For John Patitucci’s 56th Birthday, a 2009 Conversation for www.jazz.com; an Uncut Blindfold Test For Downbeat in 2002; and a “Director’s Cut” Article For DownBeat in 2000

For master bassist and composer John Patitucci’s birthday, here’s a trifecta — an extended conversation in 2009 that appeared on the now-extinct ‘zine http://www.jazz.com; an uncut Downbeat Blindfold Test in 2002; and a “director’s cut” of an article that I wrote about John for Downbeat in 2000.

-_-_-_-_

John Patitucci (Aug. 12, 2009):
TP: Let’s start with the Remembrance trio project. I read the bio. It started when you were doing a rehearsal at Joe Lovano’s home for Communion back in 2000, and Brad Mehldau wasn’t there for part of a rehearsal, and you liked the feel of the trio.

JP: We were up at Joe’s pad, and it was glorious. He has a high-ceilinged thing in his house upstate. We walked in there, and we just figured, “Oh, let’s do this without the piano and just rehearse.” We started playing and we looked at each other, like, “what…?” It was amazing. You can’t contrive that. I don’t care who it is. It could be all-star people, things that look good on paper, and you get together and the chemistry isn’t quite there, or there’s different conceptions that don’t line up. This was just instantaneous. Ever since then, whenever we saw each other, I’d say, “Man, remember that?” They’d said, “Yeah, I remember that; we’ve got to do…” We’d always talk about, “We’ve got to do a trio thing, we’ve got to do a trio thing.” So finally, I’d been also… I always wanted to do that anyway. Any bass player in jazz, if you ask them, probably would say it’s something that they would be interested in doing, because it just sounds so good to have that air and space in the music. But finally for me…I had been listening, obviously, to Sonny’s records for a while. I’d always loved the one with Elvin Jones and Wilbur Ware, Live at the Village Vanguard, but also the stuff with Max Roach and Oscar Pettiford is just amazing on <i>Freedom Suite</I>. I thought that I’ve waited, I’m going to be 50 this year—maybe this is it. Because I can’t wait forever. I guess my first philosophy was wait til I get a little older, and maybe I’ll have some time to get a little stronger before I attempt to put something… This is a heavy thing for me. With trio, there’s a legacy and a history, and you don’t want to come out of the gate sounding like you’re just doing a retro homage to these great records—even though they’re worthy of all that. But I didn’t feel that I wanted to do something that would be copying, but something that would be in tribute but also trying to add some other colors and personal things, if I could, to add some other things in the mix.

TP: You stated a whole interview’s worth of themes there. You mentioned waiting until you’re strong enough…

JP: Which you can never be.

TP: But for someone of your reputation and experience to say that is interesting. Also, you’re speaking about the overall sound of the record, which is very specifically a hardcore jazz date, with that feel, whereas many of your recordings with Concord have dealt with Afro-Caribbean feels, classical music, numerous configurations. You even mentioned in an earlier bio that some people like one sound within the record, whereas you like variety. You’ll probably contest this assertion.

JP: Yes, it’s interesting you’d say that. I read in some reviews that people didn’t get some of the other sounds on the record. They said it’s a straight-ahead blowing date. One guy said, “This is a humble record, it’s modest,” but the you get to “Scenes From an Opera,” where all of a sudden there’s a string quartet and an alto clarinet, and that’s not like a straight-ahead blowing date at all. That’s another color introduced. You could also argue that not only on “Scenes From An Opera,” but also “Mali” has the West African influence, “Messaien’s Gumbo” there’s New Orleans…

TP: I didn’t say a straight-ahead blowing date. I’m thinking of one sound with three musicians, with whom you blend together all these flavors in a very 21st century way, an organic way that reflects your experience.

JP: But it’s interesting that I had a review that said “this is a simple, straight-ahead record.” I thought, “Did you listen to the same record that I…” I guess because on some of the things we were paying tribute to those things that Sonny did in a very organic way—the way Joe is able to improvise and play with such authority and Brian’s feeling. I understand that. But to me, that’s not the only thing this is.

TP: Let’s talk about putting together the repertoire, the arc of the date. Are most of them recent tunes, written with this date in mind?

JP: I write all year round, every year. I just write. I write classical commissions. I write tunes. I write pieces for piano. I just write as much as I can, within my crazy schedule. I try to remain a work in progress as a composer, trying to compose and expand. However, I did know who I was writing for, for this. So over time, as I gathered things, I knew that it was going to be Brian and Joe. I mean, I knew that years ago, when I decided this is a project that we’re going to do together at some point. Then other things crept in. I kept thinking, and would think, “Oh, this would be good for that.” So as I collected more things, the things that sounded like they would go with this project got lumped into this area over here, which became the record.

Some things were late additions. Like, the piece for Michael Brecker was the result of me, over a year ago… Last baseball season, I sat down in my living room to change the strings on my 6-string bass, because I had to do a gig—and it’s pretty tedious. So I had the game on while I was changing the strings, and as I was tuning up a couple of strings, this drone thing started happening, and I thought, “Wait a minute…” Then, the Yankees were losing, and I turned it off. “Wait a minute; what’s this?” I found this little thing, with these voicings around this open G-string in the middle. Something started happening, and I said, “Wait a minute, I’d better write this down.” I thought maybe this is a little interlude on the record somewhere. Then after I started writing it, I decided, “no, I want to record this. Something is here; I don’t even know what it’s going to become.”

But the interesting that happens, which is part of the recording process that I love, is that I try to approach the recording process, even though I compose things also improvisationally… When we went to do the string octet… My wife and I were going to do the string octet, which was four celli and four basses, and she and I overdubbed them all. We figured, “Ok, we’ll get a baby-sitter, we’ll go to the studio, and we’ll knock out the string octet.” Then I thought, “I’ll try that thing I’m thinking, and see what happens.” But we had the time constraint—the baby-sitter is only a few hours. So we did the string octet, and we were pleased with that, we took our time, made sure everything was right. Then I said, “well, I’ll just give myself a little time on this thing and see if it develops; if it doesn’t develop, I won’t use it.” I brought my piccolo 6-string bass as well (this is for “Remembrance”). I figured, “well, I’ll try it.” So I put the thing down, then I thought, “Let me double it with the regular 6-string bass,” and it sounded like a 12-string guitar. I thought, “Wow, that’s kind of interesting.” Then I put a couple of passes of a sort of recitative melodic statement over it, and that’s when it hit me. It became this really emotional piece, and it felt like Mike. It felt like me trying to process… I don’t want to get too heavy about it. But it definitely spoke to me about something emotional, and I thought, “That’s for Mike.”

TP: When did the “Remembrance” theme become the overriding idea? Because the recording is a suite of homages to various people who have gone.

JP: That happened organically. As the tunes came together, the tunes suggested, “Well, this is really for…” Some of them I had already titled before I knew I was going to do a whole record on this theme. It just happened naturally that a bunch of these tunes… I thought, “Well, that’s what this record is; it’s become this.” Things kept happening. We kept losing more people, and I thought, “wow, I’ve got to make a statement.” But it’s not only that. Like I say in the liner notes, it’s to honor the people that we still have, who are still making strong music, because oftentimes people wait until the person dies, and appreciate them then, which is sad. Now we have people like Sonny who is still creating incredible things, Wayne Shorter obviously, all the people I mentioned there. So it’s also remembering to honor them now, and also remembering to be present. This is something in my spiritual walk, in my growth as a person spiritually that I’m trying to get better at, which I think is a challenge to all of us—to be present in the moment, not worry about the future, not get stuck being always nostalgic about the past and being locked there, and actually be here right in this instant. That’s the way these guys play, too, and that’s the way playing in Wayne’s band is—it’s very present. People are really aware of the time that we have together, and we really try to live it to the fullest and cherish it. I didn’t want it to be a totally mournful thing where people are supposed to get the record and mourn. No, that’s not what this is. You can hear it in the music. It’s a celebration of that inspiration.

TP: Do you see this in any way as a companion date to the previous record, Line by Line, which was primarily a trio with guitar and augmented by Chris Potter? Are there relationships between the two?

JP: I didn’t really think of them that way, no.

TP: You had seen Line by Line as a companion to the previous recordings.

JP: Right. Because it also had expanded orchestration and writing for strings. Line and Line and Songs, Stories and Spirituals were a couplet to me. This was something other… Although it makes sense to me that it came out after Line by Line, because it was time to change up the orchestration. I had done two records where I had written extensively for a little bit expanded formats. I thought I’d pare down and see if, as a composer, I could still make orchestrational colors happen with a more limited number of people. That was a challenge for me. A composer should be able to get orchestrational variety with a couple of instruments or many. Of course, these guys have so many colors that you could put one of them on the stage by themself, and you have a world of color. So I wasn’t really worried about getting enough colors with Joe and Brian.

TP: Before we talk about your simpatico with Brian Blade, with whom you’ve had an ongoing relationship for a decade, talk a bit about your connection to Joe Lovano.

JP: I fell in love with Joe Lovano’s playing when I heard him on John Scofield’s recordings. Sco and I have a history together. I’ve always loved John’s playing. I was a fan. I used to transcribe his stuff when I was in college; John influenced my playing. My brother is a guitarist, so a lot of guitar players influenced my playing on the 6-string bass, because of the way they approached harmony and lines. Wes Montgomery was one that hit me. Pat Martino. Benson, Sco was one of my heroes. I used to see Abercrombie quite a bit, too, in the late ‘70s and ‘80s.

Anyway, Sco’s records with Lovano with Bill Stewart. I love Sco. And we’ve played together quite a bit now; every once in a while, we get together and do something else. Now was a big deal for me, because I used to love that quartet with Joe in it, whether the bassist was Dennis Irwin, or before him Marc Johnson played a little bit, and Charlie Haden played on some of the records… Man, Joe’s playing…man, this guy is amazing. We would run into him on the road and hear him. “Man, this guy, he’s special.” So I had wanted to do something with him for years, and in fact, I probably would have hired him for Now, but I didn’t want it to look like I had just hijacked John Scofield’s band—it was Bill Stewart, John, and if I’d used Joe, it would have been way too much.

TP: Another convergence about this and Line and Line is your use of the electric 6-string. On a lot of the recordings prior to Line by Line you were playing primarily acoustic, and then doing an electric feature at the end of the recital.

JP: Yes, there would be two or three tracks maybe.

TP: But on this record and the previous one, the 6-string electric is more integrally orchestrated into the flow.

JP: When I moved back to New York, I was trying to dispel… Part of the reason why I came back was obviously to play with all these players. As a composer, there’s no better pool of incredible artists than New York for the music I want to write and want to play. But the other part is that I felt I was getting pigeonholed a little bit. Some people would say, “He’s that fusion guy.” What are you talking about? I’ve been playing bebop since I was a teenager, and playing with older musicians, too, who were amazing already in my late teens. So I felt that was a strange thing, and when I moved back to New York I was really excited. What happened was that the stereotype got shattered to the point that people literally would say to me, “Oh, you play electric bass? I didn’t know you did that?”

TP: You told me a story about a woman contractor called you for a gig…

JP: Yeah, a contractor. I said, “What do you want me to bring?” “What do you mean?” I said, “Do you want acoustic bass, electric bass, fretless? What do you want?” She said, “You play electric bass?” I said, “Okay! I guess the stereotype is erased.” I didn’t want to totally cancel out on another part of what I do.

But I also wanted to put a viewpoint out there that’s not often expressed, it seems, that in this music there is a place for the electric bass in a musical way and in an organic way. It doesn’t have to be that when you pick this up, all of a sudden it’s this loud, thrashing, bright kind of edgy sound. It can be a warm, organic kind of thing that really works in the music. Obviously, Steve Swallow has been doing this for many years, asserting this viewpoint. But not many people have that viewpoint with that instrument.

TP:   Observing your musical production this year, how relationships and continuities play out over time. For example, the trio with Jack DeJohnette and Danilo Perez—you recorded and you performed with them. You played with Wayne this summer. You played trio with Roy. You played trio with Ed Simon, which is an important relationship, though less high profile.

JP: I love Ed. He was in my band for quite a while.

TP: Then also this band. So your current musical production gives us ample opportunity to discuss your past. And the trio with Lovano and Brian Blade embodies so many flavors of 21st century jazz. Of the people you’ve played with this year. Wayne Shorter… Well, Wayne Shorter you first played with when you were living in Los Angeles, and played with him periodically…

JP: Since 1986.

TP: Talk about how that experience has evolved.

JP: Early on, when I was playing with him, it was mostly an electric bass gig. We were doing the music from Atlantis, and we’d play some with the acoustic bass, but mostly it was electric, and then we went on the road where oftentimes it was only electric. We were playing very orchestrated music, where the basslines were all massive, incredible. That was fun. But the interesting thing was coming out of… I had started to do stuff, I had done some records of my own and been playing with Chick a lot, and then in 1991 I did a number of weeks with Wayne, including one here in New York at the Blue Note. We’re standing on that small stage together, and I had that 6-string bass, and he’s right next to me. The solos he was playing… A lot of the tunes in those days were really heavily written, but then the solo sections would be open, one chord or something. But the things he would create off that were just staggering. Then he’d turn to me and say, “want some?” It was good for me, because night after night, I had to try to do something after he would chisel one of these granite, monumental solos of doom. Then I didn’t know what to do. I started to feel like my stuff was really trite. I realized I needed to get to a deeper place, because when he plays, he can with one sound destroy you, just emotionally. Just one sound placed in a certain way. One note. I was finding that I needed more of that in my playing. I felt I really wanted to get to the place where I could tell a larger story. It was good for me. Because he was very encouraging. He used to give me a lot of room to blow. He liked the bass to stretch. He would turn to me and say, “Yeah, Paganini—go ahead, go ahead.” He was into it. But it made me realize that not only did I have to learn, how to get deeper… Also, he did it with density, too. That was the thing. He could do it with one note or a million, just like Trane. He could destroy you with one, or his version of sheets of sound, or whatever. You’d be really moved by it. It wasn’t licks. There were no licks. So that was a wakeup call.

Then again, when we started the band in the late ‘90s, I started playing with him again, before Danilo and Brian were in the picture. We did some gigs. He was thinking about doing some expanded form things, and we did…

TP: You did something with the Detroit Symphony, I believe.

JP: We did that. Even before that, we did something for a giant Buddhist festival in Japan. That was a large group, with Terri Lyne and Jim Beard, Shunzo Ohno, David Gilmore—playing a mixture of things. But in the ‘90s, he started calling again, because he knew I’d left Chick to do my own thing. He always used to call me, all through those years… My wife and I had experienced a still-birth the year he lost his wife. So we had talked, and towards the end of the ‘90s, we got together and started… he said, “do you want to do something?” I said, “Look, I’m loose. I’m doing some stuff with my own group. Any time you call, I’m there. Absolutely.” so he knew he had that kind of love and commitment from me. The other stuff evolved over time.

TP: You mentioned to me that you first met Brian Blade on Danilo Perez’ recording date, Suite of the Americas, and you and he have evolved into one of the classic bass-drum pairings over the decade. What qualities contribute to your simpatico, make you such an interesting fit?

JP: Well, we have a lot of shared love of a lot of music, and also experience in terms of spiritual things. The way he was raised, and my love for that type of culture in music from the church, in the African-American tradition, and also my faith and his faith… There’s a lot of things we share. Sometimes you hit it off with somebody, and there’s an immediate click, an immediate connection. You can’t contrive it. It’s hard to put into words. Brian’s a part of my family. What’s interesting is that I could feel that… Before I moved back to New York, I was driving in L.A., and a record came on the radio which I think was him with Josh, and I heard him play. I didn’t know who it was. I freaked out. I said, “Who is that drummer? That’s it.” It just hit me. Like, “That’s the guy I need to work with.” I didn’t know who he was or anything, then I found out… Then I started hearing his name a lot.

TP: He started recording with Joshua in ‘95.

JP: I moved back in ‘96 and it was right before I moved back, so it must have been ‘95 that I heard him on a record, and I almost pulled off the freeway. I remember going to a recording session, and Harvey Mason was on it, and he also was saying, “Have you heard this guy Brian Blade?” I said, “Man, I heard him.” He said, “That’s it.” I said, “That is it.”

TP: What is “that”?

JP: Well, what is that? That is somebody whose spirit on the drums is connected to all the masters. You could easily say he’s connected to Elvin, Max, Roy, DeJohnette, all the guys who have changed the course of jazz drumming and have contributed a voice and a beauty and a power… His musicianship is so unbelievably high, and that’s the one thing that I think separates him from most of the guys. He’s perfectly happy playing next to nothing or as much as you want. He’s got those tools. He can make small sounds. He can make big sounds. He can have a lot of density. He can have absolutely simplicity. He can play any kind of groove you can think of. There’s just not that many guys who you can say even three of those guys about.

TP: I guess one of those guys might be Jack DeJohnette, who was integral in your transition from the West Coast to East, and with whom you did the [tk] project this year.

JP: Our relationship started with Gonzalo on the record, Live in Japan. He was very cool, and from that time on, he was the one who schemed to put me together with Danilo Perez. It was his idea. He introduced us at a record date by Eugene Pay, with Mike Brecker. Danilo came to the studio with David Sanchez, and I met them. Jack said, “Yeah, man, you’d better play together.” He was on it. He heard it.

The trio with Jack, Danilo and I did a really fun week at the Blue Note. When the three of us get together, it’s a whole different relationship. Jack is obviously a force of nature and a very interesting musician for a lot of things. There’s a guy who can play the piano and do all this stuff, but also his connection to Elvin, as well as Haynes… But I hear a lot of connection to Elvin. The swirling nature and the big beat. When I play with him, it reminds me… I didn’t get to play with Elvin; I missed out on that. I often think, well, maybe this is in the direction of what it would feel like to play with Elvin.

TP: In that trio, the grooves were from everywhere, but distilled in a very personal way. You have gone through periods of getting really immersed in Afro-diasporic grooves, particularly a decade ago when you were playing with Giovanni Hidalgo and El Negro and were really deep into presenting those sounds within your own compositions. On the Remembrance project, the grooves are from Africa, from New Orleans, from various aspects of jazz. Can you discuss how your own rhythmic compass has developed over this decade?

JP: One key factor… Before that, back as far as the record Another World, which was a GRP record in the early ‘90s, where I did a lot of collaboration with Armand Sabal-Lecco, who’s from Cameroon…a lot of stuff on that record was very African. I had gotten into Salif Keita when I was with Chick. When we went to Portugal for the first time, we met an African guy from Angola who hipped us to a lot of stuff. Then when Mike Brecker got with Paul Simon and was hanging with all the Cameroonian guys, he introduced me to Armand Sabal-Lecco. Mike was the one who also suggested to me, “Check some of this stuff out; you’d love this”—I got way into it. Before that, I had played with some musicians from South America. I had played with Acuna and Justo Almaria in L.A., and some other people, and a ton of Brazilian guys.

When I got back east, I started delving into more of the Caribbean stuff, the Cuban and Puerto Rican aspects, and also Danilo was a huge factor in my coming to a greater understanding of this music. He would give me rhythmic exercises. He would teach me how to get inside the three. The three is at the center, the 6/8 is at the center of all the music. It’s inside so much stuff. So he would give me little exercises where you could go in and out of the 6/8, within the three, and the pulse would stay the same but you’d be accessing all these different worlds of rhythm. This is what these guys get so great at, and take to such a deep place, where they can… Giovanni and Negro can metrically modulate and do all kinds of things that are so organic and so swinging, deeply… They have a profound understanding of the triple meter, the 6/8, how that can impact the 2 and the 4/4 and big-three. You get into all these multiples of the rhythm. We’ve been talking about that and doing musical exercises for years. He’s helped me deepen my clock with that stuff. It’s profound, how good he is at teaching it, too. He’s phenomenal at that. He understands it very well. He always jokes. He says I taught him how to read chord symbols and some harmonic things like that, but he taught me a world of rhythmic stuff. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a drummer first. I had hand drums, I had bongos and maracas, and I was singing. I loved the drums. I mean, I had the bass, too. But I remember, even after I started playing the bass, I tried to get my dad to let me have a drumset, and he said no. [LAUGHS] So the drums are something that I’ve always revered, too. Danilo, too. Sometimes he jokes around, he sits down at the drumset, and we’ll play together on the soundcheck. He has a great feeling.

TP: Then this summer you also went on the road with Roy Haynes for the first time in a while.

JP: In a while, yes. Danilo and I had been with him, and done quite a few tours and a record in the late ‘90s. Roy was in phenomenal spirits. Obviously, it was a little different, because Danilo burst his Achilles tendon, and he’s been out of commission for a couple of months waiting for it to heal up. Dave Kikoski played, and played well, and Papa Haynes was charging! In high spirits. We did 9 concerts in two weeks.

TP: I get the sense that playing in this trio in the ‘90s was very important for you, in a lot of ways. It came on the heels of your move from L.A. to New York, when you were determined to establish yourself on the acoustic bass, both in the public eye and probably in your own…

JP: I was trying to make a statement, to say: “Look, this is a big part of who I am. It’s not a peripheral kind of thing. It’s not a dalliance. It’s deeply who I am.”

TP: If anyone had any doubts, all they’d need to was listen to that trio. Could you evaluate the experience? Not only did you interact with Danilo, but you got inside the mind of Roy Haynes for a couple of years.

JP: I’d played with a lot of people, but when I played with Haynes it was kind of like swing finishing school. You felt, “Ok, if Haynes likes it, I guess I’m going to be ok.” Because obviously, he’s somebody who’s played with everyone from Louis Armstrong and Bird, Bud Powell, Monk, Coltrane, all these people, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, We Three—you can go on and on and on. For somebody like that to go, “Yeah, it’s feeling good,” then you feel encouraged. “Ok, maybe I have an understanding of this music after all. Obviously, if you play with somebody like that, who’s been connected to all the things that mattered to you coming up, all your heroes, the whole encyclopedia of jazz in one human being, which is what I call Roy Haynes. He is the living, walking, breathing encyclopedia of jazz. So if you can play with him and he likes it, then you can breathe a little easier and enjoy the fact that something you’ve been passionate about all your life makes sense to somebody you really look up to.

TP: One interesting thing about the trio at the time is that the group was so open-ended and triological, rather than a piano trio…

JP: Right, it was more an equal voice trio. He gave us a lot of trust and a lot of space.

TP: it sounds that this attitude filtered into your mutual interaction with Wayne Shorter.

JP: The relationship between Danilo and I is another thing that’s very special. We’re like brothers. We spend a lot of time together in a lot of different circumstances. So for us to be together and working in different circumstances is a source of great joy and excitement. We’ve had a chance to develop a rapport. That was a big deal for me, because after playing with Chick all those years and working some with Herbie, playing with a younger pianist, even younger than myself, somebody who is really a chance-taker and risk-taker like the guys I was used to… It’s hard to find a more adventurous pianist than either Chick or Herbie. Those guys don’t care. They’ll be reckless, which is great, and I learned a lot from that. Danilo is cut from the same cloth. He’s reckless.

TP: You told a story in the Jazz Improv interview about Herbie reharmonizing Roy Hargrove’s ballad…

JP: That was at a rehearsal for the Directions in Music project. We were going into Kuumba for warmup gigs for that tour. It was right after 9/11, too. It was heavy. We got on a plane like a week after. My wife was freaking! “What are you doing?” So we flew out there and rehearsed, and we saw Herbie singlehandedly turn a nice tune into a masterpiece, right before our eyes. He just started sitting there and patiently reworking everything. Mike and I were watching him… He started playing, and he got into it. He’d go, “No, this won’t do,” and then he’s changing…Finally, he looks up at Roy and goes, “Man, I’m sorry. I’m changing your tune; is that ok?” Roy goes, “Man, change all of it! Go ahead!” It was turning into this incredible ballad. He reharmonized it from top to bottom.

TP: I’ve channeled the discussion to people you’re playing with, but the reason we’re having this conversation is because of your own records and the group you’re leading this week, as well as your instrumentalism. So I’d like to talk about bass stuff. Since you’ve been reemphasizing the 6-string more in recent years, can you speak more to how your relationship to that instrument has evolved since you came here determined to have people know you as an acoustic bassist, and then subsequently wanting it to be clear that you do both—that you’re a multi-instrumentalist. When I spoke with you for the bio, you stated that your sound has become brighter, whereas most of your contemporaries strive for a brighter tone.

JP: If you want to speak about preference, just subjectively, I think what happened was this. When Jaco Pastorius hit the scene, he played a jazz bass, which has more of a mid-rangey sound, and people got way into that. Everybody went out and bought a jazz bass, everybody took frets out of their instrument, everybody wanted to be like him. It was interesting, because I loved and respected that so much that at one point I went, “You know what? I’m not doing that. Because nobody’s going to play like that guy.” That was a voice. That was totally unique to me. So I didn’t go that way. I stayed with fretted instruments. Then in ‘85 I wound up finally getting a 6-string bass, because I’d seen what Anthony Jackson was doing, and I decided I’d go far way from the fretless jazz bass thing, which more of a mid-range bass sound, that I wanted a broader sound on both ends. So with the 6-string bass, you had a low B-string, so you could get the 6-string bottom, and then you could go all the way up with the high C-string and get like a tenor saxophone thing going. So that was my idea about doing something else. I knew that I wouldn’t sound like Anthony. Anthony is another very individual voice, very beautiful and very special. So I deliberately took a left turn at that point. Most guys… There was an overwhelming number of guys, especially here in New York… In New York, the whole fusion scene that ensued, it was like you had to play a 4-string jazz bass, otherwise you weren’t accepted. People didn’t even like 5-string and 6-string basses. They’d look at you like “Yucch.” That’s what I heard from younger guys who took up the 6 after I did. They said, “Well, maybe you can get away with it, but they tell us, ‘no, bring the 4-string; you can’t play that in here.’” So interesting. If you wanted to be part of the whole 55 Bar scene in the ‘80s, you had to have a 4-string jazz bass. But I would come into town with Chick or whatever, I’d bring my 6-string, go sit in with Stern and just play my stuff. I wasn’t really bound by that. I was just going, “Well, this is my voice now…” For a while, like a fool, I actually got rid of my old vintage fenders. I just got rid of them!

TP: You’re a stubborn guy. A man of principles.

JP: [LAUGHS] But it was originally out of profound respect. Because I would hear these guys trying to play like Jaco, and I was like, “Boy, that sounds like a really bad imitation.” When you hear the real thing, it’s like “whoa.” Why would you want to sound like a third-rate Jaco Pastorius, when he’s Jaco, and you’re not, and it’s going to remain that way, and nobody is going to play like that again. He was that. That was him. It was very special. It was also at a time, that precise moment when he did what he did… Also speaking about Jaco, what people are sleeping on a lot of times is he was an incredible composer. “Three Views Of A Secret.” Excuse me. That’s a classic. So I have a high regard for him. He’s the one who made the fretless electric bass a voice in the music world. What he did was so lyrical and beautiful. I would say, though, when he walked, the feeling is another zone, a more Caribbean, more fusiony kind of walking. A lot of young guys took him for their model for how to swing and walk, instead of going to check out Ron Carter or Ray Brown.

TP: But over the last few years, after several years of not emphasizing the 6-string electric and now bringing it back into the flow more, how… Are there just subtle things?

JP: Pretty subtle, because I never stopped playing it all these years. I just decided that I wanted to also use it in an organic way and continue growing on that instrument as well, so that I didn’t stop growing on that instrument, and only grow on… Because I’ve spent an enormous amount of time getting back into studying classical music on the acoustic bass—and I still do. I put in so much on that over the last 15-20 years that I wanted to make sure that I just didn’t let that stop. So I’ve been thinking about how I want to sound and do things.

TP: You mentioned your affinity for the drums and your father’s refusal to buy you a drumkit back in the day. Maybe this provides an opening to talk about your formative years. You’re raised in Brooklyn, the East Flatbush area. Large, warm Italian family. Shared a house with your uncle’s family—you’re on one floor, they’re on the other. All the kids are musicians, but the parents weren’t musicians. You got your first electric bass when you were 10. You heard jazz the first time when your grandfather was on some sort of job, and he saw a guy moving out of a brownstone, saw a box of records, asked if he could take them for his grandkids, brought them home, and one of the records was Art Blakey’s Mosaic with (Wayne Shorter again) “Children of the Night.”

JP: Yeah. I was 8 or 9 when I heard that record. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Freddie Hubbard and Wayne Shorter—Jymie Merritt on bass. I didn’t know what it was, but it moved me.

TP: So jazz enters your consciousness.

JP: Right in there. It was a typical Italian Brooklyn experience. Both sets of grandparents were no farther than 15 minutes away in Brooklyn, so we’d hang out a lot. My grandfather, who used to work on roads in Manhattan, came home from a job site one day with a box or two of records one day. He said, “Look, there was his guy who was leaving his brownstone, he was getting out of New York, he was moving, throwing out things.” My grandfather said, “You’re throwing away music?” “Ah, I’m leaving New York.” My grandfather said, “Well, I have some grandsons; you mind if I take these records?”

He didn’t know, but he changed our lives. In addition to <i>Mosaic</i>, there were some of those Wes Montgomery records with Ron and Herbie and Grady Tate. That went in deep. I mean, it just cut through my inability to understand. So when was 12, I decided that I was going to play the bass, and that was it.

When I started playing in Brooklyn…the whole discovery of the instrument… First I was trying to play guitar like my brother. It didn’t feel good. I was trying to learn how to read music and all this stuff, and I just couldn’t play with the pick. I’m left-handed, although I play right-handed. Then my brother put the electric in my hands, and that started to feel really good, and I started to play by ear and learn things off records. By then, it was the ‘60s, so you had the Motown stuff, then you had Hendrix, you had Cream, you had blues, B.B. King and all that—a lot of stuff happening. On the radio you could hear a lot of great stuff—Motown and the Beatles and all these other things. So all that was happening, and then in the house, there were Mario Lanza records, opera records being played—very Italian stuff. A wide mixture. For some reason, we even had a Glenn Campbell record. It was a good record, too, actually, because it had those Jimmy Webb tunes; Jimmy Webb was an incredible songwriter. So all this stuff was happening, and it was just part of the thing. I wasn’t really aware of anything. I was so young and naive. I just knew that I really loved this.

The reason why I didn’t get into anything really organized is because when I was a kid in Brooklyn they had me go to a Catholic school which had no music program. So there was nothing. It was like Miss Petraglia with a beat-up upright piano, who would bring us into a room, and we’d sing songs out of a music book. That was it. We moved to Long Island for about a year-and-a-half before we went to California, and that’s the first time I was in a school with a music program, and that’s where I was getting snare drum lessons for a year, when I said to my Dad, “I want to play the drums, too.” That was nixed. So the snare drum and all that was only about a year of me trying to learn rudiments. But they had a program, so even though I couldn’t really read music… One of my friends was a clarinet player, and he tried to get me learn…I played on one tune with the concert band or something. Then I went to 7th grade at a middle school in Farmingville, Long Island, and they had a program, too. They had an after-school thing. One of the English teachers had a rock band. So I played in that for a minute. Then when we went to California, there was big band in 8th grade, which I played in. I could hardly read music. I’d listen to the tune down once, and then I’d learn it and play along.

That’s when I encounter Chris Pohler, who became my mentor and remains… For this record, he’s the one who sent me a treatise that Messaien wrote called “The Seven Modes of Limited Transposition.” He said, “Check this out; you might find something to mess with.” I found one of those modes, which is Mode 3, which the whole melody of “Messaien’s Gumbo” is based on. So the ongoing relationship… Chris is also the one who challenged me before I did Line by Line and some of those other records… He said, “You’ve been composing all this music, but now I want you to think about challenging yourself to be like the composers, like Bach, who could generate their harmony purely from counterpoint.” So unlike jazz musicians, who plunk down chords and then write a melody, he said, “See if you can incorporate more of that contrapuntalism into your jazz writing.” So Chris has had a lot of great ideas over the years, and he’s a terrific guy. He encouraged me a lot. Got me into taking classical lessons when I was in college and all that.

TP: You were a double bass major at San Francisco State and Long Beach State.

JP: Yes, I was a classical bass major. I was playing in all the jazz groups, too, but my teachers expected me fully to do my recitals and then go do auditions for symphony orchestras.

TP: Your high school years were an interesting time to be in Northern California, in the San Francisco area.

JP: Great.

TP: The Keystone Korner was happening…

JP: I was there many times.

TP: It was a very eclectic scene. You’ve told me that you were into the Art Ensemble and the Sam Rivers Trio, you were into Gary Peacock’s Tales of Another, you had a sort of out jazz band…

JP: I saw McCoy at the Keystone. At Keystone I also saw Art Blakey, and at the Great American Music Hall I saw Thad Jones and Mel Lewis and I also saw the Bill Evans Trio there. When I got down to L.A. is when I got to see the Sam Rivers Trio and those guys at the Lighthouse. I saw Old and New Dreams at Royce Hall, which was incredible.

TP: Where I’m going is that this notion of being attracted to all the different flavors that comprise the mosaic that is the scene at any given time was already in you…

JP: A long time ago.

TP: Even though that may not necessarily have visible to people who were following your career.

JP: Yes. Obviously, I was playing with a lot of people in L.A., a lot of the older guys. But if I wasn’t making records with them, nobody knew who I was.

TP: Three people, among others, who seem to have been consequential to you. Freddie Hubbard, to whom you pay tribute on Remembrance, and who you played with a fair amount. Victor Feldman you played with…

JP: Even more.

TP: And also Joe Farrell. I’m not clear, but was Joe Farrell your bridge to Chick Corea?

JP: In a way, yes. But actually, he was my bridge to Airto and Flora’s band, which was a very important thing for me. Airto taught me a lot about Brazilian music, how to play it, all that stuff. But I used to bug Joe all the time. I’d say, “Man, tell me when Chick is going to have auditions; I really want to play with Chick,” and blah-blah-blah. So I don’t know whether he ever said anything to Chick, because actually I wound up getting the gig with Chick through playing with Victor Feldman at Chick’s house for a Valentine’s Day party that they used to have, and invite a bunch of musicians, have food, and some cats would play. That’s how Chick heard me, playing acoustic bass with Victor Feldman’s trio in his living room.

I have to say that I learned some important things from Joe. When I first started to play with Joe, the band was Tommy Brechtlein and Kei Akagi, and we were all into Trane’s band and all that, and we wanted to just burn all the time. We were totally, like, “Love Supreme” and all the great… That’s what we wanted to do. And Joe, he could burn like crazy! But he used to mess with us, too. He wanted us to be able to do other things, too, so he would mess with us. He’d go up behind the piano player, Kei Akagi, who’d be playing like McCoy, and he’d go, “Kei. Bebop, Kei. Bebop.” He always had that little thing; he was trying to talk like Jaki Byard. Chick told me that later. Apparently, he got that from Jaki Byard, which I didn’t know about til later. But he would tell us little things. Because we wanted to burn! Then he would go, “Ok. ‘Laura.’” [SINGS] “Two-beat, two beat.” We’d have to play like that. We were like, “Aw, Joe, come on, man!” But it was great, because he taught us a lot about how to deal with all the aspects of what we were supposed to be about, not just we’re excited and we want to burn all night.

TP: You were a session player…

JP: Also.

TP: …and a club player… I don’t mean the term pejoratively, but you were a journeyman bass player around L.A. and…

JP: I was very young, man.

TP: How young were you when you started playing professionally on that level? In the Bay Area, or did it happen in L.A.?

JP: In the Bay Area I was starting to play with some good people. But when I got to L.A. is when I started playing with all the older jazz musicians. I moved to L.A. in 1982, and I’d already been playing a little in the clubs before that. By the time I got the gig with Chick, I was only 24-25 years old, but I’d bee playing with a ton of people from 20 through 24.

TP: I’d assume that playing with Chick developed your technique on the electric bass.

JP: Also. And the acoustic bass. You had to. I had played with a lot of other people when I got the gig with Chick, and I felt like my improvising… That was one of the things that I felt was part of my voice, playing over changes and being able to play over chords and be a soloist as well. It was an incredible learning thing when I finally went to play with Chick, and his comping was so intense. I felt like his comping was better than my solo. And he was so fierce. I thought improvising was one of the good things that I could do, but the first time he was comping I thought, “Oh my God, I’ve got to get a lot stronger, man.” His comping was blowing me off the stage! It was way better than what I was playing. I had to get stronger physically, too, to keep up that intensity, because that cat could blow all night.

TP: So Chick Corea gave you that feeling in the ‘80s and Wayne Shorter gave you that feeling in the ‘90s.

JP: Well, yes. I have to say. Even before that, Freddie [Hubbard] in terms being an endless fountain of ideas. I remember playing gigs with Freddie in my twenties, where he would play rhythm changes. Usually you’d think, “when are they going to stop?”—because we’re playing really fast tempos. With him, it was, “I hope he plays another one; what was that?” I would never get tired, because it was just mind-boggling what he could do.

TP: So this whole notion of… I have a quote which I’ll read back: “when I was young, like a lot of naive young musicians, you go, ‘Ok, I want to be the greatest bass player ever.’” Knowing you a bit, I’m sure you did.

JP: Yeah, I did.

TP: “Then you get a little older, and you realize (a) there’s no such thing, (b) there are so many different ways to play and so many guys who bring so much to the table on the music that it’s exciting to check it all out. So somewhere in my teens, I probably realized there wasn’t any such thing, but I still wanted to aim high. I realized there were certain things I wanted to do on the instrument. I want to have freedom and be lyrical. I want to have a really strong foundation, be able to anchor any group that I’m in, but also, when it’s my turn to stretch out I want to contribute.” You also mentioned a wish list of people you wanted to play with.

JP:  Yes. That’s very true.

TP: Now, almost all those things have happened.

JP: Almost. I didn’t get to play with Elvin.

TP: How about Tony Williams?

JP: With Tony a little bit. Tony kept trying to get me on these all-star things. It almost panned out, and then he passed.

TP: Here I want to discuss your identity as a leader. You’ve made these recordings, but I’d assume that the preponderance of your professional activity is still on these sideman situations and less as a leader.

JP: Groups. Group formations. Also lots of sideman still.

TP: One question: When leading a group, do you switch back and forth between identities?

JP: Same person. The nice thing about this particular trio is that I have no stress level being the bandleader. I’m as free as when I’m a sideman with this group. Early on in the process… I started leading bands in 1987. Chick was the one who prodded me to do that. He said, “You’ve got all this music…” First of all, he got me the record deal. I was writing a lot, but he said, “You’re writing all this music; you’ve got to make a record and you’ve got to have a band.” I said, “Do you think so, really?” and he said, “Yeah, absolutely.” He got me the record deal, I did the record, and he said, “You’ve got to put together a band and do more stuff.” Actually, even before that. He had me put together the band even before we made the record. So I was already doing some stuff, but it took me years to get comfortable as a bandleader, because then you’re wearing different hats and you’re concerned about the whole of the music, the business of it, and all that. So for me, the goal is always to be as loose as when I’m when I’m just a sideman and don’t have to worry about all the responsibilities of presenting the music. In recent years, I’m much more comfortable leading bands, because the guys I’m playing with, we’re so close… Like in this situation with the trio, I’m just enjoying myself. I don’t have to worry about anything. Those guys are going to inspire me, they’re going to take the music new places. There’s nothing for me to be concerned about except try to be in the moment with them—and I have to announce a few tunes or whatever, which is nothing. So that is the way I look at it.

I learned a lot about being a bandleader from Chick and Wayne, and their concept, which is you find guys that you enjoy their identity already and then you just turn them loose.

TP: Chick Corea’s approach seems to be project-oriented. He seems to operate with multiple files of activity. He does one thing, that’s a project, it ends, maybe he picks it up in three years, but then he goes on to another project. In each case, he’s putting himself into a different space. Wayne Shorter seems to be operating via a slightly different process.

JP: Although with Chick, we had a band for ten years. For a while, I think Chick was tired of all those projects. When we had the Elektrik Band and the Acoustic Band, he really liked the fact that we had a band that was the same people that could develop over a long track. Even though, yes, he loves doing all kinds of different stuff. He used to tell me, “the reason why I like having a band is because we can develop something over a long…” He said, “I can do projects all my life, all day.” That’s easy for him. If you give him five minutes, he can write a tune, so a project is nothing. He can write a whole library for a project in a couple of days. Just give him the time in front of the piano, and he’s…WHOOSH. So he liked the idea of having a long development phase.

TP: You mentioned that he imprinted in your mind the notion of writing all the time.

JP: Yes, because he was always writing. Also, not being so critical so that you got in the way of the process. He could write a lot. I was really influenced by him in that regard, that whole idea of writing, composing… Like, if you put me in front of the piano, I can enjoy just sitting there and I’ll write something. I might not love it, but I can write something in a complete form. He taught me to turn off the critic inside and just let the stuff flow out. Then you evaluate it. Don’t stop yourself in the middle. Let it all out, write it down as fast as you can, get the ideas out, then you can play with them and see what’s happening.

TP: Did it take a while for you to internalize the notion of turning off the inner critic, or was it not a complex matter?

JP: I’m pretty loose about when I write. I can write quickly and everything. I used to joke with Mike Brecker, because we were the opposite. He’d say, “Man, how do you write so fast? You write all these tunes.” I said, “Yeah, but Mike, I write all these tunes, but one of your tunes is better than ten of mine.” He was very meticulous, and would be like one bar… More the Stravinsky approach.

TP: He suffered over every note.

JP: Yeah. Did I ever tell you the story of Stravinsky at the Hollywood party? True story. Stravinsky at a Hollywood part, some young TV composer comes up to him, “Oh, Mr. Stravinsky…” Stravinsky was being nice. “So, what did you do today, young man?” “Well, I wrote 20 minutes of music.” Stravinsky goes, “Wow, that’s a lot of music. 20 minutes. Hmm.” The young man said, “What did you do today?” Stravinsky said, “Well, I was writing. I wrote 2 bars.” The cat was incredulous. “You’re Stravinsky. You wrote 2 bars?” Stravinsky looked at the guy and said, “Yeah, you should hear those two bars.” So I don’t take the fact that being quick is necessarily always a positive. It can be, because if you let the stuff flow out, sometimes it can get out of the way. Sometimes good things can happen when you just let the flow go, and that’s what I got from Chick. Stuff was just washing out.

TP: When I interviewed Chick Corea, he said that he didn’t get involved in classical music until later…

JP: But he had some classical piano training. Yes, he did. Miss Masullo, in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

TP: Well, thank you for that. But he told that he didn’t study it in depth until later.

JP: Probably. Even though he was taking piano lessons and learning classical music, his dad was a jazz trumpet player, so he was…

TP: and he was gigging, too.

JP: Yeah, Chick was blowing!

TP: But both Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter incorporate those interests very seamlessly into their musical production, no matter how hidden or how overt it might be. I think you said that was a help to you…

JP: It was an encouragement. Wayne was always also encouraging me to write and just expand, be really adventurous in what I would write for. He always liked when I would tell him I was trying to write some expanded music, or I had a commission. “Yeah, that’s it!” He was always encouraging me not to let anybody put me in a box about what I should write and shouldn’t write.

TP: You remarked to me once that you’re straddling different genres, that it’s sort of what used to be called “third stream,” but in a more organic way.

JP: Trying. Those terms are limiting….

TP: Well, you did use the term. But if you can do a third person on yourself….

JP: It’s a hard thing to combine those two, because you have musicians that improvise and then you have musicians that don’t. So how do you incorporate the two things so that the people who don’t improvise can still freely give and be part of a process, and utilize them well, so that they get to do what they do strongly, and then without overwriting, so there’s no space for the guys to create some new stuff and improvise on it. That’s the stuff that we’ve been doing with Wayne, with the orchestra, that I think has worked really well. He writes these beautiful, incredible, massive orchestrations, but there is room for us to interact and stretch out and open up sections. That’s great. So that’s the goal, to incorporate… Some of the commissions that I’ve written, there’s no improvisation at all. It’s a piece of modern music that incorporates some of the harmonic language of jazz without laying on these people who have never improvised in their life, “Ok, now you’ve got to blow.” You write it into the music, and they can deliver, because they’re used to dealing with the printed work. There’s a lot of different methods you can do. If it’s something where I’ve involved playing… Like, Mark Anthony Turnage wrote me a beautiful bass concerto where there’s improvisation and there’s written stuff, but the orchestra just plays what’s written. Yet, he writes so brilliantly, I don’t think they feel like they’re not doing anything.

TP: Also, since moving East, you’ve formed friendships and close affiliations with world-class classical players.

JP: Yes, in my church. Larry Dutton from the Emerson String Quartet.

TP: Playing classical music and improvising require different mindsets. At this point of your evolution, how intertwined are the two processes?

JP: historically, it’s interesting to note that it didn’t used to be that way. There was no division when Bach and those guys were operating. They could improvise fugues, and they were total improvisers. What happened was, as you started to expand numbers, the number of people, it was impossible to do that any more. You had to write things down, because not everybody could improvise. But even in the context of Baroque sonatas, guys would ornament and play on the repeat of the A section—they would add ornaments and do stuff. Some guys still do that. You have harpsichord players that improvise really well. The figured bass, which was the chord changes of that day. So there’s a lot of similarities. But once you got out of the Baroque Era and started getting to the Romantic, then the composer became king, and then it changed. So now you have a situation where many classical musicians don’t know how to improvise at all. There are varying degrees.

I am pretty open to all points on the continuum. It just depends on how you write. You have to know going in what you want to accomplish, and then go for that. If you know what you want to accomplish, then you’ll make the concessions that you need to make in the departments that you need to make them. I wrote a piece, called Lakes, for Ann Schein, who is a phenomenal classical pianist. She’s been around a long time. She was one of Rubinstein’s proteges. She’s so incredible. When she plays a piece, it sounds like she’s improvising. When she plays Chopin, it sounds like she’s making it up. She’s heavy. So for her, I just wrote the piece, knowing that even though she’s playing something that’s completely written-out, she’s going to make it sound like she’s blowing. She recorded it on a record called American Composers, which came out earlier this year. This was a big moment for me. On the same record, you have Elliott Carter, who is 100 this year, and Aaron Copland’s music, and then there’s my piece. Which is hilarious! I was joking with my wife. I said, “Yeah, there’s Carter, Copland, and what’s that? Is that lunch?” Patitucci. Is that with mozzarella on the side or what?

TP: so many different languages operating simultaneously. Not so many musicians out there are as musically multilingual as you are.

JP: I guess you have to really want to be that way. A lot of people just don’t care for that. It’s subjective. They like a certain thing, and that’s what they like. It’s interesting. When I’m with certain people, they like to play a certain way—I like it, too! I like stuff that’s loose. I also like hard-swinging music. I grew up listening to Oscar Peterson, too, so I’m just as comfortable playing… I did a record years ago with Monty Alexander, a tribute to Jilly’s, and it was just down-the-pike swinging. I absolutely love that. But I also like playing in a really open context, and I also like playing with Wayne and with Herbie. All the different in-betweens. It just depends on the kind of music you love to listen to. If you like a lot of different things, then you kind of have to go, “Ok, now I’ve got to learn how to do that,” if you want to play that music. For me, I never get tired of learning new ways to approach the music, because it keeps me excited about it.

TP: over the next couple of months, I noticed from your website, you have a number of gigs for this music, but most of them aren’t with Joe and Brian.

JP: Scheduling is very different.

TP: You’ll be using John Ellis and Marcus Gilmore, which is an interesting trio.

JP: They’re great. George Garzone is making a lot of gigs, too.

TP: But will Marcus Gilmore playing drums mostly?

JP: Yes. There’s one gig also with Teri Lyne Carrington and John Ellis up in Boston in September.

TP: It will sound very different, because this music was composed with Joe Lovano and Brian Blade in mind in certain ways…

JP: Check it out, though. The first time we ran the music before the record, I actually had a couple of gigs with John and Marcus. So they played the music early on. Some of the pieces they saw before Joe and Brian. They were very involved from the beginning, too.

TP: Where I’m going is that for you, as a composer, the ideas of the music have a firm identity outside the personnel that plays it. A lot of jazz music is so personnel-specific, but this is not necessarily the case with you.

JP: Hopefully. Obviously, though, certain kinds of musicians are needed, particularly if you look at the drums in this music. You’ve got to have somebody who can swing, but also somebody who can play some other kinds of grooves—the African stuff, that New Orleans feel. It’s not so easy to find guys who can cover a lot of ground, apart from the singular connection that Brian and I have. That’s something that’s in its own place for me. So after that, it’s another thing. But Marcus Gilmore is a very, very gifted young man.

TP: It puts you in a different position. Rather than playing with peers, so to speak… John Ellis and Marcus Gilmore are superior musicians, but younger musicians.

JP:  Well, I’m old enough to be Marcus’ father. John, not quite.

TP: And you turn 50 this year. There comes a transitional point for musicians… Well, music is a social art, more than the visual arts or writing, and you make a transition from someone who is identified more by working with Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Roy Haynes, and having done some albums, to the preponderance of your activity being a leader, as happened at a certain point with Dave Holland and other people. Is this something you think of consciously? How proactive do you want to be about establishing yourself…

JP: As a bandleader and so on?

TP: I’ll put it this way. Establishing yourself where your own musical vision is the predominant thing. From soup to nuts, as it were.

JP: Well, it has to be tempered with my time with my family, basically. I made a choice a little while back that, yes, I could go and tour as a leader most of the year that I wasn’t doing the other stuff, but then I’d never see my family. So I have to balance it, and that’s what I try to do. That’s also why I took the gig teaching at City College, so that I could choose a little bit more how much I wanted to be gone. There are still, obviously, some things musically that are super-important and I feel I have to do. But I also want to have a presence with my own family. A lot of guys sacrifice that to be a bandleader and make a statement and all that, and that’s great. But I’m not willing to sacrifice me being a good husband and father. That’s sometimes tricky, because it can be frustrating for somebody who’s been recording as long as I have… This is my thirteenth record. I’ve had bands since 1987. Yet, some people who write about the music say, “well, he’s not really a bandleader” or stuff like, “He’s not really a composer; his stuff is not that developed.” I’ve had that attitude thrown at me from time to time, and I think, “wow, is that because I’m not out there all the time with my band, going, ‘this is what I am,’ shouting it from the rooftops, touring like crazy?” Also, when you get to be almost 50, you’re think that you don’t want to go on the road all the time. I like going on the road. It’s great. But I’m not going to do it like I did when I was 25. So those are choices, and those choices have consequences. You’re not as in the public eye, so you’re not going to be poll-winning and all that kind of stuff. That doesn’t happen unless you’re out with your band all the time, saying, “Look, this is my vision.” I still have a vision. It’s a very strong viewpoint, and I don’t feel like I’m not taking it seriously. It’s just that I’m not willing to be on the road 8 months a year to do it. So I have to temper it and do it over a longer period of time, a slower arc, I guess.

TP: there’s something about the road that seems to inhibit R&D. Perhaps it hones a point of view. But when you’re off the road, there’s space… As Corea puts it, the eternal child aspect can perhaps be expressed more readily if you’re not on the road all the time.

JP: Yeah, when you’re on the road all the time, and you’re moving and moving and moving, and doing and doing and doing, there’s not as much… Well, now it’s a little easier to compose, with the computer. But you need time to just be home. And also, it’s nice to be home in a place like New York, because there’s a lot going on. You don’t feel like you came home and there’s nothing happening.

 

TP: How much of your time is teaching, how much is practicing and composing, how much is performing, and how much is parenting?

JP: I don’t even know how to break that down.

TP: You don’t sleep.

JP: Yeah, sometimes you don’t. That’s the drag about when I’m in the semester time. It can be really rough. I have to get up at 6, help the kids get their stuff for school, and then you go and teach on the days that you teach, and the days that you don’t teach you’re trying to practice or write or whatever. Or I go early to get my parking place by the school, then I go in and maybe I’ll practice a little bit before school starts, and then deal with the students. Sometimes when you come home, you’re just burnt. Some days are longer than others. What I do this semester will be coaching two graduate ensembles and two undergraduate ensembles, and 6 or 7 bass students. That means that sometimes one day is heavily loaded. I might have to get there by 7:20 to get my parking place. This semester, school will start at 10 o’clock, so I’ll practice and do some stuff before that, and from 10 to 1 is ensembles, and then private lessons until 5. The other day might be a little shorter. Those are intense days. You have to really be on. Then sometimes, when you come home at night, if you’re working on a particular thing and you’re writing with a deadline, or if you’re working on a piece and you have to practice, you stay up til 2 in the morning. Man, when 6 o’clock rolls around, it’s not fun. Sometimes I just can’t do it. Sometimes I have to do it. I just power down a few espressos, and go down in the basement and work, and pay the price the next day.

TP:  When you’re 55, let’s say, five years from now, do you envision your life breaking down in the same way? Do you expect maybe less sideman work, or…

JP: I don’t know. I know I’ll keep expanding writing and keep expanding as a player, and I’ll continue to write my own music and keep having bands. But I’ll continue to play with Wayne as long as he wants to keep doing it—and other people, too. I’ll continue pursuing the writing things also on the side, and hopefully get a chance to play some concertos with orchestras again, like I’ve had recently. And keep shedding. Writing, shedding… That’s just on the musical side. But there’s also the personal aspects of being involved with my wife and my children and our church. There’s a bunch of stuff going on there, too.

TP: So your roots are firmly in the New York area. You’re from here, you lived West, but it sounds like the West Coast was never quite your vibe…

JP: No. I liked the Bay Area quite a bit. But when I moved south, which is where I spent most of time in California, that wasn’t me. When I came home to the New York area, I felt like, ‘Man, I’m home again; this is great.” They say you can’t go home, but you can.

******

John Patitucci Blindfold Test (2002):
1. Joe Farrell, “Bass Folk Song” (from MOON GERMS, CTI, 1972/2001) (Farrell, flute; Stanley Clarke, bass; Herbie Hancock, electric piano; Jack DeJohnette, drums).

[INSTANTLY] That’s Stanley Clarke. And that’s got to be from the ’70s. This could be the band with Chick and Joe Farrell. That’s what it sounds like — Chick, Joe Farrell, and I’m trying to suss out who the drummer is. Airto was the drummer in that band. Could be. It’s easy to identify Stanley. His sound, and particularly his touch. I grew up hearing a lot of his music. After Ron Carter, Ray Brown and those guys, when I was in my teens, when he came on the scene, someone turned me on to a Chick Corea record, and it blew me away. He’s a very individual voice. This is a nice record. I’m not sure which one it is, unless it’s the first one with the dove flying over the ocean. It’s not an ECM record because of the way it sounds. The recording is different. I like it. It’s great open energy. These guys were playing together a lot. It sounds very free-blowing; they’re just reacting to each other. They’re just vamping out! It’s great. [Do you have stars for it?] I was thinking about that. I don’t really like the idea of stars… [But can you?] I’m going to give everything five. The other thing, too, is I’m kind of anti-criticism. [But we’re talking about your aesthetics.] I can’t do that. It’s like grading… But I can make a lot of comments, which I think are more valuable than trying to, you know, grade papers. Just for the feeling… I’m trying to remember the record. There’s one record Stanley did before the solo album that people know, and this could be that one, which was called The Children of Forever, with Pat Martino and all those guys, but it… I thought the keyboard player was Chick, but now that he’s playing a solo, it sounds like Herbie. If it’s Herbie, that kind of changes thing. But it still sounded like Joe Farrell to me. The drums? I also know that he did some stuff with Tony Williams. The hi-hat is going on all fours; that’s Tonyish. But in this period…it could be Tony. Yes, that’s Herbie, totally. That’s great. I don’t know this record, though. I’m trying to pin down the drums. It has Tonyish elements in it. But in that period, too, a lot of guys were influenced by Tony, like Lenny White and… But if it’s Herbie, it could be Tony, because I know Stanley played with Herbie and Tony, too. In this period of time, in the ’70s, I thought on acoustic bass Stanley was particularly sharp in those days. He sounded really on the top of his game. He was really strong conceptually, and playing with a lot of conviction. And real interesting. Great rhythmically. Everything. They get all the stars! Whatever you want to give them, they get all of them! It’s refreshing. I haven’t heard this vintage of this guys in a while. [AFTER] Oh, it’s Joe’s record. I know the record. I know the tune especially. But I still don’t know who’s playing drums. It was Jack? But I still don’t really… It’s Jack from that period, which is what fooled me. Not as dense as later Jack. But I love all periods of Jack. It sounds fantastic.

2. Ray Drummond, “Miyako” (from The Drummonds, PAS DE TROIS, True Life, 2000) (Drummond, bass; Renee Rosnes, piano; Billy Drummond, drums; Wayne Shorter, composer)

Nice. Those slides… This is a little trickier for me. I don’t know why. It sounds like a Wayne tune, but I can’t remember the name. If not, it’s one that’s really influenced by this 3/4 tune that Wayne wrote. It sounds very influenced by Herbie and that kind of trio playing, but it doesn’t sound like Herbie to me. There’s something different about it. And when the bass player was doing some slides earlier, it sounded like he was influenced by Ron, but it doesn’t sound like Ron to me. [BASS SOLO] It’s not Ron at all. Boy, this is tricky. It’s a woody sound. I like the sound. Nice lines. Mmm, wow. This piano player is familiar to me, but I’m stumped. I almost feel like I’ve played this tune… Whothe heck is this? That’s a Herbieistic lick and everything, but I don’t think it’s Herbie. Beautiful. Real sensitive. Great trio playing. I really like it. I should know who the bass player is. It sounds like the influence of Herbie and Ron and Tony kind of playing in the trio, but I don’t think it was them. [AFTER] It was Wayne’s tune. The Drummonds! I almost guessed Renee at one point. They get all the stars, too. I love that. I should have known it was her. The bass threw me, because I usually can recognize Ray. I love Ray’s playing. Yeah, it was happening.

3. Miroslav Vitous, “Miro’s Bop” (from UNIVERSAL SYNCOPATIONS, ECM, 2003) (Vitous, bass, composer; Chick Corea, piano; Jan Garbarek, tenor saxophone; Jack De Johnette, drums)

That sounds like Chick. That last lick was a Chickie lick right there. And it sounds like Michael Brecker, or somebody influenced by him. Oh, it’s not Mike. Somebody influenced by him, definitely. I thought the bassist might have been Eddie Gomez first, from a little vibrato thing, but then I can’t tell you yet. He hasn’t soloed. It’s a nice sound. The drums sounded very Jack-ish to me right there. But the tenor player is tricky, because it sounds like Michael, but I’m not sure. [I’m sure the tenor player wasn’t influenced by Michael Brecker.] Oh, okay. But that’s Eddie. It sounds like Eddie, with that little… Well, maybe not. Whoo, nice! Oh, wait a minute. That kind of facility; it could be Miroslav Vitous, too. I like it a lot. Okay, contemporary… The saxophone almost sounded Garbarek for a second there. It could be Garbarek. The bass sound… It’s great bass playing. This is not easy. [AFTER] The bass could have been Miro. [It was.] Yes. That would be Miro, Jack, Chick and Garbarek? [Yes.] Because sometimes, in the attack, in the percussiveness, Eddie can get into that kind of thing, too. But the tone was different. It had another thing on it, that Miroslav thing on it. I loved the piece. It was definitely influenced by that Miles kind of thing in the ’60s, with the bursts, and the way the bass was kind of coming in and out. Was that Mountain… No, it’s not Mountain In The Clouds. I don’t know which one it is. [When did it sound like it was done?] It sounded like an ECM recording. It sounded like the ’70s to me. [It’s a brand-new record.] You gotta be kidding! Great. Cool. It definitely has that older feeling, though.

4. Joe Zawinul, “East 12th Street Band” (from FACES AND PLACES, ESC, 2002) (Zawinul, keyboards & vocoder; Richard Bona, bass; Bobby Malach, saxophone; Paco Sery, drums & percssion; Alex Acuna, percussion; Amit Chatterjee, guitar)

I love this. It’s got the African vibe. It could be Zawinul, his thing, just from the sound. Sounds like Zawinul’s band to me. I’m not sure which vintage. Victor Bailey plays like that, but Richard Bona has that kind of vibe, too, with the short notes. They wree both playing all through this time. Victor was in and out of the band, and Richard was in the band for a while. That phrase was Victorish, down at the bottom. But Richard plays like that, too. Very nice. It’s Paco Sery on drums, the African guy. Great vibe. It’s hard to tell which bass player it is. I’ve known Victor for a long time. I think I met him when I was 19. Whether it’s Richard or Victor, it’s great playing. If he takes a solo, I can tell for sure, but I don’t think he will. I’ve heard Richard play some, but that sounds more like Victor to me. I can’t be sure. I’m going to get in trouble with Victor if I guess wrong! “What do you mean? You couldn’t recognize me after all these years?” Post-Jaco. Fantastic. [AFTER] It’s Richard? Fantastic. But there’s a similarity in the approach for sure. [Do you think that approach has to do with their own approach, or with Zawinul’s music?] That’s tricky, because Zawinul was influenced a lot by Jaco’s stuff but also the African stuff, but also the Africans were influenced by Jaco. It’s great playing. When I heard the first groove, I thought of Richard because it was very African, but the more it loosened up and got more jazz, it kind of sounded more like Victor. But Victor has a lot of stuff in him from everywhere, too. So it’s very difficult to pin down. Again, lots of stars.

5. Masada String Trio, “Meholalot” (from THE CIRCLE MAKER: ISSACHAR, Tzadik, 1997) (Mark Feldman, violin; Eric Friedlander, cello; Greg Cohen, bass; John Zorn, composer)

This is great. And it’s fun. There’s a lot of groups popping up like this, acoustic string groups playing more rhythmic music in the last 10-15 years or more. But I’m not familiar with all the… I know the guys around New York, like Mark Feldman is an improvising fiddle player, but I don’t know their styles. I know a little bit of Mark’s playing, but he wasn’t playing solo so much when we’ve played. He plays in Abercrombie’s group, too, but I don’t know it’s him. It’s a guess. I’m just throwing out names of fiddle players who improvise. I like the abandon of it. And the cellist I’ve played with who I know improvises is Eric Friedlander. But I haven’t heard him blow that much. I’ve just played with him, and I know he’s good. He can play. I heard his solo album, which I liked a lot, with Stomu Takeishi, the bass player. I like the idea of the orchestration, too, using the pizzicato rhythmic stuff. The bass player sounds great, but I don’t know who it is. He’s sort of the rock holding it together, and it he sounds really great doing it, too. Nice and woody. Earthy. It’s fun. I like the fact that they’re not playing it safe. It’s tricky with a bow. I do a lot of playing with the bow, so I know. Once you pick up the bow, to put something across rhythmically takes some doing. It’s not easy to do. And they’re just going for it. They’re not safely trying to do it right. They’re just going for it. And I love that. It’s got kind of an Eastern thing happening on it, too, which I dig. I love when they break down to the pizzicato stuff. But I have no idea. [AFTER] So it was Zorn’s stuff. That’s great. I’ve heard some of Zorn’s music before, on WKCR actually. I know Greg Cohen, and he’s a great bass player who has a broad musical scope. All the marbles for them. I think it’s great. I like that they were charging. It’s no prisoners and here we go!

6. Ray Brown, “Stella By Starlight” (from WALK ON, Telarc, 2002) (Ray Brown, bass; Geoffrey Keezer, piano; Karriem Riggins, drums)

[ON INTRO] Beautiful sound, right away. “Stella.” Somebody with a little flexibility on the instrument; right away I can tell you that, by the way he just tossed off a couple of things, musical, without even trying. Somebody who is definitely also… The triplet licks were very Ray Brown-esque. But the sound isn’t…it doesn’t sound like Ray Brown. Just somebody who is, like we all are, influenced by Ray Brown. The sound of the bass is a little different. I’m not going to make a quality judgment on the sound, because I like it. It’s just a different recorded tone. Ray’s been recorded so much, he has a lot of different sounds, but it doesn’t quite sound like Ray to me. The triplets is one aspect of what they’re doing. This is tricky. I feel silly. I can’t tell you who the piano player is. [BASS SOLO] Now we’re going to figure out who this is. He has that flexibility like John Clayton. But I can’t say definitively who that bass player is. The piano player played some interesting harmonic stuff, too. [AFTER] I’m stumped. It was Ray Brown! The sound didn’t sound, to me… I guess I was in the right ballpark. Ray and John Clayton, that’s pretty close. But the sound threw me. He was playing all the licks, but the recorded sound of the bass threw me. Once he played those triplet licks and I said, “Oh, it sounds like Ray…”

7. Steve Swallow, “Ladies Waders” (from THREE GUYS, Enja, 1999) (Swallow, electric bass; Lee Konitz, alto saxophone; Paul Motian, drums)

This is based on “Out of Nowhere.” [BASS SOLO] This is great. From the sound of the bass, it sounds like Swallow. It’s an electric, but it sounds acoustic. And I can hear the pick, because he uses a pick. But it sounds like Swallow; he’s melodic, beautiful, killing… Is the alto player Slagle? I can’t tell you? It almost sounded Ornetteish. Swallow is one of the few electric bass players who sounds like a jazz musician, a real, bona fide jazz musician. All the stars for Mr. Swallow, always. Wait, who is the alto player? Sounds more like Konitz now. That’s crazy! I’m trying to zone in on the drummer now. It could be Motian. Fantastic. Paul Motian, amazing. I love it. It’s just trio, but it sounds huge! I love that. And a very interesting tone. Because Swallow’s tone has evolved over the years on electric. And this is even thicker than before. It’s hard to get a thick tone in that way. He’s got a very special touch and sound because he’s playing with a pick. All the marbles.

8. Ornette Coleman, “Mob Job” (from SOUND MUSEUM: THREE WOMEN, Verve/Harmolodic, 1996) (Coleman, alto saxophone, Charnett Moffett, bass; Geri Allen, piano; Denardo Coleman, drums)

It’s interesting, the rhythmic thing on this one, because they’re trying to imply time without playing it. They don’t have the bass mixed up quite loud enough. It sounds kind of like Eddie, but it’s back there. Bow with some effects on it, too. It’s kind of cool. Oh, wait a minute. Sometimes Charnett does this stuff with the bow with the effects, too. I can’t hear it that well. If it was by proxy, I know Charnett is playing with Ornette now. It could be the reason they’re trying to imply the time without playing it. Denardoish. It could be Ornette. It’s Netman and Ornette and Denardo. But the piano player I can’t hear. All the stars just for the sound of Ornette even. Ornette sounds great. Attitude for days. It’s interesting to hear Ornette play blues like that, sometimes when he gets into that head. Fort Worth! It’s really strong. Whoo! Now the bass sound is coming into focus. He’s coming to the fore. It’s nice and woody, too. But I couldn’t hear that before. I can’t give you a guess on the pianist. Sounds like what happened is the snare drum is mixed very forwrd, and it’s kind of tricky to hear. [AFTER] Geri Allen? She’s fantastic. I like her writing, too.

9. George Mraz, “Up In A Fir Tree (Na Kosate Jedli)” (from MORAVA, Milestone, 2000) (Mraz, bass; Emil Viklicky, piano; Billy Hart, drums; Zuzana Lapcikova, voice, cymbalon)

I know what this record is. It’s unfair, because I was listening to it last month. It’s George Mraz with the Moravian guys. It’s beautiful. It’s a great idea to do this. I love this, that he did something for the homeland. This is really nice. George sounds terrific on this, and he’s really well recorded as well. It’s woody and a nice sound. George was one of the guys that I grew up listening to as well. I listened to Ron and Ray and Sam Jones and Paul Chambers and Percy Heath and all those guys, but then I also listened to Stanley, Eddie, George, Dave Holland, Charlie and Miroslav. He’s sort of in that generation, as the next thing that happened. As a bassist, too, dealing with the instrument, he’s fantastic. His pitch is so beautiful, and he plays beautiful with the bow. On this record, there’s some stuff with the bow that’s happening. Yeah, he sounds terrific. I especially love him in that group with John Abercrombie, the quartet with Richie Beirach and Peter Donald. He was killing in that group. All the stars for George.

10. Trio De Paz, “Baden” (from CAFE, Malandro, 2002) (Nilson Matta, bass, composer; Romero Lubambo, guitar; Duduka DaFonseca, drums)

Beautiful. Is this Trio de Paz? Yeah, Nilson, Romero, and Duduka. They get the serious vibe on it right away. It’s like a switch. Boom! Nilson sounds great on this. As soon as the first bar, Nilson Matta… The swing of that style of playing is immediately evident. Bass players from Brazil understand that the whole essence of samba comes from the surdo drum. That’s where our part comes from, the big drum with the mallet. So that has to be in there. That’s the root of what they’re doing. They might be doing stuff around it, but they know how to make the backbeat of Brazilian music happen. Even though Nilson is doing a lot of hip decoration and all kinds of other stuff, the groove and rootedness is always there. And Duduka sounds amazing. These guys have been playing together a long time. It’s great. There’s an art to doing that on the drums as well; making those beats sound like that. All the stars to the boys from Brazil.

11. Michael Formanek, “Emerger” (from NATURE OF THE BEAST, Enja, 1996) (Formanek, bass; Dave Douglas, trumpet; Steve Swell, trombone; Jim Black, drums)

I like the composition right away. Great drummer. [BASS SOLO] Wow. That’s all written out. That kind of flexibility reminds me of Dave Holland. Not necessarily his sound. And also the freedom. Dave certainly was part of a lot of seminal recordings of some open music that was… A great bass player, too, whoever this guy is. I don’t automatically flash on a name. The trumpet player sounds familiar, but I can’t… It’s kind of Kenny Wheelerish there, but the sound is different. Wow! It almost sounds like it could be European cats. Bugt it’s hard to say that, because there are cats who play with that sensibility here now, and it’s cross-pollinized — almost the Classical way of getting around the horn like that. Nice trombone sound, too. The bass player and drummer sound great together. I’m not sure who it is, though. It could also easily be a night at the Knitting Factory. It sounds Downtownish to me. It could be a lot of guys. There’s some really strong cats like Mark Helias and Drew Gress… But I know it isn’t Drew, because the context isn’t… Another guy is Mark Dresser. I’m guessing, though. [This is a guy who I think you were about two years behind when you were coming up in the Bay Area.] Jay Anderson? Jay was right ahead of me. [AFTER] Mike sounds fantastic. He was playing with Freddie and everything. Was the drummer Joey Baron? Jim Black? He’s great. I know his playing. Formanek sounds incredible on this.

12. Ron Carter, “Blues In The Closet” (from STARDUST, Blue Note, 2001) (Carter, bass; Roland Hanna, piano; Lenny White, drums; Oscar Pettiford, composer)

“Blues In The Closet,” huh? [AFTER FIRST CHORUS] That’s Ron. The lines. The architecture. Even though his sound has gone through various incarnations over the years, but also he’s one of my main… This is modern Ron right here. It’s more of a blended sound now. In the ’60s it was all microphone. Then I got the feeling in the ’70s he got into the pickup and there was a certain sound. This is both kind of put together. Sounds great. He has a great sense of humor, too, when he plays. Nice brush stuff, like Lewis Nash-ish, but it’s not him. Ron made some trio records with Billy Cobham, but that’s not Billy. Harvey Mason? All the stars for Ron.

****

John Patitucci (DownBeat) – 2000:

During John Patitucci’s decade with Chick Corea, when he began to make his mark as a consummate six-string electric and acoustic bass virtuoso, his deep connection to and affinity for jazz’s main stem was somewhat muted. So listeners who think of him solely as a premier Fusion man, fluent and elegant in the electric idiom, may be caught off-guard by the emotional range of the searing compositions and savvy improvisations that mark Patitucci’s three recent acoustic dates for Concord and the mercurial interplay and rooted foundation he imparts to a rampantly imaginative new trio session with Roy Haynes and Danilo Perez (Verve).

A fixture in Los Angeles since 1980, Patitucci left Corea in 1995 to pursue personal projects and plot future directions. In quick succession, he married, and decided to move to New York to begin a family and satisfy creative hungers by plunging headlong into hardcore jazz. “If anybody was really listening, I don’t think I ever sounded ‘West Coast,'” Patitucci remarks from the well-equipped basement studio in his comfortable new home just north of New York City, a half-hour drive from the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the working-class neighborhood where he spent his first 12 years. While we wait for a pot of orichette and lentils (pasta fagiole — from a family recipe) to reach the proper consistency, Patitucci, who at 40 has the compact muscular frame and focused alertness of a prototype baseball catcher, expresses his disdain for being pigeonholed.

“People labeled me with the term ‘Fusion’ and I resented it,” he says. “I came up in jazz a lot…well, everything from R&B to Classical to free music inspired by the Art Ensemble of Chicago. My major in college was Double Bass Performance, playing Classical music and also in the jazz groups, and from my early days in Los Angeles I played with Victor Feldman, Joe Farrell, Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and a lot of other older guys. Though I started on electric bass when I was 10, I didn’t get back into electric until after college, when I realized that I had to get both instruments together to get work. For a while with Chick and on my earlier recordings I played a lot on the six-string bass because it was a new instrument that I wanted to explore. I’ve always been after the line. Either it’s a line that’s interesting, that has shapes and dynamics, flows, is musical and lyrical, or it’s just scales — no matter what speed you play it. I aim high, and there are certain things I want to do on the instrument. I want to have freedom and be lyrical. I want to have a strong foundation and be able to anchor any group that I’m in, and when it’s my turn to stretch out, I want to contribute.”

Patitucci honed those qualities during his productive tenure with Corea. “Whatever label people put on Chick’s music, it was always creative and amazing, and I learned a lot playing with him,” he emphasizes. “He got me a record deal and encouraged me to write. During my last three years I only played in his acoustic groups — the trio and quartet. It was more a practical matter than not wanting to play the electric music. He was very busy, and I didn’t want to do double duty on the touring. I felt I hadn’t shown a huge part of my personality on my records, though I’d been giving hints, and I wanted to experiment and explore and demonstrate some of this other music that I have inside.

“I started to realize that a lot of the people I wanted to play with more extensively were in New York. There are a lot of great players in Los Angeles, but the town is geared towards Pop music and the movies, and there isn’t much support for people who try to reach and stretch. In New York it’s not rose-colored glasses, but there’s an amazing concentration of creative musicians, an actual scene, more than anywhere else in the world. Stylistically and artistically, I always felt like I belonged here; most of the bassists who are my heroes, the diverse musical minds on the instrument — Ron Carter, Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, George Mraz, Scott LaFaro, Dave Holland, Charlie Haden, Mingus, Steve Swallow, Jaco Pastorius — who influenced the way I hear and play lived here. I was more than a little concerned about coming back to the town where my heroes work, and I certainly was respectful of the scene. But I got encouragement from people like Michael Brecker and Jack DeJohnette, who told me I’d be fine. Finally I decided there was no point in waiting any longer, never doing it, then wondering, ‘Boy, maybe I should have tried to go home.’ So I did.”

After moving to New York, Patitucci recorded “One More Angel,” “Now” and “Imprint.” On the latter, which could not have been conceptualized nor executed anywhere else but New York City, Patitucci presents the full scope of his comprehensive aesthetic. He assembles and deploys in a variety of configurations a cast of first-tier improvisers with whom he interacts on a regular basis — young tenorists Chris Potter and Mark Turner, pianists Danilo Perez and John Beasley, trapset masters De Johnette and Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, and state-of-the-art hand drummer Giovanni Hidalgo. He offers them a set of original compositions that span a capacious terrain of ambiance and groove, from spirit catching drum chant to aria-like ballads, incorporating a flexible template of rhythmic signatures.

“John is able to write simple tunes — simple in a good way,” notes Potter, a veteran of Patitucci’s ensembles since 1993. “Interesting things happen, it zigs when you think it’s going to zag. But it seems he’s learning to pare down to essentials, so that the themes are very memorable, singable melodies, and the way he constructs the changes makes it very open for the soloists. It seems his band concept is to have a clear framework for a tune, and then hire people to do what they do over it. John’s gigs are fun for me because I’m encouraged to explore whatever I’m into; I’m not straitjacketed into one kind of style. He’s a fountain of energy. He wants it to be loose and take off — all the right things. You feel that force behind you when you’re soloing, that he’s on your side — on the music’s side. He’s thinking about the music in a larger way, how to orchestrate it so it’s going somewhere, so it makes sense.”

“The way John is writing is a marriage of Latin and Jazz; you don’t know where one stops and the other ends,” adds Perez, Patitucci’s partner in the Roy Haynes Trio since 1997. “He can paint. He uses all the different styles of music, and can deal in any situation. You can go electric, acoustic, swing, jazz, Latin — it clicks in every situation we’ve worked in. John’s ability to play Latin music is amazing; he isn’t uncomfortable playing on the one-beat, which is the way Latin musicians play. He always takes the musical approach. He has a lot of facility, really great technique, but he doesn’t put it in your face all the time. He knows when to use it and when not to. He isn’t an egotistical player at all. He’s always finding ways to instigate situations, always doing something, always thinking, ‘What can I do to make this better through my function?’ And talk about playing in tune — my God.”

Patitucci stokes the fires throughout the recent bebop-to-the-future Roy Haynes Trio release, switching on a dime from foundational to soloistic functions with relentless intensity and almost devotional consonance. “I’ve played with a ton of different drummers over the years,” he notes, “and I’ve tried to sustain an attitude of keeping the doors wide-open, enjoying everybody’s ideas of playing the drums and molding in and learning from it. I like to try to get inside the rhythm section and lock in with the soloist, without preconceived ideas. I mean, you play the way you play anyway, and hopefully you do find your voice. But it’s so much richer if you’re open to be the catalyst. As the bass player you’re sitting right in the middle of the music. It’s exciting!”

The pasta fagiole is delicious. As dinner winds down, the conversation turns to Patitucci’s Italian heritage. “Culturally I feel very identified with it,” he remarks. “My father was a big opera fan, and played opera records in the house. I think the Italian fascination with the lyrical delivery of a melody definitely influenced my playing. My upbringing gave me an aesthetic of being thankful for certain things, and also the sense of art as something that’s important in the day-to-day aspects of life.”

After dinner, Patitucci peers out the dining room window into the twilight at his snow-blanketed backyard, honing in on the dimly outlined snowman he’d constructed earlier that day with toddler daughter Sachi Grace, an indefatigable 2-year-old who keeps metronomic time on the basement trapset. “Jazz got into my soul when I was so young,” he reflects. “It touched off something in me. I love the improvisational aspect of it, that there’s room for individual expression and the excitement of actually co-creating stuff on the fly. That’s magical. There’s nothing like it, and I wasn’t willing to let go. I had plenty of opportunities in L.A. to go pop, but it didn’t hold me emotionally.

“This is the most exciting time of my life. I love it back east. I’m home again. You can’t make snowmen in California.”

[-30-]

For Monty Alexander’s 71st Birthday, a Downbeat Feature From 2010 and a Separate Interview

In acknowledgment of pianist Monty Alexander’s 71st birthday today, here’s a feature I wrote for DownBeat in 2010. I’ve appended below an interview that I conducted with Monty for a Ray Brown tribute that appeared in DownBeat after the bass grandmaster passed away in 2002.

* * *

Monty Alexander Downbeat Article:

The adage “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” coined to convey the kindling effect of separation on romantic ardor, applies with equal measure to pianist Monty Alexander’s ongoing obsession with the music of Jamaica, his homeland, whence he migrated to Miami in 1961, at 17.

As a Kingston youngster, Alexander recalled, “I soaked up everything—the calypso band playing at the swimming pool in the country, local guys at jam sessions who wished they were Dizzy and Miles, a dance band playing Jamaican melodies, songs that Belafonte would have sung. I was fully aware of the rhythm-and-blues, my heroes on piano were Eddie Heywood and Erroll Garner, and, above all, Louis Armstrong was my king. I had one foot in the jazz camp and the other in the old-time folk music—no one more valuable than the other.”

Once in the States, though, Alexander compartmentalized, sublimating roots towards establishing a jazz identity. By 1970, he was a distinguished voice, with a c.v. citing long-haul trio gigs with various New York A-listers, as well as consequential sideman work in Los Angeles with Milt Jackson and Ray Brown. By the late ‘70s, when he closed the books on his 300-days-a-year-on-the-road trio with John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton, he was an upper-echelon stylist, referred to by Oscar Peterson, himself descended from St. Kett’s and St. Croix, as “my little West Indian counterpart.”

“You come to America, you try to blend in and do what they do,” Alexander explained. “At first, I was even trying to speak like American people”—he demonstrated several voices—“so they wouldn’t keep asking, ‘Where do you come from?’ But as the years went by, I started expressing myself by claiming my heritage more. I said, ‘Wait a minute, home is as good as it gets.’”

In Orvieto, Italy, for a five-concert engagement at Umbria Jazz Winter 2010, Alexander spoke in the high-ceilinged sitting room of his hotel, which evoked a ducal mansion. With him for the week was a band comprising an acoustic trio with bassist Hassan Shakur and drummer George Fludas and a plugged-in Jamaican contingent—Wendell Ferraro on guitar, filling both soloistic and comping roles, Glen Browne on bass, and Karl Wright on drums.

Dubbed the Harlem-Kingston Express, this instrumental configuration—documented on the 2011 release, Harlem-Kingston Express (Motéma), comprising live dates at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola and in Europe—is the most recent iteration of a series of Alexander-conceptualized efforts over the past few decades to coalesce “things that reflect my heritage as an English-speaking Caribbean person” with the principles of hardcore swinging jazz. “I was bummed out after it ended with John and Jeff because I’d gotten used to that precision, that projection,” he said. “Although other people were fine and good, no one came close to that, and I’m not one to go scouting.” To recharge, he began spending quality time in Jamaica. “I’d go to the studio with Sly and Robbie, who know me from way back. It’s simple music, two chords—but life is in those two chords.”

Later in the ‘80s, Alexander—whose first Jamaica-centric dates were the still-sampled mid ‘70s MPS groove albums Ras and Demento—started to present units with which he could incorporate Caribbean flavors, including an “Ivory and Steel” ensemble with steel drummer Othello Molyneaux and hand drummer Bobby Thomas “married to whatever bass player and drummer I had at the time.” After signing with Telarc in the mid ‘90s, he embarked on a succession of recordings on which he reunited with musicians he’d known since teen years, among them several dates with guitarist Ernest Ranglin, and one with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. Four other recordings—Stir It Up and Concrete Jungle reveal Alexander’s take on Bob Marley’s music, while Goin’ Yard and Playin’ Yard address a broader Jamaican spectrum—hearken to mento, Jamaica’s indigenous calypso, descended from the French quadrille music to which English colonists danced in the nineteenth century. Mento evolved into, as Alexander puts it, “a deep country Jamaican thing” with African retentions—a banjo, a rhumba box that is akin to a bass kalimba, hand drums, and often harmonica, fiddle or pennywhistle. It spread throughout the island, and, as the 20th century progressed, cross-pollinated with rhythm-and-blues and jazz, evolving into Ska.

As Alexander delved ever deeper into these rediscovered interests, he found it increasingly difficult to convene a single ensemble in which he could satisfactorily convey them. “I would have a trio of jazz masters, and when I’d want to play something that reflected Jamaica, whether calypso or Bob Marley, I couldn’t get that thing because that’s not what they do,” Alexander said. “Conversely, the Jamaican guys didn’t relate to the jazz experience. I wanted to give myself an opportunity to share my two loves, which is one love, to coin Bob’s phrase.”

This feeling had permeated the previous evening’s concert. Alexander came to the piano, positioned stage center to the left of Shakur and Fludas. He opened with Ellingtonian chords, and launched a chugging train blues, transitioned to the changes of “Blue and Boogie,” then returned to an Ellington medley that resolved into “Caravan.” After brief remarks, a brisk stomp through “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and some nachtmusik chords, the Rasta-dreaded Browne and Wright, who wears white driving gloves when playing, entered stage right, and laid down phat Reggae riddims. Playing percussively, Alexander soon segued into Ernest Gold’s “Exodus,” blew a melodica, quoted “let my people go” within his solo, returned to the piano bench, and ended with a flourish. With the trio, he played a shuffle blues, then a hard-swinging blues—midway through the latter, he stood, pointed to the Jamaicans, and orchestrated a metric modulation, quoting “Manteca” in his solo, before seguing into Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.” The back-and-forth proceeded for another half-hour, before Alexander concluded with a romping “Come Fly With Me” and a melody-milking rendition of “All The Way.”

“Recently I’ve been doing this with more commitment than before,” Alexander remarked of the real-time genre-switching. “I’m fulfilled, because it’s my own life experience. It’s like Barack Obama music. We are all cut from the same cloth.”

[BREAK]

Perhaps twenty years ago, Alexander got angry at someone, intended to hit them, thought better of it, punched the wall instead, and broke his hand. “Ever since that day, I don’t play as fast as I used to,” he said. “But instead of playing twenty notes that may or may not mean that much, I started playing six or seven that hopefully are soulful or meaningful. Sometimes I’m playing and the muscle tightens, and I look like a kid who takes one index finger and goes PLINK-PLINK-PLINK. I think, ‘Shit, that must look terrible to the audience, this so-called ‘good’ piano player playing with his index finger.’”

The chops are abundant on Uplift (JSP), a deeply swinging navigation of the American Songbook with bassist Hassan Shakur and drummer Herlin Riley that follows the 2008 trio dates, The Good Life: Monty Alexander Plays the Songs of Tony Bennett and Calypso Blues: The Music of Nat King Cole [Chesky] as companion pieces to his excellent 1997 Sinatra tribute, Echoes of Jilly’s [Concord]. Rather than abstract the tunes, Alexander hews to the iconic arrangements, illuminating the music from within, deploying effervescent grooves, lovely rubatos, a killing left hand, an innate feel for stating melody, well-calibrated touch, harmonic acumen, and an ability to reference a broad timeline of piano vocabulary stretching to pre-bop. Each interpretation embodies a point of view. Like his “eternal inspiration,” Erroll Garner, Alexander gives the hardcore-jazz-obsessed much to dig into, while also communicating the message to the squarest “civilian.”

“In our home, Nat Cole was the voice of America,” said Alexander, who experienced a transformational moment in 1956 when he saw Cole play on a package concert in Kingston with Louis Armstrong. “I grew up learning his songs, without knowing the titles, even before I knew about Sinatra. My awareness of his piano playing came later; it was just that smooth voice. At first I confused him with Gene Autry. I was always connecting one thing with another—‘Wait a minute, that sounded like that.’ That’s why for me, even now, it’s one world of music. I try to remove all the lines.”

By 1956, Alexander had already spent half his life entertaining people with music. “I’d emulate people my folks knew who played old-time stride,” he said. “I was playing boogie-woogie from the getgo, rockin’ the joint. I just had fun at the piano.” Later, he would extrapolate a conceptual framework from Ahmad Jamal’s 1958 classic, “Poinciana.” “It was a merging of two worlds,” he said. “Sophistication on the piano, harmonic wonderment, and the nastiest jungle rhythm going on in the background. That’s Jamaica. It’s about dancin’, it’s about groovin’—it’s all one thing.”

Such formative experiences gave Alexander a certain ignorance-of-youth confidence when he started playing in “tough guy clubs” in Miami Beach, where hookers congregated and alcohol “flowed like crazy.” Within a year he was working at Le Bistro, a two-room joint where he shared the bill with a Sinatra impersonator named Duke Hazlitt. One night after a concert at the Fontainebleau, Sinatra came through with an entourage, including Sinatra’s consigliere, Jilly Rizzo, and Rizzo’s wife, Honey.

`“I’m playing, minding my own business, trying to behave, not to be too noisy,” Alexander recalled. “But I must have been kicking up a storm, because apparently Honey came in and told Jilly to come hear this kid play. In those days, I’d come in with all guns blazing. She told me, ‘We’ve got this club in New York, Jilly’s, and it would be nice to have you play in there, kid.”

About a year later, midway through 1963, Rizzo finally brought Alexander to his eponymous West 54th Street tough guy bar, which doubled as Sinatra’s late night office. Just 19 and residing a few blocks away in the Hotel Edison, Alexander joined Local 802, situated directly across the street from the club, and assumed his place among New York’s jazz elite. Within a few years, he was also working uptown at Minton’s Playhouse, “before a different crowd of tough guys; drug people and hot goods,” and at the Mad Men era Playboy Club.

“I remember sitting at Jilly’s piano bar, a few feet away from Miles Davis and Frank in deep conversation,” Alexander reminisced. “My crowning point was when Miles came to me and said, ‘Where did you learn to play that shit?’ Next thing, he writes his phone number on a little matchbook, and we’re hanging out at his house or going to the fights. Miles told me, ‘You got the right complexion.’” Alexander noted that his bloodline is an admixture of Lebanese, Spanish and African strains, and that the ambiguity as to his racial identity had a great deal with to do with his ability to comfortably navigate various circles in Jim Crow Miami as well as New York City. “At Minton’s they’d say, ‘What’s this Puerto Rican guy doing who can play jazz like that?’ When I first saw Ray Brown’s picture on an Oscar Peterson record cover, I saw the smile and the teeth and said, ‘Damn, Uncle Jim!’”

More than the familial resemblance, Alexander was drawn to Brown’s consistency, his tone, the truck-coming-down-the-road surge of his beat, and he tried to be around him whenever he could. “One night Ray was in town with Quincy Jones to make the album Walking In Space, and I asked him if he wanted to go out,” he recalled. “I took him to the Half Note to hang out with Coleman Hawkins and Major Holley. After he hung out with Bean, he said, ‘What’s going on uptown?’ ‘There’s a little bar called Docks, and Wynton Kelly and Sam Jones play duo there.’ ‘Ok, let’s go.’

“I got to know Ray better. I went to see him in L.A. at the Gaslight. When I got there, nobody’s listening, nobody cares, it’s the last set, and they had to play one obligatory tune. Frankie Capp walks to the drums, Mundell Lowe picks up the guitar, but the piano player is boozed-out at the bar. I asked Ray, ‘Can I play a tune?’ Within two choruses, he’s screaming, he’s groovin’ and I’m groovin’, and we’re as happy as kids in the candy jar. He said, ‘Where are you going to be this summer? I want you to play with me and Milt Jackson.’

“When you’re in company with people who are at a certain level, it upgrades your musicianship. I’d been smitten with the MJQ since I saw a record with these four dignified black men on the cover—they looked like funeral directors. I learned about the connections—John Lewis and Ray with Dizzy’s big band, Hank Jones telling Dizzy about Ray. I took that personal thing on the bandstand. I felt like I belonged to that crowd of people.”

[BREAK]

In spontaneously orchestrating the Harlem-Kingston Express band in live performance, Alexander seemed to be paralleling the bandstand procedures by which both Ahmad Jamal and Duke Ellington deployed their units to convey their intentions in real time. The pianist concurred.

“It’s a kind of joyful, loving dictatorship,” he said. “That’s why I use musicians who are willing and easy-going, who give me their trust and confidence and won’t question what I’m doing.”

Moreso than instant composition a la Jamal and Ellington as an m.o. for following the dictates of the moment, Alexander focuses on serious play. “I don’t read music and I play by ear,” he said. “You can chalk it up to a certain amount of laziness, because if I really wanted to read, there’s no reason I can’t. I took lessons with an older white lady from England who slapped my knuckles to play the scales. I learned to love her, because she meant well and she saw my talent—that taught me respect for the instrument and to get a sound, so the music starts to fly. But when I see paper in front of me, man, I start sweating. That part of my brain doesn’t function well. I don’t know how to play music that’s not coming from my instant, make-it-up stuff.

“I get bored with a planned format. I can’t repeat the same thing twice. I’m always reaching for now, live in the now, present tense, and I look for inspiration from wherever.”

This blank slate attitude inflects the aforementioned trio projects. “I just went in the studio,” Alexander said, referencing the 2008 Nat Cole tribute. “‘Haji Baba’ is from a movie with Nat, and I used to sing walking down the street when I was nine—I listened to the bridge on that and on ‘Again’ to make sure I had it right. But for the most part, when I play music, I smell it and see colors. Every song has its own personality, its own soul, and if I can’t feel it, I can’t play it with feeling.

“I don’t understand what it is that makes me different, but I feel I have very little in common with anybody else. I seem to be my own strange character. If I’m right in my motivations and attitude, amazing things happen.”

 

* * *

Monty Alexander on Ray Brown, 2002:

TP:    When did your association with Ray Brown begin?

MONTY ALEXANDER:  It began around 1966 or 1967.  I saw him on several occasions, and he saw me as a tiny kid who just wanted to get to know him better.  He didn’t hear me play music or anything; I just phoned him and started hanging out with him, and he welcomed me into his social life, and he came to New York, and I remember we met, and I took him to a club with mutual friends of ours, and I was talking about Wynton Kelly and Sam Jones, and I took him to see them play at a little bar.  I saw the camaraderie between them, and we hung out and had a lot of laughs. Then I took him to see Coleman Hawkins down at the Half Note, and he saw his old friends… So he liked it, and I ended up being in his company.

Then I saw him in Los Angeles a few months later, when he was doing the “Joey Bishop Show,” which became later the “Merv Griffin Show.”  I went to say hello, and he invited me to hang out with him again.

But the real association happened one evening when I went to where he was playing.  They were on an intermission, and when the time came to play a tune, just to sign off for the night… Because they weren’t really listening to the music; it was a sort of Hollywood club.  The pianist had one drink too many (I won’t call his name), and I said, “Can I sit in?”  Ray said, “Yeah.”  We started playing.  And in a few bars, I could hear his joyful sound, and mine too.  It was the beginning of knowing Ray Brown in music.  We just played some blues.  Then I got off the bandstand, and he asked me if I could join him in (?) that summer, just like that.  This was 1968.

TP:    When was the last time you played with him?

ALEXANDER:  We made what probably was his last recording.  He and I and Russell Malone have a release coming in October on Telarc.  We were all very happy to be together.  We had toured Europe last year, then we made this album, just the trio, and had all these dates in October and November, and next year we were going to tour Europe.  We were just happy to be together, and everybody loved the band — and we loved the band.

TP:    And you played with him with varying degrees of frequency and consistency between 1969 and early this year, then, on various gigs and recordings.

ALEXANDER:  With varying degrees of consistency is a great way to put it.  Because for a while, there was a lot of activity, and then I just went off doing what I do, and he started touring more and playing with Gene Harris and a trio.  He would have a trio.  Before that, Herb Ellis and I and Ray played in a group that everybody called The Triple Threat.  We made about five CDs for Concord.  We were playing and having a good thing.

TP:    Over the 34 years of knowing him well, did you hear him evolve as a musician?  Did Ray Brown in 1968 sound different than Ray Brown in 2002?  I assume the answer would be yes, but I wonder what the quality of his evolution would be.

ALEXANDER:  Ray Brown was like Art Tatum.  I’ll tell you why.  The first time you hear Art Tatum play, it was so incredible… I mean, his first recordings, whatever he did, to many us that heard it, it was as incredible in his latter days as in the beginning.  So it was already beyond words.  And Ray Brown was that.  Ray Brown was a continuous circle of beyond normal.  There was nothing on the planet… And I’m not just saying it out of emotion and sentiment.  In my opinion, what he stood for, just when he laid that rhythm down, it was like… I used to conjure up terms to try to explain how it was, and it was a Mack Truck with a Rolls-Royce engine.  That’s what it was.  I mean, that’s just my little parlance.

To me, the last times I played with him, every time from the beginning there was that sense of excitement that I would get, that I’m playing with this guy who is like a royal duke.  He’s a king.  He’s not a normal level of bass player.  He had something in him that was brilliant, just brilliant.

TP:    It seems he would play exactly in the right manner for any situation, and always make his personality shine, and yet never make himself outshine the situation.

ALEXANDER:  He was the greatest support player, and yet he was so strong with what he did, and you knew it was him.  He wasn’t about to be just a nameless character in the background, just doing the pedestrian work.  He was definitely so unique, that sound he got just from those fingers on the strings and what he heard.  A musician plays what he hears, and Ray heard this thing.  It was just a fat, beautiful tone.  I think as the years went by, it wasn’t so much an evolution; it was just a matter of, as you age, you don’t want to pull the strings as hard — so maybe he lowered the strings a little on the fingerboard.  Maybe.  But I couldn’t prove it.  I was always astounded.

TP:    Why do you think he went to younger bands in the last 10-12 years of his life?

ALEXANDER:  Well, the old guys were fading away also.  Whether or not he used young guys is not the point.  The point is that there weren’t that many older men that he would lock in with that would have the enthusiasm or spirit or the spirit of swinging that he was all about.

TP:    So it was because of his own exceptional energy that he wanted someone to match that and sustain it.

ALEXANDER:  Exactly.  And you have a better shot when you get a young, growing, fine musician who is also so desirous of matching his strength.  Which, by the way, was still leaps and bounds in terms of endurance.  Because whenever I saw him playing with anybody, it was like they were trying to keep up with him.

TP:    As someone who started off as a student and evolved into a peer, what would you say were the greatest lessons he imparted to you that impacted what you do as a musician?

ALEXANDER:  Well, I was never a student.  When I got on the bandstand with him, I felt like I was right there shoulder to shoulder.  That was my attitude in music from the beginning.  I was just so stubborn and ignorant!  I would say in many ways his mentoring to me was more about life and attitude than how you play.  Because he sensed in me from the beginning that I understood why and what he was, and I would play… When I played with him…  And I think Benny and Jeff would say the same thing.  We didn’t play with him; we played for him.  It was like we played together.  At least, that’s what I saw and heard.

TP:    So his lessons to you were life lessons.

ALEXANDER:  Yes.

TP:    Comportment and sustaining yourself within this big sharkpit.

ALEXANDER:  You said it well.  It was about fortitude and straight-ahead, and no matter what, don’t stop.  It’s like the way he played.  In other words, if the stuff is falling apart, keep on rockin’!  That’s what he did.  You hear that bass, from the first time you heard it, you knew it was this exceptional thing.  He told me, “Man, I got tired of playing out behind all them horn players at Jazz at the Philharmonic.”  The horn players would take 50 choruses apiece, no matter who they were.  Enough was enough.  And as he got older, he didn’t want to do that any more.

TP:    I’m sure that kind of pretty formulaic for him after a while.  But it would seem like no matter how formulaic the situation, he would never sound…

ALEXANDER:  The point is, no matter what he had to put up with, if he had to put up with it, it would never sound like there was any kind of backing-up.  He never backed up a thing.

To me, whatever note Ray played was like the first and the last note of his life.  He played like his life depended on that note.

I can’t get over the fact that man isn’t alive.  Because he was larger than life.  Most of us couldn’t consider the fact that the day could come he wouldn’t be alive!  This is emotional and personal.  He was almost like an uncle, a father, a big brother.  But he was so larger-than-life that it’s like… He was a survivor, and he… With all the new technology… Ray didn’t have a cell phone.  I mean, he finally got one, but he didn’t use it.  He didn’t do email, he didn’t do all this stuff.  But yet, he was so busy.  Larger than life, man.

For Bassist John Clayton’s 62nd Birthday, a DownBeat Feature From 2010

John Clayton, who continues to make his mark as top-tier bassist, composer and bandleader, turns 62 today. I had the pleasure of several conversations with him in late 2009-early 2010 when researching and composing a feature piece for DownBeat, which I append below.

* * * *

One of John Clayton’s favorite sayings is that he doesn’t do stress. “I’d rather roll up my sleeves and get the job done,” Clayton said. “I might have to go without sleeping, deal with difficult people, maybe have people scream at me—but it rolls off my back.”

It was the second Tuesday of January, and the bassist, 57, was anticipating the final installment of an eight-night run at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola with the Clayton Brothers Band, which he co-leads with his brother, Jeff Clayton, to be directly followed by two days in the studio to record The New Song and Dance, a follow-up to Brother to Brother [Artist Share], a 2010 Grammy nominee. He had arrived in New York directly from a week at Umbria Jazz Winter in Orvieto, Italy, where he performed four duos with bassist John Patitucci and another four with pianist Gerald Clayton, his son.

On the previous evening at Dizzy’s, the only screaming came from a packed house of NEA Jazz Masters, who ate salmon, drank wine and mineral water, and rose up and hollered in response to a surging, well-paced set. “That band is great,” 2010 awardee Kenny Barron said later, summing up the prevailing opinion. “It reminds me of why I wanted to start playing jazz in the first place.”

Such approbation made sense: Since 1977, when the Claytons co-founded the unit, they’ve connected to the hip populism and presentational values that defined the musical production of such predecessors as the Adderley Brothers, Benny Golson’s Jazztet, Horace Silver, the Ray Brown-Gene Harris Trio, and Count Basie. Now they’re a pan-generational ensemble, with forty-something trumpeter Terrell Stafford sharing the front line with Jeff Clayton on alto sax and flute, and twenty-somethings Gerald Clayton and Obed Calvaire on piano and drums. At Dizzy’s, CBB articulated old-school aesthetics in a non-formulaic manner, addressing sophisticated harmonic and rhythmic raw materials with a sell-the-song attitude and acute attention to detail. John Clayton radiated the cool, composed affect of which he spoke—alert to all the nuances, he smiled encouragement at his band-mates, goosing the flow with consistently melodic basslines and ebullient, surging-yet-relaxed grooves.

“When I was 16, I studied with Ray Brown,” Clayton explained. “Milt Jackson was like an uncle to me at 17. Their music was extremely deep and serious, yet they had no problem allowing the joy that they were deriving from it to be expressed on their faces and in their body language.”

Known as Ray Brown’s protégé since those years, Clayton holds an undisputed position in the upper echelons of bass expression—in addition to his considerable jazz bona fides as both an ensemble player and soloist, his peer group gives him deep respect for having held the principal bass chair with the Amsterdam Philharmonic for five years during the 1980s.

“One of John’s talents is picking things up quickly—understanding concepts,” said Jeff Clayton. “I practice long and hard. John practices smart—always has. In preparing to audition for the Amsterdam Philharmonic, he just added another hour or so to his practice.

“ I was practicing a lot anyway, so I just added the orchestra audition material to what I was practicing,” Clayton said matter-of-factly. “Classical is just another kind of music. You’ve still got to push the string down to the fingerboard. You have to play detached notes or legato notes, forte or piano. Now, the instrumentation or the groove or some other aesthetic might be different—you learn those things.”

“I’ve always been analytical,” he added. “I’m more comfortable if I try to figure out why the characters in a situation say what they do or act as they do. Rather than play something from my lesson 300 times, I’ll play it 50 times, and each time analyze, say, what my elbow or wrist is doing.”

Clayton has applied his penchant for compartmentalization and mono-focus towards mastering various non-performative aspects of the music business—indeed, he does so many things so well that it is possible to overlook how distinctive a niche he occupies. “John is a visionary, who says, ‘Five years from now, I’ll be here,’ and then gets there,’” said Monty Alexander, with whom Clayton spent the better part of three years on the road during the middle ‘70s. “When John says he’s going to do something and then it transpires, it’s not by chance,” his brother adds. “We would write down goal sheets and follow them; once we’ve made it to ALL of our goals, then we set new ones.”

One platform is the area of composition and arrangement for small groups, big bands, and orchestras, a craft that Clayton learned in the crucible of the late ‘70s Count Basie Orchestra. While in Amsterdam, he continued to refine his aesthetic, creating charts for a radio big band. Upon returning to Los Angeles in 1986, he found steady work in the studios, and set to work establishing himself as a film writer.

“I was involved in a lot of film sessions as the only African-American musician in a 75-piece orchestra, and I thought as a writer I could help change that situation,” Clayton said. “But when it looked like the doors were starting to open, it became less interesting to me. I realized I was getting into it for the wrong reason; I’d be focusing on a lot of music and an environment that doesn’t define me. If you’re lucky enough to work with the great directors or producers, then fantastic. But to work with unqualified shlocks who are telling you what to do, and have no taste in music… I always say that jazz saved my life. I don’t make the kind of money that a successful film writer makes. But I smile a lot.”

Instead, Clayton focused on establishing the Clayton-Hamilton Big Band as a primary locus for his musical production, transmuting vocabulary from various Count Basie “New Testament” and Woody Herman arrangers, Duke Ellington, and Thad Jones into his own argot in the process of creating a book. As the ‘90s progressed, he served as arranger-for-hire, producer, and conductor on numerous recordings and high-visibility concerts, adding to his duties administrative responsibilities as Artistic Director of Jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1999 to 2001. While multi-tasking amongst these activities, he also taught at the University of Southern California (he retired at the end of the 2008-09 academic year), developing a comprehensive bass pedagogy.

In discussing his first principles as a bassist, Clayton referenced his initial encounter with Ray Brown at a weekly “Workshop in Jazz Bass” course at UCLA in 1969, which he rode four buses to get to.

“Ray came through the door, took out the bass, and showed the whole class what we had to learn,” Clayton recalled. “He played every major scale, every minor scale, all the arpeggios in every key. Later, he brought in recordings of Charles Mingus, Richard Davis, Ron Carter, Israel Crosby, George Duvivier, Sam Jones, and Scott LaFaro, none of whom I’d ever heard of. He saw how hungry I was, so in love with the whole thing, so he’d invite me to his recording sessions or club gigs in the area. I can pick out Ray in the middle of a 150-piece string orchestra. But he still has lessons for me, whether about tone, how to handle a groove from one tune to the next, and on and on.”

Mentorship evolved to friendship and ultimately productive partnership in Super Bass, the three-contrabass ensemble that united Brown, Clayton and Christian McBride from 1996 until Brown’s death in 2002. Most tellingly, Brown bequeathed to Clayton his primary bass—Clayton played it at Dizzy’s and in Orvieto. “It’s like a talisman,” Clayton said. “It’s as though by touching this instrument, I am infused with confidence, not egotistical, but as if to say, ‘You’re touching this bass, the music needs this, you can supply this.’ I tell my students that creativity begins from nothing and silence. When you touch the instrument, before you play a note, allow some silent moments so that you are immediately cool and chill and calm—and THEN give the music whatever it demands.”

[BREAK]

“I’m playing the piano, and standing next to me is this patriarch guy, caressing everything and making what you’re playing better,” Monty Alexander said, recalling Clayton’s comportment as a 22-year-old in his trio. “Sometimes I got mad because I wanted to say, ‘Hey, respect seniority here!’ He had a way about him that just made you happy to play.”

“My dad finds a way to translate his approach in life better than a lot of people,” Gerald Clayton remarked. “He’s got such a big heart, he’s thankful for the situation, and he brings that energy and love and honesty into the music. Even if he’s telling you to do something, it’s more like an invitation—sort of intimidating but loving, like a big bear.”

Asked to comment on this patriarchal trope, Jeff Clayton said: “Our mother raised seven kids as a single mom, worked ten hours a day at the Post Office, went to choir rehearsal, taught the junior and senior choir Tuesdays and Fridays and went to church all day Sunday, and took one class per semester, one night a week for 12 years, and got her degree in theology. As the oldest brother with that many kids, John had to be responsible.”

“Billy Higgins used to say, ‘You don’t choose the instrument; the instrument chooses you,’” John Clayton said, “I think that surely applies to me. People look to bass players as glue. We’re the go-between for the egos of the drums, or the piano, or the vocalist, or the trumpet—we understand where everyone is coming from. That molds your personality, and you move more towards what the bass represents.”

Clayton’s personal rectitude and groundedness, his impeccable craft, his insistence on privileging ensemble imperatives above solo flight, his staunch identification with the bedrock codes of jazz tradition, can impart the superficial impression of aesthetic conservativism. But his comments on  what he considers distinctive about his voice reveal an incremental sensibility.

“The changes and contributions I make to the structures we work with are inside, subtle, upper-level things,” Clayton said. “I was inspired by the way Israel Crosby, with Ahmad Jamal’s trio, superimposed within his bassline a tune on the tune he was playing. Or when Monty played a solo, the way he would anticipate my bassline and harmonize it before I created it. Now I’m listening to Terrell, and create my bassline based on a melody fragment he’s just played in his solo.

“Our ultimate goal as musicians is to become one with our instrument, and singing is the barometer that tells us this is happening. In fact, any time that my playing starts to go south, all I have to do is remind myself, ‘Oh yeah, I’m not singing,’ and it automatically clicks back into place.”

Prefacing his first Orvieto duo concert with Patitucci, Clayton introduced his partner as “a faucet that turns on and turns off and plays melody.” It could have been self-description. Performing such iconic bass repertoire as “Tricotism,” “Whims of Chambers” and “Ray’s Idea,” songbook chestnuts like “Squeeze Me,” “Body and Soul,” and “Tea For Two,” and baroque music, they engaged in open dialog, intuiting each other’s moves, playing as authoritatively with the bow as pizzicato, taking care to stay in complementary registers, switching from support to lead on a dime.

“It was the best musical experience I’ve ever had playing duos with a bass player,” Patitucci said. “He’s a consummate musician. The pitches lined up, which made the sonorities much richer; he’s so well-rounded that you could throw up anything and read through it, and it worked.”

The father-son duos at Orvieto proceeded along similarly open paths, the protagonists addressing blues, spirituals, standards, and originals by Clayton fils with abundant reharmonizations, and polytonal episodes, with a stylistically heterogeneous stance. Pere Clayton kept things grounded with a relentless pocket and elevated the mood with a succession of transcendent arco solos, including an introduction to John Lewis’ to “Django” that channeled Bach in grand Koussevitzkyian fashion.

“Each situation is about passion,” Clayton said of his unitary interests. “You immerse yourself in that language, and try to make it part of what you do, because you’re so crazy about it. I love classical and jazz styles 50-50, and I think that’s what you hear.”

On The New Song and Dance, the Clayton Brothers place tango, New Orleans streetbeat, and complex time signatures into the mix towards the notion, as Jeff Clayton put it, “that swing is part of a large cauldron of many ideas that we are allowed to visit in each song.” “It shows the wide span of creativity that the group represents,” John Clayton said. “The project is pushing me in ways I haven’t been pushed before; my brother’s songs don’t sound anything like songs he wrote four years ago. Gerald stretches us, too. If people thought they knew what we sounded like, they’re going to be surprised with different sounds.

“The things I write for the Clayton Brothers that I’m less happy with lean too close to being over-arranged. I always look for that balance to have it organized yet allow for a lot of freedom. With the big band it’s a little different. I want it to be a blowing band, but then other times I’ll write a chorus with no improvisation at all.”

Clayton anticipated a light touring schedule over the summer, the better to focus on expanding “Red Man, Black Man”—a programmatic 2006 opus commissioned  by the Monterey Jazz Festival as a collaboration between the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra and Kurt Elling, that year’s artist-in-residence—from a 25-minute investigation of the affinities between Native American and African American music into a concert-length performance. To frame Elling’s reading of original lyrics and poems apropos to the subject, Clayton orchestrates a Shawnee tribal stomp (“the singers were using call-and-response, the notes were primarily the blues scale, and the shaker pattern was CHING, CHING-A-CHING, CHING-A-CHING, CHING”) with radical techniques—the musicians blow silence, the saxophone section plays the transcribed stomp with wood flutes, chains and anvils strike the ground at measured intervals to represent a chain gang.

“I’m interested in different cultures and their music, and always tried, somehow, to incorporate them in what I do,” Clayton said, citing an unaccompanied bass feature that combines “Lift Every Voice And Sing” with “Danny Boy,” and, on a meta-level, the fall 2009 release, Charles Aznavour and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra [Capitol Jazz-EMI], on which  Clayton’s subtle arrangements—the guests include pianist Jacky Terrason and Rachelle Farrell—reimagine the iconic chanteur’s hits, and some choice new repertoire, in a swing context.

However his milieu evolves, Clayton does not intend to be left behind. “In the big band era, there were way fewer choices,” he said. “Now we can listen to so many categories of music. Many young musicians say, ‘There’s too much for me to absorb and learn and be held responsible for.’ I think, ‘That’s great—get busy.”

[—30—]

A DownBeat Feature From 2009 and an Uncut Blindfold Test With Christian McBride

A few weeks ago, I missed a chance to observe bassist-composer Christian McBride’s birthday with a post of a DownBeat cover piece that ran in late 2008 and a slightly earlier Blindfold Test that I conducted with him not long before that. I’ve decided to rectify the omission, as I think both pieces are worth reading. I’ve posted my “director’s cut” of the feature (it runs about 900 words longer than what appeared in the magazine), and the original, unedited transcript of the Blindfold Test.

 

 Christian McBride, DownBeat Cover Article:

Late in the afternoon on Friday, May 8th, Christian McBride stood in the foyer of David Gage’s Tribeca bass atelier, poised to sound-test the latest addition to his arsenal. There was little time to spare—McBride had fifteen minutes to retrieve his car from the parking lot, a short walk away, and it was a mere 90 minutes til gig time at the Blue Note with James Carter’s new band with John Medeski, Adam Rogers, and Joey Baron. Still, McBride couldn’t restrain himself. Beaming at his new possession like a father cradling a newborn, he  put forth an elegant, funky one-chorus blues that the prior owner, the late Ray Brown, might well have cosigned for his own. Then McBride packed with a single efficient motion, enfolded Gage and his wife with a hug, and exited the premises, grabbing the car keys with two minutes to spare.

McBride was elated for reasons that had less to do with the excellence of the bass, which he declared superior to the one he had traded in to ameliorate the price, than with the pass-the-torch symbolism of the occasion. His new instrument had not come cheap, but he seemed to regard his possession of it to be more in the nature of an inheritance than the result of a transaction.

“It means the world to me, but I don’t think I’ll get that sentimental about it,” said McBride, who performed with Brown and John Clayton throughout the ‘90s in the singular unit, Super-Bass. “In my heart I’ll know it’s Ray’s bass, but I’m going to play what I need to. We had a very fatherly relationship. I don’t want to sound selfish, but I feel I SHOULD have it, since John has one of Ray’s other ones.”

Barely out of his teens when he joined Super Bass, McBride, now 36, was anything but a neophyte. Out of Philadelphia, he moved to New York in 1989 to matriculate at Juilliard, and quickly attained first-call status. By the fall of 1993, when McBride made his first extended tour with Joshua Redman’s highly publicized quartet with Pat Metheny and Billy Higgins, many considered him a major figure in the jazz bass continuum.

Perhaps this explains the vigorous blastback that certain elders launched McBride’s way in the latter ‘90s, when he began to revisit the electric bass, his first instrument, as a vehicle to investigate more contemporary modes of musical expression.

He recalled a backstage visit from Milt Jackson after his band, opening for Maceo Parker, played “a little tune I’d recorded that wasn’t a swing tune.” “Milt asked, ‘Was it necessary?’” McBride laughed heartily. “I said, ‘What do you mean, ‘necessary?’ ‘That ain’t the kind of stuff you’re supposed to be doing.’”

“I stood there and took it, because I loved Milt. But I had to ask: At what point am I allowed to get away from bebop? Is there some graduation process where Ray Brown or Hank Jones or Tommy Flanagan comes to Bradley’s and gives me my diploma? Why do I feel that I’m going to get in trouble if I decide to get a little funky? I knew stretching out wouldn’t affect my bebop playing or make me alter my sound.”

In point of fact, Brown, a fixture on L.A.’s commercial scene, who, as McBride notes, “played pretty good electric bass” himself, was anything but judgmental about his protege’s populist proclivities. “Ray never said a negative thing to me,” McBride said. “His whole thing was about pocket; as long as it had a toe-tapping quality, he was into it. He loved that I brought my own thing to Super Bass as opposed to ‘trying to play like a bebop guy.’”

Over the past decade, McBride’s penchant for adapting his “own thing” to any musical situation, however tightly formatted or open-ended, brought him copious sideman work with a crew of auditorium-fillers, among them Sting, Bruce Hornsby, David Sanborn, Herbie Hancock, and Pat Metheny, with whom he toured extensively during the first third of 2008. It was the final year of his four-year run as Creative Chair for Jazz at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, for which, since 2005, he had booked 12 concerts a year. Among the highlights were projects with Queen Latifah and James Brown, his idol, on which he both music-directed and played bass, and also such high-concept jazz fare as Charles Mingus’ Epitaph and a ninetieth birthday celebration for Hank Jones. McBride had not neglected his jazz education commitments—per his annual custom since 2000, he spent a fortnight as Artistic Director at Jazz Aspen Snowmass, and he maintained his co-director post at National Jazz Museum in Harlem, an employer since 2005. If this weren’t enough, McBride also assumed artistic director responsibilities at the Monterrey and Detroit Jazz Festivals, producing new music for the various special projects and groups presented therein.

The impact of all this activity on McBride’s Q-rating was apparent when the three Metheny devotees sharing my table at the Blue Note stated that his name, and not Carter’s, was their prime incentive for shelling out the $35 cover.

McBride did not disappoint: Playing primarily acoustic bass, he constructed pungent basslines that established both harmonic signposts and a heartbeat-steady pulse around which the band could form consensus. He also brought down the house with a pair of astonishing solos. On the set-opener, “Mad Lad,” a stomping Rhythm variant by Leo Parker, McBride bowed a fleet-as-a-fiddle, thematically unified stomp, executing horn-like lines with impeccable articulation, intonation, and stand-on-its-own time feel. To open the set-concluding “Lullaby For Real Deal,” by Sun Ra, he declaimed a wild Mingusian holler, then counterstated Carter’s balls-out baritone sax solo, chock-a-block with extended techniques, with a to-the-spaceways theme-and-variation statement that ascended to the mountaintop, danced down again, and concluded with an emphatic FLAVOOSH on the E-string.

At the Rose Theater a fortnight earlier, McBride performed equivalent feats of derring-do with Five Peace Band, the Chick Corea-John McLaughlin homage to the fortieth anniversary of their participation on Bitches Brew with alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, and drummers Vinnie Colaiuta and Brian Blade. Halfway through the final leg of a seven-month world tour, with Blade on drums, FPB addressed the repertoire in an open, collective manner, and McBride switched-off between acoustic and electric feels with equal authority. On one McLaughlin-penned piece, he laid down crunching funk grooves on the porkchop, at one point mirroring a staggeringly fast declamation by the leader so precisely as to give the illusion that the tones were merged into one hybrid voice.

“Technically, I could have done that ten years ago, but I don’t think my confidence would have been there to try it,” McBride remarked. “From playing electric so much more on sessions and gigs, now I have that confidence on both.”

He elaborated on the sonic personality that each instrument embodies.

“The acoustic bass is the mother, and the electric bass will always be the restless child,” he said. “Sometimes the energy of a restless child is cool to have around. It gets everybody up, and it keeps you on your toes. But the mother is always there, watching over everything—a wholesome feeling. The acoustic bass isn’t as loud, but it’s so big—it grabs all the music with a big, long arm. It encircles it. The electric bass is clearer, more in your face, but it doesn’t have that wisdom. Even with Jaco at his creative peak—and he was easily to the electric bass what Bird was to the alto saxophone—you never got that feeling. But you would go, ‘Man, this cat’s from another planet; who IS this?’”

[BREAK]

“I don’t know what made me think I would be able to do Detroit and Monterrey back-to-back, though I managed to pull it off,” McBride said. “I’ve always prided myself on being able to take on multiple projects at the same time. But in 2008 I bit off way more than I could chew. By October, I was ready to collapse. Then I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go to Europe for five weeks; I can’t collapse.’ Everybody was like, ‘You’re in town for three weeks? Let’s book some record dates.’ My brain was saying yes. But my body was like, ‘If you don’t go somewhere right now and sit in the dark for about three weeks, I’m unplugging on you.’ I’m trying to edit ‘09 a little bit.

“I’m ready to sink my teeth into my own music and see what I can finally develop on my own. Maybe one day I can be the guy leading an all-star tour or calling some other cats to come on the road with me.”

Towards that end, McBride was ready to tour with a new unit called Inside Straight, with saxophonist Steve Wilson, pianist Eric Reed, vibraphonist Warren Wolf, and drummer Carl Allen, whom he had assembled for a one-week gig at the Village Vanguard during summer of 2007 and reconvened to play Detroit. “I hadn’t played at the Vanguard since 1997, and thought it was time to go back,” McBride related. “‘Lorraine Gordon said, “Of course you’re always welcome at the Vanguard. But don’t bring that rock band you usually play with!’”

Said “rock band” was a plugged-in quartet with Geoff Keezer, Ron Blake, and Terreon Gully, which McBride first brought on the road in 2000 to support Science Fiction, the last of his four dates for Verve, to bring forth McBride’s “all-encompassing view of what jazz means to me.” The week before Christmas, during FPB’s December layover, they entered Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola for a “farewell-for-now” engagement. On the first set opening night, without rehearsal, they stretched out and hit hard, detailing a sonic template that spanned the soundpainting-beatsculpting feel of such ‘70s art fusion as Weather Report and Mwandishi and the inflamed ebullience that mutual heroes like Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, and McCoy Tyner evoked in their live performances of that same period.

Indeed, the group’s extreme talent far exceeded their recorded documentation or gig opportunities. “We got defaulted as a fusion band, which I thought was inaccurate,” McBride continued. “It seemed our gigs always got stuck in when I had two nights off with Pat or Five Peace Band, and it was hard to change hats quickly and think things all the way through. But we all like music that has a lot of energy. It could be funky or free, it could be bebop or Dixieland swing, or it could rock. As long as that jazz feel is underneath, what’s on top doesn’t really matter.”

Funk, freedom and rock are absent from Kind of Brown [Mack Avenue], McBride’s debut date with Inside Straight, and his first all-acoustic presentation since Gettin’ To It, his 1995 opening salvo on Verve. “I call it one of those ‘just in case you forgot’ recordings,” said McBride, whose twentieth-anniversary-as-a-New Yorker plans also include weekly hits over the summer with a big band, and Conversations With Christian, a still-in-process project comprising 20 duet interview-duo performances with select “friends and mentors.”

“I came to New York to play with all the great modern jazz musicians I could, and I became known doing that in the Paul Chambers-Ray Brown spirit,” McBride said. “In a lot of recent musical situations, I’ve found myself being a little louder than I really like, and I got the itch to come back to some good foot-stomping straight-ahead.”

It was observed that McBride had traversed a conceptual arc not dissimilar to the path of such generational contemporaries as Hargrove and Redman, whose respective careers launched on their ability to hang with elders on equal terms. While in their twenties, they embraced on their own ground the tropes of contemporary dance and popular music, but recently, perhaps no longer feeling a need to prove anything, have returned to more acoustic, swing-based investigations.

“I see everybody turning the corner again to the acoustic-based, swinging thing,” McBride said. “We were the generation that was able to assimilate all that had happened before us, and at some point decided to use with their jazz vocabulary hip-hop or certain types of indy rock, great music that not too many jazz people were keeping their ear on. It’s no different than what any other generation of jazz musicians did.”

[BREAK]

Regardless of the context in which he plays, McBride appears—has always appeared—to be grounded in a place not quite of his time. “My own mother told me once, ‘You really are an old soul,’ he said. “Coming from her, that almost scared me. I’ve never consciously thought we’ve got to bring back the vibe from the old days, but I probably do have a certain thread with an earlier generation. I’m an only child. My mom had me young, and she raised me as a single mom, so as much as we’re mother-and-son, we’ve always thought of each other as best friends. My childhood was hanging around my mother’s friends, listening to their stories, to their music.”

Referencing his fast learning curve, McBride added, “Having two working bassists in the family didn’t hurt.” One was his great uncle, bassist Howard Cooper, whose outcat gig resume includes Sun Ra and Khan Jamal. The other was his father, Lee Smith, a fixture in ‘70s Philly soul and R&B circles who began playing with Mongo Santamaria later in the decade. “He was a consistent figure in my formative years, in that I’d see him a few times a month,” McBride said. “We always practiced together, but after the initial ‘lessons’ when he showed me how to hold the bass and where to place my hands, it became just jamming. By high school, I spent all my time practicing classical etudes on the acoustic, which my dad didn’t play then.”

From the jump, McBride conceptualized the acoustic “as an oversized electric bass.” “Clarity was always the center of my concept of bass playing,” he said. “The  instrument’s range and frequency means you can feel the pulse that makes you move, but it’s hard to hear the notes. Much as I hate to admit it, I mostly hated bass solos, because I could never understand what they were playing. Notes ran into each other, and some cats would be out of tune—outside of first or second position, it gets dicey. I found that cats who play very clear and have good melodic ideas tended to be from the low-action, high-amplified school. When they’d start walking, all the pulse would go. Then, bass players with a really good sound and feel, who make you want to dance, when they soloed it was, ‘Ummm…go back to walking.’

“So my whole style was based on balancing the two—to play with a serious clarity of tone and still have the guts and power of the true acoustic bass. When I walk or am accompanying somebody, I wanted that soloist to feel they have the best tonal, rhythmic, and harmonic support possible, but I also didn’t want to bore the hell out of people when I soloed.  I was young enough when I started not to think that I had to get ideas only from other bass players. I thought, if I can play it, why not try to transcribe a McCoy Tyner or Joe Henderson line for the bass, and see how it comes out. Dumb 11-year-old idea.”

The notion of balance—triangulating a space between deference and self-interest, between pragmatic and creative imperatives, between acoustic and electric self-expression—is perhaps McBride’s defining characteristic.

“I’ve always tried to live in the middle,” McBride said. “I’d be a good U.N. diplomat! I’ve always found it interesting that I could talk about the same subject to two people who have violently different outlooks.” He recalled an early-‘90s encounter in San Sebastian with Lester Bowie—himself no diplomat—and Julius Hemphill when “they just started ripping into Wynton. ‘Man, Wynton’s ruining all you young cats. It’s a SHAME what he’s doing to you cats. But see, you got some different stuff happening, McBride! See, you got the opportunity to not be fazed by any of that stuff!’ I’m not really disagreeing or agreeing with them, just listening, ‘Mmm…mmm-hmm.’”

It’s unclear whether Bowie knew that McBride considered Marsalis “very much like a big brother or a mentor.” Old soul or not, he’s a child of the ‘80s, “one of the most fruitful periods for great jazz,” and, like many in his peer group, considered Marsalis’ recordings—along with those of the Tony Williams Quintet, Harrison-Blanchard, the various members of M-BASE, Art Blakey, Bass Desires, and Ralph Moore—“as important to my development as Miles and Freddie’s.” So when Marsalis came to Philadelphia in 1987 to conduct a high school workshop, McBride learned “as many of his tunes as I could.” Intrigued, Marsalis invited the 15-year-old prodigy to see him play the Academy Theater three days later, and invited him to sit in on “J Mood.”

Marsalis kept in close touch, conducting a regional Duke Ellington Youth Ensemble in which McBride participated, and “calling to check on me, telling me to keep my academics together” as McBride became a presence on the Philly scene. During these years, at Marsalis’ urging, McBride focused on the unamplified, raise-the-strings approach to bass expression  which, as he puts it, “seemed to be the new religious experience for young bass players coming to New York.” As his reputation grew (“people seemed to like what they were hearing”) he staunchly adhered to this aesthetic even through several bouts of tendinitis—although, upon Watson’s insistence (“Bobby, you don’t understand; the bass was not made to be played this way; maybe Victor can come down a bit…”), he did relent and purchase an amp for a Village Vanguard engagement.

Not too long thereafter, early in a duo week with Benny Green, Ray Brown heard McBride for the first time. “Ray said, ‘Why are you young cats playing so hard? You don’t need your strings up that high.’ I thought, ‘Shut up, and listen to Ray Brown.’ I saw him a few nights later, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Ray seemed to be playing the bass like it was a toy. He was having fun. Playing jazz, he had that locomotion I heard in the great soul bass players, like James Jamerson and Bootsy Collins and Larry Graham.  He wasn’t yanking the strings that hard, he had the biggest, fattest, woodiest sound I’d ever heard, and most of it was coming from the bass, not the amp. At that point, I slowly started coming around. I was able to find a middle ground where, yes, it’s perfectly fine to use an amplifier. It’s not the ‘40s any more.”

[BREAK]

A member of the last generation to receive a full dose of the heroes of the golden age of jazz, McBride is now well-positioned, through his educational activities and increasing visibility as a public spokesman, to facilitate the torch-passing process. His present views, informed by deep roots in black urban working-class culture and the attitude towards musical production that he absorbed during formative years, are not so very far removed from those of his mentors.

“Everybody’s nice now, but a lot of hard love came from those legends,” he said. “At Bradley’s, if you played a wrong change, you’d hear some musician at the bar going, ‘Unh-unh, nope, that’s not it.” They’d ream you on the break. After they finished, they’d buy you a drink. All of us wear those moments as badges of honor. When you see young cats doing the wrong thing, it’s not a matter of actually being mean or being nice when you  pull them aside and tell them what’s happening.”

Often he tells them not to bridle at the notion of marinating “in situations you’re not used to or that make you uncomfortable—situations where you’re playing bebop.”

“The people behind the scenes who pull the strings play on this idea of faction-race-gender-class, groove-versus-no-groove, intellectual-versus-street,” he said. “We’re in a period where the less groove or African-American influence, the more lauded the music is for being intellectual, or ‘this is cutting edge,’ ‘this is what you need to go see,’ ‘this is pure genius,’ whereas the guys who are grooving—‘that’s old; we’ve been hearing that for over half a century; we need to come further from that.’ The more European influence—or, shall we say, the more ECM—you put in your music, you can be considered a genius.

“At first, I thought it was racial. Maybe it is to a certain extent. But the white musicians I know who like to sink their teeth into the groove can’t get any dap either. Part of it might be backlash from when the record labels were dishing out the cash to advertise and market some straight-ahead ‘young lions’ who frankly didn’t deserve it. The recording industry did real damage to the credibility of young jazz musicians who were really serious about building on the tradition. It almost took an American Idol twist—some new hot person every six months. When it happened to me in New York, I remember thinking, ‘That could change tomorrow.’”

From the musicians in his family, McBride learned early that music is as much a business as an art form, and that to sustain a career requires labor as well as talent.  “My focus was always on being good,” he said. “If I’m the best musician I can be, I won’t have to worry whether someone thinks I’m hot or not; I’ll just be working with all the musicians that I can. I think that’s where I got my outlook to always try to find the middle ground.”

He intends to retain this attitude. “You see musicians reach a point where they no longer have to take certain gigs—and they don’t,” he said. “Some of us think, ‘They’ve lost that edge; they don’t have that passion like they used to.’ I never wanted to become one of those guys. My chops start getting weird. The pockets start getting funny. There’s a reason Ron Carter is still as active as he is. He’s playing all the time. Ray Brown was like that. They keep that thing going.”

[—30—]

 

Christian McBride Blindfold Test (Raw):

1.   Hans Glawischnig, “Oceanography” (PANORAMA, Sunnyside, 2007) (Glawischnig, bass, composer; Chick Corea, piano; Marcus Gilmore, drums)

I feel like I’m pretty sure on at least who two of three of those guys are. It certainly felt and sounded like Chick on piano. I’m going to guess that was Eddie Gomez. [No.] Really! Mmm! In that case, I’m a bit stumped. Whoever it was, I certainly feel like they come from the school of playing of Eddie Gomez, a lot of very pianistic, melodic lines way up on top of the bass, a wonderful melodic sense all over the bass but particularly in the upper register, and it didn’t sound like a very overtly powerful, kind of meaty, woody, kind of Ray Brownish school. The sound came more from the Gomez-Peacock-LaFaro kind of school. That’s why I might have thought it was Gomez. But if it’s not Gomez, it’s certainly someone I like a lot. I can’t guess who. I didn’t know who the drummer was at first. At first, I thought it might have been Jack. I thought it might have been Jeff Ballard. Knowing it was Chick, it thought it might have been Airto playing traps for a minute. So I’m a little stumped on who the bass player and drummer are, but I liked it a lot. Any professional musician playing changes that good and playing that good time, 5 stars. Hans! Very-very-very-VERY hip. Beautiful, Hans. Sounded great. Good job.

2.   Victor Wooten, “The Lesson” (PALMYSTERY, Heads Up, 2008) (Wooten, bass, hand claps, composer; Roy Wooten, cajon, shakers, hand claps)

I’m glad I heard that last minute. Got to be Victor Wooten. Only one man sounds like that on the electric bass. Victor has become the new bar, the new standard for a lot of electric bass players today. There has now been a legion born of Wooten-ites, as we call them, who try to play like that. I guess it’s very similar to what happened when Jaco came on the scene; now, every electric bass player had to sound like Jaco to be considered hip. So Victor Wooten is very much in that position these days. I love what Victor does. Is this a recent recording? [It’s coming out.] Well, one thing I’ve heard in Victor’s playing recently more than what I’ve heard in the past is that I could tell his level of harmony has completely blown way past the stratosphere at this point. When I first heard Victor, he was more or less a straight-up kind of R&B-funk guy, but his technique on the electric bass was so incredible you couldn’t help but be affected by that. But now I know he’s been working with a lot of guys like Mike Stern and Chick, so he’s been in situations where the musicality now is almost at the level with his technique. So it’s really great to hear what Victor’s done with this new thing. I love it. 5 stars.

3.   Omer Avital, “Third World Love Story” (ARRIVAL, Fresh Sound, 2007) (Avital, bass, composer; Jason Lindner, piano; Jonathan Blake, drums; Joel Frahm, tenor saxophone; Avishai Cohen, trumpet; Avi Lebovich, trombone)

Is it the bass player’s album? Is it his composition? If it’s his composition, I give him or her a few extra stars. I like the composition a whole lot. It was very soulful, interesting but not too complicated, as I know is a tendency to happen among a lot of jazz musicians in my generation and younger. We get so involved into the “hip” aspect of writing, sometimes we lose the simplicity of it all. This song had a nice, simple feeling to it. The only thing that I would have liked to hear a little different didn’t have anything to do with the bass player, but had to do with the comping behind the solo. I kind of wish the entire rhythm section would have come down a little more behind the solo, or maybe they could have raised the bass up in the mix a little more. But that was the only little minor thing that I heard that I might have thought I’d have done a little different. I could tell that whoever this is, is someone I know. The guys in the band, I could tell I probably I know them. But for the life of me, from that particular track, I can’t tell who it was. I’m not good at giving stars. Because any professional musician doing a helluva job like that, they’ve always got to get 5 stars. [AFTER] Johnathan Blake? I knew it! I should have said it. The last time Johnathan and I played together, I remember getting that same feeling. Listening to the drumming on this… When I did some gigs with the Mingus band, and Jonathan played drums, I remembered that same kind of feeling, like there’s someone behind chomping away! Not in a bad way, obviously. But I had a feeling it was Jonathan. Very nice, Omer. He’s such a jolly guy anyway. I love the cat. Omer! The big teddy bear.

4.   Eberhard Weber-Jan Garbarek, “Seven Movements” (STAGES OF A LONG JOURNEY, ECM, 2007) (Weber, electric upright bass, composer; Garbarek, soprano saxophone)

Stanley Clarke. No? Is this person American? [Why would you ask a question like that?] I think it’s a perfectly legitimate question. [Go through your thought process.] My thought process is that most bass players I know with this kind of sound and that kind of facility, if it’s not Stanley Clarke, it’s always been someone from Europe. [The bassist is European.] Thank you! That part there has got to be overdubbed. That’s humanly impossible to play on the bass. You can’t go from a high E on the G string down a low G on the E string. Now, that can be played on the bass. [MIMICS FINGERING WITH LEFT HAND] Is this Eberhard Weber and Jan Garbarek. He’s done a lot of stuff with Kate Bush, hasn’t he? [This is 65th birthday concert.] So he’s really playing that live? I’d love to see that. Well, I dig that a lot also. For that particular thing, I don’t think two guys have that sound more together than Eberhard and Jan. Even the American cats who have recorded for ECM who have tried to kind of get that sound, that’s… We have our own explicit sound… When certain cats get that sound, we have a certain American way that it sounds. But that particular thing there, that’s entirely theirs, and they have their own definite fingerprint on that particular sound—which is, frankly, European. That’s not said to be an insult or a compliment. That’s just what it is. I liked it a lot. [Any speculations on what’s European about it?] It was much more based on harmony and melody than rhythm. I’ve found that most European music tends to rely less on rhythm than melodic and harmonic content, which is cool if that’s what you’re in the mood for at that particular time. I think what we just heard is the preeminent way to capture that one thousand percent Euro sound. And it should be! 5 stars.

5.   Peter Washington, “Desafinado” (Steve Nelson, SOUND EFFECT, High Note, 2007) (Washington, bass; Nelson, vibraphone; Mulgrew Miller, piano; Lewis Nash, drums)

Is that my dear friend, Lewis Nash? [On bass solo.] Is that Peter? Anything Peter Washington plays on gets 5 stars. Peter Washington has always been one of my favorite bass players of all time. He has such a big, big sound and such great time. He picks such great notes. Hearing him on record is almost misleading, because when you hear him live, his sound is so much bigger. It still sounds great on record, but hearing him live is even a bigger treat. Of course, the way he and Lewis have played together through the years, they’ve established a chemistry that’s pretty special. The way Lewis always plays behind everybody, particularly bass solos, is why he’s the hardest working man in the drum business, and he rightfully deserves to be, the way he plays behind everyone, particularly bass players. That’s why Ron Carter loves him so, that’s why I love him so, that’s why Peter loves him so. But getting back to Peter, he sounds great all the time. I’ve never heard him have a bad night, never heard him sound a little bit off—he’s always right in the pocket. Since I got Peter and Lewis, I don’t know if I want to put an egg on my face and guess the other two. I don’t know who the vibe player is. I was thinking he didn’t sound quite as eagle-like as Bobby Hutcherson or Steve Nelson. They’re both so much in the stratosphere, unless it was one of them purposely holding back. I certainly don’t think it was one of those two. It was Steve? Okay, Steve was trying to hold back. We’ve all seen Steve Nelson just take off on a spaceship and go above the clouds. And I respect him! He was trying to be cool on this one! But he still sounded great. Just by an educated guess, was it Renee playing piano? No? Kenny Barron maybe? You got me. Mulgrew. Ah, of course. Well, that’s the A-band.

6.   Reginald Veal, “Ghost In the House” (UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS, Blue Note, 2004) (Wynton Marsalis, trumpet, composer; Veal, bass; Victor Goines, tenor saxophone; Wessell Anderson, alto saxophone; Wycliffe Gordon, trombone; Herlin Riley, drums)

Just from the sound of the bass, it only leaves a handful of people. It’s got to be like Ben Wolfe or Carlos Enriquez. It’s not Reginald Veal. These are gut strings on this bass. I’d be very shocked if this is not Wynton’s group or the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. So is this Carlos playing bass? Is it Ben? Reginald?! Really! This must not be new, then. What is this from? Ah, the Jack Johnson film. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Reginald play with gut strings before. It certainly sounds like gut strings. I’ll tell you a little secret about Reginald Veal. I’ve always been very happy he never decided to be part of the New York scene—to kind of hit the Bradley’s scene, the Vanguard scene, and work around with the New York cats. Because if that were the case, a lot of us wouldn’t be working! I’ve loved Reginald Veal for a very long time, and I’ve heard him in many different situations with a lot of people. I think he’s most known in the jazz world for his association with Wynton. Also with Diane Reeves, but with I don’t think he was able to really stand out in that particular group like he did in Wynton’s group. But this particular thing here I don’t think would be the best representation of Reginald’s great ability. This was obviously a wonderful track. He played great, he sounded great, as he always does. But those of us who have seen Reginald through the years know he’s a sleeping giant, as they say. He’s a bad dude. 5 stars.

7.   Scott Colley, “Architect of the Silent Moment” (ARCHITECT OF THE SILENT MOMENT, CamJazz, 2007) (Colley, bass, composer; Ralph Alessi, trumpet; David Binney, alto saxophone; Craig Taborn, piano; Antonio Sanchez, drums)

Is this Dave Holland? It’s killin’, whoever it is. I liked it a lot. I’m still trying to guess who the bass player was. Like I say, whoever it is, is really killin’. Maybe Patitucci. No? Good sound, good facility. Is that the bass player’s composition? There was a lot in there. I was trying to analyze it, but it’s hard to catch a lot of that stuff the first go-around. Obviously, it’s someone I could hearken back to when I talked about the…it has some very tricky parts in there. Compositionally, it’s built very well. For the first time around, it was a little bit of a challenge to find something to hang my hat on. I could tell it was definitely a really, really good composition, but from the very beginning I remember those slick dissonances between the bass part and the melody, and then how it kind of built into that section where it kind of explodes, where the drummer was kind of cutting loose at the end, and then the middle section where the solos were. So a lot of happening. Some good stuff going on. A couple of different drummers came to mind. Billy Drummond actually came to mind, but I know that’s not quite his sound. I’m a little stumped on who it might be, so I beg you to relieve me. 5 stars. Scott Colley? Dammit! Rooney, my good friend! Sure. I didn’t recognize Antonio’s sound, quite honestly. I’ve always known his drum sound to be a little different. But as I said before you told me who it was, whoever it was, was killing. Scott is definitely another one of my favorite musicians. I had no idea he was such a killing composer. I wouldn’t have guessed Craig.

8.   Francois Moutin, “Trane’s Medley” (Moutin Reunion Quartet, SHARP TURNS, Bluejazz, 2007) (Francois Moutin, bass, arranger; Louis Moutin, drums)

Is this Brian Bromberg? Well, that certainly would have gotten a lot of house in a big theater. It was certainly imaginative. Nice Coltrane tribute. My knee-jerk reaction is to say it might have been a little too choppy for me, and I don’t mean choppy in the sense that it didn’t flow. I mean choppy in the sense that whoever this person is has absolutely amazing chops, and it was used to the effect of garnish as opposed to meat on the plate. I say that with the utmost respect, because I know that people have said that about me from time to time. But with it being just bass and percussion, maybe that person felt a need to compensate for the lack of the piano and the guitar and whatever else was not there with some cute chop runs every now and then. But it was definitely imaginative, and it would have gotten plenty of house in a big theater. I don’t know too many acoustic bass players with those kinds of chops. After Bromberg, I’m a little stumped. 4 stars.

9.   Miroslav Vitous, “The Prayer” (UNIVERSAL SYNCOPATIONS II, ECM, 2007) (Vitous, bass, composer, samples; Gary Campbell, tenor saxophone; Gerald Cleaver, drums)

Is the bass player also the composer? Really! Is this from a movie? I feel like I’m watching a movie. [What do you see in the movie?] Like a war scene or something like that. The after effects, or something like that. I’m so into the composition that my knee jerk reaction is that it almost doesn’t need a bass solo in it. Whoever the composer is, I’ll give a bunch of stars, more than 5, just for the feel and the arc of the composition. I think the bass solo, whoever it was, with all due respect, I don’t think it was needed. The composition stands alone very well by itself without the soloing in between. The saxophone, too; not just the bass. I could have stood for even a little silence in those holes there. But definitely a bunch of stars for the composition. I couldn’t tell who the bass player was. Miroslav! I actually got to play with Gary Campbell once. But wow, Miroslav, a huge amount of applause for that piece of music. That was awesome. It was also my first time really getting to hear his orchestral samples kind of up-close like that. I’ve heard them kind of on their own, just as a demonstration once.

10.  Buster Williams, “The Triumphant Dance of the Butterfly” (GRIOT LIBERTE, High Note, 2004) (Williams, bass, composer; Stefon Harris, vibraphone; George Colligan, piano; Lenny White, drums)

[AFTER 8 BARS OF OPENING BASS SOLO] Buster Williams. I know that album pretty well. That’s a great, great record, with George Colligan and Stefon Harris. Buster Williams has created such a legacy. He’s such an influential musician and such a really, really great composer. I’m not quite sure why more bass players don’t give it up to him, because he’s certainly right on that level where you would mention a Ray Brown or a Ron Carter or an Oscar Pettiford. I have always felt you had to mention Buster along with those guys. He’s also been able to develop a pretty identifiable sound. Even before he was using an amplifier, if you listen to him on, like, Sassy Swings The Tivoli, he still sounds a lot different from a lot of bass players from that period, and it just developed and developed. He has a sound like no other. When he’s playing quarter notes, man, when he starts swinging, it’s treacherous!—in a great way. Five million stars for anything he does.

11.  Hank Jones, “Prelude To A Kiss” (FOR MY FATHER, Justin Time, 2004) (Jones, piano; George Mraz, bass; Dennis Mackrell, drums)

This sounds like an elder statesman. Is that Doctor Taylor? [What makes it sound like an elder statesman to you?] Just the way they’re playing the time. It’s nice and relaxed. The language. The style of chords. Just the approach. It sounds like guys who never got stung by the Herbie-McCoy ‘60s bug. Interesting to give it to the drummer on the bridge, because it’s such a pretty bridge. I’m not saying drummers can’t play pretty. I still think it’s one of our elder statesmen. Was the bassist Earl May, or someone like that? It’s got to be Hank or Billy or someone like that. Georege Mraz? Aggh! There we go. 5 stars.

12. Ornette Coleman, “Sleep Talking” (SOUND GRAMMAR, 2006, Sound Grammar) (Coleman, alto saxophone, composer; Greg Cohen, Tony Falanga, bass; Denardo Coleman, drums)

Is this Ornette with the two basses? Greg Cohen and I forget the other one. I’ve only seen this group in person, not on the record. I dig it. It’s kind of hard not to dig Ornette—for me. I remember when Melissa saw Ornette’s group at Carnegie Hall with Abbey Lincoln, and she said it was amazing because so many of these so-called “culture experts” who so-called know that Ornette is a genius, they couldn’t hang past the first tune. But I give props to Melissa. She hung in there the whole night. She said, “I dug it.” I was out with Metheny, and we saw them somewhere in Eastern Europe. But I dug it, man. I like the basses. Ornette might be the only person who would be able to get away with putting together something this loose. But knowing that it’s… Put it this way. If someone other than Ornette had to put this together, I’m not sure I would have understood it as much. He’s reached a point where he can put together almost anything and it will work as long as he is in the middle of it some kind of way. First of all, it was always my own personal opinion that Ornette was never really that out. I know he gets called the genius of the avant-garde, but I’ve always thought Ornette was pretty funky. I still hear plenty Texas in his playing, even when he’s really, really way out there. So I like that. That kind of ties it all together for me. So no matter how out it is, there’s still some hint of brisket underneath. [Meat is a frequent metaphor for you.] Yeah, man! 5 stars.

[END OF SOUND FILE]

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]

An Unedited Blindfold Test with Ray “Bulldog” Drummond On His 67th Birthday

Today is the 67th birthday of bassist Ray Drummond, whose huge sound, harmonic acumen and unfailing time feel have made him one of the major practitioners of his instrument since the end of the ’70s. To mark the occasion, I’ve posted the unedited proceedings of a DownBeat Blindfold Test  that he did with me either in late 2000 or early 2001.

Ray Drummond Blindfold Test:

1.    Oscar Pettiford, “Tricotism” (Bass, Bethlehem, 1955/2000) (5 stars)

It’s obvious that it’s “Tricotism” in one of its versions.  O.P.  Oscar Pettiford.  I already know it’s 5000 stars.  O.P. is in the school, the great tradition of Jimmy Blanton; Oscar Pettiford, Paul Chambers and people since then who have adhered to this  tradition.  The melodic articulation.  He’s trying to play like a horn.  He’s expressing himself, telling a story, and it’s a very articulate story.  He seems himself as a melody player in the same way that a saxophone or trumpet player would.  Plus he’s got great time, his walking is strong.  Ray Brown comes from this same approach to the instrument.  Serious bass playing.  To me this is the main stem, the trunk of the bass tree.  All the branches come from this tradition, and every bass player has inherited this.  Blanton and O.P. and Ray Brown are three of my particular heros that I learned a lot from just listening as I was coming up, as a musician as well as a bass player.  That articulation!  Just a wonderful player.  It’s O.P.!  God is in the house.  I hadn’t heard that version.

2.    Marcus Miller (all instruments), “Tracy” (Who Loves You?: A Tribute To Jaco Pastorius, Concord, 2000) (5 stars)

This is Jaco Pastorius.  It’s not?  But it’s his tune.  He used to play this; I don’t remember the name.  The only person I can think of who gets into textures like this who’s an electric player is Marcus Miller.  That’s the first guy that comes to my mind.  He’s the only guy who has that kind of talent.  It’s just good music!  He’s playing all the instruments?  That’s even better.  He gets five stars anyway, in my book, because he’s such a musical talent.  He’s a great bass player, but he’s also a great musician.  Once again, going back to O.P., who was a great musician, not just a bassist.  Marcus has that sound.  It’s a little harder to catch, given the sound of the bass guitar.  I wouldn’t think I’d pick up on him, because I haven’t been listening to a lot of Marcus’s own projects.  Last time I saw him he was producing a David Sanborn record.  I haven’t seen him play in years.

3.    Rodney Whitaker, “Whims of Chambers” (Ballads & Blues, Criss-Cross, 1998) (Paul Chambers, composer; Whitaker, bass; Stefon Harris, vibes; Eric Reed, piano; Ron Blake, tenor sax) (3 stars)

At first I thought it was an older recording, but now as I listen to it I realize it’s a bunch of younger guys.  I have to figure out who they are.  It’s a P.C. tune.  But it’s definitely not P.C.  What the whole band is doing sounds a bit superfluous; as a producer I’d have to tighten it up a little by snipping out some of what I would consider self-indulgence.  The point is to tell your story, and there’s no reason to have extraneous stuff in your recording.  I think part of the problem is that the compact disk has allowed everybody to become a lot more self-indulgent.  They’re good players.  Younger players. [TP: How can you tell they’re younger players?] I can tell they’re younger because the tonal universe is broader than you would normally hear from the mainstream players of the ‘50s and ‘60s. I don’t know which young bass player this is.  I know it’s not Christian McBride.  It could be one of half-a-dozen guys.  The problem I have is to try to hear guys’ different sounds.  Like I say on my web-site, getting your own sound and projecting your own voice is not one of the paramount values that a lot of younger jazz musicians today are going for. When I came up, I was kind of the last of the generations of musicians who had been counseled, “No matter what you do through your musical life, if you really want to play, acquire a voice.”  You have a voice.  Understand it.  Play through that voice and project that, and understand that that’s you.  Even if your articulation never gets to be too hot, or your choice of tunes or your knowledge or whatever, if you never pursue a career… I can tell you  about many musicians all over the world, the guy might be a doctor or a scientist, and yet he has this gorgeous tone.  Can’t play hardly anything, he can’t improvise, he can barely play a section, but the guy gets up and plays one note — and you say OH!!!  Because he’s got this sound.  In music schools especially, I guess, nobody is teaching people to acquire their own voice as the basic value, as something even more important than getting all over your instrument.  to me that’s much more important than being able to run up and down the bass or the saxophone or drums or whatever.  Having that sound.  Some people play a couple of notes and you say, “Ah, that’s such-and-such” and “that’s such-and-such.” [TP: There isn’t one of these musicians you could say that about.”} Well, I’m listening, and I think I know…I  probably know every one of these guys.  I probably have even worked with  some of them.  But somehow I can’t get that sense.  I’ll give it 2-1/2 stars.  The musicianship is excellent.  For me, a little self-indulgent, which brings the star level down.  But in my opinion, I just don’t think that there is much personality as these players actually have.  So the producer didn’t quite get what I think is necessary to show off the musicians.  It was on the generic side.

4.    John Lindberg, “Hydrofoil (For Fred Hopkins)” (The Catbird Sings, Black Saint, 2000) (Lindberg, bass; Andrew Cyrille, drums) (four stars)

It’s definitely post-Ornette style avant-garde playing, but I have a feeling it was recorded in the ‘80s or ‘90s as opposed to the late ‘60s or ‘70s.  To tell you the truth, I really haven’t listened to a whole lot of these guys.  I’m not familiar with people like William Parker.  I’m not saying that’s who this, but I’m saying I haven’t been paying attention to guys like that, because I’ve been out of that loop for a long time.  when I was coming up as a musician in California in the early ‘70s, there were a fair number of opportunities to heat that kind of music, and I did some gigs like that as well.  So I’m not from that school that tries to debunk anything or thinks this is not as creative or as important or as difficult to play as any other kind of music.  I like this music.  I wouldn’t want to play it myself as a steady diet, but certainly for contrast.  I won’t take any guesses. I like the drummer.  Barry Altschul comes to mind, for whatever reason, just from the sound of the recording; the cymbals sounded like ECM.  That’s I said Barry Altschul, because I know they recorded him like that.  But they recorded that kind of music in the ‘70s and they haven’t been recording that kind of music in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and this is recent.  I’d give it 3-1/2 to 4 stars for the energy and execution. [AFTER] I  haven’t heard John Lindberg in a long time.  He was a good player with the String Trio, but it was much more “inside” than what I heard here.

5.    Christian McBride, “Move” (Gary Burton, for Hamp, Red, Bags and Cal, Concord, 2001) (McBride, bass; Burton, vibes; Russell Malone, guitar) (4-1/2 stars)

The first thing that comes to my mind is… It feels like Ray Brown, but I don’t know if it is.  Yeah, it’s Ray Brown.  It’s got that feeling.  He’s the only one that pushes it like that. They played this Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool.  “Move.”  But let me listen more, because there are a couple of guys who might… I’m going to make a decision when I hear the solo.  It’s got to be Christian McBride, because that’s the only other person… We heard all the Ray stuff in the beginning there.  But this is Christian McBride.  I have to say that straight-out.  I speak about inheriting the mainstream tradition, Jimmy Blanton and how Jimmy Blanton affected O.P. and Ray Brown and the younger guys like Paul Chambers, and he obviously affected Ron Carter, then post Ron Carter you get players like me, Rufus, George Mraz, a whole raft.  And this young guy here, Christian McBride, really likes what Ray does.  That’s Russell Malone there.  I don’t know who the vibraphonist is.  The configuration reminds me of Tal Farlow, Mingus and Red Norvo.  Is this a tribute to that?  But they didn’t play like this.  They had another thing happening.  Probably Stefon Harris.  But if not, I don’t know who it is..  For the musicianship… It swings.  I can’t give it 5, but definitely 4-1/2.  It’s not at the same level as the O.P. [AFTER] Gary Burton?  I’m very impressed, because I did not know that Gary Burton had inherited so much Lionel Hampton and Red Norvo.

6.    Dave Holland, “Jugglers’ Parade” (Prime Directive, ECM, 1999) (Holland, bass; Chris Potter, saxophone; Steve Nelson, marimba; Robin Eubanks, trombone; Billy Kilson, drums) (5 stars)

It’s Dave Holland with Robin Eubanks, Chris Potter, Steve Nelson, Billy Kilson.  It has the different rhythms and they’re right on it.  I caught them last summer live.  We ran into each other at the Northsea, but nobody could listen to anybody, and then we saw them in Munich — we came in a day early and they were working downstairs.  Dave and I are the same age, and I’ve been listening to him since the late ‘60s.  The first I met him was a the Both/And in San Francisco in 1970, when he was playing in Chick Corea’s Trio; ECM had just been formed and they were selling “A/R/C.”  I had bought my copies of Chick’s solo improvised records and “A/R/C” from Chick there in the club, and that’s when I first met Dave.   I really enjoyed what he was doing.  That’s the first time I met him.  But the first time I heard him was in Miles’ band, at a concert they did at Stanford University in 1969.  And I was familiar with him from “Bitches Brew,” which is the first time I heard his name.  He’s got his own sound.  Again, he’s from that era where older guys would say, “Get your own sound, boy!”  Because that’s as important as anything else you’re going to do as part of your musicianship.  When I heard this band last summer, it was just a delight to listen to.  Dave’s got a whole concept.  It’s him!  He’s been playing this way all his musical life.  All the projects he’s been on, from Miles to now, it’s a concept that’s been Dave.  His voice and the message, the story that he tells, and that story has just gotten deeper and deeper and deeper.  I can’t say that about every musician that’s out there.  It’s the kind of thing that gives me a great deal of inspiration, that there’s a fellow bassist who is also a contemporary age-wise… I would never want to play like that, but I love to hear that.  It gives me a lot of ideas as a composer.  It’s just very inspirational.  5 stars.  It’s definitely on the same level as that O.P. piece.  Yay for Dave!

7.    Red Mitchell-Hank Jones, “What Am I Here For?” (Duo, Timeless, 1987) (5 stars) (Mitchell, bass; Jones, piano)

[IMMEDIATELY] That’s Hank Jones.  From the first notes.  Even though that’s a Rudy Van Gelder recording, that’s Hank Jones’ piano with Hank Jones playing it.  Hank and Red Mitchell.  Red Mitchell.  Talk about someone with a concept, someone with a voice and someone with a great deal of… If you want to just someone by the content of their character, boy, you’ll never go wrong with Red Mitchell!  That was one serious musician.  We miss him a lot.  He had a way of playing… Of course, he strings his bass totally different than the “traditional” way that basses are strung, giving him another kind of approach as part of the concept.  Because he used to play bass the same way everybody else plays it, and then he changed his tuning in the mid-‘60s for whatever reason.  There are a lot of reasons advanced.  Two consummate masters.  Five stars.  You could listen to this all night and sip a few cognacs and pretend we’re back at Bradley’s again, back in the day.  They used to play together several times a year at Bradley’s, and it was always a treat to hear them.  Oh, would we could do such a thing today!  It would be wonderful to have that inspiration again.  One thing about Red Mitchell is that he could play with anybody, and I think a hallmark of a great musician, not just adaptability, but the ability to project that personality in such a way that you do interact with other musical personalities.  And the strongest ones, in my opinion, are the ones who are able to interact with one another using their own personal voices and their visions, and they wind up weaving a story together.  That’s what they did here.

8.    Barre Phillips-Joe Maneri, “Elma My Dear” (Rohnlief, ECM, 1999) (Phillips, bass; Joe Maneri, tenor sax) – (3 stars)

I have no idea who the musicians are.  Again, for me it’s like post-Ornette.  Well, that’s not fair, because Ornette is not the one who unleashed this.  I don’t get the sense of composition.  I get the sense of interaction  of two musicians, as if they just went in and did whatever they did.  This is part of a larger piece or concept?  That’s the feeling I get.  But it didn’t to me as if it was anything other than the two guys interacting with one another, that there wasn’t any kind of motif, or maybe there was a color that was trying to be established.  I’m relatively open-minded about the process, but in terms of the execution of this one I’d have to say 2-1/2 or 3 stars.  The musicianship definitely is good.  The guys know something about their instruments in the colors they’re trying to create and that sort of thing.  But I feel a bit lost because I’m not sure about the context in which they’re trying to place it.  That’s the only reason that I can’t give… I’d give a qualified 2-1/2 or 3 stars.  But I feel a little lost as a listener. [AFTER] I’ve never met Barre Phillips, but I’ve heard his name for a number of years.  And he’s definitely somebody who’s a trouper from the ‘70s and ‘80s.  Obviously, there’s no question about musicianship and that sort of thing.  But as a listener I felt lost.  You told me about Joe Maneri and his microtonal concept, so obviously there’s a context for what this was about.  I think you need to be more informed to be able to understand what’s going on  here.

9.    Michael Moore-Ken Peplowski, “Body and Soul” (The History of Jazz, Vol. 1, Arbors, 2000) (Moore, bass; Peplowski, clarinet) (4-1/2 stars)

Obviously, it’s “Body and Soul” in a clarinet-bass duo.  As far as the performers, that’s a tough one.  The clarinet player is a serious clarinet player, like Eddie Daniels or… It’s not Paquito.  But Eddie is the guy who comes to my mind because of the sound.  Ken Peplowski also has a sound like that, but I’m going to say Eddie, even though I’m probably way off the mark.  It’s somebody that really is deep into the clarinet.  The bass player is really lyrical, and the only guy I can think of…. I don’t know how these guys have played together… I’m sure they  have, but I’m surprised to see them on a record.   Michael Moore is the bass player.  Michael is the only one that…he’s got that… It’s Michael!  It’s hard to explain.  It’s his sound and his concept.  He’s a player like Red Mitchell because he’s very lyrical in his approach, the way he plays the melody.  I’ve never heard him play with the bow like that.  I’ve always loved Michael.  Again, to go back to Bradley’s, Michael played there often.  4-1/2 stars [AFTER] I’ve had the opportunity to play a couple of times with Ken, but I really didn’t get into his clarinet playing until just this past summer when we were all in Japan and I got to hear him play clarinet every night.  I said, “Oh my goodness!”  Ken is a serious clarinet player as well as a marvelous saxophonist.  The beginning was lovely, the way they wove a duet out of tempo together stating the melody and creating the improvisation around the melody and that sort of thing right in the beginning for one full chorus.

10.    Ray Brown Trio, “Starbucks Blues” (Live At Starbucks,  Telarc, 2001) (Brown, bass; Geoff Keezer, piano; Kareem Riggins, drums) (5 stars)

Look out, Brown!  Signatures.  Well, we talked about Ray Brown earlier.  But there’s no mistaking him.  The fact is that Ray  Brown has his voice, he has his stories, and he’s been playing like this for almost 50 years at this point.  The first time I ever heard Mr. Brown live was as an undergraduate in college in the mid-‘60s with the great Oscar Peterson Trio with Thigpen.  They came down to Shelley’s Manne Hole, and I’d be down there two or three nights a week if they had a two-week engagement, just to listen to this trio and this wonderful bass player, this incredible master.  Oh, my goodness, that’s almost 40 years ago.  And Ray hasn’t lost anything.  He’s gotten even more… Not just the maturity, but your voice deepens as you age, especially if you allow it to be.  He’s just such a consummate player, such a grandmaster.  Every time you hear him, it’s such an inspiration.  Five stars.  You’re talking about somebody who’s been the central part of mainstream bass playing for a very long time, and still waving that flag and carrying it for all intents and purposes… I hope as many people as possible will see him while he’s still here with us.  Because we’ve lost so many people and it’s so great to have one of the grandmasters still able to do that thing that only they can do.  God bless Ray Brown. [LAUGHS]

11.    Fred Hopkins, “Mbizo” (David Murray Quartet, Deep Rivers, DIW, 1988) (Hopkins, bass; Murray, bass cl.; Dave Burrell, piano; Ralph Peterson, drums)

I don’t know who this is.  It’s funny, because I get this picture of Cecil McBee in my head, but it’s not Cecil; it’s just somebody who would like to play like Cecil, but hasn’t figured out, in my opinion, how to sound like that.  It’s not Cecil.  Right?  Whew, good.  But as a bass player, this player is chasing another kind of a value.  There’s a lyricism  I think the bass player is trying to get to that he hasn’t figured out yet.  Part of it has to do with his articulation and his intonation.  But that’s part of what he’s trying to do.  Oh, wait a minute!  That’s David!  Damn.  That’s David.  Is this Fred on here?  Fred.  That’s who it is.   It is Fred.  It’s David and Fred and…it could be Andrew.  I’ll take a stab and say Andrew.  The piano player might be Dave Burrell.  I probably missed the drummer.  I’ll stick with Andrew, though I’m probably wrong.  Oh, it’s Ralph.  Yeah, he’s trying to play like Andrew.  He plays more like Andrew than he plays like Blackwell.  Four stars.  The thing is, I loved Fred.  I really did.  But the thing is, there was a kind of lyricism he  as trying to get to that I never thought he quite got to.  But what a talent.  And what an unrealized talent!  There were certain kinds of things that I know Fred wanted to do musically that he was not given the opportunity to do.  I think that he was not only underappreciated while he was alive, but I think a lot of people are still asleep as to what he was up to as a musician.  He was amazing.

12.    Wilbur Ware, “Woody ‘N You” (Johnny Griffin Sextet.  Riverside, 1958) – (5 stars) – (Ware, bass; Johnny Griffin, ts; Kenny Drew, p; Philly Joe Jones, d.)

There’s only one Wilbur Ware, just like there’s only one Ray Brown.  It’s marvelous.  I’ve not heard this with Griffin, so this is probably something from the Riverside days.  There are several versions of this tune is on Sonny Rollins’ “Live At the Village Vanguard,” from probably around the same time, and Wilbur takes some solos on that, too, with that sound and that concept.  Again, he’s got his own way of telling a story, and it’s very effective.  He was a good player.  Kenny Drew?  Sounds like him.  Sounds like Kenny Drew playing.  Art Blakey, Wilbur Ware and Johnny Griffin.  Marvelous date.  Five stars.  I have got to give it up!  [AFTER] I was going to say it could be Philly Joe playing his Art Blakey shit, but you know… It had that Art Blakey thing in the beginning.  But now it’s definitely Philly Joe.  Kenny Washington will probably kill me for mistaking Philly Joe Jones for Art Blakey.

13.    Peter Kowald, “Isotopes” (Deals, Ideas & Ideals,   Hopscotch, 2000) – (Kowald, bass; Assif Tsahar, bass cl.; Rashied Ali, drums) – (3 stars)

Again, we have an example of textures.  Obviously notes, too.  But we’re talking about textures and moods.  Colors.  At this point we’re into ostinatos.  Again, this is a hard one to rate.  All the example of “freer” music, if you want to call it that… But he’s using a great deal of the resources available for color… But it’s funny, because we always think of this kind of playing as so different than mainstream playing.  And yet I would submit… This is where a lot of bass players are asleep on Mingus.  Of course, this is not Mingus, so I’m not going there with this.  On “Money Jungle,” Mingus used those kinds of techniques, a lot of colors, where traditionally bass players play something else, something a little more “traditionally”-based.  This person has a lot of ability to play in this context.  It would be interesting to hear whether this person is into notes as well.  I’m not sure this person is.  But again, there’s a different approach to lyricism here, because it’s more about colors and impressions and mood creation and that sort of thing.  Ah, it’s a trio, with bass clarinet and drums.  Whoever this bass clarinet player is, this person loves Eric Dolphy!  We heard David playing earlier, and there’s some Eric in him.  I mean, he can’t help but be affected by Eric when he plays bass clarinet.  But this person in particular seems to have a real affinity for Eric.  It’s the same kind of rhythmic phrasing.  That’s definitely where David and Eric part, in the rhythmic phrasing.  Some of the concepts that David uses are similar in terms of how they approach the bass clarinet.  But Eric could have done something like this, too.  As for the bass player, I’ll say it’s Alan Silva.  But I have a feeling that this is later, probably recently, so I’ll have to back off it.  I’ll give it 3 stars.  For my taste, it gets a little self-indulgent.  Okay, you started a story.  Now, what happened?  Where’s the story?  The story has a beginning, a middle and an ending.  And we did.  On the one with David, with Fred, obviously there were some stories being told.  You may not exactly understand how everybody’s getting around it, but there was something being said there.  Here I thought they were saying something, but then it drifted off.

14.    Charles Mingus, “Mood Indigo” (Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Impulse, 1963/1995) – (5 stars) (Mingus, bass; Jaki Byard, piano; Walter Perkins, drums; Eddie Preston, Richard Williams, trumpets; Britt Woodman, trombone; Don Butterfield, tuba; Eric Dolphy, Dick Hafer, Booker Ervin, Jerome Richardson, reeds & woodwinds)

That’s the sound of Duke.  The pianist even sounded convincingly like it could have been Duke.  That was my first impression.  Of course, this is Charles Mingus with “Mood Indigo.”  There’s only one guy who played like Mingus.  Of course, we know him.  Listen to the lyricism and technical ability.  And he had a different way of… He just did what he did.  And a lot of bass players will not give it up to Mingus as a bass player.  If you ask them what is the contribution that Charles Mingus made in the music, the first thing most bass players say is his composing, and they think of him as a composer and they don’t think of him as a bassist.  I can’t tell you how many guys actually respond that way.  It really used to surprise me once, but now I’m not.  I think it’s because  Mingus is so individual.  Charles Mingus was so strong and had his own… He just would play anything at any moment.  And I think for some bass players, it kind of disturbs them if you’re not playing a traditional part… [LAUGHS] Mingus had such a fertile imagination musically, so he could do anything.  Five stars.  Jaki Byard.  Boy, that’s another soul we miss that we’ve lost.  One of the grandmasters.

A 1996 WKCR Interview with Ray Brown, Born 85 Years Ago Today and Some Interviews About Him for A Downbeat Obituary in 2002

For bass king Ray Brown’s 85th birthday anniversary, here’s a piece that ran on the http://www.jazz.com website a couple of years, incorporating the proceedings of a 1996 WKCR encounter on which he joined me in the studio with Christian McBride. The introduction draws deeply on the obituary I wrote for DownBeat when Brown passed on July 2, 2002. After reading the WKCR interview, feel free to read the transcripts of my conversations with McBride, Geoff Keezer, Ron Carter, Monty Alexander, Herb Ellis, John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton, Benny Green, Quincy Jones, and Ed Thigpen, all of whom generously agreed to speak with me for the DownBeat piece.

* * *

Ray Brown’s supple sound, elemental beat, harmonic wizardry, and ability to create striking melodic lines at any tempo made him the definitive bassist of modern jazz. During his 58 years as a professional musician, he played with virtually every consequential figure on the scene. In the first stage of his career, he played on the first Gillespie-Parker combo recordings (“Shaw Nuff”), later making such influential sides as “One Bass Hit,” “Two Bass Hit” and “Ray’s Idea” with Gillespie’s seminal big band in 1946.  He joined fellow Gillespians John Lewis, Milt Jackson and Kenny Clarke in the first iteration of the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1951, at which point he had been touring regularly since 1948 with singer Ella Fitzgerald, his first wife, and with Jazz at the Philharmonic. Indeed, Brown’s relationship with Norman Granz led to numerous sideman appearances for Verve and Pablo until the latter 1980’s.  A short list includes recordings with Louis Armstrong, Gillespie, Parker, Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Benny Carter, Ben Webster, Illinois Jacquet, Sonny Rollins, Milt Jackson, Bud Powell, Hank Jones, Phineas Newborn, Jimmy Rowles, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington.

Many of those recordings found Brown in a rhythm section with pianist Oscar Peterson, whom he met on Peterson’s first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Montreal in 1949, and whose trio—first with guitarists Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis, and subsequently with drummer Ed Thigpen—he famously anchored from 1952 to 1966. In 1966, Brown came off the road, and settled in Los Angeles, functioning simulaneously as a musician and businessman. Over the next two decades he managed such artists as Quincy Jones and the Modern Jazz Quartet, contracted for the studios, co-founded the L.A. Four, co-owned a nightclub called Club Loa, and continued to freelance extensively.

In the mid-’80s, Brown returned to the road with pianist Gene Harris and drummer Jeff Hamilton.  The trio recorded a series of albums for Concord and Paddle-Wheel, evolving an ensemble sound that blended harmonic sophistication with grits-and-gravy blues imperatives.  Under contract to Telarc during the ’90s, Brown continued to challenge himself, sustaining trio excellence with such hand-picked young talent as pianists Benny Green and Geoff Keezer and drummers Greg Hutchinson and Karriem Riggins, and organizing Super Bass in 1996.

“When Ray laid the rhythm down, it was like a Mack Truck with a Rolls-Royce engine,” Monty Alexander told me in a tribute piece that Downbeat ran after his death. “He was the greatest support player, yet he wasn’t about to be a nameless character in the background, just doing the pedestrian work.”

“Ray gave me confidence,” Peterson remarked. “I never had to wonder and worry about where things were going harmonically or rhythmically. He listened to each performance that everyone gave, and adjusted his playing to you on different nights, which not a lot of bassists do. He would walk different lines behind me, change the harmonic pattern, just to see what I would do.”

“If you isolated Ray’s basslines and superimposed them over the chords in, say, a higher register, you’d find he was creating beautiful contrapuntal melodies all the time,” Keezer said. “I felt I had complete freedom to go whatever direction I wanted — and I took it pretty far out.”

“Ray’s approach to teaching wasn’t ‘Try this scale on this chord,’ Clayton stated. “Instead he would say, ‘Check out what Oscar Pettiford did on this record, or what Israel Crosby did with this bassline from Ahmad Jamal.’ He turned me on to Eddie Gomez, Richard Davis and Scott LaFaro. People forget that Ray Brown played Bebop, and when it hit, people thought it came from outer space; more jazz lovers could not relate to it than could. And Ray continued to search and stretch and experiment. His later arrangements involved more unpredictable voicings, chord changes and melodic movement than things he did five and ten years before.”

“He saw at an early age with Norman Granz in JATP how to run a business and take care of the musicians,” Jeff Hamilton noted. “He related that Norman once pulled the entire tour off of an airplane because, even though he’d bought a ticket for it, they wouldn’t allow his bass on board. Ray’s pride and sense of self-worth influenced his business techniques. ‘Well, if you don’t want me for this amount, you must not want me very much.’ They would inevitably call back. Ray said, ‘No, that was the amount you offered two weeks ago; now the amount is this.’ That kind of self-confidence came through every part of Ray Brown’s personality, musically and doing business off the bandstand.”

“After he moved to Los Angeles, we started working a lot together,” said Quincy Jones. “We got closer and closer. After a while, Ray started to take care of booking gigs and travel. He was an astute businessman. Old school played everything. We all played chitlin’ circuits. And you didn’t sit around whining about what you had to play, man. You played it, and tried to make it all sound good.  That’s what I loved about Ray. That’s where I think our chord struck, in being very curious about what the business side of it was and not wanting to be a victim. We wanted to be more in charge of our own destinies.

“A man never plays more or less than they are as a human being, and Ray was a very confident, take-charge person. He played bass like that and lived like that. He ate 17 different dishes like that. Wherever we were, whatever was good, Ray knew what it was. He’d probably eat a 249-pound catfish if he tried!  To me, he was the absolute symbol that if you empty your cup every time and learn to make it a habit, it always comes back twice as full. Give it up every time, man. Don’t save nothin’. I learned more and more about that from him all the time. In everything.”

On the final night of Super Bass’ debut gig at the Blue Note in 1996, Brown and McBride joined me on New York’s WKCR for a discussion about his life and times. An edited version appears below.

[MUSIC: Ray Brown/Basie/Roker, “One” (1975); Ray Brown Trio, “Con Alma” (1993); Ray Brown with Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, “One Bass Hit” (1946)]

I’d like to get things started by giving Ray Brown a bit of the third degree on his early years in music.  Hearing Count Basie and Ray Brown together puts you in touch with two-thirds of your deepest musical roots, because when you were 11 years old or so, you got to hear the Basie band on a fairly regular basis, didn’t you.

Oh yeah.  I went down there every day…

This was at the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh. You sat under the piano, right near Walter Page.

Right, in Pittsburgh.

How did you find out that this was happening, and what was the cause of your interest at this time?

Oh, I knew everything about music.  We had a lot of music in Pittsburgh.  We had two theaters that had live shows 52 weeks a year.  We had jam sessions at the union every night of the week, and the guys from the theaters came down there and jammed with the local guysThere was a big band in each theater, and a big band played a concert once a week in Pittsburgh.  There was a ton of music.

What was the source of your being inclined to it?  Was music in your family?  Were your parents musicians?

No, they weren’t musicians, but they loved music.  When I was a little kid my father wanted me to be a piano player, and he loved Fats Waller.  We used to sit up and listen to Fats Waller, and he’d say, “Listen to that left hand; listen to that guy play.”  Of course, Fats Waller was fantastic, one of the best of all time.  Then he came in with another record and he said, “Yeah, I got another guy I like; you’d better listen to this guy.”  Then he put this record on, and it was Art Tatum.  So you get pointed in the right direction.

Did you have private teachers?

Yeah, I had piano teachers.  The first one was kind of uppity.  She would pass me in the street… I’d be playing marbles, and she’d stop the car and pick me up and say, “All right, let’s go.”  I had to go home and wash up and come in there.  She’d inspect my nails.  She was a very proper… I told my mother I didn’t like that piano teacher.  So my mother said, “Well, what do you want to do?”  I said, “Well, there’s a couple of ladies… There’s a lady named Ruby Young I want to study with.”  Ruby Young had her own band.  There were two bands in Pittsburgh at that time led by women.  One was Gertrude Long and her Nighthawks, and this was Ruby Young and her band.  So Ruby was teaching lessons.

How old were you when you started playing?

Oh, God.  Young.  10, 11, somewhere around there.  But anyway, I took my first lesson with Ruby Young, and after the lesson I said, “Can you play some jazz for me?”—and she struck out then!  I told my mother, “Now, that’s it.”  She just sat up and played some stride and everything, and then I was very happy.  This is what I wanted to do and this is what I wanted to hear.

I gather you lived next door to a trombone player who played with Gertrude Long’s Nighthawks.

Right.  I used to go over and sit on the floor while they were rehearsed. I was around music all the time.  And my father liked Fats Waller so much that when my folks gave parties, he hired a guy who looked like Fats Waller, who played very little piano, he sang a little bit, but he wore tails and a top hat just like Fats Waller, and my father would tell all the guests, “After you get a few drinks, he sounds real good.” [LAUGHS] This guy would imitate Fats Waller, singing “Your Feet’s Too Big,” sang all those songs, and he played the piano.  My father couldn’t get Fats Waller, but that was the best thing he could do.  So there was music all the time in my house.

So come 1937 with the Basie band sort of on their workshop month preparing for their sojourn in the north, you were there regularly.

That’s right.  He had Sweets and Buck Clayton and Dickie Wells.  All those guys were in the band.  Jo Jones, Walter Page, Freddie Green.  So I met all these guys when I was a kid.

Do you remember the interaction, things you asked them, what they said to you?

No.  I just remember sitting there listening.  So that record has two people who were very-very influential to me, Dizzy Gillespie (who we don’t even have to talk about) and Count Basie.

But you weren’t playing the bass at all in 1937 when you saw Walter Page.

No, I wasn’t playing the bass at all.

That happened when you heard Jimmy Blanton, I gather.

Well, it didn’t happen right away, but I was aware of Jimmy Blanton, and then when I started messing around with the bass it became very prominent.

How did it come about that you made the transition from being a piano player to a bass player?

Well, it was very simple.  I went to junior high school, and I signed up for orchestra, and they had about, I don’t know, 28 piano players and they had 3 basses and only 2 bass players.  So every day, there was a bass laying on the floor, doing nothing.  And I’m sitting over there waiting for my 15 minutes a week to sit down to the piano.  It’s difficult for teenagers to sit around all day and not do anything and stay out of trouble.  So I asked the teacher, “Hey, if I was playing that bass, I could play every day.”  He said, “That’s right.  We’re looking for another bass player.”  I said, “Okay, you’ve got one.”  And that was it.

Was there a good teacher there?

No-no.  I just played it.  Just figured it out.  The schoolteacher showed me what… He had to show everybody every instrument.  He tuned up everybody’s instrument and he showed you, gave you five minutes maybe, and then you were on your own.  But I was bringing these things home; I was practicing with the records.  And I luckily played a lot with Duke Ellington, because the guy who was on that record sounded best to me.  So I played with that record all the time.  Any Duke Ellington record.

So Jimmy Blanton was the guy you played along with.

Daily.

When did you start gigging on the bass?

When I got to high school, a guy who I used to deliver papers to named Henry Foster was looking for some guys, and I said, “Hey, I play the bass and my friend plays the piano” — a guy named Walt Harper.  He hired both of us, and we started working with them on Friday and Saturday and Sunday, making $3 a night.  That was a lot of money then.  There were no taxes either.

What type of places would you play, and who was coming to hear you?

Just local people.  I don’t know… A lot of that stuff is dim now in terms of me giving you accuracy about the people showing up.  All I can remember is playing and learning the tunes.

Was it piano-bass-and-drums…

Piano, bass and drums and saxophone.

Do you remember what kind of repertoire you were playing at the time?  Did you ever have room for features for yourself?

Not really, no.  But we played just the tunes of the day.  “Tea For Two” and “Satchmouth Baby” and “Honeysuckle Rose.”

And all this time you’re still going to the theaters to hear the big bands…

Oh yeah.  Well, when I got to high school we started playing hookey to hear… We were listening to Lester Young, Bud Powell with Cootie Williams, Oscar Pettiford with Charlie Barnet, way before he ever joined Duke Ellington.

In Pittsburgh what was the top level of bass playing you could hear when you were coming up?

I guess the top bass players were a guy named Bass McMahon, who wound up playing with Eckstine’s band.  Then a guy who wound up here in New York, who they called Crusher, named Carl Pruitt, and he was with Roy Eldridge’s band.  They were the top guys in Pittsburgh.

Hearing Roy Eldridge’s name, and he being from the Pittsburgh area, makes me want to ask you which of the many famous musicians who emerged from Pittsburgh were you in contact with, were your peers when you were coming up.

There’s more famous people out of Pittsburgh, I think, than any place in the world, which is just ahead of maybe Philadelphia and Detroit.  You go back to Earl Hines and Roy Eldridge and Maxine Sullivan and Billy Strayhorn and Billy Eckstine, and come up to Art Blakey and Erroll Garner and Stanley Turrentine and Tommy Turrentine, Mary Lou Williams, George Benson… It’s a long list.  Dakota Staton.  Henry Mancini.  Pittsburgh had zillions of bad dudes come out of there!  A lot of people came out of Pittsburgh. So there was a lot of music in Pittsburgh.  I think in towns (Philadelphia was like that, Detroit was like that) where there’s a lot of music going on, I think it inspires young people to get into it.

<Now, the only guy I ever had any contact with (I didn’t know Roy or Eckstine or any of those people) was Erroll Garner, who was a few years older than us, but we used to play hookey, go over to his house and listen to him play the piano.  He used to come by, this little band that we worked with… He lived around the corner, and on Sunday night we played this North Side Elks; he’d slip in there around 11:30 and come in there and jam with us.  It was a lot of fun when he showed up.

Was he playing the same then as later…

Well, he swung the same way.  But he was playing more like Fats Waller then.

Did you get to see Jimmy Blanton play in person?  Do you remember that experience?

I saw him at the theater, yes.  The problems with the bass back in 1940-41, which is when Blanton was very prominent (or any other bass player), there were no amplifiers. There was a microphone in front of the band, and the saxophone player came up and played solos off it, the singers sang, and the leader would make announcements on it.  I mean, there was just one microphone up there.  Until Duke Ellington showed up and had a special mike on Jimmy Blanton standing in front of the band, you never heard the bass that well.  I mean, you heard the guy playing, but you couldn’t do anything fast on bass because nobody would be able to hear it.  So Blanton was an oddity in the first place, and a lot of people didn’t understand it.  They said, “Why does Duke Ellington have this guy up there playing all them bass solos?”  “Hah!  Yeah, sure.”

From you, a quick evaluation how Jimmy Blanton changed the face of the bass.

Oh, he just changed it.  From black to white.  That big a change.  Just picking it up, he was different.  I mean, he had the best sound you ever heard.  He played the best lines.  He played the best solos.  He did everything!  And everybody was into Jimmy Blanton.  I mean, I delivered newspapers to Carl Pruitt’s house, and I don’t care when I went by his house; he was playing those records and practicing with the records just like everybody else.  This must have been done around the world.  Everybody said, “What?”  They heard a guy play a bass like that… PSHEW!

Let’s take you from Pittsburgh in a capsulized way to 1944 to New York and hearing Dizzy Gillespie.  What were the circumstances of leaving Pittsburgh?

I would have left Pittsburgh before I finished high school, but my mother said if I did she was going to have me picked up by the police.  So I had to finish high school.  Schenley High School.  What happened, really, Cootie Williams’ band was at a big theater downtown with Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots and some dance team, Cook & Brown or something like that.  It was a big show.  They had Benson & Hedges’ hot record, “Put Me In Your Brass Bed,” or whatever the name is… Anyway, that show was hot.  The bass player in that show got picked up by the Army because he didn’t pick up his draft notice.  They came and got him from backstage, put him in a truck and drove him off to the Army base.  So now they’re looking for a bass player, and they got Crusher, Carl Pruitt, and he finished out the week.  But somebody told them about me, and I went down there, and they tried the jacket on me — and Carl Pruitt was too big, the jacket fit me, and they offered me the job. [LAUGHS] So I ran home and told my folks.  I said, “I got a job with Cootie Williams’ band.”  They said, “You have no job.”  You’re going to school.  And I cried and rolled over and died a few times.  But my mother said, “You’re going to finish school.”

So you had to stay in Pittsburgh a little while more.

Absolutely.  If you knew my folks, you would have stayed, too.

So after high school, then what?

As soon as I finished high school, I went on the road.  I went to Buffalo with a guy named Jimmy Hinsley in ‘44.

Wasn’t Hank Jones in Buffalo at that time?

Yes, that’s where we met.

I’ve read about you meeting after the show, drinking milkshakes and then going to hear Art Tatum after you were done.

Yes.  What happened was, I got a room at the YMCA, and a couple of days after I’d gotten there I was coming down going to someplace I was going.  I used to take the stairs down, and you passed a door that was the door to the cafeteria.  They had a piano, for some reason, in the cafeteria.  And I heard what I thought was this record we had at home of “Begin The Beguine” by Art Tatum, which I knew very well.  I played it many times.  I knew it practically by heart.  And I heard this record playing, and I stood outside the door and I said, “Wow, there’s that Tatum record,” and I sat and listened to it and it played — but when it got to the end there was some more playing!  I said, “Whoa!”

I went through the door, and there’s a guy sitting up there playing the piano.  I walked over to him and said, “Hey, man, that was that Art Tatum record, ‘Begin The Beguine.’”  He said, “Yeah.”  I said, “Oh yeah!”  That was Hank Jones.  That’s how we met.  So after that, every day I would bring my bass home, and we would go down to the cafeteria and play — every day.  We were on different jobs, but we just played together every afternoon.

What sort of things would you play?

Anything he wanted to play, and I followed him.

You were part of the first group of musicians where the general level of knowledge required seemed to be more.  How much do you think your piano background helped you in dealing with the music you had to play later on?

Well, the piano has always helped me in music.  The bass helps you hear the chord, but the piano then spells it out for you, in case you don’t know what the other notes are.  The piano plays all the notes.  So between the bass and the piano you have everything.

Let’s get you back on course to New York City.  You’re in Buffalo with Jimmy Hinsley, you meet Hank Jones, you’re playing in the cafeteria.  The story I hear is that you were on the road with the Snookum Russell band, then you left that band and went to New York City.  Snookum Russell was one of those band that had major figures before they became major figures.

Well, everybody in those days… There were a ton of big bands, and when you left school and went on the road, you normally went, in those days, with a big band, and you would play with the big band and then you would get better and you would move up to a better big band.  Eventually, you would wind up with one of the major big bands, as you became better.  Two guys who were in Snookum Russell’s band just before I joined it were was Fats Navarro and J.J. Johnson.  Those are not too bad names!

What kind of music was he playing?

I guess you could call it almost a commercial jazz band.  He covered the hits of the day.  If Lucky Millinder had a hit with Bull Moose Jackson, “Who Threw The Whiskey In the Well,” we would be doing that.  What happened was, I joined Snookum, and then he found out that I knew all of this stuff that Jimmy Blanton and Duke Ellington had done, so he started doing it between the two of us — because he of course loved Duke Ellington.  So he started featuring me doing the Blanton stuff.  There was a saxophone player in that band named Charles Carman(?) out of Sandusky, Ohio, and this guy was a Lester Young freak.  He knew everything Lester Young ever made—every note!  When I met him, and we were talking (after he’d been in the band for a little while), he said, “Do you know anything about Prez?”  I said, “Sure.”  He said, “What do you know about him?”  I said, “Well, what do you want to know?”  He said, “Do you know any of his solos?”  I said, “Call one.”

What you need to know is when I was going to high school we had a club of musicians, and every record that came out, as soon as it came out, you’d buy it (and it cost like 29 cents, a ‘78), you had two days to learn any of the major solos on there, and if you didn’t learn it in two days then nobody would let you in the house, because you had to sing it before you could get in the guy’s house.  So you had to learn every solo off of every record.

So I said, “Which one do you want to hear?”  He said so-and-so and so-and-so, and then I started singing it to him.  I couldn’t get rid of him after that.  Now, Lester Young and Slam Stewart had these records with Johnny Guarnieri and Sid Catlett, and we started doing those things—““Sometimes I’m Happy,” all that stuff.  So we were covering everything.

So Snookum Russell was a stimulating experience.

Oh yeah.

But you left.  It’s a funny story I’ve heard, there were four or five of you, they were going to leave the band, and they backed out…

Well, we all said we were going to go to New York and try our luck.  We had been with Snookum about eight months, and we’re reading Downbeat magazine and reading about Coleman Hawkins and 52nd Street and all these things.  We said, “We’ve got to go to New York.”  Because you had to go to New York to make it then. You couldn’t make it anyplace else.  You had to come to New York.  I said, “Well, then, let’s go to New York.”  So five of us decided we were going to go to New York.  And the night before we were supposed to leave, I started packing, I looked around, and everybody was sitting around.  I said, “What’s going on?”  One by one, they said, “Naw…”  The other four guys backed out.  So I started to back out, and then I said, “No, I’m going.”  I had talked to an aunt in New York and she said I could stay with her.  So I said, “I’m going.”

How did you travel?

On the train.  Took two days.

What happened when you got here?

I went to my aunt’s, washed up, she gave me some dinner, and I asked her son, who was my age, “Where is 52nd Street?”  He said, “Well, you’ve got to get the subway to get down there.”  I said, “Well, as soon as we eat, let’s go down there.  I want to see it.”  And he took me.

And who was on the Street?

Oh God, I can’t remember every band, but it was frightening.  I know the Downbeat, the second club on the right, had Art Tatum and Billie Holiday.  Stuff Smith was across the street (I can’t remember the other band).  Benny Harris and Don Byas.  There was one band that I went to see every night for a month (I didn’t miss a set), which was a trio with Erroll Garner, J.C. Heard and Oscar Pettiford.  Never missed a set.  Never did miss a set.  It was ridiculous.  You would have died if you could heard that group, man.  Obnoxious.  But anyway, the third place there had Coleman Hawkins featured, and Billy Daniels was singing intermissions, and he was being accompanied by a piano player, and it said, “Hank Jones.”  So I ran in there, and I asked if Hank Jones was around.  They said, “Yeah, he’s back there,” and I went back there, and we sat down and started to talk.  While we were talking, “Oh, there’s Dizzy Gillespie coming through the door.”  I said, “Oh yeah?  Introduce me.  I want to meet him.”  Because I had heard all his records and stuff.  So he called Dizzy, and Dizzy came over, and Hank said, “This is a good friend of mine; he’s a good bass player; he just got in town.”  Dizzy looked at me and said, “Can you play?”  I said, “Well…” I mean, what are you going to say?  Hank said, “Yeah, he can play.”  So he said, “You want a job?”  And I said, “Yeah!”  And he gave me a card and said, “Be at my house tomorrow night 7 o’clock for a rehearsal.”  I got up there, and there was four guys in there—Bud Powell, Max Roach, Dizzy and Charlie Parker.  Can’t beat that.  If you won the lottery tomorrow, it wouldn’t be as good as that.

What happened then?

Well, I had a heart attack first, and then we started to play some music.

What did the music sound like to you?  Was it along lines you were thinking about?

Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. They played tempos and keys and songs that I had never heard of, and you’re just standing there watching and trying to keep up.  Dizzy and Charlie Parker played so good, it was a frightening experience.

Dizzy Gillespie was famous for showing musicians how to play the music that he developed.  Did he do that with you at all?

He did that with all of us.  He used to show Max a lot of stuff.  They were very meticulous about what they wanted from the drums, especially Dizzy.  But if you’d ask him, then he would show you.  I know after I had been with him for about three or four weeks, I said, “How am I doing?”  He said, “Well, you’re doing pretty good, but you don’t play the right notes.” [LAUGHS] So I said, “What do you mean?”  He took me over to the piano and showed me.  He said, “Now, this note is right.”  Then he played the chord and showed me.  He said, “You play this note.  It’s right.  But that’s not the note I want.”  They were using a lot of substitutions.  So I would be playing a D, but he would want me to play a B.  I didn’t hear that at first, and then after he showed me I started finding out.

A few words about your relationship with and impressions of Charlie Parker.

Charlie Parker was unique.  I don’t have to tell anybody in their right mind how well this man played his instrument.  But what you don’t realize is, he’s the only guy I ever heard who could cover <b>everything</b>.  If you wanted to play “Cherokee” as fast as you could play it, he would eat it alive.  If you wanted to play some swing, like “Now’s The Time” or something like that, he would kill that.  If you wanted to play a ballad like Bird with Strings, he would eat that up.  And then,  he was the best blues player you ever heard!  He just covered everything.  There was nothing he couldn’t do.When you ask me for a few words about Charlie Parker, in a capsule that’s covering it pretty well.

Did he always play fairly short solos?  Was the way he plays on records or the various broadcasts with four or five choruses the rule, or did he extend…

He stretched out a few times.  But I’ll never forget what he told me.  One night somewhere we were playing, and after one of the sets I walked up to him and I said, “Bird, it feels so good when you play, why don’t you play more?”  And he looked at me and he said, “Raymond, if I played any more, I’d be practicing.  I do my practicing at home.”

A few words about Dizzy Gillespie.

Wow, that’s difficult.  I don’t know where to begin.  He was responsible for a lot of things that happened to me.  And he taught me a lot of things.  This is something that we as musicians don’t talk a lot about to people, but we learn many things from our mentors or people who we work for or who we admire or who are in front of us.  You don’t even realize how much you’ve learned from them.  You carry it with you all your life, and then you pass it along.  I just learned a tremendous amount of things from Dizzy Gillespie. Needless to say, he was a magnificent trumpet player, and he was a prolific songwriter, and he was a prolific arranger.  But I just keep going back to his knowledge of music.  Because in that band, which was a fantastic band that I just talked about… In fact, they picked up Milt Jackson a couple of weeks later.  Dizzy organized all the music.  He laid all the music down.  What can I say?  It’s history!

Were you in there at the very beginning of the big band?

He had a big band before, but it didn’t go, and he had to give it up.  I joined him when he had given up the big band and was getting ready to start another small band.  That’s when I showed up.  Then when we came back from California, he told Milt Jackson and I, “Listen, I’m thinking of getting another big band, and if you guys want to stay with me, you let me know.”  So we both said, “Absolutely!”  Then we opened up on 52nd Street.

What were the early rehearsals like?  Is it true that Monk was involved…

Monk was the piano player in that big band before John Lewis.

Was that a similar experience to hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in 1944 on coming to New York?  Did it sound like anything you’d ever heard?

No, not like any big band I’d ever heard.  Very exciting.  The music, the writing, the approach was all different.  The harmonies.  The only guy who experimented with harmonies to that extent was Duke Ellington, and he was always ahead of his time.

How did your first and still famous features for the band come to be?

Well, most leaders look at a band and they see who they have there to exploit, who has some talent that they can feature.  When he looked at this band, I guess it was Jackson and I, and James Moody who enjoyed a lot of the solo space along with Dizzy.  Other guys got solos, but we got a lot of space.

It was a great opportunity to really develop your conception in a variety of ways.

Yeah, but all these things are designated by the leader.  It’s like Jimmy Blanton joins Duke Ellington, and six months later he’s standing in front of the band playing solos all night. So Duke Ellington saw something and he was right.  He was absolutely right!  Here’s a guy who had under his thumb at any given time, Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Harry Carney and Ray Nance and Cootie Williams—all those guys!  But this was a diamond he had just discovered, and he did something with it.

In talking about Blanton before you were mentioning the difficulties bassists had in big bands because of the lack of amplification.  Now, you had to play very fast with Dizzy Gillespie.  Did you have amplification by that time?  How did you deal with…

Well, I didn’t play fast solos.  We were just playing fast tempos.

CHRISTIAN McBRIDE:  “Things To Come”! [LAUGHS]

When I was talking about playing fast I was talking about the way Christian McBride plays now.  20-30-40 years ago you wouldn’t have heard all those notes he’s playing.  Now you can hear every one of them.

But then, from what I gather, people heard you pretty clearly, and those are some tempos that haven’t been caught up with yet!

We’re not discussing tempos, now.  We’re discussing solo lines.  That’s a big difference.  Nobody dared play anything that fast because you couldn’t hear it.  Oscar Pettiford played some magnificent solos, and you didn’t really get to hear him until he joined Duke Ellington.

I’d like to talk you about Coleman Hawkins and your impressions of him.  I read a story that you and Hank Jones were trying to work out ways to trick him…

[LOUD LAUGH]

…on “Body and Soul” or something, and he just threw them right back at you.

That’s what I was talking about with all of the great saxophone players, how they differed.  For instance, let’s take Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins.  We were on Jazz at the Philharmonic, and Coleman Hawkins was playing “Body and Soul,” which he had to play whenever he took his saxophone out.  Hank Jones and I rehearsed in the daytime, we devised about 15 different sets of changes on “Body and Soul.”  And it didn’t make any difference.  Whatever we played, he just ate it up!  He just turned around, looked at us and said, “Hmm, THBBF,” and would go right through it.  We just broke up.  But it was good.  This guy had a magnificent ear!  On the other hand, Lester Young, you could play what you want back there.  Doesn’t matter.  He’s playing little stories.  He makes up melodies of his own, so he’s not interested in the changes.  He didn’t miss the change, but then he had his own interpretation of how to do it.

McBRIDE:   What about that story you told me about Ben Webster, when you were doing one of those Jazz at the Philharmonics.  That one wasn’t as smooth, huh?

Well, but that’s how you learn, though.  That’s why I can play songs in all the keys now.  He’s kind of responsible for that.  They had a ballad medley on Jazz at the Philharmonic, and each guy would walk up… They had ten horns.  Each guy would walk up two bars before the other guy finished and tell the rhythm section what he was going to play in what key.  So Coleman Hawkins would say, “‘Body and Soul’ in D-flat,” then he’d go out and play.  Roy Eldridge would come by and say, “‘The Man I Love,’ E-flat.”  It was just like that.  Until you get to Ben Webster, and Webster would come up and say, “‘My One And Only Love,’ B-natural.”  And we’d be back there scrambling for those changes!  So after the show was over, I would be in the back, packing up my bass, and somebody walked up behind me and hit me on my head.  I turned around and it was Ben Webster.  He said, “You messed up the chords tonight.”  I said, “Man, you were playing in B-natural.”  He said, “Don’t you have a B on that bass?”  Enough said.  Christian likes that story!

McBRIDE:  I’m sure we’ve all been through that a couple of times!

But it’s good for somebody to bring that to your attention.  All it does is, it improves you as a musician.

All those saxophonists had very different sounds and different approaches to projecting sound.  Ben Webster, for instance.

Oh yeah.  That may be the best saxophone sound I ever heard in my life, just the sound he made coming out of that horn.

You once described it, I think, as he and Coleman Hawkins and Johnny Hodges had the most mature sounds that you had heard.

Well, Charlie Parker used to call Johnny Hodges the Lily Pons of the saxophone.  Now, Lily Pons was a famous opera singer; what a beautiful voice.  That’s what Bird called Rabbit, the Lily Pons of the saxophone.

Staying on various personalities, Hank Jones was obviously very important to you at that time.

We call him “Mr. Piano.”  There’s just not a lot of people around who are that prolific on that instrument as he is.  He plays everything well.  I mean, he’s sort of like I said about Charlie Parker; this guy just does it all.  Magnificent player.  Wouldn’t you say so, Christian?

McBRIDE:  Oh, definitely.  I’d like to ask Ray about the short movie clip of Dizzy Gillespie’s Big Band, Jivin’ in Bebop?  You were saying how Duke used to put Jimmy Blanton in front of the band, and Dizzy does that to you on the video where you guys play “One Bass Hit.”

Oh yeah.  Well, they didn’t have to put me up front, but I guess if you’re featured on a tune, doing this movie the tendency was to bring the soloist up front.  It was unusual for the time, but they did it even with a bass player.

McBRIDE:  Every note you played came through crystal-clear.

Such as it was.

I’d like to talk to you about some of the drummers you’ve played with, since bass and drums are so interlocked.  First of all, Kenny Clarke, a fellow Pittsburgher.

That’s right.  I didn’t name him, but I left out a lot of people.  Kenny Clarke was a special drummer.  I never will forget, I would come to work on 52nd Street… Because he was in that first rhythm section, Monk, myself and Kenny Clarke.  He said, “Now, I want you to stand behind the bass drum, because I want your bass notes to go through the bass drum so it doesn’t come out BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.  It will sound almost like a bass coming out of there.  And he would come down early and have a damp cloth and wipe down his bass drum and tune it, and then tell me exactly where he wanted me to stand, because he said that makes the rhythm section sound better.  Most guys aren’t that meticulous about music.  He was special.  And he could swing.  That’s another thing about those Pittsburgh drummers.  Art Blakey, PSHEW!  Boy, those guys had some beat.  They had a beat, man.

<But we were talking about Hank Jones.  We did a session, and I challenged him on this… I said, “Do you ever remember a song that Fats Waller used to sing called ‘Your Feet’s Too Big’?”  He said, “Hell, yeah, I knew that tune.  I grew up with that.”  I said, “Well, let’s play it.”  And we played it on this record date.  So this is just for Hank Jones.  I hope he’s listening, because he’ll fall out.

[MUSIC: RB/HJ, “Your Feet’s Too Big” (1976); RB/HJ/Bags, “Nancy” (1964); OP/RB/Ella, “Street of Dreams”]

That was Ray Brown’s selection of music with your first wife, Ella Fitzgerald.

Well, there’s been so much since she passed away.  They’ve done so much.  I’ve heard it on the radios everywhere we’ve gone, Europe and the United States.  We’ve just lost one of the best ones.  A magnificent woman and a magnificent singer.  One of the best who ever did it.  I have great memories just for the fact that… The first trumpet player, and one of the best of all time, Mr. Louis Armstrong, he and Ella did a lot of stuff together, and I was fortunate to be on a lot of that stuff.  But I’ve been overly blessed to play with all the way back to Louis Armstrong and all the way up to guys like Christian McBride now.  And I’m just elated to still be able to go up on the bandstand and play.  It’s a great feeling!  And to have gone through all of those people I’ve played with.  All of those saxophone players, Prez and Hawk and Ben and Sonny Rollins, Johnny Hodges and Bird and Cannonball.  Sweets and Roy and Fats and Dizzy…Clark Terry.  I can’t name everybody.  All the piano players I’ve played with, all the guitar players, and all the drummers.  Just I’ve worked with almost everybody in this business, and that’s a blessing.  can’t describe it.  It’s just too overwhelming.

Just a few words on how This One’s For Blanton came to be.

Well, I made maybe half-a-dozen sessions with Ellington, whom I had always wanted to play with ever since I was knee-high to a duck.  But Norman Granz said to me, “You and Duke ought to do some things like he and Blanton did.”  I said, “Oh, I don’t know about that!”  But I said, “Well, let’s talk about it.”  He tried for years to get us together.  We were just in different places all the time.  Duke was busy and he was someplace, and I was busy someplace.  Of course, this was the last record he made before he passed, and I was fortunate enough to get in the studio with him.  The second session we did, he was pretty sick.  He had a fever. But he came in and played magnificently.

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

REMARKS ABOUT RAY BROWN:
Christian McBride

TP:    Talk about Ray Brown’s legacy in the music, in a synoptic way.

CHRISTIAN McBRIDE:  If I can make this as simple and poignant as possible, I would have to say that Ray Brown was to the bass what Charlie Parker was to the saxophone.  He revolutionized the instrument.  He took what Jimmy Blanton started to an entirely new level.

Ray Brown was arguably the very first bass player to revolutionize note lengths.  Most bass players before Ray Brown played very short, choppy notes, and Ray Brown revolutionized the sound of the bass in that his notes were very long.  Every note got its full value.  A quarter note was actually a quarter note.  A half note was actually a half note.  A whole note was actually a whole note.  How Ray Brown came across playing that way during a time when nobody did, it will always be beyond me, but I guess being in the company of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, and the man who I’m with now, Roy Haynes, I’m sure greatness and innovative ideas would run rampant.

TP:    When did he build his technique?  Did you ever get that from him?

McBRIDE:  Well, he always had that technique.  But I never really got a chance to talk much to him about any of his teachers or his early studies.  But Ray always talked about Jimmy Blanton.  That was his main man. That’s what made him want to play bass.  And it’s quite amazing that Ray Brown… When Jimmy Blanton hit the scene, that was really only seven years before Ray Brown hit the scene.  So there really wasn’t that large of a gap in age difference between the two of them.  That just proves how much of a sponge Ray was, to be able to pick up what Jimmy Blanton did.  And not to slight all the other bass players who were around then, like Milt Hinton, of course, or his fellow beboppers, like Al McKibbon and Nelson Boyd and Tommy Potter and Curley Russell.  But Ray, in most people’s eyes, was head and shoulders above the rest.

And his intonation was impeccable.  That was another one of his calling cards throughout his entire career.  Every note was always perfectly in tune.

TP:    I guess there was a hand-in-glove type of thing going on between he and Oscar Pettiford.

McBRIDE:  Absolutely.  Ray talked a lot about Oscar, too.  But even talking to a lot of guys who were there, like Roy Haynes or Hank Jones… Needless to say, Oscar Pettiford was a revolutionary in his own right, not just bass playing, but playing the cello and being able to play all those wonderfully melodic lines that Charlie Parker and Dizzy were playing, and incorporate that into the bass.  But his sound, the way he played his notes, still came from an older style.  Oscar Pettiford’s notes were still kind of on the short side, and Ray Brown elongated them. The bass had much more of a forward motion with the notes ringing out that much.  They almost ran into each other, his notes were so resonant.

TP:    How did his sound evolve over the years?  This is someone, it seems quite evident, who kept his curiosity, and particularly in the last ten years nurtured young musicians.

McBRIDE:  I think the fact that Ray Brown never stopped playing… I mean, even after he left Oscar Peterson’s company and moved to Los Angeles in the ’60s and started working on a lot of television and film, the “Merv Griffin Show” and whatnot, he never got away from the groove and the swing.  He played that style every day all of his life, and of course, when you do something like that every day, you can only get better and develop.  He never lost focus of his strength.  All during the time when people would think that being in Los Angeles and working on film scores and doing a lot of things that weren’t very jazz friendly, he might lose his chops.  But he never did.  I think the fact that he was able to stay so active during his time in L.A., when he really wasn’t traveling a lot, going on the road with other bands… When he decided to start a trio again and go back on the road, people realized, “Oh my gosh, he sounds better than ever.”

TP:    I’m looking my file of the interview, and he told the story that in junior high school he signed up for orchestra, and there were 28 piano players and 2 bass players, and there was a bass lying on the floor, so he asked the teacher if he could play it, and the teacher said he could.  He said he just figured it out himself without a teacher.

McBRIDE:  I totally believe it.  I never heard him mention having a private teacher. That’s testament to the man’s genius.

TP:    Talk about your personal relationship.  Of all the young musicians, you and John Clayton might have been the closest to him.

McBRIDE:  I can only say that a lot of musicians tend to call older guys “Dad” in a very loose manner.  But Ray Brown was not only a father figure to me, but I know he was to John as well as Benny Green and Diana Krall, or even people like Dee Dee Bridgewater.

One thing I loved about Ray more than anything else was that he took a very simplistic view toward life. Ray was not into over-conceptualizing.  He was always able to get right to the crux of the matter without doing a lot of dancing around any type of subject.  That’s the way he approached his music.  You watch a lot of musicians, and sometimes we have a tendency to do that, to over-think, to always want to try to get to that next level by thinking it out and a lot of trial-and-error.  Meanwhile, Ray had this ability to see it and go for it.  I’ll give you a perfect example.  Ray and I were talking about playing with the bow one time, and of course, traditionally there’s a way you hold the French bow and a way you hold the German bow.  I was talking to Ray about that one time, and Ray said, “I don’t see what the big deal is; it’s nothing but hair.”  He said, “If you hold it with your fist, you’re still going to do an up bow and a down bow, and it’s still going to sound okay.”  I said, “wow, I’ve never heard anybody quite put it like that, Ray.”

TP:    He wasn’t joking, though.

McBRIDE:  He wasn’t joking.  He was dead-serious.

TP:    So it was a totally pragmatic thing for him.

McBRIDE:  Totally.  And he lived his life like that.  He was always able to get right to the crux of the matter, and not being evil or being indignant; that’s just how he felt.  He was able to get right to the core of the matter.

TP:    He was a very standup guy also, I gather.  Someone you didn’t want to cross in any manner.

McBRIDE:  Absolutely not.  He was a very astute businessman, too.  He had that jazz club in L.A. for a long time, the Loa, and of course, he managed the MJQ for a while, and he also managed Quincy Jones for a while, when Quincy was really starting to heat up in Los Angeles, writing for Sanford and Son and Ironside and all those shows.  So this man had it together on both sides of the fence.

TP:    Would you describe for the 8-millionth time how you met?

McBRIDE:  I met Ray Brown at the Knickerbocker.  He was in town playing at the Blue Note with his trio, which at the time was Gene Harris and Jeff Hamilton.  Mary Ann Topper, who was manager to Benny Green and I at the time… I was playing in Benny’s trio at the time.  Mary Ann said, “Listen, Ray has got to hear you guys.  There’s no way in the world he wouldn’t dig you guys.”  So Benny and I were playing at the Knickerbocker, and Mary Ann got Ray to come over.  Needless to say, Benny Green and I were scared out of our wits.  I think a lot of times… I know some guys are different, but a lot of musicians, the last thing they want to do if they’ve been playing all night is go hear somebody else play.  They just kind of want to chill out, have a drink, and be cool and just vibe with the cats.  So Ray comes over, and we could tell he was tired, but he sat down and listened to us, and gave us some really nice words of wisdom, not anything too over the top, but he said, “You guys sound great; keep it up; you guys have really got it together; come see me play tomorrow night.”  So Benny and I went and saw Ray; it was his last night, a Sunday night.  Much to our surprise, he acknowledged us from the stage.  He said, “Last night I went to this club around the corner, the Knickerbocker, and I heard these two young men, and they were swingin’ like dawgs.”  I’ll never forget, those were his exact words, “swingin’ like dawgs.”  He asked us to stand up in the audience.  And about eight months later, Benny became Ray’s pianist, took Gene Harris’ place, and about four months after that, almost a year after we met, he started the new version of Super-Bass with John Clayton and myself.

TP:    What was it like playing with him?

McBRIDE:  All I can say is, I always wanted to know what a drummer felt like, playing with a really, really great bass player.  I always used to hear Billy Higgins say that when he played with Sam Jones, the drums played themselves.  He was like, “I don’t have to do anything; I can just put my stick right up on the cymbal, and it sounds good, because Sam is just laying it down.”  When I got to stand next to Ray Brown and hear him walk…I mean, feel him walk… I mean, physically the stage moved.  “Man, I’ve never felt perpetual motion like this!”  I was supposed to solo on top while he was walking, but I just couldn’t do it, because I was so amazed at the energy and force his bass lines created.  I was stuck for a minute.

TP:    What do you think Ray Brown’s legacy is going to be in the music?

McBRIDE:  That he was able to make the most simple musical statements with such ease… Like I said before, his music was like his whole outlook on life.  It was very direct and to the point, and it felt really good ,and I don’t think there will ever be another bass player that will be able to physically move a band quite like Ray Brown did.

TP:    Why is that?

McBRIDE:  I don’t know.  To kind of follow on Ray’s simplistic viewpoint, I really believe there are some guys who are just born with it and some guys who aren’t.

TP:    Are you talking about a specific quality or his essence?

McBRIDE:  I’m talking about a specific quality.  Because you would think that, the way Ray Brown plays, there would be a lot of other guys who would kind of… Because it’s a very simple style to figure out.  But nobody has really quite done it like Ray Brown.  You listen to somebody like Miles Davis.  Miles Davis has a very singular style that’s very easy to figure out, and you can analyze it for days and years and decades, but nobody will ever be able to quite do it like that.  It’s the same thing with Ray Brown.

Geoffrey Keezer

GEOFFREY KEEZER:  You’re never prepared for something like this, since he wasn’t ill, really.  It kind of took us all by surprise.

TP:    He had a sort of indestructible vibe to him, didn’t he.

KEEZER:  That’s a good way of putting it.  I think it was the quality of his generation.  Art Blakey was like that, too.

One thing that I could say that seems to be consistent from that era, whether it be Art Blakey or Ray Brown or Roy Haynes or Art Taylor or…not so much Hank Jones… Generally, they really hit hard!  Every single time they play, it’s as if it could be the last time they ever play music.  I always felt that these musicians always gave 150% every single time.  That’s a quality which I think doesn’t always migrate to younger players.  I think there’s something in the way these older people lived, there’s something that they survived early in their life that gave them this kind of warrior quality.  I think things are just generally easier.  It’s easier to live now.  We’re not dealing with the same things that they were dealing with.  We don’t have segregation, among other things…

TP:    Not so many gangsters now either.

KEEZER:  Yeah.  I remember one conversation, I don’t remember where, but I was in a dressing room with three generations of bass players.  It was Milt Hinton, Ray and Christian McBride.  The conversation went something like this.  McBride was complaining about the hotel or something that we were staying in, and then Ray said something to the effect that when he was young they stayed in real fleabag hotels, with bugs in the bed, just really bad conditions.  Then Milt Hinton jumped in and said, “Yeah, at least you had a hotel.  When we were young, we stayed in a hole!”

TP:    They’d go to town and black families would board them because there was no hotel.

KEEZER:  Yeah.  Not having lived it myself, I can only speculate.  But I think perhaps life was harder, and I think the music took on this sort of warrior quality.  From being with Ray for three years, besides all the musical things I got, I also was able to observe him on a daily basis, just how he handled the business side of things.  In contrast to someone like Art Blakey, who was a little bit more chaotic, Ray was really meticulous about business.  He would be up at 6 o’clock every morning on the phone; he would call Europe early in the morning; then he would go play golf; then he would be on the phone more in the afternoon. He never had an agent or a manager; he always did everything himself.

TP:    Well, he was a manager himself.  He managed Quincy Jones and the MJQ, plus he functioned as a contractor for the studios.  And did that carry over to the way he organized the band, his approach to setting up sets or repertoire?

KEEZER:  There was definitely a quality of attention that he brought to whatever he did.  In terms of what he did on stage, Ray was aware of the show-biz side of things, and he was definitely an entertainer as well as a great artist.  I think actually some young musicians take the whole thing way too seriously!  Of course, you have to take your practice seriously and take the music seriously, but I’ve always felt that it’s also entertainment, and he really understood that side of it.

TP:    I think that might be another characteristic of the generation.  They played shows.  They’d go on a show, and there’d be a dance act, a chorus line, some comedians.

KEEZER:  So he was always sensitive to the kind of audience we were playing for, and he would adjust accordingly.  If we were playing for an older, gray-haired kind of crowd, he would usually play more kinds of old standards, favorites, swing-oriented things, and if we were playing for a younger crowd he would throw in more Funk.  Especially in my last year in the band, we had a lot of guest stars.  We would have guest vocalists, somebody like Marlena Shaw or Diana Krall or Kevin Mahogany, or sometimes Stanley Turrentine would play with us.  So he was aware of the value of presenting interesting packages.

TP:    That’s evident on the “Some of My Best Friends” series.

KEEZER:  He was just as adept as a businessman as he was as a musician.  Which I think is a good quality to have.  And for him, I think it was in balance.  For some musicians, they’re all about business, and the playing suffers.  The reverse is also true.

TP:    Let’s talk about him as a bassist.  Talk about the quality of playing with him on a nightly basis, how he played and created basslines under you.  The dynamics of operating in a high-level trio with Ray Brown.

KEEZER:  I’m so glad that I had a chance to tell him this the last time I saw him, which was at Catalina’s in L.A. about a month ago.  With some distance and really being able to hear his trio from the audience as opposed to being in the middle of it, because sometimes when you’re in the middle of it, it’s harder to hear everything that’s going on, because you’re so sort of involved in what you’re doing at the moment… But hearing his new trio and how much Larry Fuller had improved in the couple of years he was with Ray… He went from being a good pianist when he started to being a really exceptional pianist.  I had a chance to tell Ray how much I appreciated playing with him every night for three years, and how I thought it was really the best thing I ever did for my piano playing.

TP:    Why was that?

KEEZER:  Number one, just because we’re playing every night.  Number two, because what Ray brought was such a wonderful kind of support.  For me, Ray embodied every quality that I like in a bass player.  He did everything really perfectly, and he did all the things that you can’t really say to a bass player, but all the things that you just wish they would do! It’s almost like with another bassist, you want to say, “Why can’t you do what Ray does?” but you don’t want to say that.  I’m trying to think if I can explain a little bit more clearly.

First of all, his beat was so huge, and he swung really, really hard.  Also harmonically speaking, he was so completely aware in every moment of what I was doing, and I felt that he was truly accompanying me. Even though he was the leader and it was his band, I felt like I had complete freedom to go whatever direction I wanted.  If you heard some of the records we made, you know I took it further out than any other pianist.  I only remember one time when he sort of said something about what I was playing. I started playing the Darth Vader theme in the middle of something, and he leaned over and said, “Jazz, please!” But other than that, I got to do as much as I possibly could, and he was right there with me.

TP:    [READS RAY’S QUOTE ON KEEZER]

KEEZER:  What I appreciated is that he let it happen.  There’s another thing about his bass playing which I always talk about in workshops.  That’s his understanding of how to play a walking bassline.  Very few people really understand this.  What he was doing at all times was playing melodies.  And a lot of younger bass players play four notes to the bar, and the notes they choose usually relate to the chords in some way, but the actual notes don’t connect up to any kind of melody.  And with Ray, if you isolated just the bassline and superimposed it over the chords, let’s say in a higher register, you’d have a beautiful melody all the time.  This is similar to what Bach does.  But what that means is that not only was he aware of the chords and being a rhythmic instrument, but he was also creating these melodies all the time underneath everything that I was doing — contrapuntal, in a way.  It’s really an advanced level of bass playing.  There’s only a couple of guys I can think of off the top of my head who can do that — Ron Carter, Dave Holland, Ray Drummond, and a handful of younger players.  It’s a very subtle aspect of playing bass, which hasn’t really migrated well to the younger generation.

John Clayton

TP:    Can you talk about how your relationship began and evolved?

JOHN CLAYTON:  When I was 16 years old, I was getting serious about the bass, and started my first Classical lessons.  Also around that time, I heard my first Ray Brown record, with the Oscar Peterson Trio, and my mind was blown.  So I mentioned the name to my Classical teacher, and asked, “Have you ever heard of him?”  He said, “Sure, I know him; he’s a friend of mine.”  My eyes got wide.  Then he took out a letter from Ray Brown that said, “Dear Mr. Segal, would you please tell your students about a class I’ll be teaching at UCLA called ‘Workshop in Jazz Bass’?”  That was my last Classical lesson with that guy.  I paid $65, and I enrolled in the extension course at UCLA.

TP:    What was Ray Brown like as a teacher?

CLAYTON:  Phenomenal, because he knew the importance of correctly learning the instrument.  In the beginning, Ray Brown was self-taught, as are most of us.  But then at some point, Ray Brown, while on the road with Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson and those kinds of people, started to hook up with principal bass players in major orchestras, and he had lessons in between his gigs on the road.

TP:    So he set up a network of teachers for himself, taking advantage of his travels?

CLAYTON:  Yes.  And he did that really, frankly, in terms of studying and practicing…he did that until he died. He practiced.  Ray used to tell me, “A lot of people say, ‘Boy, you’re just so talented and so good,” and he’d say… He’d usually use an expletive and say, “They don’t understand I PRACTICED to get together what I have together.  I’m not as talented as most people think.  I had to WORK on it.”  That was very enlightening.

The course at UCLA then led to me following him around to gigs and studio sessions and all of that sort of thing, basically doing whatever he told me to do.

TP:    Once getting past fundamentals, did he teach principles of improvising or playing basslines in a functional situation, that sort of thing?

CLAYTON:  He only led me to other people, not himself; how other people would do it.  He never talked about, “Try this scale on this chord” or that sort of thing.  He never had that approach.  Instead he would say, “Check out what Oscar Pettiford did on this record or what Israel Crosby did with this bassline from Ahmad Jamal.”  He’s the guy who turned me on to Eddie Davis, Richard Davis and Scott LaFaro.

TP:    It seems he kept his ears open to everything happening in the music.

CLAYTON:  As long as you were serious about the music and you were doing something that had something, Ray… People forget that Ray Brown played music that people thought came from outer space — Bebop.  And when bebop hit, there were more people who could not relate to it — I mean, jazz lovers who could not relate to it — than people who could.  So it was a very inside music.  That hasn’t changed.  That was a part of Ray Brown that was in him all the time.  If anyone ever does a thesis on Ray Brown and his music, they’ll see that he continued to search and stretch and experiment.  His later arrangements involved a lot more unpredictable chord voicings and chord changes and melodic movement than things he did five and ten years ago.

TP:    As a friend and someone who deeply analyzed his playing, what were the essential elements that made Ray Brown be Ray Brown?

CLAYTON:  Sound.  His bass sound was absolutely separate and distinguishable from every other bass player on earth.  Sound, his bass lines and his melodic bass solos.  And of course, oops, his drive.  Those things to me really set him apart from everybody else.

TP:    As you’ve implied, he befriended musicians from many walks of the music and many different generations.  But it seems like after the band with Gene Harris and Jeff Hamilton broke up, he made a real choice to go with younger musicians and use them in his touring bands.  Maybe that was in part a practical decision, but what’s your take on why he did that?

CLAYTON:  Because he wanted to keep the youth in his music.  The only practical part of it might be that some of the older musicians that he would ask were busy with their own groups. But also, like you pointed out earlier, he had his ear to the ground, so he was really digging what a lot of these younger musicians were doing.  So it sort of also evolved on its own.  It goes from Benny Green joining the group, and when Jeff Hamilton finally leaves, then Benny can recommend another one of his friends that plays swinging drums, and next thing you know, you’ve got Greg Hutchinson.  All of those guys helped keep Ray up on what was happening in the younger jazz world.

TP:    So they stimulated him.  He needed that constant stimulation.

CLAYTON:  Well, they did stimulate him.  I think all artists need that.

TP:    It sounds like he got some of that as well from Super Bass.

CLAYTON:  That was sure stimulating for me.  Ray and I had actually done a Super Bass record together before he put the group together with Christian.  It’s on Capri Records.  That, of course, kind of set the idea going in our heads.  And when Christian McBride came along, then at some point Ray asked what I thought about putting together a Super Bass group with Christian.  I said, “Are you kidding?  When can we start?”  Of course, we all got along so well together, it really became a family trio.

TP:    Were there any particular stories or incidents that you can think of that get to his essence?

CLAYTON:  There’s one which I told at his funeral, in my eulogy, which really sums up Ray Brown from my perspective.  This is in regard to his concern for musicians.  When I was following him around to the studios, I got star eyes.  I just loved what he did in studios, and was enamored by this whole life of the studio musician, working with all these stars, and I’d see his name stencilled on his equipment, and it all looked so impressive.  So I asked him if he could help me become a studio musician when I got out of college, and he hit the ceiling!  He cursed and screamed, and told me I didn’t even know how to play the effing bass, and the first thing I needed to do was learn how to play it from top to bottom, and then get on the road and play some music, and then if I want to come back and play this garbage in the studios, it will be here waiting for me.  He and I laughed about that a lot in later years, because he was really pissed at the idea that I might get sucked into something that was not helping me to develop as a musician.

TP:    He was also a very practical man, wasn’t he?  A good businessman, a manager, an entrepreneur.

CLAYTON:  I know that for the last twenty years of his life, he did not have a manager.  He handled all of his business, he booked all of his concerts; if it was Carnegie Hall or a funky dive someplace, he booked it.

TP:    And he handled all the details.

CLAYTON:  He did.

TP:    I gather his routine was to get up at 6-6:30 every morning, do business, play golf, come back, do more business, practice, take his nap, and if there was a gig, go to the gig.

CLAYTON:  That pretty much was it.

TP:    A very disciplined man, then.

CLAYTON:  He was.  It wasn’t always 6, but it was early in the morning.  You’re right.

Ron Carter

TP:    When did you first hear him, and what impact did it make on you when you did hear him?

RON CARTER:  The first time I saw him was with the Oscar Peterson Trio with Herb Ellis at the Village Vanguard, right I came to New York in August 1959. Oscar brought his piano in, of course, and that was quite impressive to know a guy could get a gig and bring his own piano.  Up to that point, I hadn’t known piano players to have the command to do that.

What I hope his legacy is, Ted, is that bass players remember that the bass player also plays time.  I think most of us kind of got away from that part of the process of playing bass with a group.  One of his legacies to the bass community is how great his time was and how he always commanded attention by the way he played great time.

But what impressed me at the Vanguard, THEN, was his professional approach to the instrument.  I’d seen Wyatt Ruether, Bull Ruether, one of the early bass players who was with Chico Hamilton when I joined the band.  He played the bass without a lot of skill level, and while he had the interest, it just didn’t seem to have the command of the instrument that Ray had.  Later on, I saw George Duvivier play in New York with Lena Horne and Chico Hamilton, and again, I was impressed by their professional approach to the instrument.  I mean, they were playing it like a bass, not like a baseball bat.  They used a different combination of notes and great intonation.  Those things impressed me with Ray when I first heard him.

TP:    Did you become friends with him?

CARTER:  Much later.  I’m fortunate to say that I saw him when he was last in New York at Birdland with the flute-led quartet.  He and I and Sandy Jackson had a great talk.  I hadn’t seen him for a while.  The last time I’d seen him was at the Blue Note, and he was just thinking about undergoing some knee surgery or hip surgery.  He looked in great shape.  We had a nice conversation.

TP:    But did you ever at any point analyze his playing, or wasn’t it like that.

CARTER:  No.  When you kind of have your own track in your head, the most you can do is just appreciate people who have found their own track.  He was clearly out of the Jimmy Blanton school, but he had his own sense of where to play the time.  There was no question he thought that the time belonged right here.  He wasn’t afraid to play where he thought the beat was, and he would play it until everyone agreed with it.  He just kind of towered over the rhythm section.

TP:    And it seemed he got stronger and stronger up to the end of his life.

CARTER:  Yeah.  I was as stunned as anyone else to know that he passed away, whatever the circumstances, because he seemed so vital and he sounded great that night I heard him at Birdland.

One doesn’t know when their last chance to play the bass is going to be.  I’ve been telling my students for a very long time that you’ve got to play the bass like this is your last change to get it right.  And he always brought that kind of energy to the instrument.  He never fooled around, never spun the bass, he never told jokes.  He just played the bass like it was his last chance to do it, and he was going to appreciate the Creator’s intent for him and he was going to do it.  That’s that whole mindset that’s escaped some of the bass players, I think, who see the bass as a tool for something other than creating a good level of music within a group.  That wasn’t his mentality.

TP:    So your main point would be that his impact on the way bass players play grooves and play in time.

CARTER:  Absolutely.  He made it that way.  There’s a record, “For Musicians Only” with Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Dizzy Gillespie, Herb Ellis, Ray and Stan Levey.  It’s a fabulous record of how to play time.  This was 1956 or something like that.  He just nails it in place, man!  What a perfect example of how a bass player who wants to really oversee the rhythm section, making things Stan plays… Perfect example, man.

Herb Ellis’ Written Statement and Remarks

“Ray never met a stranger.  He was the friendliest and warmest-hearted man I ever knew, always willing to help any musician, giving lessons and tips for playing not just the bass, but he was able to help anyone become a better player.

His sense of humor is almost as well known as his unbelievable talent.  That he was one of the greatest bassists and innovative leaders is a given, changing the role of the bass into more than just a rhythm instrument.  His love of music, life, friends — and, of course, golf — are legendary.

I feel so blessed that he was my friend for over fifty years, and that I got to play with him for so many years.

He is missed now, and will always be missed for all who knew and loved him, and will always be in our hearts.

TP:    Do you recollect when you first met?

HERB ELLIS:  I first met Ray in Boston when I was playing with a group called the Soft Winds.

TP:    Did that coincide with your hearing him for the first time in person?

ELLIS:  Yes, it did.

TP:    What was your impression?

ELLIS:  I was just blown away.  I couldn’t believe his talent.  And fortunately, I got to play with him much of my musical life.

TP:    In the Oscar Peterson group, within that trio format, do you recall his role in putting together the voicings and arrangements in the group?

ELLIS:  I’ll say that he was the very best.  You could take the bass notes he gave you and take them anywhere in the world.  He was the epitome of bass players.

TP:    John Clayton mentioned to me that when he was on the road, either with Oscar Peterson or the JATP, in different cities he would take lessons with symphonic bass players.  Do you remember that?

ELLIS:  Yes, I do.  And Ray was always willing to give lessons, which was …(?)… to work at being a better bass player.

TP:    Do you feel that he evolved very much as a musician during his career as he got older?

ELLIS:  Yes, he did.  He became better and better.  He was getting better right up to the very end of his life.  He always was trying to be a better bass player.  Not that he needed to, but that’s what he strove for.

Monty Alexander

TP:    When did your association with Ray Brown begin?

MONTY ALEXANDER:  It began around 1966 or 1967.  I saw him on several occasions, and he saw me as a tiny kid who just wanted to get to know him better.  He didn’t hear me play music or anything; I just phoned him and started hanging out with him, and he welcomed me into his social life, and he came to New York, and I remember we met, and I took him to a club with mutual friends of ours, and I was talking about Wynton Kelly and Sam Jones, and I took him to see them play at a little bar.  I saw the camaraderie between them, and we hung out and had a lot of laughs. Then I took him to see Coleman Hawkins down at the Half Note, and he saw his old friends… So he liked it, and I ended up being in his company.

Then I saw him in Los Angeles a few months later, when he was doing the “Joey Bishop Show,” which became later the “Merv Griffin Show.”  I went to say hello, and he invited me to hang out with him again.

But the real association happened one evening when I went to where he was playing.  They were on an intermission, and when the time came to play a tune, just to sign off for the night… Because they weren’t really listening to the music; it was a sort of Hollywood club.  The pianist had one drink too many (I won’t call his name), and I said, “Can I sit in?”  Ray said, “Yeah.”  We started playing.  And in a few bars, I could hear his joyful sound, and mine too.  It was the beginning of knowing Ray Brown in music.  We just played some blues.  Then I got off the bandstand, and he asked me if I could join him in (?) that summer, just like that.  This was 1968.

TP:    When was the last time you played with him?

ALEXANDER:  We made what probably was his last recording.  He and I and Russell Malone have a release coming in October on Telarc.  We were all very happy to be together.  We had toured Europe last year, then we made this album, just the trio, and had all these dates in October and November, and next year we were going to tour Europe.  We were just happy to be together, and everybody loved the band — and we loved the band.

TP:    And you played with him with varying degrees of frequency and consistency between 1969 and early this year, then, on various gigs and recordings.

ALEXANDER:  With varying degrees of consistency is a great way to put it.  Because for a while, there was a lot of activity, and then I just went off doing what I do, and he started touring more and playing with Gene Harris and a trio.  He would have a trio.  Before that, Herb Ellis and I and Ray played in a group that everybody called The Triple Threat.  We made about five CDs for Concord.  We were playing and having a good thing.

TP:    Over the 34 years of knowing him well, did you hear him evolve as a musician?  Did Ray Brown in 1968 sound different than Ray Brown in 2002?  I assume the answer would be yes, but I wonder what the quality of his evolution would be.

ALEXANDER:  Ray Brown was like Art Tatum.  I’ll tell you why.  The first time you hear Art Tatum play, it was so incredible… I mean, his first recordings, whatever he did, to many us that heard it, it was as incredible in his latter days as in the beginning.  So it was already beyond words.  And Ray Brown was that.  Ray Brown was a continuous circle of beyond normal.  There was nothing on the planet… And I’m not just saying it out of emotion and sentiment.  In my opinion, what he stood for, just when he laid that rhythm down, it was like… I used to conjure up terms to try to explain how it was, and it was a Mack Truck with a Rolls-Royce engine.  That’s what it was.  I mean, that’s just my little parlance.

To me, the last times I played with him, every time from the beginning there was that sense of excitement that I would get, that I’m playing with this guy who is like a royal duke.  He’s a king.  He’s not a normal level of bass player.  He had something in him that was brilliant, just brilliant.

TP:    It seems he would play exactly in the right manner for any situation, and always make his personality shine, and yet never make himself outshine the situation.

ALEXANDER:  He was the greatest support player, and yet he was so strong with what he did, and you knew it was him.  He wasn’t about to be just a nameless character in the background, just doing the pedestrian work.  He was definitely so unique, that sound he got just from those fingers on the strings and what he heard.  A musician plays what he hears, and Ray heard this thing.  It was just a fat, beautiful tone.  I think as the years went by, it wasn’t so much an evolution; it was just a matter of, as you age, you don’t want to pull the strings as hard — so maybe he lowered the strings a little on the fingerboard.  Maybe.  But I couldn’t prove it.  I was always astounded.

TP:    Why do you think he went to younger bands in the last 10-12 years of his life?

ALEXANDER:  Well, the old guys were fading away also.  Whether or not he used young guys is not the point.  The point is that there weren’t that many older men that he would lock in with that would have the enthusiasm or spirit or the spirit of swinging that he was all about.

TP:    So it was because of his own exceptional energy that he wanted someone to match that and sustain it.

ALEXANDER:  Exactly.  And you have a better shot when you get a young, growing, fine musician who is also so desirous of matching his strength.  Which, by the way, was still leaps and bounds in terms of endurance.  Because whenever I saw him playing with anybody, it was like they were trying to keep up with him.

TP:    As someone who started off as a student and evolved into a peer, what would you say were the greatest lessons he imparted to you that impacted what you do as a musician?

ALEXANDER:  Well, I was never a student.  When I got on the bandstand with him, I felt like I was right there shoulder to shoulder.  That was my attitude in music from the beginning.  I was just so stubborn and ignorant!  I would say in many ways his mentoring to me was more about life and attitude than how you play.  Because he sensed in me from the beginning that I understood why and what he was, and I would play… When I played with him…  And I think Benny and Jeff would say the same thing.  We didn’t play with him; we played for him.  It was like we played together.  At least, that’s what I saw and heard.

TP:    So his lessons to you were life lessons.

ALEXANDER:  Yes.

TP:    Comportment and sustaining yourself within this big sharkpit.

ALEXANDER:  You said it well.  It was about fortitude and straight-ahead, and no matter what, don’t stop.  It’s like the way he played.  In other words, if the stuff is falling apart, keep on rockin’!  That’s what he did.  You hear that bass, from the first time you heard it, you knew it was this exceptional thing.  He told me, “Man, I got tired of playing out behind all them horn players at Jazz at the Philharmonic.”  The horn players would take 50 choruses apiece, no matter who they were.  Enough was enough.  And as he got older, he didn’t want to do that any more.

TP:    I’m sure that kind of pretty formulaic for him after a while.  But it would seem like no matter how formulaic the situation, he would never sound…

ALEXANDER:  The point is, no matter what he had to put up with, if he had to put up with it, it would never sound like there was any kind of backing-up.  He never backed up a thing.

To me, whatever note Ray played was like the first and the last note of his life.  He played like his life depended on that note.

I can’t get over the fact that man isn’t alive.  Because he was larger than life.  Most of us couldn’t consider the fact that the day could come he wouldn’t be alive!  This is emotional and personal.  He was almost like an uncle, a father, a big brother.  But he was so larger-than-life that it’s like… He was a survivor, and he… With all the new technology… Ray didn’t have a cell phone.  I mean, he finally got one, but he didn’t use it.  He didn’t do email, he didn’t do all this stuff.  But yet, he was so busy.  Larger than life, man.

Benny Green

BENNY GREEN:  If it’s all right with you, since you edit things down, I’m going to err on the side of giving you too much information.

The first time I heard Ray in person was 1978. It was also my first time hearing Oscar Peterson in person.  The band was a trio of Oscar, Ray Brown and Louis Bellson at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, California. It was 15 or 16, and it was the first time as a child, basically, that I had been moved to laugh out loud and cry tears all in one sitting through the music itself, through the depth of emotion that was being conveyed. That was a lot for me as a kid to be feeling, and that was the level that these gentleman were communicating on.  I was overwhelmed with this sense of heritage, which also was a big concept for a young person to be able to understand.  But that’s again how clearly and powerfully they conveyed their lives through the music. Ray had his bass turned up quite audibly, and you could just feel the vibrations from Ray’s bass throughout the seating area of this amphitheater.  It just resonated.  He was speaking the truth, his truth, playing the music he had devoted his life to.

TP:    So you fell in love with his sound right then.

GREEN:  His sound and his feel.  His time was like…I know of no better way to describe it than to say it was akin to a heartbeat, something that organically resonates within the listener as a human being.  Oscar was playing all that piano, and yet Ray was just at the bottom of everything, holding everything together and directing traffic, and doing so with such consummate grace.  It was really apparent to me as a young person that I was witnessing mastery and just the greatness of the music.  Now that Ray has passed, I understand more clearly that that beat and sound I felt and heard is, in fact, a direct connection to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and Lester Young and Charlie Parker, and all of the real pillars of the music who he actually played great music with.  Not just made casual record dates with, but he was obviously personally involved with these people, the way I can say I was involved with him and Art Blakey.  He had countless just geniuses in his life who were very proud to get to play with him.  They weren’t doing him any favors.  He is the music.  He isn’t just someone who plays it well.  He is the real thing.  Anyway, I was able to feel that as a kid who hadn’t really lived too much, and that’s how effective the music was.

Moving a few years forward: The first time I got to speak with Ray Brown, I’m pretty sure the year was 1984.  I was working with Betty Carter.  I must have been 20-21.  We were playing a festival in Canada — Edmonton, Alberta.  We finished our concert that evening with Betty, and I went to another venue at the festival where Ray had the quartet — I suppose it was co-led — with Milt Jackson, Cedar Walton and Mickey Roker.  They played this version of “Misty,” and it was so beautiful.  Again, it was the same thing I experienced, where Ray’s bass notes were at the bottom of everything, just affirming this sort of truthfulness, this authenticity to the song.  He was really portraying the essence of Erroll Garner’s song.

I was so moved that I finally got up the nerve, as shy I was, to actually speak to Ray, and after they finished their set, I went up to this icon, who even physically was like towering over me, I was so small a guy in those days.  I mustered up all my courage, introduced myself, and I asked him if it would be all right to put a musical query to him.  He said, “Sure.”  I asked him, “What were the changes you were playing in the fifth and sixth bar of the bridge of ‘Misty?'” Ray leaned down, got right up in my face, like almost nose to nose (man, I was petrified), and he stared me down and he said, “The right changes.”  I said, “Okay, thank you,” and sort of backed away.  Thereafter, I would go see Ray in the next few years with Gene Harris and Mickey Roker, but I was terrified to speak to him.  He really dropped something on me when he said those three words, because he completely demystified his whole image to me by saying that. It wasn’t like some magical secret that he held.  He was saying to me, “If you want to know what changes I’m playing, go pick up one of a hundred albums where I’ve recorded that song, and learn it!” — just like he did with Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford and Slam Stewart.  “Just learn the music.  It’s there for you.”  He gave me that message with those three words.  It’s not about trying to read his mind or figure out this mystic, intangible thing.  It’s like the information is there on the records.

TP:    He himself had started off as a pianist, and was a huge fan of Tatum.  Wynton told me that he sent him the Tatum complete solos, and told Wynton to study the harmonic language.  Wynton said, “I did.”

GREEN:  He knew Tatum and he told me a few stories about Tatum that I can tell you if you have time.

TP:    I remember not long after you joined him, we were on the radio, and you made a comment I thought was very telling.  You were very much into Gene Harris and the Three Sounds, and your trio with Christian was very much influenced by that.  So here you are replacing Gene Harris, and then I think you said it that Ray Brown was hearing you be a little too respectful, maybe, to the Gene Harris sound, and said, “I didn’t hire you to play like that; I hired you to play like yourself.”

GREEN:  True.  Which is the exact same thing Betty Carter told me about John Hicks.  These great bandleaders have some things in common. As well as having their own unique facets, these people are really about the music, and it’s clearer than ever when they pass on and you look at their legacy.  You say, “This is what they were devoted to.”  Once the smoke clears and you have a little hindsight, you realize they did everything within their powers to perpetuate their music and pass it on to the next generation, and recruit anyone who ever heard them play to become lovers of this African-American art form.  That’s what their life was devoted to.  And part of that whole legacy is finding that natural, honest balance between embracing the heritage and all your influences and bringing something to the plate that’s your own at the same time.  Otherwise, you’re not really contributing to the music.

TP:    Perhaps you could tell the story I related back to you in your own words.

GREEN:  The thing is, Ray and Oscar Peterson have a musical language, and they’re like brothers.  Oscar’s whole approach to the piano is so largely inspired by Art Tatum and Nat Cole and Hank Jones in particular, and he would say the same… In fact, Oscar told me that every time he sits down to play, he endeavors to pay homage to those three, if at all possible.  Ray Brown clearly comes out of Jimmy Blanton, Slam Stewart and Oscar Pettiford, and these people are proud to embrace their influence every time they play, and yet, when you hear Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson play, you know it’s Ray Brown and you know it’s Oscar Peterson.  Nothing about it feels derivative.  It’s not one or the other.  It’s both.  You hear the influence, and yet they are just clearly their own men.  That’s where it’s at.  They’re teaching by example when they play.

So in getting back to what Ray stressed to me:  The influence from Gene Harris was an honest one.  His music felt good to me.  That’s why I’d been soaking up those Three Sounds records and attempting to absorb what he was doing with Ray’s trio.  That sort of aligned me with the privileged position of actually getting to play with Ray, because I was honestly pursuing this path that Ray was about.  Ray had a certain approach to music and to his trio, where pianists like Hank Jones, Oscar Peterson, Monty Alexander and Gene Harris were just part of a language, a palette that he heard when he put together a trio arrangement.  These were musical personalities that became part of the fabric of Ray’s trio sound.  So it was natural for me to be pursuing this music, which was infectious to me, which felt good to me, and it also put me in a musical position where, when Ray heard me, he understood beyond any words that I was a young person who was eager to be a part of that heritage.  I wasn’t listening to Gene Harris so I could cop the gig.  I was doing it because I loved the music.  Thankfully, that resonated with Ray.  So he heard Christian and I play…

TP:    The story Christian told me is he was at the Blue Note that week, you guys were at the Knickerbocker, Mary Ann Topper said, “You’ve got to come hear them,” and maybe on the Saturday night he came over and heard you, invited you to the Blue Note the next night, and then called your name from the bandstand.

GREEN:  That’s exactly right.  Shortly thereafter, Christian and I were playing with a group that opened up for Ray’s trio in Japan.  As soon as we finished our set, Ray grabbed me backstage to say, “Would you be available to record?”  Obviously, without batting an eye, I said, “I would love to, Mr. Brown.”  So he said, “Give  me your information, and I’ll be in touch.”  So I wrote down my number, and he called shortly thereafter and invited me to fly to L.A. to record a record date with James Morrison, himself and Jeff Hamilton.  That was my first opportunity to play with Ray.

The first thing I remember noticing about the feeling, once I connected with Ray musically, was, one, how easy and buoyant he made the music feel.  To me that’s always a measure of musical maturity.  Because anyone can be difficult to play with.  An absolute beginner can be hard to play with.  But to really manifest the attitude of “What can I do to make you feel more comfortable; how can I lead you down this garden path?”, that takes not only experience and seasoning, but also just a certain attitude, a certain willingness to help and support.  The other thing I noticed was that this man takes a lot of chances when he plays, and he always lands on his feet.  He always lands on one, on the perfect note to ground what’s happening in the ensemble.  But he wasn’t just playing some sort of stock bassline. He was all over that bass, and filling and doing all sorts of rhythmic and melodic things, and would always land, BAM, right on ground one to support everything else that was going on.

TP:    So he was fearless.

GREEN:  Oh, most definitely!  He really, really went for it.  He went for the jugular every time.  He played with such passion.  There was more than just testosterone behind his confidence.  It was the fact that he knew, through this life devoted to music, that the music was his.  It wasn’t something he was trying to get towards.  He owned the legacy that had been given to him by all his forefathers, and he wasn’t afraid to stand tall and say that “Jimmy Blanton and Slam Stewart and Oscar Pettiford have left us, and I’ll never be quite like they were.”  He was like, “Okay, I am the bass now.”

TP:    So it was a fresh experience every night, being on the road with him, no matter how similar the repertoire.

GREEN:  Oh, in so many ways.  When we finished that record date, he told me the trio was going to be going to Australia soon for a lengthy tour, and that Gene Harris wasn’t going to be able to make the first two or three weeks, and asked me if I’d be interested in playing.  I said, “Are you kidding?  There’s nothing I’d be more grateful to do.”  He said, “Okay, what I’d like you to do, then, is pick up some of our CDs, and why don’t you learn about 10 or 12 of our tunes.  I’m not even going to tell you which ones to learn.  Just learn the ones you’re most comfortable with, and that will give us something to play.” At that point, I wanted to show Ray more than tell him how much I wanted to play with him.  I already owned all the CDs, but for the next few months before that tour came up, all I did was woodshed that music, just sleep with it, practice to it… [END OF SIDE]

When we got together to rehearse in Australia for the first gig of that tour, I told Ray that I knew all the tunes in his book, and we could rehearse and play anything he wanted.  So he proceeded to call tunes, and I knew them all.  He didn’t say a word, but just kept going through tune after tune after tune.  He said, “Okay, we can take a break now,” and he stepped outside to get some air.  Later on that day, Jeff Hamilton told me that while they had stepped outside, Ray turned to Jeff and said, “I can’t believe he learned all of that music.”  But to me, he didn’t say a word.  He was just scoping me out.

When we finished that tour, I said to Ray, “Listen, I know that you have a band right now, but if you ever are at a point where there’s going to be personnel changes, I want you to know that I would be so grateful to get a chance to play with you again.”  “All right, I’ll be in touch.” And thankfully, he called me a few weeks later from Australia, to say that Gene was going to be leaving the band soon, and asked me if I wanted to join the trio.  I was so excited.  So I began playing with him in the early spring of ’92.

One of the first things I noticed about Ray as a professional is that he was always punctual.  When there was a lobby call, he would always be downstairs, clean, a few minutes before the time we were actually expected to meet.  And to be honest with you, at that point I had a habit of being 10 to 15 minutes late all the time, and thought that was okay.  I didn’t understand at that time that when you do that, you’re not even being part of the band.  You’re just being a single agent.  It’s incredibly selfish, and it ultimately does enter the whole vibe on the bandstand when you do that.  Eventually, after the few gigs, I noticed that every time I came downstairs, even if I was only 5 minutes late, instead of 10 or 15, Ray was always down there.  So one day I said to him, “I see you’re not of the mindset that the bandleader can afford to be the last one downstairs.”  He didn’t even look up.  He said, “Nope.”  I then realized that it was unprofessional and disrespectful for me to be…that the young kid in the band is having Ray Brown waiting on me.  So I got it together.  I was never late again.  And to this day, I have Ray Brown to thank for that.  I know that however long it takes me to get ready, if it takes two or three hours, to allow that much time, and not start getting dressed five minutes before the lobby call.

TP:    He was an immaculate businessman, wasn’t he.

GREEN:  Completely.  But the interesting thing is that he told me there was actually a defining moment in his life when he got that all together.  There was a time prior to that defining moment when he was more like the old stereotypical image of a musician who didn’t care, who didn’t take responsibility for business.  He hadn’t been paying his taxes for a few years.  He was with Jazz At The Philharmonic, and they’d been sending him notices, which he just disregarded, and one day they played a concert with Jazz at the Philharmonic somewhere in the Midwest, and the evening after the show, the curtain went down, and the Feds were there to physically haul him off to jail.  Norman Granz, as you know, had a lot of money, and he bailed Ray out right then and there on the spot, so they never took him.  He just coughed up the cash and had a talk with Ray.  He said he was a changed man from that moment forward.

But obviously, the Ray Brown that you and I knew was so incredibly balanced with the left and right brain.  He could be so creative and so plugged into the music all the time, constantly honing the band’s arrangements, staying at the very top of his game and continuing to challenge himself as an instrumentalist.  No matter what time we were in, he woke up at the crack of dawn, getting on that phone and fax machine, doing business, booking gigs one or two years down the road.  That’s very rare for someone… There are obviously musicians who are great businessmen, and oftentimes, on some level, the music suffers.  Sometimes the people have so much talent that they’re able to carry it off, and you don t realize what you could be hearing were they totally putting all their eggs in the basket.  But with Ray, God, you could never say, as much as a sharp-shooter he was as his own booking agent and manager, that anything ever, ever suffered in the musical arena.

TP:    Do you think that part of that constant imperative to develop as an instrumentalist from the high level he had attained was one reason why, in the last decade of his life, starting with you really, he started using young musicians on a regular basis?

GREEN:  With Ray and Art Blakey and Betty Carter, something… Art was doing that from early in his career.  But in the case of Betty and Art, there was a period where initially the bandleader was more playing with their peers, and then at some point they really got this bug to have like new young blood in the band, and they really found personal gratification in helping the young musicians, and, with whatever surface idiosyncracies people could observe them as having, their pure love for the music clearly showed.  They were passing it on, really kicking their young players in the behind, challenging them, making them reach beyond a superficial comfort zone, and really pull the depth of their untapped reserves of talent out of that.  In fact, they instilled that kind of fire in their sidemen, hopefully so that these younger players could go out there and perpetuate the music.

TP:    But do you think there was reciprocal benefit he garnered from using young talent? He said that using you or Keezer or Larry Fuller forced him to practice so he could play the way he used to.

GREEN:  I can’t say for Geoff or Larry, but I can tell you first hand that Russell Malone and I played a private party for Ray in St. Paul a little over a month ago, and, man, he kicked our tails in the most positive way.  This guy is 75 years old, and when he gets on the bandstand, the whole level of musicality is so profoundly elevated.  You really get this deep sense that you’re on the bandstand with the same lifeline as Duke Ellington.  You feel it.  It can’t even be put into words.  But you can feel it in your body, you can almost taste it…

TP:    Oh, I understand that.  What I’m saying is, he thought of his trio as the Ray Brown Trio, not Ray Brown Plus Two.  So he’s incorporating the musicality and musical personalities of the people he has in his band.

GREEN:  Oh, definitely.  When I joined the band and was trying to play like Gene, he said, “Okay, for these first few weeks, we’ll continue playing these arrangements that I wrote specifically for Gene, but the more we play, I’m going to scope out what you do and I’ll start writing new arrangement that embrace your sound and feeling so we can help you develop.  He took pleasure in that.  Obviously, nobody can play something in a slow bluesy groove like Gene Harris.  Nobody can do that.  And that certainly includes Benny Green.  I would try to, but I wasn’t raised in the Black Baptist church, I didn’t have Gene Harris’ life, and I wasn’t physically built like Gene Harris.  Ray knew that.  It’s almost not honest to try to force yourself to play like someone you love.  That love can come through naturally once you accept it’s there and live in the moment as yourself.  So Ray was encouraging me to do my own thing, and he started to write arrangements that incorporated more swift tempos, more linear kind of things that he felt were more suited to what he heard as something that was a more natural part of what I inherently did.

TP:    It seems he revisited and reinterpreted a lot of areas from his earlier career with you and Geoff, a lot of bebop tunes that I don’t think were too much of the repertoire with Gene Harris.

GREEN:  That makes sense.  And I’m sure once Keezer joined the band, he probably opened up that much more harmonically because of what Geoff can do.  Not to get anything real specific and narrow anyone’s approach down, but he prided himself on doing that.

Once early on in the band, we did a show, and I ended a couple of tunes with an Ahmad Jamal ending that Ray hadn’t written, just the patented two-note ending that Ahmad plays on most of his trio arrangements in the trio with Israel Crosby and Vernell Fournier.  Ray didn’t say anything on the bandstand.  He came to the dressing room afterwards, and he was livid.  He said, “That is not my sound, that is not what we do in this band.  Don’t play that any more.”  And I didn’t.  He was very clear about it.  At the time, I felt, “Wow, it’s just two notes; why is it such a big deal.”  With the passage of time, I came to see it was a very big deal, because he wasn’t just playing the music, however it might come across.  He had a very specific language, something I couldn’t possibly understand as someone who wasn’t even born when Ray was already a past master.  So I just respected that this man knew what he wanted.  Betty Carter and Art Blakey both were the same way.  Certain things weren’t appropriate.  They didn’t want their approach to the music to just become sort of homogenous.  There was a certain sound and feeling, and when we hear it, there’s things they do and things they don’t do that give us a specific feeling as a listener.  So it’s very much a language.  A younger person, no matter how talented or intelligent or soulful they may be, is not really going to get that in the way that someone who has lived it all their life who is a veteran of the music knows down deep.

TP:    You played with Ray Brown what years?

GREEN:  From the early spring of ’92 to the fall of ’96, 4-1/2 years.

Two things I’d like to say I think are very pertinent.  One (and I’m sure every other musician who worked with Ray will tell you the same thing) is that I never once asked him a question about music that was uncool to ask.  I never asked him a question and got a non-verbal communication that it was something he didn’t want to discuss.  Every time I asked Ray a musical question, he would sit with me, look me in the eye, and talk for however long it took.  Everything else going on would stop.  And he wouldn’t stop talking until he felt that I really understood what it was he had to say.  It was never about telling me how to play.  It was just about being a better musician, and just bringing this feeling, imparting life experience through the music — never about how to play or a style.

The other thing which I’ve really been feeling strongly about Ray since he passed is how much of an ambassador he was, like Louis and Duke and Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson, among others.  Sometimes we would play venues, concerts or festivals where the bulk of the audience were real jazz aficionados, and they loved the music, they knew who he was, and they appreciated him.  But other times, we would play some places where the crowd would be quite stiff, maybe a money crowd, and they weren’t really passionate about jazz.  And I can tell you first-hand that any time we played for that latter type of an audience, by the end of the performance he would have made absolute converts for life out of every single person in the house, where they left loving the music, wholly disarmed, coming up to us and talking, showing their emotions, and showing by example, by doing that, that that’s the level we need to aspire to when we bring the music… That we can’t just be satisfied with playing to impress one another, but any time we have an opportunity to play this music for someone who has never heard it before, whatever our individual approach to the music is, we really need to bring something of an emotional substance that any human being can relate to.  I interpreted it that this was his ultimate homage to those great masters that he played with.  Because we know that Louis Armstrong did that and we know that Duke did that.  You couldn’t help but love this music, no matter what you’d heard about it or what you’d been told or what you’d heard that you didn’t like.  When you heard them, you knew this was like something really great and about some love and some life.

TP:    You played with him just a couple of weeks before he died.

GREEN:  Yes.  It was perfect.  Lord knows, I didn’t know it was going to be our last time.  But everything from the time he entered the room was a lesson, and I remember it vividly.  First of all, at the soundcheck, he did what he’d always done.  He was showing me a tune that I had heard from Nat Cole’s repertoire but never played, “I Just Can’t See For Looking.”  He was ready to leave the bandstand before we played and get comfortable, but I still wasn’t quite secure with the melody, and I asked him to stay and help me out, and he did just that.  Whatever it was he wanted to do off the bandstand was on hold, and he stayed up there on stage with me, made sure I had it together, and after he was done he said, “Do you have it now?”  I said, “Yeah.”  He said, “All right,” and then he walked off the bandstand.  That’s how he always was, no matter how physically fatigued he might have been.  Nothing came before the music.

After the gig, he said one of the most beautiful affirmations to me.  He said, “Benny, you don’t have to worry about anything; you just keep playing the piano.”  That meant so much to me coming from Ray Brown.  Then he sat up with me for about two hours.  We didn’t leave the venue.  He just sat with me and talked about the music, and talked about the great pianists.  He was teaching me.  I think back on what he was saying and how he tied his conversation about different pianists all together with the message he was trying to give me about me and the piano.  Then I left him for a moment again, not knowing this was the last time I was going to see him, and I went to the piano on stage and started to play, and then he walked over to the stage and just stood there and listened to me play, and talked about the songs I was playing.  God, as long as there was music going on, he never wanted to go to bed. I’m so thankful that before we said goodnight I gave Ray a big kiss, and I thanked him for charging my battery, and I told him that no matter how much I might not have understood things he’d said to me in the past at the moment he said them, that they were all inside, and that so many gems he’s given me continue to come up as I play music, and that I’m thankful for what he’s given me.  That’s how I left him, and I’m so thankful we had that beautiful closure, because no one was ready for this.

It’s a blessing he was taken so peacefully, so mercifully, doing what he loves. We’ll always remember Ray being strong and vital and taking no prisoners.  He never faded.

Jeff Hamilton

JEFF HAMILTON:  I met Ray in 1976 at the Lighthouse in Los Angeles.  He was booking Milt Jackson, and had booked Milt with the Monty Alexander Trio, and came into the club to see how we were doing.  That’s the first time I met him.  I asked him that night if I could meet with him and ask him some advice on what I should do with my career.  I was all of 22 years old.  He said, “Sure, we can meet — if you buy lunch.”  So that was the beginning of our long friendship.  Based on what he heard that night, he kept me in mind, and hired me for the L.A. Four when Shelley Manne left.

TP:    I haven’t spoken with a drummer yet about the experience of playing with him.  Can you talk about the qualities of his playing that made him distinctly and identifiably Ray Brown, from your perspective behind the kit?

HAMILTON:  My first awareness of him was listening to him on an Oscar Peterson Trio record with Ed Thigpen, and wanting immediately to pick up a stick and hit a cymbal with that trio, play along with that groove that the three of them had together.  And the more that I listened to it, I kept keying in on Ray more and more, and thinking that I really wanted to play with his quartet notes.  The older I got, I realized that it was the intensity in his playing, in his beat and his time and his sound, that was so big and full that it just raised the band and urged them to get into that same groove that he was playing, and invite them into his sound.  That’s what I felt as a drummer, that I needed to crawl into that big sound of his and match the sound with the intensity of the drums.  It also has a big full sound, and the trio would come out sounding like a big band.

TP:    That means in some ways you would match the length of his notes through the way you articulate beats?

HAMILTON:  Not so much the length.  Just the urgency of how important every note is.  The first night that I played with him, I thought, “Well, this is a lot more intense than I thought it was going to be from listening to the records.”  When I was able to adjust to that and make that happen, then I thought, “Okay, now I can play with Ray Brown.”  Then the first time I played with Ray and Oscar, it was that next level of intensity.  I thought, “Man, I’ve got to step this up.”  Not so much in nervousness or frantically trying to keep up with them.  I don’t mean that.  I just mean bringing your intensity to the time and to the music, like you’re in a conversation with two other people and they’re really going after it, and you’re kind of sitting there going, “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”  It doesn’t work.  So you’ve got to jump in and join the conversation with them.

TP:    You did many tours with him where you shared a bandstand night after night for a month or six weeks for a good chunk of the year.

HAMILTON:  For 18 years!

TP:    Was he a very creative player from night to night?

HAMILTON:  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from night to night.  First of all, his stamina from night to night was something that I had never witnessed before.  I have played with musicians who wanted to be great every night and were trying to do it, and had that in mind.  But I’ve never seen anybody like Ray, be able to get on the bandstand and play like it might be his last night.  I don’t know where that came from, but it was such an intensity… I keep going back to that word, because that’s Ray Brown. In every walk of his life, he was very intense.  And the need to get up there and really stretch out and try to push us was I think maybe instilled by the days with Dizzy, and playing with Bird, and having that need to play some new music and try to push the arrangement into something else.  I think that’s evidenced by looking at the evolution of his own trio.  When I go hear those arrangements we did with Gene Harris, and they’ve changed with every trio.  They’ve gotten a little more modern, and Ray is at the bottom, changing things around.

TP:    That raises another question, which is the level to which playing with you or playing with younger musicians like Benny Green or Geoff Keezer affected his conception.  Benny described it that when he first went out with the trio (I guess you were the drummer), he was very much influenced by Gene Harris, Ray knew it, and Benny said that the trio would play those arrangements, he’d scope Benny out, and would try to write new arrangements that suited him.  You could hear it, because he played more bebop, modernist material.  I’m wondering how you evaluate the presence of younger musicians within his orbit having impacted what he did, if at all.

HAMILTON:  Well, he was smart.  One of the great things I learned from him was how to make everybody in the band sound as good as they possibly can.  So he would go to their strong points, and he’d play music that fit everybody in the band.  That was his thought with every personnel change, “how can this person’s influence change this musically, and yet we can all still vibrate together.”  So he would arrange things. I think that was probably influenced by Duke Ellington’s writing for personnel in his band.

TP:    I’d like to get back to the nature of your relationship, personal or musical.  He befriended you when you were 22 and he was 50. Benny described him as being an unfailing mentor.  Any time he had a musical question, he would be there to answer and would take as long as necessary.  Does that jibe with your earlier relationship?

HAMILTON:  When Benny came in, he really took Benny under his wing.  When I came in, he looked more to me as “you need to be an equal with me,” and I think he kind of classified me in his generation. There isn’t thirty years between us.  And I’ve always kind of been old for my age anyway, and I think he picked up on that.  I’ve been pretty mature for my age — and musically.

TP:    When you were 20, you were playing with Hampton…

HAMILTON:  I’d already played with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Murray McEachern, and with Lionel Hampton, Monty Alexander and Woody Herman.

TP:    So you’d had a full complement of experience by the time you joined him.

HAMILTON:  Right.  I had some touring under my belt.  So he knew he wasn’t getting a kid, and that I’d listened to his music and grown up with his music when those records came out.  I didn’t have to wait and get them on CD twenty years later.  I talked to him about that.  I had a different relationship with Ray, and I think he tried to make me an equal because of the L.A. Four situation.  He hired me, and everybody was a leader in that group.  Shelley Manne had been an equal part of the L.A. Four, and that’s what he needed.  They weren’t trying to make a kid grow into the seat; they needed someone who could come in and do it.

TP:    Another common thread everyone has mentioned is that he played always as if it was the last time he was ever going to play.  They also mention how deftly he was able to balance his creative life with the practicalities of business.  It seems he was incredibly disciplined.

HAMILTON:  I think that goes back to him being smart, and being in the right situation with Norman Granz in Jazz at the Philharmonic, and seeing how business could be run in jazz, and what jazz musicians deserve, and having somebody go to bat for them to get what they deserve.  That was instilled at an early age.  I think he kept that pride factor for what he thought his self-worth was, and for other musicians, and that entered into his business techniques. “Well, if you don’t want me for this amount, you must not want me very much.”  And they would inevitably call back.  Ray said, “No, that was the amount you offered two weeks ago; now the amount is this.”  He kind of played hardball with some of these guys just to get his point across, that you can’t just take advantage of a jazz musician and offer him $50 to come and play for you.  So I think there was a combination of the pride and the smarts, and being smart enough to learn from those early days with Jazz at the Philharmonic.  He always referred to Norman as taking care of the musicians.  He once told a story about Norman Granz pulling the entire tour off of an airplane because they wouldn’t them bring his bass on board — and he had bought a ticket for it.  So Norman announced that everybody had to get off the plane, if the bass wasn’t going to go on.  The plane took off about 15 minutes later.  It’s that kind of thinking of, “Listen, this is what I think my self-worth is, and this is the self-confidence I have in myself,” and that came through every part of Ray Brown’s personality, musically and off the bandstand, in doing business.

TP:    John Clayton said that he was constantly practicing all the time, right up to the end.  Would you practice together?  Oscar Peterson describes him and Ed Thigpen sitting in the room rehearsing harmonic and rhythmic patterns so they could be prepared for anything.  Did you do that?

HAMILTON:  Not so much.  Our arrangements weren’t Oscar-like, so that we had to sit down and digest things together.  The other thing is that Ray and I really didn’t have to think too much about what we did.  It was a pretty natural hookup.  So we’d just look at each other.  In fact, I was reminded of this on the 75th birthday tour last July, where there was a guest artist, and Ray just turned, gave me a look, and I knew what he meant.  We went into this introduction, and the person said, “How do you guys know to do that?  Nobody said anything.”  But that’s just sort of what Ray and I had together, and we grew into being able to raise an eyebrow and know that meant an “and-a-4” or some kind of beat we’d played before. Or he’d just say a word, and it would trigger something.  I think because of that, we didn’t have to rehearse a lot.  He would go to Hawaii for a month every January with his wife, Cecilia, and he would write new arrangements for the trio.  He was so excited about coming back and starting about three days of rehearsal in February, before we’d go on the road.  But that’s about all we rehearsed.  It wasn’t really knock-down, drag-out rehearsals.  But he did talk about those Oscar Peterson rehearsals.  In fact, he and Herb Ellis roomed together, and start playing those arrangements that sounded so tricky!

TP:    Oscar Peterson also described that they’d play the London House, and after the room closed at 4:30, they’d stay til 7 working other things out.  So they did the other end of the hang, too, I guess.  When you met him, he was still in the middle of his period of being extremely busy in the studios.  I’m an East Coaster and a bit younger than you, so I’m not sure how much the L.A. Four was working.  Did that mark the beginning of his move back out of the studios towards more hardcore performing?

HAMILTON:  That was part of it, I think, but that group was more in the studio, actually, with Laurindo Almeida and Bud Shank, and Carl Jefferson of Concord Records, which was pretty new at that time.  I think that’s how that group got off the ground.  But I think the actual idea happened in a recording session with Laurindo and Bud.  That was partially responsible, but I think, too, he’d been working with Milt Jackson at that time, and kept sneaking out of the studio to do these records at Shelly’s Manne-Hole, and still was playing jazz, still was doing tours during all that Merv Griffin stint.  I think that after a while, real jazz players really can’t take the studio that much any more, and are looking to get out when they can.  That was a period where his not getting out of the studio was one of the things, but it also made him think about, “I’ve got to get my own trio.”  So he would do things with Monty Alexander and Gene Harris and Mickey Roker and with Jackson, and so that got him… All those things got him back in the loop.

TP:    So it was a gradual process of weaning himself out of what he’d gotten into.  Do you have any particular favorite anecdotes that might get to the essence of who he was to you? Someone told me you would have some golfing stories.  Was there an analogue between his his approach to golf and his approach to music?

HAMILTON:  Again, intensity! [LAUGHS] Intensity on the golf course.  He wanted to play really well, and he wanted everyone else to play as well as they could when he was playing with them, so he would offer comments to help you.

TP:    Would they help?

HAMILTON:  Of course not!  Just like on the bandstand, in the heat of the battle somebody turns to you and says, “Hey, do this now!  Try this!”  You go, “Uhh…okay, but I’m trying to do everything else at the same time.”  But it was all meant well, and we used to laugh about it.  He said, “Anybody who opens their mouth on the golf course will get an automatic penalty stroke.”

TP:    What was his handicap?

HAMILTON:  For a while, he said he was around an 11.  Somebody told me he was an 8 at one time.  I think when he was in Toronto, with the Oscar Peterson-Thigpen school up there, they were playing every day, and I think he was probably down to an 8 then.  But in later years he was around 11.  After he had the knee surgery, he started to get his game back, and he was playing an awful lot.  I never beat Ray on the golf course.

TP:    Was that psychology or talent?

HAMILTON:  I think mostly talent, because I didn’t start playing… I was a tennis player for thirty years, and I had elbow surgery from tennis.  He was so mad at me, because I had to take time off from the trio to get the surgery!  He said, “Why don’t you play golf?  You’re not going to blow your ligament off the elbow playing golf.”  So I finally did, and then he gave me a set of clubs that he had won at a tournament.

TP:    What a practical man!

HAMILTON:  Yes! [LAUGHS]

TP:    Was he also a practical joker?

HAMILTON:  Are you kidding?  The funniest one to me is the Oscar Peterson anecdote at Jazz at the Philharmonic, when Oscar went to Norman Granz and asked Ray to be introduced last out of the group.  Just to keep peace among the group was the way Oscar presented it to Norman.  Norman said, “Oh, really?  Because I’ve been announcing you last.”  “No-no.”  So Oscar goes out first, and sits down at the bench, and Ray’s bass was laying on the floor next to the piano bench.  While Norman is announcing Herb Ellis, either Jo Jones or Buddy Rich, Oscar leans down and detunes Ray’s bass.  Then “Ladies and gentlemen, Ray Brown!” and Ray Brown came out and picked up the bass.  They had already started the introduction to the tune.  Ray started to play, and of course he sounded like he was underwater.  “And Ella Fitzgerald!”  So Ella came out, turned around, and said, “What is going on back there?” Ray just kept tuning up with his left hand and plucking with the right, and said, “Just keep singing; I’ll be there.”

The next time that he got Oscar Peterson… He told him, “I’ll get you.”  They were in Japan. Do you know about Pachenko?  It’s a game with little round silver balls, like a vertical pinball machine.  Ray hit the jackpot, and all these balls drop into a metal tray and make a lot of noise, then you cash them in.  Instead of cashing them in, he put the balls in his pocket (he had about 20-25 balls, I guess), and walked right over to the concert hall, and lined the balls up in the piano strings of the piano.  And that night, Oscar Peterson was the last musician introduced, and he came out, they’d already started playing, and Oscar played like two chords, and all these balls started bouncing out of the piano.  I guess Oscar’s feet came off the floor about two feet!

TP:    Did he ever get you on a good one?

HAMILTON:  Oh, boy.  There are so many funny little jokes.  There was one night at the Blue Note… I have a pretty loose grip, and sometimes my sticks will fly out.  He used to kid me about it.  This night the stick hit him in the chest, and rolled down on the other side of his bass, and off of his bass onto my hi-hat, and rolled onto the snare drum and over to the mounted tom, and then back to the snare drum, and I picked it up and continued playing.  He said… Well, I can’t tell you what he said!  He said, “How the hell did you do that?!”  And I didn’t do anything.  Just the stick happened to land where I could pick it up and play.  A lot of funny things like that on the bandstand.TP:    You met Ray Brown in ’48, and when was the last time you played with him?

Oscar Peterson

OSCAR PETERSON:  I guess the last time I played with Ray was when I did a couple of dates in New York with he and Milt Jackson.

TP:    That were documented on the Telarc record, “The Very Tall Band”?

PETERSON:  Yes, that’s right.

TP:    So 50 years of making music with him.  He was already an extremely experienced musician when you met him for the first concert, and when your partnership began.  Was there any way in which he help show you the ropes or helped you get grounded?  The broader question is what impact he had on you as an instrumentalist and musician?

PETERSON:  He gave me one thing, and that was confidence.  That’s probably the most important thing that a bass player can give anyone that he or she is playing for.  When I played with Ray, he gave me confidence, because I never had to wonder and worry about where it was going either harmonically or rhythmically.  And if you can reach that plateau with any bass player, you’re in the right place at the right time.

TP:    So he never threw you any curve balls.

PETERSON:  No, he never did.

TP:    And if he gave you a 95-mile-an-hour fastball it was something you could hit.

PETERSON:  [LAUGHS] I more than likely would see it coming!

TP:    You roomed together.  You probably saw more of each other than any other person.  What does that level of proximity do for musical communication?

PETERSON:  I’ll tell you one thing.  It gives you a better insight into the inner weaknesses and strengths of your roommate.  I mean that professionally.  You can tell just from conversations with them… I knew right away the people that Ray admired musically, and including bass players.  I don’t want to mention names, but I knew who he admired and who got to him and who reached him, and I knew the bass players he didn’t care for.  So you get to know the innards of a person a lot better.  And he knew the pianists that I admired and revered and he also knew the pianists that I did not like.  With this kind of information, we had a better insight into what and how to play with each other.

TP:    Did you tend to share the same likes and dislikes?

PETERSON:  I have to say yes to that.

TP:    He was a reasonably proficient pianist.

PETERSON:  Ray was what I call a compositional pianist! [LAUGHS] Ray would sit at the piano and would harmonically play what he wanted to play, and would sing the melodic things that he wanted to go over, because he didn’t have that kind of dexterity on the piano.  He was a bass player.  That wasn’t his instrument.  But you could tell that he knew where he was going.  In fact, one of my gifts to him one year was to give him a keyboard he could travel with, so he could write tunes on the road.

TP:    John Clayton said that at a certain point — and you would know this better than anyone — he started forming a network of symphony bassists in the different cities you would visit, either with the trio or JATP, and would then take private lessons going from city to city.  The larger point being that everyone says he practiced and strove to improve incessantly, without letup.

PETERSON:  He did.  He really worked at it.  People think that it was just raw talent, which it is, but it was not the complete talent.  But Ray, to be very honest with you, had great respect for what the classical bassists could do with music, because he knew that it was a very difficult instrument to in play in certain aspects as far as being in tune and certainly in time.  He was always working to try to perfect these fine points of the instrument.

TP:    But it’s correct that he did this rather systematic study with different people in various places.

PETERSON:  He did that, and he also did it the other way around.  He would do that with classical bassists, because they wanted to get an insight into his playing.  So quite frankly, it worked both ways.  But he also would hold his own little clinics in his room with different local bassists, as he went from city to city.

TP:    In hearing him for fifty years, looking back, what would you say were the qualities of his playing that evolved most noticeably?

PETERSON:  First of all, I have to say his concept of time.  That’s the essence of all of jazz, I think.  Secondly, his harmonic sense from an accompaniment standpoint when he was playing with someone.  He knew what to play, where, when he was playing for and with someone.

TP:    So he refined those skills, and made them better like fine wine, as it were.

PETERSON:  That’s right.  Certain things that he would play behind me, or certain things that I played… And it could be the same tune.  But certain nights, he could sense… He was a great listener.  There’s one of the things.  He listened to each performance that everyone gave.  But certain nights he’d play a certain way for you.  He played differently because you were playing differently!  That’s something a lot of bassists do not do.

TP:    So along with you, he helped make the trio a creative entity every night, even when you’re in the middle of four sets a night, six nights a week.

PETERSON:  Oh, yeah.  It was a challenge.  He would walk different lines behind me different nights, just to see what would happen.  He would go a different way.  He didn’t have a set routine harmonically for me.  He would change the pattern different nights, just to see what I would do with it.

TP:    Did he always have his keen penchant for business?  His business skills after moving to Los Angeles are somewhat legendary.  Did he always possess this acumen?

PETERSON:  I think so.  Norman Granz used to tell him, “Why don’t you just be a booking agent and get it over with?”  He said, “Pick one or the other.  Either be the world’s best player or the world’s best booking agent.  Take your choice.

TP:    I guess the exceptional thing is that he was the world’s best player and a pretty darn good booking agent.

PETERSON:  I’m not going to dispute anything you say or anything Norman said.  I think it was Ray’s choice, and he lived his life the way he wanted to.

TP:    It sounds like you’ve been able to do the same.

PETERSON:  I’m trying.

Quincy Jones

TP:    I know he was managing you and working with you.

QUINCY JONES:  He was.

TP:    Before we speak about that, may I ask when you first became acquainted?

JONES:  Ray Brown?  On records, when I was about 13 years old.  We used to listen to 78 records at Sherman & Clay, a record store in Seattle.  We couldn’t afford to buy them. I’d just discovered music two years before.  They had glass booths where you could play the 78s, and didn’t have to buy it.  I’d listen all day long — Dial Records, and Charlie Parker and Dizzy and Miles and Slam Stewart.  We were working in nightclubs at that age… Because Ray Charles got up there a year later.  When I was 14, Ray Charles was working up there, too.  He was 16.  During the war.  Seattle was jumping during the war.  It was really jumping.  Because it was the last stop before Japan, what they called the Pacific Theater.  So we were absolute junkies with all the bands.  Everybody.  Dizzy’s band…

We were at the Washington Social Club one night, and I saw this guy come in with just a little stingy brim hat, an Italian suit on, and real cool kicks (what we used to call shoes), and he had a trenchcoat on.  They said, “That’s Ray Brown, man.”  Since we were kids, we were trying to determine who the hell we were.  Because in the ’40s, man, music… There were no TV shows.  Radio, forget it.  And the books, too.  So the definition of who you were, you had to just try to figure it out through the people who came through, sailors and so forth… I know I’m making this a long answer here, but this is what happened.

Then I started to see the bands come through, like Basie and Duke and Erskine Hawkins and Louis Armstrong, and then Dizzy’s band came through.  I’d sit there, and I knew then I was hooked on 5 saxophones, 3 or 4 trombones, and 4 trumpets and a rhythm section the rest of my life.  I’d sit there just mesmerized all night long.  How do they play all at once and not play the same note?  Not only that, but these brothers are dignified, they are unified, they’ve got wit, they have fun, they’re talented, and they’re doing what they want to do.  They had everything.  I said, “That’s the kind of man I want to be.”

TP:    They were clean, too.

JONES:  Oh, clean as a chitlin’!  Please, man.  And all the girls… They had everything, man!  The sailors, they were pretty cool.  We used to dress like sailors for a while, when we were 11.  But man, when the musicians… I said, “No, that’s it, man, please.”  Because they had the music going.  And the sounds… It just took over my soul.  When I saw Ray Brown… I can’t even express it because it was just so powerful.  We didn’t have any connection with anything.  There was no MTV or anything else.  You’d hear everything on the grapevine, with the guys coming through, like blues bands, they’d say, “Charlie Parker just put some dexedrine in Peg-Leg Bates or Rubberlegs Williams’ coffee or something…”  And all the tunes, “Little Willie Leaps” and all the things… Personally, I learned how to write music then.  I’d write all the stuff down.  We were just like totally obsessed.

TP:    You’d take the stuff off the records?

JONES:  Yeah.  And people would give you copies of it.  It would travel around like the Dead Sea Scrolls or something.

TP:    It was a true oral tradition then.

JONES:  It was!  And they were like griots, you know.  All the bands.  We’d go backstage in our little bebop bags, and try to play grownup and sneak in, because we couldn’t afford to see the bands, and everything was cool when it was Duke and Basie, but then the first time they said, “Where are you going, man?” I said “We’re in the band.”  It was Les Brown!  “No, you’re not.” [LAUGHS] Or Skinny Ennis or somebody with Gil Evans’ arrangements.

TP:    So Ray Brown was one of the people who formed your conception of what music and the life was.

JONES:  Yes.  See, a skilled writer can say that in one word.  It takes me a half-hour.  Basie was, too, and Clark Terry was.  Those three guys were very important.  Ray Charles, Clark Terry, Basie, they were something.

TP:    So before you were a professional musician, these are the three people who really affected you…

JONES:  We were professional then!  We were playing clubs!

TP:    But before you got out in the broader world.  And you wound up playing and becoming involved with all of them.

JONES:  Exactly.  But that was the first bite.  And just what the lifestyle was about, the intelligence and wit — everything.  It just was so addictive.  Then I didn’t see Ray for another few years…

TP:    You didn’t see him for a number of years.

JONES:  Right.  But I kept up with him.  The grapevine was very strong then about what was happening in New York.  Because we had never seen New York; through our imagination was the only thing on 52nd Street and all that stuff.  Then finally, I got a scholarship to Boston at the Berklee School in the fall of 1950, which was the Schillinger House then, and Oscar Pettiford played across the street at the Hi-hat.  It was just love at first sight.  I’d go to the nightclub every night.  [b.1933]

TP:    So Ray Brown is only seven years older than you, but nonetheless…

JONES:  Right!  But he was 21 then, and that’s a huge difference.  He was big-time.  Ray Charles was two-three years older.  Anyway, Oscar Pettiford took me to New York while I was in school there, and said, “Would you like to write two arrangements for my record date?”  He saw some of the tunes I wrote while I was in school at the Hi-Hat.  I lived across the street.  Then he said, “I would like you to come down and do a session with me.”  Mercer Records.  Leonard Feather was the A&R man.  That was my first New York minute, and I was like Dracula at the blood bank.

That was the first time I saw New York.  I met Mingus… It’s ironic, because you’re talking about    bass player, and Oscar introduced me to Mingus and Art Tatum, and then I kind of followed Ray around on 52nd Street.  We still hadn’t hooked up, though, you know.  Then to make a long story short, in the ’50s, when I was working out in L.A. to do some arrangements for somebody, I went to see Sidney P…Poitier (because we started together almost at the same time, in New York, starving to death together) at the Knickerbocker Hotel, and Ray was… I was going to Sidney’s room (this must have been in ’55 or ’56 or ’57), and Ray was playing golf in the hall. [LAUGHS] He was putting down the hall.  That time we hooked up, and it was forever.

One thing led to another, then he did a record date with me in 1959 on my Birth of The Band album, and I was just… They had to put cold water on me just to cool me off.  The idea to even have Ray Brown play on your music, it just blew my mind.

TP:    Did you follow the Oscar Peterson Trio during those years?

JONES:  Oh yeah.  I was a Jazz at the Philharmonic junkie.

TP:    Talk a little about Ray Brown’s role in JATP and the trio.

JONES:  That was equivalent to the Rolling Stones today, or whoever you want to say…about Voodoo or whatever… It was the same thing.  They had the crowd screaming, man, and Ella and Oscar Peterson, Nat Cole, Bird, Flip Phillips — everybody.  It was incredible.  That was our Rock-and-Roll.

TP:    I understand.  But I’m asking about Ray Brown’s function within that situation.  Because I think it was quite a special one.

JONES:  Well, at that time he was married to Ella Fitzgerald.  That’s a pretty big function, playing all that bass and Ella Fitzgerald’s husband, too.  At that time, everything was bigger than life to us.  That was probably the most influential thing — that and the big bands — for a whole life.  It was not just the music; it was the lifestyle, too.  And bebop, with all this freedom and this exploration, of breaking out of the entertainer role for black musicians.  I guess that was one of the key things, too.  It wasn’t so much about entertainment. It was serious, serious musicians.  And we heard the word about Oscar Peterson, and then Ray and he hooked up… I don’t know, just the grapevine was so strong… I know I’m not on a straight line here.  I don’t know how to do it.

TP:    You’re saying it was no more about entertainers, but it seems Ray Brown was very much an ambassador, as was Oscar Peterson, through their comportment and level of commitment to being on every minute…

JONES:  Everybody was like that, Ted.  Oscar Peterson.  Nat Cole was like that.  Earl Hines.  Everybody was like that then.  That was the tenor of the times.

TP:    It was like a different way of being an entertainer.

JONES:  They were on another planet. I remember when the Big Band school went into Bebop, and there was a little friction there at first.  You know, Pops wasn’t crazy about that.  Louis talked about Dizzy playing all that weird stuff.  I loved both of them, big bands and bebop.  But bebop was my heart.  And Ray was the personification of bebop.

TP:    But then at JATP, he’d be playing with Prez and Illinois Jacquet, swing guys…

JONES:  The best in the world. And that was probably the metamorphosis of swing into bebop.  Because Dizzy came out of Cab’s band and Bird came out Jay McShann, and then they converged with Earl Hines, and then Billy Eckstine took ALL of them over then.  The whole bebop workshop was going on over there, you know, with Sassy and Art Blakey and J.J. [sic] and Dizzy, Fats, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, everybody.  That was the real melting pot, Billy Eckstine’s band.  That was a pure bebop band.

That’s how I learned how to write, when I was really getting into writing.  I remember I asked Ray Charles, “How do they play all this stuff and not play the same notes?” I was 13 or 14.  And Ray hit a B-flat-7 chord and a C7 on top of it; it was like a B-flat-13 with an augmented fourth.  BANG!  Why, it just opened up a whole passageway.

TP:    So you were heavy into the Jerry Valentine charts.

JONES:  All of them.  Gil Fuller.  Everybody.  Everything he played, man.  The Cuban stuff.  Cuba was BIG then.  “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop” and “Manteca.”

TP:    They were all playing on top of each other on 52nd Street.

JONES:  Chano Pozo.  Mario Bauza, man.  I worked with him as recently as eight years ago.

TP:    Oh, right before he passed you worked with him.

JONES:  Yes, indeed.  We were at the Montreux together.  There was a big band in Montreux.

TP:    So ’59 is the first time Ray Brown plays with you, and you meet him around ’55-’56-’57 in the hotel and make that connection.  So you like each other…

JONES:  Yes.  As people we hooked up together, and then musically we hooked up in ’59, and it just never stopped.

TP:    Talk about what he was like at a session.  Most of these situations would have been sessions rather than live performances or tours.

JONES:  Right.  But for arrangers it didn’t make any difference.  You had to put all the stuff down on paper before you got there, and know who your soloists are and let them stretch.  I always loved that, to keep a big band mentality but have a little band sensibility about the solo stuff.

TP:    What I specifically want to get at with this question is his manner in his studio.

JONES:  A man never plays more or less than they are as a human being.  Ray was a very confident person, a take-charge person.  He played bass like that and lived like that.  He ate 17 different dishes like that.  That’s the eatingest sucker… At the eulogy, everybody had their own little focus.  Mine was on the eating.  Ray could EAT, man.  Whoo!  We ate everywhere on the planet, man.  France, you name it.

TP:    What was his favorite meal?

JONES:  Oh, whatever was good.  Kobe beef and Shabu-Shabu in Japan; and Peking Duck in Hong Kong; foie gras at Lafont; or ham hocks or whatever at Sylvia’s.  Wherever we were, what was good, Ray knew what it was.

TP:    From downhome haute cuisine to haute haute cuisine.

JONES:  That’s right.  I started that way and still am.  If they’ve got fresh produce and they know what they’re doing, I’m your man.  And Ray was, too.  But Ray… [LAUGHS] I’ve never seen… We were in Japan once with Mr. Nakashima… He was my manager by then.  We took the big band over there in the ’70s or ’80s, and we stayed over after the gig.  He took us all to great restaurants… Nakashima was a great promoter over there and a great friend.  He said after three days, “I think you guys have eaten up all the kobe beef in Japan.”  Ray said, “Man, you’ve been so nice, I think we’re going to stay over three more days.”  He said, “Oh, no-no.”  He drove us to the airport.

TP:    How did you begin the relationship of manager-artist?

JONES:  Well, all of these things just sort of evolved.  We started doing dates together, and then he came to me… A lot of record dates.  Movies.  I mean, TONS of movies.  Like, remember In Cold Blood?  Well, that was Andy Simpkins and Ray played the two killers, Bobby Blake and Scott Wilson.  They were the metaphors in the score for the two killers.  Richard Brooks… It was amazing, on the way to Ray’s funeral, Richard told me about Rod Steiger leaving us, too.  But we did dozens of movies together.  We did record dates, we did TV shows, we did the Cosby Show, and we got closer and closer together.  After a while, Ray would just say, “Man, I’ll take care of this,” and “I’ll take care of this…”  We’d do tours in Japan, he’d get with the promoter and stuff, and we’d just do it.  We did a tour with Roberta Flack, one of the best concerts I ever did in my life.  All of us… We had 37 musicians at the Greek with Roberta Flack.

TP:    I heard a story that Norman Granz once said to Ray Brown, “Why don’t you just become a booking agent and be done with it?”

JONES:  He did!  Ray had the ability to do that.

TP:    What does it take for a musician to be such a creative… I don’t think word “genius” would be misused with Ray Brown.  So he’s a creative genius and an extremely gifted businessman…

JONES:  An astute businessman.  It takes using all of your brain. [LAUGHS] It’s all in there.  You just have to use it.

TP:    The left side and the right side is there with him.

JONES:  That’s right, the left-right brain thinking.  There’s a great book out called Six Thinking Hats, and Ray’s was… That’s what it’s about, is using all of your brain.  The stuff he uses for booking gigs and travel and all that stuff is using a part that you don’t use when you’re playing the bass.

TP:    Did his management activity with you begin after 1966, when he moved to Los Angeles, or had he started to do this before?

JONES:  It started around that time, yes.  Because I didn’t get out there permanently until ’64 or ’65.  I came out to do Cary Grant’s last movie, is when I started to stay — Walk, Don’t Run.  I was in a house, and I was like all New Yorkers, talking loud about California, about the palm trees and all this stuff. [LAUGHS] Nobody said anything.  And then you have to eat your words, because that Christmas I was out in my backyard, picking some oranges off of a tree at the place I had leased, and I said, “Man, I don’t need three other seasons.  This is it.”

TP:    Basically you did so much work together, it would be hard for you to pinpoint anything.

JONES:  God, it’s just so much, Ted!  I think of the things… The Ellington special.  One of my passions was to do a special with Duke Ellington on a network.  They resisted it so much in the beginning, but finally, a guy named Phil Capece(?) said, “Let’s do it.”  Clarence Avon, a friend of mine, helped me get that connection together.  We were trying to find out who to go to.  Ray was involved.  I think from that spot on, we started to work together.  We did the album of “Walk In Space,” all those things… Then Grady Tate… A thing that stands out when he and Grady Tate first met each other. Man, it was a match made in heaven.  Amazing.

TP:    Did he ever indicate frustration with you at any of the limitations of studio playing?  Eventually, he did get out of it and went back to touring.

JONES:  Frustration?  No!  Ray did the shit out of whatever he was doing.  We didn’t get into that.  Because, you know, old school comes from… Also Clark Terry, who was my teacher when I was 14.  They come from Silas Green’s Circus, man.  They played everything.  He’s older than Ray.  But they’ve been around.  They’ve played chitlin’ circuit… We all played chitlin’ circuits.  And you didn’t sit around whining about what you had to play, man.  You played what you had to play, and tried to make all of it sound good.  That’s what I loved about Ray. That’s where I think our chord struck, in being very curious about what the business side of it was and tired of always a victim — not wanting to be a victim.  That’s the same thing in Ray, and he saw it in me.  We wanted to be a little bit more in charge of our own destinies.  Then I had the good fortune in 1957 to live in France, and live next door to Picasso.  Man, Picasso was totally in charge of his life. Lithograph plants.  He didn’t have to take any shit from anybody.  And I LOVED that idea.  Because I heard all the victims… Black musicians were HUGE victims in the ’50s.  And I watched it.  I watched my idols… Like the Duke, the man who’s like the god of American music. We were producing a show once, and saw him in Vegas, and it just tore my heart out.  He was 75, man, and he was playing in a lounge in Vegas.  It just killed me!  Because the man I used to watch in the white suit with Al Hibbler when I was 12, 13 or 14, and he’s playing in a lounge, and Paul Gonsalves was walking around the tables, man, like a violinist.  It hurt me.  It hurt me for him.  It really hurt me.  Basie and I used to talk about that all the time.  Basie was like my father, you know.  From 13 years old on, he took care of me.  Brother, father, manager, everything.  He’d get gigs for my band — everything.

TP:    He was a true survivor, wasn’t he.

JONES:  Oh, what a beautiful man.  I feel so blessed to have come up from that school, with Dizzy and Basie and Ray Brown and Ray Charles.

TP:    You’re a modernist with old-school values.

JONES:  Yeah.  I came up in the middle of the best damn thing, in the ’40s, after the war.  I was a kid.  Then I was with Lionel Hampton for three years, ’51 to ’53, and Dizzy’s band, and writing for Basie.  So jazz and big band was just equal ambidexterity.

I’d like to add one thing.  I never saw him do it… Going back to the eating thing.  As a bass player, he’s the King of Humididing and Spangalang, please!  And he could probably eat a 249-pound catfish if he tried!  Ray could eat that.  We used to have so much fun.  I guess it’s that campfire thing.  After you do all your other stuff, it’s always sit at the table around the campfire.

TP:    Well, another aspect of people from your day is that they all knew how to have a good time.

JONES:  Absolutely, man.  Ben Webster taught us how to drink.  It was great.

I’d like to say one more thing about the man I love here.  Ray to me was the absolute symbol of if you empty your cup every time and learn to make it a habit, it always comes back twice as full.  What I’m saying is give it up every time, man.  Don’t save nothin’.  That we definitely shared, and I learned more and more about that from him all the time.  In everything.  In relationships.  Everything.  Give it up.TP:    You said you first met Ray Brown at a JATP concert in Tokyo in 1953.  Was that your first experience listening to him?  I’m sure you’d heard the records before hearing him live.

Ed Thigpen

ED THIGPEN:  That was in 1953.  When I went into the Army, I was with Cootie Williams, and I hadn’t really been exposed to… Well, I had JATP.  But when did Oscar go down there?

TP:    He started going out in ’49, but would do more of a feature, and I think in ’50 he started going out as a duo act with Major Holley, and then he linked u with Ray Brown in ’52, around the time when his relationship with Ella Fitzgerald was dissolving.

THIGPEN:  Okay.  That puts things in perspective, because Ella was on that concert in ’53 in Japan as well.  Prior to that, I had heard JATP, but I wasn’t really into… I got out of high school when they started out, and I’d been working with territorial bands… I got to New York in ’51, but I was working with Cootie Williams.  I was on the road with Dinah and rhythm-and-blues bands.  I’m a little more than four years younger than Ray.  Whatever.  But anyway, it was ’53.

TP:    But you knew the records with Dizzy.

THIGPEN:  Oh yeah, I’d heard that in high school.

TP:    So you knew who Ray Brown was from when you were very young, and a formative musician.

THIGPEN:  Yes, but you know and KNOW who he was.  I didn’t have a record player when I was in high school.  I didn’t get a record player until I was a grown man.  But I heard a lot of live music growing up in L.A.  Anyway, that’s another story.

TP:    All of this is a roundabout way of asking what was your impression of his sound and his aura as a musician.

THIGPEN:  To be honest with you, the group was just so overwhelming with Herb, as I told you in the letter.  That pretty much summarizes what I thought. What impressed me was his kindness.  He was a nice guy.  Everybody played… I was looking at Ben and Benny Carter and J.C. Heard.  But mainly, when I met him, he was a nice person.

TP:    Good enough. Then I’m going to jump ahead to 1959, when you join the band, and the orientation of the trio changes from piano-bass-guitar, very orchestrative, to you kind of driving the band from the drums.  The way Oscar Peterson put it, they would change their articulation to suit the type of fills you would do, and this became more part of the structure of things.  First, how were you recruited to the band?  Through Ray Brown?

THIGPEN:  Well, I guess so.  As you said, Oscar said he recommended me.  I remember that in 1958 I was working at the Hickory House in New York, and Oscar came in.  He didn’t say anything to me.  He just came in at dinner, like Duke Ellington used to do at the Hickory House…

TP:    A steakhouse.

THIGPEN:  A steakhouse, right, on 52nd just off Broadway.  Earlier I was working there with Billy Taylor, Jutta Hipp, Toshiko and different people.  I was working with Billy during 1957-58.  But he came in, and that summer I got a call from Norman Granz saying that he wanted me to join Oscar Peterson.  There was a little discrepancy in the money… Anyway, I didn’t go with him right away.  Which I was very shocked by it.  I said, “What have I done?!”  Anyway, six months later, it was just at Christmas break, he called me again and said, “Okay, we’ll give you that.”  Boy, I said, “Thank you, Lord.”

TP:    So you’d never played with Ray Brown up until…

THIGPEN:  Oh, yes.  We had done a record with Blossom Dearie prior to that.  I’d started getting on the scene because I was in New York, working with Billy.  critics started liking my work, and I was getting recognition.  I’d go see Ray, and somehow we hooked up, and we did this date.

TP:    But that was just in the studio.  So your first bandstand experience with him was the rehearsals and then going on stage with the Oscar Peterson Trio.  Tell me about the experience of playing drums with Ray Brown.  What were the qualities that made Ray Brown, Ray Brown?

THIGPEN:  Well, his sound and his time, his attack. And it wasn’t just playing fast, it was the whole approach, the musical approach for me. In other words, taking your instrument and making it an orchestra.  How do we play together?  How do we blend together?  It was much of the tradition that I’d heard from Kenny Clarke and Jo Jones and my dad about how a rhythm section functions.  It was very dominant.  But they had an edge, playing on top of the beat, laying in the middle of it, laying behind it, shifting gears… But sound.  How our sound blended.  So on my own… He didn’t tell me what to play, but it was like how he played.  And I loved it so much — same with Oscar — that I developed techniques of my own that I thought would be compatible with what you were doing.

TP:    You played with him night after night for 6-1/2 years, maybe 200 nights a year…

THIGPEN:  We worked ten months a year.

TP:    That’s 300 days a year.  Was he an extremely consistent player?

THIGPEN:  Extremely.

TP:    And was he an extremely creative player from night to night?

THIGPEN:  Extremely musical, creative… It was…

TP:    That’s hard to do.  On the road for ten months a year?

THIGPEN:  It isn’t as hard to do when people are compatible.  It’s hard not to do because it’s not acceptable not to do that.  You don’t lay on… It was never coasting.  Oscar and Ray were at another level altogether, and their penchant for excellence was dominant.  But Ray was never forceful with me.  Just you wanted to be the best it was at what you were doing.  So you were giving your all every evening.  And once you get used to that, it’s unacceptable to come below that level.

TP:    Did you rehearse a great deal with Ray?

THIGPEN:  Oh-ho!  Well, we lived together.  He shared a room with me.  He was like a big brother, taking care of me, guiding me — just a lot of things in general.  We would practice every day.  After two weeks, I said, “I guess we got it.”  He said, “not yet.”  And two years later, we’re still practicing how to play time together, and dynamics, and me play his part, sing his parts and play mine, and vice-versa.  What was Oscar doing?  Then when we’d do things with the orchestras, when it was augmented, how to shift… How to work a rhythm section, how to really make it work.  We worked at that every day.

TP:    So he never rested on his laurels.

THIGPEN:  Oh, no!

TP:    By 1963, he’s Ray Brown, the heir to Jimmy Blanton, but he’s continuing to work on himself and perfect what he does.

THIGPEN:  I wrote (and I took some time to word this correctly in the email) at the end that Ray Brown was a worker at everything he did.

TP:    You said he “was a natural leader, dominant but not forceful, he was consistent, a very persistent, patient hard worker. Brownsk was in the trenches with you leading by example.”

THIGPEN:  That’s it.

TP:    It’s wonderfully put, and I’m talking to you for elaboration and examples, which you’re giving me.

THIGPEN:  That was Ray.  Everything he did.  He came home, he studied all the time, he practiced all the time, trying to improve all the time.  I think all great artists are like that, but the ones I’ve had the pleasure of working with are really exception.  Like, he would get together with symphonic players; he wanted to improve the bowing, he wanted to do this, and they would come down to see what he was doing.  He was always open.  But there were some things that were definite that they had stylistically that worked, and those things they were very adamant about, because they worked.  I’m speaking of Ray and people of that caliber.  We’re talking about the very top of the heap, now.  Whether it was Buddy Rich or Oscar Peterson or Ray Brown… Ray Brown, after he heard his father play Oscar Pettiford, he came off the road, and went back and learned everything Oscar Pettiford was doing before he’d go back out there again.  Oscar Peterson didn’t feel he was ready to come down when Norman asked him, and when he felt ready he came down, and jumped right to the top of the line.  So those guys are going to be the best possible, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to lay on it.  Because that instrument is challenging and the music is like that.  The instrument tells you.  There’s always somebody coming along, like a new fast gun.

TP:    I interviewed him in 1999, and he said he had to practice all the time so he could execute all the stuff he used to play.  I think that’s one reason why he had young musicians in his trio.

THIGPEN:  That’s right.  He told me, “When you go out…”  Because I’d been off, I was raising my kids and blah-blah-blah.  But he said, “You get you some young boys, because they’re gonna be on top of it.”  So that’s what you do.  You’ve got to get where the energy is.

TP:    So your friendship lasted the duration, after leaving Oscar Peterson.

THIGPEN:  Oh yes.  My spiritual brother, Donald, and every… Oh, Ray was more than just a friend on the bandstand.  Ray spiritually was like a big brother.  He didn’t press you for anything, but if I needed to know something or whatever…encouragement… Ray was always there.

TP:    Was his business acumen always extremely evident?

THIGPEN:  Well, let me put it this way.  I knew he was a fast study.  I certainly couldn’t keep up with him.  But he would try to pull my coat about certain things which I just couldn’t grasp until later years.

TP:    You mean business things.

THIGPEN:  Business-wise.  But he’s one of these guys who could read the “Herald-Tribune” in 15 minutes, and you ask him a topic and just give him the page number and the subtitle, he’d tell you everything in the paper.

TP:    So to use the word “genius” wouldn’t be overstating the case with him.

THIGPEN:  No, I don’t think.  “Genius,” dictionary-wise, says a person of exceptional talent, unusual creativity and talent, and how to use it.  That’s the dictionary form of the word.  I think he fit the category.  You have nuances.

TP:    Well, everyone has their idiosyncracies.

THIGPEN:  But as far as these extra-special gifts that he had, and how you use them is what’s important…

TP:    Can you think of any one or two anecdotes that really get to his essence?

THIGPEN:  Yeah, my last little paragraph.  I thought this out; it wasn’t just random.

TP:    What I mean is that over the forty years of friendship, any thing you remember happening that brings into relief his qualities and his character.

THIGPEN:  What I mentioned is that he was consistent, and as I said before, he’s a very caring and thoughtful person.  This is very personal.  He became a very integral part of my life, as I said, as a spiritual brother and by example as a human being, thinking of me as a person… Unlike a lot of people, they talk to you and they don’t really listen to what you have to say from your perspective. He was one of the most fantastic listeners.  He knew how to listen to people for what they had to say.  Not for what he was perceiving them to say, but what they HAD to say.

TP:    That exactly correlates with what he did on the bandstand, too.

THIGPEN:  That’s right.

TP:    As you know, Oscar Peterson has an incredible feel for people’s voices.  How they speak, how they phrase things… It’s uncanny, and it really adds to the book.  He said he was doing his job, because he had to listen to them, because he had to play with them…

THIGPEN:  That’s right.  I mean, I always felt like that. My father had told me that, and that’s a deep-rooted scene.  And you learn that as an accompanist.  He was the perfect accompanist.  That’s an art.  You’re not afraid of losing your identity by being subservient or serving up something good to enhance another person’s performance. That was him.  When I said he was a caring and thoughtful human being, he was a caring and thoughtful musician in everything that he did, and it was like, “‘How do you make it better?”  And that was the thing that… That put it on for me.  And living with a person like that, when you’re able to practice it every day on the bandstand, then that’s something else.

William Parker Blindfold Test From Ten Years Ago, Uncut

The Vision Fest began yesterday, and is in full swing. So it  seems apropos to give a nod to William Parker, a monster bassist, tireless worker, and generous spirit. Without him—and without his wife, the dancer and organizer Patricia Nicholson Parker—this great event would be a very different entity…if it existed at all.

About ten years ago, William agreed to sit with me for the DownBeat Blindfold Test. For reasons that would take too long to explain, he had to listen to everything with cheap headphones through a Sony Diskman — and got through it like a champ! This, of course, is the raw copy.

* * *

William Parker (Blindfold Test):

1.  Cachao, “Descarga A,” Master Sessions: Vol. 2 (Columbia, 1995) [4 stars]

I think, from the bowing in the beginning, that that was Israel Lopez — Cachao.  People have been telling me about him for years and years, and I’ve just heard specks here and there.  Unfortunately, right now, I don’t own one of his CD’s.  But I enjoyed that very much.  It was just a happy folk feeling that I really like in a lot of music I prefer to listen to, because it’s bright and had a song going through it — and his bass playing is right on.  It’s very-very-very nice.  And the singing, the trombones, the saxophones, everything was very-very-very tasty.  So I would give that four stars.

2.  Andrew Hill,  “Wailing Wall,” Smokestack, (Blue Note, 1963/1995) [4 stars] (Richard Davis & Eddie Khan, basses;  Hill, piano; Roy Haynes, drums)

[ONE MINUTE IN] This is two basses. [2 MINUTES IN} This is Richard Davis. [2½ MINUTES] I’m trying to figure out who this piano player is.  Is that Andrew Hill?  Andrew Hill, Eddie Khan, Richard Davis. [Who’s the drummer?  You know.] This is a piece called “Wailing Wall.”  What was getting me was, it wasn’t… The piano wasn’t as eccentric as I’m used to with Andrew Hill — or say as personal — at first.  But then he found that space that sort of gets into his area of…that brings out his personality.  The bowed bass was with Richard Davis, and that was excellent, excellent, excellent.  And Eddie Khan… They both had deep bass sounds, really thick sounds, and I particularly like that on the bass.  That was a perfect vehicle for two basses, with that piano sort of backdrop.  I’m not sure who the drummer was.  The drummer was double-timing.  I’m not sure who that was.  Because it was mostly cymbal.  Joe Chambers, Tony Williams… I’m just guessing who was on the record. [That was Roy Haynes.] Roy Haynes, okay.  He’s not a usual sort of person on these records.  Because he didn’t do that many with Andrew. [Well, he did Black Fire, too.] Well, I enjoyed that very much also.  I would give that 4 stars.

3.  Fred Hopkins & Deidre Murray, “Dedicated To Ronnie Boykins,” Firestorm (Victo, 1992). [4-1/2 stars]

Barre Phillips.  No?  I’ve heard this bassist before.  I’ve heard this sound before.  Was this recorded in a church?  It’s got that open sound. [THEN] It’s got that cello and bass.  [LATER]  It’s not Deidre Murray… [LATER] I’m going to take a guess.  I’m not really sure.  This isn’t Deidre Murray and Fred Hopkins.  Oh, it is?  Usually I can spot Deidre Murray like that. [It’s Fred’s piece.] It’s Fred’s piece, okay.  For lack of better terms, it sounded a bit more Classical, or even European-sounding than what they usually do.  But everything they do has always been top-notch.  I think Fred’s passing was so unfortunate, because he was great.  I would give that 4½ stars.  That was very-very-very nice.  I guess sometimes when the sound is right in front of you, it’s like looking for something and then because it’s right there you don’t see it. [They did it at East Side Sound.) That was a very nice sound.

4.  Ron Carter,  “Laverne Walk”, Piccolo (Milestone, 1977/1999). [3-1/2 stars] (Carter, piccolo bass; Buster Williams, bass; Kenny Barron, piano; Ben Riley, drums; Oscar Pettiford, composer)

Right off I can tell that they’re having fun.  What often happens when two bassists get together, there’s like a thing where bass players can play together without being in competition, and they sort of really know how to complement each other. But I’ve got to figure out who this is. [LATER] That slide is like a Ray Brown thing, but the tone doesn’t really sound like Ray Brown the way it’s recorded.  But those slides… [LATER] This bass player, John Clayton.  [ANOTHER MINUTE] They were really interwoven in there, playing in the same register sometimes, and except for a few slides I could not distinguish who was who. [Were they playing the same instrument?] Well, it’s hard to tell.  Because nowadays, a lot of bassists play in the upper register, miked through a pickup.  So I really couldn’t hear the acoustic sound of the bass too well on that one. [Did you know the tune?] I don’t know the tune.  But I thought the performance of it and the spirit with which they were playing was good.  They weren’t trying to be political or revolutionary on that one!  They were just trying to get a groove and make something happen. [LATER] When I heard the left-hand skip I thought of Ron Carter, and I also thought of Buster Williams, but I couldn’t clearly distinguish them.  What I’d say about Ron Carter in general is that he’s been one of the foundations for sort of post Paul Chambers bass playing, walking bass lines — he’s influenced a lot of people there.  Also, his choice of notes and his placement of notes in certain spots, not playing a lot of notes.  And also keeping a bass sound on his bass, so to speak.  That one I would give 3-1/2 stars.  I think that they weren’t necessarily getting to any musical essences there, but it was a good performance of jazz, and interplay between two basses.  I’m sure if I was in the room and watching this live, it would really be a lot more present and happening than listening to it on a CD.  I think you lose a lot when you’re listening to two basses on CD.

5.  Ray Brown,  “Tricotism,”  Much In Common (Verve, 1962/1996) [5 stars] (with orchestra, arr. Ernie Wilkins;  Oscar pettiford, composer)

Oh, they said who it was at the end of the tune, but to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have said Ray Brown.  I didn’t hear any particular Ray Brown licks there, or I guess I never heard Ray Brown in that particular context.  That was very-very-very modern type of playing, and I always thought of him as a slower type thinker.  I think in bassists you have people who sort of play fast, and then you have other bassists who really dig into the note and play slower.  I always thought of him as someone who had a deeper, more soulful type of feeling when he plays.  Also sometimes you get bass amnesia; everything blends into one.  But that was an excellent performance.  I’d give that 5 stars. [Did you know the tune?] I didn’t know the tune.  When I was listening to it, I started to say, “Is that Oscar Pettiford?”  That’s the connection there.  I thought maybe he was trying to reflect on Oscar Pettiford, because it wasn’t in the area that I associate with Ray Brown necessarily.

6.  Oscar Pettiford, “Stardust,” Vienna Blues: The Complete Session (Black Lion, 1959/1990) [3½ stars] (Oscar Pettiford, bass; Attila Zoller, guitar; Jimmy Pratt, drums; Hoagy Carmichael, composer)

Those stops.  I don’t know who this is.  It’s hard to tell when they don’t play any wrong notes! [LATER, AT 5:30] I’m not sure who this is.  But they’re playing all the right notes!  It’s a nice ballad.  But I think sometimes you need some off-notes or off-sounds to give the music a little edge.  I think he’s putting some in now with those strums, but… [LATER] This is Oscar Pettiford. [As a young player, would you study Oscar Pettiford or Ray Brown?] Not really.  That was a little bit before my time.  I was studying stuff that had happened the last ten years rather than the last twenty years.  But let me just say that that performance… I do have an affection for Oscar Pettiford, but I only could give that 3-1/2 stars.  To me it was just functional.  It was nice, but it didn’t really go over the top too much.

7.  Bill Dixon-Alan Silva, “Summer Song/Two/Evening,” Bill Dixon In Italy: Vol. 2 (Black Saint, 1980) (dixon, trumpet, composer; Silva, bass)

Alan Silva and Bill Dixon.  In this performance, Alan is not playing any… His phrases are symmetrical but within their own space.  Then he’s putting an edge on the sound where you would least expect it, while simultaneously underpinning the trumpet but also creating his own sort of road that the trumpet is reacting off of.  Bill is one of the masters at playing trumpet lines in this slower tempo, just creating layers and layers of sound built on top of each other in this continuous ballad that has… It’s like trees.  It’s very in synch with Nature.  If you could put a trumpet in a tree and blow the wind through it, that’s what Bill sounds like.  Then Alan underneath him sounds like… If Mother Nature could play the bass, that’s what it would sound like.  I would give this 5 stars.  It’s excellent.

8.  Evan Parker (soprano saxophone) & Barry Guy (bass) “Slope,” Obliquities (Maya, 1994).

Oh my God. [LATER] Sometimes you can’t tell if it’s a violin, cello or bass just yet.  Because the bass players nowadays play in the violin range, they play in the cello range, and when you have more than one player it’s hard to tell, but I do hear a cello in there. [NO] A violin. [NO] Bass!  That’s what I’m saying.  You can’t… I’m trying to figure out who the saxophone player is.  Very nice.  Very nice colors and textures.  But I don’t hear any personal codes yet from the string section that I can recognize. [LATER] To be able to hear any musician and know who it is, you have to hear them numerous times. [You’ve played next to this guy.] [LISTENS] I’m reluctant to say who the saxophone player is, because if I say the wrong person I’ll get in big trouble.  [Who do you think it is?  You’re probably already in trouble.] [SILENT] Oh, man, never mind! [LAUGHS] Is this Evan Parker? [4½ minutes] And Barry Guy. [BREAK] Is there a cello in here, or is it just duo?  It’s a duo?  Barry sounds like two basses there, because he plays so fast that he looks like two basses.  It’s like watching a sped-up movie, because he can go up to the top and down to the bottom.  But this is a very nice performance.  I would give this 4-1/2 stars.

9.  Paul Chambers. “The P.C. Blues” Red’s Blues (Prestige, 1998). (Paul Chambers, bass, composer; Red Garland, piano; Arthur Taylor, drums)

It’s a blues.  And they’re playing in 4/4 time, the drummer is keeping the time.  Let’s see what happens now.  Nice!  These are authentic players.  Deep bass work.  I like the idea of simplicity in the bass work and the tone.  Very nice tone, very nice time.  In a piece like this you don’t really have to go crazy or anything, just keep it basic and let your tone and time be the spokesmen.  At this point I don’t hear who the bassist is.  I have to listen a little bit more. [BREAK] Very solid.  It’s somebody that sounds like they’re in the school… [DURING SOLO] This is Paul Chambers.  Because he’s bowing on nylon strings and it’s a little raspy.  But the time and the tone were very sweet.  I’d give this 4-1/2 stars. [Do you know who the pianist was?] That was Wynton Kelly?  I’m not… Those guys were the creators of their genre in music.  So it’s not just authentic; it is the real thing.

10. George Mraz, “Mr. Pastorius,” Bottom Lines (Milestone, 1997) (Mraz, bass; Cyrus Chestnut, piano, synthesizer; Al Foster, drums)

From just initially hearing this… Now, this is an electric bass or acoustic bass? [Acoustic bass with a synth.] Well, the sound is a little dry, and no one seems to be vibrating their instruments acoustically.  I don’t really hear it.  That sort of takes down the usefulness of the music for me to a point.  It’s nice for what it is, but for me it doesn’t have enough bite.  They seem to be proficient at what they’re doing, but it’s just a matter of if you have a particular taste and like what they’re doing.  So I don’t know who this is.  But the way it’s recorded, the lead instrument sounds a little electronic.  I’m not even sure what instrument it is.  I mean, I would say that the music isn’t… It sounds a bit like a soundtrack, and I’d say it basically isn’t vibrating enough for me to do the nervous system any good.  So it may be harsh, but I have to give this 2-1/2 stars. [LATER] Now that you’re telling me who this is:  I’m familiar with George Mraz, from Czechoslovakia, and he is an excellent bassist, and he can produce excellent music.  I just think it was hidden in the arrangement of that particular song.  To me, if it’s acoustic bass, the wood has got to vibrate to get the sound.  That’s what it’s set up to do.

11. Charlie Haden (w/ Paul Bley & Paul Motian), “Blues For Josh,” Memoirs (Black Saint, 1990).

It sounds like Charlie Haden, who is a bassist who I guess gets recognized immediately by a lot of people.  It’s like people who have a more individual voice. Like when we hear Ted Panken on the radio, we recognize that it’s him immediately!  He’s from the Ozarks, and he’s got this country-folk thing happening in his bass playing that always really speaks, and he’s got a feel for what he’s doing that’s in his own time zone.  He’s not trying to play like the classic bass players, so to speak.  That’s what you really have to do in music.  You have to try to find your own way of playing time, or not playing time, or playing music.  That’s sort of the goal.  Because everyone’s got their own feeling inside.  I think your personality can come out when you discover what’s you.  That’s one of the things that Charlie Haden has.  So that’s him on bass.  That’s Paul Motian on drums.  And Geri Allen?  Paul Bley.  Well, Paul Bley has his own language on the piano.  So this again is a classic trio that… They’ve been making music together for years.  That gives you some stars right there, for being able to stay alive in the Jazz Business for all those years — you can give some credit just for that.  That doesn’t mean that every performance you give is wonderful, but I think this is a very nice piece of music.  So I would give that 4 stars.

12. Glen Moore, “Jade Visions,” Dragonetti’s Dream (Intuition, 1995).

That’s a Scott LaFaro composition. [AFTER LISTENING TO THE WHOLE PIECE]  That’s a bass player from the West Coast. [Yes.] David Friesen. [No.  Why do you say it’s from the West Coast?] Because it’s big tree sound music, and it sounds folksy.  It reminded me a little bit of the bass player David Friesen, but if it’s not him, then I don’t know who that was. [LATER] Oh, that’s Glen Moore.  He’s the other guy whose name would come up, because he’s got an  open, tree-like sound.  I used to listen to him when he played with this group called Oregon.  They did all these concerts at WBAI, the Free Music Store.  He played the composition straight, and it was just the sound…the bass was ringing.  That was a very good recorded sound.  It really reminded me of playing out in the forest in the morning.  Because there’s certain music that’s just for particular times of the day, and if you listen to it the wrong time of the day you’d have a totally wrong impression of it.  Like, if we were walking through a forest and we heard the sound of his bass, it would be magnificent.  But if you’re in a smoky nightclub that particular music would be almost too majestic for a place like that.  That was very meditative.  4 stars.  That was very nice.

13. Dave Holland, “Bedouin,” Points of View (ECM, 1998). (Dave Holland, bass, composer; Robin Eubanks, trombone; Steve Wilson, soprano saxophone; Steve Nelson, vibraphone; Billy Kilson, drums).

He’s a slider.  He slides like guitar players and sitar players.  …younger players, and this was recorded in the ’80s or ’90s.  The way the composition is laid out and the rhythms that the horns are playing and the way the beat… It almost has a Hip-Hop feel.  Nice trombone player. [BREAK] I don’t know who this is.  I’d just be guessing.  Because they’re musicians I usually wouldn’t…don’t listen to.  Not because I would refuse to listen to them.  Just that as you become older in this field of music… A lot of people keep up with what’s going on, and then a lot of people just listen to the same records they have in their cabinet!  So I don’t know if I ever have actually purchased a CD in the ’90s! [Do you have any sense who the bass player is?  He had a solo at the top.] Well, he seems to be very flexible.  He’s someone that might also play electric bass. [Once upon a time.] Once upon a time.  [LATER] Oh, this is Dave Holland.  So that’s Robin Eubanks.  He’s a nice trombone player.  Dave Holland has a singing sound on his instrument, and you usually can tell who it is by his phrasing and his sound.  But I didn’t really hear that.  This was more condensed or in the ensemble.  That was very tricky.  I would give that 3-1/2 stars.  Because again, it was nice, but it didn’t have any particular special message to me.  But it was a nice tune, and nicely executed.  Because I’ve heard another cut on this record which I actually liked a lot more than this.  I guess that one was a bit more dynamic and exciting.  This was a groove piece.

14. Malachi Favors/Roscoe Mitchell, “Keep on Keeping On,” Hey, Donald (Delmark, 1997) (Malachi Favors, bass, composer; Roscoe Mitchell, alto saxophone)

That’s Malachi Favors and Roscoe Mitchell playing a duet.  Roscoe goes from one end of the sound spectrum to the other.  He has his very open forms; he has his folk feeling, his simple song feelings.  That was a hymn almost. [It was Malachi Favors’ tune.] Okay.  Malachi is one of the all-time masters of the bass.  If he had played pizzicato…I could really-really-really recognize him pizzicato.  But he’s also got this nice, deep, dry sound playing arco. For being Malachi’s tune, I’d give that 5 stars.

15. Mark Helias, “Semaphore,” Open Loose (Koch, 1998) (Helias, bass, composer; Ellery Eskelin, tenor saxophone; Tom Rainey, drums)

Is it three or four people? [AT 2 MINUTES] In this short period of time, the bassist has gone into three or four different areas.  He has a very strong sound and a very good sense of timing. [PONDERS] David Murray on saxophone?  No.  Is this an American band? [It’s a New York band.] I like it a lot.  Everyone’s got a strong sound.  I hear a breathiness in the saxophone player.  That’s why I mentioned David, or even… It’s not hard like Archie Shepp; it’s a lighter sound. [Any idea who the bass player is?] I’m not sure.  Is this Mark… Which Mark? [LATER] Mark Dresser?  No.  It’s Mark Helias!  See, I’ve never heard his band.  So this is Ellery Eskelin and Tom Rainey.  I played a duo a couple of weeks ago with Ellery Eskelin and he does have that sound.  But I’ve never heard Mark Helias’ own bands.  I thought he had more than a trio.  This is very nice.  They got their own space happening.  I’m going to give this the full 5 stars.  Mark Dresser also has an excellent band which I just heard which has an excellent saxophone player and drummer, but it was a little different than this.  This is nice.  They’re getting some nice colors and textures.  When you don’t have a piano in the way, the bass can really guide the group and underpin everything and move things around.  And this is Open-Loose!  Very nice.
_________________________________________________________________
All bass players write their own music.  I wonder why that is.