I could have maybe come up… I don’t think so, because I always liked Music, something with some substance. And to me, that was Jazz and the so-called Pop music of the day, which was Music at that time.

TP: In Reading when you were a kid, did the bands come through?

MOODY: Oh, in Reading I was a kid. I didn’t know anything about…

TP: You weren’t taken to any of these.

MOODY: No, I didn’t know anything about the music thing at all until I was actually in my teens. Then I knew about bands coming somewhere or something, or seeing some musicians. But I had never…

TP: What early bands do you remember seeing?

MOODY: The only band I remember seeing was a group playing… Pancho Diggs in Newark, New Jersey. Pancho Diggs had a band, and his hit song was “Swanee River.” Pancho Diggs, and there was another band there led by Mandy Ross. Finally, they started bringing bands to the Adams Theater in Newark on Park Place…

TP: Ellington’s band broadcast from there, and there are other broadcasts I’ve heard from there.

MOODY: Oh, I don’t know. But I know that’s where I saw Count Basie, because I liked Lester Young, and I wanted to see Prez play. But when I got there, Prez wasn’t there, so it was Buddy Tate and Don Byas who were playing tenor. I had an alto, and I wanted to play tenor, too — I liked that. So anyway, when I was drafted into the Air Corps, my mother got me a tenor. I got a tenor. Because then, we had a couple of bucks that we could put down, I guess, to buy a horn. But my Uncle Louis got me my first alto.

TP: That’s when you were 16?

MOODY: I was about 16.

TP: And that’s around when you saw Buddy Tate and Don Byas?

MOODY: Mmm-hmm.

TP: Were you a very quick learner on the saxophone?

MOODY: Well, I wouldn’t say that.

TP: Let me just say that five years after you get your first saxophone you’re recording your solo on “Emanon” with Dizzy Gillespie. So it sounds like you were pretty quick.

MOODY: Well, I was in the band. But I had a lot to learn. I don’t know. Maybe somebody could have done it in three years. Know what I mean?

TP: Maybe so. But were you a kid who memorized a lot of Lester Young solos and Coleman Hawkins…

MOODY: No.

TP: You hadn’t done that sort of thing.

MOODY: No, I hadn’t done that. All I did was just listen to things, and I liked them, and there would be certain pieces of something I liked, and I would go with that.

TP: Because a lot of people from your generation would memorize Chu Berry’s “Stardust,” or “Lester Leaps In” or Coleman Hawkins’ “Body and Soul”, they’d learn the solos and go off from there.

MOODY: Yeah.

TP: But it was a different process with you.

MOODY: I didn’t do that. Because in the first place, I didn’t know the musical scene. I didn’t know what it was to learn music. I didn’t know how to go about learning. As a matter of fact, I used to go around asking, “What are chords?” It’s funny, because when you ask someone and they don’t know, it’s like the blind leading the blind. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to help me. It was just that they didn’t know and I didn’t know. So for the longest time, I just went not knowing. Then finally, when I got with some people that did know, then I had to start trying to learn.

TP: Was that in the Service?

MOODY: That was when I had my septet.

TP: Oh, so not until the ’50s.

MOODY: Yes, that’s when I had my septet that I started getting with the chords.

TP: I read in one of the liner notes that Tom McIntosh had a lot to do with that.

MOODY: He’s the one. He’s the one who taught me my changes.

TP: Let me take some steps here. You’re saying that you really didn’t know how to play, but obviously you did in some sense…

MOODY: I played by ear.

TP: Tell me about your Service experience.

MOODY: I was in the Air Corps. I was drafted in ’43 and discharged in ’46. I was in the Air Corps, and it was segregated at the time, and so they wanted a Negro band, and that’s how I happened to get in the band. Actually, where I was, it was BTC #10, Basic Training Center #10. So I was being trained to be a soldier, and they wanted to have a Negro band. So one quarter of the base was Negro, the other three-quarters was Caucasian. So they said, “Has anyone got a horn here?” So I said, “I’ve got one.” They said, “Well, send for it.” They didn’t ask if you could play it; they just said, “Send for it.” So I sent for my horn, and they formed a band and I was in the band. Dave Burns was in the band. Pop Reeves who I think wrote some arrangements for Benny Goodman. Erroll Garner’s brother, Linton, was in the band. And as time went by, what they did was, they had the musicians from the official Air Corps band come over and help us, the ones that needed the help, and they helped. I formed a friendship with a couple of the guys that were in the band, because they… Afterwards, when I came out and got with Dizzy’s band, I would look sometimes and they would be in the audience. We’d be playing a dance or something, and they’d be standing down front. People used to do that. It was just nice to see them again. And I appreciated their help, too.

TP: Were you playing alto or tenor in the Army?

MOODY: Tenor.

TP: A lot of musicians who were in Army bands say it was a great experience for them, they’d practice every day and their whole day would be music, and it helped form them as musicians.

MOODY: Well, that’s the case now. But at that time it wasn’t like that, because you didn’t have the Jamey Aebersold books, the David Baker books, the Gary Campbells or Jerry Cokers — we didn’t have those. So we’d just try to get a look at whatever it was and try to play that, and if you learned it, that was about the extent of…

TP: Did you hear Charlie Parker during that time?

MOODY: Oh yeah. Charlie Parker, that was it. Charlie Parker and Dizzy, that was the stuff that you listened to.

TP: Did you hear Bird when he was with McShann or subsequent?

MOODY: No. I heard him afterwards.

TP: Do you remember the first record you heard? Was it live or a record?

MOODY: It was a record. I don’t know what it was. It might have been “Now’s The Time.” But in those days, one record would come out maybe every five or six months. Now 20 million records come out every second. But in those days you’d get a record, and then finally everybody would say, “Hey, man, have you heard the latest thing by Diz and Charlie Parker, man? You’ve got to listen to this. It’s called ‘Now’s The Time.'” I said, “Wow, what’s that?” Then the next thing you know, there’s “Salt Peanuts.” That came out. They didn’t have albums; there was just one record with two sides.

TP: So you’d memorize…

MOODY: So you just listened to that and say, “Oh, man.” Yeah, you’d play it over and over again.

TP: Where were you stationed?

MOODY: Greensboro, North Carolina.

TP: Was that a situation where you could go off base and hear bands coming through?

MOODY: You could go off-base and hear… I heard Benny Carter play there. But then Dizzy came on base and played at the Big Top for us. But he played for us, because like I said before, it was segregated. That was the place where I went… I guess you know that they had the German prisoners-of-war on the base there, and they would go into town and go into restaurants and eat, and they could socialize and do whatever they wanted, eat and whatnot…

TP: The prisoners-of-war could.

MOODY: The prisoners-of-war. And they wouldn’t let me… I couldn’t go in a restaurant.

TP: Is that where you met Dizzy?

MOODY: Yes.

TP: Did he give you a phone number and say…

MOODY: No, what he said was… He was playing at the Big Top, which was a big tent where we had our entertainment. He told me and Dave Burns that he was going to disband the band that he had, and when he got back to New York he was going to form a new one. We told him that we were going to be discharged in a few months. So he said, “Well, come on by and try out for the band.” And that’s what we did.

TP: When did you get to New York?

MOODY: Well, after a few months, when I was discharged, then I came back to Newark, New Jersey, where I was, and then I went and tried out for the band. I didn’t make it. Walter Fuller, who was the band director at the time, said I didn’t play loud enough. Then about two or three months later, my mother was ironing clothes and she had a smile on her face, just a look, and I asked her “What’s happening?” And she pointed onto some sheets that she had ironed, and under there was a telegram from Dave Burns that said, “You start with us tonight” — at the Spotlite on 52nd Street.

TP: Were you gigging after the Army?

MOODY: Oh yeah. Well, I had a gig. I was working at Lloyd’s Manor in Newark on weekends, man, and my pockets had the mumps. I was making some bucks.

TP: Was it bebop…

MOODY: It was a jazz gig! Piano, bass, drums and me.

TP: But were you playing the new music, or a mixture…

MOODY: I was playing what I was playing, and what I was playing was what I liked, so whatever it was, that’s what I was doing. But it wasn’t Dixieland, for sure.

TP: So you were with Dizzy for about 2½ years with one interruption when you went with Howard McGhee…

MOODY: No, I didn’t go with Howard McGhee. I was with Dizzy, and I did a recording with Howard McGhee. I was with Dizzy up until the time I went to Paris. I went to stay for two weeks and stayed for three years.

TP: That was in ’48.

MOODY: Yes, in ’48.

TP: Within that time you were some records with Dizzy and that wonderful session for Blue Note with Gil Fuller…

MOODY: Yes, “Tropicana”…

TP: Right, and “Fuller Bop Man.” And Chano Pozo was on the date as well. I’m sure you’ve been asked these questions about 8 million times, and I’m sorry you have to deal with them again. But had you ever dealt with Afro-Cuban before being in Dizzy’s band?

MOODY: Well, Mario Bauza was the one who hipped Dizzy to Chano, and Mario Bauza was aware of the Afro-American thing, and he played with Cab Calloway. I think he had something to do with Dizzy getting in the band. So Diz always had a big respect for Mario Bauza. In the interim I think he hipped him to Chano Pozo. So Dizzy got Chano Pozo in the band, and started writing like “Manteca” and different things, and Chano would be playing on it.

TP: Was that feeling something you had an instant affinity for?

MOODY: Well, it’s another feeling. Because if you’re feeling a straight 4/4 on the drums, CHICK-A-DING, CHICK-A-DING, you know, and then you get BUNCK-GOO, BAHK-A… It’s another feel. It’s another rhythm, another feel and it’s another lesson.

TP: Was Dizzy very proactive in breaking it apart…

MOODY: Dizzy was adept at it. I mean, he just loved it. He just went for it.

TP: One thing that seems to have been maybe his most lasting contribution was his ability to convey information to other musicians in a very specific way and break down music to its primary fundamentals. How did that apply to your experience with him during those years?

MOODY: Oh, I learned a lot from it. And my wife has heard me say this a lot of times, like, “Ah! That’s what I meant.” Even now I look back at certain things, “Oh…okay.” So it was a good learning experience. And Dizzy would take the time, and he would sit down at the piano and explain what something was, or he’d beat a rhythm and say, “See, this goes with this; listen to that.”

TP: So there was an aspect of school and you were really in the forefront-cutting edge of what was going on in the music at the time.

MOODY: Well, life was a school. That’s what it was. So right along with it; that’s what it was.

TP: Paris. Talk about your time there. You went there with Dizzy for the Salle Pleyel concert?

MOODY: No. I went to Paris mainly because I had a bout with alcohol. I had a bout with alcohol, and I was just drug and everything. So my uncle, who was living in Paris at the time, told my mother, who was his sister, “Well, send him over here for a couple of weeks, just for relaxation. Maybe that will do him good.” And I went over for two weeks and stayed for three years.

TP: This is the uncle who gave you an alto saxophone.

MOODY: Yeah, my Uncle Louis.

TP: Was he a musician?

MOODY: No. He worked for the government, the civil service. He wanted to be a dentist, but he couldn’t because we never had enough money for him to go to college.

TP: Talk about the way things got set up in Paris? Someone wrote you recorded something like over 90 tunes in a few years, which seemed hard to believe.

MOODY: No. You mean when I did 11 tunes in Sweden.

TP: Some are classics, and one is a song you still have to play…

MOODY: “Moody’s Mood For Love.” No, I did 11 sides. Anders Burman… I was down jamming at the Club St. Germain one night, and Anders Burman, who is a drummer, came in and sat in and played. But he also had something to do with the Metronome Record Company in Stockholm, Sweden. So he said, “Would you like to make some sides with us?” Like, 12 sides to be exact. I said, “Sure.” He said, “Okay, I’ll send you a plane ticket; you come up and record for us.” So I went to Stockholm and I played there a week and recorded.

TP: Then you another bunch of sessions two years later.

MOODY: Where?

TP: In Sweden? Well, there are sessions from ’49 and sessions from ’51. Prestige just put out a CD with 24 sides recorded in 1949 and 1951 with the Swedish musicians. Lars Gullin is on the latter sessions.

MOODY: That was in France. What was funny was, I didn’t know that “I’m In The Mood For Love” had become a hit. And all of a sudden, everybody in France was calling me. They wanted me to record for them. And I didn’t understand what was going on, because my mother didn’t have a telephone and I wasn’t telephoning home. You didn’t do that; you’d just write cards or something. And now, when I look back, what it was, was they wanted to get a hit, too. It was a hit already. You know what I mean? So when I look back I say “Ah.” If people want you, then they want to use you.

TP: You have such a lyric style, and within the modern harmonies, and I was wondering if you were influenced by singers in the way you approach…

MOODY: No.

TP: Not at all?

MOODY: No. And when I play a song, I don’t know the lyrics.

TP: Really.

MOODY: No.

TP: That surprises me.

MOODY: No. I don’t know the lyrics. All I know is the melody, and I like that; if I like the melody, I’ll play it.

TP: Did somebody put those songs in front of you, or were the songs your choices? Like “I’m In The Mood For Love” or “Pennies From Heaven.”

MOODY: No, I set “I’m In The Mood For Love” at the time.

TP: Were you gigging throughout the three years you spent in Europe?

MOODY: No. I wasn’t doing anything. I was just living there. My uncle was taking care of me. [LAUGHS] I didn’t have to work.

TP: So you came back to the States in ’52?

MOODY: I’m not sure what year I came back, but I came back reluctantly. I say that because of how I was treated when I was in the Air Corps. But when I got to France it was different. I said, “Oh!” Because I always thought something was wrong with me, and then when I got to France and saw what was going on, I said, “Ah, I see it isn’t me; it’s them. It’s the government back here.” I said, “I’m never going back there.”

TP: What brought you back?

MOODY: Well, they kept insisting that I come. I said, “I’m not going back.” They said, “Yeah, but come back and make that money, man.” I said, “All right, I’ll come back and make the money and then go back to playing.” But then when I got back here I said, “Why should I go back when I was born here, like I’m letting them run me away from where I belong?” So that was it.

TP: So you’re back here in the ’50s, and you put together a septet, and it works with an interruption or two until about ’61 or so, a similar format. And it was very influential. One of the first pieces I did for Downbeat was with Hank Crawford and Fathead, and they both were emphatic that the sound of your band influenced the sound that they were getting with Ray Charles and what he wanted.

MOODY: Yes.

TP: I’d like to talk about how you conceptualized the sound of that band, and what you did, and that experience.

MOODY: What happened with the sound of the band, the idea came from the sound that Gösta Thesalius did in Sweden for the “I’m In the Mood For Love” date. See, we had done all the sides with the strings. So we had a couple more to do, and so we did “I’m In The Mood For Love.” So Gösta Thesalius went into the john and sat down and sketched the harmonies out, and it was one take on a borrowed alto saxophone — from Lars Gullin. Then when I came back, I had to have those arrangements done so that they would sound similar to the record. So Johnny Acea, Quincy Jones, Gene Tease, Jimmy Boyd, they wrote the music for me. They wrote it, and it had that sound. It was a good little band, too.

TP: A fabulous band. The bass player was great. John Lathan.

MOODY: John Lathan. He had good time. The first time I heard John Lathan he was in Cleveland, Ohio, playing with a band called Gay Crosse, and that’s the first time I heard John Coltrane, who was playing alto — because he was living in Cleveland at the time, playing with Gay Crosse. I said, “Man, who IS that?”

TP: You I liked him right away, huh?

MOODY: [LAUGHS] Immediately. Before that.

TP: You were in Europe when he was with Dizzy, so you didn’t…

MOODY: No, I didn’t know him.

TP: And the drummer was really swinging, Clarence Johnston. On the hottest tempos he’s swinging.

MOODY: He’s from Boston. He studied with Alan Dawson.

TP: One thing that’s so interesting about that band is that it’s as modernist as music would get harmonically at that time, but it’s also a very communicative band.

MOODY: Oh yes.

TP: One reason why you’ve been so popular and loved by people over the years is being able to blend that very serious concert attitude to music with a very communicative thing. I wonder if you could comment on that.

MOODY: Actually, I guess I must say that I was probably just fortunate. Because you see, I didn’t do anything purposely to say, “Well, I want to do this and get a hit.” I was doing it because I liked the way it sounded.

TP: I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of getting a hit…

MOODY: But that’s what most people think. They think, “He wants to get a hit, so maybe he can scream on this” or do this or that. Do you know what I mean? But that wasn’t it. It was just something I liked, and so it was done.

TP: How much did that band work?

MOODY: We worked ALL the time.

TP: Any time off at all?

MOODY: No. All the time. The only time we were off was traveling to the next gig. In the wintertime we worked in the northern cities and in the summertime we worked in the southern cities.

TP: The easy way, huh?

MOODY: Like my mother would say, everything was bass-ackwards.

TP: And you had let’s say two cars or something?

MOODY: Yes, a station wagon and a car.

TP: And Eddie Jefferson was the band manager for most of that time?

MOODY: What happened was, after Babs Gonzalez left, I hired Eddie Jefferson to sing, and then as we would play these dances, we would go and there would be a certain amount of people… Say there would be 1000 people in the dance hall, and the guy would tell us there were 300 people. You know what I mean? I got Eddie. I said, “I’m going to make you the manager, and you’ll have a clicker, and after you get finished singing you go and keep clicking the numbers as the people come in.’

TP: And did the singing evolve out of his being in the band, or was it also part of it…

MOODY: No, he was a singer, and I was looking for a singer. He was a singer and a dancer, you see, and so I hired Eddie Jefferson to sing with the band, not knowing that he was the one who wrote the lyrics.

TP: Oh, you didn’t know it.

MOODY: No, I didn’t know that.

TP: When did you find out?

MOODY: When I found out, I said, “Wow!” His girlfriend had telling me this for the longest time. Her name was Tiny. She said, “Oh my old man, he loves your music; he put some words to your music, and you’ll hear him one day.” Then when I met him, and then when he told me about Tiny and then I saw them together, I said, “Ah!” Then two and two made five.

TP: So those bands, you were playing dances, clubs…

MOODY: Dances, clubs, yup.

TP: Mostly black clubs?

MOODY: Naturally, sure. Mostly Negro clubs. The reason I say that is, what color am I?

TP: Very deep brown with probably tints I can’t even tell.

MOODY: Red tints, but not black. Right? You see what I mean? This is black, that watchband. I read a thing, the guy says, “When I was in the Air Corps I was colored, then when something else happened I became a Negro, then when I got to such-and-such again I’m black.” Know what I mean? I just like “Negro” better, even though it means black in Spanish. I prefer “Colored,” really.

TP: So throughout that period you would play for Negro audiences.

MOODY: We would play for Negro audiences, and then sometimes we would play for Caucasian audiences. Then sometimes they would have two dances. They would have a rope down the middle, and the Caucasians would be on one side and Negroes on the other side.

TP: So it was still the period when that happened.

MOODY: Yes.

TP: Did you change repertoire when you did that?

MOODY: No! We played the same things we had! Played the arrangements that we had. That was it.

TP: And you recorded so many classics during that time for Prestige and Chess. Do you ever listen back to those old records?

MOODY: To be perfectly honest with you, Ted, I don’t have to do that. If I have time, I’ll listen to somebody else — steal as much as I can get. But my wife, she collects them all. We’ve been in Europe and she says, “Wait, I want to get this!” She gets it. I say, “Honey, forget it. That’s done.” But she has the collection herself. But I don’t want to hear them.

TP: So you get to hear him play night after night and practice and the records!

LINDA: Yes, but he doesn’t really have a lot of time to listen to music when he’s home. He has so many things to do, to play catchup and do what he wants to do.

TP: So we take you through the ’50s with the Septet, and then you rejoin Dizzy in ’62.

MOODY: I’m not sure when I joined Dizzy, but I joined him and stayed for eight years.

TP: How was it the same? How was it different?

MOODY: Oh, it was different then because it was a quintet, and then we were together more. Because in the band, you’re never… You won’t be around too much together. But then with the quintet we started hanging out more together being together. It was a smaller group.

TP: So that’s when you became closer.

MOODY: Closer, yes. As a matter of fact, after a while the band was Rudy Collins, Lalo Schifrin and Chris White, then Leo Wright left and I came in and took his place. Then after a while Lalo left, and when Lalo left, Dizzy wanted a piano player, and I told him to get Kenny Barron.

TP: How did you know about Kenny?

MOODY: Well, Kenny had been with my sextet. See, I had a sextet at the Five Spot in New York. Kenny was 18 years old then. And do you know what? Out of all these years… Kenny is almost 60 now. Do you know, I’ve never heard him make a mistake? Never, ever… I mean, he’d play a solo, and each solo, no matter what it was, it would sound as if it were a painting. I’ve always said that Klenop. I always say that when I see him.

TP: Also, during those years, you were doubling alto-tenor by the late ’40s, and then in the ’50s you added flute. I’m not sure when the soprano became part of what you do. I’d like you to talk about the challenges of multi-instrumentalists. Because another thing I think people are so impressed by is your ability to project a very individual and distinctive voice on each instrument, to make each instrument sound like your main one and not just a section sound. So anything you want to say about the different instruments.

MOODY: I need to practice them! Yeah, I need to practice them. That’s about the size of it. You play one horn because you like the sound of that, but then you play the other horn because you like the sound of that, and you want to play certain things on that, but then you play the other horn and you like the sound of that and you want to play certain things on it, then you play another one and you play that, and finally you say you want to play everything on everything. So you start trying to do that, and when you look, it’s time to go to bed. Then you get up and try something else; you look, and it’s time to go to a gig.

You know, if I had $40 million, do you know what I’d do? I think I’d give a concert every now and then, but I would be in school every day, practicing, and my wife would be sitting, whatever she wanted — there would somebody just fanning her, bringing her whatever she wanted.

LINDA: Sitting down. [LAUGHS] Oh, you’re so cute.

MOODY: You know what I mean? But mainly all I would do is practice, and give a concert every now and then. And of course, I’d want to help some people, too, buy some horns for some kids and help them get by.

TP: There’s a story, I don’t know if it’s apocryphal, that you got the flute one day from someone in Chicago and played it on the gig the next night?

MOODY: Not the next night. But I got it, and then I recorded in a week or so with it. And it sounds like it, too! [LAUGHS] But I would never do that again, the way I got the flute. I bought a hot flute, and I would never do that. I guess I was young and dumb. Because when you buy a hot flute, you’re stealing it from somebody. So why do that? I’d never do that again. So I’ve asked forgiveness for that.

TP: Without asking any particular specific question about Dizzy, but when you look at the people who are performing in it, he had a huge impact on just about everyone who’s performing in it, one way or another.

MOODY: Dizzy had an impact on every musician, he and Charlie Parker, I would think. Because who do you know didn’t play with Dizzy?

TP: Not too many people.

MOODY: See that? So that’s about the size of it. And it wasn’t because somebody was pulled into him. It was that they wanted to be around him, or be in his band or something. And for me, it was a good lesson. The only thing is I wish I would have been more spongy. I wish I would have absorbed more quicker. But then you look back in that respect, and a lot of times you say you wish you would have done, so I’m going to keep in mind what Dizzy told me before. Because I never will forget, I told Diz, “Diz I wish I would have gone to school and study music, because I never studied.” And Dizzy looked at me and said, “Moody, you ain’t dead.” And a big lightbulb went on in my head.

TP: Did he tell you that during the Sixties?

MOODY: I don’t remember what year it was…

TP: Was it during that second time?

MOODY: He told me when I told him I wished I’d have gone to school for music. Ever since he told me that, you know…

TP: Let me just ask you about some of the personalities you’ve encountered over the years who my impression would be you were close to in one way or another — or don’t, if you don’t want to.

MOODY: Yes.

TP: Kenny Clarke?

MOODY: Klook was wonderful. When I joined Dizzy’s band at the Spotlite in ’46, Klook was the drummer. But I got to know him even better in Paris when I was living there, because he was living in Paris — and we played together.

TP: Any particular reminiscence about him?

MOODY: No. Just nice being around him.

TP: Gil Fuller.

MOODY: Gil Fuller was a brilliant person. He was brilliant, but he was detrimental to himself, in a way, I would think. But a brilliant man. Brilliant but…I don’t know. A little more spirituality would have been good for him, I think.

TP: Lester Young. Did you get to know him?

MOODY: I knew Lester a little bit, yeah.

TP: Because he was one of your first idols.

MOODY: Yes, he was one of my first idols. I didn’t know him to be around him all the time, but I liked the way he sounded. He was just one of my idols.

TP: Did you get to know Bird?

MOODY: I didn’t get to know him, but we had dinner together one time together in Detroit, at a Chinese restaurant. I was staying at Sonny Wilson’s Hotel, which was a Negro hotel, and when Charlie Parker and I got finished having the dinner, I drove him back… I had my car. I drove him down to the hotel on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. Charlie Parker was in this splattered white t-shirt, some blue bermuda shorts, white silk stockings that came up above his calves, and looked like black patent shoes or something. I took him down to this hotel, and it was strange to me because he got out and said, “Thanks, Moody,” and it was strange to me as he walked down this hall, as I’m looking at him, through the lobby downtown, because Negroes couldn’t stay in the hotels downtown in Detroit. So my assumption was that the gangsters said, “This is Charlie Parker and we want him to stay there,” and that’s it.

TP: That’s quite an image you just painted.

MOODY: Yeah, that was it.

TP: A couple of other names. Was Don Byas somebody you were close to?

MOODY: Don Bayez. That’s the way they called him in France. He was in France when I was there, along with Bill Coleman, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge. I got to know them all. It was nice. Don was from Oklahoma, you know — Muskogee. Coleman Hawkins, it was nice to know him. It was nice. A lot of saxophone playing going on over there, boy. Don Byas, boy, was bad! I mean, Don knew those changes, boy. Hawk knew changes, too. Hawk was like WHOO-DOOD-LOO; Don Byas was like WHOO-DOODLEOODLE… And I loved Roy Eldridge.

TP: When I hear you now on these recent records… I realize it may be totally impressionistic and have nothing to do with what’s happening. But for some reason, Don Byas is what I’m thinking of. I don’t know why.

MOODY: Well, I don’t know. Maybe something subconscious is there.

TP: It’s probably just me.

MOODY: Oh, okay. All right.

TP: So you were with Dizzy throughout the ’60s. Then you spent the ’70s in the Hilton Hotel Orchestra in Las Vegas?

MOODY: Yeah, I was at the Las Vegas Hilton.

TP: That was an economic decision?

MOODY: Well, that was an economic decision mainly because I wanted to see my daughter grow up. I had a family, and I wanted to see my daughter grow up. I didn’t want to be going on the road and… I saw her when she was born and I said, “I’m going to watch this daughter grow up.” Because I have a daughter coming from France now, she’ll be here for the party with her husband, who I didn’t see grow up.” She’s in her forties now, and the one I saw up until she was in almost her teens she’s 31. So I wanted to stay in one place, and work and come home, work and come home. That’s when I did all the shows, like Liberace, Ann-Margaret, Connie Stevens, Milton Berle, Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, the Rockettes, the Osmonds — I played all those shows.

TP: You just played a functional section man or…

MOODY: No-no-no! I was in the Hilton Orchestra. They had 40 pieces or something, had a string section and all that, and I had a book they put the music in and I had to play my part — that was it.

TP: Did you garner anything from that musically?

MOODY: Oh, definitely. Because I was used to play with Dizzy, with big band stuff. But when you play the show music it’s something altogether different — the intonation, everything. And they tell you exactly the way it’s going to be. You look at it – BAM. [LAUGHS] Boy, it was a lesson. A good experience. If I had to do it all over again, I would.

TP: What’s the name of your daughter who’s 31 now?

MOODY: Michelle Moody. The other one is Maryvonne, and she’s in her forties.

TP: In the ’80s you did a group of records for RCA-Novus all very different, each with its own personality. Did your decision to start touring and going back on the road as a solo artist coincide with your daughter graduating high school or getting older?

MOODY: Oh, no. I was divorced. I got a divorce before she even got into her teens. I was divorced and I left again, and I started playing with a quartet. I played with the Mike Longo trio, then finally I got another group, and I’ve been doing that ever since. I recorded with RCA…

TP: Kirk Lightsey was on one.

MOODY: Kirk Lightsey was on one…

TP: Kenny was on another.

MOODY: Right. Kenny, and Tom McIntosh did the arrangements. And you know something? I think those were nice records. I think they were nice musically. I think so. But it’s a funny thing, and I’ve always said this, and I hate to have to say it. The record companies want to make the records and they want you to sell them. And it should be the other way around. They should let you make the records and they sell them, because that’s how it should be. But they think they know what sells and what doesn’t, and I’m sorry to say no one does.

TP: No one knows what sells and what doesn’t.

MOODY: No. Like, good music, I would think, would sell.

TP: You’d think.

MOODY: Sure. And you know something? I’ll tell you what sells. A little public relations and stuff behind it? Bang, it sells it. Because nothing really sells itself unless it’s in a position to sell itself. And things aren’t in that position, because you listen to the radio, you hear what people play. So I still maintain musicians should be able to make the music.

TP: Did you have that freedom on the RCA records? Those seems like pretty personal dates.

MOODY: There was a certain amount of freedom that was given to me, and I’ll give credit where it’s due. Certain things. But do you know what my thing of freedom would really be? To go in a studio with the musicians that I want, wouldn’t anyone be in there but me, them and the engineer. That’s it.

TP: Otherwise is there a vibe on you that…

MOODY: Well, then you can talk to the guys and say, “You know what? I’d like to do so-and-so. I don’t think I want it like that” or “Yeah, I like that.” And I’m a one-take person, maybe two. But when you start three takes, four takes, that…

TP: Is that what happened?

MOODY: Well, what happened is, you’re gung-ho and everything, and the second take…I mean, by the fourth take you’re talking about ho-hum.

TP: Are you still with Warner Brothers?

MOODY: No.

TP: There are two records of your own and the two-tenor thing with Mark Turner. Both are excellent and I thought you were in wonderful form. For the purposes of this article, this those closest to the fact, tell me a bit about the Sinatra record and the Mancini record. Was the Sinatra date your concept?

MOODY: Well, what happened was, they wanted a concept, so we came up with Sinatra, which was okay, because Sinatra, he was singing the good songs, so you can’t go wrong with that. Then Henry Mancini wrote good music; you can’t go wrong with that.

TP: And Gil Goldstein set up the arrangements, you came in and…

MOODY: Oh, Goldstein’s a wonderful arranger, a wonderful musician. Nice guy. My buddy, too.

TP: What are you looking for in the musicians who are in your bands? Since Mike Longo, your pianists have been Lightsey, Mulgrew Miller, Mark Copland; the bassist is always Todd Coolman for years; a bunch of drummers, including Teri Lyne Carrington…

MOODY: They all can play. They play their buns off. That’s it. Play their buns off and punctuality.

TP: Got to be on time.

MOODY: Be on time, yeah. I’d rather have a musician that didn’t play as well but could play, and would be punctual — and that’s it. Because there are no stars. The only star that I know is Jesus. I mean, you have to be on time, because no matter what it is, everything is business. Business, business, business. Then when you have your own time, you come and go as you feel like it. But when you have to deal with other people, you have to be on time.

TP: Do you keep abreast of what the younger musicians are doing?

MOODY: As best I can. As best I can. Because there are a lot of people I haven’t heard that I wish I could hear, and then you hear them and you say, “Boy, wow, they sound beautiful!” Because so many records come out. Who do you listen to? It’s like a bookstore. I mean, how many books can you hear at once? You hear this person and say “Wow!” That’s why it’s good for jazz, because you can have a whole lot of jazz clubs, because one person can’t work all the clubs at the same time. So it’s good for clubs to be there so everybody can work.

TP: Among some of the younger musicians you’ve come in touch with, who are some who’ve particularly impressed you?

MOODY: All of them. Sure.

TP: Let me phrase it more generally, then. Things obviously have changed socially and politically since you came up. But musically, how do you see the generation of musicians from the Baby Boom on? Do you think highly of the musicianship…

MOODY: The musicianship is much better with these younger musicians. Why? Because they have the books and the teachers now that really… Jamey Aebersold and David Baker, like I said before, and Gary Campbell, Jerry Coker — all of these playalongs. Not only that, the schools.

TP: Sure. You can study with Jimmy Heath or Donald Byrd.

MOODY: Right. You see? If you feel like you want to learn something, you can learn it, from the bottom up. And if you get a good teacher, you can play real quick. And if you have a bad teacher, you’ll still be scuffling, years upon years upon years.

TP: A lot of people who have written about you in liner notes from the ’50s and ’60s remark on you having self-doubt and never being satisfied with what you do…

MOODY: Sure.

TP: Is that something…

MOODY: No. I have a doubt, but it’s not a self-doubt. My doubt before was that like I was flying an airplane but I didn’t know what the route was. You see? What it is, if you don’t know the changes, you’re skimming. I might skim now, but at least I know I’m skimming. I skimmed before, but I didn’t know I was skimming.

TP: Are you saying that until you did these busride sessions with Tom McIntosh and your subsequent studies, you were sort of walking the edge every time that you played?

MOODY: Right. And I can also say that still, even at 75, I haven’t reached my peak, because I’m still trying to find out how to play the changes. See, the young cats come up and they learn this from the very getgo; I mean, they can play the hell out of them. See, I’m a little slow with them, but at least I know things that I have to learn and I’m trying to learn them. So I’m going to sound different one time or other, because I’m going to be playing some of the changes. It’s not going to be the same as not playing them.

TP: What are the advantages of being an ear player?

MOODY: How about the disadvantages?

TP: Are there any advantages?

MOODY: Well, let’s look at it this way. Like, if you’re an ear player and then you learn the changes, what was advantageous about not knowing the changes? That’s where the self-doubt is, see? You’re playing by ear, but you’re saying, “Damn, I don’t know this, and I’m scuffling. Was that it?”

TP: Another person I’d like you to say a few words about is Tom McIntosh.

MOODY: Wonderful musician. Nice trombonist, too. Wonderful orchestrator and writer, and a wonderful human being.

TP: When you had those sessions with him, how did he approach it with you?

MOODY: It was very simple. He would say, “Moody, this is a C-scale. This here is a C-Major Triad, and you flat the third here. This is a C-Minor Triad. This is a C, E, G, a B-flat, and that’s a C7. C, E, G, B, that’s a C-Major-7. C-Flat-7, Dominant-7. And he’d be telling me that… Then after I learned them I said, “Oh, boy, I got that.” So I wanted to play a song, and I’m looking at them, [SINGS REFRAIN FROM “Cup-Bearers”] I said, “Yeah, but it doesn’t sound like that when they’re playing. Because you can’t hit tonics and play. You have to start on 3rds and 2nds and 5ths. You know what I mean? And you have to be able to weave and bob and come up half-steps below and half-steps above… But at least I’ve got an idea of what it is now.

TP: Did you get hands-on instruction in that regard from Dizzy in the ’60s? Specific harmonic information?

MOODY: Hands-on?

TP: Well, by “hands-on” I mean did he sit down with you and break things down?

MOODY: Well, he told me about the minor VII-flat V chord. That was one of his things. That’s why when he wrote “Woody ‘n You” and those things… He liked Monk a lot, because Monk had those minor VII-Flat-V chords, and Diz always called them… He said, “I like to look at them as minor-VI.” [SINGS THE SOUND] Diz looked at it as a minor-VI. He used to call a minor VII-flat V a minor VI chord. He looked at it that way.

TP: Also, Zan Stewart who wrote liner notes for a reissue, talked about your having immersed yourself in Coltrane’s harmonic system.

MOODY: Oh, yes, man! [LAUGHS]

TP: You’re one year older than Coltrane. Talk about the impact he had on you.

MOODY: Well, the first time I heard Coltrane, like I told you, was in Cleveland, Ohio. He was playing alto with Gay Crosse. I heard him and John Lathan. Boy, they were playing “Our Delight,” and I said, “Man, who is that guy, because he sounds phenomenal.” And I was down the street at another club, and as soon as we finished I’d break over and run over to the other side to listen to what he was doing!

TP: But later on, when he’d developed his concept, were you friendly? Did you talk to him?

MOODY: I didn’t see Coltrane that much. But I did take him from Chicago… I think he was working at the Sutherland Hotel, and he wanted to go to Elkhart, Indiana.

TP: To the Selmer Factory?

MOODY: Right. So I drove him to Elkhart. And he was playing that stuff then, and I was saying, “What is it?” and he said, “Oh, man, it’s nothing.” And he really meant it, that it wasn’t nothin’. Then he got this soprano, and a few months later is when he came out with “My Favorite Things.”

TP: Did that inspire you to play soprano, or were you already doing it? Was the soprano the last of the instruments you added to your arsenal?

MOODY: Well, I played the soprano I guess because everybody else started playing it. So I got one, and I liked the sound of it. Because when I was living in Paris, Sidney Bechet lived across the courtyard from me, and he played soprano. But I didn’t necessarily feel like I wanted to play it at that time.

TP: Did you get to know Sidney Bechet?

MOODY: Well, I knew him, but not as a… I saw him, because he lived across the courtyard from me in Paris. Just like with Django Reinhardt; I played with him one time in the Club St. Germain, but I didn’t get to know him. But he seemed like a nice person, and so did Sidney Bechet.

TP: Talk about what it was like in Paris for those years.

MOODY: Well, in Paris it was like I could go anywhere I felt like going, and it was like you were accepted anywhere you went, as long as you acted like a gentleman. It was different, especially after being stationed in Greensboro, North Carolina.

TP: Or being on the road as a professional musician and dealing with all the bullshit.

MOODY: Being on the road, and going on the bus and having the bus driver to get you sandwiches and things because you couldn’t go in the restaurants and eat.

TP: I’d like to talk a bit about this concert. Say a bit about the different people who are appearing.

MOODY: Like what?

TP: Like, what do I want you to say?

MOODY: No… Well, you’ve got Jon Faddis. I remember Jon when he was 12 years old in San Francisco. We were working at the Jazz workshop with Dizzy. Jon came in, a tall, lanky kid, a nice kid. We liked him. I liked him from the jump. And it’s nice to see him now, doing what he’s doing. I remember Wynton when Wynton was with Art Blakey, when he first came to town. I like to see him doing what he’s doing now. Paquito D’Rivera, I remember meeting him when he first came from Cuba, and he’s doing okay. Of course, Tito Puente is my man. I’ve known Tito for a long time.

TP: In the ’50s when you were off the road, did you play with the great Latin bands of the ’50s?

MOODY: No, I didn’t. But when Jack Hooke was there, I used to play Salsa Meets Jazz, and I’d be featured down there at the Village Gate. I did some of those.

Slide Hampton, man. I call him Slick Slide, boy, because he’s got a whole lot of music under his belt, boy. He’s a wonderful arranger and trombonist. Jimmy Heath — “Section.” I’ve been knowing Section for a long time, man. Fantastic arranger and composer and saxophonist.

TP: Did you meet him as a kid in Philly?

MOODY: yes.

TP: When he had that big band which was based on Dizzy’s big band.

MOODY: Yes. And his brother Tootie and Percy.

TP: Will this concert cover the various musical situations you’ve moved into? For instance, with Paquito there, will “Tropicana” or…

MOODY: We’ll play “Manteca.”

TP: Will there be a lot of Dizzy’s arrangements.

MOODY: We’ll play “Manteca” and we’ll probably play “Emanon,” “Con Alma”…

TP: And the vocalists will do vocals to some of your solos…

MOODY: Mmm-hmm.

TP: And your own small group will play some of it.

MOODY: We’ve got Renee Rosnes, fantastic pianist. Todd Coolman, a fantastic bassist. We’ve got Kenny Barron, who like I told you, I’ve never heard make a mistake. We’ve got Mike Longo.

TP: Adam Nussbaum is your drummer these days. Helluva drummer.

MOODY: Tell me about it.

TP: I’m looking at you and I can’t believe you’re 75 years old. I might think you were 60…

LINDA: He’s going on 18.

TP: Well, 60 anyway. Is music the secret for you? Is music what keeps you young?

MOODY: Well, let’s say the biggest secret is God. The next secret is my mother was 86, and my Uncle Louis is 86. But the music… You know, when you’re doing something and you like what you’re doing… Not to say that that there are times when you do things…you don’t always get to do what you want to do. But if it’s fairly like what you want to do, it makes everything in your system work fairly well. Happiness…when you’re happy… And then especially to have a wonderful wife, to be in love, that helps, too. When you don’t have that, you kind of fade away. But when you do, you kind of want to stay in.

TP: And you’ve been married since ’89?

MOODY: Yes, 11 years.

LINDA: You have done your homework, Ted.

TP: Oh, I always do my homework.

LINDA: It’s refreshing, I have to tell you.

TP: How did you meet?

LINDA: Would you like me to tell you? We met in a club in Los Angeles called Catalina. I drove my friend from San Diego to Los Angeles so that she could hear Moody. I didn’t know who he was, had never heard him or of him or anything else. So I took her, and then the next year he came to San Diego to play and she and I went to hear him on opening night — and three months later we were married. During those three months, he was gone for a month in Africa with Dizzy doing a State Department tour. So he called me every day from the different embassies where he was. He would be out playing tennis with different heads of state, and they would say, “Oh, come and use our phone to call Linda; it’s so much easier.” And he sent me love faxes every day.

TP: So it was love at first sight.

LINDA: Well, at second sight, mmm-hmm.

MOODY: I sent her dozen roses every Monday.

LINDA: Since our first date. I still get them.

MOODY: She still gets them.

LINDA: I still get them.

TP: And there are flowers in the hotel room. There’s about a 100-pound bouquet from Bill and Camille Cosby on the coffee table in front of us.

LINDA: I’d say it’s about 150 pounds.

TP: And Peter Jennings by the TV.

LINDA: Peter and Kaci, his wife. This is from Jazz at the Lincoln Center, and that’s from the hotel, and the sales department who took care of all of the reservations for all of our friends and family who flew into town. It’s just been one big collaboration and help, and everybody’s been so kind.

TP: And how long has this concert been in the works?

LINDA: We’ve been working on it for about a year, but intensely since about last October.

TP: Are there special commissioned arrangements?

LINDA: David Baker did the big band arrangement of “Last Train From Overbrook,” and that’s a new arrangement. And Lalo Schifrin did an arrangement of “Happy Birthday.”

[PAUSE]

TP: The waiter just came in bringing champagne and a huge basket of fruit.

LINDA: The other two big band arrangements of “Slow Hot Wind” and “Young At Heart,” Gil Goldstein did those. Then several tunes Moody’s going to do with his quartet, and of course the LCJO with Wynton.

* * *

James Moody (5-20-00):

TP: In our first interview I spoke with you about your beginnings on the instrument, and I wanted to ask a couple of more questions. You said you got your first horn when you were 16, and you went to the Adams Theater because you wanted to hear Lester Young play, but instead you heard Buddy Tate and Don Byas. Were you playing any music in the years before that?

MOODY: No, I wasn’t playing.

TP: You started playing that year?

MOODY: Mmm-hmm. When I got the saxophone.

TP: Before you went in the Armed Services…

MOODY: I like Air Corps. Because when you say “Armed Services,” nobody knows where, but when I say “Air Corps” they know exactly where I was

TP: That said, were you working with people your age? Were you doing little gigs around Newark? When did you actually start playing before a public?

MOODY: Oh, I didn’t start playing before a public until I got out of the Air Corps.

TP: So was it that you were basically practicing on the saxophone, woodshedding on the saxophone, maybe playing with some friends, you get in the Air Corps and you volunteer…

MOODY: No-no-no-no. I wasn’t jamming or doing anything. In other words, I didn’t know the instrument. I learned the instrument in the Air Corps. I wasn’t jamming. I didn’t have that in Newark. They might have had it, but I didn’t know anything about it.

TP: And so you learned it in the Air Corps, and you knew some of the music by hearing it on the radio and starting to buy records.

MOODY: Right.

TP: You said you liked Prez. Who were the saxophone players that were your favorites and probably were in your mind when you were starting to formulate your vocabulary?
MOODY: You mean from the very beginning? From the beginning was Jimmy Dorsey.

TP: On alto saxophone.

MOODY: Yes. And I guess the reason for that is because in those days they had a radio station in Newark, New Jersey, WNEW, and on Saturdays there was a guy by the name of Martin Block who come on and play a half-hour or an hour of jazz. When you say “jazz,” it would be like Benny Goodman or Jimmie Lunceford or Count Basie or something like that. And I heard Jimmy Dorsey on the radio like all during the week or something like that, and then finally I heard Charlie Barnet, and I liked Charlie Barnet better than Jimmy Dorsey. Then finally I heard Rudy Williams, who was an alto guy from Newark, and I liked him better. Then I heard Count Basie and I heard Lester Young. I said, “Oh, wait a minute, I like this.” I heard Georgie Auld. I liked him. And I heard Coleman Hawkins.

But my thing that I liked at the beginning was Lester Young, because of I guess that feel he had and the swing [SINGS PREZ REFRAIN] Boy, that used to knock me out. Even though Coleman Hawkins, when I look back now, was playing more changes. You know what I mean? But that wasn’t the thing. All I knew was what I felt and what made feel good. So I heard Count Basie was coming to the Adams Theater in Newark, and so I went down there hoping to hear Lester Young, and when I got there Don Byas had taken his place. So the two tenor players were Don Byas and Buddy Tate. Anyway, that was that.

Then when I heard Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, that really put an end to everything. I said, “That’s it; this is it.” So that’s how that went.

TP: Just so I get it straight when you heard Buddy Tate and Don Byas, you had just gotten a saxophone at that time?

MOODY: No-no, no-no. I got my saxophone when I was 16 years old. I used to go and listen to… Like, if anybody played a saxophone anywhere, I would listen to it. So there weren’t that many people for me to listen to, at least that I knew of in Newark. So when the band would come to the theater, naturally I would go and listen, because it would knock me out. That’s the first time I heard Georgie Auld, was when he played with Artie Shaw. And Artie Shaw had strings in his band, I never will forget, and Georgie Auld played “Body and Soul.” Boy, that was beautiful. At the Adams. Then I liked him. Have you ever heard of Georgie Auld?

TP: Yes, I’ve heard some Georgie Auld.

MOODY: He was from Canada.

TP: And your uncle got you an alto, and then you got a tenor before you got into the Air Corps and your mother sent it to you?

MOODY: My mother sent it to me. She sent it to me because when I was drafted into the Air Corps, they wanted to form a Negro band. But at first, I was just drafted in the Air Corps, and I was in the basic training center. They were training me to be a soldier. I don’t know what they were training me to be, but the point was, they wanted to have a band, a Negro band. Because three-quarters of the base was Caucasian and one-quarter was Negro, and they wanted the Negro part to be self-sufficient. What self-sufficient meant was they wanted you to stay on your side.

TP: They wanted a segregated band.

MOODY: That’s it. And they had it. So lucky for me, I was able to get in it. Because if it had been a regular band and all like that, I wouldn’t have been able to cut the mustard.

TP: So you had a rudimentary knowledge of the saxophone at that point, and being in that band you were able to practice and work on the horn…

MOODY: Well, being in the band, what they did was, they had the men from the official Air Force Band come over and teach us. They would show us things, at least the ones that needed it. It’s funny, because three years later, after I was discharged and I was in Dizzy’s band, a lot of those guys were my friends afterwards, because they would come and see me, and said, “Boy, it’s nice to see you, Moody. Yeah, man.” Because I was with Dizzy Gillespie then.

TP: That’s why I’m picking on this subject so much. Because when you said you knew nothing about the saxophone before going in the Army, then three years later you’re taking the solo on “Emanon,” it just seems remarkable that you were able to do it, apart from your innate talent.

MOODY: Well, that’s the way it was. That’s the way it happened.

TP: When you were in the Air Corps, is that when you first heard Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker?

MOODY: Well, I think I heard a little bit of it just before I was drafted. I was drafted in ’43, and I heard something of it. Then when I got to Greensboro, North Carolina… You know, in those days the records didn’t come out as often as they do now. So when they came, everybody had it or everybody was listening to it. So I heard Dizzy and Charlie Parker good, boy, and I would listen to that stuff over and over and over.

TP: Well, their first records I think were “Shaw Nuff” and “Salt Peanuts”…

MOODY: The Dials.

TP: The Dials were in ’46 and the Savoys were in ’45. I asked you previously if you had heard Bird with McShann, and you said, “No, later,” then I asked you what the first record you heard by Bird was, and you said it might have been “Now’s the Time,” but you weren’t sure.

MOODY: No, the first time… I heard Charlie Parker with Jay McShann when he played “Hootie Blues,” and the guy was singing, “Hey, baby, don’t you want a man like me” or something like that, and Charlie Parker played the chords or something on that. That’s the first time I heard that. But I think the first time I heard him was “Shaw Nuff” or something.

TP: So that must have been towards the end of your stay in the Air Corps, mid or late ’45, just based on when the things came out.

MOODY: I suppose so, because I’m very bad with dates.

TP: Right. I’m not trying to pin you down on the dates. I’m trying to deal with your aesthetic in some way.

MOODY: Sure.

TP: Can you describe the impact Charlie Parker had on you in some specific language?

MOODY: Well, the impact was that I liked him better than any other saxophone player that I heard?

TP: And why?

MOODY: Because of what I heard. That’s why. It’s very simple. If you look at it chronologically, the way I said, I said the first one I liked was Jimmy Dorsey. Right? Then I continued on with different people, Ben Webster, you know, then Lester Young. Coleman Hawkins I wasn’t too thrilled with. I didn’t like the way he sounded. But when I look back now, he was playing more changes than all of them. But then when I heard Charlie Parker, wow.

TP: Well, he was playing all the changes, and then he had that flowing, fluid thing you liked in Prez.

MOODY: He what?

TP: His harmony was as sophisticated or more than anyone, and then he had the fluidity Lester Young had, too.

MOODY: Who?

TP: Charlie Parker.

MOODY: No, wait a minute. No, I think you’re mixed up there with it. What I’m saying is, I heard Lester Young. Lester Young wasn’t playing the changes like Coleman Hawkins. But Coleman Hawkins didn’t do anything for my soul at that time the way Lester Young did. Then when I heard Charlie Parker, he did more for me than either one of them.

TP: Dizzy Gillespie first came to Greensboro to play a concert, which is where you met him.

MOODY: He played a concert on the base, at a place called the Big Top, which was a big tent.

TP: And you’d heard Dizzy by then.

MOODY: Mmm-hmm.

TP: So you knew that sound, and that sound had captivated you.

MOODY: Oh yes.

TP: If let’s say “Algo Bueno” or “Dizzy Atmosphere” were out by that time, could you play those by the time that you…

MOODY: Heck, no. But when I got with Dizzy’s quintet and stuff, I could play it.

TP: But Dizzy heard something in you and he wanted you to play with him.

MOODY: Well, what it is is word-of-mouth, I guess. We went and tried out for the band, and Walter Fuller said I didn’t play loud enough. My friend David Burns — we were in the Air Corps together — made it. About a couple of months later I got a telegram from Dave that said, “you start with us tonight at the Spotlite.” That was it. Because they probably needed a tenor player, and Dave probably said, “Get my guy Moody.” That’s how guys get in the band. You get in the band when somebody needs you… When I was with Dizzy’s band and Lalo Schiffrin left, and Dizzy needed a piano player, I said, “Get Kenny Barron.”

TP: What do you remember about that first night?

MOODY: The first night I was there, Thelonious Monk was the piano player, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson. The club was very small, but all the different people who I heard on the radio before were there. Coleman Hawkins, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, they would be in the audience. It was a thrill sitting there playing the music.

TP: Were you rehearsing intently?

MOODY: No. We were playing! When I went, the band… It was a gig!

TP: I meant, within the big band was it a thing where you’d learn and internalize the music by playing every night, or were there a lot of rehearsals as well.

MOODY: Oh, yeah, we rehearse. You’d rehearse a tune and then play it. But that night I had to just look at the music and go from there. What it was, my friend Dave showed me the line of “Things To Come” just before the gig, so I’d play that. so it was a breeze.

TP: It was a breeze!? Because you said you were playing by ear pretty much at that time and for the next 12-13 years.

MOODY: Right. I was playing by ear, but I could read a little bit, and then I learned to read more and more. The more you read, the better you read. then when you don’t read, you get rusty, and it’s hard.

TP: The Spotlite was the club that Clark Monroe owned, the guy who had owned Monroe’s Uptown House, and that was his joint on 52nd Street.

MOODY: It was either his or he was managing it or something. He was a Negro and he probably was fronting it. I don’t know.

TP: Was he around?

MOODY: Yeah.

TP: What was he like?

MOODY: Well, he was like a Negro guy who dressed well and took care of business.

TP: Do you remember on that first engagement with Dizzy if there were large crowds and the crowds were enthusiastic?

MOODY: Oh, there were a lot of people. Every night.

TP: Were people very excited by it? Did it seem like something totally new and…

MOODY: Very-very-very excited. Everywhere we went, places were jam-packed and everything. You’d look up and you’d see Lena Horne and Ava Gardner. It was jammed.

TP: What was it like going on the road with the band in terms of the audience reaction in the provinces in the South or Midwest?

MOODY: Well, we’d go on the chitlin’ circuit, and the chitlin’ circuit was like… If you could get over in New York, you could get over anywhere. So the chitlin’ circuit was New York, the Apollo Theater, then the Royal Theater in Baltimore, the Howard Theater in Washington and the Earle Theater in Philadelphia.

TP: They called that the Around-the-World.

MOODY: Right. And if you could make it in those theaters, you could make it anywhere. Then we went on tour with Ella Fitzgerald, and we went down South, and that was a drag, because you couldn’t eat in restaurants and the bus driver had to go get sandwiches for you. The bus driver could go in the restaurants, but you couldn’t because he was Caucasian. But that was the same thing when I was in Greensboro, N.C., because the German prisoners-of-war could go downtown and eat, and I couldn’t.

TP: But the audiences were enthusiastic?

MOODY: The audiences were very enthusiastic. We played dances where there would be a rope down the middle of the hall, and there would be Caucasians on one side and Negroes on the other side. Then they’d have two dances at a place, like a dance tonight and a dance the next night. The first would be maybe for Negroes with White spectators, and then when they had the Caucasian dance there would be no Negro spectators.

TP: But you played the repertoire you were playing. You didn’t compromise on the repertoire.

MOODY: No, we played the band.

TP: In our earlier interview, you said to you went to Paris in late summer of ’48, a few months before Dizzy went and played the Salle Pleyel concert that got recorded. You were living with your Uncle Louis, who got you the alto, and you said he worked for the U.S. Government.

MOODY: Yes, he worked for the U.S. government.

TP: You said, I think, that Sidney Bechet lived across the courtyard from you?

MOODY: My uncle lived near the Eiffel Tower. But later on, when I got married, I was living in another apartment where Sidney Bechet lived across the courtyard from me.

TP: What part of Paris was the apartment you lived in when you were married?

MOODY: I’m not sure now, but it was a nice area. I forget which Arrondissement it is. Where I lived with uncle, it was Avenue Chanfoucault(?), and I could open up the veranda on the balcony and look out, and there was the Eiffel Tower right in front of me. The maids quarters were upstairs. It was nice.

TP: And Paris for you was a wonderfully liberating experience, you said, because you could just be you and not have to worry about White and Black.

MOODY: Well, the point was that I always had a thing there was something wrong with me, and I didn’t know what it was, except the way I looked. I was wondering why I was disliked so much. So when I got to Paris, then I found out it wasn’t me. I said, “Ah, I see what it is. It’s the people. It’s them. They’re going by a color thing.’ Then when I looked back at it, I said to myself, “Damn, the majority of those people who are hating me aren’t worth two dead flies and even me worrying about them.

TP: Well, you said you went there originally to cool out some because the pressures were getting to you.

MOODY: I went to cool out for two weeks, and stayed three years.

TP: I just want to talk about the music in Paris. It seems like such a rich time, because so many great American musicians were there, not to mention Django, and that’s when you did the sides that endure today. I’d like to talk about your musical evolution while you were in Europe. Do you feel like you grew a great deal musically during your three years there?

MOODY: No, I don’t think I did. What happened is… You see, the way I came up musically, I came up wrong, I think, from the standpoint that I thought improvising was spontaneous. In other words, I thought you did it, and I didn’t realize that you had to practice, you had to practice changes… I didn’t know any changes. I didn’t know. I was playing by ear. So when I came back from Europe and started trying to find out about chords and things like that, then my music thing started changing. I started drinking, because people were saying how great I was, and I couldn’t play crap. Why are they saying I’m great? I’m not great.

TP: This is after you’re touring with the septet and becoming famous.

MOODY: yes.

TP: And you felt insecure about it.

MOODY: Yes. So now, when I look back at it… I’m 75 years old, and you know, I haven’t reached my peak chord-wise, because I’m still trying to study and learn how to put things where, and trying to become a better musician. And it’s pretty good, too. Because I’ve got a whole lot to learn, boy!

TP: I guess it gives you the feeling that there’s a lot to wake up the next day to, whatever you’re going to discover.

MOODY: Not only that, but I know which way I’m going, too. Whereas before, I didn’t know which way it was.

TP: That said, could you describe the scene in Paris? Were you gigging in Paris and in Europe?

MOODY: No, I didn’t have to. If I wanted a gig, I’d take it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t.

TP: But you could if you wanted to.

MOODY: I could if I wanted to, yes. And so what happened was, like, I would just go out every night to the Club St. Germain and listen to different people. But they only had two clubs. One club was called the St. Germain, and that one was jazz, and the Rue Columbier was Dixieland. I wasn’t a Dixieland person. Claude Lutere played there all the time. That’s why Hugues Panassie and Charles Delaunay fell out, because Panassie was a Louis Armstrong freak, and Delaunay was a Dizzy Gillespie freak.

TP: Well, he was a Modernist.

MOODY: Yes. So when Panassie died, Delaunay said he was sorry that it was like that . But that’s the way it goes.

TP: You made one famous bebop session there, the “Prince Albert” session.

MOODY: Yeah, I did that with Kenny Dorham and Max Roach. I was played with Miles while I was there, too.

TP: You came back, you said, because “Moody’s Mood For Love” became a hit, and you had other popular cuts, and people told you that you could make some money here.

MOODY: That’s the only reason I came back. Other than that, I wasn’t going to set foot on American soil again. Because I was pissed off from what had happened to me in Greensboro.

TP: It sounds like when you came back, what you found in America fulfilled what you might have expected, the reasons you left, that it matched your worst fears about it.

MOODY: Well, not my worst fears. What happened was, I came back and it was the same old shit, but only smoothed over with whipped cream. And the funny thing about it is, when you look at it, you look how the government… Excuse me, Ted. I have to say this the way I have to say it. Excuse me. But you see how the government fucked up a whole race, generations of one race, fucked them up to where they had no history, they had no chance of anything, and they didn’t give them anything, they lied to them, they cheated to them, they killed them. Then when it was time for them to get paid, they lied and said that they were owed rather than them having to pay them. When you look at this, I mean, that’s a Holocaust in itself. There’s a book out now by Randall Johnson called The Debt, and America, not only America but the world owes a debt to the Negro, mainly because every country in the world has screwed over the Negro race. If you think I’m lying, how do you think systematically the Third World countries are all dark? And how do you think that all these places have diamond mines, gold mines, and they don’t have one iota of anything to show for it. They wouldn’t let them get an education, and now they want them to be educated. Negroes have been hollering discrimination for years and years. Nobody says shit. And as soon as two Caucasians said, “Hey, wait a minute, they wouldn’t let me get a job,” they say, “No, we can’t have this discrimination stuff. That’s wrong.” You see? So they have more than three or four or five standards that they go by, and you can rest assured that the Negro’s ass is always going to be at the bottom.

Frankly, I’m not angry with any individual about it, but I think the Government in America is full of shit, and it sucks because of what they do, and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is full of shit because they don’t do shit. They only talk about superfluous stuff instead of getting down to the business and saying, “Look, we have to do right and we have to be honest.” And the first way to be honest is to give an apology to all the Negroes, and then repay them for the work that was done and was never paid for. And I’m not saying, “Give each Negro some money.” I’m saying, give them an education. Quit that bullshit about color-blind. You can’t be color-blind because you see what colors you see. They are there. Never mind the color. Just be fair. That’s what I’m saying. That really bugged me. But it doesn’t make me hate anybody. Like, Ronald Reagan. I can’t stand the son-of-a-bitch. But if I could raise my hand to make him well, I’d do it. My wife. Blonde, green eyes. You saw her. But we have the same blood type. So what’s that shit about Negro blood and White blood? That’s bullshit.

TP: Well, in this country it’s all mixed up.

MOODY: Listen, this country started this shit. It’s all over the world now. Mainly because when economics is involved, there has to be a scapegoat, and there is no better scapegoat than someone who doesn’t look like you, supposedly. But if you look… See, people don’t see the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest. But if you were to look at an individual, you would see ears, nose, eyes, hair, no-hair, if it’s male or female. But they don’t see those similarities. All they see is, “oh, look at that color.” But how many people do you say, “Oh, look at the yellow rose,” “oh, look at the white rose,” “oh, look at the red rose.” It’s “Oh, look at the roses.” Same thing with tulips or any other flower. I’m sick of all these ignorant assholes with the shit that they talk, who stand up saying one thing and meaning another thing. Look at McCain. He got up there and spoke about that flag, the Confederate flag, and said, “I think the people should take care of it.” Then later on, afterwards, when he was out of the race and he said he had to be truthful about it, he said it was wrong to have the flag up there. And it is, too. First of all, slavery was wrong, and it was wrong to fight for slavery, and I don’t give a shit who fought to save slavery. If they fought for it, they were fighting for the wrong cause. Take the fuckin’ flag down.

All of that pertains to music. Because music is a feeling. You feel what you play. You see things, you feel something and you play. No matter what you do, you do it from your feelings. So consequently, whatever it is that you feel, it comes out. But the thing with me is that my anger through music… Like, I want music to be loving. So my anger comes out in a more beautifying way. Because I want to spread love, not ignorance, like all these people that…I don’t want to say sons-of-bitches in this…

For the longest time, I can tell when they think they’re giving me the boot. Because a lot of Americans grow up thinking they’re better than certain people. So you mean to tell me if you’re this color, you’re better than them, so that’s it. Even down South, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, we taught them all we know,” and they ain’t shit.

TP: Let me ask you something. In the ’50s, it sounds like you were taking out that anger on yourself and you were drinking…

MOODY: No. The anger was coming from no knowledge.

TP: No knowledge of music?

MOODY: Yes.

TP: So in ’58, when you get out of Overbrook, and Tom Macintosh starts running down the ABC’s of harmony, it sounds almost like a new life for you…

MOODY: Of course.

TP: Then you join Dizzy in ’61. Is that when you start to accept Bahai?

MOODY: No. Dizzy didn’t tell me about the Bahai or anything. First of all, Tom Macintosh… I was out there, and people were giving me fish, and Tom Macintosh taught me how to fish, and I’ll always be indebted to him for that. If a person is hungry and you give him a fish, you give him a fish for a day. But if a person is hungry and you teach him how to fish, you’ve fed them for life, haven’t you. That’s what I’m saying. Check this out. Here’s a fish. You cook it and you eat it. Now, how are you going to get another one?

TP: You have to fish.

MOODY: There you go.

TP: I’d like you to talk about how you arrived at your faith and how it affects your music.

MOODY: When Linda and I were married, we were married at a place called Faith Chapel. That’s another thing got me, too. See, Sunday is the most racist day in America.

TP: Sunday is.

MOODY: Yeah. The White people go to their White church and Negroes go to their…because God is White and all that bullshit. And it’s a bunch of malarkey, because all of the religions come from the Far East or somewhere else. Anyway, my wife and I would go to Faith Chapel in San Diego, and when I would be sitting in the pews, the minister would be saying, “And Jesus said ‘do right,'” Every Sunday “Jesus said ‘do right.'” And I would be counting, let’s see, there are 28 women in the choir and 28 men. How many letters in that word? There are 35 lightbulbs over there. That’s what I’d be doing. Because he wouldn’t be saying a damn thing. Nothing. Then Martin Luther King’s birthday came up; they didn’t say anything about that. So one day my wife overheard me say to somebody, “I’m so sick of counting people in the choir and the lightbulbs,” and she said, “Honey, I had no idea you felt that way.” I said, “Honey, they never say anything. Nothing!” I mean, they say the same shit over and over again, which doesn’t mean anything. Suppose I see you every day, Ted, and I say, “Good morning, Ted.”

TP: “Good morning, Moody.”

MOODY: Good morning, Ted. And there we go. Shit, there’s more to that than… “Good morning, Ted. How are you? Hey, Ted, how’s the family?” Whatever it is. So my wife looked in the papers and saw there was something at the Bahai thing. So she said, “Honey, would you like to go to this thing?” I said, “Sure.” It so happened that it was a feast. We went, and when I walked into the place, right away it felt altogether different. Now, Faith Chapel, where we went, like there were Negroes, Caucasians, everything. But the vibe was a bullshit vibe, where people raise their hand, “Oh, Jesus!” and getting tears in their eyes, calling me a nigger today and then repenting, then coming back next week to…

TP: Two-faced.

MOODY: Yeah. So the thing at the Bahai place, there was Spanish people, Caucasians, just everything, and they were saying prayers in Hindu and Spanish or Persian. I said, “Wow, man.” It just felt nice there. And they didn’t have a minister. You just sat down and everybody talked. Did you know that I could marry someone because I’m a Bahai? Myself. Me.

TP: You can perform the ceremony.

MOODY: Yes. And I like that. Do you know why? Because that stuff about the minister standing up talking…man… Oh, and another thing about the Bahais is… When I went into the Air Corps they said, “What religion are you?” I said, “I don’t know. I think…” “Well, what was your mother?” I said, “I think my mother is a Baptist.” They said, “Then you’re a Baptist.” I said, “No, I’m not.” With the Bahais, a child cannot become a Bahai until the child investigates the religion and wants to become a Bahai. It’s beautiful. And the Bahais believe that Mankind is One, and Earth is one country. They had a convention at Carnegie Hall, and man, they had Bahais from all corners of the earth, and we played. I was looking out there, and I said, “Now, see, this is the way the world is.” You go to one church and you see all Caucasians sitting up there talking about “Oh, Jesus,” but they don’t want a Negro or a Chinese in there. Listen, man, the Negroes and the Chinese, they built this country. But this country and didn’t get paid for it. They promised the Negro 40 acres and a mule. Any time the Negro asks for something they say, “These black son-of-a-bitches are always asking for something. Why don’t they get out and work?” Well, shit. If they hadn’t worked, there wouldn’t be a White House, there wouldn’t be Germany, England… There wouldn’t be a lot of shit.

And that stuff about Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves? It’s a lot of bullshit. None of that stuff had anything to do with freeing the Negro. There’s a wonderful book called Forced Into Glory by Lerone Bennett. He really tells about Abraham Lincoln was a racist. He loved nigger jokes.

TP: So you came to the Bahai faith about thirty years after playing with Dizzy, if it was 1989. But you said in the earlier interview that you became much closer to Dizzy the second time around.

MOODY: Oh yes.

TP: It seems there must not be another musician who had more impact on you than Dizzy Gillespie.

MOODY: We had a wonderful relationship. It was wonderful being around him. I could talk to Diz and he could talk to me. It was just a good feeling being together; we liked being together when we were. I’d be in Sweden or somewhere, the phone would ring, and it would be Diz, calling me from Paris. When Diz was sick, every chance I could get… When I came from California, I would get a car and pick him up and take him out for a ride. It was just a good experience. Nice.

TP: He was so famous for passing on and sharing information, and I wondered what your experience was like in that regard.

MOODY: Oh, he shared information with me like that. He showed me things. I remember looking at him one time and saying, “Diz, you know what? I wish I would have gone to a music school and studied music.” And he looked at me and said, “Moody, you ain’t dead.” A light went on. That did it.

TP: I’ll conclude this conversation. But this week you’re playing with Mark Turner who is about 40 years younger than you. You do a lot of education. You made a comment in the earlier interview that musicians today are better than ever because they have access to such good education. I think that jazz music is unique among the arts because there’s a real-time interaction, real-time storytelling or narratives going on on the bandstand. They can be 80 and 20, they can be from Australia or Chicago, they can be from anywhere, and they’re still sharing a common language and moving things forward. I think what goes on this week on the bandstand would seem to bear that out.

MOODY: When you look at it, you have to remember. You have to have some musical knowledge. You can say musicians can get on the bandstand because they’re musicians, but not all musicians can get on the bandstand together. Because some people know songs that other people don’t know.

TP: So jazz is a meritocracy as well. You have to know something.

MOODY: Yeah, you have to know something, sure. Then when you get in, it’s an exchange of ideas. What’s happening is, literally I’m learning as much as I can learn. I don’t know what Mark is doing, but I’m stealing as much as I can steal or get or hold.

TP: So for you, every exchange is an opportunity to learn and take your stuff up another step.

MOODY: That’s it for me. I’ve played with Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon…

TP: Let me ask you about a particular week. Was there a week in Chicago around 1961 where you and Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons played a three-tenor week at McKie’s?

MOODY: Yes. It was just one of those things. Every time I looked, they threw us all together all the time. It was one of those things — bang.

TP: So it was another event within the long ride of your career.

MOODY: Yes. And you learned… I look to learn. The young kids today are very well schooled. It’s something where you have to… I’m trying to study on my own. Not only that, but I get things from Mike Longo, David Baker, Nathan Davis, Mark Turner… I’ll ask anybody a question to try to learn something.

TP: Do you listen to recordings, to music regularly apart from your practice?

MOODY: Well, I can’t say I listen to it regularly, because I don’t have regular times. But when I get a chance to listen, I do. I like to listen.

TP: Any particular area of music, or do you listen to everything?

MOODY: I try to listen to what’s going on today.

TP: In jazz.

MOODY: Yes.

TP: What have you been hearing in the last month or two…

MOODY: There are so many young musicians, that I don’t even know some of them, but they all sound good. If I go somewhere now and I hear somebody and they don’t sound good, I’m disappointed.

TP: That didn’t used to be the case.

MOODY: No, it wasn’t the case. Because people weren’t in school.

TP: So the rise of jazz education, of people being in school the past 25 years has been of incalculable benefit to jazz music.

MOODY: Without a doubt. 250,000 percent. Because whereas it would have taken somebody four or five years to start doing something, now you can do it in two years. You know what I mean?

TP: I’m being a Devil’s Advocate here. A lot of people talk about musicians of your generation having very individual sounds and very personal voices, and you can recognize someone in four notes, and that that isn’t so with the young musicians these days. Do you think there’s anything to do that?

MOODY: Let me say this. I always said when I was younger that I would never say that about a younger musician when I got older. Mainly because a young musician is like a colt. A young colt is running and ripping and dashing and darting. So the older musicians used to say, “Oh, they play too fast.” Well, see, before I can complain about anything or before I can criticize something, I should be able to emulate it. I should be able to do it. Then I have a license to say, “That’s no good.” If you say, “Why?” “Because of this.” “Can you do it?” “Yeah, here it is. Bam.” But you notice that people, they can’t do it, and if they can’t do it, then other people shouldn’t be doing it. So, man, young musicians are taking their music… Because what I hear, I hear. But because I hear what I hear…see, somebody else is hearing something else. When we’re all walking down the street together, we don’t see the same thing. The same thing applies to music. And if a younger musician is studying… Like, see, all these different rules that they’re making in music, they’re only made to be broken. Because things do not stay the same. Everything must change. And I say if the change is for the better, that’s beautiful. I think there are a lot of young musicians who are taking things, and they get the good stuff right at the beginning, and they’ve got it and they can just build up on that. It’s like habits. If you get a bad habit and then you build up on it, now you’ve got to break that habit and try to do a new one. Well, imagine the person who had the good habit at the beginning and they’re building. They’re way ahead of your ass. So the thing is for you not to be discouraged, to just go ahead and study. Study and try to get better. And quit talking about somebody, and listen for the good that everybody is doing. Because everybody can see bad if you want to, but look for good, and try to give good.

[-30-]

* * *

James Moody (8-26-00):
TP: I wanted to ask you about your current professional life. One thing is repertoire and handling a week in a club, like you’re doing now. How many tunes do you draw from with this band? Is it an infinite number? Is it a similar set every night, a different set every night?

MOODY: It’s different. What you do is you’re constantly trying to learn another tune, a different tune. But then, don’t forget, it’s Charlie Parker’s birthday the 29th of this month, and tomorrow is Lester Young’s birthday, so you would play a few of Charlie Parker’s things and a few of the numbers he was associated with, and then you’d play a couple of things you’re trying to learn. That’s how it goes. It’s constantly a learning process. If I played “Pop Goes The Weasel” every night, I would never be able to play as much as I could play on it. With a musical composition, you could play it… Say, if you were born and you could only play one number for the rest of your life, you would never be able to play everything that could be played on that composition. Do you see what I mean?

TP: Do you mean that every composition holds within it infinite possibility?

MOODY: Definitely.

TP: So when you play “Moody’s Mood For Love”…

MOODY: But hold it. There’s a difference. I don’t improvise on that. I’m playing that theme. See, if you play a theme, that’s one thing. Now, when you start improvising, the possibilities are infinite.

TP:   So in your performance, you have themes and tunes that you improvise on.

MOODY: Right.

TP: And the themes might be “Moody’s Mood For Love” and “Bennies From Heaven”…

MOODY: No-no, “Moody’s Mood For Love” I don’t improvise on. Because “Moody’s Mood For Love” was the improvisation that I did.

TP: But just like Coleman Hawkins would play “Body and Soul,” though he would play it differently, and Illinois Jacquet would play “Flying Home,” you play “Moody’s Mood For Love.”

MOODY: Yes. But the only thing is, “Moody’s Mood For Love” is a song. That melody is the same melody that I played. Whereas that was a solo that I took, and I wouldn’t play that same solo over and over again, and it became a hit and that’s what the people want to hear.

TP: Also, you play it with such conviction, that if someone hadn’t heard it before they might not have any idea that you had played it about 25,000.

MOODY: Yeah. Or maybe 50,000. I still don’t know it.

TP: But apart from those pivot points within a set, everything else is open and fluid around it for you. In other words, all the other material and what you choose to play and what you select is an open, fluid learning process.

MOODY: Well, hopefully. When I play, I’m performing and I’m also practicing. You’re also practicing, because you keep in mind to hold your mouth correctly, you want to breathe right, you want to finger the horn right, you want to play something. If you play something and it didn’t come out, you do it again. The people might not dig it, but you’re doing it. In other words, you’re trying to give the people the best you can give them, and when you’re doing that, you’re being honest.

TP: Do you find that that sort of concentration focuses you in a mood for improvising at your best because it puts you in that honest frame of mind? What I’m thinking about is how you put yourself in the frame of mind to be fresh every night, every performance after playing for so long.

MOODY: Well, after playing for so long, you want to try to play something fresh if you can. See, actually there’s really nothing fresh. What it is is just put in a different way. And after playing for so long, if you don’t know how to put something in a couple of different ways, you might as well give it up.

TP: It always has seemed to me that if you weren’t a musician, you could have made a career as a comedian because your timing is so precise.

MOODY: I don’t even like to dwell on that. Because that’s like a little icing on the cake. If I care to say something, I’ll say it. If I care not to say anything, I’d like for it to be that way, too. Sometimes I just want a musical thing going. Know what I mean? And sometimes I feel it conducive to say something. But then a lot of times, guys start writing articles about it, and they put the lines I say… It wasn’t an offense, but the point is, you gave away who the survivor was.

TP: Who the survivor was? What do you mean?

MOODY: You don’t put the two and two together? What I say is when you give punchline away, you gave away who the survivor was. You say who won the million dollars. Didn’t you hear about that show?

TP: No, I’m sorry. I didn’t see the show.

MOODY: Now two and two makes four, right? But now, if I get ready to say something or somebody is playing the number… Like, a guy that was really aware of something like that would say, “his choice of music or the compositions was very profound, I thought, and I think when you go and listen to them, hopefully you’ll feel the same way I felt about them,” rather than saying, “Well, he played ‘Mood Indigo’ and the he played ‘Jump Off The Bridge, Mama,’ and then he played so-and-so.” I’m not saying you. I’m just saying that would be good if people would do that.

TP: I’d heard most of the jokes you told at that concert before, but you still got me. So I don’t think you have to worry about giving away the punchline. Have you in this year gotten hooked up with any record label or any recording I should know about?

MOODY: No, I didn’t. But I was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Berklee School of Music, and they presented it to me at Umbria, Perugia, in Italy this year. Wasn’t that nice. Me and Dave Holland got one.

TP: Will there be any records forthcoming at the end of this year or next year?

MOODY: I don’t know. What I want to do is, I want to do something that’s James Moody. All me. I want to do it myself. I want to do everything on it. I don’t want anybody to have anything to do with it or have anything to say about it. I want to just, bang, do it and put it out.

TP: What would something that was all James Moody be that was different?

MOODY: Look at it this way. It would be different because I would be doing it. That’s what would be different. I would be doing it and I would pick who I wanted to be on it, and be able to play what I wanted to play.

TP: Can I jump back with you? In our first interview I asked you to tell me a few sentences about some of the people you’ve encountered, which segued into something else. I’d like to state some names, you tell me whatever you want. Babs Gonzalez. It seems to have been a very close relationship at a certain point.

MOODY: Babs was aware of how things went as a road manager, and things on the road. Al Cooper of the Savoy Sultans was the one who recommended Babs to me, and that’s how we got together.

TP: Do you have anything to say about Babs’ wit and verbal virtuosity?

MOODY: Well, see, wit to you is not wit to someone else, and what someone says might knock you out but it might not knock me out. So Babs was Babs, as far as I was concerned.

TP: He was your road manager for a while, then he left, and Eddie Jefferson came in.

MOODY: He left and I hired Eddie Jefferson.

TP: And you told me the story that you didn’t know he’d written those lyrics until his girlfriend told you. What year did Eddie Jefferson join you? Can you remember?

MOODY: No, I don’t.

TP: Was it after a couple of years of the septet?

MOODY: I’m not good with names at all.

TP: His first recordings with you are in ’55.

MOODY: Well, I know he joined me in Cleveland, Ohio, because I was looking for a singer. That’s when he came to join me.

TP: You got paired a lot in the ’50s and ’60s with Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt for various jam sessions. A few words about each of them.

MOODY: Oh, it was wonderful, because Jug was a helluva player and so was Sonny Stitt. Every time I came to Chicago, they always stuck me in between those two guys.

TP: Any particular anecdote about either one?

MOODY: No. We were just always playing. And it was always enjoyable. It was always a good learning experience for me.

TP: Tell me about what they call “cutting contests” or “tenor battles.”

MOODY: That term gets on my nerves. I’m so sick of that. First of all, when I’m playing music, I like to play a certain way I play. Then they want to put 20 million playing with you, “I want to hear these people together.” Well, when people are making love, they don’t ask someone else to come in there with you to help you to do that. I’m not really particular about them. If there’s a thing and somebody’s playing, and you’re playing on a stage and they hired you for something, okay. But in a club or things like that, I’d rather play with my quartet or something, and let it go at that, and express myself, and that’s it.

TP: Are you very interactive with the different musicians in your band? Do they find things to surprise you and take you in different directions?

MOODY: Well, the thing is, I never tell anybody how to play. See? That’s the very reason I don’t do it. Lots of people have ideas, and I don’t want to stifle anybody, just like I don’t want to be stifled.

TP: In your improvisations are you picking up on information they’re giving you and taking it in unexpected directions?

MOODY: In other words, what you’re talking about is, am I listening to the group. I listen all the time. I hear everything. I listen, and if it goes over my head enough times, it will come to me another way.

TP: Let me ask you about Chano Pozo. You’re about the only person I can think of who recorded with him outside of Dizzy. Were you friendly?

MOODY: We roomed together a couple of times in California, in Los Angeles. He had a couple of bullets that were in him from… He wrote a song or something in Cuba, and it was a good-seller, and he wanted his money from the publishing company, and the publishing company told him to come back at 1 o’clock, but the guy wasn’t there with the money, and when he came back at 1 o’clock there was a guy waiting there, and he shot him. So the guy shot him a couple of times, and the bullets lodged in him and they couldn’t take them out. So Chano Pozo some nights he would feel good and some nights he wouldn’t feel good when he was playing. And some nights he’d tell me, “Here, Moody, feel here,” and I could feel the bullets in him.

Another thing was, one time Chano cracked me up, because… You remember the phrase people used to say, “Boy, that’s some deep shit”? Well, one day Chano came to me looking real perplexed, and he says, “Moody, Moody, what ‘deep shit’?” And he held his hand up high as if to indicate “shit” up high. Boy, I cracked up laughing. I tried to explain it to him as best I could. But he couldn’t understand when people were saying, “boy, that’s some deep shit.” He was looking for some deep shit somewhere. I’m telling you, it’s funny, man. And that look on his face when he was saying it. His face was kind of frowned up, like… Because he really wanted to know, and he didn’t know… Deep shit! And then he had his hand raised up high, like “Deep shit!” So anyway… [LAUGHS]

TP: Subsequently, over the years, you said you played a lot of Latin gigs, guest-starring, with Machito’s band or Tito Puente…

MOODY: Oh, Tito Puente was wonderful. Tito Puente and also Ray Barretto.

TP: And being with Dizzy, who more than anyone else was responsible for bringing the rhythms of the world together in a jazz context, and people seem to be picking up on that thoroughly in the last ten years or so…

MOODY: See, there’s a difference in playing a band that’s playing [SINGS LATIN GROOVE] and then playing with a Latin band. There’s a difference in the rhythms. What the difference is, it has to do with the way the Latin people play the rhythms and sing and then the way they play the jazz, and the way the jazz play the jazz and play the Latin. There’s a big difference. I can’t be more specific about it because of the rhythms. I’m not hip to the rhythms. If I could explain it to you, I would. But I know what’s happening. I can feel it. Like, there’s a guy who falls off a building, and when he’s killed, they say, “Can you tell me what velocity he fell? Can you tell me how many miles it was and how many inches did his head bash in? I don’t know all that, but I can tell you he fell.”

TP: That’s very well put. You said in our first interview that you first heard Coltrane in Cleveland, he was playing with Gay Crosse, and then you once met him in Chicago and drove him to the Selmer factory in Elkhart, Indiana.

MOODY: To pick up his soprano saxophone. I drove him to Elkhart, and he was looking at these saxophones and so forth, and that’s when he got this soprano, and a couple of months later is when he made “My Favorite Things.”

TP: You started playing soprano in the mid-’60s or so?

MOODY: Oh, I don’t remember what the date was. But I started playing soprano late, I started playing flute late, and I started playing everything late.

TP: Someone was telling me the other day that soprano saxophones are manufactured so much better now that intonation isn’t the problem it used to be…

MOODY: I can agree with that.

TP: Do you think that’s true in general, that instruments are much better made these days?

MOODY: Yes.

TP: And you’ve said very emphatically several times that you think the young musicians are extremely equipped…

MOODY: Yes. There are more schools. As far as I’m concerned, they have a better chance than I had when I was coming up for getting their knowledge, and getting it quick.

TP: Let me ask you about John Lewis. You must have met him 54 years ago.

MOODY: I met him with Dizzy Gillespie. Monk was there one day, and then a couple of nights later John was there. We roomed together a couple of nights in St. Louis. We see each other. In fact, I saw John in Perugia. We were on a panel together. We don’t stay in touch, but when we see each other we can look back at something and think, boy, what a wonderful memory that was.

TP: Did you have other dealings with Coltrane?

MOODY: I didn’t have any other dealings with him. None at all, other than he seemed like a nice, kind guy and so on. And he was a helluva musician.

TP: But you were very taken with his ideas and the conclusions he came up with.

MOODY: Of course. His impact on the music was phenomenal, and I’m still learning from it. Like, when the guy went to the moon and he said, “One big step for mankind.” Well, Coltrane was one big-great step for music-kind.

TP: It’s Lester Young’s and Charlie Parker’s birthday coming up.

MOODY: Lester Young was one of my idols. First I liked Jimmy Dorsey, then I liked Charlie Barnet and Georgie Auld, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and them. But then, when I heard Lester Young, that did something else. There was something about that that got me, and I wanted to play like that. Then I heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, then I wanted to play like that.

TP: But you never forgot anything you did before. It’s just additive.

MOODY: Well, I hope not.

TP: You said when you heard Prez and Bird, you wanted to play like that? Did you memorize their solos?

MOODY: What it was, I didn’t copy any of their solos from the standpoint of transcribing them. What I did was, there would be something in a solo that I would like and I would just copy that part, and I would do it with my ear. I would listen to it, play it over and over and I’d have it.

TP: Have you always had that ability to translate what was in your ear to moving your fingers on the saxophone from very early?

MOODY: Any musician can do that. That’s not such a big deal. Like I always say, “if you can’t sing it, you can’t play it.”

TP: So if you can’t sing it, you’re not going to be a musician.

MOODY: You’re not going to be a player, right.

TP: Kenny Clarke.

MOODY: Klook was wonderful. He was in Dizzy’s band when I joined it, and in Paris I got to know him better. We played together. I remember one time either I invited them over or they invited me over… I had a son and he had a son, and they were both in the bathtub for cribs, and we had a spaghetti dinner in Paris. I remember that.

TP: It seems like in Paris you met all the people a generation older than you who were living there.

MOODY: When I was in Paris, Coleman Hawkins was there, Don Byas was there, Roy Eldridge was there. A lot of those guys were there then.

TP: Did it have an effect on your attitude towards music, just being around those guys…

MOODY: Well, it wasn’t a musical thing. First of all, I was living with my uncle. I didn’t have to work. I wasn’t working. I went over there to stay for two weeks and stayed for three years. After I found out how the people were over there I wasn’t coming back to America, because I had been discharged, and I had been on the road with Dizzy, and I saw how the racism was down South. I had experienced all of that stuff, like Colored fountains and Colored waiting rooms. The bus driver had to go see if we could get food. He would have to go get sandwiches for us. We couldn’t stay in the hotels. If we went to a rooming house, if it was two dollars, it would be five dollars when we got there. There was a whole lot of crap down South. When I got to Europe it was different, because I thought, “Why do people hate me so much? What have I done?” Then when I got to Europe I said, “Ah, it’s not me; it’s them.”

TP: But was it different for you than when you were in Dizzy’s band and traveling around and being on 52nd Street, or did you feel a sense of collegiality with the older musicians during the years before you went to Europe?

MOODY: No, I didn’t. Because I looked up to them. It was a different feeling.

TP: But in Europe you felt a sense of collegiality with them.

MOODY: In Europe it was still a different feeling. It was a little better than it was in America, but it was still the same thing. You kind of have the respect for, like, Roy Eldridge or Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas.

TP: You were at the hotel in Las Vegas for how long?

MOODY: The Hilton International for seven years in the ’70s. I did Liberace and Connie Stevens, Elvis Presley…

TP: You told me you weren’t a soloist, you were in the section.

MOODY: I was in the band. I was in the saxophone section, the woodwind section. That was it.

TP: What did it do for your musicianship?

MOODY: It made my reading very good at the time. At the time, I could read much better. It got better and better. Now my reading is slow. Because if you don’t use it, you lose it.

TP: And for the last twenty years, since about 1980, you’ve been a touring musician, either with your own band or with a rhythm section or special projects?

MOODY: Yes, twenty years.

TP: Are you satisfied with doing that?

MOODY: I’m not satisfied with what I’m doing, because first of all, I don’t have what I want, the way I want it. I would like to have a permanent group, permanent, so that I could work with it and have it like I want it, to travel with me all the time.

TP: So the band with Todd Coolman and Renee and Adam Nussbaum doesn’t go with you everywhere now.

MOODY: No, they can’t. If I could have them like I wanted to, all the time at my disposal, and I could or subtract what I wanted to from it to put certain things or something… That’s what I would want.

TP: During this year and the last few years you’ve had a lot of honors, some highly produced, elaborate tribute concerts, things like this. Is there any situation you would aspire to do that hasn’t come your way over 54 years as a professional?

MOODY: Yes. I would like to have a nice, lucrative record contract where I was the producer and I was able to do whatever I wanted to do, the way I wanted to do it, when and how I wanted to do it. James Moody. I would like to be able to do it, to show that if James Moody was able to do what James Moody wanted to do himself, James Moody would be a great success.

TP: Please talk to me a bit about your relationship with Dizzy. I know you’ve discussed this 800 million times and spoke to the guy earlier for the book…

MOODY: It’s very simple. You can only be… There are people who elaborate and it really amounts to nothing but a hill of beans, and then there are people that say it was a relationship that I will value as long as I live, because of the importance of it and the profoundness of it.

TP: Would saying more about it trivialize it?

MOODY: Yes. Because that’s it. There are times you feel like saying things, and then there are times you just want to say what you say.

TP: You said one very specific thing, about a particular harmonic figure that h wanted, and you told me twice that you were bemoaning to him that you hadn’t gone to music school and he said, “Moody, you’re not dead.”

MOODY: No. What I said was, “Diz, I wish I would have gone to school and studied music.” And Diz said, “Moody, you ain’t dead.” And that lightbulb went on. I immediately went and bought some more books, music books.

TP: In the band in the ’60s, did you do a lot of rehearsing? Your unisons are so precise. On some of them, like the “Groovin’ High” date, you sound almost as good as Dizzy did with Charlie Parker in the ’40s…

MOODY: Look at it this way, Ted. You’ve got to say this. Did you rehearse? Yes, we did rehearse. Some people can rehearse one time and get it perfect. Some people can rehearse it two times. So just say we were sufficient with the rehearsals.

TP: How many days a year would you say you worked with Dizzy in the ’60s? Half the year? 210 days a year?

MOODY: I don’t know. We worked when we worked, and we worked a lot of times just on the road.

TP: You spent a decade doing about half the year on the road with Dizzy.

MOODY: I don’t know. I’m not good at that. I’m not going to say “I’m 20 days here and 30 days off.” I’m not like that.

TP: If I say in the story that “in the ’60s Moody toured incessantly with Gillespie”…

MOODY: That would be sufficient.

TP: And that your friendship blossomed in that period in a way it couldn’t when you were with the big band, that would also be sufficient?

MOODY: No, I wouldn’t say it blossomed the way it couldn’t. It blossomed more because we were closer in the quintet.

TP: Were you close when you were in the big band?

MOODY: No. In the big band you’d be in the bus. Dizzy would be down front talking to other people. I’d be in the back of the bus, talking with Dave Burns. The bus was called… The hoot-hounds were in the back and the pot-hounds were in the front. Hoot is drink.

TP: So the drinkers were in the back and the ones who were smoking pot were in the front. Sounds like you had a lot of fun on the bus.

MOODY: Well, it depends on what the stuff did for you when…

TP: I guess you were trying to blur the reality of being on the goddamn bus.

MOODY: Yes.

TP: You’re still on the road a lot. What is it like? Does it feel like second nature? Is it something you have to endure?

MOODY: Well, it feels a little better from the standpoint that I travel first-class. There’s no other way. First class by airplane, and that’s it. Because I think I’ve earned it. It’s even better when my wife is with me. Everything, whatever I do, it’s always first-class airplane tickets if they want me. If not, don’t hire me. Because I am not going any other way.

TP: But it’s nothing like when you had your septet with the car and drove to the northern cities in the winter and the southern cities in the summer.

MOODY: I was doing all the driving. All the driving and everything!

TP: You did all the driving, too?

MOODY: I didn’t trust anybody else. And I said, “Lord, if I ever get a chance, I’m going to fix it so…” That’s where I got so I like to travel alone. Because traveling all the time bunched together and everything… I said, “Lord, if I ever… I’ll give everybody their plane ticket. You go when you want, you go when you want, and I’m going when I want.”

TP: I guess when you’re traveling with a bunch of characters in the band, it can get a little hairy…

MOODY: You get sick of the same old shit. Because there are other things going on, a lot of beautiful things going on, like the twelfth planet, stuff like that.

Do me a favor. You’ve got to put down who keeps me going, and who I love more than anything in the world. That’s Linda Moody.

TP: I may print what she said about how you met.

MOODY: Okay.

TP: I think it’s interesting how someone in their seventies keeps going, keeps stays fresh and youthful, and you said it there. It’s because you’re in love and have something to look forward to.

[-30-]

* * *

James Moody Colleagues (Kenny Barron, Jon Faddis, Jimmy Heath, Todd Coolman, Talib Kibwe, Mark Turner):

TP: Moody said that he brought you into Dizzy Gillespie’s band?

BARRON: Yeah, that’s true. When I first came to New York I wound up working with Moody, and when he went with Dizzy, which was about a year after that, I happened to run into him one day on Broadway… Dizzy was working at Birdland, and I ran into Moody, and he told me that Lalo Schiffrin was leaving, and he asked me would I be interested in the gig. And of course. I’d just gotten married, wasn’t married. So I went to Birdland to talk to Dizzy, and he hired me without even having heard me just on Moody’s recommendation.

TP: What were the circumstances of your working with Moody when you got to New York?

BARRON: I was staying on East 6th Street, next door to my brother, Bill, which was walking distance from the Five Spot, where Moody was working. I went to hear him, and since he knew Bill, he allowed me to sit in. I guess I must have made a favorable impression, because I started working with him. He had a nice sextet, with Dave Burns, Tom Macintosh on trombone, Edgar Bateman on drums, and Steve Davis on bass. Most of the music was Tom Macintosh’s, very nice sextet kind of stuff. It was mostly his music.

TP: What was he like as a bandleader? You were very young. What was his manner toward you?

BARRON: He was very gracious. Which he is today.

TP: He said he’s never heard you make a mistake in 40 years.

BARRON: Well, I have — plenty of mistakes. But Moody was very gracious, very generous, and he hasn’t changed since I’ve known him. He’s always been a very sweet person.

TP: He noted that towards the end of the ’50s is when Tom Macintosh started teaching him music theory, that before that he’d been playing more or less by ear, and that his life turned around from learning to read music. It got rid of a lot of his insecurities, and so on. It would seem to me that around the time you got with him is shortly after that process started happening.

BARRON: For me, when I first started working with Moody, he was incredible! [LAUGHS]

TP: It seems unbelievable that this guy who was playing all this stuff says that he was playing by ear and so on, but so he says.

BARRON: Yes. And even today, I can recall working not with his band, but I think during one of those tributes to Dizzy or at Lincoln Center. We were going over some music, and he kept asking me to run over the changes for him, which he didn’t feel comfortable. Which I knew wasn’t true. He may have felt uncomfortable. But he played more stuff than I could ever play! He’s still like that. He’s very humble. He’s always been like that.

TP: Had you listened to him a lot before you joined the band?

BARRON: Yes, I did. I wouldn’t say he was an influence, but he was very popular.

TP: You were growing up when the septet was big. Can you talk about how he was regarded by musicians in the ’50s and the impact of the band?

BARRON: That’s kind of when I first started listening. But everybody… Moody has always been very well-respected by his peers. I think he’s always been known for… Moody is very adventurous and a very adventurous player. Although the band he had during that time kind of a very…not almost commercial, but it was a very accessible band. They played nice music. I remember some of those records on Prestige. Actually, my sister had a lot of those records. She lived around the corner from me, and I used to go over there just to listen to her records. I remember one tune in particular, “A Sinner Kissed An Angel” where he had John Lathan on bass, Gene Keyes was the piano player, Clarence Johnston on drums.

TP: Hank Crawford and Fathead said that the sound of that band influenced the sound Ray Charles started to use, that it was influential in the way popular music was being constructed.

BARRON: I can believe it. Again, I was young then. I remember hearing some of Hank Crawford’s band when I was with Dizzy, and I’d think about some of those recordings of Moody’s, and I’d think about how Ray Charles’ band sounded. It was very close.

TP: Talk about your relationship developed with Dizzy’s band?

BARRON: We became very close. We were roommates for a while. We’d be in San Francisco. Especially after Chris White and Rudy Collins left the band, we’d be roommates a lot of the time.

TP: Was he very much a mentor to you? Kind of another older brother?

BARRON: I kind of looked at him that way. He may not have looked at me that way. But as I say, he was a very kind of person, and I very seldom saw him get upset about anything.

TP: He has a very even temperament?

BARRON: Yes. Except for smoking. [LAUGHS] And we both smoked during that time. But other than that, he always took care of his health… These are things I remember. He was very conscious of his health; although he did smoke at the time, he eventually stopped. And he was always practicing. Again, he was a very-very kind of person. Sometimes we’d work in Boston at Lennie’s on the Turnpike, and at the time I didn’t have a car. He lived in Forest Hills, and my wife and I would take the subway to Lefrak City, where he lived, and we would ride up to Boston with Moody and Allison. One time I had my baby with me; my daughter was an infant. He was always very cool that way.

TP: He said that he and Dizzy became very close during those years. Because it was in a big band before, they really hadn’t gotten to know each other that well, but during the ’60s, because of the proximity in the small group, they became quite close then, or their relationship cemented itself.

BARRON: I think that’s kind of true. They were very close. The relationship was very healthy. It was a lot of fun also. I mean, I could see that between the two of them.

TP: It was a lot of fun because they both have a sense of humor.

BARRON: Yes. And it wasn’t put on. I mean, it was really like that. And musically…I won’t say musically they were like minds, but in terms of stage presence. I think they both looked at music as being entertainment as well.

TP: The purpose of it being to communicate maybe.

BARRON: Yes. And they really did that very well together on stage. So it made it really work.

TP: Is there any particular anecdote about, say, their humor that sticks in your mind?

BARRON: I can’t think of any one particular thing involving the both of them together. Of course, a lot of it was very spontaneous. And it affected the whole band sometimes. I remember playing a matinee at the Lighthouse in L.A. Between tunes all of a sudden Chris White starts screaming, “Okay, it’s time for me to reveal my true identity,” and took off his shirt and had on a Superman shirt. Little things like that.

TP: Everybody became a comic.

BARRON: Everybody became a part of it. That’s because Dizzy’s and Moody’s sense of humor was infectious. One time we were going to San Francisco from New York, and Dizzy had on these long, flowing African robes that he wore on the plane. When we got off the plane in San Francisco, people actually thought he was an African dignitary. And Moody kind of played it up as just a valet or whatever.

TP: “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac”, were they working that out during the time that you were in the band?

BARRON: No, that had been done before.

TP: You say you don’t know whether they were necessarily of the same mind musically. Can you elaborate?

BARRON: They certainly came from the same period. But I think Moody may have been a little bit more adventurous than Dizzy was.

TP: In terms of dealing with the up-to-the-minute stuff that was going in the music, like Coltrane?

BARRON: Yeah. I think Moody was a little more into that.

TP: I guess Dizzy was complete unto himself, wasn’t he.

BARRON: Right. Which wasn’t a bad thing.

TP: Not if you’re Dizzy.

BARRON: Right! Because there were some incredible moments that I heard during the four years I was with him, and listening back to some of the older tapes and recordings that I did with him, they’re unbelievable — the whole band. But Moody was obviously… There’s a tape from the BBC, my very first trip to Europe, and Moody played so much stuff, it’s just unreal.

TP: If you were going to describe Moody’s sound to somebody who hadn’t heard him… Well, maybe you’d tell somebody to go buy the damn record. But if they weren’t in a position to do so, how would you describe it?

BARRON: I don’t know if I could. The quality of his sound. And it depends on the kind of music. Because on the very up-tempo things his sound can be very percussive, a very rough sound, and in the kinds of things he might choose to play, a lot of strange intervals. So that’s one particular kind of sound. I mean his sound is actually…I wouldn’t say harsh, but hard. Then I’ve also heard him play ballads (I’m talking bout tenor now) where his sound is very deep and warm. It depends on the mood.

TP: Sounds like more of a blues-informed player on the more up-tempo, technically complex stuff, more vocal inflection on the notes or whatever.

BARRON: Yes.

TP: Then you continued to play with Moody on and off. You worked with him for a minute in the ’80s, I recall. Two of what I consider his best records you’re on. One is Feelin’ It Together and there’s another on RCA. How do you see Moody’s concept having evolved in the period since Dizzy?

BARRON: Well, he’s constantly searching. You can see that. Constantly searching for things that are new for him. And he’s constantly on his horn, trying to find different things to do and say. It’s just never-ending with him. And behind all of that, it’s still his sense of fun. I mean, I just saw him not too long ago at the Charlie Parker thing. As usual, he sounded great. It was him and Jon Faddis which is almost like listening to him and Dizzy. But Moody is unbelievable. And when I think about how old he is and his energy… That’s what gets me, his energy, and the fact that he’s constantly trying to improve.

TP: Is there any particular point about Moody’s persona that you would hone in on as the most salient thing to know about him?

BARRON: In terms of his music, a couple of things. His sense of adventure and his sense of humor. I really like those two things about his playing. One minute he’s playing all these strange fourths, really looking for it, but on the other hand he plays those real humorous things. He changes the sound of his horn so it sounds real old. He does all kinds of things.

TP: So he’s a wizard of the saxophone.

BARRON: Yes. In terms of his personality, he’s a great human being. That’s basically it. He’s a really great human being.

TP: Another thing is that he’s so strong on alto sax and soprano, but that he has a personality on those instruments.

BARRON: Yes, alto sax and the flute. Although he plays tenor most of the time now. When we were with Dizzy he played alto a lot more, and quite a bit of flute. For me he’s probably one of the better flute players among multi-instrumentalists. People who just play flute exclusively obviously play a bit differently than someone who plays all the reeds. But for me, Moody is probably one of the best flautists.

TP: But when you think of Moody, it’s primarily a tenor sound you hear.

BARRON: Now. That’s interesting. Again, when I thought of him years ago I always thought of alto. I don’t know why. But when I think of him now, I hear tenor.

* * *

TP: I guess you first met Moody when you met Dizzy. You’ve known him now for thirty years.

FADDIS: Over 30 years. I would say that Moody is one of the warmest people of all time and he’s also very smart. He’s really, really intelligent, and I think that’s reflected in the style of playing that he does.

TP: By “style of playing,” do you mean the consistent quest for new challenges, which seems to be the thing that animates him and keeps him going, the search for new ways of expressing himself.

FADDIS: Well, that. But also there’s a certain logic to his playing. I don’t want to say his playing is intellectual, but it’s very intelligent and logical. And he’s like Dizzy in that regard, in that he can sit down and tell you… You say, “What was that he played, and then he’ll sit down and tell you and say, “here’s what it is.”

TP: So he has the ability to break everything down into its components.

FADDIS: oh yes.

TP: He said that in the first phase of his career, he was flying blind. He said he couldn’t read music, he didn’t really know what he was doing, he was playing by ear, and it led to various insecurities, going as far to say that part of why he had his drinking problem at that time is because he felt like he was treading on such thin ice. So it’s interesting he’s developed such a comprehensively analytical (?).

FADDIS: He never really told me that! I knew he had a drinking thing, but I didn’t know that was the cause behind it. But then again, Dizzy must have heard something!

TP: He said he started playing alto at 16, didn’t really start until ’43 when he went into the Army, and he comes out three years later with Dizzy! If you had to describe his sound in some impressionistic way, what language would you use?

FADDIS: I wouldn’t say impressionistic. I would say pointillistic. I’d put it this way. It’s like that painting by Seurat, “Sunday In The Park With George” at the Art Institute of Chicago. When you look at it up close, it doesn’t look like much. It looks like a lot, because you see all these details, and it seems sort of disjointed. But when you step back, you get a much clearer picture of the connection and the great work of art that it is. To me, that’s something like Moody. Sometimes you can stand next to him for a while and almost take him for granted. But then when you sit in the audience and listen to him, you say, “Oh my God.” You step off to the side of the bandstand and say, “Oh, man, what is he playing.” Because a lot of times when you’re on the bandstand, you’re a part of the music, even if you’re not playing it. Moody is always full of surprises. But when you’re on the bandstand, you might not notice them as much as if you would step back a little bit.

TP: Is that because he makes himself blend into the ensemble in a certain way?

FADDIS: I don’t know if that’s something he does consciously or unconsciously. But I’m speaking as somebody who has stood next to him on the bandstand, and what that’s like being next to him on the bandstand.

TP: I guess you’ve been aware of Moody from your earliest years of listening, just from having been involved with Dizzy’s music so much. Can you talk about how you hear his sound having evolved from those early years to how he approaches things today?

FADDIS: Well, his sound, or his style. I would say more his style. As far as his sound, the only thing he did which I didn’t really care for was his use of plastic reed. I thought he sounded better with the wood reed. But his style has evolved quite a bit, and it’s become I think a lot more harmonically advanced, but within that development it still retains a sense of melody. It’s still melodic playing.

TP: How is it being a leader on a session where he’s a guest artist, such as Dizzy’s World?

FADDIS: It’s fun. Moody is very humble. He’s not in the practice or coming into a gig and just reading any more, as he was when he was in Dizzy’s band or when he was in Vegas for all those years, when he had his reading chops up. He’s not in the habit of doing that much any more. So when we did that Dizzy’s World thing he was like, “Oh, man, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” It’s really funny.

TP: Was he very personally supportive of you when you were young? I’d imagine you met him when you met Dizzy?

FADDIS: Yes, he and Dizzy both. But the thing that surprised is when I first met Moody… He started giving me advice the first night that I played with Dizzy, and he said, “Man, whatever you learn to play, learn how to play it backwards.'” That’s one thing he said that I can remember. One thing that felt good to me and felt very warm is that I was playing with Mingus in Nice in 1972, so at that time I was 18, almost 19, and hanging out with Dizzy a little bit backstage, and Moody was there, and he remembered me, and he gave me a hug and said, “Yeah, I remember you sat in with us at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco; how you doin’, man?” I was like a long-lost son or brother or something.

TP: So he has an embracing personality. People almost universally talking about how warm and open he is, and his penchant for sharing information.

FADDIS: The one thing about that embracing which no one really talks about. See, Moody had this cologne made up for him. Did you know that? He had this James Moody cologne. And when Moody sees you in the morning, going on the bus or at the breakfast, you get up and he’ll always insist on a hug on both sides. But when he gives you that, his cologne sort of rubs off on you! And it carries with you throughout the day. Which can be okay if you don’t carry your own. So usually if I’m on the road with Moody, I’ll avoid putting my cologne on.

TP: This is what being a jazz veteran really means, is knowing when to wear the cologne and when not.

FADDIS: Something like that.

TP: Would you talk about his relationship with Dizzy, and your speculations on what drew Dizzy so closely to Moody? Moody said that they didn’t really become close until they traveled in the ’60s.

FADDIS: Well, I wasn’t there in the ’40s. I know that in the ’60s, that’s also one of my favorite bands that Dizzy had, the one with Moody and Kenny Barron and Chris White and Rudy Collins. Moody would talk about things that Dizzy told him back in the ’40s that he is just starting to understand what Dizzy meant. That’s how deep Dizzy was. I know they must have been very close, because Dizzy was Bahai and then Moody became Bahai.

TP: Although Moody said it had nothing to do with Dizzy. It happened after he got married.

FADDIS: I don’t mean close in that he was copying Diz, but that they shared the same outlook on I guess the spiritual aspect of life. There was a book about Dizzy last year by Alan Shipton, and he asked me what I thought of the book, because they asked me to do a little blurb for the back cover, and I refused to do it. One thing he mentioned in that book is that Moody, in his opinion, during the ’60s, was just acting as a comic foil to Diz. I’m saying, “how can he say that?” Then he cites a couple of tracks on a recording where it wasn’t Moody doing the stuff! It was Chris White.

But Moody would always talk about the things Dizzy would tell him about life and about music. I guess the first time that Moody really seemed grounded and satisfied with his life is after he married Linda.

TP: He makes no bones about that.

FADDIS: I think that’s something very important with him. She provides him with a lot. He had gone through some other relationships, and he would sit down and talk to me about them and shake his head. He’d say, “Isn’t that strange?” I’d say, “Yeah, that’s strange.”

TP: I don’t see comedy as denoting any superficiality at all. I think one could say that even with you a bit because you have a penchant for broad or drier humor. I noticed at his concert in April that he was telling the same jokes he’s been telling for 30-40 years, but you still laugh because his timing is so perfect. Do you hear that humor in his playing also?

FADDIS: Oh yeah. He’s one of them cats like Picasso who can make you laugh out loud at some of the stuff does. “Oh my gosh, where did that come from?” He can really touch you deep down with I guess the subtleness of humor in his playing. It’s not a more evident type of humor, like, say, somebody like Clark Terry. It’s a little more subtle.

Call Kenny back and ask him about the blue uniforms they used to have with the piping…

* * *

TP: Let me take you back to the beginning. When do you remember meeting Moody? Must have been the first time you saw Dizzy Gillespie’s band.

HEATH: Right.

TP: Can you pinpoint it?

HEATH: It was probably 1946. I think they came to Philadelphia, and Moody was in the band. If it wasn’t ’46, maybe he can correct me. But I remember we invited the whole band down to my mother’s house. John Lewis was playing at that time.

TP: Was Kenny Clarke the drummer?

HEATH: Yes. We invited them all down to the house, and a lot of the band members came, Moody and Dave Burns… I don’t recall everybody that was there. But that was my first time to meet Moody.

TP: I guess he’d done the “Emanon” solo then.

HEATH: In Philly we had heard the “Emanon” solo, and all the musicians around Philly were crazy about the Dizzy Gillespie band, period, and the new music, Bebop, and the solo was very exciting to all the saxophone players around home.

TP: Let me ask a moron question. Why was the solo exciting at that moment in time?

HEATH: Well, Moody played very fast on tenor. He doubled up. And the solo was different than any blues solo that you had heard, similar to coming out of Charlie Parker and the bebop sound. He had the bebop sound.

TP: So along with Dexter Gordon…Moody and Dexter Gordon and Teddy Edwards were the first who articulated that on the tenor sax.

HEATH: And Sonny Stitt. He was one, too.

TP: Then your first acquaintance with Moody is 1946; you’ve known him 54 years. I would imagine you kept in fairly close touch with him over the next few years.

HEATH: Oh yes.

TP: What do you remember about his manner and his personality as a young man?

HEATH: Moody has always been a very nice person, and everybody knows that. He was very interested in learning as much as he could about the music. He actually was basically playing by ear at that time when he played “Emanon.” Later on, when he had his group with Johnny Coles and Tom Macintosh, some of the people like that convinced Moody he had to learn his changes and play by changes. I don’t know why…

TP: Moody says he’s eternally indebted to Tom Macintosh for that. He says that before it was like flying blind, and it caused him all sorts of anxiety and inner turmoil.

HEATH: Well, there were things within himself he couldn’t do. Because if you don’t know the insides of the music and the changes, there’s a limitation put on what you play. As a player by ear, he was already so far advanced, it didn’t take much concentration — but I guess it did. It took a few years. Because Moody began to play so good by changes, until… He recorded one of my songs in a later year, “A Sound For Sore Ears,” which had kind of difficult changes, and man, he ate that stuff up then! Because Johnny Coles and Macintosh were… Particularly Macintosh. He was a schooled musician from Juilliard. He was a writer, and he knew a lot about the harmony. And when Moody decided that he was going to do that, the result is obvious, that he is one of the greatest players who ever lived — now. Moody, right now.

If he hears you play a lick or a sequence that he hasn’t heard, he’ll say, “What is that, Section?” He calls me “Section.” We call each other Section from playing in reed sections together over the years. If he hears you play something and he asks you what that is, once you show it to him, man, Moody takes it and takes it into his own style and elaborates on it, turns it inside-out, and does everything possible with that idea to make it his own. I know on one occasion, Moody and I made a record with Bags. The record is called Big Bags for Riverside. Tadd Dameron wrote half of the music on it and Ernie Wilkins wrote the other half. It’s one of the greatest big band records I’ve ever been a part of. The reed section was wonderful. What I was getting to is the fact that on some of the things someone was playing lead alto, but then on Tadd’s arrangement on “Round Midnight” Bags asked Moody to play the lead. And man, that is one of the most beautiful sounding lead performances that I’ve been involved in. And he’s playing alto. But Moody mostly played tenor all of his career. But that was one experience, and the others are numerous.

TP: Let me take you back to the ’40s for a second. You came in Dizzy’s band after Moody had moved to Europe.

HEATH: Right.

TP: Were you in actually to replace Moody?

HEATH: No. I didn’t replace Moody because I was playing alto. Coltrane and I played alto in the band. Jesse Powell was one of the tenor players, and Rudy Williams, known as Bones, and then Paul Gonsalves was in the band.

TP: Where I was going with that is that Moody is just one year older than you and Coltrane. Did he seem much older to you at that time, or was he musically that much more advanced, or was it just a matter of circumstance?

HEATH: He was advanced because he was around Dizzy. He was in the first big bebop band that recorded. So that made him a person for us to idolize, in a way, because we…

TP: You aspired to that.

HEATH: Yeah. We had never gotten to the point where he was.

TP: Do you have any memories from your perspective at that time of the relationship Dizzy and Moody had in the ’40s, of their interaction, or is that something you just don’t know about?

HEATH: I just know that Dizzy really dug Moody. Of course, in the long career that followed afterward, you can’t separate Moody from Dizzy.

TP: Moody said they became closer in the ’60s when they had more proximity.

HEATH: Well, they played in a smaller group together. In the big band, Dizzy had a lot of personalities that he had to deal with. But Moody was one of his main people, and probably, like you said, they got closer when the big band broke up and they were always on the road and everything.

TP: Part of the thing about Moody is that he has this photographic memory and exceptional musical intuition on top of the hard work he’s put in. Particularly in his ear-playing days.

HEATH: Well, he had a gift that he developed. He started out with a gift, and he developed it. One thing technically is Moody’s tone. The way he accented on the saxophone was much faster than most of the other saxophone players, and distinguishable in that. Moody used to tell me that when he played an eighth note line in the bebop tradition he would be thinking to himself, “tit-a-little, tit-a-little, tit-a-little,” [SINGS PHRASING REFRAIN], that accent on eighth notes which was… The bebop language included a lot of eighth notes or sixteenths. The accent was always on the AND, “uh-dah, uh-dah,” on the one that was off the beat. It gave it a different kind of a float.

TP: Did you follow the septet he organized when he came back from Europe?

HEATH: Yes. They used to come to Philly to the Showboat, and when I was there I used to go see them. One of my good friends was in the band playing trumpet, Bill Massey. Bill Massey was the person who introduced me to Coltrane. They were in the Navy together. We had a lot in common because we were interested in both composition and playing… No, sorry. I’m wrong about that. Bill was with Gene Ammons. Johnny Coles was the one. But they used to go to Philly and play the Showboat, and I would go hear Moody. Moody and I played together on several occasions. But whenever Dizzy was around and Moody and they would come around, if I wasn’t working, I would go see them.

The thing I admire about Moody is his tenacity and his focus. When he was out in Las Vegas playing as a kind of studio musician, he called me once. “Section,” and he started playing the clarinet. He was practicing the clarinet on the phone and showing me how he had been able to get to the clarinet. He was always a great flute player. To me, he is the epitome of the Bebop flute player. He is not the Western Classical traditional flute player. It doesn’t sound like somebody who has been trained in Western Classical Music. But he could play with the Bebop style on the flute, and it’s distinguishable.

TP: I did an interview with Hank Crawford and Fathead, and they said that when Ray Charles was forming his band and his sound they were paying close attention to the sound of Moody’s Septet, the John Acea arrangements and so forth. Do you recollect that as an influential band in defining a certain type of sound?

HEATH: Was it a sextet?

TP: A septet, four horns.

HEATH: I don’t remember that band that much. Except things he did, like… Was that when he did “Last Train From Overbrook” and all that stuff?

TP: That was later on. Then all the things with Eddie Jefferson in the mid-’50s.

HEATH: Right. I know Moody was having trouble drinking wine or something. He said he went to the police station and told them to stop the green men from chasing him.

TP: He didn’t tell me that, but he attributed what caused him to do to playing by ear and the anxiety it caused him on a nightly basis.

HEATH: Well, guys were coming along with great chordal knowledge, and Moody wanted to be like them. He wanted to play with the same knowledge of the other guys who were playing at that time. I didn’t know that was the reason he was drinking. The road, man. The road is rough when you’re traveling all the time.

TP: And he was traveling all the time. He said the northern cities in the winter, the southern cities in the summer, and he didn’t let anyone else do the driving. He didn’t trust anyone else to do the driving.

HEATH: Well, see, all that kind of wear and tear, that leads to drinking and smoking or whatever you do. So he was drinking a lot, which…

TP: And he had the presence of mind to take care of it.

HEATH: Yeah. And the thing about Moody is that he’s a giving person. He’s always giving. I got a straw hat that Moody gave me. If he finds some books that are interesting, he sends me books. He may find books about health or vitamins. He carries a ton of vitamins on the road with him. He has a suitcase full. “Section, have you ever tried this?” He will hand you… He’s just a person that gives all the time. We went on tour with…they had two bands on tour with Philip Morris, and we had about three or four weeks in all different places, the Philippines, all over the place. Moody will… I don’t know when he started that. He adapted just a way of kissing everybody. He would get up in the morning and go to breakfast, and you’d be there, and he’d kiss you once on one side, once on the other side. Everybody! Everybody that he meets. He’d kiss them once on each side. If you come back to lunch together, Moody would kiss you on both cheeks. “Hey, Section!” Boom! And then if you come to dinner together, BOOM. To leave you at night, he kisses you. So I eventually said at the Blue Note when they were having the birthday or something for him, they asked me one statement about Moody. I said, “Moody got more kisses than Hershey’s.

TP: Talk about the evolution of Moody’s sound, specifically on the tenor, or the phases of his sound in the time you’ve known him.

HEATH: Well, there are certain things that are identifiable with Moody. I don’t care how his sound would change, and what mouthpiece and what equipment he’s using. There’s James Moody in there. I can always tell. Moody has his own sound. You can identify Moody when he starts. I can tell if he plays four bars; I know that’s Moody. There are certain things that he does. Jumping up in the higher register and screaming in a certain way. But over the years, his development now is…he has become so free, not in a random fashion, but a scientific freedom, that he can do anything he wants (that’s what I think) with the saxophone. Speed has never been a problem with him. He’s always been a fast player. So when he wants to slow down, he slows down. But usually, he’s going to play fast. So he had great technique. His sound right at this point (and having played with him for the last four or five days together in Pittsburgh with Jon Faddis) is real smooth now. He’s gotten real smooth and mellow with his old age, like wine. He’s mellow. It’s not harsh and brash. It’s very soft until he wants to imply these certain emotional hollers or screams.

TP: When I heard him it was the Charlie Parker birthday, not at Tompkins Square but at Iridium, and he started off with “Groovin’ High,” and he played so much blues on it, putting so much vocalization on it, and it always seemed like the most difficult interval was when he’d put the most vocal emphasis.

HEATH: I think he can do anything… If he wants to play it in a bluesy fashion, he can do it. If he wants to play it in a straight bebop way without the blues or just the changes, he can do it. He has control. He has true knowledge. He is in complete control. Moody’s flute playing and his saxophone are so mature at this point. The way he acts…his personality is what I was trying to get at. The fact of being with Dizzy Gillespie, who is the mentor for both of us. That’s my man. Birks was the guy. His sense of humor, his stage presence. I think he learned a lot of stage presence from Dizzy also, not only music. He learned how to be a nice guy, or he felt it after he straightened his habit out…how to be a nice guy. That’s what Dizzy was. A down-to-earth human being with a tremendous sense of humor. Moody is a very funny guy.

TP: His timing is unbelievable. You can hear tell a joke you’ve heard 15 times, and you’re still going to laugh.

HEATH: Yes. Moody is one of my dear friends. He’s been that since the ’40s. We had so much fun last week as we do every time we get together. I just look forward to being in his company. He’s got more kisses than Hershey’s! That’s got to be in this.

* * *

TP: How long have you been playing with Moody?

COOLMAN: Since ’84 or ’85. Precisely I don’t know. But I met him around that time, and started playing with him shortly after that.

TP: This is a few years after he left Las Vegas and the studios, and was out again as a solo artist. Was he working then primarily as a solo artist, picking up rhythm sections and trying to gather a more or less permanent working band by that time?

COOLMAN: Yes. I know he had a band, Rufus Reid and Harold Mabern… I’m not sure if the drums were stabilized by that time, but I know that those two other guys were working with him more times than not, that they were doing things together for at least a couple of years prior to my being involved with him. All during that time he still was doing things with local rhythm sections when he would go on the road some. He didn’t seem able to always have those guys with him when he traveled. So he was hoping to get a band together, I think.

TP: What were your impressions about him before knowing him and meeting him?

COOLMAN: I first heard Moody, believe it or not, after I had finished college and was living in Chicago in the ’70s. He played on a television show on a PBS station. The show was Dizzy, Bags, Al Haig, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, Sarah Vaughan…

TP: That has to have been in ’76, when Kenny Clarke came here, and played the Showcase with Al Haig.

COOLMAN: It probably was. I got wind of this show, and they wanted an audience, and you could get free tickets by calling or something, and I did that. I went down and heard Moody for the first time. I was amazed by how fluent he was. I remember how easy he made everything seem. It seemed like he had no problem playing anything he wanted. And of course, I associated him then with those other players, because I didn’t know if he had a band or who he was working with, but I figured, “Gee, if he’s with these people, he must be that great.” But besides that, besides having a great respect for his playing, I didn’t have any lasting impressions. I never got to meet him. I heard him play in clubs a couple of times around that time, too, but not as a bandleader. I always heard him in these all-star things. I think Joe Segal would have him come for what he called “Charlie Parker Month”. I knew he was a great player, but besides that I had no real impressions.

TP: So you’ve been with him straight through those 15-16 years as his bassist of choice.

COOLMAN: I think so, yes.

TP: What has it done for your playing, playing with Moody?

COOLMAN: The main thing is that Moody is so interested in music, in the learning process as well as playing, that he has always encouraged me to really play a lot, and leaves a lot of open space for the rhythm section to solo in, and he’s very encouraging to have you develop and do what you do. I think part of it is because he’s just really generous; that’s part of it. And the other part is because he really wants to learn from the people he’s around. It’s very unusual, I find, that he’s so curious as to what other people are doing. It probably serves two purposes. One is that he wants you to feel like you can express yourself, but he also wants to learn what you’re doing. He’s always looking for things to use as raw materials for things he wants to develop. So he’s extremely curious about music.

TP: So he’s giving you a lot of space to just go where you will as long as it’s within the context of what he’s going.

COOLMAN: Yes. Not just that, but he’s just been real encouraging. He’s a very positive, nurturing, encouraging person. I guess a bandleader is not obliged to be that way and not obliged to have you develop your own voice. If you’re serving the music the way the bandleader wants, and if that doesn’t mean you’re developing as a player…if you’re serving his needs, that’s enough.

TP: How do you see Moody’s playing in these all-star situations vis-a-vis what he does in the band?

COOLMAN: That’s a good question. I would say that when he plays in a band, with people that he’s more familiar with, his playing is a bit more exploratory and a little bit more searching, where he’s working out ideas. I think when he plays in these all-star things, he pretty much… I don’t know if the word is “conservative,” but he plays…

TP: More of a recital maybe.

COOLMAN: Yeah, a little bit. More like he knows…he’s fully in command of what he’s doing, and he’s not really searching so much as he’s just establishing his voice — that sort of thing.

TP: Well, he made a distinction, even in the band, between the things he does that are recitals, more or less like “Moody’s Mood” or “Pennies From Heaven,” and playing.

COOLMAN: Oh yes.

TP: He was very clear about it. You can see it even in his comments. His account of how he met Dizzy, which obviously he’s had to tell people 8 million times, is almost word-for-word exactly the same in the Dizzy Gillespie autobiography as what he told me. It’s really interesting. And he tells the story so well. When you hear him tell these jokes, you’ve heard him say it… You hear them all the time. I’ve heard them before, and I still laugh at them. Like the Joe Frazier…

COOLMAN: Yeah-yeah. [LAUGHS]

TP: I mean, he has such incredible timing.

COOLMAN: I think all that stuff, the humor and even “Moody’s Mood For Love’ and all this stuff which is part of what I guess you might call his routine, in some way I’ve always thought that that was patterned after his years in Vegas, that somehow the idea of music being entertaining and being a show that has sort of a theme… Somehow I think he’s incorporated that as a bandleader. It works for him in clubs, because I think it helps him reach the less initiated. That’s the thing about working with him that’s kind of interesting, that at any club on any given night you have aficionados and you have virgins! He has a way of reaching everybody. Because the routine has some sort of universal appeal, I think. Then the other, more venturesome side of his playing is going to appeal… If Jimmy Heath is in the audience, he knows that he’s going to hear something he hasn’t heard before, somewhere, if he hangs with it.

It’s a very subtle thing. A lot of people have said to me that they’ve noticed over the years that he plays a lot of the same repertoire and tells some of the same jokes and this-that-and-the-other, and “don’t you get tired of that?” Well, not really. Moody pointed out to me long ago that if it wasn’t for “Moody’s Mood For Love,” maybe he wouldn’t be working today. So his attitude is very pragmatic. I’ve never felt once that he did that with any sense of regret or boredom or resignation or anything. He just views it as part of keeping working.

TP: Well, it seems also, apart from Vegas, Dizzy Gillespie had a lot of routines as well, and I think his ability to blend the two things is why he was so successful. So I’m sure he learned that from Dizzy.

COOLMAN: Yes. There’s no question that the whole humor angle and the sort of clowning-around and all that came from Dizzy, without a doubt. And yet, I think that it did… It’s all part of what makes the thing work. Actually, I think if Moody just played, if you want to call it just a strict set of like art music, then that, too, would mean the audience is just artists, and that would be very appealing on a certain level. But he is very sensitive about the fact that he wants to play for the public. He is just as eager to play for the guy next door as he is for, say, George Coleman. I’ve always admired that about him. There’s something very non-condescending about that approach to performing.

TP: You’re a music educator, and I’d like you to put on that cap for a second and talk about him as a tenor player, the things he does as particularly as a tenor saxophonist that distinguish him among the universe of tenor saxophonists.

COOLMAN: The answer is real simple, and it’s an answer I don’t think anyone would give you. I really believe people are sleeping on this about Moody! But despite the many things he does just as a player, the thing that I think is his strongest trait is his sense of time and his pulse. I mean, I put him up with Sonny Rollins and all those people as far as how he plays time and how he swings. What’s interesting is that that has nothing to do with the notes he plays. The music students come down, or his peers come down with their little notebooks, writing down patterns that he’s playing. They’re missing the boat. The boat is how he plays time.

Now, having said that, the thing I love about his playing, even from an academic point of view, is it’s a beautiful sort of chronology of tenor saxophone vocabulary that goes back to Coleman Hawkins, and it’s thoroughly, at the same time, contemporary. So his playing is well-versed in the whole bebop language, but it incorporates post-’60s language. So he is way into what we call altered scales, different kinds of harmonic devices, use of fourths, use of pentatonics, use of compound scales, bitonals. So in other words, every so-called advanced harmonic device, he’s aware of them. He has them in his ear and he can play them. But at the same time, if you want to play a blues in B-flat, he can play the traditional vocabulary as well.

TP: Do you feel he is able to shape the advanced devices into a melodic type of framework, or is it more academic?

COOLMAN: That’s a good question. I think the answer ultimately is yes. But part of that has to do with his stage of development, with a particular sound. Sometimes he’ll hear somebody play something, and he’ll figure out theoretically what’s going on. He’s actually asked me, “Write out the scale that’s the basis of that. What is that scale called?” Then I’ll hear him practicing that or practicing patterns based on that scale, and even bring them to the gig that way, and play a more patterned, academic approach to it initially. But I hear that sort of morph over the nights into something that becomes very strongly melodic actually, and eventually evolves away from the mechanical toward the more artful. At heart, he’s a singer, really. So he can’t lay with material that’s not song-like for very long.

TP: He’s a helluva singer.

COOLMAN: Yeah! And I think ultimately that’s where he’s at as a tenor player, is he just wants to be a singer of melodies. So yeah, on any given night you’ll come down, and I think you’ll hear him play very melodic things, and then in other cases I think you’ll hear him play very patterned…quite frankly, it almost sounds like he’s practicing at times. But he’s working something out. That’s another interesting thing about him, now that I think about it, is that very few artists are very willing to do that. They’re only willing to play things that they know sound good. They don’t want to run the risk of not sounding good. There are nights when Moody will play certain tunes or work on certain material that he doesn’t have together. On the bandstand he’ll do it. Then he’ll come up to me later and say, “Man, I just don’t have that together yet, man. I have to practice that, because that’s not working the way I want it to. But there’s a sound in there. There’s something in there, and I know I can get to it. I’ve always been inspired by that, because he’s been playing seriously since he was about 16. So after 50 or 60 years of playing, this guy wants to learn something and he wants to work it out. That’s unbelievable.

TP: He says that’s what keeps him going.

COOLMAN: I believe that. I know that. It’s the quest. It’s the curiosity. And he’s always looking for another way to say something. So it’s inspiring, really.

TP: I went to hear you at Iridium the night of the Charlie Parker birthday. He starts off with “Groovin’ High,” and it’s one of the most amazing solos you’ve ever heard, he’s like shouting on the most extreme intervals, so much dynamics, then all of a sudden it’s “Moody’s Mood,” and then he plays “Confirmation” on flute for 15 minutes. I just said, “Goodness, I’m glad I heard ‘Groovin’ High.” Which is what you were saying.

COOLMAN: Yeah. But I think in common parlance, he wears his heart on his sleeve, and he really plays the way he feels. If he’s struggling with music, he’s not afraid to show it. Somehow, I think he wins people’s sympathies by the fact that in every set they’re going to hear a “Groovin’ High” moment. [LAUGHS] So people cut him a wide berth, and say the reason he’s so great is because he has a work shit out.

TP: With the band, is he a real taskmaster? Is he very open? It doesn’t sound like anything is very heavily arranged.

COOLMAN: Well, in 16 years or so of being with him, I can’t remember… I think we may have had one or two rehearsals.

TP: Does he give you charts?

COOLMAN: On occasion. Over the years, for some recordings, he’s had people write arrangements on various things. And sometimes he’ll want to pull those out and revisit them. Then there will be charts. Even at that, now that I’m thinking about it, most of the charts he has…

TP: Are pretty schematic?

COOLMAN: Yeah. Of late, we haven’t been dealing with them very much. But occasionally we’ll pull them out and revisit them for one reason or another. But it’s not really… No, I’d say that “taskmaster” is not one word that comes to mind when you think about him. He really is as interested in people’s input as he is like having something go a certain way. So he’s very open, and he seeks information and input all the time.

TP: He has a real reverence for his past, but he seems totally non-nostalgic for it.

COOLMAN: Well, more than not-nostalgic. He has a morbid fear of sounding old or old-fashioned. It’s beyond not-nostalgic. But you know what? He’s always aware of his musical surroundings, too. So when he’s with an all-star thing… Let’s say he’s up there playing with the Golden Men of Jazz or whatever he’s doing. He’s always aware of his surroundings, and he’s aware of what will fit in a certain context.

TP: Because he’s pragmatic

COOLMAN: Yeah. But basically, he doesn’t want to sound old. He wants to sound like he’s growing and that he’s developing new vocabulary.

TP: Right up until the end, that’s what he’ll be doing.

COOLMAN: Oh yeah. No question in my mind. I think that the last solo he ever plays will have as many surprises in it as the first one does. Because he’s not satisfied with status quo and he’s not interested in looking back. I remember one night on the bandstand, we were playing a slow blues or something, and the drummer started playing a backbeat, and he made him stop doing that. After the set he explained that the backbeat makes him feel like it’s old and made him feel like it’s 1952 again. He said, “I just don’t want to go back there.” He has certain idiosyncracies, and certain musical devices don’t appeal to him. In this case, I think it reminds him of another era, and he doesn’t want to be associated with it. Which is interesting. On certain tunes, he will play bebop-oriented, real inside material. But he does it in such a fresh fashion that he doesn’t sound old doing it. He’s preoccupied with sounding “modern,” whatever that means.

TP: I think as a subtext, he was very seared by the racial climate of that time. That had a lasting impact on him. He keeps referring to being in Greensboro and the German POWs being able to eat in the restaurant and he couldn’t, then coming back here and the various bullshit on the road. So I think a lot of that attitude may have its root in that situation, associating the music of the time with the physical and cultural environment of the time.

COOLMAN: Could be.

* * *

KIBWE: I’m 47 now. I met Moody when I was 18, when he was playing with Eddie Jefferson, and we’ve been friends since then. Every time I see him, he gives me things. In July we played together in a big band Don Braden had in Litchfield, Connecticut. I was sitting next to Moody, who was special soloist. Paquito was playing lead alto and clarinet, I was playing second alto, Moody was to my right, Paquito to my left, and Slide Hampton was right behind me on the trombone. That was another time when he came up and said, “Check this out on ‘Giant Steps.'” He’s so open! I began working on that in July.

TP: So he’s always sharing information.

KIBWE: Always! He’s a true master. To give you an example: He got to the gig a half-hour before we hit because of the transportation screwup, and he didn’t make any rehearsal. So he was like, “Man, I want to look at the music.” I said, “Oh, Moody, there ain’t nothin’ but some whole notes and half-notes.” Yeah, right! So we get on the gig, and I think the second tune was a Braden original, a swingin’ tune, a killin’ tune… It was based on a minor blues, but it had some definite alternate changes up in there, and it was an extended bridge… It was a very involved piece. I’ll put it to you this way. It’s not a piece of music that if somebody played it for me once and asked me to solo without looking at the changes I could do it. I’d have to look at the changes. So Braden wanted Moody to solo on it, but he was a little apprehensive, because Moody hadn’t even looked at it. First Braden said, “Okay, Moody, you take the first solo.” Then he said, “No, you’d better wait. Let the piano solo, then so-and-so, and then you solo.” Moody said, “Okay, whatever, I’ll try my best.” Then we play. Now, he hasn’t looked at the changes. He just started counting it off. Now, he’s playing his part. He ain’t got time to look at no changes because he’s got to get to the ensemble part. Then we get to the solo, and for some reason Braden pointed to him first. And he stood up and played and never looked at the music. I was like, “Oh, shit!” So I was sitting next to him, you know… Actually, he was so close to me, he was playing, and literally his tenor was touching my shoulder. I said, “Great. I’m just going to absorb all of this shit.” But he killed it!

TP: I think the most interesting thing is that he’s 75 years old, and he has this perpetual curiosity.

KIBWE: Oh, it’s incredible. He was just telling me, “Pick up this book.” He had a book based on Coltrane’s harmonic progression on “Giant Steps.” But when I first met Moody, he showed me stuff on flute. He gave me some advice. You know what he told me? He said, “Man, I want you to become a Jehovah Witness and I want you to join the Navy Band.” I was 18. That sounded like the most crazy thing for me to do. But years later, as I was thinking about it, I thought logically it made sense. He looked at it from the point of view, you know, he didn’t want to see me out there struggling for a living. He figured if I joined a Navy band, after 20 years in the Navy you can retire and you have a pension and you can do your thing. I asked him about why did he want me to join the Jehovah’s Witness. He said, well, because one time he was in New York, and this guy was trying to rob him, and had a gun or something and wanted to shoot him or whatever went down. But he just said, “Jehovah,” and the guy just walked away and didn’t mess with him. I thought that was really heavy.

TP: If you were going to talk about him analytically, his role in the music, the dynamics of his style as a saxophonist and on the different instruments.

KIBWE: The first thing that comes to mind is that he was one of the first doublers who stood out in my mind — cats that played tenor, alto, flute extremely well. What also sticks out is that he was probably the first saxophone player with his own voice coming out of the Bird era. If I had to sit down and analyze it, I could say it in musical terms. But just his sound and hi conception of how he soloed and how he played his instrument… He had his own voice. He didn’t sound like Bird. Whereas when I heard Stitt, even though Stitt said he didn’t study Bird, but he sounded to me like Bird a lot. Cannonball in the beginning, even Eric Dolphy for that matter… All those cats in the beginning sounded a lot like Bird. But Moody didn’t sound like Bird to me.

TP: But he still had the modern vocabulary.

KIBWE: Oh yeah, he always had a modern vocabulary. But he didn’t have a Bird sound. I mean, all the other cats, Charles McPherson, Jackie McLean, even Jimmy Heath, had that Bird vibe. But Moody was the first cat for me who didn’t have the Bird vibe.

TP: Maybe it’s because he started playing alto before he heard Bird, and then when Bird came along he was playing tenor.

KIBWE: Then he played flute! I have books of his solos, and I’ve been studying his shit for years. Moody has some very heavy tritone things happening in solos that I’ve been checking out. He does a lot of tritone substitutions. He does a lot of stuff going in and out of the chord. Like, there might be a C-Major-VII, but he’ll be F#. But the way he resolves that shit is so slick. His vocabulary is so immense musically. Like on his solo of “Bebop” he plays “Giant Steps.” Now, the A-section of “Bebop” is a vamp on F-minor. He was able to put “Giant Steps” through that shit! He modulated but it fit. Yeah, he’s… Oh, man, Moody! No, he’s bad. As opposed to Benny, every phrase of Moody is an exercise. Benny’s is connected… Moody is connected, too. But you can take a solo and take 2 bars of this… Like, I’ve been taking two bars of his solos, and I have an exercise.

TP: Does that make his playing sometimes overly technical, or is the warmth always there?

KIBWE: No, I’m not trying to say it makes it overly technical. His stuff is so deep that you can take segments of his playing and turn it into an etude, turn it into an exercise to where you can study that and modulate it and extract from it and play it across changes, and utilize it, interpret it that way. That “Bebop” that I have, I’ve gotten maybe 10 to 12 phrases out of that solo that I can use just as technical exercises to help me develop my facility. When I hear a cat play something like that, that I like, I’ll take it through the keys, and then maybe add a note here or there to personalize it.

* * *

TP: How did the collaboration happen? Was it just a record label project that turned out well and so you did subsequent hits?

TURNER: Yes, that’s exactly it.

TP: How did you prepare for playing with Moody? It wasn’t necessarily the most obvious pairing on the surface.

TURNER: That’s true. Well, there were supposed to be some other saxophone players on the date, and they fell through, so it was just me. Everyone brought in tunes they wanted to play.

TP: What were your impressions of Moody before going in there?

TURNER: I had studied a little bit of him, but not that much. I would say that early on I did. In high school I was into his playing, especially some early recordings when he was in France. I learned quite a bit from those recordings. There was something about his tone quality which I haven’t heard in other saxophone players in that period, partially because at that time he was playing…I guess he always did play with rubber mouthpieces. So it had that kind of a Lester Young quality, though Lester didn’t always play with rubber mouthpieces, but it had that kind of thing, whereas a lot of other tenor players (except for Stan Getz) who were playing bebop-oriented music have… It’s not as dark of a sound, a warm, woody… That’s why I gravitated to it, because that’s a lot of what I like. Warm and woody but with still a strong core. That and also he had that… The distinction, if you want to make it, between the bebop players and the post-bebop players… He was in that camp to me, the bebop camp, of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and those people, more clearly towards that sound, and one of the only tenor players that I know of. Because the others I usually hear after that in vocabulary and phrasing and sound and in the way he improvisers. In other words, not quite so codified yet, as opposed to these horn players.

TP: In working with him, you addressed quite a span of vocabulary. It was very collaborative, and he didn’t particularly play the star on it. How was it working with him in the studio? How was he with you?

TURNER: He was very amenable, amiable, straightforward, and ready to get down to business.

TP: And how would you describe his style within the contemporary framework?

TURNER: It’s great, because he’s still like really-really playing, to me. And he’s definitely always trying to… He’s really curious. He has that curiosity, and it’s in his playing, and he’s always trying to keep it fresh for himself.

TP: People who work with him say he’s always finding information, bringing people books… This incessant quest.

TURNER: Exactly.

TP: Was he very interactive with you?

TURNER: Somewhat. Yes and no. A little bit of that and a little bit of not. I wasn’t sure how much he was into that. Because when it went there, he didn’t seem to be that into it, at least not the way I was doing it.

TP: Were his solos from night to night on the same material different?

TURNER: Definitely.

TP: So it wasn’t like a recital. It was art music.

TURNER: No, he’s definitely improvising on the same songs.

For Andy Gonzalez’ 63rd Birthday, an Unedited Blindfold Test from 2000, a WKCR Interview From 2006, a Downbeat piece from 2016 about the recording “Entre Colegas”, and Three WKCR Musician Shows from 1990, 1991 and 1993

Best of birthdays to the master bassist Andy Gonzalez, who turns 63 today. A co-founder of the Fort Apache Band with his older brother, Jerry Gonzalez, Gonzalez’ c.v. includes protracted gigs with Dizzy Gillespie, Eddie Palmieri and Manny Oquendo’s Libre. His influence is palpable on such next-generation swing-to-clave bassists as — among many others — Avishai Cohen and Hans Glawischnig. I had the opportunity to interact with and be educated by Andy at least a half-dozen times during my years on WKCR, particularly on such subjects as Cachao and Arsenio Rodriguez, upon whom he would expound with great erudition. I’ll have to transcribe those cassettes one of these days. Meanwhile, here are the proceedings of a DownBeat Blindfold Test that Andy did with me around 2000, and a WKCR interview from 2006, when the Fort Apache Band had just released their excellent CD, Rumba Buhaina. [In 2020 I’ve appended — at the bottom of the post — the transcript of three  WKCR Musician Shows that I did with Andy in 1990, 1991, and 1993.]

Andy Gonzalez Blindfold Test:

1.    Ray Brown, “St. Louis Blues” (feat. Ahmad Jamal, p., Lewis Nash, d), “SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS…ARE THE PIANO PLAYERS” (Telarc, 1995) (5 stars)

Well, it’s somebody like Ray Brown or somebody that LOVES Ray Brown on bass.  I hear a lot of Ray Brownish things. [AFTER] [Why did it take you so long?] I had to hear more of him.  At first I thought it was somebody younger, but then I started listening to what he was playing and I said, “Wait a second.”  This is somebody who has some depth to his musical history just by what he played and how he played it.  It had to be somebody like Ray Brown.  I’m not sure of the piano player, though. [Any guesses?] Mmm… That’s not Benny Green, is it?  It could be Oscar. [It’s the same generation.] Oh yeah?  [AFTER] I didn’t hear much of the trademark Ahmad Jamal things.  That was quite nice.  It gets 5 stars out of me.  Ray Brown is one of my heroes.  Of the bass players from his generation, like Oscar Pettiford and Mingus… I thought he’s the one that… There’s Blanton in his playing, but I think he took Blanton beyond Blanton.  Mingus I thought sort of took it the other way, and he used a lot more physical kinds of things about the bass, like imitating growls and doing wilder things, where I think maybe Ray Brown is more blues-based.  There’s a lot of blues in his playing.  Not that Mingus isn’t, but… And Pettiford was… It’s like three distinct voices to come out of the same era, and to play with a lot of the same people in the Bebop era and stuff like that.  But very distinct voices, all three of them.  But those are the same generation.

2.    Sam Jones, “O.P.” (Israel Crosby, bass; Joe Zawinul, piano; Vernell Fournier, drums), DOWN HOME (Riverside, 1962/1995) (4 stars)

I’m going to take a stab and say it was Doug Watkins playing cello.  No?  He did do a cello record. [This is someone who is a contemporary of Doug Watkins who did…] Sam Jones?  That was the second person I was going to shoot for.  Because I realized he had done a cello record way back, but I can’t remember the circumstances.  I only managed to cop a couple of Sam Jones records, especially on Riverside — those were a little harder to find.  For some reason it made me think of the Doug Watkins record.  I think Yusef Lateef is playing on it.  When I heard the flute I thought maybe it might be him. [Any idea who’s playing bass and drums?] That wasn’t Jimmy Cobb?  Something made me think it was Jimmy Cobb, the way he was riding the cymbal. [AFTER] You know, Israel Crosby is credited with taking one of the first solos on bass on record, “Blues For Israel,” with Gene Krupa.  I mean, an actual bass solo.  It’s a whole thing on the bass.  This is the early ’30s.  The pianist was Zawinul?  Forget it.  I would have never guessed that.  I thought the piece was nice.  It was kind of bouncy and airy.  I thought Sam Jones was very articulate on the cello and very tasty.  As a matter of fact, I never heard him take any bass solos that sounded slick, to tell you the truth! — from what I’ve heard of Sam Jones.  That was excellent cello playing, just so far as getting across the cello.  I’m wondering whether he used the cello the way it’s supposed to be tuned, in fifths, or the way Ray Brown did and some other cello cats did was retune the instrument in fourths to make it like a bass and easier to play.  Now, that might be the case, because he seemed to get around the instrument pretty good.  Playing in fifths takes a little bit more knowledge of how to get around the strings.  So that’s an interesting question to find out.  From what I heard, it sounded like it was tuned in fourths.  Four stars, for Sam Jones especially.

3.    Brian Lynch, “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face,” SPHERES OF INFLUENCE (Sharp-9, 1997) (5 stars) (John Benitez, bass; Jeff Watts, drums; Milton Cardona, congas; David Kikoski, piano; Donald Harrison, alto saxophone)

Wow!  I’ve grown accustomed to her space face.  That was a beautiful arrangement, man.  It was gorgeous.  It sounds like it was a trumpet player’s record, because he’s got the lead — and a big fat tone.  I’m trying to think of who it could be.  The drummer was on it with the Latin stuff.  He was playing the right kind of beat.  It wasn’t clave!  And the conga player was holding his own.  He’s just an adornment more than anything else.  In the seconds where there was Latin rhythm, he played well.  The bass player did okay.  Gee whiz.  Fat tone on a trumpet is what was getting to me.  I was trying to think who has a fat tone on a trumpet.  It doesn’t sound too dated.  So let me see, who has a fat tone on trumpet these days?  Terence Blanchard has a fairly fat sound.  So does Nicholas Payton.  They have kind of fat tones on the trumpet these days. [What trumpet player might think of that type of arrangement?] Now, that’s a good question, because there was a lot of depth to that arrangement.  It stretched the tune out, it stretched out the phrasing of it, and also took it in different places.  It gets five stars from me, because it was an original and unusual treatment of the song.  Because that’s not an easy song to… It’s a pretty song.  Not too many people, except for someone like maybe Sonny Rollins, have attempted to play that tune.  And then I thought it was nice having the tuba in the orchestration.  That was really pretty. [AFTER] That was Brian Lynch?  No kidding!  I didn’t even think about that.  Excellent.  I’m surprised I didn’t recognize… Well, John Benitez didn’t give anything that I could recognize him on.  Milton, well, that I could hear.  It was very nice.  I enjoyed that.

4.    George Mraz, “Star-Crossed Lovers” (Renee Rosnes, piano), DUKE’S PLACE (Milestone, 1999) (5 stars)

I sort of wish that the bass player would have bowed the melody at the end again, because he played it so beautifully at the beginning.  Good bowing technique is like studying a whole other instrument.  And he had superb control of that bow.  I mean, he really sang that melody superbly, man.  Right there that’s five stars for me, because I’m quite a fan of good bowing.  I wish I could bow that well!  But like I said, that’s a whole study in itself.  It’s one thing to pluck strings and use your hands to get tone and sound, but to use the bow and get the vibrations that the bow makes, and use your hands in that sense, it’s a whole different way of playing the instrument.  Whoever that was playing the bass, I really couldn’t tell you, but I thought that he has an excellent bowing technique. [AFTER] I figured as much.  That’s bounce, man.  He’s got beautiful, beautiful bowing technique.  It bounces!  Gorgeous bowing.

5.    Ornette Coleman, “Women Of The Veil,” THREE WOMEN (Harmolodic, 1996) (Charnett Moffett, bass; Geri Allen, piano; Denardo Coleman, drums) (3½ stars)

Oh, shades of Ornette!  I don’t think it was Ornette, but it was quite a bit of Ornettethology!  Even the trumpet player sounded like Ornette!  I don’t know who it was, but it sure sounded like an Ornetteish kind of thing.  I wasn’t that thrilled with it.  It was all right.  The bass player sure didn’t sound like no Charlie Haden, that’s for sure. [AFTER] It was Ornette?  Charnett Moffett was playing the bass?  This was recent?  Who was playing the trumpet? [Ornette.] Ah, so I was right about that.  The piano is what threw me.  I’m not used to Ornette with a piano player.  3½ stars for that.  I’ve heard Ornette play with more… I like Ornette when there’s more emotion in his playing.  Remember the Town Hall concert, “Sadness,” things like that?  That really moves me.  And the original quartet moves me a lot, with Charlie Haden, Blackwell and Don Cherry.  All that moved me quite a bit.  And Ornette over the years, man… I always dug Ornette.  I like him best in smaller situations, not with all the trappings.  I don’t like Ornette with a piano player.  I like him without piano.

6.    Ron Carter, “Samba De Orfeu,” ORFEU (Blue Note, 1999) (5 stars) (Bill Frisell, guitar; Stephen Scott, piano; Payton Crossley, drums; Steve Kroon, percussion)

It was nice to hear a bass guitar “surdo” and “casaba.”  To me I would have dug it if they had added a tambourine.  That would have really put the rhythm section a little stronger Brazilian.  But they left the space open, which is okay.  The guitar player wasn’t Brazilian; that’s for sure.  And the bass player sounded like Ron Carter to me. [AFTER] Of course!  Ron Carter, one thing, he’s got a great sense of humor.  Throughout that solo, he’s a shameless quoter, a quoter of obscure melodies!  I get a kick out of it.  I mean, that’s like… Unless you know these melodies, you just… He quoted really obscure songs, like “Popeye, The Sailor Man” and “I Want To Wash that Rain Right Out of My Hair.”  You have to know a lot of music to be able to quote these things, and he quoted quite a few different little tiny pieces of melodies from all kinds of things in his solo.  It was nice.  Five stars.  Ron Carter is one of my heroes.  I grew up listening to him, and I know him a bit, and he’s quite a nice man.  One thing I’ve got to say is that I’ve learned a lot from listening to Ron Carter over the years, especially when he was with Miles.  His perception of how to play bass in a rhythm section for that band was unique, and it really influenced me a lot.  Even playing Latin Jazz it influenced me a lot, because just the kind of thing that they had going as the quintet with Miles, this kind of ESP thing that they had going, is something that most bands strive for — that kind of empathy and mind-reading between the members of a band.  That’s something that they brought to a high art.  And Ron was very instrumental in making a lot of that happen.  I’ll always love him for that, that’s for sure.  So he gets my five stars.

7.    Dave Holland, “Jugglers Parade,” PRIME DIRECTIVE (ECM, 1999) (3½ stars)

I’m going to take a wild stab?  Is that Avishai?  He likes things that have odd meters.  Is it a bass player’s album?  Is it Santi?  I remember him writing things that sound like this.  Wow.  So far I made two guess, and both of them were wrong.  I’m not that big a fan of odd meter kind of things.  But it was put together pretty nicely, and if the bass player composed this… Most bass players make good composers, just because of the fact that they always provided the bottom of things, the bottom of the harmonies, and sometimes the bottom of just rhythm and melody.  So I am pretty happy when I hear bass players’ compositions and arrangements, because it’s like they have a different perspective on things and they hear things different.  Most bass players who I know who write, it’s usually very interesting.  And this was no exception.  It was interesting.  But like I said, I’m not a big fan of odd meter things.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s because I’ve got the clave ingrained in me to the point where it’s like… And also, I grew up in the era of real hardbop-swing kind of things, so anything that has odd meters isn’t… It’s just a preference of mine.  I’m not that particularly fond of them.  I would give it 3½ stars.  So who was it? [AFTER] That was Dave Holland?!  I would have never recognized him.  I would never have thought that it was Dave Holland.  It didn’t sound like the kind of music that he used to play before.  There’s something to be said for bass players that write.  Because like I said, they’re coming from a another perspective.

8.    Richard Bona, “Konda Djanea,” SCENES FROM MY LIFE (Columbia, 1999). (5 stars) (Michael Brecker, tenor sax)

That was very nice, man.  Richard Bona.  I met him a couple of years ago.  I think he was touring with Zawinul.  We just ran into each other on the road.  But that was lovely.  You can hear the influence of the African string instrument called the kora, which is a harp kind of instrument.  I can hear that influence in how he approaches the bass.  He’s playing it almost like a guitar, but playing it like a kora.  Just the figures that he’s playing, it sounds like if he was strumming on a kora.  It’s very pretty.  Five stars.

9.    John Patitucci, “King Kong,” IMPRINT (Concord, 1999) (4 stars) (Danilo Perez, piano; Horacio ‘El Negro’ Hernandez, drums; Giovanni Hidalgo, percussion)

Well, I recognized a couple of people in there.  I think that was El Negro playing the traps, and it could have been Giovanni playing the congas.  It could have been.  Those are my cohorts, man.  I know those guys intimately.  Is this Patitucci?  I had a feeling it was him, because I heard he had done something with the Latin thing.  He was cool.  Was this his tune?  The piano player sounded a little familiar, too, but I wasn’t positive.  I was thinking that it might be Danilo.  What made me think it was Patitucci was when it got into the groove part, he was sticking to a pretty generic kind of groove thing.  Unless you’re really sure of the clave and how to mess with it, I would imagine that’s what you would do just to… Because Negro and Giovanni can get very intricate on you, and if you’re not dead-sure where you are, they can throw you off in a minute.  It’s like the clave thing with them is that they know that so intimately.  I’ve played with them so much that I know what they’re about.  Sometimes it’s better to be safe and stick to what you know you can do within that framework.  So it was cool.  The saxophone player I don’t know.  It sounded like a Michael Brecker or someone like that, but I’m not sure.  Chris Potter?  Okay.  There was something in his tone that reminded me of Michael.  But I guess that got a four out of me.

10.    Eddie Gomez, “Footprints,” DEDICATION (Evidence, 1998). (3½ stars)

Mmm, “Footprints.”  That tune, ever since it came out, it’s been a favorite of all us musicians.  Especially when you’re in school and stuff, everybody… It’s easy to play and easy to jam on.  I was just about going to high school when that came out.  I don’t really have a clue.  3½ stars.  The bass player to me sounded like somebody like Alex Blake or someone like that.  Because Alex Blake has that kind of facility; he likes to do those kind of crazy runs and stuff.  Oh, it’s not?  I figured as much.  I just thought of him because I ran into him the other day and I hadn’t seen him for a while.  [The bass player and you have the same alma mater.] Music and Art?  He must have graduated way after me, though.  Before me?  Really.  Hmm!  I know Eddie Gomez went to Music & Art? [That’s him.] Really?  That doesn’t sound like the Eddie Gomez I remember.  It’s recent, huh?  I’m a lot closer to the Eddie Gomez of Bill Evans days, and he didn’t play like this.  He played different.  Eddie was an amazing, amazing musician, and he got along so well with Bill.  They were really mind-reading each other.  It’s sort of like the same thing that happened when Scott LaFaro was in the trio.  I got hip to Scott LaFaro maybe four or five years after he passed.  He passed in ’61.  I got hip to him early on because when I was 14 I was studying with Steve Swallow.  I was in junior high school.  He was the first one to turn me on to Scotty.  Then I used to go and check out Bill Evans at the Vanguard a lot, and Eddie Gomez was playing the bass there.  So I was just amazed at the facility that Eddie Gomez had at the time.  Because he didn’t quite do what Scotty was doing.  Scotty liked to mess with counterpoint and things like that a lot more.  But Eddie was all over the instrument, which was amazing to me.  I’m surprised I didn’t recognize him.  I would usually recognize Eddie Gomez, because he’s a guy I’ve been following since I was a teenager.  3½ because as many times as I’ve played “Footprints,” there’s a lot more things that you can say with it than was said there.

11.    Roy Haynes, “Trinkle Tinkle,” TE VOU! (Dreyfus, 1994) (feat. Christian McBride) (3½ stars)

It’s nice to hear pretty much the arrangement the way that Monk and the sax used to play the melody.  The only thing, after a while that three note figure at the end -DINH-DUHT-DAH gets annoying.  Other than that I liked it, but I didn’t care for too much, and to hear it through all the solos was a pain in the ass after a while.  I would have preferred leaving it out and just play it, because it doesn’t do anything.  It sounds like it was a novelty effect more than anything else.  The drummer sounded like someone like Tain.  I didn’t think it was, but it sounded like someone who can take it a little out like Tain can.  But I couldn’t tell you who the cats were. [AFTER] It was Roy Haynes’ record?  I’m surprised why he kept that figure, man.  It sounds annoying.  Is the bass player Ed Howard?  Christian?  I thought it was him while he was playing, but I just didn’t think he did anything… And it didn’t sound like Roy Haynes either to me.  Is it a new record?  Unusual.  Like I said, it was pretty much in the Monk tradition.  I would left out that BINH-BAHT-BAM.  I’ll give 3½ because it was well played.  Who was the alto player?  Donald Harrison!  He played well.  I wouldn’t have recognized Roy Haynes.  It didn’t sound like him.  I heard him the last time a couple of years ago, and he’s always been Mister Taste.  And it was tasteful…except for that.  I don’t mind if an effect really adds something to the music, but that didn’t really add anything to Monk.

12.    McCoy Tyner, “I Want To Tell You ‘Bout That,” McCOY TYNER WITH STANLEY CLARKE AND AL FOSTER (Telarc, 2000) (3½ stars)

I knew it was McCoy from the getgo, because it’s unmistakable, just his tone, his touch, and the kind of things that he plays.  Although I felt it was kind of like… It’s like when you’re trying to get like a funk kind of thing going, you know, almost making an attempt to get like some radio play.  The bass player wasn’t Avery?  I don’t know who it was. [Someone you might think on electric.] Stanley Clarke?  Yeah?  He did play a figure that did make me think it was Stanley Clarke.  But I said, “Mmm, let me see…”  Who was the drummer?  Al Foster?  I sort of came up at the same time as Stanley Clarke, and I’ve been watching and listening to him since the early days when he was with Chick.  He’s a fine bass player, man.  He’s been moving around in different worlds and playing a lot of different kinds of music, but I have deep respect for him as a bass player.  He’s a great bass player.  I don’t think this is one of McCoy’s better efforts.  Just for playing sake, I’ll give it 3½ stars.

13.  Avishai Cohen, “The Gift, DEVOTION (Stretch, 1998) (3 stars)

I don’t know if I could tell you who that is.  It wasn’t exactly a toe-tapper.  The soprano had a dark kind of sound.  That’s an unusual duo, the trombone and soprano.  It’s not something you hear often.  I’m at a loss.  3 stars. [AFTER] That was Avishai, huh?

14.    Red Garland Trio w/ Paul Chambers, “This Can’t Be Love,” IT’S A BLUE WORLD (Prestige, 1958/1999) (3 stars)

It sounded like a few people.  The first name that came to me was an odd name, Monty Alexander — which is weird.  But that’s the first name that popped into my head.  I heard flashes of Erroll Garner, I heard flashes of a lot of people in there.  I probably do know who it is.  Who was it? [AFTER] That didn’t sound like Paul Chambers?  You know what?  This must have been towards the end of his life.  That was ’58?  Paul Chambers articulates a lot better than that — for me.  I’ve heard plenty of Paul Chambers.  Maybe it was the rosin.  Because when you put a certain kind of rosin on the bow you get a certain sound, and different rosins give you a different… When you pull the bow across the string, it gives you a different… This was kind of a rough sound for Paul.  Paul usually gets a smoother attack sound on his bowing.  But I do know that it has to do with the kind of rosin that you use.  Some rosin makes the bow across the strings sound a little rough; it grabs the string a certain way so that the sound comes out rough.  There’s another rosin that the sound comes out a little smoother.  This sounded kind of rough to me.  Really.  Because Paul Chambers articulates a lot better on things I’ve heard him on before than on this particular piece.  From hearing Paul on his best records… This wasn’t his best.  It didn’t move me that much.  3 stars.

15.    Cachao, “El Son No A Muerto,” MASTER SESSIONS, VOL. 1 (Epic, 1994) (4 stars)

That was Cachao, and that was Nelson Gonzalez on the très, who learned to play the très in my house.  I brought home a très from Venezuela in 1970, and he was a frequent visitor to my house.  He was self-taught on guitar.  We started studying Arsenio Rodriguez records together, and he learned how to play the très in my house.  I’m the one who got him the gig with Cachao in the middle ’80s when he did his big concert at Hunter College.  I loaned him my bass and I was at most of the rehearsals, and I got Nelson involved in it.  Because they didn’t have a très player originally for the descarga section.  That’s my daddy, Cachao.  This particular tune was kind of subdued, there was not much happening for him.  The best way to catch Cachao sometimes is live.  I wish they would record him live.  This was part of the records that Emilio Estefan put out?  I don’t think he’s the best producer for that genre.  First of all, I didn’t like the balance of the sound.  It could have been a lot better.  I’ll give it 4 stars because I like Nelson’s playing on it.  Was that Paquito d’Rivera on clarinet and Nestor Torres on flute?  What about trumpet?  It wasn’t Chocolate.  It was?  That was a very subdued Chocolate.  It didn’t sound like him.  And his trademark notes that he likes to play aren’t there.  Something tells me there was maybe some weird chemistry going on in the studio.

* * *

Andy Gonzalez (WKCR–Feb. 23, 2006):

[MUSIC: “This Is For Albert” (Rumba Buhaina)]

AG:   We did a couple of albums where we had to find a way for Jerry to play the horn with Joe Ford, and after he’d state the line, he would take a solo and then jump on the drums. Because there was no overdubbing; this was recorded direct to two-track. That was interesting, to say the, to see him manage the jump back and forth.

TP:   It is one of the great sights in jazz to see him jump up from the conga drums after he’s been abusing his hands for 5-6 minutes, and immediately launch into an improvisation. Even more so when it’s a ballad

AG:   I don’t know how he does it. I like to play percussion instruments, too, but I will not play them because it makes my fingers stiff to play the bass. I don’t know how to he gets to manipulate his fingers that well right after playing hard congas, and pick up the phone and play.

TP:   He plays hard. You and your brother have been playing trumpet and bass and congas for close to 50 years…

AG:   A long time.  I’m 55, and I was 13 when we started to play music. A little more than 40 years.

TP: And you’ve often played in the same bands over the years. With Eddie Palmieri for several years, with Dizzy Gillespie briefly in the ‘60s, as well as the Apaches.

AG:   Jerry was also in the first band I ever recorded with, which was Monguito Santamaria, who was Mongo’s son. Rene McLean was in that band, and Jose Mangual, Jr., was in the band. Jerry was part of that band for a minute, too.

TP:   Let’s talk about the history of the Fort Apaches. Ten years ago, you were playing a lot around and New York and touring, but things changed, Jerry moved to Spain, and the opportunities to play are less than they had been.

AG:   Well, we have been playing some. Jerry would come in occasionally to do it, and there would be a tour set up, and some… The band has been working on and off. It’s maybe not as much as we could because of the distance between us. But we still get together enough. And it sounds like we’d never been apart, just because of the chemistry involved in the band.

TP:   It’s one of the innovative bands of late 20th century jazz, influential on two generations of musicians from South America, the Caribbean, Spain, who heard your ability to fuse Afro-Caribbean diasporic rhythms with jazz harmonies. It’s hard to say if anyone was the first to do anything, but recordings like Rumba Para Monk and things before that have had a tremendous influence on the way jazz sounds today. These ideas were exotic in 1988; now it’s the mainstream.

AG:   They were even more exotic in 1979.

TP:   There are a few streams to discuss. One of the history of the Fort Apache; the other is the present. Let’s stay with the present for the moment, and the new recording, Rumba Buhaina.

AG:   A lot of people don’t understand that “Buhaina” was Art Blakey’s Muslim name. In the late ‘40s, quite a few musicians in jazz were either converting to Islam or flirting with it. It’s just like jazz musicians are always the first to move to things that would probably help them get away from the American stereotype of what a musician is supposed or what a spiritual person is supposed to be like. So Art Blakey took the name “Buhaina.” I don’t know what it means, but all Art Blakey’s closest friends and associates would call him “Bu.”

TP:   I believe that the Jazz Messengers name came from that same origin. Unlike your exploration of the music of Thelonious Monk, Rumba Buhaina explores a number of composers, of tunes primarily from their classic period, say ‘58 to ‘65.

AG:   That was the music that influenced us a lot. We used to go hear Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in person, and that was one of the key groups of those years. Just to hear Art Blakey be as authoritative a drummer… He was an amazing teacher. He didn’t have to tell you anything. He showed you. You just listened to him play, and it was all there to hear. We learned a lot from listening to what he had to offer, and how a drummer is so much the accompanist, and how he sets the pattern, sets the standard for what is to happen in the music. That’s something that really stayed with most musicians who came up around that time. That’s why we always consider Art Blakey one of the true teachers of the music.

TP:   He was also a musician who distilled African musicians within a swing context on the drumkit, with cross-sticking figures and polyrhythmic patterns woven within his arrangements.

AG:   I thought Art Blakey had such a strong force, a force of nature that reminded me a lot of field recordings that I had of tribal music from different parts of Africa. You’d hear, say, a drummer who would be talking on the drum, and not only the pitch, the timbre of the instrument and the way certain instruments…you would communicate a message with that way of playing. I could feel that out of Art Blakey, too. There’s a certain force that’s coming out of that. I immediately identify with it.

TP:   During those years, were you also paying attention to the records Art Blakey was doing with drummers?

AG:   Oh, yeah.

TP:   Orgy In Rhythm, a couple of volumes, and the names are escaping me of a couple of others he did, where he played with the late Ray Barretto…

AG:   I was just going to mention Ray Barretto. He also did a tribute to Art Blakey a few years ago. In fact, I think there’s one tune on the record that we also did. His concept was a little different than ours. First of all, when Ray Barretto first started getting back… He wasn’t playing much salsa any more, and he started to develop a Latin Jazz band. I know he paid quite a bit of attention to Fort Apache and what we were doing, and I think he took part of that as a role model. Which we were quite honored that he would use us as a model for what he was doing.

TP:   But as far as putting the Fort Apache touch on this repertoire, how did the ideas evolve and come to fruition?

AG:   We had the idea years ago. We thought of it as one of the many projects that we had in mind to do. There were other projects, too, that never came about for various reasons. Like, we wanted to record an album with Jose Silva, better known as Chombo, the Cuban saxophonist who was probably like the Ben Webster of Cuban music, and a masterful musician. We were just about setting that up when he had a stroke and he was no longer able to play. We were already starting to pick out the material. When you have a band like the Fort Apache band, you, have a lot of options, and there’s things that pop into your head about what this band could do, what we’re capable of doing. Because everybody in the band is a great musician, and we’re capable of a lot of things.

TP:   But Rumba Buhaina is what we’re addressing.

AG:   Yes. Well, the idea for the Art Blakey tribute… We started thinking about it, and then all of a sudden we had a few days at Sweet Rhythm to play… Before we went into the studio we played and rehearsed for a few days. That’s pretty much the way we did the Monk album, too. We played and we rehearsed different concepts on different tunes until…

TP:   Were they tunes that seemed to lend themselves to dealing with the different rhythmic signatures that you bring to your arrangements.

AG:   We tried to think of ways of approaching the music… Everybody contributed ideas. That’s the way we get it together. It’s pretty simple. From all our experiences, individually and collectively, it was pretty easy for us to put it together.

TP:   Let’s step back to 1991, the album Moliendo Café, and Larry Willis’ tune, “To Wisdom The Prize.”

AG:   I like that album a lot, for a few reasons. One of them was that Miles Davis had just passed away, and we had… We thought about it a lot because he was such a strong influence on us also.

TP:   The album is dedicated to the percussionist Guillermo Barretto. Art Blakey had just passed.  Charlie Palmieri had just passed. Dizzy Gillespie shortly thereafter. George Adams as well. All are mentioned on the inner sleeve…

[“To Wisdom The Prize” & “Along Came Betty”]

TP:   On previous shows, Andy has brought literally a suitcase filled with recordings, primarily obscure and little known, great gems. A lot of this material is now available on CD so it’s a bit easier to track down…once you get the CD. Next week will you be playing primarily this repertoire or digging into the whole book?

AG:   I’ve got a feeling we’ll dig into the whole book, but we are going to feature some of the tunes from the new album.

TP:   Earlier I mentioned that there are two streams to talk about, one the new recording, Rumba Buhaina, but for listeners… As you get older, you come to grips with the notion that younger listeners don’t share core experiences. A lot of hardcore jazz fans may be unfamiliar with how you and Jerry developed your ideas about music, and what in your personal histories led to the formation of the Fort Apache Band.

AG:   Jerry got his first opportunity to record in 1979, and that was an album under his own name called Ya Yo Me Cure, which in English means “I have been cured”—whatever that means. The title track of that album was something that Frankie Rodriguez, who was a percussionist who passed away a few years ago, but was a very talented person and very close to us… He was part of Grupo Folklorico, and he was into culture really deep. I had a record of pygmy chants from Africa, and he heard one chant that was done by kids. It was like some children’s chant. He heard it a few times, and started singing “Ya Yo Me Cure” to it, just putting those Spanish words to the chant itself, and we made a guaguanco out of it. That was a precursor of what Fort Apache became.

TP:   But by then, you’d been professional musicians for more than a decade. Eddie Palmieri, Dizzy Gillespie…

AG:   I played with Ray Barretto while I was in high school, ‘69 to ‘71. In between that time, me and Jerry worked with Dizzy Gillespie. So we were getting arond. I was still in high school, and Jerry was coming out of college.

TP:   Were Eddie Palmieri and Dizzy Gillespie people who helped push you along conceptually?

AG:   It was kind of a mutual thing. We were well aware of Eddie Palmieri; we were big fans. But we brought something new to the table.

TP:   What was that?

AG:   Well, a different sensibility. The sensibility that Eddie Palmieri had before, when Barry Rogers was part of the band, and Barry would bring the harmonic element… When he’s taking a solo, you can feel there’s something that’s really in the jazz world, and it’s very spontaneous and very heartfelt, and there was a lot of feeling to it. That’s one of the things that we learned a lot about, and something about jazz improvisation, that nothing was thought out before time—it was just off the cuff. Whatever came to your mind that you thought was hip enough, that’s what you would play. So we had started to do those kind of things with Eddie. We took Eddie’s band into some new places where he hadn’t ventured before. We all used to hang out at my parents’ house in the basement apartment on Gildersleeve Avenue in the Bronx, and Eddie Palmieri used to come over and Barretto used to come over… If that basement could talk… Dizzy Gillespie used to come over. We used to have jam sessions there all the time. Out of all that stuff, out of a lot of experimentation, came the music we wanted to play.

TP:   Both of you had been deeply into folkloric music for many years. How did you get involved in… Was folkloric music just always there, or did people point you towards recordings and connections?

AG:   Well, there’s different types of folkloric music. There’s folkloric music for dancing, and it was more a commercial music that was provided for dancing, but it still had quite a bit of folklore to it. That was the soundtrack of my childhood. Family parties, things like that. There was always a collection of good 78s that everybody used to dance to, like Machito, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, Cortijo Y Su Combo from Puerto Rico with Ismail Rivera singing, Mon Rivera… This was primarily folklore in the Puerto Rican vein and in the Cuban vein. Sonora Matancera, which was a Cuban band. That’s the stuff we grew up with.

TP:   When did you start breaking that stuff down?

AG:   That came a little bit later, because that’s something we got used to hearing. But we didn’t start breaking it down until we became more schooled in music. Both of us went to High School of Music and Art. They give you theory. They give you how to analyze a piece of music, and what happens in these number of bars, and then this section comes, and things like that. But what happened was, when I was 13, we had already been listening to Cal Tjader records for a while… Jerry was two years older than me, and he was starting to play congas, and he was also playing trumpet, and I was playing the bass, and we put together a Latin Jazz quintet like Cal Tjader’s. We started working with it. We started playing… In that music, we were trying to emulate the Cal Tjader sound and what they were doing, which was quite spontaneous and very jazz-like. They always had good pianists, and Mongo and Willie Bobo were heroes of ours. So that was pretty much how we started and where our taste was as far as playing music.

It wasn’t until I got to play with Ray Barretto’s band that I really started studying what came before, especially Afro-Cuban music. Or Cuban music.  The term “Afro-Cuban” that’s bandied about now as THE term, because everybody wants to point towards Cuba as the birthplace of a lot of the music—but I don’t know. I think it was maybe a little more to do with the Caribbean experience. Not just Cuba. Cuba was dominant, but there was also a lot going on in Puerto Rican and a lot going on in other places, too. And New York was the magnet the drew a lot of elements to it. A lot of great musicians from different parts of the Caribbean were moving to New York and bringing their music with them.

TP:   How long did you play with Dizzy Gillespie?

AG:   Almost a year. 1970.

TP:   what sort of experience was that? Was he playing primarily Cuban-influenced repertoire…

AG:   No, he was mixing it up. We had an interesting version of his band.  At the time, when we joined the band, there was no trap drummer. There was just Jerry playing congas, and I was playing the bass, George Davis was playing guitar, and Mike Longo was playing the piano—and Dizzy. I was playing my Ampeg baby bass. Now, Dizzy insisted upon a bass player who could play Latin rhythms and some jazz comfortably. That’s how I got the gig. I was only 19, and I was thrilled. We traveled a bit. It was amazing.

Dizzy was not one to… If you would sit down with him and you wanted something explained harmonically, he’d sit down at the piano and show you. But as a bandleader, he had this great instinct about talent, and he knew when he put a group of people together that the chemistry was going to work.

TP:   Rhythmically did he have anything to show you, or did…

AG:   We had things to show him.

TP:   What sort of things did you show him?

AG:   I remember working in Harlem with him one night, and we were doing a week at the Club Barron—and we brought Nicky Marrero to sit in on timbales. We played one of his tunes (I forget which one at the moment), and after he took his solo, he went by the bar… The bandstand was near the bar. He went by the bar, and we doubled the time on his tune, and we were smoking, the rhythm section was cooking, man. Then he comes up behind me and whispers in my ear, and he goes, “Where’s one?” In other words, as much as he’d been influenced by and heard quite a bit of Latin rhythms, and he’d been surrounded by good rhythm drummers, sometimes you can know a whole lot and still, if you divert your attention for a minute and come back to it, you go, “Wait a second; my hearing just turned around or something; I’m not quite sure where it is.” So while I’m playing and we’re cooking, I just looked at him and I go, “One.” He goes, “Oh, ok.” Heh-heh. Dizzy was a sweetheart. I loved him.

TP:   So as kids, you’re soaking up the music at home. It’s part of the daily fabric of your lives. You’re listening to all the jazz records as they come out…

AG:   And we were lucky enough as kids to journey out the clubs and hear this music in person. I saw Trane play. I wanted to see the quartet play, but they had already broken up. I saw one of his last performances. I saw everybody play. I was quite a regular in all the clubs. I used to go down to the Vanguard to hear the Bill Evans Trio, and I’d go to the Vanguard on Mondays to hear the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. And Slugs was one of my favorite jazz clubs in the world. That was THE place. That had an atmosphere, and the music was exceptional. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers used to play there regularly. Lee Morgan, his band used to play there. I saw so many bands. I forgot that we got to play with Kenny Dorham for a year, before Dizzy… Actually, about the time I had started playing with Ray Barretto, I was playing with Kenny Dorham.

TP:   I think Jerry has related that when he was auditioning for New York College of Music, he encountered him…

AG:   Kenny was trying to get his degree so he could teach. New York College of Music started a jazz program, and they were givimg full scholarships to jazz musicians, and all of a sudden, a lot of musicians jumped in that school. They had a great big band. Great musicians there. So Kenny Dorham was studying there, and he was in Jerry’s trumpet class. The trumpet teacher was a classical teacher, and he failed Kenny Dorham. Failed him! I couldn’t believe that. Kenny Dorham could have taught him a few things. But we’ve been blessed, man. We were blessed that we were really accepted by a lot of people, and taught as well. Just by playing together with someone, you give a little bit of your knowledge, and you get knowledge back in return. There was quite a bit of activity going on for musicians in those days.

TP:   It also seems that the cultural politics of the ‘60s would point people in the direction of incorporating folkloric music into the fabric of their everyday activity and professional work.

AG:   Of course. I saw Olatunji. Olatunji had a group of drummers and dancers, and we got to hear that. There was a lot going on. But there wasn’t much Cuban folklore. Because of the Revolution, the radio stations wouldn’t play much of that music. But around 1969, Felipe Luciano, who was part of the Young Lords, he got a position to start a radio program on WRVR. I had met him while I was with Barretto, and I was studying Cuban folklore with Rene Lopez, who was one of the producers of Grupo Folklorico Experimental. We actually programmed the first month of shows. The first bunch of shows were midnight to six in the morning. We got calls from people saying, “what are doing playing this great music, and I’ve got to get up for work in the morning—are you guys nuts?” Then after a few months, finally, we got the ok to do our show in the afternoon. That was the beginning of… We did quite a bit of teaching by playing the music and talking about it, and opening that door that was closed to a lot of people about Cuban music. There was a lot of live performances…

TP:   Then you started doing it yourself, and Grupo Folklorico came into the picture…

AG:   Oh, yeah. Well, that was a given. When you’re exposed to all this knowledge, it becomes part of you, and you want to do it—and especially if you have the skills to do it. It’s like anything. When you’re studying music and you’re listening to records, it’s a communication, and you pick up on the message that’s being sent to you.

I heard this next tune on a videotape of a rehearsal in Matanzas, Cuba, that somebody gave me, of a folkloric group that was doing bata stuff, which is the hourglass shaped drum where there’s three different drums of different sizes, and they have chants going on with certain drum-beats. So there was one that was done in honor of the deity called Elegua. Elegua is the keeper of the crossroads, and is the one that opens and closes all your paths. So most ceremonies begin with Elegua. When you do a ceremony in that genre, you start with Elegua.

So I heard this chant, and it stayed in my head, and I started playing bass to it, and I figured out two sets of changes to the same melody. That’s what we use as our basis for improvisation. The first set of changes is a pedal tone, and it just stays in that pedal. It’s open. It’s kind of what McCoy Tyner or Trane would do. Then the second time we run the melody down, there’s another set of changes to it. So I came up with that, and then we developed it into a composition.

[“Elegua”]

AG:   The reason I played “Anabacoa” is that it’s a tune that had been done by a few Cuban bands, but the one that caught our attention, and that’s why we wanted to play it, was the recording by Arsenio Rodriguez Y Su Conjunto, and their version was slammin’! That’s where we got our inspiration, but then we took it to another place. And then we had the great Manny Oquendo playing one of his really classic timbal solos. It goes back to what we were talking about Art Blakey being the authoritative drummer. Well, Manny shows that he’s in that same league. He’s a very authoritative drummer.

TP:   The primal feel and the sophistication together.

AG:   Together, yeah.

TP:   That quality could describe Fort Apache, which has been doing it for 27 years, on and off…

AG:   Time flies.

TP:   We’ll move to 1988, and a live performance by an expanded edition of the Fort Apache Band, that was documented by Enja, in Zurich, titled Obatala. I’ve treasured this recording for some time; it’s an expanded version of the Apaches… Mad percussion.

AG:   When we started the Fort Apache Band, it had a large percussion section. But it was very difficult to work with that kind of ensemble, because booking it wasn’t easy. It was a lot of people to fly in and put up in hotels and so on. It was a financial decision and an artistic one to break it down to the bare essentials, which was a quintet and a sextet.

TP:   Who did the arrangement of “Justice.”

AG:   Jerry and I heard a riff on a Cuban record by Frank Emilio, who is a great Cuban pianist, and he had a riff on this record that was so intriguing, and we said, “Wow, this sounds like ‘Evidence’—because “Evidence” has such a quirky rhythm-melody to it. I said, “Wow, let’s see about putting these two elements together, and this is what came out.

[END OF CONVERSATION]

***********

It may surprise bass maestro Andy González’s many fans that Entre Colegas (Truth Revolution) is his first leader recording. Now 64, González boasts a vast and distinguished discography that includes ten recordings with the pathbreaking Fort Apache Band, in which he and his older brother, conguero-trumpeter Jerry González, masterminded a singular marriage of the harmonic language of hardcore jazz and the hand-drum rhythms of Afro-Cuban musical. Another nine albums document the pathbreaking four-trombone dance band Conjunto Libre, which he co-founded with iconic timbalero Manny Oquendo in 1974, after both left the employ of Eddie Palmieri, who González joined after two years of steady employment with Dizzy Gillespie.

“Andy is easily most influential Latin Jazz bassist ever,” says Truth Revolution Records co-proprietor Luques Curtis, a bassist whose own burgeoning career embodies González’s multilingual aesthetic. Curtis, 32, and his older brother, pianist Zaccai Curtis, met González twenty years ago after he heard their kid band play charts of such Fort Apache classics as “Moliendo Café” and “Obsesión” at a concert. “Andy came to our house afterward,” Curtis recalled. “He hung with us all night, playing his music and hanging out. After that, Andy would visit for a day or two a month. No money. He explained to us what happens during the coros, and how Afro-Cuban music is shaped.”

González has suffered the travails of aging—in 2004, the toes on his left foot were amputated due to complications from previously undiagnosed diabetes; at the beginning of 2015, he began three-day-a-week dialysis treatments. The Curtises—whose label had built momentum with releases not only by their Curtis Brothers group, but diverse artists like vocalists Sarah Elizabeth Charles and Eva Cortés, trumpeters Ray Vega, Jonathan Powell and Carlos Abadie, and timbalero Ralph Irizarry—responded to the second medical event by generating a project with their mentor.

González decided to present a pan-stylistic, strings-oriented program that he describes as “Django Reinhardt visits Cuba and Puerto Rico,” with long-time partner Nelson Gonzalez on tres, Cleveland-based Orlando “El Mostro” Santiago on cuatro, Brooklynite Ben Lapidus on guitar and tres, and Cuban emigree David Oquendo on guitars and vocals, as well as Abadie, the Curtises, and a host of hand percussionists who render the rhythms with precision and elegance.

“I just maintained the rhythm and kept the styles together,” González said, understating the effect of his enormous ears and harmonic erudition in maintaining quality control. “I was more concerned about sound than the style—when it’s good music, it’s good music, and that’s the name of the game.” He attributes his ability to get through the proceedings to acupuncture treatments that alleviated the stiffness attendant to dialysis; indeed, he plays so impeccably that it’s hard to discern any impairment.

“Andy always has a clear idea how he wants things to be, and gets musicians who can execute but also do their own thing,” said Lapidus, whose erudite program notes offer significant value-added. “He leads, but he’s also unbelievably supportive. He’s played in so many situations and so many styles that he was able to pull off what most people could only dream about doing.”

González compared the session’s ambiance to the atmosphere he and his brother generated at impromptu mid-’60s gatherings in the basement of his family’s house in the South Bronx. It was a destination for a Pan-American cohort of the famous—attendees included Gillespie, Machito, Kenny Dorham, Jackie and Rene McLean, Carlos “Patato” Valdes, Rashied Ali, Larry Young, Ruben Blades—and obscure, attracted by the brothers’ global perspective and predisposition to treat jazz and Afro-Caribbean styles not as separate entities but as extensions of each other.

“There were elements of that spirit—to play with abandon and grab some of the jams,” González said. “I played with as much abandon as I could. If they want me to do another record, I’ll see if I can think of something else to do.”

[—30—]

*******

Andy Gonzalez Musician Shows, WKCR – Feb. 28, 1990; March 13, 1991; Dec. 1, 1993:

[February 28, 1990]

[Fort Apache, “81”–from Obatala, Enja, Zurich concert, 1989]

ANDY: This record came about through our association with Matthias Winckelman. He’s one of the producers for the Enja label out of Germany. The Fort Apache had done a previous recording for them which was another live concert, in Germany, during the Berlin Jazz Festival in which we participating as well as Libre — Libre was participating on a different night in the same festival. The night that Manny Oquendo’s Libre…it was performing on a bill with Alberta Hunter, Bobby McFerrin… Dino Saluzzi, a bandoneon player who is Argentinian, I imagine. Or is he Italian? I’m not sure. He does modern tango, of which I’ve gotten to participate a bit with Astor Piazzolla, who I got to record with. But that’s another thing.

Getting back to Matthias, we were fortunate to be invited to play at the Zurich Jazz Festival, and the performance was recorded and just now released on the Enja label. This is my brother Jerry’s band, and he’s playing trumpet, flugelhorn and congas; John Stubblefield on tenor; Papo Vazquez on trombone; Larry Willis on piano; Edgardo Miranda on guitar; myself on bass; Steve Berrios on trombones and bata, chekere and coro. We had some guest percussionists — Milton Cardona, Hector Flaco Hernandez, and Nicky Marrero.

We’ve pared down the band a bit, but we do occasionally put together a whole ensemble with a huge percussion section. We’ve been trying to function on a smaller scale and trying to keep that energy level up. It seems to be working.

TP: How long has Fort Apache been functioning? What’s the genesis of the Fort Apache Band?

ANDY: Actually, the genesis goes back a long ways. Jerry and myself, we’ve always been… We grew up playing Latin Jazz and also listening to it. One of the earliest records that I remember listening to was a Cal Tjader record. That kind of playing fascinated me. So it was something that we grew up with. All throughout the years we’ve formed different groups, or have been part of groups that were Latin Jazz oriented or in that vein. So we’re part of that music. So this is really a continuation of that process.

TP: But you’re also interpreting Monk’s music. Rumba Para Monk is extremely distinctive.

ANDY: I think anybody’s compositions that we touch will come out with that sensibility to it, just because that’s the kind of music that we do.

TP: How long have you been playing the bass?

ANDY: I started playing the bass in elementary school. I was 11 years old or so. I started playing professionally at 13. It took a couple of years to learn the instrument, and I started working with bands. My father bought me an Ampeg baby bass for Christmas on my 13th birthday or something. And I started gigging right away. That was a gigging axe. If you had an Ampeg baby bass and an Ampeg amp, you were in business. Jerry had his congas, and he was already playing the horn, too. I was 13 when we had our first Latin Jazz group, which was a sort of Cal Tjader band, a quintet.

TP: You played that type of material?

ANDY: Yeah, we did some of Cal Tjader’s material and then some original stuff. The guy who was our mentor, a fellow by the name Llewellyn Matthews, Lew Matthews who right now is the musical director and pianist for Nancy Wilson… We grew up together, and he was really the guy who moved us into real playing of real serious Latin Jazz at a very early age. So we were blessed in that sense.

TP: This is the Bronx in the early 1960s. What sorts of gigs were you and Jerry doing?

ANDY: At the time we were doing small gigs here and there. School dances and occasional church dances. They were mostly dances, that I remember, but we used to play our Latin Jazz, and since it had a danceable beat, that was all people needed.

Coming up is a live performance by Manny Oquendo’s Libre. Manny Oquendo is I guess the Art Blakey of timbales. He’s one of the real greats, with a very distinctive sound and style. We’ve had this band together 15 years; this is our 15th year. It’s very special. It’s hard to put into words how special it is, and it’s a shame that certain people are asleep on it, that shouldn’t be. They should be moving more towards roots and culture instead of trying to get too commercial. But that’s always been the case. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be around. We’ll always be around. This is live in Holland about 18 months ago, when we visited Holland for a little bit. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to put the whole concert out on an album someday, because it was well-recorded, as you’ll soon here. This is “Asia Minor.”

[Libre: “Asia Minor” (Machito) – Steve Turre on shells;

TP: Next up is a live performance by Grupo Folklorico Experimental.

ANDY: That started in our basement as a jam. The Gonzalez household was a 24-hour jam all the time. We had a lot of music going on there, all the time. That was sort of our laboratory to experiment and come up with stuff. We used to invite a lot of great musicians to come and play with us.

TP: Who were some of the people you were coming up with?

ANDY: It was just the musicians we were playing with at the time who were out of the professional bands of the moment. Those were the years when… I had already played with Ray Barretto’s band, Dizzy Gillespie’s band, and I was involved with the Palmieri band at that time, and my brother was also. We were playing with a lot of great musicians, such as Chocolate Armenteros on trumpet and Jose Rodriguez on trombone, and Barry Rogers… A lot of the people who were very strong figures in the 60s period. So we got to learn quite a bit of stuff, and also we contributed a bit to what was the status of Latin Jazz at the time. We were freeing it up more, because we were also into Miles and we were into the free jazz movement of the 60s — we were listening to a lot of that music. We used to apply a lot of the things of that, and try to combine things. Sort of a mixture. It was like a laboratory. We used to experiment.

Grupo Folklorico came out of our deep respect for and our study of the roots of our music, which have their origins in African music, Afro-Cuban music in particular, and the religious music of that particular thing held a big interest for us. Also, the rumba, guaguanco and the son — those elements were all the roots of what our music is today, in one way or another. It’s felt. You can probably say that for all of Latin music. But Latin Jazz has those roots plus the jazz roots. The two musics are fairly…I guess you would call them cousins, because they sort of come out of the same experience of the African diaspora, the slave trade and what happened after that, and their individual developments in whatever country the slaves were in.

Out of all that study came this particular group of people. It began as a jam and it turned into something a little more serious when Rene Lopez managed to get a contract to record us for Salsoul Records. They were big in disco, but they had a Latin label, Salsoul Salsa. They signed Grupo Folklorico, and not too long after that they signed Manny Oquendo and Libre, and we did four albums for that record company. They’re all out of print. I’ve heard of people offering up to $100 for a copy. In fact, the President of the company asked me for a copy! So imagine!

TP: But the masters are still extant. They could be reissued.

ANDY: Oh, sure. At one point the original tapes will be…they’ll make a deal to have that stuff put out again, especially on CD. I’d like to hear that stuff on CD, maybe remixed. I’d like to remix some of it myself, because I know CD you can really get more. We had limitations. When you mix for an album, you have to limit yourself, but a CD lets you loose to really explore the full sonority of the music.

TP: Andy, I think we’ve piqued everyone’s interest, those who remember the albums and those who don’t know about Grupo Folklorico. And you’ve brought a live date.

ANDY: I found this in my collection of tapes, and I’m not too sure where we performed this. I think it was in El Barrio on 110th Street or 109th Street and Third Avenue. There’s a park there where we performed. We didn’t do too many performances, but the ones that we did do were pretty memorable, and we always had a lot… As a matter of fact, I think once we performed here at WKCR. I know people who have those tapes, and one of these days we’ll bring them up and play them.

Anyway, Chocolate is playing, Frankie Rodriguez, Willie Garcia is singing, Henny Alvarez, Virgilio Marti, Jerry, Gene Golden… A whole bunch of people. It’s a tune by Henny Alvarez that we never recorded, by the way. So it’s a real treat for the collectors. It’s called “Ango.”

[Grupo Folklorico, “Ango”]

ANDY: There’s been talk of that band getting back together. It’s been almost 12 years since those records came out and since we’d played. We’re all around. Most of us are around. Hopefully we’ll get to have a reunion and maybe make a new record. Because there’s certainly quite a bit of material, and everybody’s grown in the last ten years, so I’m sure there will probably be a lot of interest for a new record.

TP: We have another tape cued up from the seemingly endless store of tapes that Andy brought up.

ANDY: I thought I’d turn people on to a music that is a favorite music of mine, and that is the Afro-Cuban music of the 1950s, which is a very rich period. The band I have cued up… I’m going to play a couple of cuts of radio transcriptions from… The bands in Cuba all used to broadcast live on the radio. There were a bunch of them that had regular daily programs, and there were a few dancing fanatics from here who’d go down for vacation in the 50s, and bring their tape recorders and record some of this stuff. The first tune we’ll hear is “Buena Vista and Guaguanco,” and this is by Chappotin Y Sus Estrellas. Felix Chappotin was one of the great, great…along with, say, Chocolate and another trumpet player by the name of Florecita… He was one of the great stylists, soloists in Cuban music. He was part of the Arsenio band. When Arsenio decided to move to New York and make this his home base…well, Chappotin stayed with the original band. This is a transcription of that original band — Chappotin Y Sus Estrellas with Miguelito Cuni singing, who is one of the great soneros who ever existed.

[MUSIC: Chappotin-Cuni, “Buena Vista and Guaguanco”; “

ANDY: That style of music, the slow guaguanco, the son montuno, that’s all the creation of Arsenio Rodriguez, and his influence is all over that music. The first cut was a live transcription that Manny Oquendo had in his collection that he’d gotten from the bass player who worked with Arsenio…

TP: Arsenio, given the level of historical memory people have, we need a surname.

ANDY: Arsenio Rodriguez. I take it for granted everybody knows. There’s a whole new generation who doesn’t know these things.

Arsenio Rodriguez was a gentleman who played the tres. The tres is a 9-string instrument that’s similar in sound quality to a 12-string guitar. The strings are in octaves. He was a master of that instrument, and also a master composer of many forms, utiliziing all his roots, his folkloric roots of Afro-Cuban music. He was one of the greatest exponents of the music. He was a very prolific composer. One of his tunes, “Bruca Manigua,” was a big hit, a world-wide hit for Miguelito Valdes when he was with the Casino de la Playa Orchestra, which was a band that made quite a bit of noise. Then what happened was that Xavier Cugat heard a lot of that music and brought Miguelito Valdes to sing with him. Then they recorded it again. Then they recorded quite a few things of Arsenio’s. They even brought in Arsenio for a few recording sessions.

But Arsenio’s style, the conjunto style of three trumpets and bongos, maraccas, claves, singers, rhythm guitar, and a tres and a piano, that whole sound…there’s something very unique about it. It was basically a development historically from what was original a son. A son was an early form of dance music that there was no congas, there was only bongos — bongos, maraccas and claves and guitars and tres and singing. That was it. Then they added one trumpet. Then they added two trumpets. Then Arsenio came and added three trumpets. Then the bands in New York added four trumpets. We’re talking specifically about bands like the Tito Rodriguez conjunto and the Tito Puente conjunto. They added the fourth trumpet.

We’re going to spend this time doing a little dedication to Tito Rodriguez who passed away on this day I think in 1973. I had the good fortune to record with Tito Rodriguez before he passed away. I guess when I write my book about the giants in the industry who I’ve gotten to associate with…

We’ll hear something from Tito Rodriguez Live at the Palladium, the second album, Returns to the Palladium. It’s titled “El Que Se Fue.” This is when Tito had his big band. It’s one of my favorite cuts of his band in action. Manny Oquendo is in the rhythm section playing bongos. Then we’ll hear something of the conjunto with the four trumpets.

[MUSIC: Tito Rodriguez, “El Que Se Fue”; “Chen Charengo Ma’]

ANDY: “Chen Charengo Ma” is a tune written by Giusti Barreto(?), at least he’s taking credit for it, but that’s an old folkloric thing going back to the different tribal things of Afro-Cuban… They had the religious music. Then they had the abakua, which is a sort of secret society, sort of related to the Masons, sort of a self-help group, but very secretive and very ceremonious, and they had their own style of music, which was quite different than the religious music that they call the santo music, the santero music. But that particular thing, they call it palo. That’s a sect of the Congolese tribe. Imagine how far that had come if you traced the development of it. That’s something that goes back… The palo is sort of the Congolese folkloric roots going back to the Congo. So imagine that came all the way up through Cuba, surviving all that way, and then Tito Rodriguez has made a mambo out of it. It got into popular dance music of the 50s. To this day, a lot of the traditions of the folklore, the roots, come back to us.

My roots in Latin music are those of growing up, listening to these records of Tito Rodriguez and of the Machito band and Puente. Those were the three big ones, the ones that made the greatest impact in Latin music in the 50s. They were the Young Turks. I guess we’re the Young Turks of this generation.

I just wanted to play the music that influenced me, music that I like, and that’s pretty much it. We’ll run the gamut, playing stuff from different records that I’ve brought and different tapes of live stuff. I guess that’s the way we’re going to pass the next hour and 45 minutes.

TP: You have Machito cued up next.

ANDY: I wouldn’t go on a radio program with music and leave out the Machito orchestra, which was one of the greatest organizations of any band that ever came out of New York City. It’s really a New York product, but it was Afro-Cuban in nature. All the innovations and everything they’ve done are so countless. This is the Machito band in 1953 or 1954, for the Seeco label, and the tune is “Mambo Sentimental.”

[MUSIC: Machito, “Mambo Sentimental”; “Que Bonito Puerto Rico”]

ANDY: That was “Que Bonito Puerto Rico,” “How Beautiful Is Puerto Rico.” I guess that’s one of the golden periods of the Machito Orchestra, because there were a few. Some people feel that the original Machito and his Afro-Cubans from the early 40s was THE band, and then other people feel that this period, which was 1953-54, was one of the great periods. I like it all. I don’t have any distinctions.

Talking about “Cabonitos Puerto Rico,” I’d like to get into it a bit. I’ve had the good fortune to be associated with and have recorded with quite a few great figures in Puerto Rican music also. I do love my Cuban music, but I will never put Cuban music over another music. I like all musics the same. But the music of the land of my origin…I wasn’t born there… I’m Puerto Rican. I love all the music of Puerto Rico also. So I’ve had the good fortune to record over the years with quite a few of the greats of Puerto Rican music, such as, say, Rafael Cortijo, who along with his singer, Ismail Rivera, were I guess the greatest exponents of the bomba and plena rhythms. Those were the Afro-Puerto Rican rhythms.

The plena specifically…they use the three panderetas, which is sort of like tambourines without the jingles (that’s what they look like anyway), tuned to different notes. The songs are usually about… Well, the plena was a device used at the turn of the century to be the sort of newspaper. They used to make up daily songs having to do with what was going on, either in politics or maybe the latest gossip, things like that.

I had the good fortune to record with a group… This record had just come out on the Shanachie label, and the group was called Los Pleneros De La 21. 21 is a bus stop in Santurce, Puerto Rico. That’s where a lot of great pleneros grew up and sort of plied their trade. So this is Puerto Rican folklore, and we’re going to hear a tune that’s called “Canta El Gallo.” Now, Gallo is a gentleman that is one of the singers of the group, and he just passed away recently, and at his funeral he insisted that they play bomba y plena, and all the pleneros all over the city came. They converged on a funeral home on 116th Street, and they played in front of his coffin. It was the most incredible thing. Your hair stood up. It was quite emotional and quite deep.

Anyway, this is El Gallo. I’m glad that the Center for Ethnic Folk Arts was able to sort of sponsor this recording for Shanachie Records of Los Pleneros de la 21.

[MUSIC: Los Pleneros, “Canta El Gallo”; Quarteto em Cy ; Gil Evans, “Manteca”]

[SIDE 3]

ANDY: I happen to like the way Gil Evans arranged that. What intrigued me the most was the way he set up the chords and the melody for the bridge, and he used that as the intro of the tune. That was beautifully done with the flutes and stuff; it’s one of my favorite moments of Gil Evans’ arranging.

TP: You took us on a long trip on that set.

ANDY: We were in Puerto Rico for a minute. We played Los Pleneros de la 21, the Pleneros of Stop 21, which is a bus stop in Puerto Rico. Then we went to Brazil, about the year 1975, a quartet of female singers called Quarteto em Cy. That group was very influential. They came up around the time of the bossa nova craze, but they always sang in these beautiful harmonies. What they did on this record, it’s an anthology of popular Brazilian music composers. They would do medleys of each of these composers’ tunes. This is a medley of a composer by the name of Antonio Maria, and they did three of his songs. The arrangement sounds like Gil Evans. That’s why I played it, because I wanted to play the Gil Evans cut after that, which was “Manteca”… But to show you that the Brazilians are doing some fantastic things with harmony. They always had a thing for melody and harmony that was quite distinctive and quite different, and it’s always been a favorite music of mine. If you can find that record, snatch it. It’s Antologia de Musica Popular de Brasil.

Before that we heard Peruchin, whose real name is Pedro Justiz. He was the piano player with quite a few big bands in the 40s and 50s. In the 50s he was primarily featured as a solo pianist and as a piano player with a band called Orquestra Riverside. This was a 10″ album that’s very difficult to find, and this was his first solo recording session, just piano and rhythm…

TP: You mentioned, Andy, that this was from 1949, which I couldn’t help but think was the same year that Bud Powell recorded “Un Poco Loco.”

ANDY: Peruchin was one of the greats, one of the true great stylists in Cuban music. He had his antennae out. He was listening to everybody. Especially the older pianists like Art Tatum. You can hear where he was influenced by American jazz pianists.

TP: He does “Over The Rainbow” on the other side of that 10″ album.

ANDY: It would be interesting to compare that with Bud Powell’s or someone’s.

Before we heard Los Munequitos de Matanzas, which at the time when they recorded it were known as Guaguanco Matancero. One of their tunes that they had recorded earlier was a big hit. It was about comic book characters. So they adapted that name and they call themselves Los Munequitos, which means the “cartoon characters.” But this is one of the great… Matanzas is a very rich, fertile area of Cuba for music and culture. Their percussionists are just superb. It’s something extraordinary and quite different than other regions of Cuba. So that was “Guaguanco Matancero.”

TP: Now we’ll shift gears again, and listen to a recent live recording that Andy participated in.

ANDY: I did a duo piano and bass gig with Larry Willis, at the Terrace at the Village Gate, a street-level bar. It’s a nice little gig. We played just jazz standards and stuff like that. We had the good fortune of having Steve Berrios, who plays traps and percussion with the Fort Apache Band. He brought his trapset down and sat in with us. This is a tune that I happened to record, and I was quite surprised at the fidelity.

[MUSIC: Andy-Willis-Steve, “All Of You”]

ANDY: That was the Larry Willis…I guess trio. We were doing a duo, and we had the pleasure of having Steve Berrios sit in with us on traps. (Jan. 1990) That was a nice gig to do. It was a lot of fun to just do bass and piano. It was quite challenging, because you’re just left up to your own wits, and there’s no other rhythm, so you have to provide the rhythm. It worked out pretty well.

TP: Larry Willis has been doing most of the piano playing lately with Fort Apache.

ANDY: Yeah, for the last two years, almost three. The pianist before that was Kenny Kirkland. We’ve been recording with him lately for his first album under his own name. I guess you’ll be seeing that sometime in the future.

I wanted to get back to Libre, which is the band I most often work with. We’re going to be doing quite a bit of stuff coming up in the future. On our agenda is a new recording session. We’ll be doing some traveling; we’re going to California this summer, and the Atlanta Jazz Festival. Hopefully we’ll get to Europe again soon. We haven’t been there in about a year. I want to play another cut from one of our European adventures. This is from the Holland concert also. I think this is “Yevala(?) Pa Rincon”

[MUSIC: Conjunto Libre, “..(?).. Pa Rincon” – Steve Turre, trombone]

ANDY: That was Libre, a very good indication of what we do sound like and the power that we put out when we play. In 99% of salsa in New York today you won’t hear that kind of playing. You won’t hear that kind of power and that kind of swing. It’s a shame that people are asleep on that. Because this was done 18 months or two years ago, and if anything we’ve gotten even stronger. I think the little message to all the people out there listening is if you want bands to… You have to support the bands that you like and that you want to see around so that they keep working. Some of the Latin clubs are tied up. They have these little cliques where they only use certain bands. But the public is really the final arbiter of who they want to hear. So I would put to te public that whenever they hear… If you’re big fans of ours, come out. Come out to our gigs. When you hear announcements that we’re playing places…

Let me clue you in where we’re working this weekend. Manny Oquendo’s Libre is performing Friday at the Tapestry, which is in the Bronx on Westchester Avenue, very near the Parkchester housing complex. It’s easy to get to — the #6 train that goes up Westchester Avenue. Also on Saturday we’re going to be performing at the Circle Theater, which is the newest club in the Bronx. It used to be an old movie house, and they tore out the insides and rebuilt it into a supper club, a very nice supper club where you’d be proud to take your old lady out to dinner and dancing and stuff like that.

This is something that I haven’t heard. I’ve been recording a lot with Kip Hanrahan. He’s the guy who started a record company, and his first release was Jerry’s record, Ya Yo Me Cure. Since then he’s been involved in quite a few… He’s turned into a sort of producer-composer. He came up with a concept based on the world music concept, putting elements together that most people would not have thought of, like, say, a Haitian guitarist, a Latin bass player, a jazz vocalist, and things like that. I did a couple of European tours with Kip, and lately we’re doing quite a bit of recording. I just did a trio recording with John Tchicai, a name from the free jazz past, and Smitty Smith on drums and myself on acoustic bass. That was quite interesting.

We’ll hear something that I’ll be hearing for the first time, a recording I did with Kip’s band – a Duke Ellington composition, “Love Is Like A Cigarette,” with Carmen Lundy doing the vocal. But she doesn’t do the vocal with the band; she does it apart from the band, which is an interesting concept.

[MUSIC: Kip Hanrahan-Carmen Lundy, “Love Is Like A Cigarette”; Astor Piazzolla, “Knife Fight”; [END OF SIDE 3]; Astor Piazzolla, “Leonora’s Song”]

ANDY: Those were tangos by Astor Piazzolla, who is probably the foremost composer of tangos. He was sort of the rebel of Tango, the guy who took Tango specifically away from a certain sensibility that the Argentinians had, and he modernized it, added a different kind of sensibility to the music. Although there’s no improvisation in his music. It’s all written out. Every single note is accounted for. There’s nothing improvised on it. But it was one of the highlights of my career to get to record this record with him. I had never recorded Tango in my life. But I had been aware of Astor Piazzolla, and I had been listening. So when Kip called me to play bass on the session, I was scared, but I was happy to do it. And I was VERY happy that Astor liked my playing. For a Nuyorican bass player… I guess it has to do with all the influences, all the music I’ve gotten to hear here, based in New York, which everything comes here — this is the capital of the world.

TP: I won’t challenge you on that. Kip is also a son of the Bronx as well, so he’d be aware of some of the same things. The album is called The Rough Dancer in the Cyclical Night. It’s on American Clave Records. We heard “Leonard’s Song” and “Knife Fight,” which followed Carmen Lundy’s a cappella “Love Is Like A Cigarette.”

ANDY: Tango came out of the bordellos of Buenos Aires, of Argentina. It’s not supposed to be a very sedate music; it’s kind of a rough music. The best of Afro-Cuban music and the best of jazz was very close to that same element, the element of the nightlife, the bordello life, the pimps, the booze, the drugs — that was all part of it.

TP: It has that edge.

ANDY: Yes. There’s a certain “live life quick” because you don’t know if you’ll drop the next day — that kind of situation. But I was quite happy to get to record this kind of music, which I never thought I’d do.

TP: I think you have cued up, though I’m not sure, is music by Cachao.

ANDY: Not quite. This is Orquesta Aragon from Cuba. This was a live radio broadcast from the late 70s. This tune is called “Sin Clave Y Bongo, No Hay Son” – it means, “without the claves and bongos, there is no Son.” That’s Aragon’s tribute to the son, and the lyrics of the son talks about how it’s been such a strong rhythm and a dance rhythm, and it’s been around for quite a while, and it will never die because it’s such a strong tradition. It’s part of my background, too, and it’s music that I love. I love to play it, love to dance it, love to hear it.

[MUSIC: Orquesta Aragaon, “Sin Clave y Bongo No Hay Son”]

That was Orquesta Aragon, with Richard Egues on the flute and Orestes Varona, who was one of Manny Oquendo’s influences, playing bongos, which was a rarity because he’s a timbal player, and he was one of the greats. He passed away a bunch of years ago. Now Orquesta Aragon has a lot of new members in the band, and it’s not the same any more. Nothing stays the same, but we were fortunate enough that this band broadcast a lot and they recorded a lot. So the great era of Orquesta Aragon is preserved for all time.

TP: right now we’ll hear some of the most recent results of Andy’s long years of study, a track from each of two albums that have been put out by Fort Apache Band, as well as a promotional piece for Mayor David Dinkins.

ANDY: Dennis Rivera, the President of Local 1199, the Hospital Workers Union, hired us to produce a jingle, a Latin music jingle for the Dinkins campaign. So we came up with a little cute ditty. I wrote the melody. Manny Oquendo, as most of the time, comes up with the perfect idea, and then we built a song around it and an arrangement with Papo Vazquez. This is the Dinkins Jingle.

[MUSIC: Dinkins Jingle; Fort Apache, “Nutty”]

That was “Nutty” by Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band. That concept for “Nutty,” when we were rehearsing the material for the album, I was the one who came up with the concept of playing it as a son montuno, because that’s a favorite rhythm that I like, and it seemed to blend well with the melody of “Nutty.” So that’s how we did that.

TP: It’s from a recording titled Rumba Para Monk, which is a studio date comprising all arrangements of Monk tunes. [ETC.]

ANDY: I was quite a frequent visitor to this station and other stations, too. But as time went on, I was just too busy to be here. Hopefully I won’t make myself so scarce in the future.

[MUSIC: “Jackie-Ing”–Enja, Obatala, 1988]March 13, 1991 (on Cachao):

[MUSIC: Descarga, “Criolla Carabali”; “Tunas Se Quemo”; “Bailando Entre Espuma”]

TP: You’ve done this before. You know the deal.

ANDY: I know the deal. I was up here last time for the Machito Festival with Manny Oquendo, and we did a pretty good show. Here, my partner in crime is Joe Santiago, who is another one of the bass players of my generation. We’re the ones who always… I guess we’re always giving credit where credit is due, and the cat that we picked up a lot from and learned a lot from, not so much by, say, going to his house for lessons or anything, just by listening to what he was playing… We really learned a lot from Cachao. To this day, there’s things to learn from listening to the kind of bass playing that he was doing, no matter what period, because he has such an extensive career, going back to the late 1930s. It’s an incredible body of music that he put together, and he sort of defined bass playing. Afro-Cuban bass playing was brought to a high art.

TP: It wasn’t just Afro-Cuban bass playing. Cachao is a world-class improviser.

ANDY: Oh, of course. Not only that. See, he comes from a family of musicians, and many of them were bass players. I heard there’s, at recent count, 40 bass players in his family, including his mother and father. So we’re talking about somebody that really knows the instrument. Not only that. When Cachao was young and just growing up, he was playing percussion instruments, too. He started out playing bongos. But naturally, he was playing the bass around the same time period, and bass playing in Cuba at that time was mostly in the danzon bands, the charanga bands, the tipica bands of the period. That was sort of the national dance music of Cuba, was the danzon. He has a rich tradition in that idiom, and it calls for a lot of classical style playing, such as bowing the bass instead of, say, plucking it. The plucking part was more percussive. That’s more the Afro-Cuban side of things. But the bowing of the instrument, as in any symphony, or any classical situation… He has the same kind of technique as the best of classical music.

So I guess Cachao to me is probably the most well-rounded, all-around bass player that I’ve ever heard. Because he can do all. He can play with a symphony, he can play with a tango band, he can play with any salsa ensemble, any Afro-Cuban ensemble. His knowledge of rhythm is so extensive, and he can just fit a part to something, either drum-wise or bass-wise.

TP: Another aspect of Cachao we’ll focus on is his compositions, which number in the hundreds.

ANDY: Yes, because he used to write a lot of danzones for the Arcaño band. That’s the band he used to work for — Arcaño Y Sus Maravillas. Jose Antonio Arcaño. He was a master flute player. And the leader of this band, Y Sus Maravillas, were the “marvels” of the age. At the beginning, they were called Los Maravillas, or de Las Maravillas del Siglo, which means “the marvels of the century.” This band really… In that band a lot of innovations took place. The creation of new forms of dance music, and new ways of playing it, and new combinations of rhythms and combinations of sounds in the rhythm section, including… You can hear Cachao bow the bass, slap the bass, play all over the instrument. It’s incredible; incredible to listen to this.

This is a whole part of the history of music, and I am surprised that jazz scholars who really studied the 30s and 40s and have a lot to say about the 30s and 40s, or even, say, the early New Orleans days…that they are not really hip to what was going on in Cuba. They mention it barely. It’s mentioned, like, “Yeah, this was going on, too.” But they really didn’t dig deep into that side of the African diaspora, or whatever you could call it, the African side of things. And they should have been more attentive to this.

TP: Certainly, musicians from Cuba and from the Caribbean made their mark on jazz music, but they were not particularly identified as that – they were identified as jazz.

ANDY: It’s also some cultural conditioning involved. Because I imagine for any jazz fan of that time to hear a danzon with the violins and whatnot, it would sound a little like hokey to them. It would sound like something else. But they were missing the point. And the point is the rhythm. And that’s the total point. To this day, still jazz cats have trouble getting behind the rhythm and how Afro-Cuban music works. But this is the master, one of the masters of any era.

TP: We’ll be having 2 hours and 43 more minutes of elaborations on this theme, with Andy Gonzalez on Cachao. Let’s talk about the three tracks we heard at the top of the show.

ANDY: This album is one of these strange records that came out in the early 60s, after the Revolution, of tapes of Cachao’s jam sessions, which he had done quite a few recording sessions. The personnel on some of these tracks, like, Yeyo Iglesias on bongos, Tata Güines. Papin also played on some of this stuff. The pianist wasn’t Jesus Lopez, who used to play with Arcaño’s band, so it probably was Orestes Lopez, Cachao’s brother, who along with Cachao were the musical directors and were responsible for the majority of arrangements in the Arcaño band. In the Arcaño band, Orestes played the cello. The instrumentation is 3 violins, flute, cello, bass, piano, and timbales — no congas at the beginning. The bass sort of held up the bottom and with the timbal and made it sound full, like the conga wasn’t really needed. He would slap the bass sort of like a conga, too. All those things are incredible.

I’ve been for more than a year now trying to hook up a way to get Cachao in concert together with Milt Hinton. We’re talking about some serious slap bass technique in jazz — in American Jazz and in Afro-Cuban music. Now, one of these days I’ll have my dream come true. But I’ve been waiting for that. I’ve been mentioning it to promoters, and they all say it’s a great idea, but so far nobody has acted on it. But that’s one of them I want to try to do.

The tunes on this album… It’s on the Maype label. It’s funny, Cachao… I’m glad that these records exist. But the companies that put these out were like bootleg companies. They used to rip off the musicians, and never pay them a penny for their stuff. So as much as I like the presence of having the record around, it’s a drag that Cachao never really makes any bread off these records. And they’ve been in print for 25 years, so it must be somebody’s making money.

Anyway, the tunes that we heard are “Criollo Carabali.” That’s an old Afro-Cuban chant of the abakua sect, or what would you call it… That’s sort of the Afro-Cuban version of the Masons. It’s an all-male society dedicated to preserving and sort of keeping each other cool. In fact, in the early years, they used to buy each other’s freedom from slavery. So that’s a chant of that style of music, abakua.

“Tunas Se Quemo” is sort of a descarga montuno, very simple. The tres player on this record is Niño Rivera, who is probably the most modern of the tres players and the most influential, besides Arsenio Rodriguez, who is probably THE influence on the tres. All these names I’m mentioning are just giants. Giants in Cuban music. Cachao was in there, too, as the giant of giants.

TP: We have cued up a collaboration between Cachao and Eddie Palmieri.

ANDY: This is not my favorite tune from the record, but Cachao gets a little solo in it, and I like the way he plays here. He’s a driving force in any band he plays in, but the collaboration with Eddie Palmieri was… I got to see that band live, in person, quite a few times, and I was thrilled by that. Joe, when was the first time you saw Cachao play live.

JOE SANTIAGO: Tito Rodriguez Orchestra.

ANDY: Same with me. I saw him with Tito Rodriguez Orchestra. I saw Tito Rodriguez’ Orchestra at the Embassy Ballroom on a Sunday afternoon in 1964. I was playing my first big-time gig. It was Federico Pagani, he was like the daddy of promoters in… He brought the Latin dance downtown to the Palladium and all this stuff. He’s like a legendary figure. Well, he was throwing these Sunday afternoon, all day,10 bands on the bill, and he hired our little Latin Jazz group. I was about 13 at the time. We were the tenth band on the bill. So we played, a little quintet, we made 50 bucks. But at the top of the bill was the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra, Eddie Palmieri La Perfecta, Joe Cuba Sextet — the hot bands at the moment. So I got to see them for the first time. I saw Cachao play for the first time. I saw Manny Oquendo playing with Eddie Palmieri’s band for the first time. All that was great. The Colgate Gardens in the Bronx. Neither one of these two places I mentioned exists any more.

Anyway, this is the Eddie Palmieri band with Cachao. This was recorded around 1968 or 1969 – “Ay Que Rico.”

[MUSIC: Eddie Palmieri, “Ay Que Rico”; Orquesta De Fajardo, “Fajardo y su Flauta”]

ANDY: That was actually Los Treyas Cubanas, but it’s a tape that ended up in Miami and came out under the title of Fajardo, who was the leader of that band until he left to come to the States. So that tape actually isn’t Fajardo at all playing there, but the tune and composition and everything is Cachao’s. The title on the album is Fajardo Y Su Flauta, but the original title is “Julio Y Su Flauta” — Julio Guerrero, who was the original flute player who played in the Estrella Cubana band. But that’s a really nice, laid-back version of that. There’s another version that Cachao himself recorded of this tune that’s a little faster. But this one, they gave it a nice tempo.

We’re going to hear now a long, 18-minute cut. It takes a whole side of a record. It’s from the Descargas at the Village Gate, Live — the Tico All-Stars. This particular descarga is “Descarga de Contrabajoas,” the jam between the bass players. And the two daddies are here — Bobby Rodriguez and Cachao.

Now, Bobby Rodriguez was a whole other style. I think Bobby and Cachao were probably the two main influences on my playing (and probably Joe’s, too, I guess). They were the cats, man. They were the ones with the best technique, the prettiest way of playing. Bobby was very pretty in his sound especially. There’s a very pronounced difference in their tone quality. Even the way they hit the strings is different. Bobby has more of a bell, clear, ringing kind of note thing, and Cachao is funkier, a little more street when it comes to plucking the strings and slapping the bass and whatnot. They’re playing two Ampeg Baby Basses here. Tone-wise, they still get their tone out, but sometimes the sound can be a little strange. But they do some great stuff here, and they just talk to each other back and forth.

TP: The liner notes attribute this to May 1966.

[MUSIC: Cachao-Bobby Rodriguez, “Descarga de Contrabajos”; “El Fantasma Del Combo”]

ANDY: Israel Lopez, Cachao, the great bass player of Afro-Cuban music. The track we just heard was one of his many descarga, or Cuban jam session recordings. This one is on a strange label called Musicalia. Even the cover is real strange. It says, Cuban Music In Jam Session, Cachao, in big letters, and then there’s a photograph of two dancers, a lady who has on a bikini-like outfit, her arms look like they’re crossed or tied together, and then the guy is leaning down, and it’s shot in the woods somewhere — a very strange photo. Anyway, it’s a great album for the things that are on it.

The tune we heard was called “El Fantasma Del Combo.” All those little effects and all the…that’s right out of Cachao’s ideas about doing things. I was fortunate enough to participate in something that he did years later for the Salsoul label. I’ve been to a few rehearsals where he puts these things together, and he just comes up with these crazy ideas. He sets up the percussion and everything the way he wants them to start off. He orchestrates a jam session.

Which is in contrast to that mish-mosh of a thing at the Village Gate, which I don’t care for that much except for the things that Cachao and Bobby Rodriguez get to play on it. But since it was out of their control, a lot of other things were happening that really had nothing to do with… Just good playing. But I just think that track is valuable for their work together, because it’s very rare when two bass players play together on a record — it’s usually just one bass and that’s it.

Now we’re going to start delving into Cachao’s past, in the real early days. We’ve mostly been listening to 50s and 60s work. We’re going back now to 1938 or 1939, I believe. The original source of this bass solo is a Koussevitzky concerto, Koussevitzky was a Russian composer and a bass player, and he used to write for the bass. They took this piece of music and adapted it for a bass solo in the Cuban danzon tradition. We’re going to hear two versions of this. Cachao recorded it in 1938 and then recorded it again in 1957 or so. We’re going to hear the early version, and then you’ll hear the newer version.

[MUSIC: Cachao, “Canta Contrabajo” (1938 and 1957)]

ANDY: I made a slight error. The first tune that we heard on my tape of real early stuff, I believe it was called “Al de Lante(?),” Cachao as musical director along with his brother of the Arcaño Y Sus Maravillas band of 1938 or so. I’m not positive of the exact date. We’ll now delve into that particular time period, because there are so many innovations going on, not only on the bass itself, but the transforming of the whole rhythm section happened in that band — and Cachao had quite a bit to do with it. In this time period, there was no conga drum in this style of band. The conga drum was sort of a lowly… They weren’t given much attention. They considered it a very street instrument, and it wasn’t accepted in the salon de baile, in polite society dancing, of which danzon was a strong part. But in the Arcaño band, the conga was introduced around 1946-47-48, that time period.

We’ll hear the band before the conga drum was introduced, from the very early Arcaño recordings. These are all done around 1938-39-40. There is no conga drum, so the bottom of the band is in the hands of Cachao, and in the hands of Ulpiano Diaz, who was the timbal player in the band. Listen particularly to the interplay between Cachao playing what they call the tumbao, the bass figure, plus he’ll be slapping the bass. You’ll hear slaps. You’ll hear little things that sound like percussive effects, like from a conga drum, but they’re not. They’re from the bass. That in conjunction with the left hand of the timbales, which plays a beat that’s a very bass kind of sound…those two things are the bottom of the sound of this band. And it’s 3 violins, a cello, flute — the great Arcaño himself on the flute, a tremendous flute player, with a very distinctive, sweet style. And the great Jesus Lopez on piano, who was one of the more, I guess…how would I call it…the chops — Mr. Chops. This guy was sort of the Art Tatum of his day, but in an Afro-Cuban way.

[MUSIC: Arcano Y Sus Maravillas with Cachao, 1938-39]

ANDY: That was a good dose of early Arcaño and then the last tune was “Buena Vista Social Club,” which is from the El Gran Cachao album on Kubaney Records (1958). This is I guess what the Arcaño band would have been like 20 years later, from the period that we were listening to the old 78s. For the recording, Cachao some woodwinds. You heard bass clarinet, you hear a clarinet; it added an extra texture to the sound of the arrangements of the danzon, of the strings and flute sound. So that was a pretty nice thing that he did on that record.

Now, the earlier cuts… I know all the melodies, and I’m a little vague on the titles. I wish Rene Lopez was here to help me out with the titles on some of these songs. But they were all Cachao’s arrangements. Although on the 78, I guess if you really listen closely, you can hear all the things Cachao is doing on the bass to make that bottom happen in the music, because there’s no conga…

[END OF SIDE 2]

[SIDE 3]

ANDY: …that’s where all his musical background really comes from. And then, the other side of Cachao, which is the street musician, who used to play bongos in little street ensembles and whatnot.

We’re going to hear a very historical recording, mainly because of the fact that we have… This is the record entitled Patato y Totico. It was recorded on Verve Records, and Teddy Reig produced it. Patato Valdes is well known to jazz fans. He’s been recording on jazz albums with Art Blakey and Max Roach and all these people since the middle 50s. But he got together his own recording session with Totico singing, and he managed to get Arsenio Rodriguez and Cachao on the same session.

[MUSIC: Patato-Totico-Cachao-Arsenio, “Mas Que Nada”; Descarga, “Rendencion”; Gran Orquesta Tipica, “Mambo Tipico”; Cachao, “Maria Elena”; Eddie Palmieri-Cachao, “Busca Lo Tuyo”–skips]

ANDY: Sorry for the scratchy record, but I couldn’t get a better copy of this. That was Cachao playing with Eddie Palmieri in one of Eddie’s best bands. Manny Oquendo playing bongos, and Luis Miranda on conga, and Barry Rogers taking a tremendous trombone solo…

TP: I guess you play that one a lot, Andy.

ANDY: Yes, this particular copy of the record I found in a budget bin somewhere, and it was used. I didn’t think it would skip on the tune, though. I couldn’t find my other copy. It’s one of those records that I used to play a lot, and my good copy got lost. But you could hear the driving force of Cachao in the Eddie Palmieri band. It was just such a good-sounding rhythm section — Cachao and Manny and Luis Miranda and Eddie on the piano. A driving rhythm section.

Cachao during his career… When he came from Cuba and settled in New York, he worked with quite a few bands. He did a lot of freelance work, did some symphony work. He did spend a good I guess two years or so with the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra, and recorded a few albums, did some touring. They tell me he wrote some charts for the band that they never recorded, which I would have liked to hear. In particular he wrote a danzon that I’d like to have heard, a big band arrangement of one of Cachao’s danzons. But I’ll have to wait until Tito Rodriguez, Jr., digs it up out of his father’s extensive library of arrangements.

During the time that Tito Rodriguez had Cachao in the band, which was a tremendous period for the band… The Tito Rodriguez Orchestra was always a top-notch unit. Other players around that time… He always had the best — the best accompanists in that band. So imagine that Cachao would be playing, and then he managed to steal Rene Hernandez away from the Machito Orchestra, and quite a few other players of note. Like, Mario Rivera used to play the baritone sax in Tito Rodriguez’s orchestra at the time. Also the lead alto was Bobby Porcelli. Just some great musicians.

TP: Before we play the next recording, by Tito Rodriguez, please run down the music we heard before the Eddie Palmieri track.

ANDY: Before the Eddie Palmieri thing, we heard a tune called “Maria Elana,” which Cachao wrote for his daughter on her birthday. That was recorded when Cachao was a member of the Fajardo Orchestra, which he spent some time with Jose Fajardo’s Orchestra. You can see him on the cover of some of the Panart albums.

Before that we heard the Gran Orquesta Tipica, “Mambo Tipico.” This was an album entitled The 64 Professors. What they did was they put together all the great violinists and flute
players and leaders of all the charanga bands in Cuba that were coming up during the 50s. They were very strong. They were the most popular bands. We’re talking about the America Orchestra, Enrique Jorrin, just the great figures of the music. And Cachao, his brother Jesus Lopez on piano; Ulpiano Diaz on timbales — people like that. They just all banded together to record a record of… Imagine. Full strings. It almost sounds like a symphony playing danzones. This tune was titled “Mambo Tipico.” That’s what it was. It wasn’t a danzon; it was a mambo of the genre at that time. It wasn’t the New York style mambo, which is quite a bit more frenetic and a lot faster. But the original Cuban mambo was a nice, slow-to-medium tempo kind of groove. That was a good example of it.

Before that we heard one of the Descarga albums, a tune called “Redencion,” which was written by Orestes Lopez, Cachao’s brother.

Now we’re going to play something Tito Rodriguez recorded, from a CD called Big Band Latino. I’m curious to hear this because I owned the original record when it came out on Musicorp Records, and I’m curious how they remastered it. The people at the Palladium label from Barcelona, Spain, are very meticulous. They put out some Machito records, and the sound is tremendous on them. The track we’ll hear is “Esti Es Mi Orquesta,” “This Is My Orchestra,” which was a direct cop off a Stan Kenton record by the same name — This is An Orchestra. Tito Rodriguez narrates a whole thing about having a band, and the musicians in the band — he names all the musicians and has them all play something. The arrangement itself is… Well, they adapted just the words Stan Kenton said about having a big band, and they translated that into Spanish, but then the rest of the arrangement is an original arrangement. Cachao gets a nice little taste here, and so do all the other members, some of whom are quite prominent today on the scene. This cut lasts a good 12 minutes.

[Tito Rodriguez, “Esti Es Mi Orquesta”]

ANDY: That was the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra with Cachao on the bass and all the other great musicians in that band at the time period — that was around 1964 or 1965. Tito Rodriguez gave up his big band around 1965 and moved to Puerto Rico.

And Cachao? Well, Cachao always was in demand as a player. He could fit in any situation, and got to play with all the bands really. I saw Cachao play with Machito’s orchestra. That was tremendous! I saw him play with Orchestra Broadway, most of the bands. But I guess the bands that he most impressed me with from what I saw in person was the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra, which you just heard, and the Eddie Palmieri band. To me, those were where he really got a chance to shine as a section player, as part of the rhythm section.

We’re missing quite a few records that I wish we would have had a chance to play tonight. I guess we’re going to have to do Cachao, part 2, and bring in all the stuff that we’ve been missing. There’s a bunch of live tapes also of Cachao with Manny Oquendo and Libre, with two basses. I had the honor of playing along with Cachao last year, doing the two-bass thing at SOB’s, at the Village Gate, and most recently at the Atlanta Jazz Festival. Unfortunately, I misplaced my tape from Atlanta. I was tearing the house apart looking for it to bring it here so you could hear it. But I’ll have to wait until Cachao, part 2, to play it.

Also, the records Cachao recorded in the middle 70s for the Salsoul label, which he got to play some of his early danzon arrangements, newly recorded in the studio, and he also got to do new descargas, and he brought together people like El Negro Vivar on trumpet… Those were his last record dates before El Negro passed away of a heart attack in Miami. He was one of the great trumpet soloists of Cuban music. Chocolate is on the recording also, the other daddy of the trumpet. Papaito is playing there, and Virgilio Marti — quite a few of the Cuban Mafia in New York played on those records. Unfortunately, right now, they’re not here. But we’ll get to hear them on another occasion.

But that was the first that people had heard about Cachao in quite a few years. Especially the New York scene, of which he was quite popular here. He got to play on some of the Allegre All Stars things, the Tico All Stars. He took part in quite a few recordings with Charlie Palmieri, and quite a number of sideman dates. So his work as a leader didn’t revive until around 77-78, when he recorded the albums for Salsoul under Andy Lopez’ and Andy Kaufman’s production. We’ll get to hear those on I guess our second part. Cachao is so prolific a composer and a musician and a record-maker, although as a leader there are not many recordings.

Also, there’s a few that he recorded recently, in the last couple of years, for a small label in Miami. I think the label is entitled Tania Records…as opposed to Fania records, I guess…I don’t know. But there’s some great, great contemporary Cachao bass solos on those records also. Unfortunately, again, they’re not here.

But we do have quite a bit of Cachao’s early career and we do have quite a bit of his middle career, which… A lot of people consider that some of his best work took place in the middle to late 50s in Cuba with his cohorts and contemporaries, such as Emilio Rivera. Tata Guines, the great conga virtuoso who took the conga farther than it ever had gone as a musical instrument in the 50s — he’s a very strong influence on just anybody who’s playing congas today. He was quite a part of Cachao’s entourage in Cuba during the time when they were recording those Cuban Jam Session records.

We’re going to return to the Cuba Jam Session period now and hear a town called “La Luz.”

[MUSIC: “La Luz”]

[END OF SIDE 3]

[MUSIC: “La Luz” (skip)”; “El Manicero”; “Juan Pescao”; “La Luz”; Cachao Descarga-Nino Rivera, “Potpourri de Congas”;

ANDY: That was the great Niño Rivera on tres with Cachao and his Descarga group. On bongos of course was Yeyito, and on the congas was Tata Guines, on the timbales was Guillermo Barretto, and I imagine that was Cachao’s brother playing the piano. Those are classic recordings, and they are more obscure ones, because the great album that everybody knows is the Descargas In Miniature album, which we don’t have a copy of here, but we’ll get it for part-2.

All these records were originally recorded… The first Descargas in Miniature were done… The reason they called them “In Miniature” is because they were all done for release on 45s, of which I have a few. As a matter of fact, I didn’t realize it until I started hunting through some record bins in Chicago and ran across some Panart 45s of some of the tunes from the first Descarga album. That one to me is the classic of classics. If they ever have Grammys for classic albunms, that should win one, because Cachao really put together a stellar organization, and his ideas and the way he puts little jams together, he really sets them up. They don’t just happen. He sets them up real nice.

Basically, the two great recording feats of Cachao’s career are the whole thing with the danzon and the tradition, and how he sort of was instrumental in new innovations in Cuban music. And then, the whole thing with the descargas, of which I hear that he wasn’t the very first to do a Cuban jam session — there were other albums. But the ones he put together are considered…they’re classics of the genre.

We just heard quite a few of these little Cuban descargas. There was one called “Potpourri of Congas,” which started to skip so we had to take it off. These are old records, man. Some of them I’ve played to death for years and years, and unfortunately as best as we can clean them, they still skip.

TP: We made an adjustment on “La Luz.” Meticulous cleaning job!

ANDY: I’ve been collecting records for so many years, you learn that sometimes you have to put some soap and water to it and scrub out the gunk. And they play! You’d be surprised. Vinyl is very resilient. They spring back to life.

Anyway, we’ll get back to some early Cachao. We’d like to continue this on another occasion and have Cachao Part 2 with more of his great solo work. Unfortunately we weren’t able to bring some of that material with us today. But we’re trying to give you an all-around view of how great a musician he is. Hopefully, to those who have never seen him play in public, make a definite attempt to see him in person. He is one of the most dynamic figures to watch while playing, because he does so many things. He’s an entertainer. He knows you’re watching. He’ll do some stuff to dazzle you. Watching him play whatever he’s playing, his tumbaos or whatever, and then all of a sudden he’ll just surprise you with something and make you go nuts.

We’ll hear some of Cachao’s arrangements from the Arcaño band. He’s playing bass, of course. He doesn’t get much of a chance to do any solo work on these records. But, what he does do in the rhythm section, behind the rhythm section, as an accompanist and as just an all-around player, there’s quite a bit of very interesting stuff going on. All bass players give an extra ear to this.

[MUSIC: Cachao-Arcaño, “El Nono Toca” and more titles from early 40s]

ANDY: That was the music of Arcaño Y Sus Maravillas, and that last track was called “Cubanita,” and that was Los Hermanos Rigual that were singing the front part of the tune. They were pretty well known as a trio singing in harmony. They did some work with the Machito Orchestra, particularly with Graciela on “Contigo En la Distancia.”

That’s it. We’re wrapping it up. We haven’t really, except for a couple of instances, shown Cachao in the light of being the great soloist that he is, and that’s what I think the 2nd part of our Cachao special should focus on.December 1, 1993:

[MUSIC: Libre, “Imágenes Latinas”]

TP: Tonight we’ll focus primarily on a kind of autobiography via recordings spanning 20-25 years. What was that selection?

ANDY: First, good evening, Ted. It’s a pleasure to be back here at WKCR. I have a tendency to come up and publicize my heroes. When you asked me if I want to do a show on me… I’m not one to blow my own horn on the radio. It’s not my style. But I figured that it’s time to do a show on my greatest adventures in music, which there have been quite a few over the last 25-odd years that I’ve been playing in the business.

The tune we opened with was an original, a poem by Bernardo Palombo that I put music to, and we recorded it on our second album, Manny Oquendo and Libre on Salsoul Records. They went out of business, and those records are hard to find. They haven’t come out on CD yet. Hopefully they will. This was something that we’re very well known for, which is our descarga jam kind of situations. This was pretty much an invention in the studio. We had an outline, a basic format as to how we wanted to play. That was the late, great Barry Rogers at the beginning of the tune. To me, that’s one of his nicest statements on record, that whole beginning of the tune. He really plays it. I asked him to do something specific for me, and that was to imitate a vocal. Like, guaguanco, the beginning of a vocal is what they call the diana, when a singer goes, a-nah-nah, a-nah-nah, a-nah-nah, sort of to establish the key and to establish the mood of the song. So I had Barry do that on the trombone. He did a great job. It’s like the first Latin Jazz instrumental diana for a guaguanco. It’s really great.

I thought I’d bring up different things I’ve recorded over the years with Manny Oquendo and Libre; with Palmieri – the two Palmieris, the Palmieri brothers; with Tito Rodriguez; Machito; Puente; and the latest Latin Jazz things that are going on today with Fort Apache with my brother; and Charlie Sepulveda and Hilton Ruiz; and also older stuff — stuff when I was working 20-something-odd years ago with Ray Barretto’s band and Eddie Palmieri’s band. Things like that, and occasional jazz things here and there.

TP: The first thing you’ve cued up comes from 1975-76, when you seem to have been quite busy in different bands, a time when a lot of fresh ideas were being formulated.

ANDY: Well, that time was the beginning of Libre. We had started working as a steady band on the circuit here in New York, and we had gone on some trips already — to Africa and Brazil. Now, this particular recording we’re going to hear is from that period, but it was with a friend of mine by the name of Bobby Paunetto. He’s a Bronx-raised musician, pianist, vibist. I knew him from… He went to Berklee, graduated out of Berklee School of Music, and came back with a lot of fantastic music. But I’ve always known him to play more or less the same kind of style musically; he’s always adhered to that style, even though it’s progressed harmonically and he’s a great composer. Unfortunately, he’s been kind of bedridden…not bed-ridden so much, but apartment-ridden – he’s been in his apartment quite a bit. He’s come down with multiple sclerosis, and it’s kept him from really developing his career as a player. But before came down with this illness, he recorded these two records with a lot of friends and help from family. They’re great records, and I think that eventually they’re going to be re-released on CD. This is called “Brother Will.” He wrote this in memory of his brother, who was mugged and murdered during this time period. This was his putting into music what he felt about the situation. It’s Pathfinder Records. The players are people like Todd Anderson, Billy Drewes, Ronnie Cuber is on some of this, Manny Oquendo plays on some of it, and Jerry, myself, Milton Cardona. When we were all up-and-coming, struggling young musicians in the Bronx, Bobby was one of us, and he sort of took his particular sound and concept to another level by going to school and really learning his trade, his art. When he got out of school, this is what he came up with.

[MUSIC: Bobby Paunetto, “Brother Will” (1975); Ray Barretto, “Tin Tin Deo” (1969); Eddie Palmieri, “Adoracion” (1973)]

ANDY: The thing about “Adoracion,” which was from an album called Sentido, is that the beginning part was totally improvised. What I came up with was to play harmonics on the strings with my bow. For years after that, people were asking me, “What is that sound?” This was before synthesizers were being used on recordings and stuff like that. So it’s an unearthly kind of sound, and a lot of people were freaked by it — they didn’t know what it was. But it was me playing the bow.

TP: How long were you playing with Eddie Palmieri? How did you become involved?

ANDY: I was working with Ray Barretto’s band, and we worked a lot opposite Eddie. Nicky Marrero was the timbalero in the band at the time. I was always an Eddie Palmieri fan from way back when Manny Oquendo was the timbal player in the band, and sort of the heartbeat of the Eddie Palmieri band. All through the years, the names of Manny Oquendo and Barry Rogers keep on popping up on these records, especially the records that I have anything to do with, because these are the cats — they’re the ones who were the movers and shakers of the Eddie Palmieri band. They made things happen in that band. Manny still makes things happen with Libre, and Barry was always one to make suggestions and add to the music to make it spectacular.

TP: That band was pushing the boundaries of Latin music.

ANDY: There’s some truth to that. Eddie was a good catalyst for other people to push the band. Eddie was good at sort of being the glue that made all the innovations and things happen. Some of the ideas were his, but the majority of rhythm ideas were from his players.

TP: What are some of the innovations that happened within the Eddie Palmieri bands of that time?

ANDY: Well, one was just the sound of the trombones, a band with just trombones in it, two trombones. That was kind of unique. It wasn’t original. Other bands had that sound also. But the Eddie Palmieri band, the La Perfecta, brought it to a height of musical excellence. Barry was in charge of making sure that the music was hip, and Manny was in charge of making sure the rhythm was hip — and Eddie was Eddie, doing what he does. It’s a unique sound. That band was really influential while I was growing up, as part of the soundtrack of when I was young.

TP: Since you were a toddler, has your life been suffused with music?

ANDY: Sure. My dad was a vocalist, and he used to sing with bands, and he’d take us to the rehearsals when we were 6 or 7 years old. We were listening to Cortijo y Su Combo and La Sonora Matancera and Machito… The house music, what we’d hear in the house in the day and at the family parties and stuff like that.

TP: Is that the process by which you learned to play, by hearing the music all the time and being around musicians?

ANDY: That’s sort of part of it. When you’re growing up and listening to the music, you get a feel for it. It became a normal thing to hear that kind of music. What knocked me out is my uncle had a red record. I said, “A red record? What is that?” Fantasy Records. It was Cal Tjader. That opened our ears to another way of playing than just listening to dance music and playing dance music, and tipico, Afro-Cuban-based New York music. This was Afro-Cuban, but it had jazz in it and improvisation, and the sound of the vibes was a very nice, pretty sound. I heard those records when they were new, and that was in the middle 50s. I was just 5-6-7 years old. Even back then, it was a revelation to me. Just the sound of it sounded so nice. I didn’t realize until later how much jazz influenced they were. Cal Tjader was a very heavily Milt Jackson influenced…

[END OF SIDE 1]

…in the fourth grade, playing violin. I played violin for a year-and-a-half and then switched to the bass. At that time, the charanga craze was happening in the dance music of New York — the violin sound with the flute. That was pretty prominent. I had no real aspirations to play that kind of music. From the get, we were trying to play Latin Jazz. That was our thing.

TP: Was your brother always a drummer?

ANDY: He started as a drummer, a conga player and trumpet player at the same time. We sort of started coming up in music together.

TP: Before “Adoracion,” we heard you in a Ray Barretto band playing Dizzy Gillespie’s “Tin Tin Deo.” You were young.

ANDY: I was 18. It’s from an album called Ray Barretto, Together. It’s the first album I recorded with Barretto, on the then-fledgling Fania label. Fania hadn’t hit its stride yet as the big salsa label. I lasted in the band about a year after that recording, and then I left and went with Dizzy Gillespie’s band; me and my brother joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band. We stayed there for about 8 months, toured a bit, played a lot in the city. That was a great experience playing with Diz.

TP: Had he heard you with Ray Barretto?

ANDY: He’d hired my brother first to play percussion. Then they needed a bass player who could play without getting lost in the rhythm. They had a couple of bass players play in the band, but Dizzy wasn’t satisfied with how they were approaching the rhythm, so Jerry recommended that I come in. I came in and…

TP: Was he emphasizing Afro-Cuban things, or was it the full range of what he did?

ANDY: It was a unique band. There were no traps, which is unusual for a jazz band at the time. It was Mike Longo on piano and George Davis on guitar, myself, and Jerry on congas — and Diz.

TP: No timbales.

ANDY: No. Just the congas. And it made it. For the kind of music Dizzy was playing at the time, which was… You’ve got to remember at the time, we were still immersed in the boogaloo era, kind of rhythm-and-blues with Latin rhythm combined kind of thing. Dizzy was reflecting some of that sound in his music.

There was one tune that made some noise and is still remembered these days from the album we did. It’s called “Olinga.” I think Milt Jackson covered it and a few other people covered it. So that’s one of the points in my life that I’ll always remember.

TP: It must have been a harmonic education for you.

ANDY: Of course. Matter of fact, I didn’t think I was ready to play with Diz. But he would egg us on. He was very generous with his time, as far as showing musicians what they needed to know about his music. He was just the funniest person you could ever know, and great to be with. He got along very well with all of us. To show you what kind of person he is, he met my parents when he hired us, and he’d come by the house every now and then, and my dad and him became pretty good friends. Then we were out of contact with Diz for a while because he was busy doing stuff. With the U.N. Band, they were down in Puerto Rico at the time that my dad was hospitalized. Diz found out about it and called my dad at the hospital to find out how he was and whatnot. I’ll always remember that about Diz, how nice and sweet a person he was.

TP: Also at the time, there was so much activity… Wasn’t Kenny Dorham also someone you performed with?

ANDY: Yes. We were close to Kenny for about a good year, and we were playing almost every day. At the time, they had passed…well, they had anti-poverty funds, and they set up schools. I was teaching bass, Jerry was teaching percussion, and Kenny Dorham was teaching trumpet. We didn’t have too many students, so we’d play every day, just for our own enjoyment. We got to play a few gigs, too; we formed a little Latin Jazz quintet. That was another education, because K.D. was an amazing musician. Another beautiful, sweetheart kind of person.

TP: You had the opportunity to be around two of the great trumpet masters, as well as experiencing the whole range of Latin music that one would hear at the time.

ANDY: Yes. I was also into the jazz… I got to see Trane play, one of the next-to-last gigs he ever did, at the Village Theater. That was exciting, with the Ornette Coleman Trio and John Coltrane Octet. That’s when he had Pharaoh Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison. Jimmy Garrison I got to know pretty well after Trane’s death. He lived in an apartment next to a friend of mine, and I was always paying him visits. That’s how I got to buy a bass that someone had left in his house.

TP: Who were some of your teachers? Was it pretty much through gigging and practical experience? Or did you have a more formal thing?

ANDY: The Latin side of it was pretty much self-taught and listening to the masters — listening to Bobby Rodriguez, listening to Cachao. Those were the cats. Those were my heroes. They still are.

For jazz, I was fortunate when I was in junior high school… I had the audacity to call Steve Swallow and ask if he gave bass lessons, and I took about two years of bass lessons with Steve Swallow. This is before he made the decision to switch from upright bass to the bass guitar.

TP: Was he with Art Farmer at the time?

ANDY: He was with Stan Getz, Art Farmer, and Gary Burton.

TP: Let’s get to another set of music. This one will have a more contemporary slant, and begins with a 1980 album that brought the music of you and Jerry into very clear focus. It’s from Ya Yo Me Cure on American Clave Recorda.

ANDY: This was our first attempt at putting out something more or less our sensibilities about things. Trying to improvise, trying to move the music forward, and also keep some roots to it. Guaguanco roots. We were listening to a lot of Cuban music and Cuban groups. Also we were doing a lot of jamming at my house, at New Rican Village, which was a place on Avenue A where I used to be the musical director. This particular album really reflects all this time period where we were doing a lot of jamming and a lot of playing, and we were starting to formalize kind of a direction in Latin Jazz that we wanted to move in.

[Fort Apache, “Agueybana Zemi”; Grupo Folklorico, “A Papa Y Mama”; Libre, “A Chango Y Maria”; Papo Vazquez-Milton Cardona, “Chango Y Yemeya”–Breakout-Timeless]

TP: You’ve been working with Papo for 15 years or so.

ANDY: Papo has been working with us in different situations since he was 16 years old. That was 1975 or 1976. Well, he’s like part of the family, part of our extended musical family of quite a few musicians.

TP: Like many of the musicians you’ve worked with, and you and Jerry, he’s totally fluent in the idiomatic performance of Latin Jazz and Jazz, and can merge them or code-switch easily.

ANDY: That’s part of the experience of growing up and dealing with New York City. I don’t think there’s any other place in the world where we could have so much access to musics as here in New York. When I was a teenager, I used to run to Slugs to hear Jackie McLean or to hear McCoy or hear… We were jazz fans. We had so many musical heroes that used to follow and go hear all the time. And studying history, there’s quite a few heroes that… Over the years, you start learning about who’s who and who did what in the music, in jazz and in Latin. I did quite a bit of studying. I was fortunate to acquire a large cache, they call it, of old Downbeats, and I started reading each one of them cover-to-cover just to learn about what was going on, what people were listening to and who…

TP: Reading old Blindfold Tests is an interesting exercise…

ANDY: Yeah. Like Miles Davis saying he’s going to step on Eric Dolphy’s foot the next time he sees him. Things like that. Those are funny.

But I did learn about the different critics who were around, and how they tried to formulize people’s tastes. Critics used to put Coltrane down; they used to put Charlie Parker down — things like that. I used to think that was kind of silly. Most critics are…their particular opinions… It seems to me they’re frustrated because they’re not playing. I don’t know what that is. You know, in the Latin world there aren’t too many critics. I think that’s because they’d find themselves in cement shoes at the bottom of the ocean if they say something bad about somebody! [LAUGHS]

TP: On “Chango y Yemeya,” the percussion were Steve Berrios, Milton Cardona and Patato; Papo Vazquez on trombone; Andy Gonzalez, bass; Edgardo Miranda on cuatro; Bill O’Connell, piano; and Mario Rivera.

ANDY: If you’ll notice, most of those guys were on the Ya Yo Me Cure record. Like I said, we have an extended family of musicians; we’ve all been playing together for years.

TP: Before that was “El Chango de Maria,” from Los Liberes de la Salsa. That’s from a compilation of two sessions by Libre from 1978 and 1979. Papo Vazquez, Jose Rodriguez and Barry Rogers on trombones; Manny Oquendo and Jerry Gonzalez on percussion…so many, and I’m not sure who is on which particular track.

ANDY: Before that, “A Papa Y A Mama” is by Henny Alvarez, by Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental Nuevayorquino. That was a pretty historical record for its time, because it really… When that record was released was when Fania was starting to move up and try to establish their particular sound as the commercial sound in Latin American music, in Salsa, and they were the ones who sort of pushed that name, “Salsa,” on the music, because it didn’t have that kind of title before. We sort of recorded it, and it became like an antidote to that commercial sound.

TP: Why was that sound objectionable at the time? Or not “objectionable,” but what were you reacting to?

ANDY: Well, it wasn’t a deliberate reaction to the other kinds of music that were happening. It was just a natural…it was an evolution rather than a revolution. It was something that evolved, partly because of the jams we were having in the basement of my house, including a lot of these musicians. We formulized a group to play folklore and also to experiment with new forms. We played a few college concerts with that, and out of that, with the help of Rene Lopez, we were able to get a recording contract on Salsoul. We ended up recording two albums. The first one was a 2-LP set, Concepts in Unity, and then a year later we put out Lo Dice Todo – “We Say It All.” We were true to what the title says — a Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental Nuevayorquino. It’s a folkloric group that’s experimental, and we are from New York, so it’s going to involve all the influences of New York.

It was pretty much Afro-Cuban. On the second album, we did a Brazilian tune by Jose Rodriguez. By the way, he’s in the hospital and I’d like to wish him my best. He’s not been feeling well lately. He was the powerhouse trombone player to be teamed up…

[END OF SIDE 2]

…or any kind of experimental Latin music until we decided to do this. It created quite a stir, because some of the tunes on these albums are very exciting. To this day, people ask me, “When are these things going to be released on CD?”

TP: I was about to ask you that myself.

ANDY: I have no idea. I’ve been pestering the owner of the label to re-release the stuff, and hopefully he will do so.

TP: It seems also that the notion of delving into the broad folkloric spectrum has filtered into the contemporary approach of many of your generation of Latin musicians.

ANDY: I’m sure that these records had to have had an effect. They were quite popular when they were released, and they made quite a bit of noise. Everywhere I go, people ask me about them and ask me different things about the recordings, and the tunes, and the people who played on these records. There’s been talk of a reunion, like a new recording of Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental. But that’s just talk right now. But most of the people who participated in the original recordings are still around, and it’s quite possible to get them all together. So who knows?

TP: The next set will focus on some of Andy’s musical heroes. The first he’s selected, and at the top of the apex, is Cachao, on whose music we’ve done several radio shows over the last few years.

ANDY: We’re going to hear something Cachao recorded in Cuba. This is the second version of this recording. The first he did in 1939 or 1940. It’s called “Canta Contrabajo,” which means “sing contrabass.” What it is, is Cachao’s adaptation of a bass concerto by Koussevitzy, who is a great bass virtuoso, who wrote classical music for the bass. Cachao adapted the melody and then put a montuno on it, and he made a danzon out of it, which was Cachao’s… The great body of work that he has done is mostly in danzones, original danzones, which is the national dance of Cuba. It’s classically oriented of sorts.

Cachao has composed thousands of these danzones, and they’re all great, and they’re all… I would call them little symphonies, and they have a great deal of original thought in Afro-Cuban composition. That’s why I really enjoy Cachao’s work. I learned quite a bit from listening to the way he put Cuban clave counterpoint. That’s the art of Cuban music, is the counterpoint. It’s a whole world of rhythm. That’s the world I’ve involved myself into, and I’ve been in that since I started, because I realized that’s really the study that one has to do to be able to play this music correctly, is really involve yourself of that particular aspect of the rhythm. Clave counterpoint.

TP: It’s an extension of the concept of African drumming, which is interlocking rhythms playing against each other…

ANDY: Yeah, polyrhythms, all that stuff. Anyone who studies that… If you put your mind to it, it becomes another language that you can utilize in your music or in your improvisations. This is something I intend to maybe get some literature put out on. I’m working on a bass book now. I think all bass players should study this kind of counterpoint, because it really makes for a varied approach to the instrument. It’s not only harmonic, and it’s not only 4-to-the-bar walking. It adds another dimension to your playing.

TP: We’ll play the selection from album that’s autographed to you from Cachao.

ANDY: Oh, yes. That was at the time when we were rehearsing for Cachao’s recording sessions on Salsoul. He did two albums, which I don’t have here. Also, we were preparing for a concert at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, and that Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental, Cachao and his Danzones, and Manny Oquendo and Libre — we all performed in concert. I was at the one of the rehearsals where I gave the album to Cachao and he signed it to me.

[MUSIC: Cachao, “Canta Contrabajo”; Arsenio Rodriguez, “Kila, Quique Y Chocolate”; Chappotin, “Los Jovenes de la Defensa”]

ANDY: That was the great Chappotin Y Sus Estrellas, with Miguelito Cuni on the vocals. That whole genre of Cuban music is one of my favorites. That’s the school that Arsenio Rodriguez sort of started, which was the cut we heard before that — “Kila, Quique Y Chocolate.” That was Arsenio’s rhythm section. It was a tune Arsenio wrote…in other words, stating that without the rhythm, there just is no Cuban music; there’s nothing to it.

The next cut we’ll hear is one of my all-time favorite cuts to play for bass players. It’s to show you what bass players can do in the music. Some musicians tell me in Salsa that they’re tired, that they play the same kind of what they call tumbao, which is a vamp. They are reluctant to move away from the vamp because they think that maybe it might spoil the rhythm or something. But this bass player… I’m not sure who it is. The bass player that played with Arsenio is LázaroPrieto at that particular time. He was quite skillful about playing what Arsenio liked to hear, which was great counterpoint kind of bass lines. The bass player with Chappotin was a guy named Sabino Peñalver, and he was another master of making up these absolutely great basslines that laid right in the pocket, and swung like mad.

Now, this next bass player, I’m not sure of his name. The band was a big band called Orquesta Sabor de Cuba. It was led by Bebo Valdés. They’re backing up a vocalist called Pio Leyva. He’s still around in Cuba, and he’s a popular singer of son montunos and guajiras and stuff like that. Now, he recorded a tune called “Pobre Nicolas,” “Poor Nicholas.” When the montuno starts on this tune, the bass player starts doing the most incredible things. It’s not all about fast or anything. He’s just laying down notes that fit right in there. I use this as an example to all my students of how to be free and play Cuban counterpoint and just be right there. Nothing is missing. It’s just laying down time in certain ways. It’s a great record.

[Bebo & Pio Leyva, “Pobre Nicolas”; Tito Rodriguez, “Me Faltabas Tu”; Machito, “Soy Salsero”]

ANDY: That was an album Machito did for Harvey Averne and the Coco label I think he was doing at the time. That was a strange record. It came not too long after Mario Bauza had departed from the Machito Orchestra. There was quite a controversy about that. It seemed that Machito had an opportunity to take a band to Europe, and there was an argument about… They couldn’t take the whole band, and Mario was very upset. He wanted the whole band to go. It ended up that they took a small ensemble to Europe. But I think Machito’s instincts were correct. What it did was open the door for Latin bands to appear in concert in the jazz concert circuit in Europe, and that opened the door for all the bands that came afterwards. Machito’s band was the first one to appear. Then Puente, and then a bunch of them. The door opened wide open for bands. Now at the jazz festivals in Europe, you’d see bands from Cuba, you’d see bands from the New York circuit, and you’d see the new Latin Jazz artists that are coming out now. Fort Apache has been there, and Libre has been there, quite a few of the artists are starting to go to Europe now.

TP: Fort Apache recorded for the German Enja label, and Messidor is a Germany-based label that’s been recording a lot of contemporary Latin music as well.

ANDY: Yes. It’s very popular over there. The festivals usually include at least one evening of Latin American or Afro-Cuban kind of entertainment. It’s become like THE popular event at most of the festivals. This album was recorded using Machito and part of his band — unfortunately, without Mario Bauza. It’s just strange because it came out around the time this happened. To me it was kind of shocking that Mario would leave the Machito Orchestra to go on his own, because Mario didn’t start his band until years later.

TP: The last tracks on the set featured you with Tito Rodriguez and Machito — hits you did with other people. How long did you work with Machito? What was he like?

ANDY: I’ve worked with the Machito band as a sub, on and off, since around 1970. It was always a pleasure for me. I’ve subbed with the Tito Puente band, too. What I get a kick out of is playing the classic charts — the classic Machito charts, the classic Tito Puente charts. A big feather in my cap, and I’ll never forget it, was the recording I did with Tito Rodriguez. I was 19 or 20. I had been working… I was working with Palmieri, so I was about 21. What happened was that Palmieri was playing a dance opposite the Machito band, and the Machito band was backing up Tito Rodriguez for a special set of music that Tito had, like a show set of all his hits. The bass player who was playing with the Machito band had arthritis in his fingers, and he couldn’t be counted on at that moment. He was a great bass player, but just old, and couldn’t be counted on to really cut the chart for the Tito Rodriguez show part of the thing. So they asked me to do it. I sight-read the music perfectly, which was to my surprise, and Tito liked it so much that he asked me to do the recording session. The album is entitled Algo Nuevo, and it was Tito Rodriguez and Louis Ramirez, another figure who passed away recently. To this day I really appreciate the opportunity to have recorded with Tito Rodriguez, who is one of my big heros, too. Also, I enjoy the sound of the recording. It was recorded in Media Sound, on 57th Street. It was like a church, a big room. The sound is pretty nice on that record.

Continuing with the sessions… I’ve done quite a few sessions for other bands as a bass player. I just picked out a few that I could find at the moment and ones I kind of liked. This is one of the earlier things that I did as a session player. I was with Ray Barretto’s band. This is Ray Barretto’s rhythm section backing up Justo Betancourt and Johnny Pacheco. This is a nice tune that I enjoyed when it came out, “Mango, Piña Y Marañón.”

[MUSIC: Justo Betancourt and Johnny Pacheco, “Mango, Piña Y Marañón”; Totico Y Sus Rumberos, “What’s Your Name?”; Libre, “Little Sunflower” (1983); Steve Turre-Dizzy, “Toreador” (1993); Astor Piazzolla, “Street Tango”]

[END OF SIDE 3, INTO SIDE 4]

TP: All featured Andy and are from recordings made during the past 10 years.

ANDY: [Astor] was another feather in my cap. I was always a fan of Astor Piazzolla, because he was the…I guess you would call him the rebel of the Tango. Some innovations that he did were not quite accepted by the Argentinean diehard Tango fanatics, but I thought it was great music. When they called me to do this session, I was like, “Wow, I don’t believe it; I’m going to record with this guy, and he’s one of my heroes.” Another hero. I was lucky to record with the man. He passed away this past year. I recorded on his last recording session, which I think will come out this year sometime.

“Toreador” from Sanctified Shells featured Dizzy Gillespie’s last recorded solo. Carmen Turre, Steve’s mother, played castanets. She plays them very well, and she knows her music. She was on it, boy. She was telling Steve, “Listen, in bar 39 of this, do you think that rhythm is correct?” She’s really knowledgeable. She’s an amazing lady. I hear there’s another shell album in the works due to the popularity of this one, so I’m looking forward to it. I’ve appeared with Steve and this group, the Sanctified Shells, in a few concerts. We just did the San Francisco Jazz Festival recently.

Our version of “Little Sunflower” is already a classic. A lot of people told me it should have gotten a Grammy when it came out. [Montuno records] We have a new one coming out soon, Manny Oquendo and Libre, “A Hora.” It should be in the stores within a month or so.

Totico Y Sus Rumberos did that old doo-wop standard.

[MUSIC: Charlie Sepulveda-David Sanchez, “Nina’s Mood”; Fort Apache Band, “Interior Motive” (from Moliendo Café]

For Kenny Barron’s 70th Birthday, A 2005 DownBeat Feature and WKCR Interviews From 1991 and 2004

To mark the 70th birthday of the magnificent pianist-composer-conceptualist-educator Kenny Barron, who made it to the big leagues of jazz at 18, not long after he moved to New York, and has remained there ever since, I’m posting a pair of interviews we did on WKCR — a Musician’s Show in 1991 and an appearance promoting a week in a club in 2004. I’m also putting up the first of two interviews I conducted with the maestro for a DownBeat profile—which leads this entry—that I pitched and was given the opportunity  to write in 2005.

Kenny Barron Downbeat Article:

The wall of windows behind the bandstand of Dizzy’s Coca-Cola Room revealed a twilit tableau of Central Park treetops and the Fifth Avenue skyline as pianist Kenny Barron, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Mino Cinelu prepared to begin set one of the Kenny Barron Festival last April. Barron put down his glass of red wine, cocked his head slightly to the left, and began to play “Prelude To A Kiss.” He spun out flowing rubato variations on the melody, imparting to his lines the joyous ache of romance, then brightened the tempo and stated a kinetic Caribbean beat as he painstakingly built the arc to ecstatic resolution.
As the sky turned indigo, and the lights of Fifth Avenue twinkled in the distance, Barron sustained the Spanish tinge with discursive three-way dialogues on “All Blues,” a tune he played frequently during a lengthy ‘70s stint with Ron Carter, and “Calypso,” a lively original that he first recorded on a 1981 solo album for Xanadu.  Then he parsed the melody of Thelonious Monk’s “Shuffle Boil,” and embarked on a solo tour de force, conjuring luscious voicings atop a rock solid stride to complement the long, fluid, melodic lines he carved out with his right hand, deviating slightly in tempo and inflection from a version that appears on The Perfect Set, a new release on Sunnyside that documents an April 1996 engagement at Bradley’s, the saloon that was then New York’s sine qua non for piano jazz.
Thus inspired, Barron concluded the set with “Madman,” built on a fourth interval theme constructed around a bass line he heard in his teens from Hassan Ibn Ali, a famously eccentric Philadelphia pianist who regularly came to Barron’s house to practice with his older brother, Bill Barron, a tenor saxophonist with a taste for navigating the outer partials. He channeled the into-the-wild-blue-yonder side of Bud Powell,  engaging in intense rhythmic dialogue with Cinelu; at the end, he announced that this was his first public performance of the tune, which he recorded in duo with Roy Haynes on Wanton Spirit [Verve] in 1995; he deviated from the record by adding a free, rubato coda.
The festival lasted three weeks, and Barron framed himself each week within a different sonic environment. He shared the stage with Cinelu for the remainder of week one, joined by bassist George Mraz and kora player Abou M’Boop on nights three and four, and Mraz and guitarist Romero Lubambo on the final two evenings. During week two, Barron addressed hardcore, straight-ahead modern jazz, assembling a crackling sextet, fueled by drummer Victor Lewis, to interpret his fire-to-romance compositions. For the final week, Barron recruited Drummond and drummer Grady Tate to form a Bradley’s style “classic” trio.
Throughout the engagement, Barron followed the imperatives of the moment, resolving audacious ideas with the panache, in the words of Victor Lewis, of “a cat who always lands on his feet.”
“The rhythms were all over the place,” Barron said of week one. “I don’t think we played anything straight-ahead, which forced me to play other things. We started with no preconceived ideas or notions, and the tunes went whichever way they went.”
“What always surprises me about Kenny is his apparent nonchalance and very casual approach, and yet the tiger within,” said Cinelu.  In 1996 he and Barron collaborated on Swamp Sally [Verve], a free-form electro-acoustic project on which Barron referenced an exhaustively global lexicon of strategies and attacks.
Swamp Sally is one of a string of Barron recordings since 1992 on which French producer Jean-Philippe Allard encouraged Barron—now a serial poll-winner and Grammy-nomintee, but then typecast as a bop-oriented sideman supreme—to allow his imagination to roam, and paved the way for him to assume his present stature as a distinguished jazz elder. These albums include a kaleidoscopic duo with violinist Regina Carter; two recitals of Barron’s Brazil-inflected compositions, including Canta Brasil, a 2002 encounter with Trio de Paz; and several venturesome quintets and sextets comprising diverse personnels and instrumental configurations, most recently Images, with vibraphonist Stefon Harris, flutist Anne Drummond, and drummer Kim Thompson, all young stars on the rise.
Barron infuses each of these recordings with a spirit of spontaneity, human warmth and dance-like grace that often eludes musicians who possess his surfeit of technique.
“Kenny knows how to play inside the drums, and make the drummer sound good,” says Danilo Perez, a keen student of Barron’s music. “He knows how to syncopate—how to jab behind the beat for a swing feel, and jab on top, pushing it just like a Latino. With the Brazilians, he plays the subdivisions pretty much in their style. He’s a master of knowing what to do at the right time, whomever he’s playing with.”
“I like music, and I like all of it,” Barron stated. “I don’t want to be put in any kind of pigeonhole, even though I’m sure I am. Ideally, in one set I can go through everything. One song might come out as straight bebop, the next may go outside or be Brazilian. You don’t know what it sounds like until it reveals itself, so to speak. I like not-knowing. That’s the fun. Let’s see where it goes. I don ‘t think I need to go to school and study Brazilian music for three or four years. I just need to LISTEN to it, and respond whatever way I can.
“As you get older, you start to give yourself permission to make a mistake. There’s another chorus coming! You can try it again. Whether you make it or not, you’ve got to reach. Very interesting things can develop through that process.”
* * * * * *
Barron bedrocks his predisposition for risk on a strong foundation in the jazz tradition, which he absorbed first hand as a Philadelphia teenager. “Bud Powell is at the core of what I do,” he said, citing Horace Silver, Ahmad Jamal, Red Garland, Wynton Kelly, and McCoy Tyner as other strong formative influences. At the top of Barron’s list, however, is Tommy Flanagan. The infatuation began in ninth grade, when a friend brought the 1956 Miles Davis-Sonny Rollins recording of “In Your Own Sweet Way,” on which Flanagan sidemanned, for their art class to paint to.
“I stopped painting,” Barron recalls. “It was so crystal clear, and the touch was so light, so delicate. I fell in love with Tommy’s playing right then and there. Nothing tugs on my heartstrings the way Tommy could.”
Within several years, on Bill Barron’s say-so, Philly’s finest were calling the youngster for cabaret gigs at Elks Clubs and Masonic Lodges, as well as some less savory venues. “I remember an after-hours place called the Northwest Club where I played with Jimmy Heath, Mickey Roker and (bassist) Arthur Harper,” says Barron, who recalls playing until 3, taking the last bus home, and waking up for 8 a.m. classes. “The rhythm section had to play a show, and there wasn’t always rehearsal. I played for singers, comedians, shake dancers and tap dancers—a lot of standards,  songs based on ‘I Got Rhythm’ and rhythm-and-blues. It taught me how to listen and helped me with musical language. It prepared me for New York, where I still had to do those kind of gigs. I didn’t start working at Birdland right away.”
In point of fact, Birdland was the site of Barron’s first New York gig—a Monday night in 1961 with his brother and Ted Curson. Not long after, he hit the majors on jobs with Roy Haynes, Lou Donaldson, and James Moody, In 1962, he married, moved to Brooklyn, and, on Moody’s recommendation, joined Dizzy Gillespie. His four-year stint with Gillespie kicked off a three-decade string of high-profile sideman jobs with Freddie Hubbard, Yusef Lateef, Ron Carter, and Stan Getz, all admirers of his consistent creativity and lyric gifts, and with Sphere, the Monk-inspired collective quartet he co-founded in 1982 with Riley, Charlie Rouse and Buster Williams. At Lateef’s urging, he earned a college degree, and took a position at Rutgers in 1973, where for the next thirty years he mentored young talent like David Sanchez and Terence Blanchard, repeating his high school ritual of making early morning classes after finishing the third set at Bradley’s a few hours before. He moonlighted extensively, working with top-shelfers like Moody, Bobby Hutcherson, Benny Carter and Frank Wess and playing duo in various New York piano rooms. He documented his point of view on an impressive series of albums for such independents as Muse, Xanadu, Enja, Reservoir, Candid, and Criss Cross between 1975 and 1991.
“Each bandleader I worked with had a different style,” Barron says. “For example, Dizzy’s band was very tight and precise. I learned to keep stuff in reserve, not play everything you know all the time. Yusef was looser, the music was freer; you could play out, as far as you wanted to go. Ron likes hills and valleys; I learned to use dynamics. Stan and I shared a love for lyricism. We fed each other. He was one person who could play a ballad and really make you cry.”
As documented on Bossas and Ballads: The Lost Sessions [Verve], a 1989 quartet session that was not released until 2003, Getz played Barron’s tunes—these included such present-day standards as “Sunflower,” “Voyage,” “Phantoms” and “What If?”—and related to him as a de facto co-leader. Still, Barron was not able to generate consequential interest in his own projects—around 1985 he Barron formed an incendiary quintet with Eddie Henderson, John Stubblefield, David Williams and Victor Lewis to play his compositions—until Getz died in 1991.
“For some reason, the industry was late getting to Kenny,” states Lewis, whom Getz employed throughout the ‘80s. “It was frustrating, because we were all active members of the jazz community, we felt the  group and Kenny’s writing were special, and we couldn’t understand why we never worked much. We did a tour of the West Coast, and Kenny took out a loan to pay the airfare, to try to promote us.”
Perhaps one reason for Barron’s tortoise-like breakthrough lies in his genial, understated personality, devoid of visible idiosyncracy. During his sextet week at Dizzy’s Room, for example, Barron functioned as the band pianist as much as a leader, comping enthusiastically for his youngish front line—youngbloods Jeremy Pelt on trumpet and Dayna Stephens on tenor saxophone next to veteran Vincent Herring—and soloing when they were through. “I have to give cues,” he chuckled. “So it’s easier that I take the last solo. I like to think of myself as a team player, so I’m less interested in myself sounding good as much as the group I’m with, whether as a leader or a sideperson.”
“Kenny has incredible ability, and yet he is never flashy about it,” says Cinelu. “Which I guess frustrates everybody but him. He has a special touch. It’s easier to get the message when you see a musician who has a lot of obvious charisma and an obvious routine—who is very visual, let’s say. Kenny is not that. Yet, his message passes. He’s one of the great jazz pianists.”
It’s interesting to compare the gradual arc of Barron’s  career to the rapid ascent of such generational contemporaries as Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, all Miles Davis alumni who broke ground as young men and then, inspired by Miles, established themselves as leaders by differentiating themselves from the jazz tradition. In contrast, after apprenticing with Gillespie, Barron—who enthusiastically abstracted form during tenures with Hubbard and Lateef—was never willing to shed mainstream values.
“Things evolve the way they should,” Barron says. “I don’t know what other choice I could have made. I was influenced by Herbie with Miles and on Blue Note, like Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage, not so much the electronic stuff. By Chick’s writing more than his playing; to me, Chick in the ‘60s was still sounding a lot like McCoy. But I didn’t know quite what to make out of Herbie. His stylistic influences were harder to pin down, other than some he shared with Bill Evans, like French Impressionism.”
“Kenny has a unique approach, a kind of blending of styles,” says Mulgrew Miller, Barron’s partner on a dozen or so duo concerts in recent years, following an initial mid-‘90s encounter at Bradley’s. “He’s rooted in the bop language but takes risks you don’t necessarily hear from people we call bop players. He wasn’t breaking down barriers like McCoy or Herbie, but he’s always trying to reach past his limitations, and he shares with those guys a command of the language of whatever area he’s dealing with.”
In a manner almost unique in 21st century jazz, Barron’s tonal personality encompasses the entire jazz timeline organically and unaffectedly. In the course of a set, he’ll stride with a percussive force and joie de vivre that would not sound out of place at a Harlem Renaissance rent party or a Roaring Twenties Park Avenue soiree. He channels the hard-boiled, warp speed attitude that marked the bustling 52nd Street bars and soulful uptown lounges where bebop flourished after World War Two, and the nuance and polish of the trios that entertained the bibulous mix of gray-flannel suits and tourists who patronized midtown’s upscale grills in the ‘50s. He’s au courant with the craftsmanship and sophistication of the American Songbook, and interprets  it without irony, on its own terms. The airy melodies and surging rhythms of Brazil and the Caribbean dapple his compositional palette, and he has an intimate relationship with the tropes of the Saturday night blues function and Sunday church ceremonial.
“I like Kenny’s touch,” adds Billy Taylor, a friend since Barron’s Gillespie days. “Whether he’s playing a bossa nova or wailing on something with guys playing Art Blakey kind of things behind him, he has the thing for that. To be able to change your touch that way is remarkable. He’s curious, so he’ll take a gig playing ballads. That gives him a chance to play beautiful songs that not everybody plays. Then he works with a group that’s straight-ahead with a soul thing happening, and he’ll go back to church with you. I used to hear him with groups that, quite honestly, were not up to what he was capable of doing at the time. He always found something in that group to take with him. That’s the mark of a first-rate artist.”
It’s also the mark of a pragmatist, a man with responsibilities. Barron intends to work as much as possible as he moves through his seventh decade. Although his stated intention after retiring from Rutgers in 2003 was to eschew teaching for practice and musical exploration, he soon received offers he could not refuse from the jazz departments of Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard, where he taught a total of 10 piano students privately during the 2004-05 school year.
“My daughter’s getting married, and I’ve got a wedding to pay for,” he says. What wouldn’t he do? “I’d probably hate playing Hawaiian music,” he responds, perhaps with tongue in cheek.
Has he always been a practical person?
“Practical? Do you think I’m practical?”
Well, yes. Married for 42 years, Barron is a musician who sustained creative edge while paying the bills and found a way, like Tommy Flanagan, to maximize his value as a performer in the world in which he functioned.
“I would be inclined to say it’s there,” he says. “Not that other people haven’t helped me. Yes, I’ve been able to function and be consistent. Work. Be married. Try to be in creative situations as much as possible. Whatever the word for that is, yeah, I am.”

[—30—]

* * * *

Kenny Barron (March 21, 2005):

TP:   First, the editor wants me to write about the different groups. When we spoke on the radio, you said that playing in different situations all the time, which is what you do on your records, keeps you fresh, keeps you thinking differently…

KENNY:   Oh, it does.

TP:   Have you ever done a three-week event like this, where you showcased a different sound over the course of an engagement.

KENNY:   Actually, I have. I did at the Vanguard twice. It was the same rhythm section every week, myself and Ben Riley and Buster Williams, and each week we used a different horn player. One week we used Vincent Herring, another week David Sanchez, I think Jesse Davis… It was fun.

TP:   But that’s a different proposition. These are three different…

KENNY:   Three totally different environments. True.

TP:   The first week with Mino Cinelu… You called the record Swamp Thing. This is a pan-Latin, pan-Brazilian…

KENNY:   Yeah, it’s a little bit of everything! Every two nights it’s going to change. The first two nights it’s myself, Mino Cinelu and John Patitucci. The next two nights John was unavailable, so George Mraz is going to play bass, myself Mino and Abdou M’Boop, the percussionist, who will also play kora. The last two nights will be George Mraz, Mino, myself and Romero Lubambo. That will have more of a Brazilian cast.

TP:   Have you played with Abdou M’Boop before?

KENNY:   No, I haven’t.

TP:   But you’ve played with Mino and Romero.

KENNY:   True. But I haven’t played M’Boop. He came by here and brought his kora, and it wasn’t quite what I expected it to be in terms of how it’s approached, so I have to rethink how it’s going to be used.  But he also plays talking drums, so he’ll be playing percussion as well. Kora is an interesting instrument, because once it’s tuned it has to stay in a particular key. It’s not a chromatic instrument, it’s diatonic, so you tune it to a particular scale and it stays there. If you tune it to B-flat, you can’t play in A-flat. He can retune it, but it’s a very time-consuming thing. He can’t do it between songs.

TP:   So you have to do the whole set in a particular key.

KENNY:   Well, the pieces that I’m going to use will all be in the same tonality. If it’s B-flat, it can also be G-minor, which is the relative minor of a B-flat. So it can be major and minor, but the notes will always be the same.

TP:   Keeping that interesting will be a challenge.

KENNY:   Very much so. There’s a way to do it. We ran over some stuff here.

TP:   That will be the one premiere of this week. Let’s discuss each of the people. Mino Cinelu  is one of the great pan-diaspora percussionists. He seems to have everything…

KENNY:   He can do almost anything. Well, he does. He does everything. He has some very interesting equipment. He has a wave drum, which produces all kinds of interesting sound effects and colors, and I’m sure he’ll use some of that. On the recording, we also did some all-acoustic stuff duo. We did a couple of concerts in Europe.

TP:   So you have a repertoire.

KENNY:   Yes, we have a repertoire. I don’t know that we’ll necessarily be doing… Since we have bass player, we’ll try to expand it. Because there was no bass player on the recording we did.

TP:   With Romero Lubambo, you had a project that had legs with Trio de Paz. But in this case, it’s George Mraz and Mino.

KENNY:   I’m sure we will do some Brazilian stuff, but we’ll do some other stuff as well.

TP:   You and Mino are the ones who are going to shift what you do to suit each environment.  This is an old question. But I’d assume that your involvement with pan-African rhythms goes back to playing with Dizzy.

KENNY:   To a certain extent, yes.

TP:   Did it precede it when you were in Philly?

KENNY:   Yes. Especially Latin music. More Latin music. This was before bossa-nova and Brazilian music. But Latin music was always popular in Philly when I was coming up.

TP:   Did you play Latin gigs?

KENNY:   I didn’t play that many, no. But I’d hear the records by people like Joe Loco and Machito, Perez Prado. I listened to that music a lot.

TP:   Was your peer group interested in it?

KENNY:    Not so much. It was something I liked to listen to.

TP:   How did it come to you?

KENNY:   I heard it on the radio, and said, “Wow, listen to that.” There weren’t stations so much that played it. But there was a jazz station that played it… I don’t know if you know Joe Loco.  He was Cuban, and he had a lot of hits on standards, but always with an acoustic kind of group, trio or whatever. As I got older, when I moved to New York, I started listening to Symphony Sid, who played a lot of Latin music. That’s when I really…

TP:   Did you go to the Palladium at all?

KENNY:   No, I never went to the Palladium. Again, just listening to the radio.

TP:   When you came to New York, it was an efflorescent period for Latin music.

KENNY:   Yes. I came in ‘61.

TP:   Did it give you the same feeling as jazz? Did it add something to your palette?

KENNY:   I think it added something.  I always found Latin music to be very joyful. There’s always dance… It sounds kind of corny, but it was happy, happy kind of stuff. It was fun.

TP:   That’s interesting, because it isn’t a quality that all your contemporaries embodied in their playing. Certainly, modern jazz of the early ‘60s in New York wasn’t so much about keeping a groove going.

KENNY:   No, certainly not. During that period, music started to really become concert music. It got to be THAT kind of thing. I was into that myself. I wanted to be SERIOUS. But that’s one of the elements that I think Monk had, was humor, a sense of fun, playfulness in the music. I think that’s often missing. We’re all so busy being serious, or trying to show that we’re not really enjoying it. That’s what I loved about Billy Higgins. Billy was always smiling. He loved what he did! And that joyfulness, it showed.

TP:   It came out in his sound, too.

KENNY:   Yeah, it came out in the music, and it kind of infected everybody in the bandstand and the audience.

TP:   Did you and Mino first play together on that 1995 project?

KENNY:   No, that was really the first time.  I first heard Mino in Nice with Miles. We had a mutual friend who kind of thought it might be interesting for us to play together. I started going over to his house, and just talk about music… We became really good friends, which we still are. His wife would fix these great meals, and we’d sit and talk about music, and he has all this great equipment. Consequently, a lot of the stuff on the recording we did in his music room. We also did stuff in the studio, where I overdubbed this or that.

TP:   You’ve been very bold in your aesthetic choices. You won’t ever let anyone put you in a bag. One recording you’ll do ballads with Charlie Haden. Another one is wild duos with Mino. Then you’re doing a new quintet with young players, with a flute up front, you’re doing your take on post-bop with the sextet, a duo with Regina… What you’re doing over three weeks characterizes the way you’ve presented yourself over the past 15 years, when you began to do records with serious production values.

KENNY:   I don’t want to do just one thing.  The thing is, I really like all kinds of music. I’d like to expand it even further, do some other things. Another project coming up, and I don’t know if it will come to New York, is I want to do some stuff with the Turtle Island String Quartet. We’ll do something in November, but right now I don’t think there are any concerts slated for New York. So that will be a challenge for me, to play in that kind of environment. I don‘t want to only do one thing. There’s too much to learn.

TP:   Certain people, when they go into Brazilian music or Latin things, deeply study the idiomatic nuances of each idiom. That’s not your approach.

KENNY:   No. I just listen to it, and I respond in whatever way I can, so it’s organic. I’m not Brazilian, so I can’t be Brazilian. But I love the music. So whatever I do, it’s going to be my personal take on it, so to speak.

TP:   But with a lot of people, there might be a quality of superficiality in addressing something without… It’s like someone playing bebop without knowing the changes. Your personality comes through. You always sound completely at home.

KENNY:   Yeah. I don’t know why. It just is. I think it’s because I love the music. I don ‘t think it’s necessary for me to go to school on it. I don’t think I need to go to school and study it for three or four years. I just need to LISTEN to it. That’s all that’s necessary, is to listen to it.

TP:   Was very Dizzy very much about breaking the stuff down for you in the early ‘60s

KENNY:   He didn’t do it for me. He was very helpful in terms of showing me voicings, harmony. But I saw him do some stuff with Rudy Collins, where he wanted a particular rhythm. So he told Rudy, “Do this with your right foot, do this with your left foot; play this with your right hand, that with your left hand; hit the cymbal here.”

TP:   Do you do that when you play with younger musicians?

KENNY:   I don’t like to do that. If I hire somebody, it’s for what they can bring. My idea about leading a band is to let people do what they do. That’s why you hired them.

TP:   With Romero, you told me that Trio de Paz played for a long time at the Coffee Shop on 16th & Union Square East. I don’t know if you made it a destination, or if it was by accident…

KENNY:   Well, the first time was totally by accident. My wife and I were there shopping at the green market, and we said, “Let’s go get something to eat.” We went in there, and there they were along with Duduka’s wife, Maucia(?), who was singing. Then it became a destination. So every Saturday we were in town, we went there to hear some music. Then we met them and became good friends, and eventually it turned into, “Boy, I’d sure like to play; let’s play something.” Then it turned into, “Let’s do a record.” It evolved that way. We did some tours and concerts. I’d like to do some other things with them, because I enjoy playing with them a lot.

TP:   It sounds like all these projects evolve organically out of your life as a musician…or your life in general.

KENNY: I think so. A lot of things just happen. If I hadn’t gone to the Coffee Shop, the whole thing would never have happened.

TP:   You would have heard about them eventually. But maybe not.

KENNY:   Yeah, or maybe not. You never know. But I would have missed a lot.

TP:   Have you played much with John Patitucci?

KENNY:   Only once, actually. But I love his playing. I have one of his records that I really love. It’s called Communion. The first time we played was actually on a recording with a singer, Cheryl Bentyne. I’ve always loved his playing. So I’m really looking forward to this.

TP:   You and George have played together, but not that much.

KENNY:   When I first started working with Stan, we played together. A couple of times, I’ve subbed for Hank Jones, and worked with George and Dennis Mackrell. But I haven’t played with George in a long time. Actually, on one of the very first gigs with the Ron Carter Quartet, Buster Williams wasn’t available, he was in California, so George made that. That was in the early ‘70s.

TP:   After Dizzy, you played a lot with Freddie Hubbard. Was that a fairly steady-working band?

KENNY:   It was a working band. We didn’t work as much as I’m sure Freddie would have liked, but yeah, it was okay. We didn’t do long tours. It was mostly around New York, working at Slug’s, and a place called La Boheme, which was at 61st and Broadway, and the Coronet in Brooklyn.

TP:   What else were you doing in New York after you left Dizzy?

KENNY:   One thing I did right after I left Dizzy was work with Stanley Turrentine at Minton’s for five or six weeks. The rhythm section was Herbie Lewis and Joe Dukes. That was great, working uptown in that kind of environment. Six weeks back-to-back.

TP:   Dizzy’s time at Minton’s was long gone.

KENNY:   He’d gone past that. Financially, he was past that. But when I left Dizzy, I more or less freelanced for a while, working with as many people as I could.

TP:   The thing with Ron Carter began in the early ‘70s? The mid ‘70s?

KENNY:   Probably the mid ‘70s. Before that was Yusef Lateef. We toured quite a bit, especially during the summer. Yusef was teaching at the time at Manhattan Community College. He actually got everybody in the band to start going to college. He encouraged everyone, “You should go back to school.” So I did. It was a two-year school, and I got an Associate’s Degree, and after that I went on to get a Bachelor’s Degree from Empire State College, which is part of the SUNY.  When I was going to Manhattan Community College, and we were going on the road, I would always tell my teachers, “I’m going on the road for three weeks; what material will you cover in that three weeks?” They were always pretty cool about telling me. I’d bring math. We had math, and I had never had this kind of math before in my life. When I came back, I was ahead of the class.

TP:   You didn’t allow yourself to be distracted.

KENNY:   No, I did the work. But I attribute that a great deal to Yusef’s personality, because that’s the way he was. He was very centered and very into doing what you have to do to make things work.

TP:   I’m sure the relationships between music and mathematics make the logic systems clearer.

KENNY:   You’d think so. But that didn’t necessarily happen.

TP:   Your involvement with Ron Carter was long-standing.

KENNY:   Yes. How that gig started, I was working at the Keystone Korner with Yusef, and Ron was in town and came by. That’s how that happened. It’s a question of being in the right place at the right time.

TP:   When did you first start to lead two- and three-horn ensembles? Your first record is ‘71, I think, forMuse.

KENNY:   There were no horns on that. It was basically trio. Sunset To Dawn. On one tune, by Freddie Waits, Warren Smith said, “Why don’t I play vibes on this.” So it’s a really fast Freddie Waits tune, “Alkefa.” “I’ll play vibes on this.” he was incredible. But there were no horns.

TP:   When did you start?

KENNY:   One of the first times was at a place in the Bronx, the Blue Morocco, where I used Bennie Maupin and Bill Hardman. It was the same rhythm section, with Freddie Waits and Herbie Lewis.

TP:   Was that because of the gig, or was something in you wanting to…

KENNY:   No, that was just a gig. But in terms of starting to write music and say, “Okay, I hear this for quintet,” probably happened first when I had the quintet with John Stubblefield. The ‘80s. Wallace Roney did the first record, What If.

TP:   Was that just percolating? A lot of pianists showcase their instrumentalism and wind up playing trio. But you’ve built up a large body of work for various ensembles.

KENNY:   I like being part of a team. One of the things I like is that I can write for it. I find it difficult to write things for trio. People do it all the time, but it’s more difficult for me. I have no idea why. But it’s easier for me to write things for horns. You can showcase harmony and movement and stuff like that. In that particular group, it started as part of a grant. I had applied for a grant to write some original music, so that was the band I chose.  I’d been knowing John for a long time, and Victor Lewis and Cecil McBee. I got the grant, and did a concert at what was then Carnegie Recital Hall, and they made a tape. It sounded so good I thought I’d like to record it, and I talked to Enja Records. That was the beginning.

TP:   Does a song like “What If” come out of your trio experience?

KENNY:   No, for the quintet. I really heard it for those particular people, for that group. When we first started playing as a group, the music at the time—live anyway—was going to the left. It was starting to go out. Which I loved!

TP:   That would be John’s propensity.

KENNY:   Yes.  But again, it was organic. Nobody said, “Well, let’s play out.” But it just started to move that way. One of our first gigs was a place called Joanna’s [18th Street]. We did a set, and played two tunes in an hour or something. But it never got boring, because the music went in so many different places. We had such a great time. When we did the record, there are considerations of time and length, so it didn’t…

TP:   But subsequently on your ensemble records, you added different flavors. Some had more of a pan-Caribbean-South American feel, some were more hardboppish…

KENNY:   Right. I didn’t set out and say, “Okay, this record is going to be bebop and this one…” It just happened.

TP:   I suppose it speaks to the fact, again, that you’ve assimilated so many musical languages. Is there ever an element where they’re competing for space within you? A bebop side competing with the lyric Brazilian side competing with the classic piano side… This is probably an absurd question. But I find the tonal personality you express so personal but also encompassing so many flavors. I’m sure it seems totally organic to you because you’re living it, but I want to see if we can pinpoint where it comes from.

KENNY:   I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t feel competition in terms of different styles or different idioms. Ideally for me, in one set of music, I can go through everything. What it is, I think each tune kind of carries itself. Each song is a development in itself. One song, if you play it, it may actually be straight bebop. That’s how it might come out. The next song may go out. Or the next song may be Brazilian. All in one set.

TP:   Do you know beforehand?

KENNY:   No, I don’t. It just happens. We may play a blues, especially with the group I have now with Anne and Kim Thompson, and it may go out! I kind of like that. I like not-knowing. That’s the fun for me. Let’s see where it goes.

TP:   Do you think of the different styles as different styles?

KENNY:   Probably not. There’s 12 notes.  There are only 12 notes. It’s just music.

TP:   What differentiates them?

KENNY:   It’s rhythm primarily that will make a difference. The way you approach the rhythm, and phrasing. If you’re playing bebop, for instance, there’s a certain kind of phrasing that works best. The attack. If you’re playing R&B, or if you’re playing some funk, there are certain kinds of voicings that won’t work so well. If the voicings are too sophisticated, they won’t work.

TP:   The sextet you’re bringing in the second week has a new tenor player, Dayna Stephens.

KENNY: I met Dayna in California at a clinic I did for a week at the Monk Institute at the University of Southern California. He’s one of the people who was there, and he really impressed me. When I was looking for a tenor player, I thought about him, but I didn’t know how to get in touch with him. Then somebody told me he had just moved to the New York area. I think everybody will be very surprised. He’s a very good player.

TP:   Everyone else you’ve played with…

KENNY:   Oh, yeah, for a long time. In different situations. Actually, I haven’t worked with Victor in quite a while.

TP:   New repertoire?

KENNY:   Some new stuff, and then some stuff that will be recalibrated or whatever.

TP:   Do you always recalibrate?

KENNY:   Not always.  But sometimes just having a new player will make that happen.

TP:   Benny Golson discusses the art dearth writing, trying to make three horns sound as big as possible. Is that a concern… Let’s put it this way. What are you trying to put forth on this sextet than the quintet?

KENNY:   In terms of instrumentation, the sound is heavier because it’s three horns. And harmonically, with three horns you can do more rhythmically and in the way you can use them. The different colors also that you can have from three horns. Dayna plays tenor and soprano…

TP:   Like most young guys.

KENNY:   Yes, like most young guys. Those are different colors that you can utilize. So for me, it’s about the harmonic movement that three horns allows you. Eddie is only doing two days, and Jeremy Pelt is doing the remainder.

The third week is the trio, what they call the Classic Trio. Ben wasn’t available, because he’s going to be in Europe with his Monk Legacy. Well, he does get back in the middle of the week. But I wanted someone close to Ben in style and age, and I called Grady Tate. Grady does this tour I do every other year in Japan called 100 Gold Fingers, and I’ve always enjoyed playing with him. He’s a very tasty, very sensitive drummer.

TP: What does the term “classic trio” mean to you?

KENNY:   I have no idea.

TP:   But does it mean something to you? Jazz? Classic?

KENNY:   It’s a trio.

TP:   Well, is it a trio that you play a certain type of repertoire and not another type of repertoire?

KENNY:   Well, that could be true. With a trio, I tend to play more standards and… Yes, that’s basically it.

TP:   Well, you probably have 800 tunes that you can draw from.

KENNY:   Yes. I remember we did this at Bradley’s one week with Ray and Ben, no repeats. [18 sets] I have to think about whether to do that again!  But it might be fun. Not repeat any songs. That means there won’t be any “arrangements.” You’re saying, “Oh, let’s do this song.”  But at the same time, I don’t want it to be a jam session.

TP:   So in a certain sense, the classic trio is closer than the other formats to being what that idealized notion of what jazz is supposed to be.  It’s this older material, but you’re approaching it in a totally spontaneous way.

KENNY:   Yes, a spontaneous way. So you won’t know what a song is going to sound like until it starts to reveal itself, so to speak. Again, that can be a lot of fun. Again, I don’t know if that’s what we’re going to do, but it’s a thought.

TP:   So you’re telling me that you don’t go into any performing situation with the whole arc of a performance planned out. There’s always room for openness.

KENNY:   Oh, yes.

TP:   There are general outlines or motifs, and every night you’re approaching it in a different manner.

KENNY:   Hopefully, I’d like that to happen. Almost nothing is planned, other than, “We’ll do this song.” But how the song evolves is up for grabs.

TP:   That doesn’t happen as often as the commonplaces about jazz would have you think it does, to actually approach a set with that attitude. It’s kind of risky in some ways, because you have to get the stuff out there, and a lot of people aren’t so interested in leaving themselves open that way.

KENNY:   I like that. When you reach for something, you have to say it’s okay if you don’t make it. But you’ve got to reach. We all have bad days.  But sometimes you have to reach for it and say, “Well, I didn’t make it.”

TP:   Is  that innate? Or did you learn to do it?

KENNY:   I think as you get older, you start to give yourself permission to make a mistake. Because there’s another chorus coming! So you can try it again. That’s one of the things that makes music interesting for listeners sometimes, is to hear someone reach for something, and maybe not making it, but trying it again. Sometimes very interesting things develop in that process.

TP:   One reason why you don’t hear much chance-taking is that young musicians go to school and study everything so thoroughly. That can be at odds with what we’re speaking about. Now, you’ve been an educator for thirty years. How do you address your students on this issue?

KENNY:   I put a lot of stress on being as creative and lyrical as you possibly can. I’m not big on transcribing solos. I never have been big on that.

TP:   Not even Bud Powell and Ahmad Jamal back in the day?

KENNY:   I said transcribing. I learned solos, but I learned them by rote. By hearing them and then playing them. A lot of people are into transcribing, but I find that when you transcribe solos, you only get involved with the notes. There’s a lot of other aspects to a person’s playing. So if I’m listening to Red Garland with Miles… When that record Round About Midnight came out, I knew all those Red Garland solos. I never wrote them down. But one the things that happens when you write them down is you only deal with the notes. If you learn it by rote, then okay, you get this person’s touch. It’s easier to emulate this person’s touch, phrasing, all of that.

TP:   So Red Garland was one of the guys you got into your body.

KENNY:   Yeah.

TP:   Who were some of the other people?

KENNY:   I used to listen to Horace Silver a lot. I’m talking about junior high school and high school. Tommy Flanagan, Wynton Kelly, Hank Jones. They were all different. Wynton had this feeling, and a harmonic concept that was unique. Red had this touch. Everybody had something different to offer.

TP:   You’ve paid some explicit homages to Bud Powell, with that piece “Bud-Like,” and “Madman” has certain qualities to it… It’s an area that you seem to have a fondness for.

KENNY:  Oh, I do. Probably that particular style is at my core. I think Bud is really at the core of what I do.

TP:   Did you ever meet him in Philly?

KENNY:   No. I got to meet him once, when he was not doing well.

TP:   Did you ever meet Monk?

KENNY:   No.  I saw him, but he was always such an awe-inspiring person that I would never go up and say anything.

TP:   Do you mean intimidating?

KENNY:   Yes. He was intimidating, actually. He was very big and… I had just come to New York, and… So I never went up to say anything…

TP:   [Ben Riley’s story] You’ve been in New York since 1961. Initially in the East Village.

KENNY:   I stayed next door to my brother, 314 E. 6th Street, where all the Indian restaurants are. It was a great block. A lot of musicians lived there. I stayed at Vishnu Wood’s place. The rent was something like $60 a month, and it was hard to make that. But it was just one room. Across the street was Lee Morgan, Tootie Heath and Spanky DeBrest, all Philadelphia people who had an apartment. Upstairs from where I lived, Pepper Adams and Elvin shared an apartment. Reggie Workman lived with Lee and Spanky, too. Ted Curson lived a couple of doors up from them.

TP:   A real Philly enclave on East 6th Street.

KENNY:   That’s right. I could walk to the Five Spot and the Jazz Gallery, which were owned by the same people. Coffee shops, like the Fat Black Pussycat, Café Wha, Café Bizarre, all in the West Village. There was so much music. I met Sonny Clark at the Five Spot. I heard Cecil play duo with Clifford Jarvis at the Café Wha?

TP:   What does living in New York have to do with your embrace of so many vehicles of self expression?

KENNY:   Well, I think because it’s all here. Music from everywhere is here in New York, and you can hear it all.  Just life in New York in general, especially during that time for me. I was young, and it was exciting, and all the people whose records I would buy, I could go hear them, I could talk to them, I could see them. Then other things as well. I really got into Latin music then, mostly due to radio. But I really got into it then. Everything is right here in New York.  Just the vibrancy of the city. It’s such a great city.

TP:   You’ve been in Brooklyn for how long?

KENNY:   Actually, I was in Manhattan only one year. I got married in ‘62, and I’ve been in Brooklyn ever since. The first place I lived was on St. Marks and Franklin, and then I moved to Prospect Place and Nostrand.

TP:   There was a fairly consequential scene going on in Brooklyn then.

KENNY:   Oh, there was a lot of music in Brooklyn. There was the Coronet, the Continental, and quite a few other places. There were also a lot of musicians. When I moved to Prospect Place, I discovered that Cedar Walton lived around the corner on Sterling Place. Freddie Hubbard and Louis Hayes lived around the corner in the same building on Park Place. Wynton Kelly lived around there on Lincoln Place. Cecil Payne lived nearby.  There were a lot of musicians.

TP:   Were the Brooklyn audiences different at all than the Harlem audiences?

KENNY:   I don’t think so. One of the things that was happening during that time is that the audiences for the music… If you went to the Coronet to hear music or to play, you would see the same people all the time. Neighborhood people came out to hear the music. That kind of stopped in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s.

TP:   Did that impart a different flavor to the way you played?

KENNY:   I don’t know if it added a different flavor.  But it was definitely inspirational.

TP:   For people in New York at the moment you arrived, you could hear the whole history of the music, people who effect the outer partials of what’s happening now, like Cecil or Ornette (whom you’ve played with), or you could hear Willie The Lion or Ellington or Coleman Hawkins. And you told me that you did.

KENNY:   Yes, I did. I remember working at the Vanguard playing with Freddie Hubbard, and we played opposite Coleman Hawkins for two weeks. Barry Harris was playing piano with him. I don’t remember who else was in the band, but I know Barry was there. That was amazing.

TP:   A lot of younger musicians in the ‘60s were perhaps not so embracing of the older forms, but it seems that even that is part of… On the Live At Bradley’s record you played Blue Skies and Sweet Lorraine, and a lot of tunes you’ll play with the trio are from that era.

KENNY:   Well, apart from bebop, I grew up listening to… Well, the first person I heard do Sweet Lorraine was Nat King Cole. And I loved it from that point. But it was a long time before I started actually playing it. But you have memories of these things, and you say, “Oh, I remember that song; let me start playing that.”
TP:   But someone born after your generation probably wouldn’t have heard Sweet Lorraine on a jukebox.

KENNY:   No, they wouldn’t have. Or Canadian Sunset. I remember hearing that on a jukebox.  Eddie Heywood. And Jug also recorded it.

TP:   Someone like me heard it because I went out looking for it. But it wouldn’t have been an organic part of my upbringing unless I was in an extremely specific house or environment.

KENNY:   Right, it was all around. You’d go into a luncheonette, and on the jukebox there you’d see John Coltrane, Blue Train or Moment’s Notice, or Ahmad Jamal, Poinciana. Any jukebox. In a luncheonette, a restaurant.

TP:   So those things come out in your sound.

KENNY:   Yes.  That stuff was all around. You’re exposed to it.  People who are younger have to search for the music. You have to look for it on the radio. You certainly don’t hear it on television…. Well, you didn’t hear it on television then either. But you have to look for it now.

Plus there were certain experiences, playing situations we were able to get as young players that aren’t available. They weren’t necessarily “jazz” gigs. I used to play dances a lot. We called them cabarets. You had to play standards. You had to play rhythm and blues. That’s what that really meant: I Got Rhythm and Blues. A lot of songs based on that. You had to play for singers. You’d have to play a show.  A singer would come up. “What key are you doing this in?” “I don’t know.” There wasn’t always a rehearsal. If you played, you’d also have to play for a comedian, tap dancers, stuff like this. You’d get to play all this…

TP:   You’d play a whole show. What was the club in Philly…

KENNY:   Oh, there were many clubs. Many. Sometimes they weren’t necessarily clubs…

TP:   The Masonic Lodge, the Elks…

KENNY:   Exactly. That kind of stuff. But I remember there was one club in particular in Philly that was called the Northwest Club. They had a lot of after-hours clubs. I remember working there one time with Jimmy Heath, Mickey Roker, and Arthur Harper was the bass player. But as part of the rhythm section, you had to also do this other stuff. You had to play with the singer and the comedian. That was just something you did.

TP:   That had to have been ‘59 or ‘60, if you did it with Jimmy. So you were 16 or 17.

KENNY:   Yes.

TP:   That prepared you for New York.

KENNY:   Yes.  There are certain kinds of experiences you had. You knew how to play for a show.  You knew what to do, how to end songs and things like that.

TP:   It’s a very rare musician under 45 who’s had had that experience. Although there are a few.

KENNY: There are some. But it’s rare.

TP:   What  did that do exactly?

KENNY:   Well, one thing, it taught you how to listen. It taught you how to listen, and then it helped you with the language. Musical language. It wasn’t enough just to know… Well, one thing is that you have to learn songs. We used to play for what was called shake dancers, kind of tame strip-teasers.  They would dance to Duke Ellington, Caravan… Exotic dancers. Jimmy Forrest, Night Train, a bump thing. Those are the kind of things you learn. It really prepared you to come to New York. Because it didn’t change that much once you got here. You still had to do those kind of gigs. You didn’t come here and start working at Birdland right away.

TP:   But you came here and soon started working with Dizzy.

KENNY:   Well, I came here in 1961 and started working with him in November 1962.  I graduated high school in ‘60, then I kind of laid around Philly, and came to New York in the Fall of ‘61. Then I got married in ‘62.

TP:   You grew up very young, didn’t you.

KENNY:   Well, I got married very young.

TP:   It wasn’t like a whole lot of time to “find yourself.” But maybe you did that later.

KENNY:   Well, still.

TP:   But a lot of people in that situation would take jazz as a job. You’re always very open-ended within the function stuff you do. You were a professional from 16-17-18. Music was a job, a livelihood from that age, and there are a lot of functions you have to play.  Some things must have felt rote to you. Some people would allow their imagination to be stifled in those situations, and many people have allowed their imaginations to be stifled. Others settle on one kind of sound and stayed with it—and evolved it, which is great. You’re not that way.

KENNY:   I think one of the things that helped was having an older brother who played, having friends… There was a drummer, for instance, named Jerry. I used to go over to his house. He always had the latest records. He built his own stereo system.  We would sit there and listen to the latest records. That’s the first time I heard Ornette, was over at his house. “Wow, what is that?!” So I’ve always been into listening and trying to hear new stuff.  Trying to do it, too.  That’s part of growing. I didn’t want to become stuck. I never did. I don’t know if you believe in astrology, but that’s part of being a Gemini. “Oh, let’s try this.” I think that’s part of it. Just being exposed to other things is is important.  When I came to New York, my brother Bill had been working with Cecil Taylor. He was really into avant-garde.  That was his thing. He loved that. He listened to Stockhausen and showed me 12-tone row music and stuff like that. It made me listen, too.

TP:   You did a tune, didn’t you, called Row House?

KENNY:   Yes, I did, which is a 12-tone row. So again, there’s always something to learn, something to try.

TP:   What was it like playing with Ornette?

KENNY:   It was different.

TP:   Has there ever been a situation that didn’t quite work?

KENNY:   I wouldn’t say that situation didn’t work. But there’s always hindsight. I wished I could have done this, wish I could have… But it came out okay. I was surprised that he called me. Because I think the whole idea was to recreate the group he had with Billy Higgins and Charlie Haden, who were both there, and Wallace Roney to take the place of Don Cherry. But one of his first groups had piano.

TP:   What I recall about the concert is that he took out his trumpet and played a chorus, and summed everything up in that chorus.

KENNY:   I enjoyed it. Probably even more memorable than the gig were the rehearsals, as he tried to explain his harmolodic concept. Which I never really got. So I just played.

TP:   Lee Konitz told me that Charlie Haden told him, “We really play changes.”

KENNY:   On some of the earlier things, the stuff is so melodic, it really sounds like they’re playing changes, or playing around changes. There’s some stuff there you can hear on The Shape Of Jazz To Come. That’s one of my favorites. Lonely Woman. You can hear harmonic structure in all of his pieces. It’s not just willy-nilly. They’re playing some stuff.

[—30—]

* * *

Kenny Barron (WKCR, September 2, 2004):

TP:    Sitting across from me, looking extremely cool and relaxed on this beautiful day, after a subway ride, is Kenny Barron. Next week, he enters the Village Vanguard with a sextet comprising Terrell Stafford, David Sanchez, Vincent Herring, Kiyoshi Kitagawa, and Ben Riley. On Wednesday, he starts his semester at Juilliard. On Thursday, he starts his semester at the Manhattan School of Music. So it will be like old times for Kenny Barron, who during the Bradley’s days, would leave at 3 in the morning, and go out to Rutgers the next day at 8 or so. You’ve been doing this for a long time.

KENNY: Yes, I have.  And as you get older, you get tired faster!

TP:    Well, there are no 3 in the morning sets any more.

KENNY: Not any more. Although I kind of miss it.

TP:    That’s the thing. You want to hang out late, but then in the morning you feel sort of happy that you didn’t do it. But several years ago, when you retired from Rutgers, I recall you saying, well, you wouldn’t be teaching any more. You were going to devote your time exclusively to music, and practice…

KENNY: I did say that, didn’t I.

TP:    What happened?

KENNY: Well, I got a call from Justin DiCioccio at Manhattan School of Music, saying, “We would like you to come and teach?” and I said, “I want this amount of money,” and he said, “okay.” And I only wanted a certain number of students…

TP:    And he said okay.

KENNY: Yeah.  So it’s been working out actually.

TP:    And at Juilliard as well.

KENNY: At Juilliard as well.  Well, I guess from the beginning, I’ve only had two piano students there. So this semester, starting this week, I’ll have four.

TP:    This show is not about education. But what sort of students do you have?  You’re not teaching them the basics.

KENNY: Oh, no. They could almost teach me. I mean, some of them are so incredible, especially in terms of technique, and they really understand the language very well. Actually, it’s fun to teach them. Because they really challenge me. They’re great students. A couple of them have won some competitions.

TP:    It’s a truism by now that, given advances in jazz pedagogy and education, that the technical level and proficiency of young musicians today…they start younger and younger, and they can do more and more. What things don’t they have?  What do they need to get?

KENNY: I guess the things they need to get, they’ll only get by living. Experience.  Experience and paying dues; as Ben Riley likes to say, “having their hearts broken.” So they’ll have some stories to tell. When you’re young and everything is fine, you don’t REALLY have any stories to tell.

TP:    You yourself were 18 when you moved to New York.

KENNY: Right.  In 1961.

TP:    You moved to the East Village, I think.

KENNY: Right.

TP:    Everyone was living on East 5th Street and 6th Street.

KENNY: East 6th Street I lived on.

TP:    You were working, and then joined up with Dizzy Gillespie and got your first college education on the road with Dizzy Gillespie. Subsequently, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, you went back to school and got a degree…

KENNY: I did.  I went to Manhattan Community College, and got an Associate’s Degree from there.  They had a program, part of the State University of New York, called Empire State College, and I got my B.A. from there.

TP:    I don’t want to put you in the position of looking back to the good old days. But just step back to those days a bit and discuss the climate then, and the attitudes of the musicians you were running with when you came here from Philly. What was percolating? What was in the air.

KENNY: Well, there was a lot. The block I lived on was the block where there are now a lot of Indian restaurants—Curry Row, they call it.  Sixth Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue. I lived at 314. I was staying with my brother for a while, and then I moved next door with a bass player named Vishnu Wood. Upstairs, for instance, lived Elvin Jones and Pepper Adams. They shared an apartment together. Across the street lived Lee Morgan and Tootie Heath, and a bass player from Philly who’s passed away named Spanky DeBrest, and Reggie Workman also, and two doors up from that lived Ted Curson. It was a great neighborhood. I could walk to the original Five Spot, which was on the Bowery, and the same guys, the Termini Brothers, also owned the Jazz Gallery on St. Marks. So I could walk to all those places. All the coffee shops. I first heard Cecil Taylor, for instance, at Café Wha in the Village.

TP:    On McDougal Street.

KENNY: Yes.  I heard him in that year, ‘61. I met Sonny Clark at the Five Spot. I first heard Kenny Dorham.

TP:    Was there a lot of collegiality? Were people supportive of each other?  Was there a sort of give-and-take?

KENNY: Oh, I think there was.  I would have to say yes. Especially among the musicians from Philadelphia.  There was always a kind of brotherhood, so to speak, among the musicians from Philly.

TP:    So even if someone was from Germantown and someone was from South Philly, once they get out of Philadelphia…

KENNY: Oh, yeah.  Well, even in Philly there wasn’t any kind of neighborhood rivalry.  You were a musician. You were one of the cats.

TP:    Prior to that, had you been working a fair amount on the Philly scene?

KENNY: Some. I was doing a lot of local stuff, and occasionally I would get to work in… When I was there, Philly had two major jazz clubs, the Showboat and Pep’s. At some point I got to work there. One of the highlights, I was still in high school, and I got to work there with Jimmy Heath and Lee Morgan and Tootie and Spanky DeBrest. I was thrilled to death.

TP:    This would have been shortly before you came to New York?

KENNY: Yes, shortly before.

TP:    I seem to recall you mentioning to me that while you were in high school, you’d play jam sessions, and catch the last bus home, and get home at 4 or 5 in the morning, and then go to school. I may be overstating the story…

KENNY: Well, not a jam session… But that is true. I would be out a little late, and my mother would be very upset!

TP:    I’m sure there are exceptions, but young musicians don’t have these kinds of experiences these days.  Again, not to get you embroiled into an “our generation had these things,” but do you see it as a different quality by which the information is processed when it’s processed in such a functional situation?

KENNY: I don’t know. I guess there’s something to be said for both. There’s something to be said for going through academia, and there’s something to be said for just learning it organically, through the streets. However you learn it, it’s great. But I guess one of the things when you learn it on the street, so to speak… For me, I think it really stays with you. You get more… This is hard to explain.  There’s more spirit involved. In school, sometimes you can over-intellectualize everything, and everything becomes about scales… It becomes too intellectual.

TP:    Philadelphia may be known as the City of Brotherly Love, but I gather that doesn’t necessarily apply to the attitude of audiences when you’re not doing things as you’re supposed to.

KENNY: Oh, no.  They’d let you know. You get embarrassed a few times, and you’ll work on your stuff.

TP:    What dicta did the older musicians tell you? Would people be quick to correct you on the spot?

KENNY: Well, yes, they would. If I was interfering with what everybody else was doing, yes, they would definitely be quick to point it out to me. But if it wasn’t too bad, they would wait til after the song was over or after the set was over, and pull me aside.  But generally speaking, they were very willing to share information and to let me know: “Voice this chord this way” or “These are the right changes here.”

TP:    So when you got to New York at 18, it was that, but on an everyday basis.

KENNY: On an everyday basis.  And you might say at a higher level, too, in terms of the musicians who were here in New York.  But it was more of the same, yes.

TP:    I apologize for bringing you back 43 years on the third question. So let’s step up to the present. Kenny Barron is performing at the Village Vanguard next week with his sextet. You’re one of many musicians of different generations who express themselves through different configurations. I think you have two-three forms of sextet; there’s one that’s sort of straight-ahead hardbop, another uses strings and flutes, a Brazilian-tinged group, there’s trios, duos, the quintet that you’re working with flute and vibes… Did this also happen organically?  How did it come about that you use so many modes of expression?

KENNY: I like different things.  That’s basically it. With the Brazilian project, for instance, I used to go to this place called the Coffee Shop. [Union Square & 16th]. That’s where I first met Duduka DaFonseca, Nilson Matta and Romero Lubambo. I just happened to be passing by, heard the music, went in, introduced myself, and we talked. Then I wound up going there every Saturday just to listen to them. Eventually, I said, “Wow, I sure would like to play with these guys,” and we figured out a way to make that happen. They were there for 12 years.

TP:    Were they doing a brunch gig?

KENNY: Yes, every Saturday afternoon.

TP:    But your exposure to Bossa Nova goes back to the American involvement in the idiom with Dizzy, who picked up on it fairly quickly.

KENNY: That’s true. Actually, the group that started me really listening to Brazilian music was Sergio Mendez, Brazil ‘65. I still have that vinyl record that I bought in 1965.
TP:    I’ll assume the group this week, to use the term in a totally generic way, a more straightahead, hardbop oriented thing.

KENNY: Yes, it is more straight-ahead.

TP:    The three horns…if you were around in 1990, you’d call them young lions, but now all are established tonal personalities on their instruments. David Sanchez has been on a few of your records.

KENNY: Yes. David actually was a student of mine at Rutgers. That’s when we met. I was there when he auditioned, and I remember how nervous he was. I don’t think he graduated. He left because he actually started working. I ran into him a couple of years later at the Village Gate. They used to do Monday nights where they’d invite a jazz artist with a Latin band, and I was playing with Eddie Palmieri, and happened to turn around, and David Sanchez was playing on the band.

Although he wasn’t my student, Terrell was a student at Rutgers University. Vincent I met a long time ago, and always loved his playing.

TP:    Kiyoshi Kitagawa has frequently played bass on your gigs.

KENNY: Yes, frequently. That started at times when Ray Drummond wasn’t available, and then Ben Riley actually told me about Kiyoshi. I love the way he plays.

TP:    You and Ben Riley go back a couple of minutes, too.

[MUSIC: “Um Beiju”; “Things Unseen”]

TP:    This was Kenny’s core quintet for about a decade. Eddie Henderson and John Stubblefield, KB, Ray Drummond, Victor Lewis, and Minu Cinelu… Perusing the recordings here, you’re the composer of all but two tunes on Spirit Song – 8 or 10. You’re the composer of all the tunes on Things Unseen from ‘95. On Images, the latest release, you composed 6 of the tunes. And your compositions comprise the preponderance of the material on many of your records. You’ve been composing for a long time, and some of your songs and little melodic hooks are part of the vocabulary now. You hear musicians quoting “What If,” for example. However—and I could be wrong about this—people don’t necessarily think of you first and foremost as a composer of the scope and breadth that you demonstrably are.

KENNY: Well, it’s funny, because I don’t think of myself as a composer. I write tunes. It’s a work in progress. I’m still working on trying to find things to write. I’d like to try to write something for a larger group.

TP:    Aren’t you being unnecesarily modest here? Do you mean that you don’t through-write? What to you is the difference between a tunesmith and a composer?

KENNY: Maybe what I mean is, the stuff I write isn’t terribly complicated. For a lot of people, it’s not a composition unless it’s difficult.  The stuff I write is really very simple. And sometimes that’s a good thing.

TP:    Do you write for personnel?

KENNY: Generally, if I’m writing for a particular project, then I’m writing for the people in the band who I’m going to be playing with. Not necessarily for the instrumentation, but for those particular people. I kind of know what they sound like, and I think I know what they’re capable of.

TP:    Since the ‘70s, when you first recorded for Muse, your tunes incorporate a lot of exotic scales, a lot of world rhythms—Brazilian, Latin and African rhythms. You have a rather broad template, which you’ve used for at least thirty years, and perhaps even going back to your days with Dizzy.

KENNY: I enjoy listening to all kinds of music. I enjoy trying to incorporate various aspects of different cultures into the music, as much as I’m able to.

TP:    Are you trying to find new material to improvise on?  Is the goal always to find something to take off from?

KENNY: As a jazz artist, I think ultimately it’s about improvising and having a vehicle for that.  But at the same time, I would also like to get more involved in through-composing, really writing a piece all the way through. I think it would be interesting to do.

TP:    Who are your models as a composer?  Among your contemporaries are some of the major people, and you worked with Dizzy Gillespie who codified bebop composition.

KENNY: Among my contemporaries, I love Wayne Shorter’s writing. Of course, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. That goes without saying. Some of those pieces they wrote, like Blood Count, Lush Life, they’re really incredible. Bud Powell, things like Glass Enclosure and Tempus Fugit.

TP:    For example, this week with the sextet… You occasionally recycle or reconfigure compositions, but not too often. Usually a Kenny Barron record presents a bunch of new pieces. Are there new things in the book for the sextet next week?

KENNY: Most of the things we’ve done before. I think we’re going to try two or three new things next week?

TP:    Are you a deadline-oriented composer, or is it a matter of when the spirit moves you?

KENNY: If you give me too much time, I won’t do it! If I have three months to write something, I’ll wait until the day before…or a week before. It’s really just a question of developing a certain kind of discipline, which I have yet to do; to just sit down and… I remember sitting down with the pianist Hassan in Philadelphia, who I’d known since I was a little kid, and he told me that he wrote a tune a day.  That’s 365 songs.

TP:    You must have at least 100 copyrighted.

KENNY: Maybe a few more than that.

TP:    You haven’t exactly been a slouch… Having spoken of composition, we’ll hear some blowing by Kenny on the piano, of which there are ample recorded documents.  This trio worked frequently at the time; you could hear them every 3 or 4 months at Bradley’s. Am I exaggerating?

KENNY: No, you’re not. We were there a lot.

TP:    It’s a one-hour recital of ten tunes, and it reflects the flavor of what your sets would be like. There are tuneful originals with nice rhythmic feels, there’s a couple of Monk, a couple of great standard songbook things, some soul tunes…

[MUSIC: Sweet Lorraine, Alter Ego]

TP:    Lemuria would have done when the trio did a no-repeat week; a week at Bradley’s without playing the same tune twice. That would be 18 sets. I think it happened around ‘91… Playing this music from Bradley’s: You worked there a lot with this trio. It was a real locus for New York’s piano community for about twenty years.

KENNY: I think the first time I worked there, they had a spinet piano. The first time I went there, I heard Bobby Timmons, who was there quite frequently, and eventually I started working there. But I loved working there.  The ambiance, and like you said, it was a really great hang. The last set sometimes would be full of musicians coming by from their gigs. I remember one really memorable night. I think Tommy was working there, and Carmen McRae was working at the Blue Note, and she came by after her set, and I think she played almost the whole last set at Bradley’s. She sat at the piano and sang and played. Only at Bradley’s could you catch something like that.

TP:    What does it do to a musical community to have a gathering place like that? There hasn’t been anything quite like Bradley’s since 1996.

KENNY: For me, I felt very much at home there. I think most of the musicians did.  It was like home.  You’d go in there, you knew everybody… I never had to order a drink!  Because the bartender knew what I drank. He just put it right in front of me.

TP:    So even if you wanted to change for that night, you still had to drink it.

KENNY: Yeah! [LAUGHS] I miss it. I really do miss it.

TP:    A more general question. Is there a New York piano school? Obviously, we’re not talking about people born in New York, because the majority of musicians who make their living here come here from someplace else.  But that being said, it seems that the overall sound you’d hear at Bradley’s from one week to the next and from year to year kind of crystallizes a New York approach to piano.  But it’s unclear in my mind specifically what that approach might be. So do you think of it that way, or is that a bit too general?

KENNY: It’s a little hard for me to think of a New York school of piano playing. As you mentioned, everybody comes here from somewhere else, and all those forces come into play. You’ve got people who come from Detroit, like Tommy and Hank and Barry Harris and Kirk Lightsey. But oddly enough, there is a Detroit sound. Especially with Tommy and Hank and Barry and Roland Hanna, those guys had a particular sound. I think whatever happens is just an amalgamation of everything that’s happening around the country. Because everything comes here; everybody comes here.

TP:    The last time you can really talk about an indigenous New York sound might be the ‘50s, when you have people directly coming out of the stride pianists, and Bud Powell and Walter Davis and Walter Bishop. When you got here in the early ‘60s, what were most of the piano players listening to? At the time, you got here is the same time Herbie Hancock got here, it’s the same time Chick Corea got here… I mean, roughly.

KENNY: Yes, it was around the same time.

TP:    Keith Jarrett got here then. You all arrive in New York with diverse influences, but coming out of the same things that were in the air.

KENNY: I’m trying to think of what I was listening to when I came to New York, the people I would seek out to listen to. For me, it was Tommy and Hank, even though they were rarely in New York during that time. I think they were always busy working, so I never got a chance to hear them live that much then. People like Sonny Clark. I used to listen to Erroll Garner. I never really got a chance to hear Bud, unfortunately. I heard him one time, and he was really not himself. So it was kind of sad for me to see. And Monk; I got to hear Monk.

TP:    As one of the founding members of Sphere, you played Monk’s music extensively in the ‘80s, after he died. Did you get to know Monk?

KENNY: No, I didn’t really get to know him. When I saw him a few times earlier on, I was very young, and I was so much in awe, I would not have approached him at all. Plus, he was a very awe-inspiring looking figure. He was a very big man. I’m a kid. I said, “Wow.”

TP:    You didn’t know what he might say to you.

KENNY: Right.  But I certainly did listen to him.

TP:    And being with Dizzy Gillespie, I suppose that would be a first-hand channel into the attitudes and tales of the music of the generation before you.

KENNY: Oh, sure.

TP:    Is that something you were very curious about at the time? I’m asking in this context. For a lot of younger musicians who didn’t have a chance to experience those lifeblood artists first-hand, didn’t get to see Monk, didn’t get to see Bud Powell, maybe didn’t get to Dizzy—didn’t even get to play in those bands, a lot of them. So for them, the notion of being around New York in 1961, you’d think of it as a kind of golden age. Here’s Coleman Hawkins.  Here’s Monk. You can hear almost the whole history of jazz on any given night in New York in 1961 or 1962 or 1963.

KENNY: That’s true.

TP:    Was it that way to you at that time?

KENNY: Yes, it was.  It was that way to me at that time. I got to hear, thankfully, a lot of people. I got to hear Willie The Lion Smith.  I got to work opposite… I was working with Freddie Hubbard at the Vanguard, and we worked opposite Coleman Hawkins for a week. We played opposite Cecil Taylor for a week. I heard some incredible music.  And I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of great people.

TP:    Have you always had a very open attitude to music? Looking at your discography in recent years, on the Bradley’s record you play “Everybody Loves My Baby But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me,” a ‘20s Tin Pan Alley thing, which you play in the stride manner but in your own style.  Then with Minu Cinelu on the track we’re about to hear, you’re prerecording fragments of material, recording electric keyboard bass, using the latest technology. On another track, you explore intervals that you might associate with Cecil Taylor or Hassan. There’ s a lovely arrangement of Bud Powell’s “Hallucinations.” Really, your music and musical persona seems to encompass very comfortably the whole timeline of the music in a rather organic way.

KENNY: I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, and I love and appreciate a lot of different kinds of music. In terms of being open, I think I’ve always been that way. I’ve always listened to all kinds of stuff. I’ve always wanted to play as much as I could, all different kinds of music.

TP:    We have a set of duos by Kenny Barron with different people. First is “Mystere” with Mino Cinelu. A few words on how this recording was set up.

KENNY: We did a lot of stuff that you’d call preproduction, setting up certain things—in his living room actually.  He’s a whiz at the computer, so he’d add different things with the computer. I know nothing about that stuff, other than how to get my email. He did all of that.  Then in the studio, I opened up the acoustic piano on most of it. On my solos, he added other things electronically and altered the sound on certain things with the computer. So when I heard it back, it was totally different.  On quite a few tracks he altered the sound or added things to it. But on the track you’re about to play, we did some of the stuff in his living room, we came in and I overdubbed the piano solo, and I also played keyboard bass.

[KB-Cinelu, “Mystere”; KB-Regina Carter, Fragile; KB-Roy Haynes, “Madman”]

TP:    A set of duos concluded with a few signifying drumstrokes by Roy Haynes, concluding a piece called Madman, from Wanton Spirit. Was that your tune?

KENNY: It is a tune, actually. I’ve never done it live and never recorded it since then. But I think I will start doing it.

TP:    You played Sting’s “Fragile” in duo with Regina Carter.

KENNY: My wife was working at the time, and I went to pick her up, but she wasn’t quite ready, so I went to a bar next door in Soho. I was having a drink, and they were playing Sting singing this particular song. I thought it was so beautiful! So I asked the bartender who it was. I had no idea who Sting was. So I went out and bought the record, and to my surprise, I liked the entire record, but that particular piece, I really fell in love with.

TP:    In 1996, not too many people were working with computers to create the sounds you got on Swamp Sally. And we’ve heard a very diverse selection of music, many colors and scales and cultural reference. But almost all have been done for the same label and the same two producers—earlier for Jean-Philippe Allard, and more recently Daniel Richard, who produces you for French Universal, no longer issued in the States by Verve, but currently by Sunnyside. It seems to me that there might be some connection between having a steady, familiar relationship with a receptive producer and the venturesomeness of your output.

KENNY: Fortunately, they are two producers who I really appreciate. They’ve allowed me the maximum amount of freedom in terms of what I wanted to do. “Go ahead!” Interestingly enough, the CD with Roy Haynes and Charlie  Haden, Wanton Spirit, was actually a suggestion of Jean-Philipppe Allard. Because I never would have thought of it. He said, “What do you think about recording with Charlie Haden and Roy Haynes?” I said, “Wow, that could be… Yeah.” So that’s how that one came about.

TP:    Charlie Haden has a similar relationship with him, as does Randy Weston and Abbey Lincoln and Hank Jones and others. The ‘90s was a prolific, fertile for all of them in terms of albums. But a lot of musicians in your position, after more than forty years in the music business, an established bandleader for at least thirty of those years, and with a pedigree that includes Dizzy Gillespie, Ron Carter, Stan Getz during the ‘80s… For all of that, you seem very willing to make music with almost anything good that comes your way. It’s a very egoless type of… Of course, you have your ego. And I don’t want to throw around paeans to you here.  But there’s a sort of openness to new experience that seems to inform what you do.

KENNY: Oh, I do like to try new things, yes. They may not be NEW new, but they’ll be new for me. So in that sense there’s certainly a sense of adventure about it for me.

TP:    What underlies that?  Is it as simple as just trying to keep yourself fresh so as not to repeat?

KENNY: No, I think it really is curiosity. I’m not really concerned about becoming stale or anything like that. Now, I should be! But it’s really curiosity. I get inspired by a lot of different things. I’ll go out and hear one of the cats or one of the young women playing today, and I’ll get inspired. I’ll say, ”Wow, that was incredible.” So inspiration comes from a lot of different places, and it inspires you to try a lot of different things on your own.

TP:    Having seen you on nights-off or after a set going out to hear people, I know for a fact that you do check out a lot of music. In your quintet, everyone is under 35, and most of them are under 30.

KENNY: The two young ladies, Kim and Anne, are 23. Stefon Harris is just 30. Kiyoshi is older than you’d think. I was surprised when I found out how old he was.  But still, he’s younger than me.

TP:    What is the benefit to playing with so many people? Because your sound is very identifiable always within whatever context you’re in. I’m not really going to give you to someone on a Blindfold Test, let’s say.

KENNY: Well, what I get playing with all these different people is that they make me play differently. Playing with some straight-ahead, which I love to do, that makes me play one way. Playing with a good singer makes you play another way. Playing with young people who are really energetic, that energizes me. Playing with someone whose music is a little more esoteric puts me in another thing. I like to think of myself as a team player, so I’m less interested in myself sounding good as much as the group I’m with, whether it be as a leader or as a sideperson. Sounding good is more of my concern.

TP:    So if the group sounds good, you’re sounding good.

KENNY: Essentially, yes. That’s very true.

TP:    Is that innate? Did you learn it from someone?  A little bit of both?

KENNY: Maybe a little bit of both.  It’s a team effort.

TP:    Stepping back forty years ago, you were part of Dizzy Gillespie’s group, from 18 to 22. What’s the most important lesson you learned from that, apart from learning all those great tunes from the inside-out and hearing him every night, and the stage presentation and so on.

KENNY:   Well, those are among the things. I can’t say there’s any one thing that was more important than any other.  But it’s how to save yourself, by which I mean that you don’t give up everything all at once every night. You save some stuff.  Keep some stuff in reserve. One of the things I learned is not to play everything you know. That’s it. You don’t play everything you know all the time.

TP:    Why not?

KENNY: What for?

TP:    You played a lot with Ron Carter in the ‘70s. The group was popular, lots of recordings and bookings.

KENNY: That was a really great band, with two bass players; Ron played piccolo bass and Buster Williams the full-sized bass. Ben Riley was on drums. Ron is a really good bandleader, because he knows what he wants, and he knows how to TELL you what he wants and how to get it. One thing I learned from playing with Ron is dynamics, how to use dynamics. He’s very used to not playing at one level all the time—hills and valleys in music.

TP:    How about Stan Getz? Since he passed, some amazing recordings have come out of your collaboration.

KENNY: I guess the thing Stan and I had in common was a love for lyricism. I think we fed each other in that way.  I certainly learned a lot from hearing him. He was one person who could play a ballad and really make you cry.

TP:    Is there anyone during the time we could call your apprenticeship, which was a long one… You played steadily as a sideman for thirty years, though for a chunk of that time you were a leader. Is there anyone you wish you could have played with that you didn’t get to?

KENNY: Yes, a few people. Pre electronic days, I always wanted to play with Miles.  And Sonny Rollins is someone I always wanted to play with.

TP:    With Sonny, that could still happen.

KENNY: One never knows!

TP:    After you leave here, you have a rehearsal for next week. So will this be the first rehearsal for this band for this program?

KENNY: Yes.  And unfortunately, I don’t think everybody is going to be there.  People are still out of town. So we’ll muddle through.

TP:    You mentioned that you have three new pieces. Are you a stickler for rehearsal? Your bands always have a sound of elegance and casualness that makes me think that you might be working them really hard.

KENNY: No. I rehearse because it’s necessary.  But I don’t LIKE to rehearse.

TP:    The trios with Ben Riley and Ray Drummond, I’ll bet you didn’t rehearse.

KENNY: Oh, no, we rarely rehearsed.  And many of the arrangements are really just head arrangements. They evolved over the course of playing them over a period of time.

TP:    You said that your music is very simple, but it’s very distinct. What do you think is the hardest aspect of playing your compositions correctly?  Is it the phrasing?  Is there a certain attitude?

KENNY: I don’t know. Again, I don’t think it’s difficult, but if there’s anything, it’s playing with the right attitude. I certainly don’t think the music is terribly difficult. If it’s anything, I think it’s playing with the right attitude and the right feeling.

TP:    Another one of your tunes that’s gotten some broader play is New York Attitude. So maybe it’s the New York attitude. Not everyone has it.

KENNY: Could be.

* * *

Kenny Barron Musician Show (WKCR, 2-13-91);

[MUSIC: K. Barron, “New York Attitude”]
Q:    [ETC.] Kenny is from Philadelphia.  I think that’s probably the first thing anybody should know.
KB:  Right.  From North Philadelphia.
Q:    Neighborhoods are pretty important in Philly.
KB:  Yeah.  Well, there’s North Philly, South Philly, West Philly.  They’re all different, too.
Q:    You’re from quite a musical family as well.
KB:  Yeah.  Well, Bill was the oldest.  There were five of us altogether.  Bill and myself are the only ones who became professional musicians, but everyone else played the piano, two sisters and another brother.  They all played the piano.
Q:    There was one in the house?
KB:  Yes.  There was always a piano there.  My mother played also, so she was kind of the one who inspired everybody to do that.
Q:    What kind of music was played in the house?
KB:  It was usually Jazz, Rhythm-and-Blues — primarily.  And Gospel Music on Sunday.
Q:    What were your folks into?  The big bands?
KB:  It was strange, because my folks…my parents didn’t really listen to the radio, or they didn’t seem to listen to music that often, other than my mother, who as I said, listened to Gospel Music on Sunday.  But my brothers and sisters listened to lots of different kinds of music.  At the time, they had some really great radio shows, Jazz radio shows in Philly.  As I got a little older, by junior high school I was also listening to, like, Doo-Wop groups and things like that.  So I listened to all kinds of music.
Q:    You were also studying European Classical Music.
KB:  Yes, I was studying Classical piano.  I did that from the age of 6 until I was 16.
Q:    Now, what was your first exposure to the world of Jazz in Philadelphia?  Did you sneak out when you were younger and go hear groups in the neighborhood, or was it through your brother?
KB:  Actually it was through my brother.  He had a fantastic collection of old 78’s, Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro, Dizzy, people like that.  So I used to hear those things all the time.  I can remember being very affected by one tune in particular; I’m talking about when I was maybe ten years old.  That was a piece called “Sippin’ At Bells.”  I always tried to find that piece and that record, and I couldn’t remember the record label.  Somehow or other, it really got to me.
Q:    Bud Powell was on that, yes?
KB:  I believe so.
Q:    Of course, I’m sure your brother must have been practicing around the house.
KB:  Oh yeah.
Q:    It must have always been there.
KB:  Yes, there was always music.  His friends would come by.  I’m sure you’ve heard of the pianist Hassan from Philly.  Well, he and Bill were very close, so he used to come by the house quite often, and they would spend hours playing and just talking together about music.  So I would be there listening and checking them out.
Q:    Do you have any particular reminiscences about Hassan? He didn’t have a lot of visibility outside of Philadelphia, and recorded only once, albeit with Max Roach.
KB:  One record, right.  That’s right.  He was unique as a pianist.  Eccentric.   He just had a very unique style.  Kind of Monkish.  Of course, at that time, when I was 9 or 10 years old, I knew nothing about Monk.  But he had, like I said, a very unique style.  Later on, I found out that one of his biggest influences was Elmo Hope, and not Thelonious Monk.
Q:    One of the compositions on that record, actually is dedicated to Elmo Hope, too.
KB:  That’s right.  Actually, I plagiarized a bass line from one of his compositions from The Incredible Hassan on one of my records.  I see you’re taken aback!  It’s funny, because only a few people knew it, and they were all people from Philadelphia!
Q:    I’ll bet.  Who were some of the other people on the Philadelphia scene who were important in the 1950’s, and particularly when you were beginning to emerge and find your way?
KB:  Well, there were people… There was a saxophonist, for instance, named Jimmy Oliver, who was very influential on the Philadelphia scene at the time.  Jimmy Heath.  I had a chance to work with Jimmy while I was still in high school.  Oh, and just the guys that I came up with; there are people who probably aren’t that well known outside of Philadelphia.  A bass player named Arthur Harper…
Q:    He played with J.J. Johnson…
KB:  Exactly.
Q:    I think he’s playing with Shirley Scott now.
KB:  Yeah, exactly.   He is playing in Philadelphia.  He moved back to Philadelphia, and he’s working there.  But he was one of the guys that I came up with who had a very big influence on me.  He was a fantastic bassist.  We used to play together a lot, and talk about music.
Sonny Fortune, we came up together.  So a lot of people were around during that time.
Q:    I guess you were a little young to remember Jimmy Heath’s big band…
KB:  Yes, that was a little before my time.  But I often heard of it, because Bill played in that big band, and I often heard him talk about it.  And there were some great people in it.  I think John Coltrane…
Q:    And Benny Golson…
KB:  Benny Golson, right.
Q:    [ETC.] Now, you’re on record as saying that the first record that really grabbed you was a Miles Davis session from 1956 with Sonny Rollins and Tommy Flanagan and…
KB:  Yeah.  Max. [sic: Art Taylor]
Q:    …you were really into Miles Davis at that time.  So we have a set of Miles from that period lined up for you…
KB:  [LAUGHS]
Q:    …by the miracle of radio.  Was this one of your brother’s records, or did you hear it on the radio?
KB:  No, actually what happened, I was in junior high school, and we had an art class, and the teacher used to encourage the students to bring in music to paint by, so to speak.  So a friend of mine, a drummer, who is now an English teacher actually, he brought in this record, Collectors Items.  The tune that they were playing that got me was ” In Your Own Sweet Way.”  I stopped painting, I was listening, and I was “Who is this?  Who is that?”  Because it was just so clear, so crystal clear, and the touch was so light,  delicate.  And I just fell in love with Tommy’s playing right then and there.
Q:    Well, we’re going to hear that in this set.  But we’re going to start with “All Of You” performed by the Miles Davis Quintet, with two other Philly legends, Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones, on the famous recording, Round About Midnight.
[MUSIC: Miles, “All of You,” “In Your Own Sweet Way.”]
KB:  When that record came out, it had such an impact on the Jazz scene that I was coming up with… One of the things that we could do, for instance… I mean, I knew everybody’s solo on every tune.
Q:    From the Round About Midnight record.
KB:  Yes, from that record.  I mean, I could do that as you were playing it then!  I mean, that didn’t make me unique, because everybody did that then.  I mean, that was one of the ways in which you learned about improvising, was just through trying to imitate and learn solos, and find out how they did it, what they did.  It was a great… It’s still a great learning tool, just to listen.
Q:    At about the age of 14 and 15, who were the people you were following?  Obviously Red Garland.
KB:  Yeah, Red Garland.  I also was listening to Horace Silver.  I think I may have been a little younger than that when he came out with Six Pieces of Silver.   For some reason, I remember at that particular time we didn’t have a record player in the house.  There was a luncheonette about five or six blocks from the house, and they had on their jukebox “Señor Blues” and “Enchantment.”  And I went up to this luncheonette every day to play that, play those two songs.  Then when I found out that the drummer, Louis Hayes, was 18, I mean, that really gave me a lot of inspiration.
Q:    There’s hope for me yet.
KB:  Yes. [LAUGHS]
Q:    You were also listening to Ahmad Jamal at this time.
KB:  Right.  The Live At the Pershing album came out at this time.  Well, maybe a little bit later.  But that was also very influential.  I remember I was laying in bed, getting ready to go to sleep, and I had the Jazz station on, and the tune they were playing was “Music, Music, Music.”  And again, it was “Who is that?”  It was just so hip.
Q:    Just encapsulate your impressions of Ahmad Jamal and Horace Silver, their contributions in retrospect, now that  you can look back at it.  They’re still doing it, actually.
KB:  Well, that’s right.  Still!  I heard Ahmad a couple of summers ago, and he’s still unbelievable.   Actually, I appreciate him even more now, now that I really know what he’s doing; not really know, but now that I kind of understand what he’s doing.
I think Ahmad is like the consummate trio player.  There’s just so much space and so many ideas and he’s so creative in a trio setting.  And his technique is…I mean, it’s unbelievable technique.  His touch… So he has it all happening for him.
Horace was also a very big influence on my playing.  He’s completely different from Ahmad.  Horace is a much more percussive player, and you know, a little more out of the  Bebop thing, but a great pianist and an unbelievable composer.  So just about every Horace Silver record that came out, I would go and buy it, or find somebody who had it so I could listen to it.   Because I was as fascinated by his compositions as I was by his playing.
Q:    As are many musicians still.
KB:  Yes.
Q:    I think he’s one of the most popular fake-book…
KB:  Yeah, that’s true.
Q:    Were you engaged in teenage combos at this time?  Were you working at all?
KB:  Not working as such.  But yeah, I did.  I had a little trio.  We used to perform in school functions and things like that.  It was fun, and it was, again, a great learning device.  While I was in high school I met Arthur Harper.  We  happened to be… I was studying bass at the time, and we happened to be studying with the same teacher.
Q:    Who was?
KB:  I don’t even remember his name.  He was a Classical teacher.  Mr. Eaney(?).  That was his name.  Wow.  He played with the Philadelphia Orchestra.  And I had my lesson at 10 o’clock, and Harper had his lesson at 11, so I would see him, you know, when… I never knew how good a bass player he was, and I guess he never knew that I played piano.  Until one day I happened to go to a jam session in West Philly.  I was playing bass, you know.  So one of the guys, we later became great friends (his name was Jimmy Vass, an alto player) but I had just met him this particular day.  He called “Cherokee.”  And obviously, I couldn’t make it!  [LAUGHS]
Q:    It wouldn’t seem obvious to us now.
KB:  I’m talking about on the bass, now.  I was playing bass.  Then I spotted Arthur Harper!  And I had a pleading look in my eyes.  He came up and rescued me, and I sat down and listened to him, and all I could say was “Wow!”  I mean, he was such a good bass player.  His time… He was incredible.
[MUSIC:  A. Jamal, “Music, Music, Music,” “No Greater Love,” H. Silver, “Señor Blues”]
Q:    Did you discover Bud Powell around the time you first heard Ahmad Jamal and Horace Silver?
KB:  Actually I discovered Bud later.
Q:    Later.
KB:  Yes.
Q:    Monk, too.
KB:  Monk, too — later.  I guess I was so taken with Ahmad and also with Tommy Flanagan that I kind of neglected to go to the source, so to speak, which was Bud Powell.  It’s hard not to come through him for almost any pianist.  It’s very difficult for any pianist who is playing today not to have come through him, to have been influenced by him, either directly or indirectly, one way or another.
[MUSIC: Bud Powell, “Glass Enclosure (1953),” “Hallucinations” (1950]
Q:    We’ll move now to music emanating from Philadelphia in the late 1950’s that Kenny was involved with in one way or another as a young musician.
KB:  Well, I met Jimmy Heath: I was still in high school when I met him.  He had done this first album for Riverside [The Thumper and Really Big], for kind of a small big band, and he organized a group in Philadelphia, kind of scaled it down.  So I had a chance to play with him, and play a lot of the music from that album — and it was really a lot of fun.  A couple of times he even used the big band.
Q:    I take it he heard about you through your brother.
KB:  Through Bill, right.  And also through another saxophonist in town by the name of Sam Reed, who I think had mentioned me to Jimmy.  He was very helpful, in terms of my career, even though he may not know it.  I remember one time Yusef Lateef came to Philly, had a matinee at the Showboat, Monday, 4 o’clock, and his pianist missed the flight.  So Jimmy gave him my number, and he called me, and I went and played the matinee — and that was it.  He paid me.  Then about three months later, just after I graduated from high school, I got a call from him to come to Detroit and work ten days in a place in Detroit called the Minor Key.  It was a great experience.  First time on an airplane, first time on the road.  It was a great experience.
Q:    And Detroit was quite a scene at that time.
KB:  Yes, it was.  Yes, it was.
Q:    Did you meet most of the people then residing in Detroit?
KB:  I met some, yeah.  I met some people.  The drummer was from Philadelphia, though: his name was Ronald Tucker.  The bassist was from Detroit, I think he lives here now, or he may be back in Detroit now: he was Ray McKinney, who comes from a very musical family.  That was a great ten days.  And the music that Yusef was doing at the time was really unusual.  So it was my first time experiencing that.
Q:    Of course he later became a big part of your career, some fifteen years later, which we’ll be hearing later on in the course of the Musicians Show.  The other material we’ll hear on this set is a Philly Joe Jones date from 1960 called Philly Joe’s Beat, which is your brother’s debut on record, more or less, a wonderful recording.
KB:  Yeah, it is.  It is.
Q:    It features a lot of the Miles Davis arrangements, and other things, done Philly Joe style.  Now, did you know Philly Joe Jones at this time, or was he too much out of town…?
KB:  Well, he wasn’t in Philadelphia that often except to work.  But again, I got a chance to work with him when he came through Philadelphia.  It was the same sort of situation.  He came through Philadelphia, and his pianist wasn’t able to make it.  So I got a chance to do I think four nights with him, along with Arthur Harper, my brother Bill was there, and trumpet player Michael Downs.  We did four nights at the Showboat in Philly.  Again, it was pretty much the same music that’s on this album, Philly Joe’s Beat.
[MUSIC: Jimmy Heath 10, “Big P” (1960); Philly Joe, “Salt Peanuts” (1960); J. Heath 10, “Nails” (1960)]
Q:    Kenny participated in all of this music in one way or another around the time that the material was recorded.
KB:  That’s true.  That’s very true.  I had a chance, again, to work with Philly Joe, where we played pretty much the same music, and I had a chance to work with Jimmy Heath during that time, and played a lot of the music that was on that Really Big album.
Q:    I’d say we’ve thoroughly covered the Philadelphia period.  Now we’re in 1962, and you’ve been to Detroit with Yusef Lateef for ten days, and done some other things.  But now you join Dizzy Gillespie, and that lasts four years and really brings your name out into the wider world of Jazz.
KB:  Yes.
Q:    How did Dizzy find out about you?
KB:  Again through a recommendation.  When I first moved to New York, I…
Q:    When was that?  When did you make the move?
KB:    I moved to New York in 1961.
Q:    Right out of high school?
KB:  Well, I graduated in ’60.  So I spent about a year around Philadelphia, and then I moved over here.
Q:    What induced you to come up?
KB:  Well, just the same thing that induces everybody.  Just to be around all these musicians and to be around all this music — and to learn, you know.
But anyway, when I first moved here, I moved next door to my brother on East Sixth Street, so I used to walk to the Five Spot a lot.  James Moody happened to be working there, and I sat in — and he hired me!  We did some gigs in Brooklyn, at the Blue Coronet in Brooklyn, and again at the Five Spot.
Anyway, about a year later, I ran into Moody on Broadway.  Moody had gone with Dizzy, and I ran into him on Broadway.  He said they were appearing at Birdland, and he said, “You know, Lalo Schifrin is leaving Dizzy; would you be interested?”  And I had just gotten married, and I needed a gig! [LAUGHS] You know?  Plus, I mean, that’s such an honor.  So I said of course I’d be interested.  So he said, “Well, come by Birdland.”  And I went by Birdland, and just talked to Dizzy.  You know, Dizzy had never heard me play, and he hired me.
Q:    Without hearing you play.
KB:  Without hearing me play.  Just on Moody’s recommendation.
Q:    Well, they have some history together.
KB:  Yes, they do! [LAUGHS]
Q:    Did you just go in cold?  You must have had a rehearsal or two.
KB:  No, actually we didn’t.  Right after Birdland, the first gig was in Cincinnati — and there was no time for rehearsal.  So I remember after checking into the hotel and going to the gig in a cab, Dizzy was running down these things to me, talking certain tunes down.  Then Chris White, who was the bassist at the time, and Rudy Collins, the drummer, they were also very helpful in pulling my coat to what was happening with each tune and… The gig wasn’t a whole week, I don’t think, maybe just a few days.  So we managed to get through it.  And by that time I felt a lot more comfortable, after playing it a few times.  So it worked out. [LAUGHS]
Q:    Apparently it did, because you did four years with Dizzy Gillespie.
KB:  Right.
Q:    A few words about Dizzy, and evaluating the experience.
KB:  Well, I mean, what can you say?  I think Dizzy’s a national treasure.  I mean, as a musician, as a human being, and his sense of humor — I mean, that’s real; that’s not just on stage.  I mean, that’s real.  He’s just a great human being, a great musician.  And I learned a lot musically, just being around him, how to save yourself… You know, one thing you do when you’re young is, you play everything; you try to play everything you know.  But that’s one of the things, listening to Dizzy, that you learn; you don’t have to do that all the time.  Save yourself for those difficult moments when you really have to do that.  And you don’t have to play everything you know at every moment.
Q:    Dynamics.
KB:  Exactly.  I think that’s one of the biggest things I learned from him.
Q:    You made several records with Dizzy, but we’re going to go back to a recording by the great big band of the 1940’s, and listen to a version of “Manteca”.
KB:  Well, this is actually one of the first things I heard.  I can remember hearing this on the radio, this big-band version of “Manteca.”  And again, I was…whoo, I loved it.  And I’ve never really liked big bands that much, but there were a couple of things that really got me, and this was one of them.
[MUSIC: Dizzy Big Band “Manteca” (1948); Monk (solo) “Blue Monk,” “Ruby My Dear” (1971); Dizzy Big Band, “Round About Midnight” (1948)]
Q:    Dizzy Gillespie and Monk are two musicians Kenny has been associated with, although in very different ways.  The public associates you very much with Monk, I imagine, through your work with Sphere, and also from recording a lot of Monk’s tunes on your albums.  But you didn’t really get into Monk, you said, until rather late.
KB:  Yes, not until much later.  Towards the end of high school I really started listening a lot to Monk, and really began to appreciate his writing and his playing.  They are almost inseparable; they are so similar.  I mean, it’s very hard to imitate him, he’s such a strong stylist and so unique.
Q:    So what do you do?
KB:  Well, you play yourself playing Monk.  That’s the best you can do.  I mean, you can do it tongue-in-cheek…
Q:    I never got that impression from you, though, that you were ever doing Monk tongue-in-cheek.
KB:  Well, there are certain things you can allude to, you know, about his playing.  The humor in his playing, the use of dissonance, his touch, the percussive touch that he had.  So you can allude to those things just for flavor, but I don’t think that it would make sense to really imitate Monk.
Q:    Well, he really developed his own fingerings and his own personal language.
KB:  Yes, as you say, his technique was very personal.  I got to see him live only a few times, and just to watch him would amaze me, looking at his fingering, how he would execute. I mean, I’d think, “Is he actually going to pull this off?”  Of course, he always would.
Q:    Walking the tightrope.
KB:  Yeah, exactly.  It was just so unorthodox.  But I think his approach and the way he did things is part of the uniqueness of his music, what makes it all sound so special.
Q:    I guess “Round Midnight” was in Dizzy’s book when you were performing with him, because I know you recorded that with him on one of the Mercury albums.
KB:  Yes, it was.
Q:    [ETC.] Now we’ll take an interlude, and listen to some musical offerings by our host this evening, Kenny Barron, in quintet and trio format… [ETC.]  I wonder if you’d elaborate on your speculative title “What If?.”
KB:    Well, it’s like always looking ahead and trying to find problems, when there aren’t any.  “What if this  happens, and what if that happens?” rather than just go with what is happening.
[MUSIC: KB Quintet, “What If?”, KB Trio, “The Courtship”]
Q:    Now we’ll get back to influences, and we’ll hear something by McCoy Tyner, who had a major impact on you.
KB:  Yes, he has.  Well, on almost all players younger than him.  I met McCoy when he was still living in Philly, and his playing was quite different then.  After he joined Trane, it just really changed, and just grew and grew and grew, so that he became a major influence himself.  But his playing when he was still in Philly was a little more beboppish, a little more bebop influenced.
Q:    He’s not really that much older than you.  There’s about a five years difference.
KB:  Yeah, something like that, five or six years.
Q:    Which means a lot then, but…
KB:  Well, at that time, at that time, at that stage, yeah, it can mean a lot.
Q:    Who was he working with in Philly?
KB:  Well, he used to work with people like Odean Pope, and also he used to work with, like, Lee Morgan and people like that.  Whenever someone would come in from New York… I remember one time Kenny Dorham came in, Kenny Dorham and Jimmy Heath, and the rhythm section was McCoy and Lex Humphries, and I can’t remember who the bassist was…it might have been Jimmy Garrison, I’m not sure.  This was at a little small club that didn’t last too long in Philadelphia, so whenever someone came through Philly, McCoy would always be the pianist.
Q:    Those are some high standards on the Philadelphia scene that you had to come up under.
KB:  Oh, yes.  That’s right.
Q:    You couldn’t be messing around in Philadelphia.
KB:  No.  And there were some other good pianists there that no one ever heard of, who still live there.
Q:    Well, now they’ll hear of them.
KB:  There was a guy there named John Ellis, another pianist named Omar Duncan.  Hen Gates, who some musicians may know, is from Philadelphia.  Some others…the names escape me right now.  But there are a lot of good musicians.
[MUSIC: McCoy, “Inception” (1962)-DEFECTIVE]
Q:    Coming up will be music by Freddie Hubbard and Yusef Lateef, and in each instance we’ll hear one of Kenny Barron’s compositions.  You joined Freddie Hubbard immediately after leaving Diz, or…?
KB:  No, it wasn’t immediately after, but maybe a year after I left Dizzy.  Freddie lived in the same neighborhood… Actually, at the time he lived around the corner from me in Brooklyn, and I started working with him.  It was a great experience, because it was totally different from working with Dizzy.  Things were very, very structured with Dizzy, but with Freddie it was a lot looser, and I was able to take a lot more chances, to be a little more adventurous.  It’s all part of the growing experience.
Q:    Which was very much in keeping with the times as well.
KB:  Exactly.  Exactly, because it was during the Sixties.  I went through several different bands with Freddie.  One was a sextet, with James Spaulding and Bennie Maupin, the late Frederick Waits, and a bassist who is now back in California, Herbie Lewis.  That was a really good band.  It was the kind of band that could shift gears.  It could play inside, outside.  Then we had another band called The Jazz Communicators, which never recorded, which was with Joe Henderson, Freddie, Louis Hayes, Herbie Lewis and myself.
Q:    Never recorded.
KB:  Never recorded.  So I’ve been through several different situations working with Freddie, and they were all great.
Q:    I can’t recollect whether you’re playing electric piano or piano on the track, but you did quite a bit of work on the electric piano over about a 10 or 12 year period.
KB:  Yeah, during that time I did quite a bit on the electric piano.
Q:    Why were people concentrating so much on the electric piano then?  Was it because clubs didn’t have pianos?  For experimentation?
KB:  No, that was primarily for recording.  I think what you have there was the very, very beginning of the fusion thing.  So a lot of record companies, when you recorded, wanted you to use electric piano to add other colors.  Because the fusion thing could go in several different directions.  It could be used kind of for more avant-garde kind of music…
Q:    Color, texture…
KB:  Yeah, texture and things like that.
Q:    Freeing things up.
KB:  Yeah.  And also it could be used percussively for more R&B kinds of things.  So a lot of companies wanted the pianists to use the electric pianos during that time.  I think one year I won a New Star Award or something from Downbeat, and I never had an electric piano.  I won the award on the electric piano, I mean; and I never owned one.  But I was using it a lot on recordings.  Not at my request, but the company’s request.
[MUSIC: Freddie, “The Black Angel” (1968); Yusef, “A Flower” (1976?)]
Q:    Now, Yusef Lateef was the first musician with whom you went out on the road, in 1960 or so, and you did five years with Yusef in the 1970’s.  How much was the group working then?
KB:  He was teaching himself at the time.  So we worked primarily during the summer.  We would either go to Europe or out West, a California tour, work our way out to California and back.  So for about four or five years that’s all we did.   And again, it was mostly during the summer, because he was teaching.  And during that time, everyone in the band also decided to go back to school, so everyone else was in school as well, studying.
Q:    That whole experience was very positive.
KB:  Yeah, he had a very positive influence.  Like I said, he influenced everyone to go back to school.  Well, he’s an amazing person.  He just has a very positive effect.  I was in one of his classes, actually, a harmony class.  I remember one of the projects, everyone had to write a large piece of music, so I wrote a string quartet.  He said, “Well, it’s nice that you wrote all this music.  How can we get to hear it?”  So everyone in the class put money together, and we hired musicians, and actually gave a concert to perform these pieces of music that we had written for our term projects.  And it really came out great.  But that’s the kind of person he was, who inspired you to do things like that.
Q:    Coming up we’ll hear the last issued record by Kenny Barron’s late brother, Bill Barron.  There’s one that’s ready for issue in the near future.  Your brother was the head of the Jazz Department at Wesleyan University at that time.
KB:  Yes..
Q:    You recorded with him on just about every record under his leadership, I think.
KB:  I believe so.  Just about every one.
Q:    You’ve mentioned, of course, your brother’s influence.  Just a few words about your older brother, Bill Barron.
KB:  Well, he was an incredible musician.  I don’t want to use the word “underrated,” but there it is, you know.  In terms of the public, I think he was.  I think musicians knew and respected his work, you know, as often I’ve heard… Especially people that he came up with.  People like Jimmy always spoke very well of Bill.   And he was a really good person, and very dedicated.  He was very dedicated to music.  I think he spent most of his waking hours involved with music one way or another, writing music, talking about music.  He was also a very good composer.  He had some unique ideas about composition, very different ideas, and it came through when he wrote.  He was just a great player and a great person.
[MUSIC: B. Barron, “This One’s For Monk” (1990)]
Q:    A few words about the quintet working at the Village Vanguard this week.
KB:  Well, I could speak volumes about them.
Q;    Then we’ll do short stories.
KB:  On trumpet is Eddie Henderson, who I think is one of the finest trumpet players around today.  He’s obviously a very intelligent person; he’s a doctor…and a funny guy, too!
I guess what I love about everyone in the band is that when it’s time to work, they really hit very hard.
John Stubblefield is, you know, from Arkansas, so he’s got a certain kind of grittiness in his sound.  At the same time, he has that certain other kind of thing that maybe Wayne Shorter…
Q;    From that AACM background, there’s another…
KB:  Yeah, exactly.  And David’s background is West Indian, but he’s been here for a very long time, and he’s worked with almost everybody.  He’s a current mainstay with Cedar Walton’s European trio, the trio that he takes to Europe quite often, sometimes with the Timeless All-Stars.  He works a lot.  He’s dependable… I’m talking about in terms of music.  I can count on him to be there, and to be imaginative, good sound, good intonation, good time.
Now, I don’t know exactly what I can say about Victor Lewis.  I mean, Victor can function in practically in any kind of circumstance.  Whatever kind of music you want to play, he can do it for you, and do it well — and enjoy doing it.
Q:    And different every time.
KB:  Yeah, different every time.  One of the things about having this band, I don’t tell them what to play; I just let them bring whatever they have, their own thing to it, and it works out better that way for me.
Q:    [ETC., THEN MUSIC]
[MUSIC: Moody/KB, “Anthropology” (1972); KB Trio, “The Only One” (1990)]
[-30-]

For Slide Hampton’s 81st Birthday, a WKCR Interview From 1994

In recognition of the 81st birthday of Locksley Wellington “Slide” Hampton, the great trombonist-arranger, here’s the transcribed proceedings of a “Musician’s Show” that he did with me on June 22, 1994, in which he selected music that had influenced him, and discussed his life and times.

* * *

[MUSIC: Jazz Masters, “Tour De Force,” 1993]
SH:    …I think that first composition we played there, “Tour De Force,” was a great way to start the show.  It made me feel real good.

Q:    Me too.  The three trumpets, Faddis, Roy Hargrove and Claudio Roditi all conversing.

SH:    Yes!  It’s good to hear the guys playing like that.  And each of the guys have such a different style.  Right in  that piece alone, you’ll hear a lot of the influence of a lot of the music that we’re going to hear during the show, and where their influences are coming from.

Q:    We’ll be begin with music from several periods by the source of modern jazz, Louis Armstrong. and parenthetically, we’ll hear some of the seminal early trombone players playing at somewhat later in their careers, like Jack Teagarden and Trummy Young.  When did you first hear Pops?

SH:    Well, actually Pops had been a favorite of mine for many, many years.  I was born into a musical family, so we were listening to some music all along.  We were hearing everything that was available which was on the radio at the time.  And one of the most popular artists at that time was Louis Armstrong.  He’s had a big influence on me; and he’s had a big influence on all of the musicians actually.  I heard the group in person with Trummy Young and I heard the group also in person with Jack Teagarden.  I had the opportunity to play for a week in Atlantic City opposite Louis Armstrong’s sextet with Trummy Young, when I was playing with Lionel Hampton — and also Ella Fitzgerald was also on that same time.  So I spent a week there listening to Louis Armstrong.  The amazing thing was that every time he played it was wonderful.

Q:    Was it different every time?  Did he have a set solo, or was it a fresh improvisation every time?

SH:    Well, it always felt fresh.  What I noticed, though, is that he was very organized in his approach to the composition.  What he played always had a very, very strong relationship to what the composition was and the harmony of the composition and everything.  He was never just playing at random.  He was an improviser that really did try to interpret the composition that he was playing, and make his soul a part of that composition.  It was really wonderful.

Q:    It also seems to me when I listen to him, that the trumpet is an extension of his incredible voice.  He’s my favorite singer as well as my favorite trumpet player.  I see the two as intertwined somewhat.

SH:    I feel the same way.  And the thing that’s really wonderful, which I’ve remarked about Pops, is that he came along at a time when the musicians didn’t have a chance to do a lot of formal training, the black musicians in this country, because of the race situation and everything that existed then — and it still exists, in fact.  But he was just a natural player.  He could pick the trumpet up after maybe singing a song, or singing a couple of choruses, and start playing incredible stuff that you would think most people would have to do a little warming-up or something.  But in his solo, he’d just pick the trumpet up after singing a chorus of some song, and play some fantastic music.  I saw him do that kind of thing in movies and in person often, and it was tremendous to see that.

Q:    You share a background with musicians like Louis Jordan and Lester Young of being born into a family band that played carnivals, circuses, so forth and so on.  I read in one of the liner notes that you started blowing when you were three years old!

SH:    Well, actually, at 3 I had to take part in the family… Actually, it was the family profession by that time.  I was too small to play the trombone certainly; I couldn’t have gotten past third position or something.  But I danced.  I first danced and sang in the band.  Then I actually played trumpet a little while, and then I finally started to play the trombone at 12 years old.

That was a wonderful period, because in this country at that time the pop music was the music that all the musicians were actually creating, and the artistic music that was being created was Pop music at that time.  That’s what the audience was listening to.

Q:    The dance music of the period.

SH:    Yes.  And the people going to the dances… There was always a group of people that went to the dances, and they would stand right in front of the bandstand, and listen to the band, and then there was a group behind them that would do dancing.  It was a wonderful period in music in this country.

Q:    A few words about your family that organized this band.  What was your father’s musical background and your mother’s?

SH:    Well, my father was the one that organized the band.  He was a tenor saxophonist and he played drums.  My mother played harp and piano.

Q:    Where was he from?

SH:    Virginia.  They’re both from Virginia.  A wonderful man, my father — and my mother.  And to have twelve kids and keep them together the way they did, you had to be really something special.  He taught all of us.  He was a schoolteacher also.  He was an artist and a carpenter — he did everything.  But at that time you had to do everything to just maintain your existence.

But he put the band together, and everybody in the family had to participate in the musical part of the profession, in the band.  So made that a rule.

Q:    Would the band play all year, or only during the warm-weather months?  How was that organized?

SH:    We played whenever we could get a job, and usually that was all year.  We were playing different kinds of jobs.  There were fairs at that time, and circuses, and political things going on.  We played anything, any time they would ask.  They could call us at 3 o’clock in the morning and say there’s a job, and we’d go play it.

Q:    This was during the late 1930’s and up until about the end of World War Two, I guess.

SH:    Yeah, up to the Forties.  The band still existed even in the Fifties.  We came to New York, I guess, in the early Fifties.

Q:    Did it function as a territory band, or did you travel around the country?

SH:    We traveled all around the country, in the strangest transportation you could imagine, but we went everywhere.  We went to the South, and we played often concerts opposite Louis Jordan.  That’s one of the guys who really left a big impression on me.  I remember playing opposite that group.  We had about a 12-piece band then, and he had his five pieces; and man, they would swing you into bad health with five pieces.  We’d usually go up and play a set, and then he would go up and play a set, and we would play one and he would play one.  So it was a great experience for us.

But we came to play at the Apollo Theater at Carnegie Hall in the early Fifties with the band, had a big success here.  I tried to talk my brothers and sisters into staying in New York at the time, but they wanted to go back to Indianapolis, so we had to go back.

Q:    Did your father also take care of your education?  You said he was a schoolteacher.

SH:    Well, we actually went to school in Indianapolis.  We did have a private teacher for a while, too.

Q:    Is that where you were based, in Indianapolis?

SH:    We stayed in Indianapolis most of my childhood.  But for the rest of the kids, we were moving around to different places.  But after we did move to Indianapolis, we stayed there, and that’s where we went to school, and that’s where we actually developed most of our orchestra repertoire and everything like that.

Q:    What kind of repertoire would you be dealing with at the time?

SH:    Well, from a lot of the orchestras that we’re going to hear today.  We were playing music from Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, Fletcher Henderson, all of the guys.

Q:    Let’s get started, because this is too exciting!

SH:    Yeah, I’m ready!

Q:    We’ll hear Louis Armstrong doing “Chinatown” from 1931.  I guess if you were a young trumpet player, this must have just thrilled you.

SH:    Louis Armstrong inspired you whether you played the trumpet or not.  He inspired everybody.

[MUSIC:  Louis Armstrong, “Chinatown,” “Weather Bird,” w/Teagarden, “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue,” w/Trummy (only obbligatos), “I’m Crazy About My Baby”]

Q:    In this next set of music we’ll explore some of the pre-World War Two, pre-Bebop, so to speak, trombone players, such as Trummy Young and Jack Teagarden and Lawrence Brown and Vic Dickenson and so forth.  By the way, Slide, when did the trombone become your main instrument and vehicle of expression?

SH:    Well, as far as my family is concerned, it became my main instrument when I was born, because they didn’t have any trombone players.  They only waited for my arms to get long enough, and they said, “You’re going to play trombone.”  That’s how it happened.  They gave it to me on the left side, so I play it left-handed — although I’m right-handed.  But that’s how it happened.  Actually, they chose it for me.  If I can ever thank them for anything, I do thank them for choosing the trombone, because I love that instrument, and the more that I scuffle with it and try to learn how to play it, the more I love it.

Q:    How analytical were you about the trombone?  You said you would listen voluminously to records and the radio.  Would you try to copy solos?  How did you go about learning to play it?

SH:    Well, in the beginning we were very enthusiastic about  learning, and we were in a very great musical environment in Indianapolis.  There were a lot of young musicians that were coming up there.  Also at the time, a lot of bands were constantly coming to Indianapolis to play; every week there were four or five bands there.  So we were very inspired, the public was very into music, and we thought that if you just practiced hard enough, you’d learn how to play good.  We didn’t know that you really had to have a sort of process of practicing to develop.  So we practiced all day long.  Sometimes we’d practice so much that we couldn’t play anything, you know, because we’d just kill our chops by practicing.

But it was a wonderful environment anyway.  We did learn a lot about music in general.  And I was constantly listening to all of these musicians that we’re listening to today.  Whenever we could get records… We were very poor, so we didn’t have that many records available to us.  But whenever we could get records, we were always listening to Trummy Young and Vic Dickenson and Jack Teagarden and Tommy Dorsey and all of the guys at that time.  So we were very inspired by that.

A lot of people don’t know that the trombone was quite popular at that time.  In the Sixties and Seventies, you didn’t hear the trombone very much at all on recordings, but right from the Forties and the Fifties back, the trombone was a very popular instrument.  Some of the great bands were actually led by trombone players.

Q:    Let’s talk a little more about the trombone in this period.  I guess Don Redman was the first to use the three-trombone section, and then that became pretty much it in the big bands of the 1930’s.

SH:    Some bands, of course, didn’t use any trombone players, but there were usually two trombones (maybe); there were a lot of bands that had two trombones.  A few bands started to use three trombones a little later.  But the trombone was one of the solo instruments, so that’s the reason it was constantly heard much more than it was later.  It was a solo instrument, so whenever there were any recordings you would hear somebody like Trummy Young, Vic Dickenson, any of the guys that we mentioned.

Q:    I guess in the Tens and Twenties, there were a lot of marching bands… Well, the trombone has a fair amount of volume, which would have made it very good for days of pre-amplification.

SH:    You can’t have a marching band without trombone, so I guess I’ve always had a lot of regard for the marching bands.  I got a lot of my training in marching bands, too, and I think all musicians did actually at that time.  What happened out of those marching band ensembles… Most of the jazz bands in the Twenties were small groups, any amount of musicians they could get together.  The tradition of an organized group was usually six people.  But the marching bands were the thing I guess that inspired some of the composers to start to write music for larger ensembles, then you started to get some of the big bands come into existence.  The marching band probably had an influence on all of that.

Q:    Slide Hampton is also an arranger, so we’re going to hear a number of these trombonists in different situations, beginning with Trummy Young in the Lunceford band, and one of his great features, “Margie,” recorded in 1938.  A few words about the Lunceford band and Trummy Young.

SH:    Well, Jimmie Lunceford, of course, was one of the really great bands.  Jimmy Heath is always calling me and telling me, “I’ve got something by Jimmie Lunceford I want you to hear.”  He’s very much into Lunceford.  Lunceford was really one of the great bands.  I guess the reason that he maybe finally didn’t have the popularity that Duke had is because Duke himself was such a strong guy.  But a lot of people feel as though Lunceford was one of the main bands of the whole big band period.

Q:    Lunceford’s main arranger, of course, was Sy Oliver, who was responsible for what became the established sound of the band.

SH:    Yes, he did.  Sy Oliver was very important in that band.  Also, after he left Lunceford’s band, he went to help develop the repertoire of a lot of other bands.  A lot of people, when they hear the music that he did later, don’t relate it to the Jimmie Lunceford repertoire.

Q:    Well, let’s hear “Margie,” featuring the virtuosic trombonist Trummy Young.

[MUSIC: Lunceford/T. Young, “Margie (1938),” Dorsey/Teagarden, “The Blues (1939),” Vic Dickenson, “Keepin’ Out Of Mischief Now,” “Battle Axe” (1941)]

SH:    Ted, as I was listening to this music, as I remember, in a lot of the arrangements that I hear in some of the big bands, I hear some of the riffs and things from the small groups of the time, so that the small groups actually had a big influence on the whole concept of orchestration and arranging.  Actually, I guess a lot of the guys that were doing the writing were guys that had been in some of the small groups, and they were bringing some of that music right into the big band concept.

Q:    Talk a little bit about your ideas about the relationship of dance music in the 1930’s to the emergent new music of musicians who were to be the founders of Bebop, including Dizzy Gillespie.

SH:    Well, I saw a show on television a while ago about how important dance was in all the different societies.  And at one time in this society, dance was also very important.  So most of the music that was written was usually written with people dancing in mind.  When I went to hear Dizzy Gillespie’s band for the first time, at the Sunset Terrace in Indianapolis, people had said that it wouldn’t be a very danceable music, but I must say that they danced more to Dizzy’s music than they did to a lot of the bands that we know as being the really great dance bands, like Lionel Hampton and the guys.  Dizzy had the people dancing.  They were hanging off the rafters, really having a great time dancing.

Really great music, I think, unless it’s something that’s really specially written only for listening, will be music that will make you want to dance.  Dancing is a very important part of the development of any society, and the more that we’ve gotten away from it, I think it’s had a big effect on society.  I think that we have to employ more music in what we do that makes the people want to dance again.

Q:    In the next set of music, we’ll hear a few selections featuring Lawrence Brown with the Ellington band, which was a band that could function equally well as a listening band, a dance band — any type of band.

SH:    I danced especially to this composition that we’re about to play now.  I danced to this many times myself.  Actually, Duke’s band could play the same composition either for concert or they could play it for dancing.  They had such a variety…such a great ability to be able to do everything with their music.  The great thing about Duke, too, that I tell a lot of young guys, is that Duke continued to play a lot of the same songs he’d played twenty or thirty years before.  It shows you how long it takes to really get the most out of a song.

Q:    Well, he was always tinkering with his compositions, finding new ways to orchestrate and so forth.

SH:    Well, he probably didn’t actually premeditate to do it.  As he was going along, he heard different things on the composition, so he kept writing them over, not really trying to accomplish any great level of quality or anything, but just that he’d hear “Solitude” or something this year one way, next year he’d hear some other things on “Solitude,” so he kept writing it.  I think it’s very important to realize that in order to really get to know a composition, you have to play it a long time.  You might know the melody and you remember it.  But to really know it, you have to play it a long time.

[ETC., MUSIC: “I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So” (1945), “Slippery Horn” (1932), Woody Herman w/Bill Harris/Earl Swope, “Lollypop” (1949)]

Q:    Did you get to hear the Ellington band in Indianapolis a fair amount?

SH:    Yes.  In fact, all the bands came there.  I got to hear Count Basie’s band there.  In fact, I heard Billy Eckstine’s band there when Art Blakey was playing with him.

Q:    Was Charlie Parker in the band at that time?

SH:    No, he wasn’t in that band at the time, but…

Q:    This was after he left.

SH:    After he had left.  I think Dexter Gordon and some of the guys were still in the band, and I was lucky that I… I don’t know how I got in.  I guess we didn’t have an age limit on the dance-halls, because there wasn’t any alcohol being sold there.  People were just going there to dance.

Q:    What were the names of the main dancehalls in Indianapolis?

SH:    Let’s see… We had one that I remember all the big bands used to come to.  I think it was a dance hall in a place called the Claypool Hotel.  There was a dance hall in there.  It was a big place.  Several hundred people could get in there.  And all the bands, from time to time, would play there.  There was one theater that the bands used to come to, too, downtown.  I can’t remember the name of it right now, but I saw Stan Kenton’s band there with Charlie Parker, in fact — Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.  I guess that was the one time I heard Charlie Parker in person, was there, with that band.

Q:    A few other words about the musical community in Indianapolis in the mid- to late-1940’s.

SH:    Well, I was raised there with Wes Montgomery and J.J. Johnson and Freddie Hubbard and David Baker.  It was a real great musical environment there.  We all were very enthusiastic about learning.  I guess sometimes we were a little more in love with music than we were with really trying to face the reality of what it takes to really be a good musician.

Q:    How so?

SH:    Well, a lot of times you think that if you love it enough, that’s going to actually help you to develop the musicianship that you’ll need to take part in the professional musical world.  But that’s not really the case. It takes a lot of experience and a lot of understanding, a lot of help from a lot of people — which we did get from guys in the different big bands.  They were very helpful to the young musicians.  If they felt that you were really serious, they would give you all the help they could from their experience.

One great thing at that time I remember is that the musicians were very sincere and very critical of each other.  If there was something that was weak about what you were trying to do with a musician, they would tell you about it.  It wasn’t always patting you on the back and saying, “Great.”  I mean, they were telling you when there was something that you were doing that was not good also.  And I think that that was very healthy.

Q:    Of course, your family band was primary in your musical background.  But what were some local clubs and some of the strong local musicians who you learned from?

SH:    Well, there was a place called the Sunset Ballroom.  All of the big bands came there.  The Ferguson Brothers, who owned this ballroom were booking agents, and all the bands that were travelling throughout the South would usually come in first to Indianapolis to get their contracts and things, and then they would go and travel through the rest of the country.  Whenever you came there to get your contract, you usually had to play that ballroom.  Now, we were too young to go inside, so we would go to the back door and listen to the different bands.  But after we were old enough, we played there with the family band, too.

Then there were clubs on a street called Indiana Avenue.  There were clubs all up and down the street, and bands were playing there every night.  There was music every night, and it was just wonderful.

Q:    Talk about what the music sounded like.  Were they small combos?  Larger ensembles?  What sort of music were they playing?

SH:    Well, at that time the radio was a really great outlet for music.  You were hearing Count Basie and Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford and Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.   You were hearing that music over the radio all the time.  And in the clubs… You know, often you’d have a big band playing in a very small club,  The people were just so glad to be there, they didn’t even care whether it was crowded or too much smoke.  They were so glad to be there that they just went under any kind of circumstances.  There were more big bands at that time than there were small groups.

Q:    And we’re talking now about the years during World War Two?

SH:    Yes, and before the World War, during that time.  I guess you’d find that the main small groups were usually local musicians playing, and they were playing in some of the very small clubs.  And there were some talented musicians there in Indianapolis, too, people that never became popular at all.

Q:    Mention a few of them.

SH:    Well, one man, I remember his name was Earl Grandy.  He’s a pianist that was just an incredible musician.  Earl Grandy was a guy that had perfect pitch.  You could go to the piano and play a string of notes, and he could tell you what they all were.  If you’d go put your arm dow on the piano on a whole couple of octaves of notes, he could tell you, “Well, you heard this note down there, and that note,” and he could… He was a tremendous man, and he helped a lot of us that were just starting to become musicians.  He  helped a lot of us.  I remember he’d tell us from time to time, you know, “You’ve got to go home and practice; you’re far away from the mark.”  He was very critical.  But he was a real good musician, and certainly was a man that I’ll always have a great esteem for.

Q:    Any others who made a mark on you?

SH:    Oh, yes.  In town at that time there were guys who were coming, and they lived there, but they were going out with professional bands.  I remember Earl Walker was a great drummer that was there who played with Lionel Hampton, and of course, Wes and his brothers were there.

The great thing about Wes Montgomery and his brothers is that they were very, very devout musicians and very sincere.  They were practicing every day for hours.  That’s all they did.  When they weren’t playing out somewhere, they were at home practicing.  You could go there and find a group of them, all of them together practicing.   They would practice one composition for weeks before they would play it in public.  It was incredible, the dedication that they had and the kind of standards that they had set for themselves, how they wanted to have their music to sound before they would perform it in public.  I learned a lot from Wes and Buddy and Monk Montgomery and those guys.

Q:    In this next set we’ll hear a track by a trombonist who had a great impact on J.J. Johnson, who was a few years your elder and out of Minneapolis.  I guess he heard Fred Beckett after first going out on the road with the Snookum Russell Band, and had taken the first steps to becoming a professional musician.

SH:    Well, you always wonder about a guy like J.J. and we’re still wondering about him.  All the trombone players constantly, when J.J.’s around, we’re looking at him, trying to see, “What is it about this guy that’s so different?”  I’ve certainly asked him the question, and I imagine many other people have, too: “What was your influence?  What gave you the idea to take music in the direction that you did?”  And I very clearly remember him saying that Fred Beckett was one of the people that really influenced him.

At that time I had not heard much of Fred Beckett.  Of course, I had heard so many great trombone players.  You see, J.J., like Charlie Parker, came out of a period of music when there were a lot of great trombone players.  So if you were going to come up with something new, you had to really be doing something special, because there were already a lot of guys that were playing the trombone incredibly well.  When Charlie Parker came along, for instance, he came out of that period when the alto saxophone was really something special.  And those guys were all great players before Charlie Parker.  They were great readers, they played great in the ensemble, they were great soloists, their intonation was good.   So that had a big influence on the level of quality that you finally heard from guys like Charlie Parker and J.J. at that period; it was just fantastic.

Q:    The implication, then, is that really what Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and J.J. Johnson were coming up with wasn’t particularly any radical break, but more or less a natural evolution of things that were happening organically within the big bands and the dance music of the time.

SH:    If you go back and listen to some of the guys, like  Roy Eldridge and Lawrence Brown and those guys, you can definitely hear the link that J.J. came from, for instance, and where Dizzy came from.  If you go back and listen to Lester Young and Willie Smith and some of those alto saxophonists, you’ll hear where Charlie Parker came from, and how they were inspired to finally develop something that was even more sophisticated.  Because they were coming from a very sophisticated period of music.  When they started playing, music had already arrived at a very high level of  sophistication, because of Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson and all of the bands that were in existence at that time.

Q:    The great arrangers of the time.

SH:    Yes.  Those arrangers actually inspired a lot of the soloists with their concepts of harmony that they wrote in the music, that caused guys that wanted to be soloists to hear things that they might not have heard otherwise.

But then, you had Art Tatum and guys like that, that were those once-in-a-lifetime people that came along, who inspired everybody.  Art Tatum just had this natural thing for music.  I don’t think he even thought about what what one chord had to do with another as far as resolution was concerned.  He just resolved everything naturally.  It was the same way when you were listening to Louis Armstrong.  It’s incredible when you listen to that and you hear that he played with a rhythm section that sounded like it was recorded in the Twenties or playing in the Twenties or something, and then he comes out sounding like he’s years ahead of that, almost like he didn’t record at the same time that they did.  That was natural for him.  That was natural for Art Tatum.  If you go back and listen to Louis, you’ll hear a lot of things that Dizzy and Miles all the guys did that was coming out of that same concept.  Very close.

Q:    Fred Beckett didn’t record that much, which is why I think his being such a source for J.J. has perplexed people. I’m sure he heard him live, and was able to hear him stretch out.  Fred Beckett’s recordings are with the Harlan Leonard group.  Undoubtedly Charlie Parker would have heard him, too, because he played briefly with Harlan Leonard shortly before coming to New York.  Tadd Dameron did arrangements for the Harlan Leonard group as well, so there’s also that connection.  The piece we’ll hear is “A La Bridges,” a Tadd Dameron composition and arrangement from 1940, and it features, amongst other things, a trombone solo by Fred Beckett, as we continue on the Musician Show with Slide Hampton.

[MUSIC: Harlan Leonard/F. Beckett, “A La Bridges” (1940);  J.J. Johnson, “A Night In Tunisia (1955),” “When The Saints Go Marching In (19610”; F. Rosolino with Stan Kenton, “Frankly Speaking (1952)”]

Q:    What did you think of Fred Beckett’s solo?

SH:    He played beautiful.  He really played beautiful.  I can understand why, especially at that time when J.J. was listening to him, he must have been a great influence and really very impressive.  When you think about the fact that at that time the recording technique and everything was much different than it is now, and the instruments that they were playing were much different than the instruments are now, and those guys played wonderful on those instruments… It’s hard to understand, except that it’s a very natural thing that brought about the possibility of them being able to play like that, at that period of time.  You should have heard more of the flaws and more of the difficulty of playing, but they made it sound easy!

That’s one thing that was really wonderful about J.J. and about Louis Armstrong.  It sounds very easy when they do it, and it’s very consistent.  You don’t find after they’ve played, for instance, eight measures or a chorus or something, that they start to lose the control of their embouchure.  Their embouchure stays intact, even with all of this great improvisation that’s gone on and everything.  And that’s really something that’s very difficult to do, even for good musicians, to keep that consistent control over the sound of what they’re doing when they’re improvising.  Because of course, there’s a lot of energy that goes into improvising alone.  But to be able to keep the technical aspect of it together and all of that is just… Louis Armstrong was just fabulous for that.  I guess I can never understand that.

Q:    Well, I don’t think there’s any better person than Slide Hampton to give us an encapsulation of what is it about J.J. Johnson that is so great.

SH:    Well, I was playing with Maynard Ferguson in the early Sixties, and we played a concert opposite J.J. for two weeks — and it was impossible to understand that a human being could play that well.  It was every night, from the time that he would warm up.  It was perfect!  Just everything that you would imagine that a person should only do only once in a while, he played that way for the whole two weeks.  For the trombone players, of course, in the band, it was very intimidating.

Then I was at one of his recording dates, I remember.  This is the time when J.J. was playing that King 3B.  He sounded so wonderful that they couldn’t get that sound on the record.  It sounded marvelous on the record, but it didn’t sound as wonderful as it sounded in the studio.  It was like the microphone would only accept so much of the sound, and the rest of it wasn’t there.

Q:    Well, I think that’s another quality of his, that apart from all the technical virtuosity, he has a huge, warm, encompassing, enveloping sound.

SH:    It’s incredible, you know, when you think that he’s playing a normal size instrument, a 3B, which is an instrument around the size that a lot of guys play on.  But  he would get this huge sound, like he was playing on something that had a big bore almost like a Bach-36 or something like that.  And he kept that sound.  Even when he was moving all over the horn, he was keeping this sound, and at the same time improvising incredible things.

Q:    This is the Musician’s Show with Slide Hampton, and I guess now is a good time to mention that Slide Hampton and The Jazz-Masters primarily has been performing Slide Hampton’s arrangements of Dizzy Gillespie’s music. Is the repertoire of the band expanding?

SH:    We’re developing our next repertoire, which is going to be on the music of Charlie Parker.  The next album that we do will feature arrangements from all of the musicians in the band who are arrangers and orchestrators.

Q:    In some ways I think arranging Charlie Parker’s tunes would almost present more of a challenge than Dizzy Gillespie’s compositions, which had that sort of arranger concept within them and many of which were written with his big band in mind.  Most of Bird’s tunes were, if it all, only parenthetically done for big bands, and were performed in small combo situations.

SH:    Well, that’s true.  See, the thing about Dizzy’s compositions is that you heard them performed by large ensembles, and you heard Dizzy with large ensembles.  All of his compositions at one time or another have been played by some large ensemble.  So that gave you a lot of ideas, or at least a place to start with them.  Charlie Parker’s compositions, his really great compositions were usually never orchestrated in any way.  But I have always, even listening to them, remarked, man, there’s so much stuff there that you could do if you start to develop this thing and make an orchestration out of it or to arrange it.  I’ve found that it’s really, really a lot of fun writing his music.

Q:    Well, we’ve spoken about your development as a trombone player and we’ve spoken a little bit about the arrangers of the big bands, but we haven’t really discussed your career or avocation as an arranger and composer of music.  And I’d like to talk about your first exposure to Bebop.  I’d imagine, coming up when you did, you were an avid listener to all the records as they came out.

SH:    Well, yes.  Actually, the thing that happened to me and all of the musicians that I was raised with that actually directed us into the area of orchestration and arranging was that we felt this was all a part of being a musician.  In order to be a well-rounded, a complete musician, you had to learn about arranging and orchestration and composition.  So it wasn’t really something that we felt was separate from playing.  We felt that you couldn’t really be the best player unless you knew about these things.  If you wanted to play with other people playing ensembles, if you wanted to conduct orchestras, you had to learn to orchestrate and to arrange so you knew what you were dealing with when you were doing either one of those things by taking part in an ensemble or being a conductor, or even playing in front of an ensemble.

So we all were learning about orchestration, because we were hearing music all the time, man.  In our sleep we were hearing music.  We went to sleep listening to music, we woke up listening to it, we played and we rehearsed and practiced all day, and we listened to music all the time.  So arranging was a very natural thing.  When I asked Dizzy Gillespie, “Who inspired you to become an arranger?” he said, “Well, I was playing in bands that would have guys like Tadd Dameron and Gerald Wilson and those people, and I was listening to their arrangements.  I was hearing eight brass play this harmony all night.”  He said, “When I went to sleep at night, I was hearing harmony from these guys.”  So actually it just became a very natural thing for him to start to take part in that himself.

Of course, most people might not know it.  Dizzy was just a natural harmonic genius.  I mean, harmonizing things and voice leading and stuff is very natural for him.  He showed all of us a lot about that stuff when he was alive.  One of the great things that we remember about Dizzy beside the incredible music that he played on the trumpet is that he was a great teacher — and a very humble person about it; he never took himself very serious.  But man, the stuff that he could do as far as composition and harmonizing and arranging was concerned was just fabulous.  It was so natural.  It was like he didn’t learn it anywhere, just it was a part of his character that he could do it.

Q:    Not to mention the incredible rhythmic understanding that he evinced.  It really changed the whole rhythmic cadence and velocity of big-band music, and small-group as well.

SH:    Well, he was hip enough to go to the Latin musicians and learn from them about rhythm.  And you know what?  You just can’t imagine how natural it is for them… The complicated rhythm that some of us would never use, for them is just us like playing a common time, a 4/4.  It’s just natural for them to be able to deal with very complicated rhythms.  So Dizzy went to those guys, Mario Bauza, Chano Pozo and a lot of guys like that, and he learned a lot from them.  A lot of people don’t know that one thing that was just fabulous about the Latin musicians, when they came into New York, is that they gave a lot of work to all of the musicians.  Everybody worked with them.  They were not prejudiced against anybody working with them.  With their strong traditional background, you would imagine that they’d always want guys that understood that background better.  But they let everybody work with them.  Dizzy worked with them, Charlie Parker worked with them, all kind of guys.  So we all had a great advantage with them.  Dizzy really took advantage of it, and learned from them.

Q:    Let’s hear a few examples of the artistry of Dizzy Gillespie, including one of his very earliest big band compositions, recorded for Guild in 1946, “Ray’s Idea.”

SH:    I really love this arrangement, which I think is by Gil Fuller.  I don’t know whether it was inspired by whoever wrote the composition, but it’s a wonderful arrangement.  When I first heard “Ray’s Idea,” I heard this trombone solo on it, and I’m thinking, “Now, this guy, we’re going to hear more from him.”  We never heard one more note from this guy that plays the trombone solo on it.  So when I was spending some time with Kenny Clarke in Europe (he was living in Paris at the same time I did), I asked Kenny, “Who was this guy that played this great solo?” — see, because the solo was just fabulous.  Kenny said, “I know it was, because I wrote the solo for the guy to play!”

Q:    It was either Alton Moore, Taswell Baird or Gordon Thomas.  [ETC. WITH PERSONNEL]

[MUSIC: Gillespie BB “Ray’s Idea” (1946); Slide, World of Trombones “Con Alma” (1980), Bird/Diz, “Hot House” (1945)]

Q:    Slide Hampton mentioned while “Hot House” was playing, when you heard that, it absolutely floored you.  You couldn’t believe how people could make music sound like that.

SH:    Yeah, I had been listening to all of the bands before that.  I had been listening to Duke and to Count and Stan Kenton and a lot of the guys.  But man, when I heard that music, I couldn’t understand what kind of intervals they were using to make music sound like that.  So it kind of got past me at the time.

The thing that I found so incredible as I was listening to it now is that usually, when you start to deal with theory on a very sophisticated level, it has a great effect on the amount of creative input that you’re going to have into compositions.  Often theory will not allow you to really be that spontaneous when you’re going to improvise, or even when you’re going to develop or compose melodies.

But the thing that I found was very wonderful about the music we were listening to is that it related a lot to the level of spontaneity that Louis Armstrong had in his music when Dizzy and them were playing.  They were playing, sounding very at home in the music, like they were very comfortable with improvising and being able to relate their solos to the compositions.  You often find that when you hear really sometimes good compositions, but when the improviser plays, you don’t necessarily hear how the solo relates to the composition.  But you can hear these solos, and what you’re hearing is almost a part of the melody. They felt so natural with it, it was so relaxed and so just swinging along in a very natural kind of feeling.  I think that was one of the great things about that session.

Q:    Sid Catlett’s presence I don’t think hurt much.

SH:    That helped.  That helped! [LAUGHS]

[ETC.]

Q:    You mentioned that you’d listened to Ellington and Basie at the time of Bebop.  You can hear some of the harmonic implications in…well, particularly in one of the pieces we’re about to hear performed by the Ellington band in 1942, “Johnny Come Lately.”  I’d like you to say a few words about Billy Strayhorn’s contribution.  Everybody knows about his great lyric gifts and poetic sensibility.  But he was really involved in very advanced harmonic structures and putting them into the flow of the big band context.

SH:    Well, Ellington, of course, but Billy Strayhorn is one of the unsung heroes, also like Thad Jones.  And it’s a pity… Now, there was a time when those guys actually would have been held in much higher esteem in this country.

Billy Strayhorn is a guy that had a tremendous natural ability to compose and orchestrate.  He wrote some compositions that people have played from the time that they were written until now; also some of the great orchestrations that you heard in Duke’s band were actually done by Strayhorn.  He was very influenced by Duke, because Duke was such an imaginative guy.  But Strayhorn was a guy that actually could put that stuff down on paper exactly the way Duke heard it, in a very sophisticated, thorough, complete, organized way, you see.

When I think of Strayhorn, I also think of another man who is very much in that same kind of category or level of music, who is Thad Jones.  He’s another guy that had this great natural ability to orchestrate.  If you go look at the scores, you don’t see no theory in there that you ever studied before.  You don’t understand anything you see there.  All you understand is that when you hear it, it sounds great.

Q:    I’ve been told by people in the band that he was self-taught, and he would write out each part separately, and then sort of layer them together.

SH:    Unbelievable.  It’s true.  And I’ll tell you, to do that is just not thinkable.  Because usually, when you’re writing for an ensemble, you’re looking at each chord and making sure you’ve got notes there that are going to be harmonious, whether it’s dissonant or not.  Thad would write a part out for maybe a chorus, and then come back and write another part out, and write the whole thing down like that, and then put it together, and you’d hear all this organization of all of the harmony and everything.  It’s just uncanny when you think about it.  But see, for him it was natural.  That’s how you do that.  You don’t do that by studying, you know.  You don’t learn that in school.  It was natural for Thad to look at the voicings, and be able to orchestrate them and see which way they should move.

So Thad Jones could do that.  Billy Strayhorn was that kind of guy.  Tadd Dameron was like that.  There were several guys.  Duke was like that.  If you go back and look at Duke’s music, you would never think, if you were going to make an orchestration, to actually put these instruments together to make an ensemble that he would use.  Duke wrote music that used the very instruments that nobody else would use to make an ensemble or a family of instruments.

Thad Jones had a lot of that.  I go down often and hear the music that he wrote maybe thirty years ago, and I’m telling you that that music written thirty years ago is frightening, to hear something that’s that modern and that sophisticated, and you hear it today and it sounds like something somebody that really writes incredibly great might have written today!

Q:    Well, let’s hear a set of music.  I think we’d better dig up something by Thad!

SH:    [LAUGHS]

Q:    “Johnny Come Lately” was recorded in 1942 by the Ellington band.  Of course, this features trombone solos (given the theme of the show) by Lawrence Brown and Tricky Sam Nanton after Billy Strayhorn takes the first chorus.

[MUSIC: Ellington, “Johnny Come Lately” (1942); Curtis Fuller, “It’s All Right With Me” (1959); Coltrane, “Countdown” (1960); Thad Jones, “Tiptoe” (1970)]

Q:    …there’s nothing in the music like those Thad Jones charts.

SH:    Well, you know, it’s funny, because I know the guys have other arrangers that are writing for them now, and they have good arrangers that are writing for them.  But man, you can really see the difference when they get back and play some of Thad’s music.  And the sound of the band when they play Thad’s music is so different.  He’s got this thing that you would think, well, this guy must have studied orchestration in every way that you could.  But it was just natural for him, man.  When you listen to one of these arrangements, let me tell you, the amount of work that would have to go into doing something like that under ordinary circumstances would be incredible.  And he was writing these things fast!

Q:    Of course, I guess in a band like the Basie band, it would be like how you described Dizzy Gillespie, hearing harmony when you go to sleep every night…,

SH:    Yes.

Q:    …and having been immersed in the musical culture of Detroit before that.

SH:    That was a good environment to grow in, the Basie Band.  I loved that band, man!  I’ve gone to hear them when the magic that they weave is just unbelievable.  And so Thad certainly did get a big influence from that, and he took that and actually interpreted the music in his way, with that influence from Basie and all of the other bands that he had been in.  It’s just tremendous.  The accomplishment and the outcome of what he’s done is really tremendous.

Q:    [ETC.] We’ll move now to an album that  Slide Hampton recorded in 1985 for the Criss-Cross label entitled Roots, with Clifford Jordan on tenor saxophone, and the stellar rhythm section of Cedar Walton, David Williams and Billy Higgins.

SH:    I remember this album very, very well, because the day we recorded it, Cedar Walton and his rhythm section had just come from someplace far away, and they got there just in time to come right in to the recording date.  What I was thinking, I said, “Well, man, these guys are going to be tired, so you’re going to hear that.”  But Cedar, when he gets in the recording studio in front of a microphone, it seems to transform into something unbelievable, and he just plays incredible.  From the first note, you think some of the songs are maybe new to him, the whole situation is new.  But he comes in, man, and just plays one solo after another.  Any of the solos that he played on the date that are not on this album were just as good as these that you heard on here.  He played marvelous on everything.  And the guy should have been tired; they all should have been.  But then you had Billy Higgins there, and Billy is always giving a lot of happy energy to everything, and David has such a beautiful attitude, too.  And working with Clifford… It was a beautiful experience.

[MUSIC:  Slide/Cliff Jordan, “Roots,” (1985); Dexter Gordon, arr. is Slide, “Laura” (1977)]

Q:    What’s most impressive about “Laura” is that it shows Slide Hampton’s gift for making mid-sized ensembles sound as rich as a big band, as he amply demonstrated at the beginning of the 1960’s on a series of currently out-of-print octet recordings.  “Laura” sounds as though it were played by a 12-13-14-piece band, just as the Jazz Masters, at 10 or 11 pieces, gives the illusion of having an extra horn in each section.  So great writing by Slide Hampton, great playing by Dexter Gordon.

SH:    Well, thank you very much.  It was a beautiful experience working with Dexter.  Of course, I asked you to play that last composition because my mother’s name was Laura, and I was very happy to write that arrangement on the album for that reason.  It was just a beautiful album, and  working with Dexter was wonderful.

Q:    Well, we wouldn’t ask Slide to give away his arranging secrets, and even if we had the inclination to, we wouldn’t have time.

[ETC.]

We’ll conclude with one of the classics of the big band repertoire of the 1950’s, Frank Foster’s “Shiny Stockings” done by the Basie band.  You said before that you could listen to that band all day.

SH:    I have to tell you that first of all, the Basie band, all the way back from the beginning, is just one of the bands that brought me probably more wonderful moments in music than anything that I can think of.  Now that Frank Foster is the leader of the band, he is just one of the greatest musicians and people that I’ve ever known.  And “Shiny Stockings” has always been one of my favorite compositions.  I think that Frank probably doesn’t like to play it any more, but you can play it every day for me, and I love it.

[MUSIC: Basie, “Shiny Stockings” (1956)]

On Hugh Masekela’s Birthday, An Uncut Blindfold Test from 2009

In celebration of the 74th birthday of South African trumpeter, flugelhorn, and cornet master (and singer) Hugh Masekela, I’m offering the uncut transcript of a DownBeat Blindfold Test I had the privilege of conducting with him in 2009.

* * * *

1. Max Roach-Booker Little, “Tears for Johannesburg” (from WE INSIST: FREEDOM NOW SUITE, Candid, 1960) (Roach, drums, composer; Booker Little, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Walter Benton, tenor saxophone; Abbey Lincoln, voice; James Schenk, bass)

I really liked that. I have no idea who it could be. But it reminds me a lot of the kind of things that Max Roach was doing in the late ‘60s, and it sounded… He had a group with Booker Little. But he did some things where he got guys like Chief Bey to come and play. I think it was Max’s era, when he was really into African activism. Yeah. But I loved it, man. I don’t know who it is. It could have been Charles Tolliver on trumpet, or Booker Little, or Cecil Bridgewater. But I’m not good at guessing. 5 stars. I really loved it. [AFTER] I went to school with Booker Little, you know, at Manhattan School of Music. I was very close to Max and Abbey. I’m very happy that I guess it right. The last time I did this test was with Leonard Feather in 1967, and I got everything wrong. This is the first time I passed anything in this test!

2. Mongezi Feza, “Diamond Express” (from Dudu Pukwana, DIAMOND EXPRESS, Arista, 1975) (Mongezi Feza, trumpet; Dudu Pukwana, alto saxophone; Frank Roberts, keyboards;  Lucky Ranko, guitar; Ernest Othole, electric bass; Louis Moholo, drums)

I’m going to guess here. I don’t know when it would have been, but it sounds very much like Dudu Pukwana on saxophone, and it could be either when they were with Chris McGregor and then when they were the Blue Notes, or maybe later on the Brotherhood of Breath. The guitar player sounded like Lucky Ranko, and it sounded like those guys when they were in London. I don’t know whether Johnny Dyani was on bass, and Mongezi Feza on trumpet probably. But that definitely was Dudu Pukwana. I was a great friend of Dudu’s, and we did a great album together that’s still a collector’s item called Home Is Where the Music Is. I loved Dudu. He was one of the most beautiful players. I was really heartbroken when he went away. But that’s a wonderful South African groove. I wish that the South African musicians could be listening to stuff like this. It definitely starts to bring back… But it’s beautiful. 5 stars. [AFTER] They came over to England… This was the second group after we formed the Jazz Epistles with Abdullah Ibrahim (who was Dollar Brand then), and Johnny Gertze (bass), and Makhaya Ntshoko on drums, and Jonas Gwangwa on trombone, and Kippie Moeketsi on saxophone. We were a group called the Jazz Epistles, and we did the first long-playing record by an African group in South Africa in 1959. It’s still a collector’s item. Then I left, and Jonas went to… Well, we broke up because after the Sharpeville massacre, gatherings of more than ten people were not allowed, and we were just about to go… We had just broken out, we were about to go on a national tour of South Africa, and we would have been the first instrumental group to be able to do that, and we had to break up. But then a year or two later, the Blue Notes, formed by Chris McGregor and Dudu Pukwana, came out of South Africa, and they came out to, like, Switzerland, and they did extremely well. They really took Europe by storm. Louis Moholo was on drums, and he’s the only one alive of them. All of them died. Dudu died. Mongezi Feza, the trumpet player, died. Johnny Dyani on bass died. Chris McGregor also passed away. Whenever I see Louis Moholo, he goes, “One man standing!” [LAUGHS] But I loved those guys. They were fantastic musicians. I’m crazy about that album. I’m going to get that album for myself, if I can find it.

3. Wynton Marsalis, “Place Congo” (from CONGO SQUARE, JALC, 2008) (Marsalis, composer; Soloists: Andre Haywood, trombone; James Zollar, trumpet; Sherman Irby, alto saxophone; Yacub Addy, master drum)

Wow, that’s beautiful. I really enjoyed that. You have to make me a copy of all these records! That sounded like something from the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. Max Roach started this whole interest in African music, and at the same time, it sounded very much like something…if Duke Ellington wanted to write an African suite, he would have done an arrangement like that. So I suspected at one time that it was him. But I really have no idea who it was. I keep hearing people like Chief Bey playing in the drum section. But it was really a beautiful African kind of suite, a la Duke Ellington. I don’t know if somebody was trying to imitate him. Five stars. It’s really beautiful. I really don’t know who it was. I thought I heard Eric Dolphy or somebody somewhere there. [AFTER] Wynton Marsalis! Really. He didn’t play a solo.  I think that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard that he’s done. It’s a great collaboration. It’s definitely Duke Ellington-esque. Something that, like I said, Duke would have done—the voicings, the solos, and some of the contemporary stuff. It’s very beautiful.  Five stars.

4. Jerry Gonzalez, “To Wisdom The Prize” (from MOLIENDO CAFÉ, Sunnyside, 1991) (Jerry Gonzalez, flugelhorn, congas; Carter Jefferson, tenor saxophone; Joe Ford, alto saxophone; Larry Willis, composer, piano; Andy Gonzalez, bass; Steve Berrios, percussion)

I have no idea who that might be. For a time there, the piano player sounded like Larry Willis, who I started playing with… My first group was with Larry Willis. It sounded maybe like it could be one of Larry’s records. I’m not sure. The piano solos and the voicings and all that; Larry did pretty nice stuff like that. If the guy isn’t Larry Willis, then he tries to play like him—or he influenced Larry Willis, one of the two. The trumpet player with the beautiful fat tone, I don’t know who it might be. Maybe Eddie Henderson. I have no idea. But I liked that very much. Four stars. I have no idea who it was. [AFTER] Who’s playing trumpet? Jerry? Fantastic. I liked it very much.

5. Amir El-Saffar, “Flood” (from TWO RIVERS, Pi, 2007) (Amir ElSaffar: trumpet, arranger; Rudresh Mahanthappa, alto saxophone; Zaafer Tawil: violin, oud, dumbek; Tareq Abboushi: buzuq, frame drum; Carlo DeRosa: bass; Nasheet Waits: drums)

I got very thirsty on that one. It was very sort of Middle Eastern jazz or Arabic jazz, or maybe Saharan jazz. I had pictures of camels and a lot of sand and sandstorms, and I was dying for an oasis. I have no idea who it is. But thematically, I enjoyed it very much, because obviously it had a Saharan-Middle Eastern thing.  I don’t know who it is. I’m not a critic of people who play. But I would give it three stars. [AFTER] Well, I wasn’t too off when I said it was Arabic-Saharan jazz.

6. Charles Tolliver, “Chedlike” (from EMPEROR MARCH, Half Note, 2009) (Tolliver, trumpet s solo, composer, arranger; Cameron Johnson, Michael Williams, Keyon Harrold, David Weiss, trumpets; Mike Dease, Jason Jackson, Stafford Hunter, Ernest Stewart, Aaron Johnson,  trombones; Bill Saxton, Bruce Williams, Todd Bashore, Billy Harper, Marcus Strickland, Jason Marshall, saxophones, woodwinds; Anthony Wonsey. piano; Reginald Workman, bass; Gene Jackson, drums)

I loved it. It sounded like somebody trying to imitate Gil Evans. If it wasn’t the Gil Evans band, then it was somebody who is a big fan of Gil Evans. The drummer reminded me a lot of Elvin Jones. I don’t know anybody else who played like that. If it’s not Elvin Jones, it’s a great fan of Elvin Jones. I was crazy about both of them. The first night I came to New York, in 1960, I saw Elvin Jones with John Coltrane, Reggie Workman and McCoy Tyner, and I’d never seen a drummer play like that. This reminded me of that night in September 1960. All the work Gil Evans did with Miles Davis was just phenomenal. I have all his stuff. I loved that very much. I don’t know who the trumpet player was. It could have been Johnny Coles. I’m not sure. Johnny Coles played much more mellow. So I’ll give it four stars. [AFTER] So Charles must have been a great fan of Gil Evans. Or Gil Evans must have been a great fan of Charles Tolliver. I don’t know who came first. The arrangement was very Gil Evansish. I know Charles a long time.

7. Brecker Brothers, “Wakaria (What’s Up?)” (from RETURN OF THE BRECKER BROTHERS, GRP, 1992) (Randy Brecker, trumpet and flugelhorn; Michael Brecker, tenor saxophone, composer, arranger; Armand Sabal-Lecco, bass, piccolo bass, drums, percussion, vocals, arranger; Max Risenhoover, snare programming & ride cymbal; George Whitty, keyboards; Dennis Chambers, drums

Very nice. I don’t know who that is. I have no idea who that is. But I loved the arrangement. It sounded like a recent recording (I might be wrong). I really enjoyed it. 4½ stars. I have no idea who it is. I really loved it. The trumpet sounded like it was played through some kind of electronic… I’ll tell you something. To a great extent, after the ‘60s, after Miles and Clifford Brown and Fats Navarro and Dizzy, all those guys from that time, and of course Louis before that…you could always tell who was playing. But later on, it became very technical, and people became very technically proficient. You couldn’t really tell who they were. They were technically unbelievable, but you just couldn’t say there is so-and-so. I guess also having been away from the States for over 18 years, I haven’t followed any of the new developments. But it was technically very, very proficient. I loved the arrangement. In fact, I’m still remembering the melody. It’s a very nice children’s song kind of thing. I don’t know     it was. [AFTER] The Breckers. I didn’t know their work very well. I loved Michael’s playing a lot. Again, for me, even though they’re techincally proficient, I could never say that’s Michael… After Coltrane, after the guys from the ‘50s and ‘60s, everybody else seemed to imitate them in one way or the other, and I never could put my finger on them and say it’s so-and-so. Because it seemed like after that, there was nowhere to go. Fusion came in, and all kinds of things. {How did you deal with that yourself?] Well, I came here as a bebopper, and my story is that I had hoped to play with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, because that was like the college of everybody. But everybody said, “Form your own group. You come from Africa. Let’s see what… You should be teaching us stuff. You shouldn’t be imitating us. As a result, I reverted back to the township dance bands that I came from, and my thing became sort of a hybrid between that and jazz. I went back to the township. I think that’s what makes me stand out, not to sound like other people.

8. Dizzy Gillespie, “Africana” (from GILLESPIANA, Verve, 1961) (Soloists: Gillespie, trumpet; Leo Wright, flute; Lalo Schifrin, piano, composer; Art Davis, bass; Chuck Lampkin, drums)

That sounded like somebody trying to imitate Dizzy Gillespie—or Dizzy himself. The flute a little bit sounded like it might have been James Moody. I don’t know how long ago it was done. If it wasn’t Dizzy, it could have been Jon Faddis. But it felt to me like Dizzy Gillespie. I loved the piece. It sounded like something Dizzy would have done. It’s very Dizzy-esque. I don’t know who might have arranged it or when it was done. I remember a time when he was doing a lot of work with Quincy Jones, but that sounds like something maybe much later. But I loved it very much. 5 stars. [AFTER] Beautiful. Well, Dizzy was the Svengali and god of the trumpet. So many people came from him. Harmonically, he was so amazing. He could do soft things. He did beautiful things on the Harmon mute. He played Harmon mute on that. He and Miles were like the… When they played the Harmon mute, I threw mine away. I stopped playing the mute when I heard Dizzy and Miles play. Dizzy used to play it on “Con Alma,” on… but he was a god.

Dizzy was also the most beautiful person I ever met. For me, he was like a foster dad. He bought me my first winter coat when I came to the States. He sent me records in South Africa long before I came. I met him through Miriam, who he really loved and looked after. She introduced me to him by letter. We didn’t have phones at that time. The first night I came to New York, Dizzy was playing at the Jazz Gallery, opposite Monk, and he had insisted that as soon as I land I have to call him and come see him wherever he was—and he happened to be at the Jazz Gallery. He introduced me to Monk when he came off the set. He had that band. He had Leo Wright and Chris White and Rudy Collins and Lalo Schiffrin on piano. They’d just come back from South America, and he was playing “Desafinado” and “Con Alma” and all those Brazilian songs. Then he introduced me to Monk and said, “Thel, Thel, this is that little trumpet player I was telling you about who was coming from Africa,” and Monk stuck out his hand, a limp hand, and he went, ‘NEIGHHH…,” heh-heh-heh, and walked away. Dizzy’s like, “Oh, Thel, you was born dead.” Then he said, “Listen, Max wants to meet you.” Max was playing around the corner with Booker Little and Eric Dolphy was on saxophone, opposite the Mingus band. He took me there and introduced me to Max. At the time Max was with Abbey, and really into the anti-apartheid movement. Members, Don’t Be Weary, right? I had just come off the plane from England. When I came back to the Jazz Gallery, he said, “Where are you going?” I said, “I have to go and sleep, man—I’m going home.” He said, “No-no-no, you can’t sleep; you can’t go home. I told Coltrane that you were coming to see him. He’s waiting for you. You’ve got to go to the Half Note. So I went to the Half Note, and I stayed there til 4 in the morning. When I got out of the Half Note, I got out of the cab, and I Coltrane and McCoy Tyner and Reggie Workman were waiting on the sidewalk for me. Dizzy had told them, “This guy is coming.” So Dizzy introduced me to everybody. In one night, I saw him, I saw Monk, I saw Max, I saw Charlie Mingus, and I saw Trane. And I left the Half Note at 4 in the morning. 5½ stars for Dizzy. 7 stars!

9.  Jon Hassell, “Northline” (#9) (from LAST NIGHT THE MOON CAME DROPPING ITS CLOTHES IN THE STREET, ECM, 2009) (Hassell, trumpet; Peter Freeman, bass; Jan Bang, live sampling; Elvind Aarset, guitar; Helge Norbakken, drums)

I don’t know who it is. But I think only Miles was able to play in those dark, sleepy moods, and still keep you up. This one was too foggy and misty for me. 2 stars. It sounded like a soundtrack, an effect for something. It could have been a soundtrack. I don’t knock anybody. A fantastic lower register technique, a beautiful tone, but it didn’t go anywhere, didn’t take me anywhere. [AFTER] I wasn’t too far off. It was a mood compositional kind of thing. It sounded like something for a movie where the murder is hiding in the fog.

It’s Dizzy Gillespie’s 94th Birthday Anniversary: Slide Hampton, James Moody, Jimmy Heath, John Lee and Claudio Roditi on the Master in 2006

To observe the 94th birthday anniversary of Dizzy Gillespie, I’m posting the uncut transcript of a conversation with five of his distinguished acolytes — James Moody, Jimmy Heath, Slide Hampton, John Lee, and Claudio Roditi, all playing with the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Band at the Blue Note five years ago — that ran in edited form in DownBeat.

Dizzy Gillespie Forum (Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath, John Lee, James Moody, Claudio Roditi) – (Blue Note, June 20, 2006):

TP:   My first question for Slide and for Jimmy Heath is: What are the dynamics of Dizzy Gillespie’s music that make it possible for a band like this to function in 2006. What makes the music so fresh and such a vehicle for your creativity?

SLIDE:   I think that Dizzy’s music when he was writing it was so far in advance that today it sounds like something that might have been written today. It was a big inspiration, because a lot of people don’t know that Dizzy was a great arranger and orchestrator, and he inspired a lot of the guys that were orchestrating and arranging at that time. That was their thing that they did mainly, was to arrange, and Dizzy wrote some wonderful arrangements, and we’re going to play some of them tonight. The approach to the arrangements that he made is the thing that inspired us to write. Actually, when we hear his stuff, it makes us feel like he’s the teacher and we’re the students.

TP:   Just to get technical about it, what are some of the things he innovated that are very present in the vocabulary of modern jazz?

HEATH:   I think Dizzy instituted the rhythm aspect of the music. He really concentrated on that as well as the harmonic. Between the two, the marrying of the two the way he did, it brought about a different sound because of the Afro influence and the European harmony with this Afro groove. That’s what made it so special. The combination is a marriage like bread and butter.

TP:   Was that modernity always there from when he and Gil Fuller did the first charts for the big band in 1946?

MOODY:   I think it was always there. Now, I can’t speak from the standpoint of Slide or Jimmy because I don’t write, and I’m not as knowledgeable as they are, and I wasn’t then, but I’m trying to come to grips with what WAS happening then. It was so deep, because when I joined the band, Thelonious Monk was the piano player, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, Cecil Payne – like that.

TP:   Jimmy just made a genuflecting gesture.

MOODY:   What happens is, I look back and… Jimmy wrote a composition called “Without You, No Me,” which meant that if there had never been a Dizzy Gillespie, there wouldn’t be a Jimmy Heath. I feel the same way myself, even though I have to say what Jimmy said – but what he said first was true. People always ask me, “Well, what was it like being there in 1946?

TP:   In the Spotlite Club on 52nd Street, right?

MOODY:   Yeah, in the Spotlite. Man, all I know is, I was there, I was 21, and it felt good and nice, but man, what was happening around me, I didn’t know.

TP:   Do you have any recollection of how the audience responded?

MOODY:   Well, they were wonderful. But let me get to this point. Gerald Wilson brought an arrangement… No, it wasn’t Gerald Wilson. I guess it was Gil Fuller who did it. He kept doing it… I said, “This note is wrong here, just this note.” “No, it’s okay. Cool.” I said, “Diz, this note is…” He said, “No-no.” I said, “Diz…” “Moody, shut up!” It was a flat five. I mean, if you don’t know, you don’t know. But the point is that… What I’m saying is, like, you don’t have to tell somebody you don’t know. People know when you don’t know. And I didn’t know for the longest time. Now I’m trying to come to grips with what it was…not what it was, but what it is. Because I’m telling you. It will take a lifetime. Nicholas Slonimsky said in his book on the source of  melodic patterns that in order to exhaust the possibilities of a chromatic scale, you’d have to live 2000 years. But what’s coming out of Diz and Monk, I mean, you have to live 2000 years to be able to do it. Unfortunately, a lot of us are only going to make it to 100.

HEATH:   There’s one thing that I want to say, and that is: What WAS good, IS good.

MOODY:   You hear that?

HEATH:   What was good, IS good.

MOODY:   You hear that?

HEATH:   So Dizzy’s music was good during that time. It still is good. If you say Bach and Beethoven, if that was good, it’s still good. Stuff don’t just disappear and change and be bad over a period of time – if it’s good! But if it’s sad, it’s sad. And it’s going to stay sad. But if it’s good, it’s going to stay good.

TP:   Jimmy Heath and Moody, when did you first become aware of Dizzy Gillespie.

MOODY:   I met Dizzy when I was 18 years old, and I was in the Air Force at Greensboro, North Carolina. Dizzy came down and played at the place where we had our entertainment. It was a segregated base. One quarter was Negro; the other three quarters was Caucasian. He came and played for us at a place called the Big Top, and it was the Big Tent. That’s where I met him. That’s where I met him with Dave Burns and Joe Gales. So what happened was, Dizzy said… We were going to be discharged in about 3 or 4 months, and Dizzy said, “Come and try out for the band in New York.” So after we were discharged, that’s what I did. I went with Dave and we tried out for the band, and Dave made it. I didn’t, because Walter Fuller said, “You don’t play loud enough!” So I went home, man. I was doing a gig, making $7 a night, man, a lot of money, at Lloyd’s Manor. About three months later I got a telegram from David Burns saying, “you start with us tonight.” So I went and joined the band at the Spotlite, and David Burns told me, “The only thing you got to watch out for is this thing,” [SINGS LINE OF “Things To Come”] He showed me the line on that thing. So the other part, I read… So I had it down!

TP:   Didn’t Percy meet Dizzy before you did?

HEATH:   Percy was a Tuskegee airman, and I was on the road with Nat Towles’ Orchestra in Omaha, Nebraska. Percy told me, “Jimmy, you should quite and come back home if you like this new music, bebop, so much, because I met Dizzy Gillespie.” When I quit the band, which I was going to quit anyway, I came back to Philly. And I found out that Dizzy didn’t even know Percy’s name. He just called him “Lieutenant.” Because it was an honor to have a black pilot and a Lieutenant. So as it happened, I got in the band before Percy did. What we did as the Heath Brothers, me and Percy, we put on our berets and our artist ties, like Dizzy’s band had, and followed him. If they played in Wilmington, Delaware, we would be right in front of the band. If they played at the Savoy, we’d be right there. If they played the Apollo, we’d be right there. Dizzy said, “There’s the Heath Brothers!” – until we got a gig!

MOODY:   Jimmy told me, “We followed the band until he gave us a gig.”

TP:   What did the music sound like to you when you first heard it? Was it shocking to you?

HEATH:   Extremely.

SLIDE:   It was a shock. We had been hearing about “Things to Come.” I was in my house once, and coming from another part of the house I heard this music start. My brother had found the CD, and I didn’t know it. When he started playing, I said, “That’s ‘Things To Come.’” – and I had never heard it before. But when I heard this new music, I knew what it was. It was really a wonderful, wonderful shock. The first thing I heard was “Our Delight,” and I was sitting in an outdoor place having a sandwich, and they started playing this introduction – and I almost fell off the stool that I was on because the way they were moving the harmony, which was not usual.

But the thing that I’ve got to say is that I do realize when I hear the great arrangements of Gil Fuller and Dizzy and Tadd Dameron, that the music that came before, the arrangements of Jimmy Mundy and those guys had a big influence on those orchestrations. Because those guys wrote the ensemble so that it sounded really full, and when Gil and them came along with the new music, their ensembles sounded really full, too. It wasn’t a weakness because it was a new harmony. They still had that fullness that actually came from the period of guys like Jimmy Mundy, Ernie Wilkins and all of these guys…

HEATH: And Sy Oliver.

SLIDE:   Sy Oliver and Benny Carter.

HEATH:   But I had heard “Bebop.” I had heard the records because my mother and father had a friend who had a record store in Philadelphia. So whenever anything new would come out, boom, they’d get it. “Hey, we got a new Dizzy Gillespie, come on by,” and we’d go get it. That’s how it happened. And when I heard “Things To Come,” I was very excited by it. But I heard “Bebop” with Billy Eckstine’s band. They used to do that in 1944.

TP:   The tune “Bebop” or bebop the style?

HEATH:   The tune. They used that for a signoff to take intermission. [SINGS IT] “Now we’re going to take a break.” That’s what Billy Eckstine would say. They were playing that in that band. Because Dizzy was the musical director of Eckstine’s band. So the bebop sound came before Dizzy got his band.  It was from Earl Hines into Billy Eckstine into Dizzy’s COMPLETE bebop band.

TP:   Did either Jimmy Heath or Moody hear Charlie Parker in Earl Hines’ band?

MOODY:   No. I heard records…

TP:   Well, they didn’t record with Earl Hines.

MOODY:   I heard the record Dizzy did with Cab Calloway, where he took that solo. [SINGS SOLO ON “Pickin’ the Cabbage.”]

TP:    Did this music immediately become a banner for you to follow as a stylistic improviser?

MOODY:   I’ll tell you. Everywhere the band played, everywhere, even on the stage, there would be people, because the place would be sold out, and everyone would have on a beret and horn-rimmed glasses and bow-tie. Everyone would have it. Then it got so hip that if you came to the place and you wanted to get in free, all you had to do was look exactly like that and you got in.

HEATH:   The music fascinated us in Philadelphia so much, Coltrane and myself eventually getting in the band in 1949… But what had happened, we had tried to learn all of those things before we got in the band. We went to Little Rock, Arkansas, to play a gig – before Faubus – and the people sent out scouts and said, “We don’t need no bebops. Why don’t you’all go back and send Buddy Johnson down here?” Or Count Basie. They wanted to dance! See, we was playing a dance. So we could have beat the audience up in a fight, there were so few people in there. So Dizzy right away, he gets mad, and he pulls out “Things To Come,” like he’s going to shock us, like we couldn’t play it. But we had already shedded on that back home! We learned that, and some of the things he had recorded. Like “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop,” all that stuff in different meters and all that. John Lewis’ music, and George Russell, and Tadd. Tadd’s music always had a mellow quality. He was a romantic style orchestrator, whereas Gil Fuller was a cat with fire. And Gil was arrogant to the point where he said, “Tadd’s music, that’s background for my stuff.” [SINGS REFRAIN FOR “Our Delight” – SLIDE LAUGHS] He said, “That’s a background.” Because he was coming up with [SINGS “Things To Come” WITH FLOURISH] But that’s Dizzy’s intros. Those ideas are not Gil Fuller’s; in some cases they are Dizzy telling him what to write. He orchestrated Dizzy’s idea. So Dizzy is the master.

SLIDE:   But isn’t it amazing, though, that he could orchestrate those ideas so well?

HEATH:   Sure it is!

SLIDE:   With that new music, to be able to orchestrate it so well.

JOHN:   No one had orchestrated like that before. Right?

SLIDE:   No.

HEATH:   Dizzy had orchestrated some of them. He could do it. So he was the one responsible for Gil writing like that. But Gil Schillinger, and he knew how to put stuff together real quick. So that was a marriage. What Gil was doing was writing Dizzy’s stuff the way Dizzy wanted it to sound. And bebop was the strongest thing that I had heard to date.

TP:   Claudio, as a young trumpet player, I assume you heard all these records, or subsequently heard them and absorbed them.

CLAUDIO RODITI: You have to understand that growing up in another country than the United States, the music would get there later. But things would take a few years.

TP:   But you did hear the records.

RODITI:   I heard. But in 1959, when I was 12 years, I had a very pleasant experience. You’ll understand why. People kept telling me, “You’ve got to buy an album by Chet Baker; this is the latest thing you’re going to hear in modern trumpet.” So I went into a record shop and asked for a Chet Baker record, and they said, “We don’t have any Chet Baker right now, but we have this other record here.” They handed me an album. It was Dizzy Gillespie and Roy Eldridge, with Oscar Peterson playing organ. I said, “I’ll take it.”

MOODY:   Oscar Peterson playing what?

RODITI:   Organ.

MOODY:   Damn!

RODITI:   Yeah. I still remember this album.  So I took this album home and I said, “Wait a minute. What is all of this?” It was something completely new. Because I had heard a little bit of jazz, but via albums that you could find – Louis Armstrong and things like that. But nothing that modern until them for me, especially being a 12-year-old kid. I had already started with the trumpet. But I was in for a shock.

TP:   Did you try ever to emulate Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet style?

RODITI:   No.

TP:   It seems to me that a lot of trumpet players have not. Jon Faddis, obviously. But remarkably few for how influential Dizzy Gillespie is on the history of the music. Now, Jimmy Heath is laughing, and I know the answer to the question is obvious…

HEATH:   They couldn’t do it.
TP:   Why couldn’t they do it?

RODITI:   First of all, technically. He had a range that very few people have to play it. Now, Fats Navarro came close, and Fats Navarro had something different. When I started copying and transcribing some solos, I started with Fats Navarro.

SLIDE:   That’s Jimmy’s man, too.

RODITI:   Moody mentioned a name that I just got hip to now, because I heard something on the radio the other day. Dave Burns. Now, that was a master trumpet player. Totally forgotten.

SLIDE:   Now, you know that Miles said he personally wanted to play like Dizzy himself, but he couldn’t.

HEATH:   He said the only reason he didn’t play like Dizzy is because he couldn’t. A lot of people tried. But Fats Navarro told me he was trying to play more like Bird instead of Dizzy, which is close, but it’s not exactly the same.

MOODY:   When Dizzy would play things like… There was something about the fingering and his jaws that did something that just other trumpet players couldn’t do.

SLIDE:   Yes, the fingering that made it possible to play those phrases in certain registers probably would be difficult, especially if you were going against the grain with the fingering going out that way… He had a way that the fingering seemed to be coming this way, and he could play in those registers and play the lines.

TP:   You were moving your fingers backwards when you said “against the grain” and moving them forward when you said “that way.”

SLIDE:   Yes, it’s like if you’re playing something and the line is going up, and you have to go down the fingering, then of course, you’re going against the grain. But if you play the same thing coming up the fingering, that means you might start in a place where it would be a fifth position on trombone and then come up. If you’re going to play a line, it’s easier to go that way than it is to go out this way in certain ranges, and Dizzy had that all worked out some way.

RODITI:   What we call alternate fingerings on the trumpet. I remember when he was teaching me “Birks Works,” there was one simple thing where he used an alternate fingering, that if you tried to do it an alternate way, it doesn’t sound the same.

MOODY:  The only one that I know who came close to Dizzy and loved Dizzy was Lonnie Hillyer. He was trying to play like him. But Jon Faddis got him.

HEATH:  But also Dave Burns… When Dizzy had a hair in his lip in the Apollo… Were you with the group at the Apollo when David was taking all the solos because Dizzy had this hair?

MOODY:   Oh, I was there. He had a hole in his lip as big as a lollipop. I don’t know if he got it when we were playing baseball on the road or something.

HEATH:   Dave Burns was playing all the solos. And Dave Burns played like Dizzy, too. In a way. The best he could.

MOODY:   The best he could, right. Lonnie Hillyer from Detroit…

HEATH:   You thought so? Closer?

MOODY:   Yeah. He was closer.

TP:   In previous conversations, each of you have referred to Dizzy Gillespie as a tremendous mentor. Can you discuss his characteristics as a bandleader?

MOODY:   If anybody was nervous or if they was funky, as soon as Dizzy walked in, the whole atmosphere changed. Everything was cool. Everything was nice. Dizzy could calm the most ferocious storm. He’d cool it right out.

TP:   How would he do it?

MOODY:   Just his presence.

JOHN LEE:   His personality.

MOODY:   Just Dizzy.

JOHN LEE:   I was there almost ten years, and you had multi-relationships with Dizzy. There was Dizzy who was your bandleader, then he was like a brother on some things if you needed help, and then he was just like a… That’s like a brother-father kind of thing – right, Moody? [Yeah.] Then just purely as a friend at some point. Being in his room late at night, some of the stories he told. He could be tough and kick your ass, but he was also very sensitive. I went through a lot of marital problems when I was with Dizzy, and he was very sensitive to that. He even altered his schedule at sometimes wanting to know how I was doing. You just came to love him so much beyond the music thing because he cared so much.

MOODY:   And didn’t take any shit. Excuse me for putting that way.

TP:   That’s something I was about to ask. There are stories about him and Billy Eckstine touring the South and not taking any stuff from people when that was a very radical thing to do.

MOODY:   Wait a minute. They knew when to act and when not to act. Because if you’re someplace and you’re outnumbered, like, a billion to one, don’t be a fool. Because I remember seeing Dizzy down South, the bus flying down the highway, and he got Eppie, the bus driver, by the collar, telling him he was going to kick his butt, and we’re saying, “Dizzy, no-no, wait til we get to Washington.” Because Eppie had said something to Lorraine, and it touched Dizzy the wrong way. And Diz had him by the throat. So-and-so and so-and-so. “Dizzy, that’s okay,” and Dizzy cooled it.

But we had a lot of instances like that down South. Man, they had what’s his name out there, the trombone player who just died in San Francisco. He was mugged and he said he had played with Dizzy, and then, when I saw him, he was the same one that we were sitting on the bus while this sheriff with his big hat was sitting there at this whitewashed barn, hammering a door, that the sheriff had said that he broke the door. He didn’t break the door, but he had to do that. Then we were there another time when Ella Fitzgerald… We were late for the gig, and when we got there everybody had gone except this guy, and he asked Ella Fitzgerald to get off the bus and sing to his wife, because “she loves the way you sing.” “Miss Fitzgerald, come on there and sing for my wife, now, because she loves your singing.” Ella was saying, “Yeah, but the band, and I odn’t know…” – and she was in her bandanna.

SLIDE:   Did she go sing?

MOODY:   No.  But it took a long time.

JOHN LEE:   Dizzy defended her?

MOODY:   Yeah.

HEATH:   But you know, the thing about it… What’s really interesting about Dizzy the teacher… Dizzy, every day that I was in his company, he was always conscious of something musical, and he would show you things every time. If it wasn’t something, he’d be tapping out some rhythm, “and this is how you play in five, and this is how you play in seven – it’s all the same. You’ve just got to syncopate it differently.” He would be doing either rhythmic patterns, or he’d get on the piano and show you some harmonic sequences. He was always teaching. He was a master teacher. As far as that is concerned, that’s one of his assets.

The other thing is being a nice guy, too. He was very proud of me because I had messed up in his band and went to jail, and when I came back and had straightened out my life, man, he just… He was almost like my father. “I’m so glad that you’re back.” It was like taking me back in prodigal son returns.

SLIDE:   You can’t imagine him being in jail, can you?  You know the thing that was amazing about Dizzy. When we had the rhythm section that was… We had a Cuban, a Puerto Rican, a Brazilian, a guy from Panama, two Americans. And Dizzy could stand on the front of the stage, way away from that rhythm section, and never get lost. And they were playing the most complicated rhythms. I was sitting there and I was lost ALL the time. But he would never get lost on those fast things like that. “Tanga.”

JOHN LEE:   We had Giovanni Hidalgo, Airto and Ignacio, a Puerto Rican, a Brazilian and a Cuban, and all at the top of their game. Giovanni’s the Charlie Parker of the congas, and Airto probably the greatest multi-percussionist of his time – or ever. And you’re right. Dizzy knew every rhythm they were doing. He’s like the father of it all.

HEATH:   There was a statement someone made that Dizzy could be playing in a hall, and the band would be playing: he could go outside one door, and come back in the other door playing right in meter and right in the song, like he’d been standing on the stage. He never would get lost in meter or anything. He’d come back right in place.

SLIDE:   He would try to keep the rhythm section close to the source. Because the longer the distance, the more difficult it is to communicate. But he could be a long distance from the rhythm section and be playing something that most people might get lost on anyway, and stay right in time. And playing very complicated. Very complicated!

MOODY:   No matter where we went, no matter where we were, it could be the quintet or the big band, whatever, as soon as we got to the place, the first thing Diz would do was go over to the piano and sit down. Because a lot of these compositions that I hear now, I heard at the beginning on the piano, different places. I used to hear [SINGS FIRST FEW BARS OF “Con Alma]…  All the different compositions. I heard them in concert halls or dance halls way before Dizzy finished them. I’d hear him sitting there playing.

JOHN LEE:   One thing we all had is you just wanted to be around him. It’s hard to explain how much he gave to you – in everything, not even just music. He always had fun, too. I noticed that when I’ve worked with people who have internal struggles or are so wrapped up in themselves. Dizzy had fun every night. We could travel 18 hours and he might be a little cranky, but when we got to the gig, he was going to have fun and enjoy it.

MOODY:   but you know what? The difference is… Jimmy Heath and Slide Hampton are writers and orchestrators, so they were hearing everything different from me. I was just sitting there, and I didn’t know anything about the harmonies and things. I have to be truthful with that. I got into Dizzy’s band; if a C-VII would have jumped in my face, I wouldn’t have known it.

HEATH:   What ears!

MOODY:   so what I did, I was just in the band, but I was there, and all I know is it made me feel good and I liked being there and I liked what I heard. But if you had asked me to explain it to you, what it was, I wouldn’t know. All I knew is it just sounded good, man, and I liked it. Like, at the beginning I liked Jimmy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet and those people, and it was okay, but when I heard Dizzy and Charlie Parker, I said, “Unh-oh, that’s it.” I liked Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins. I liked Lester Young better than Hawk, because Hawk knew the changes better than Lester Young, but I didn’t like [SINGS HAWK LINE] that lope thing that he had; I liked [SINGS PREZ LINE] like that. You know what I mean. But then when I heard Dizzy and Charlie Parker, I said, “Oh, man!” So now, I thought, well, Dizzy and Slide, they’ll tell you now, boy – I’ll be asking. I said, “slide, show me this section,” “Jimmy, show me, man.” I’m beginning to see some things now. A good thing now is, I’m beginning to see SOME of the light.

RODITI:   The one thing I noticed in the five years I was with the United Nations Orchestra… You were talking about Dizzy being fun, and he was. He was also funny to the band. Sometimes, when he conducted the band, he made some faces that the audiences couldn’t see, but they were absolutely unbelievable. But I always noticed that at the same time, when Dizzy… I said this before, but I would like to say this one more time. When he put the trumpet to his face, he was serious. There was no fooling around, no dancing around, no clowning; it was just absolutely pure music.

TP:   As an instrumentalist, was Dizzy a constant improviser? Did he repeat solos?

MOODY:   Hell, no.

TP:   Did he always play things fresh?

SLIDE:   Never repeated.

HEATH:   Everybody has cliches. But they wouldn’t be in the same place. Everybody got cliches. But Dizzy was a true improviser. They would be in different places. It wouldn’t be the same solo.

SLIDE:   He started in a different place in the phrase, started in a different key in the chord…

HEATH:   A true improviser.

MOODY:   Yes. You’re right. He’d make you say, “Damn.”

HEATH:   I’ll give you an example. Me and Coltrane was in the section together, and we were playing alto and Paul Gonsalves was playing tenor. We would look at each other every night to see what kind of break Dizzy was going to take on “I Can’t Get Started,” which is a ballad. When the band said [SINGS PHRASE TO THE BREAK] and he’d make a pickup, it would be different every night. Trane said, “Jimmy, you hear that?” I said, “Yeah, I heard.” Next night it would be different. That’s on a ballad!

TP:   For a career as long his, he had a lot of different phases. Several different big bands, the quintet with Moody, which covered all his bases up to the time, from bop to Brazilian. Do any of you have favorite phases? Or is the whole thing your favorite?

MOODY:   You mean a favorite group? I like the band with you and Coltrane and Benny Golson. That was the band, man.

HEATH:   That’s what Dizzy said in the book, but I said the one with YOU. I listened to you and Howard Johnson and Cecil Payne, John Brown – that reed section. That was the one I like!

TP:   Still?

HEATH:   Yeah. That was great. The one in the ‘50s I didn’t hear enough of. But I heard it on record. ‘56. That’s the one with the guy who used to play with Tadd playing lead alto and Phil Woods playing second.

SLIDE:   Jimmy Powell?

HEATH:   Jimmy Powell, yes.

SLIDE:   I was fortunate enough to play in that.

TP:   That’s when you first joined Dizzy, right?

SLIDE: I played with that band, although I was out of place in it. It was a fantastic band. They were playing music by Quincy Jones and by Benny Golson and by Dizzy and by Melba Liston, and the arrangements were just shocking, man, for a young arranger.

HEATH:   Were you there with that singer?

SLIDE:   I was there with Austin Cromer.

HEATH:   That’s the one I’m talking about.

MOODY:   “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” Unbelievable.

SLIDE:   He outsang Billy Eckstine and everybody. “Wonder Why.”

HEATH:   I’ve got that on my I-Pod.

MOODY:   Austin Cromer, man, from Detroit. He was bad!

HEATH:   The problem with critics is they believe that music can only be coming from one person at a time. What’s the matter with these people! Ain’t no one person got all the music.

MOODY:   You’re damn right.

HEATH:   Everybody got some!

MOODY:   That’s right.

HEATH:   I love Coltrane. I love Miles. But come on! You know what I’m saying? What about the other guys? The critics get on something, and he’s this and he’s this, Miles and Miles and Miles. Fats Navarro kicked Miles’ ass in a band I saw with Dexter and Lucky Thompson, Miles and Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, Percy I think, and Kenny Clarke. And man, Lucky Thompson was eating Dexter up on fast tunes and Dexter was kickin’ his ass on medium swing. But Fats was kicking Miles’ ass on both! Miles was a great musician, man. He ain’t the only one that got…

MOODY:   They never gave Diz the credit he was due. Did you ever notice that? It’s always Miles-Miles-Miles. But they don’t give it to Diz, man. He doesn’t get the credit that he deserves.

TP:   Why do you think that is?

HEATH:   Miles got on Columbia Records. Dizzy said to me in Palm Beach, down in Florida, when I told him that the Heath Brothers were on Columbia, he said, “You’re on Columbia Records?!” Because he never got that kind of a contract. Miles stayed on there so long, that’s what made Miles popular. He was on a major label for a long time – him and Johnny Mathis! So they got famous.

MOODY:   Do you know what Diz did? He looked at me and said, “Moody, you had a hit, but I never had one.” I said, “Yeah, but I’d rather be you.” You hear what I’m saying? I’d rather be Dizzy, boy.

TP:   Is there any sound from Dizzy’s different periods that’s the template for this band? Does it go back to the ‘56 band that Slide was in?

SLIDE:   This band has some of all those different periods in it.

JOHN LEE: All the periods. We have “Round Midnight,” “Lover Come Back To Me,” “Things To Come.”

SLIDE:   “Two Bass Hit.”

HEATH: Yeah, and “Emanon” and all those…

JOHN LEE:   Moody had a famous solo on “Emanon.”

TP:   That was your first recorded solo with Dizzy, wasn’t it?

MOODY:   Yeah, and it wasn’t supposed to be mine. It was supposed to be Billy Frazier’s solo – the baritone player. He didn’t show up for the session, so Diz said, “Blow, Moody.” And that was me. But other than that…

JOHN LEE:   One important thing about this band, which Slide started… We’re not going to sit still with… First of all, a lot of those arrangements are still lost. We’ve been trying to rewrite them. Now, Jimmy and Slide and Dennis Mackrell are writing new stuff. The new album is going to have new expressions on a lot of these tunes. We don’t want to just sit still with that.

TP:   Has the band been primarily Dizzy’s charts or transcriptions of his tunes…

JOHN LEE:   Remember, Dizzy commissioned a lot of charts. Benny Golson, Quincy Jones, Tadd Dameron…

HEATH: Ernie Wilkins.

MOODY:   “Without You, No Me.”

JOHN LEE:   Ernie Wilkins. Slide.

MOODY:  Let Jimmy tell you what happened.

HEATH:   First, you asked the question about this band. This band has got more great soloists than the band I was with with Dizzy. This band has more great soloists than any band that Dizzy had, in terms of number of great soloists. In all the bands, they had a few great soloists and the rest of the guys was playing parts. In this band, you can point to any one of them guys. They stand up and it happens every time. That’s the difference. As an almost-80-year-old, I feel like this is a university. This is the Dizzy Gillespie University in action.

MOODY:   Now, about the song “Without You, No Me,” I’ll let Section… We call each other  Section, because we’re the saxophone section. I’ll let Jimmy Heath tell you. Dizzy called him and commissioned him to write this for him. You finish the section.

HEATH:   Well, Dizzy called me and he said, “I’ve got Slide, Benny Golson, Thad Jones, Frank Foster; I’m starting another band, and I’d like you to write a piece for me.” I felt so honored to be in that group of great arrangers and composers. So he put it on tape, because I wasn’t home, and it was on the tape machine. I kept that tape. I don’t know where it is now, but I had the tape. So when he told me that, I said, “Well, yeah, I’ll write an arrangement,” and I wrote that arrangement. This was a commission when he’d call you up and tell you to write something for the band. When I got finished with it, certain things he told me to change because he didn’t like the nomenclature or the name-calling that I was using, the Lochrian mode or something. He said, “No, just minor with the VI in the bass.” He called it a minor with the VI in the bass, and I changed it to that. He took it and went on the road and played it, and they taped it somewhere, and I have a copy. But he never mentioned any money. So he just never paid me for it. But the thing is, I never asked him for any money. All the money that Dizzy gave me, I would be stupid to ask him for money! If he’d asked me to pay for every lesson he gave me, I’d be in his debt.

TP:   I want to ask Claudio something about this. Getting back to the first thing Jimmy Heath said, that Dizzy Gillespie combined harmonic and rhythmic innovations… I don’t want to put you in a position of being representative of all Latin American musicians who play jazz, but can you discuss his… He was influential on a world scale and addressed the different vocabularies on their terms.

RODITI:   The only thing I can tell you about this is from my experience of being Brazilian, and knowing that Dizzy went there before some other folks that we know who made a lot of success with the new music called Bossa Nova at the time.

JOHN LEE:   That’s the biggest one, too. Because Stan Getz gets all that credit, but Dizzy…

RODITI:   Yes, and Dizzy was there before. He went there, and he heard the new music, and he brought some of it. But he did not have the success that he deserved with that music. We always felt in Brazil… I never told any of you this. But I can speak for a lot of musicians, and say that when we heard the recordings of Joao Gilberto and Astrid Gilberto with Stan Getz, we didn’t particularly like what we heard in Brazil. We liked the music. But we had heard that music before, done only by Brazilians. Had Dizzy had the opportunity to really develop with the Brazilian music, it would have been something very, very special. Now, I must also add that there was another guy that went there and he incorporated that music for the rest of his life – Herbie Mann. Herbie went to Brazil in the early ‘60s and also heard the new music, and was very touched and very influenced by it. He had a very nice feeling. But when we Brazilians heard Stan Getz playing, we felt that something was wrong. What was wrong was that the pulse, the way Stan Getz was playing the music was wrong. He was feeling the music in 4/4 when the music was in 2/4. It was half of that.

HEATH:   Kenny Dorham went down there, too.

RODITI:   But that was later. That I remember, because that was about 1963. Dizzy was there in the late ‘50s.

MOODY:   When I joined the Quintet, Dizzy gave me the little book and he wrote this stuff out, and I said, “Diz, you’ve got 2/4 here; why didn’t you just write it in 4/4, so I could…” He looked at me and he said, [SINGS PHRASE] I said, “Oh, okay. That’s it.” The feeling is altogether different in 2/4 than 4/4.

TP:   Cuban musicians also felt that Dizzy had an idiomatic command of those rhythms, too, through Mario Bauza and Chano Pozo, and this influenced a lot of young musicians who themselves are influencing the way jazz is heard today.

MOODY:   Did you know that Chano Pozo had three bullets in his body that they couldn’t remove. Because we roomed together, and just before we’d go to bed or something, Chano would say, “Moody,” and he’d have me feel the different bullets, where they were. Now, the reason the bullets were there was because Chano… I don’t know what the song was. I don’t know if it was “Babalu” or what it was. But he wrote this composition, and the guy at the publishing company hadn’t given him the money in Cuba. The guy said, “Come back at 1 o’clock.” And Chano, who was very menacing, you know… Chano had a thing on his shoulder! So when Chano got there at 1 o’clock, there was a guy waiting, and he shot him and tried to kill him. But Chano lived, so that’s what it was.

JOHN LEE: Do you know what’s very important to mention about all this stuff we’re talking about. Moody, you tell me if it’s right. But what I noticed, we’re talking about Getz’ success and different people’s success, but Dizzy never seemed bitter in all of that. He just kept moving on to something else. I never heard him say anything like, “Oh, Stan Getz did this or that.”

MOODY:   He liked Getz.

JOHN LEE:   He liked Getz a lot. They were friends. But there was no bitterness about…

HEATH:   He liked Miles, too.

JOHN LEE:   With Miles’ success and everybody, Dizzy just kept creating and being about music and having fun.

MOODY:   But Dizzy, somehow or other he knows that the proof is in the pudding. When you hear things, your ear should tell you, “well, that’s what it was and that’s where it was.” So anything you hear by Dizzy, you’ve got to say, “wow.” No matter what it is. Wow. And the people who are supposed to be so great, you hear them and you say, “Oh, okay.” But you don’t say “wow.”

TP:   Can anyone illuminate who were some of the people Dizzy was listening to as a young guy?

MOODY:   Art Tatum.  Art Tatum was the man.

HEATH:   Roy Eldridge.

MOODY:   And Louis Armstrong.

TP:   How about composers?

SLIDE:  He told me when he was playing in the bands, before he really started composing himself, Jimmy Mundy and all of these guys. He said he learned to arrange just sitting there listening to those arrangers. At night in his dreams he’d be hearing the brass section playing these things.

HEATH:   That could be!

TP:   Was that in Earl Hines’ band, when Jimmy Mundy was arranging for Earl Hines?

SLIDE:   Yeah, in Earl Hines’ band.

HEATH:   Budd Johnson, too.

SLIDE:   He said he learned it from all those guys who were writing in that band. He had such an ear. That’s the thing a lot of people don’t understand, that the key to learning is having a good memory and a good ear. If you’ve got those two, you learn fast. Because you just hear stuff, you know what it is, and you remember it. Because even if you see a score and you see what something is and you don’t remember it, then you haven’t learned it. For people who have good memories, learning is easy, and Dizzy had a helluva memory and he had an incredible understanding of music – because he loved music so much and he was so dedicated. That’s another thing that’s very important. A musician can be a talented musician, but he doesn’t have to be dedicated. That’s a choice. If you really respect music, you’ll dedicate yourself to it. So you can give something back to it and not just be taking from it. Dizzy was giving more to music than he was getting from it.

TP:   Jimmy and Moody both were saying that Dizzy Gillespie, on a certain level, didn’t get his due. What are some of the things people don’t understand about the magnitude of his accomplishment?

MOODY:   First of all, I want to get to Coltrane and say this. When Coltrane played, the critics said, “there is somebody who is really full of crap, because he’s not playing anything but a bunch of notes and a bunch of noise.” Then later on, as time went by, people began to see, “Wow, wait a minute,” what he played made a lot of sense and it’s cool. Now you have people that are saying that people who are playing a lot of these other notes are great, when in essence, they know their butt from a hole in the ground what they’re playing. Now, when it comes to Dizzy: America is a land of mediocrity when it comes to anything with art. If it’s something dumb, oh, give me some more of that. But what Dizzy was playing, the people… See, if you love somebody, you give them what you know is good. Now, if you don’t know if it’s good, find out whether it’s good or not, and give it to them. America, they don’t do that. What they do is: Give me something that’s dumb and the people will like that, and I’ll give them that – and I’ll make more money.” So in essence, what Dizzy did was… If people had known what Dizzy was doing and if they knew now what he’s doing, people would be healthier, there would be less crime, and there would be more love. You know where I’m coming from? Mainly because of what he played. And his music was knowledgeable. All the music you hear today, there’s no intelligence to it. It’s a bunch of crap. But what Dizzy played, you had to use your brain a little bit to understand it, but later on, when you did, you could feel it emotionally, too. It was wonderful.

TP:   He was also a great entertainer.

MOODY:   Yeah, he was a great entertainer. But he did that mainly because he said, “Well, the people are sitting there looking at me like I’m nuts, so I’ll just do something to make them…” But that’s fine.

SLIDE:   But before him, there was a lot of entertainment going on. Bandleaders all were entertainers. Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway. He played with all those guys. So when he became a bandleader, it kind of seemed to be the right thing to also add some entertainment. Which is a good idea, because it kind of brings the people in, gives them a chance to hear some…

RODITI:   If I may just interject on the same thing. You notice the way Paquito D’Rivera leads a band has a lot of Dizzy’s influence in that particular thing of entertainment also.

MOODY:   Look at me. Look at me when I’m on stage. I mean, hey, man… That’s Dizzy, man!

HEATH:   When I conduct my band, I’ve got a little of that in me, too!  That’s where we came from.

JOHN LEE:   People want to be entertained. They really do.
SLIDE:   Yeah. It helps bring them into something that calls for a very sophisticated outlook, a sophisticated listener. Just that alone, most people wouldn’t be able to hang with it that long. But if you give them a few other things as a reason why they’re out there paying their money, then they start to listen to some music that’s on a very high level of sophistication, and they start to get it emotionally. Because that’s what the final result of the music is about, is about the emotional effect that it has on… But some people, if you give them something like this without something that brings them into it, then they’re never going to get to the place that they can really listen to it. And getting people to listen to the music is the first thing you have to do to see whether they’re going to like it or not.

TP:   I’d like to get back to the question of what, concretely, is not properly understood about Dizzy Gillespie.

SLIDE:   That he was a very intelligent guy. The reason they didn’t understand him is because he was able to deal with people on all different levels of intelligence. He could deal with the guy in the street that spoke bad English. He could deal with a person who had a very extensive vocabulary. You see, he was a very intelligent person, but not where he looked down on other people who didn’t have the same intelligence development that he had.

HEATH:   He was a people person. Dizzy liked all people, and they liked him for that reason.

SLIDE:   He liked to talk to the janitors and the…

JOHN LEE:   The man had an amazing understanding of logic. Dizzy would do shit, and you’d go… The best story I always tell that a lot of people don’t know about is when him and Sarah Vaughan took Earl Hines to the White House just as a guest. When they played during dinner, Nixon snuck up behind Dizzy and said, “Diz, uh, you think Earl would play for us even though he’s not here to play?” Dizzy dropped his fork and said, “You’re the President; you ask him.” He asked Dizzy to ask him. Just think about that. “You’re the President. You ask him. I’m not the President.”

MOODY:   Dizzy was a helluva speller. Dizzy could spell damn near anything. You know how he got his name? They said he was dizzy because he did little funny things. But that saying goes, “Dizzy was dizzy like a fox.”

TP:   So he was a very precise person. He could spell out all the rhythms, he could spell out all the chords, and he did that for four generations of musicians.

SLIDE:  Yes. He loved grammar, he told me.

TP:   Grammar musical and verbal.

SLIDE:  Yes.

HEATH:   Dizzy was a born genius, man.

JOHN LEE:   that’s it. That’s the bottom line.

HEATH:   He was a born genius. When he went to school he was throwing spitballs around at the other kids, because he already knew what the teacher was saying anyway. He was bored.

TP:   Dizzy was married fifty years to a very strong woman. What effect do you think she had on his success in the music business?

MOODY:   If it wasn’t for Lorraine, Dizzy… For everything that Dizzy did that was wonderful and brilliant and like a genius, he squandered. He’d spend. No matter what it is, if he saw it, he had to have it. He’d buy it. He could get it, but Lorraine kind of put a rein on him, like, “Cool it; you don’t have to do this, you don’t have to do this…” She slowed him down. Because Dizzy was going 90,000 miles an hour, boy.

JOHN LEE:   He recognized that she was his anchor, would bring him down to earth all the time.

MOODY:   Yes.

JOHN LEE:   She had amazing common sense and amazing discipline. Lorraine had amazing discipline. She was a very devout Catholic.

MOODY:   You know what cracked me up? She said, “I damn near burned the house down trying to save his black ass.” Because you burn candles in the Catholic religion. She said, “I damn near burned the house down trying to save his black ass.”

JOHN LEE:   There’s a famous story about Lorraine when someone was coming through… Do you all know this story about when someone was coming through the kitchen?

HEATH:   No.

JOHN LEE:   Dizzy had bought Lorraine a shotgun. Someone knocked the screen out the window, and he got up, he got his arms in… Lorraine is around the corner with the shotgun, standing there. Got his arms in, and the guy had… God saved him. They say he got halfway through and he stopped, and he said, “no,” and he backed up and left. She would have blown his head off. She was going to shoot him when he got through that window.

SLIDE:   She wouldn’t shoot     him halfway through.

JOHN LEE:   No-no. She said, “Okay, if he comes all the way in here, he’s dead.” But he thought about it. This guy got kissed by an angel, went “wait, no,” and backed out.

SLIDE:   A guy who goes into people’s houses to rob should be shot.

JOHN LEE:   The gun was cocked. She was right around the corner. She was watching him.

RODITI:  I feel if it wasn’t for bebop, the music would have made no sense in my life. Bebop created everything that I am now. All the pleasure. The pleasure of playing, the pleasure of composing, the pleasure of composing in a Brazilian vein even is influenced by bebop as well.

JOHN LEE:   The challenge of it.

SLIDE:   I’m with Claudio on that. Bebop brought something to music that was so important for music to have, to make music become all that it can be. There’s one thing that was missing. Because we had the European harmony, we had the African rhythms, we had influences from a lot of people. But we didn’t really have the importance of making the most music out of whatever you do, more so than all of the rules and all of the customs. Bebop is the thing that made musicians develop the whole respect for what they make in music. Made musicians respect music and respect what you have to put into music to get whatever you want out of it. Bebop was very important in that way. If you hear a musician who doesn’t have bebop in their playing, and you’re a good musician, you will know it.

HEATH:   Bebop took the Afro-American classical music to a higher level.

JOHN LEE:   And it’s a lifelong challenge, isn’t it. Still practicing and learning stuff.

HEATH:   As musicians we get as much fun out of… I enjoy finding things. Like the piece I’m writing now called “The Endless Search.” That’s what we’re all involved in. The endless search.

TP:   Does playing Dizzy’s music now, after 50-60 years of knowing it and playing it, hold the same sort of excitement… Obviously, it would be on a different level. But does it hold the same sort of excitement now as it did then?

HEATH:   To us. And the audiences we’ve been playing for.

SLIDE:   It has the important energy of guidance to it, and giving you something to judge, whatever you play. No matter what style you play, if you have a real firm understanding of the tradition of bebop, then you have a way of looking at whatever you play and telling whether it has any real value or not. You can play a completely different style, but you have something to judge what you’re playing, what music is there really in what I’m doing. Because you can easily get into a style that’s very exciting and very impressive. It doesn’t have to be musical.

HEATH:   Because bebop is, like I say, the endless search. That means if we are trying to learn something and striving to get better all the time, we are not thinking about getting to the level where we want to make a whole lot of money. We’re not thinking about that. And watering things down so the general public will like it. We’re not catering to that. In bettering the music, we are bettering ourselves as human beings. That should make everybody want to be better.

TP:   And Dizzy Gillespie was an exemplar and an avatar of that attitude.

MOODY:   That’s what I was saying. People ask me what I do… When I play, I play for myself. And the reason I play for myself is because my goal in life is to play better tomorrow than I did today for myself. What I’m saying is that I am going to give you the best that I can give you. I can’t do any better than that. That’s what bebop is. When people are giving you something that is great… I mean, you can’t get anything better than that. Because Dizzy didn’t say [SINGS THEME OF “Bebop”] He didn’t do that so people could say, “Wow!” But if you want to make somebody’s mind grow, [SINGS “Bebop”…] That’s spiritual and mindblowing. And that’s why bebop I think is more valid than any kind of music that you have. Even classical music. Because in classical music, nobody plays bebop through the keys. Beethoven’s minor or whatever symphony, just one thing. If they want to say classical music is better than jazz, play all those things through different keys, and then I’ll go along with them.

JOHN LEE:   The best explanation I’ve ever heard is that classical music is the expression of one man, the composer; everyone else is an interpreter. In jazz, everyone… Listen, I do want to say one thing, Ted. It’s the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band. Slide Hampton is our Musical Director. The small group is the Alumni All Stars, because we recorded like that. And the record is coming out in September.

TP:   I have one final question for each of you, counter-clockwise, starting with James Moody.  It’s perhaps a little more complicated for James Moody, because you played with him for so long. But let’s say three favorite recordings or performances by Dizzy Gillespie.

MOODY:   I couldn’t answer that. When you hear music, it’s like eating. Today you might want some beef, you might want some fish. If you listen to a recording, it might be the greatest thing you’ve ever heard at that time, and then later on it won’t be, then next month… I can’t say.

TP:   Fair enough. Slide Hampton, can you say?

HAMPTON:   I can. “Things To Come,” “I Can’t Get Started,” and “That’s Earl, Brother.” The first piece I ever heard in this style of music was “That’s Earl, Brother.” That was Sonny Stitt and Dizzy, a wonderful composition written by Ray Brown, and the solos… The great thing about Dizzy’s solos is that they sound like a part of the composition, a part of the arrangement. I heard the recording of “I Can’t Get Started” and also in person, and it always makes me feel great to hear it. “Things To Come” was just one of the most exciting things… This was one of the biggest changes that came in music, and also the thing that made people realize that music has to change, like everything else – and it has to get better. All of a sudden, people have taken music to a very low level of quality. It’s the wrong thing to do. It’s wrong to do this. Dizzy and them were the exact contrary of that. They were putting their whole lives into music to make it better, so people’s minds would be more stimulated by music, not only in music, but in their lives in general.

TP:   Jimmy Heath?

HEATH:   I think the first one would be “Shaw Nuff,” with Charlie Parker and Dizzy and Sid Catlett. That’s the first thing I heard, and that just blew my mind. There are so many by the big band that I love. “Things To Come” is one. Also some of the later ones. Dizzy’s arrangement of “Lover Come Back to Me” is one that I think was exceptional, and I’d say some of the things he did with… That’s very difficult. Some of the things… “Con Alma.” I think “Con Alma” is one of the greatest compositions ever written. When I hear it, it touches my heart and soul deeply, and I think about Dizzy and it makes me want to tear up and cry. When I hear it, it just puts me in a solemn mood of understanding that such a beautiful composition is just like Dizzy was – a beautiful man.

RODITI:   Of course, I would have to say that first recording of Dizzy with Roy Eldridge stays in my heart as one of my favorites. I also am very fond of the 1949 Metronome All-Stars, “Overtime,” with Dizzy, Fats Navarro and Miles Davis in the trumpet section. To me, they elevated the trumpet to such a height that this remains with me, very much so. But there are so many recordings. I should say also “The Eternal Triangle,” Dizzy with Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins is another. There are so many. But these come to my mind at this moment.

JOHN LEE:   I’m the youngest in the room. My father brought home Dizzy On The Riviera and played “Desafinado” over and over and over again, so that made a big impression on me. Then “Night In Tunisia.” Are we talking about an album or a tune.

TP:   Either way.

JOHN LEE: It’s hard to pick. I was going to say “Things To Come,” but that song was licensed on so many albums. Sonny Side Up for me, and then Dizzy On The Riviera, and then Dizzy Live at Newport with “Dizzy’s Blues,” with the great Al Grey solo and Wynton Kelly on it – an amazing record. But I’m a lot younger, so I wasn’t exposed to “Shaw Nuff” and all that stuff.  That’s what I was exposed to first through my whole childhood – Dizzy at Newport, Dizzy On The Riviera and “Things to Come.” But I can’t really tell you what album my father had of it. My father loved Dizzy, though.

MOODY:   You see what I’m talking about? Everything that everybody said, I dug. Each thing. “Things To Come.” “Con Alma.” But I can’t tell you what, because when I hear all of it, each one is “Ah, boy, yeah,” “Ah, boy, yeah.”

JOHN LEE:    The one thing I’m going to miss tonight is that we’re not going to play [sings  refrain of “I Can’t Get Started.”] Slide, can you take that off the album. It’s about time. We’ve got to have that.

SLIDE:   We have to play that, man. That’s everything. That’s all of life, man! If we play that, that’s going to make everything on the planet better.

JOHN LEE:   These arrangements got lost. We could play it in the small group. But the big band arrangement Slide is talking about is only a 4-minute arrangement.

SLIDE:   See, that was a piece that was recorded by a lot of trumpet players. And to imagine a guy who plays so modern to be able to make another recording of it that would stand up against the recording that came before is incredible.

JOHN LEE:   We’ve got the two best ballad trumpet players alive in the band.

HEATH:   You can send me home after that.

TP: Everyone’s been laughing about Jimmy’s reactions to a photograph of Dizzy in the Roy DeCarava book doing… What would you say he’s doing?

SLIDE:   That’s a pirouette.

MOODY:   Dizzy got all that dancing stuff from Lorraine. She was a chorus girl, you know.

JOHN LEE: We pack them in everywhere. Tanglewood, Kennedy Center.

MOODY:   If we could make a movie with Jimmy and his brother following Dizzy’s band around with the ties and berets. We could get Spike Lee to play the part of Jimmy! It would be a great movie.

TP:   Who could play Percy?

HEATH:   I don’t know. That stuff with Fats and Miles, man, that ain’t necessary. That’s bush. All them guys had something. They were wonderful.

SLIDE:   Well, Miles was wonderful, man.

HEATH:   we know that.  I got him in my car, all the ballads.

SLIDE:   Miles showed a way that a person who didn’t have all the technique, all of the impressive technique that Dizzy had, and still make a lot of music. And Miles made a lot of music with his simple way of playing.

HEATH:   He sure did. A voice.

SLIDE:   He took all these great musicians and helped them become more popular. They came through his band; when they left his band, they could have their own band.

HEATH:   I don’t need no Miles Davis fans coming to holler at me for what I said about Fats. Fats was an incredible trumpet player. Miles wasn’t at that time. The thing is, at the time… Fats didn’t live long enough to be recognized by the world like Miles.

SLIDE:   Miles became more popular than Dizzy or any of the guys. Because he played the songs. If you want to become popular, there was a time when you could play songs. Not now, but there was a time. Now, actually, some of the guys are starting to go back and sing the songs again.

Let’s start with “Whisper Not.” You can’t go wrong with that. Then let’s do “One Bass Hit,” then come on up into the new stuff.