Players Interviews

MEL MARTIN'S JAZZ and SAXOPHONE WEB SITE
Billy Pierce
by Mel Martin
Reprinted from The Saxophone Journal January/February 1991
Volume 15, Number 4
One of the great pleasures of doing interviews is getting to know other

saxophonists on a one-to-one basis. Billy Pierce is someone who has caught my
ear for quite some time. My first exposure to him was on the James Williams'
Concord jazz dates, and then later on with Art Blakey's incredible Jazz
Messenger group, with both Wynton and Branford Marsalis. I had assumed Billy
to be of their generation, or slightly older, but always felt he had a well rounded
maturity. To my surprise, I discovered he just entered his fourth decade, and not
only had a varied background as a professional, but is an excellent and dedicated
teacher. In fact, as the interview progressed I discovered we had much in
common, such as being out on the road in the early seventies, as well as similar
teaching experiences. Self described as a late bloomer, Billy has really come into
his own with a very distinctive style and a "steady as she goes" attitude about life
and music. So, for those who don't really know him I would like to introduce to
readers of Saxophone Journal my new found friend - the great Billy Pierce.
I'd like to start by asking how you started playing tenor and perhaps give us a
little background.
I started on tenor, then I played alto, then I went to clarinet, then bass clarinet. I
did it backwards. I grew up in rural Florida. My mother was a school teacher and
we owned a nice home in Jacksonville. I actually finished high school in Miami
where I got my early training in my high school jazz band with reading, and I was
hearing jazz music as it should almost sound. Originally we all played the written
solos off those early stage band charts like Cherry Point, Neil Hefty's stuff, and
Marshall Brown, who had the Newport Youth Band. Solid Blue was one, and the
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other one was Copley Square. At the time I had no idea that Copley Square was
in Boston, which is where I actually ended up. We would play those really dopey
solos, but we had no idea. We didn't sound like the high school stage bands do
now. That was like 1965, or '66 when stage bands were still in their embryonic
stage.
Then I went to college and I never considered that I would be able to be a

working musician. I just loved music! I really wanted to play!
After high school I went to Tennessee State on a work-study scholarship, and by

then I started playing around with the oboe. I was there, so I said to myself, 'I'm
planning on learning something, I want to get some information.' It didn't happen
at all. They started a stage band when I was there, but we weren't allowed to play
jazz in the black school. If you played jazz, like on the pianos in the practice
rooms, the monitor would come and kick you out. It was amazing! That was
when the black cultural and political awareness was just happening. So, I started
to gradually change a little bit, but they were really steeped in this thing about
only European classical, or traditional black music, or whatever - anything but
jazz! Still, there were some good players who came out of that school like
Cleveland Eaton, Phineas Newborn, and Charles Lloyd. There were some good
players there, but they themselves weren't getting any good information either,
and I couldn't get it from the guys at the school or from the teachers.
I was working in funk bands at Tennessee State and that's where I found out what
the IV chord was. I played in a club called The Sugar Shack, and the band was
like a Motown R&B kind of showcase band. I learned a lot about professional
playing in that group. I got a gig several years later working with Stevie Wonder,
in 1970, by working at the Sugar Shack.
By that time my family told me to go to Berklee College in Boston, which I

always knew about and always wanted to go to. When I got to Berklee the reality
of what good playing involved, what it took to be a good jazz player, and what it
encompassed, really hit me. I was young and I thought people like Charlie Parker
just came out of the air, like all of a sudden something just hit them and they just

played. But I found out there's a whole lot more to it. You've got to know your
instrument and the music, and all aspects of jazz. I was overwhelmed at first.
Who was teaching at Berklee at that time?
My first teacher at Berklee was Charlie Mariano. I don't remember exactly what I
learned from Charlie, but I did learn some things from being around him. Like a
lot of really good teachers I've had, a lot of the things I learned from them wasn't
anything direct, like "This is A, then you do B, then you do C." Many times it
was just the daily conversations I would have with them and things would
eventually sink in, or eventually I would realize, "Oh, that's what those guys
meant." To some degree I now teach like that. I try to be specific, because that's
what students want. But it's amazing that some of the stuff those guys would say
in passing, and I would think, "Now what was that?", would be the most profound
things that one could tell you. I had the same experience with Joe Viola, Joe
Allard, and Andy McGhee. Those were the four guys I studied with in my college
experience.
Joe Allard was at Berklee?
No, I studied with Joe Allard after I finished Berklee. I went to have a few lessons
with him and found him to be very interesting. He's quite a character. I got a lot
out of my time with him. Again, I couldn't tell you specifically what, but I do
remember some things about tone production. And again, he'd say some things
and I would go, "Now, what is this guy talking about?", and later on I'd say, "Oh
yea!" One has to figure out a few things for oneself. I think a lot of master
teachers allow students to do that. They might give an analogy, but basically it's
self discovery and one has to get into it and experience it.
You mentioned playing with Stevie Wonder early on, and you later landed a
major gig with him. Was this the period before he really started getting the big
breaks.?
That's right. In 1970 Stevie Wonder had just turned twenty-one. At the time there

were a lot of negotiations between him and Motown over a new contract.
It was a good band, and I stayed for about six or seven months. Signed, Sealed,
and Delivered was one of the things we were playing. I actually dropped out of
Berklee to go on the road with Stevie Wonder. I wasn't sure what I was going to
do anyway. Stevie was great, but I wasn't that knocked out playing the music. I
enjoyed being on the road, but it wasn't jazz, and that's what I really wanted to
play. But, it was the first time I ever made that kind of money and a chance to
travel. We went to Hawaii, LA, South America, and then the group disbanded.
My friend Bobby Eldridge and I were supposed to come back with a new band.
Bobby was the baritone player. Now he plays in the pits in New York City and is
a good player. Word got out Stevie was looking for a new band and by that time
Steve Madeo, Trevor Lawrence, and Dave Sanborn were in his band. For a period
of time I was listening to a lot of rock, and blues. I was listening to Jimi Hendrix
and the Beatles, and things like that.
Right, we were all out there with that stuff. I was touring with Boz Scaggs about
the same time. I toured a lot around your area (Boston) in the early 1970s.
But all that was the learning experience. After the Stevie Wonder thing ended I
went back to Boston, and then that was the period where I grew the most. The
baritone player and I were roommates and we lived in an apartment building that
had another group of musicians on the second floor (we were on the 4th floor),
and they had a B-3 in there, an electric piano, and a set of drums.
I wish I had known your address. I was sitting in a hotel in Cambridge the whole
time!
A lot of guys who came through town would stop by. The guy whose house it
was (his name was Steve West) went to the Performing Arts School in New York,
so he knew a lot of players like George Cables, Lenny White, Stanley Clarke
(who played with Joe Henderson at that time), Larry Young, Steve Grossman,
and Dave Liebman. I got to hear a lot of great players, and a chance to play
everyday. We would play until three or four in the morning. The cops would

circle the place to find out what was going on. It was a really great experience.
Cedric Lawson was the piano player (he used to play with Miles Davis and Art
Blakey), and Art Gore was the drummer.
The Boston Underground!
Yeah, it was a pretty happening scene. That was a really good period of time with
a lot of playing and a lot of self discovery musically. It wasn't like I was
practicing so much, but I was playing a lot and things started to come together.
After that period of time I decided to go back to school. My parents had already
given me all this money and I figured I should repay them by finishing up. By the
time I did eventually finish school I had gotten married, and I found myself (at
age twenty-three) figuring out how I was going to support myself and my family.
Then I went on the road with a traveling Vaudeville type of thing. As a matter of
fact, the guy's name showed up in a newspaper in Bakersfield, California about
three or four years ago because he got bumped off (a guy named Roy Raden). The
group was called Roy Raden's All-American Vaudeville Review. I did about
three of these things and they were like one month tours of one-nighters; thirty in
a row, two bills a week, and you tripled. We were backing up people like Frank
Gorshin, Joanne Worley, dog acts, drunken jugglers - I mean it was bizarre! We
only played for policemen and firemen's benevolent associations. We'd be in
really small towns, and sometimes the place would be full of cops and I'd be the
only black guy there. I was playing alto, which I never thought I could and after
about three weeks of playing alto I couldn't play tenor. I also had to play clarinet,
which was never one of my favorite things to deal with. After about three of those
tours I said, 'I can't hack this anymore!" I decided teaching can't be worse than
this, it's got to be better. They had already asked me to teach at Berklee, and I had
really wanted to do that. So, I started teaching there and I learned a lot more than
I had ever learned before, by teaching someone else. I had to really focus my
ideas!
I find that in teaching you have to keep going over so many fundamentals with

people. Plus you've got to be able to live up to what you're teaching people and to
be able to demonstrate things. And it's also give and take. A lot of times a student,
who's a beginning player, will say something or ask a question that makes me
think, and I'll say, "That's interesting, let's see if that works," and sometimes it
does. And sometimes I get players who are already so accomplished I don't know
exactly what I can show them.
Do you do much writing?
Usually when I get stuck for some tunes for a record date or a gig. I really want to
write more. I like some of the tunes I've come up with. I have some ideas that
sound pretty good. When I was studying arranging and composition in college it
was still just a means to my learning how to play better. I didn't really look at it as
composition, just learning more about music. I feel like you've got to understand
music, you can't just be a saxophone player. But I've never thought of myself as a
composer, although I have taken gigs doing arrangements for people. And now, I
want to do that more, although I don't really have the time to pursue it the way I'd
like to. I'd like to have a piano and be able to write more. I tend to lean towards
other people's compositions, rather than my own, but I'd like to change that.
Do you ever pass some of your tunes onto your students?
Not too much. Sometimes if guys have a band and they really want to play my
tunes then I do. If I hear other people play the tunes that I write, I can find some
things out about them. There's a guy out here (California) who studied with me.
His name is Reggie Oliver. I'm always sending him stuff because he always asks.
It's nice when people want to play stuff that I've done. My favorite composers are
the three piano players I've played with the most: Mulgrew Miller, James
Williams, and Donald Brown. Donald Brown is really something as a composer.
He's very intuitive, but profound. He comes right from the heart. It's complex as
hell, but it always sounds musical.
When did you actually start teaching at Berklee?

Seventy-five through seventy-nine, and then I started working with Art Blakey.
After I left Art Blakey I came back in eighty-three, and I've been at Berklee since.
When you were with Blakey was that when Branford and Wynton were there? I
always felt that Wynton stepped out on his own perhaps a little too soon because I
really enjoyed his playing with Art, and the things he did with Herbie and Tony
were phenomenal.
Yes, but I was actually thinking of Bobby Watson. Branford was in the band
about six months. Wynton was in the band about two years. When I left the band
about four or five of the guys all had a family. We all had kids around the same
time (me, Art, John Ramsey the road manager, Bobby Watson , and Charles
Fambrough). With Art Blakey we travelled at least ten months a year. That's kind
of hard on family life. I have a boy named Kai (who was born while I was on the
road with Art), and a girl name Aria.
That must have been quite an experience playing with a master drummer like Art
Blakey.
I know what it takes to make me play, and that's to have somebody back there
really driving the vehicle and kicking me in the butt! I've been fortunate enough
to play with some great drummers like Art Blakey, Tony Williams, Alan Dawson,
and Max Roach. These guys are the acknowledged masters. I've played with
countless younger masters too. It was incredible playing with Art. I could see
how he changed my concept of playing, and especially my concept of hearing
drumming. When I would to back to Boston on breaks to do gigs it would be
really hard to play with anybody else.
When did you find it was really beginning to happen for you in Boston?
Since I've been back from Art Blakey's gig, like eighty-three, maybe even before
that. There was always one club in Boston that had basically the thing you
needed. There was a place called Michaels, back in the late 1970s, and then since
eighty-three there have been four or five clubs like The Willow, The Thirteen

Sixty Nine, Nights, The Regatta Bar (for travelling acts mostly), and the Starlight
Room on top of Howard Johnsons. There was a pretty fertile period in Boston for
playing. It's diminished a little, but it's still pretty good. It used to be especially
good for young guys with no name, but there's so many cats in Boston now that
it's not quite as easy as it was a few years ago. I'm sure that will change. It comes
and goes. Oh yes, one I almost forgot: There was also a club in Cambridge called
the Sunflower Cafe.
I've gone through a similar kind of thing here in the Bay Area. Do you find that
there is a point of diminishing returns when you play in one area? The guys in
New York say the same thing.
Right now I don't play in Boston that much because I'm busy enough going on the
road, and teaching. If you play in one small market all the time you wear out your
welcome, and then you can't get paid correctly. It's the same thing in New York
or Topeka, Kansas. There are name cats who people in New York consider
"locals". I guess I have mixed feelings about that. I would like, and have never
had the chance, to just play in one spot (like Boston) every week. Maybe if I got
around to doing it I'd change my mind. I don't know.
It seems like if you work at a certain financial level, say if you always play fifty
dollar gigs, you never break out of that. You could work steady, but if you add
that up, it's not a lot of money.
That's the trick. Occasionally you get grant money, or something that's funded by
someone, other than working in a club. With club owners it seems like once you
set a particular wage, that's all you're ever going to get.
There used to be a definable ladder you could work up, but it's just not there now.
There's so many people who want to go out, learn to play, and build their
profession. They should be doing that, but they work for low bread, and then
everybody else gets low pay. We're part of the problem too because we're
teaching them and encouraging them to go out and play.

Right! So it's a vicious cycle. There's always been musicians who will undercut
another musician. Club owners know they've got all that. In Boston I had a good
situation because I had a so-called name. I'd been out on the road, and there's a lot
of guys who haven't been out playing with anybody since the fifties. I can't
demand a lot but I can sometimes get more than other people. The thing that
people don't realize is that you can get to a certain financial level, and then
bounce back so fast that it's difficult to keep track of. That's what keeps guys on
the road. Even Dizzy Gillespie says that you've got to stay ahead of this problem
because if it catches you you're dead. For me travelling was a hardship. I'm a
family man too. I play better when I stay in one place. I'd like to play more but
I'm trying to balance my teaching with my road work, and I just don't want to go
backwards and work twenty-five dollar gigs. When I went on the road when I was
younger I enjoyed it, but now I can only take it in small doses. I wouldn't want to
be on the road like I was with Art Blakey, that's too much! A couple summer's
ago we went on the road with Tony Williams and played pretty much every night
for six weeks. Telepathy was happening and my playing started coming back.
Once again I could feel how I changed from playing that much and with the same
guys. It was a nice feeling. But it all begins to trail off, so I get a bit tired of the
road. It's that road-rat feeling, with four or five A.M. wake up calls to catch a
train or a bus. You get a certain mind set, a physical feeling that's like a zombie.
Pretty soon you don't know what day it is, and you don't care. But, I'm glad I got
a chance to do it. There's so many cats who don't get that opportunity.
Who were the major influences that really got you into playing the saxophone?
One of the first things I remember was a Dave Brubeck record with Paul
Desmond, because it could always be found in any music store. Cannonball and
'Trane also really got me going. Initially Trane was the only person I wanted to
hear and to play like, although I don't think I sound anything like that now. When
I went to college I had a roommate (Mike Dubkin) who was always trying to play
Sonny Rollins for me and it just didn't click. I couldn't even hear Bird then. There
were moments I'd hear someone like Stanley Turrentine, where I would hear
some things I liked, especially if it was bluesy. I always liked the blues. Then I
started hearing Sonny and Bird, and I began opening up and listening to a lot of
people. I always liked Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson, who were "the younger
guys" at the time. But, I never wanted to sound like anyone in particular.
Did you study cat's solos or transcriptions?
Yes, later on, when I was more of an accomplished player. I didn't want to fall
into the trap that some people fall into. I never wanted to be a clone. I have
students who want to play just like their idols. I tell them that I can understand
studying a single style, but as a final result, you can't be the same because they
already have that. So what's the point? Like Coltrane; you can never sound just
like him! Learn to see what's in you, even if it seems like a small thing. Try to let
whoever you are come out. It's weird to me to hear a guy playing other people's
stuff verbatim.
I did an interview with Joe Henderson, whom I consider to be one of the last real
innovators on tenor. He feels outraged at the robotics and the cloning that's
going on now.
It seems like cat's don't have the idea anymore that you try to get something of
your own self. That's what jazz really is. People don't even think that way
anymore. They say, "I've got to get my Trane thing, or my Sonny thing, or my
Brecker thing." I don't think the older guys thought like that. There's a basic
saxophone language in jazz, but the goal should be to go beyond that. I like to
hear the jazz tradition in a player, but I also like to hear a personal interpretation
of these things as well. Sometimes I tell students that they have to study scales
and arpeggios because that's what technique is about - that's how you learn to
master the instrument. There's a French saxophone book by Lacour that uses
transposition of scales. It starts off with whole tones and diminished scales and
tone rows. It's a very interesting book. I still like to play those things. I still find
good ideas in there. There's nothing you practice that can't be useful. Some people
say they only want to practice what they're going to perform. I say I don't know
about that. You want to embrace all aspects of music. It's going to have an
influence on you. Actually, the further you get away from jazz, in your listening,
the more you can learn. It can have an effect on you as a person and a musician

that will come out in your playing later on. You have to be open, yet maintain a
direction.
We talked earlier about the early 1970s, which was a time when you could really
merge various influences, as I personally did in a band called Azetca. But later
attempts, at became known as "fusion' and really became formalized. I think the
volume had a lot to do with it. I never could play well in a loud band. There was
no flexibility with the rhythm section.
There was a time when a lot of different things were being attempted. Even now,
with Tony, I'm still trying to find the balance between getting a nice sound, and
having enough projection and power. Tony puts out so much energy that I have to
go with it. It was the same thing with Art Blakey.
I feel that the music benefits from not exceeding a certain acoustic level. It may
have affected my hearing.
Here I am at forty talking like an old geezer (laughter). I guess I'm something of a
late bloomer, but it's worked out well for me. It seems there are some benefits,
because you've been able to reap all that experience.
You may have made some mistakes, or gone down some dead ends only to come
out into the light. I've seen some very gifted young musicians that seemed to go
right through their development period and end up in a totally unrelated area.
Or they burn out early on. It seems like they get there too fast and their focus
becomes scattered. I find it really gratifying to see a student who has little ability
start to get some things together, even if they go on to another teacher.
You mentioned that you stress literature. Could you expand on that?
There's the material that all saxophonists must look at in the beginning stages.
The classical literature: Klose, Mule, and various etudes that I learned through
Joe Viola. It's funny though because I've had European students that didn't want

to deal with that because they had it at home, and only wanted to know about
jazz.They don't see the connection.
Beyond that literature I try to teach what we call GB, or "General Business"
tunes; Tin Pan Alley, Show tunes, and standards. Then the jazz repertoire. So
many players have to go on the bandstand and pull out their Real Books, when
they should really know the common literature. I try to explain that the more
music you know, the more musical you can become. And the more melodies you
can play, the more melodic you can be. For finals at Berklee sometimes Joe Viola
will ask a student to play a tune and they can't. He points out that the saxophone
is primarily a melodic instrument.
With my more advanced students I'll say, let's play a tune, and I might play the
first chord in a different key. That way they have to use their ears. Then I tell
them to just play the sound of a given tune. I like to expose them to Thelonious
Monk's music, which makes them think in an entirely different manner. Once
again emphasizing the melody. There's so much there in his music. A student says
they want to improvise on a Monk tune. Well, what are you going to play that's
more hip than the melody? It's those simple melodic devices that are really
meaningful.
Have you listened much to Lester Young? Did you ever hear Lester's version of
Body And Soul with Nat Cole on piano? It's an unbelievable solo, maybe better
than Hawk's, although it's apples and oranges at that point.
A lot of people have told me they hear Lester Young in me. John Hammond was
very complimentary about that. I was honored that he felt that way. I like Chu
Berry's solo on Body And Soul, which was about a year before Hawk's. I did a
project with Hank Jones and Roy Haynes, which was sort of fashioned after those
Lester Young sessions without a bass player. It was great playing with those cats.
When I started teaching a course on saxophone history I went back and checked
out a lot of people like Lester, and Chu Berry. You have to go back and check out
the masters. It's like sax players starting by listening to Trane, or Mike Brecker.

Why don't they check out who those guys listened to. You can't ignore the history
of the instrument.
I know you have to go to work soon. I've thoroughly enjoyed this interview with
you. Later that night I heard Billy perform with the Tony Williams group at
Yoshi's Nightspot in Oakland, and as always, he turned in a superb performance.
COPYRIGHT 1991 Mel Martin

Bobby Watson
Bobby Watson and I first worked together in The Keystone All Stars which
included Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Mulgrew Miller, Lenny White,
Jeff Chambers, Jerry Gonzalez, Bobby and me. We immediately found a rapport
that has continued with him appearing in Bebop and Beyond 2000. (Pictures
below) Along with trumpet great Jack Walrath, we have established a strong
front line. Bobby has a wealth of experience as a sideman with Art Blakey and
others and as a leader of a number of fine groups. He is one of my favorite
players and individuals, a true original. I am very happy to present to you my
very good friend... Bobby Watson.
MM
"Art Blakey used to say, 'If you don't think you're a mother, nobody else will,'"
alto saxophonist Bobby Watson recalls softly. A decade after leaving the late
master drummer's Jazz Messengers, an unequaled incubator of nascent jazz talent
for nearly four decades, Watson has earned respect within the jazz world as a
sideman, a bandleader, and most of all, a clear-headed, influential figure in the
modern mainstream of jazz. He is, in his own quiet, modest way, a "mother."
This thoughtful, soft-spoken native of Lawrence, Kansas, began his musical

training on piano at the age of 10, and the next year joined his school band
program. "I wanted the saxophone first," Watson rememberers, "because of my
father, but he made me start clarinet. My father plays tenor. He didn't do it
professionally, because his main profession was in aviation-he worked for the
FAA and taught as a flight instructor for many years-but he also tuned pianos and
repaired instruments. The only time I'd see him perform live would be in church.
Otherwise he'd be in the house, practicing his licks and listening to Gene
Ammons, sometimes."
Like so many jazz musicians, Watson is the most notable-and most persistent-
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member of the proverbial "musical family." His mother plays piano by ear and all
five of his younger brothers played instruments in school, "but as we got out of
high school, I was the only one that didn't quit. I knew I was going to be a
musician. I didn't realize it was a jazz musician until later, but I knew I was going
to play music. And I knew I wanted to perform and improvise." He stuck
exclusively to the clarinet until his last year of junior high, then played tenor
saxophone for a year before switching to alto in 1970.
At about that time he bought his first jazz records, a Charlie Parker album, "and
then Clark Terry," he remembers, "because we saw some of his clinics back in the
'70s. To me, he was the first one to be out there doing it. But for sure, Charlie
Parker had a great influence on me, as well as a lot of the rhythm and blues
players-Maceo [Parker], King Curtis, Junior Walker."
After high school, Watson spent two years in a junior college in Kansas City. He
originally planned to enter to the jazz program at North Texas State, but a friend,
guitarist Pat Metheny, was a student at the University of Miami and helped
change his mind. "We were talking, and he told me that I should go to Miami. So
I went down there to study composition for my final two years of undergrad, and
I graduated with a music theory and composition degree."
Watson believes that it is unnecessary for an aspiring jazz musician to earn a

formal degree in jazz performance. "You've got to do all the work yourself,
ultimately," he maintains. "I could still attend the jazz classes. College in general
is a great place, and if it has a good jazz program you can collect a lot of
information. So if you're hungry to learn anyway, you just sort of use it. You
don't have to have a jazz degree. I think it's a waste of time.
"I left Miami and went to New York in August of '76, and met Art Blakey in
October of the year. I was sitting in around New York and Art always seeks out
young cats. A friend of mine brought him and his wife down to a club called
Storyville for his birthday-October 11-to have champagne. The next thing I know,
he's up on the stage playing, and he pulled me in the back and asked me if I want
to join the Jazz Messengers." Less than five months later, in January of 1977,
Bobby Watson enrolled in Professor Blakey's exclusive and exacting graduate

school of jazz.
In Watson's view, that often overlooked late '70s, pre-Marsalis brothers edition of
the Messengers-featuring front-line mates Valery Ponomarev on trumpet and
David Schnitter on tenor saxophone-"put Art back on the map. And then when
[pianist] James Williams got there, we were together for a long time. We sort of
helped bring the attention back into the Messengers. That was a very pivotal band
for Art."
Ponomarev, who joined the group only a short time before Watson, shares his
first impression of the young alto player. "I was amazed at how well he
commanded the instrument already-he was still a young man at that time.
Nevertheless, his command of the horn was incredible-his technique and sound
and range. And of course, he could read music very well." Ponomarev also
marveled at Watson's dedication. "He was really attracted to the instrument. All
the time he was thinking in terms of his alto saxophone and practicing, and
neglecting whatever free leisure time we had-always dedicated to his horn."
But, Watson realized, this was merely what any fresh-out-of-college player would
have to do to pass the master's grueling, nightly tests. Was working under Blakey
a demanding experience? "Yes," he responds quickly. "Musically, yes. And as a
human being, also. You had to have a certain spirit to be around Art. "It was trial
by fire. Either you could play or you couldn't, otherwise, `Next-'. A lot of guys
couldn't deal with Art because they wanted to know, `How much am I making a
week?' and `What is this and what is that?' They were a little too rigid in their
thinking. To be around Art you had to have a lot of heart and courage because
you're just taking a plunge into the unknown through music. The gigs come up
and you just trust the music to take you wherever it is you're supposed to be. And
not many people can deal like that."
It was a hot house to be sure, and Watson's artistry began to bloom. "He was
already a well-schooled musician," Ponomarev notes. "He wrote very well, and of
course he knew harmony and solfeggio and everything. But it was a totally new
sphere of music, being with Art Blakey. Art, of course, is known for that. He
would see the potential in a person, and he would help the person to disclose his
potential to the utmost possibility, and that's what happened to Bobby. He was

discovering talent within himself he was not really aware of."

In time, Watson, following in the footsteps of such notable ex-Blakey sidemen as
Horace Silver, Benny Golson, and Wayne Shorter, was promoted to "musical
director" of the Jazz Messengers. But by 1981, he was ready to leave the nest. "It
was a mutual decision. He says, `You can fly,' so it's time to go."
Shortly after his departure from the Messengers, Watson toured with the George
Coleman octet. The veteran saxophonist was delighted both with Watson's
musical strength and his originality. "He's got power," Coleman observes, "and
he's got a certain style of his own, as far as playing the horn. You know it's him. I
see a bright future for him, and I think his career has blossomed in the last couple
of years. He deserves the best-a fine young man."
After the gig with Coleman, Watson worked with drummer Louis Hayes and
pianist Harold Mabern, among others, and put together his own band, Horizon. "I
started rehearsing my group actually a week after I left the Messengers, and
started getting gigs right away."
Watson's friend and one-time Jazz Messenger colleague, pianist James Williams,
feels that since the saxophonist has been on his own, a sort of "quiet confidence"
has infused his work. "I think his playing has matured tremendously," Williams
observes. "Well, I saw leaps and bounds even during the period we were with the
Messengers, but since that time there is a certain maturity. He now seems to
realize that you don't have to prove everything every night on the bandstand."
Watson agrees that his playing is now more grounded, less frenetic than in the
early Messenger days. "It's, maybe, gotten more relaxed. When you get more
relaxed, a lot of things start to happen. Your sound can get fuller because you've
relaxed on the embouchure, and allow the reed to vibrate more. And also, you can
breathe better when you're relaxed. You don't get tired and you focus your energy
and you pick your notes. Yeah, I'm playing fewer notes. I just find that I trust the
guys around me more."
To Valery Ponomarev, the most significant aspect of Watson's recent work is the

evolution of his sound. "He keeps working on articulation, he keeps working on

sound, and on every aspect of playing the horn. It's like with anybody else, it
never stops-it either goes down or goes up. And with Bobby, it goes further and
further up. He was always swinging hard, but now it becomes more and more on
the level of the greatest alto players there ever were in jazz music. His sound was
always solid and very firm and definite, but now it has become fuller with more
overtones to it-more precise, if you can say something like that about sound."
As the leader of a working band, Watson spends a great deal of his time of the
road. "I tell him," Williams laughs, "`You're definitely one of Art Blakey's
children, you're still on the road.' He's a road warrior. All of us, I guess, have
some of that ingrained in us, which is good, because the one way you keep a band
together is just keep them working."
Watson reflects on the difficulties of being a leader, "trying to keep a band

together," he notes, "and keep the guys inspired, and remain honest with the guys.
And the sidemen always have advice, but they don't ever do their own thing. So
that's the hardest thing, to always have to hear advice from people who aren't
doing it. Certain situations come up, like a situation may come up at the airport,
and it's, `Why wasn't this taken care of?' or, Ì would've done this.' Well, go
ahead. I invite anyone to do it."
He also points out that musicians who become leaders can have difficulty getting
work with other leaders. "Once people find out you're a leader, they don't hire you
too much for sideman gigs because they figure you're always doing your own
thing. They say, `Why even hire him? The minute I get used to him playing the
music and then he gets a gig with his own band, he's going to do that,' because I
have to. So it's a double-edged sword. But if you believe in it, I feel, in the long
run it pays off. And I get tired of working for other people."
So he works for himself, as if any creative artist in a business controlled by pony

tails and gold chains, six-figure salaries and two-digit IQ's, truly could be said to
be working for himself. Still, Watson voices few complaints. "I think I get
everything I deserve out of life" he believes. "I'm not one of those guys who says,

Ì should be doing this, I should be doing that.' So wherever I am, I deserve to

be."
But all Watson he has to do is look around and see how many of his
contemporaries have fallen through the cracks. Caught between the 80-year old
"living legends" and the 25-year old "young lions," these "late-thirtysomethings"
are neither young enough nor old enough to capture the attention of the recording
conglomerates and the narrowly focused mass media that feeds off them. They
are in danger of becoming jazz's "lost generation."
"People like Jack Walrath, Billy Pierce, James Williams, Steve Nelson," Watson
explained, "there's so many cats that haven't gotten a chance to express
themselves, that sort of got phased out right when they were at their peak. They
had over a decade of experience working with different bandleaders, the
apprenticeship that's supposed to be there. You know, there's a danger that you
can destroy the whole apprenticeship thing, which is an ancient tradition-it goes
back to Africa. We're talking a very dangerous situation. You can't destroy that
balance between the young and the old.
"When I first got to New York, people of my generation looked up to people who
were in their late '30s or early '40s. That was our goal, before Wynton [Marsalis],
because Wynton changed everything. Then everybody else was trying to look for
their own young phenomenon. And that's how the industry is, they copycat."
Williams agrees, arguing that the music business, and the record companies in
particular, have placed undue responsibility-and pressure-on the newcomers. "It's
very fashionable to go with a much more glitzy kind of thing," he observes, "and
in rare cases it has some substance to it, too. By the same token, they're calling
our generation a lost one, but it's really not. I think it's going to be that generation
that they're putting that emphasis on, because if they don't happen to sell records
for those major record companies, they're going to be dropped.
"Then they're going to end up being 28 and 30 years old, and not having had the
experience of playing with a great leader. They won't know which way to go,
because they feel like going and playing a sideman gig would be a step or two
down. And [the record companies] will be looking for some more 22-year olds to

market."
And so, the right kind of handling by a record label can be crucial. "I'm just
hoping that Blue Note [Watson's current label] will realize what they have in a
talent like Bobby," Williams cautions, "that they really give him the financial
backing and the marketing that he not only needs, but deserves. That's the
difference between what's been done with Wynton, as opposed to some other
musicians that are probably and actually-and I don't mind saying it on record-
more seasoned, better and more natural musicians.
"Probably Bobby makes most of his records in three days or two days, just like
most of us do. Whereas in Wynton's case with CBS, he has seven days-that's not
counting mixing-and if he wants to go in longer, fine. And so, he can do 20 takes
on a tune, which really, I think, is in poor taste for a jazz album. Naturally, it
sounds like a so-called Grammy Award-winner when you can go in there and
`Punch-and-Judy' like that. But it teaches a different kind of discipline to be able
to say, `Well look, we're on a time limit, we're on a budget limit, and so we have
to go in here and do this.'"
But Watson is not pessimistic. Maybe, he hopes, his experience and leadership
can have an impact on the young phenoms. "I believe that I can influence them
another way with the music, because the music that I'm doing is strong and it's
real and it's honest. And then, you never know, that may start a trend for honesty,
for a while, and make everybody bear down. It would be better for everybody."
One thing that Watson advises aspiring players to do is to get out and listen to the
music and to spend time with other musicians. "One of the most important things
you have to remember in jazz is that it's a social art, too. Hanging out is very
important, so I think a lot of guys make the mistake of not hanging out in clubs. I
was hanging out the night I met Art Blakey, and I was hanging out the night I got
the gigs with George Coleman and Louis Hayes and many other gigs. Hanging
out keeps you in there-you make contacts and you work. You sit around, there's a
lot of BSin', too, but it's very important."
He also feels that some players fail to take full advantage of their musical
opportunities. "A lot of guys go through a lot of stuff to get a gig, but once they

do get the gig," he lamented, "they're complaining, Òh, this ain't right, that ain't
right.' Then the gig is over, and they may have missed a chance to give up
something musically. So I think whenever you get a chance to get a gig, you
should always play like there's no tomorrow. If you can't come off the stage and
give yourself an À' for effort, then something's wrong. Even if you didn't like
what you played, at least you tried."
When asked about the mistakes he has made in his own career, Watson's answer
seems a bit surprising. "Sometimes I'm too nice to people, and I'd like to be a
little more firm." Too nice to whom? Record companies, club owners, other
musicians? "All of the above," the mild-manner saxophonist replies, "at different
times. You have to think about what you need. Nobody looks around and says,
Òh, Bobby's a good old chum, let's give him an extra boom, boom, boom.' You
have to look out for yourself. That's part of being an artist, knowing your worth.
"At the same time," he emphasizes, "I have a mission to prove that you can be
nicer, and still make it. There's nothing wrong with being nice-you can still be a
human being. You know, bringing people into your world is very important."
***
In 1992, Bobby Watson signed with CBS-Sony, which records Wynton Marsalis.
He made three albums for its Columbia label, the second of which, 1993's Tailor
Made, premiered his 17-piece big band, but was dropped from its artist roster in
1995. Since then, he has recorded for a tiny independent, Kokopelli, in Santa Fe,
New Mexico. Watson continues to perform with Horizon, formed an electronic,
fusion-oriented group, Urban Renewal, and in 1997, began reviving his Tailor
Made big band.
Bob Bernotas, 1991; revised 1999. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Bird interviewed by Paul Desmond

(Boston radio, early 1954)
C.P.= Charlie Parker P.D.= Paul Desmond J.M.= John McLellan (Fitch)
P.D.- that music because there's many good people playing in that record but the
style of the alto is so different from anything else that's on the record or that went
before. Did you realize at the time the effect you were going to have on Jazz-that
you were going to change the entire scene in the next ten years?
C.P. - well let's put it like this: no. I had no idea that it was that much different.
J.M. - I'd like to stick in a question, if I may. I'd like to know why there was this
violent change, after all - up until this time the way to play the alto sax was the
way that Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter played alto, and this seems to be an
entirely different conception, not only of how to play that particular horn, but of
music in general.
P.D. - yeah, how to play any horn.
C.P. - yeah, that I don't think there's any answer to...
P.D. - like the way you were speaking, John.
C.P. - that's what I said when I first started talking, that's my first conception,
man, that's the way I thought it should go, and I still do. I mean music can stand
much improvment. Most likely in another 25, or maybe 50 years some youngster
will come along and take the style and really do something with it, you know, but
I mean ever since I've ever heard music I've thought it should be very clean, very
precise - as clean as possible anyway - you know, and more or less to the people,
you know, something they could understand, something that was beautiful, you
know. There's definitely stories and stories and stories that can be told in the
musical idiom, you know. You wouldn't say idiom but it's so hard to describe
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music other than the basic way to describe it - music is basically melody,
harmony and rhythm - but I mean people can do much more with music than that.
It can be very descriptive in all kinds of ways, you know, all walks of life. Don't
you agree, Paul?
P.D. - yeah, and you always do have a story to tell It's one of the most impressive
things about everything I've ever heard of yours.
C.P. - that's more or less the object. That's what I thought it should be.
P.D. - another thing that's been a major factor in your playing is this fantastic
technique, that nobody's quite equaled. I've always wondered about that, too -
whether there was - whether that came behind practicing or whether that was just
from playing, whether it evolved gradually.
C.P. - well,you make it so hard for me to answer you, you know, I can't see where
there's anything fantastic about it all. I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's
true. In fact the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once when we
were living out West. She said I was driving them crazy with the horn. I used to
put in at least 11 to 15 hours a day.
P.D. - yes, that's what I wondered.
C.P. - that's true, yes. I did that for over a period of 3 to 4 years.
P.D. - Oh - yeah. I guess that's the answer.
C.P. - that's the facts anyway. (chuckle)
P.D. - I heard a record of yours a couple of months ago that somehow I've missed
up to date, and I heard a little 2 bar quote from the Klose book that was like an
echo from home...
C.P. - yeah, yeah. Well that was all done with books, you know. Naturally, it
wasn't done with mirrors, this time it was done with books.
P.D. - well that's very reassuring to hear, because somehow I got the idea that you
were just born with that technique, and you never had to worry too much about it,
about keeping it working.
J.M. - you know, I'm very glad that he's bringing up this point because I think that
a lot of young musicians tend to think that...
P.D. - yeah, they do. They just go out...
J.M.- It isn't necessary to do this.
P.D. - and make those sessions and live the life, but they don't put in those 11
hours a day with any of the books.
C.P. - oh definitely, study is absolutely necessary, in all forms. It's just like any
talent that's born within somebody, it's like a good pair of shoes when you put a
shine on it, you know. Like schooling brings out the polish of any talent that
happens anywhere in the world. Einstein had schooling, but he has a definite
genius, you know, within himself, schooling is one of the most wonderful things
there's ever been, you know.
J.M. - I'm glad to hear you say this.
C.P. - that's absolutely right.
P.D. - yeah.
C.P. - well?
P.D. - what other record?
C.P. - which one shall we take this time?
J.M. - I want to skip a little while. We, Charlie, picked out "Night and Day",
that's one of his records. This is with a band or with strings?

C.P. - no, this is with the live band. I think there's about 19 pieces on this.
J.M. - Why don't we listen to it then, and talk about it?
P.D. - Charlie, this brings us kind of up to where you and Diz started joining
forces, the next record we have coming up. Where did you first meet Dizzy
Gillespie?
C.P. - well, the first time, our official meeting I might say, was on the bandstand
of the Savoy Ballroom in New York City in 1939. McShann's band first came to
New York, I'd been in New York previously but I went back West and rejoined
the band and came back to New York. Dizzy came by one night, I think it was the
time he was working with Cab Calloway's band and he sat in in the band. I was
quite fascinated with the fellow, and we became very good friends and until this
day we are, and that was the first time I ever had the pleasure to meet Dizzy
Gillespie.
P.D. - was he playing the same way then, before he played with you?
C.P. - I don't remember precisely I just know that he was playing, what you might
call in the vernacular of the streets, a boo-koo of horn, you know.
P.D. - boo-koo horn?
C.P. - yeah.
P.D - ok.
C.P. - you know, just like all the horn packed up at once, you know.
P.D. - right.
C.P. - and we used to go around different places and jam together. We had quite a
bit of fun in those days, and shortly after McShann's band went West again I went

out with them and I came back to New York again I found Dizzy again, in the old
Hines' organization in 1941 and I joined the band with him. I was in New York, I.
we, both stayed on the band about a year. It was Earl Hines and Dizzy Gillespie,
Sarah Vaughn, Billy Eckstine, Gail Brockman, Thomas Crump. There was
Shadow Wilson, quite a few names that you'd recognize in the music world today
you know, were in that band.
P.D. that's quite a collection.
C.P. - and that band broke up in '41. In '42 Dizzy formed his own little
combination in the Three Deuces, in New York City and I joined his band there
and that's one of the records you're about to play now - we made these in '42 in
New York.
P.D. - yeah, I guess the first time I heard dig group was, you came out to Billy
Berg's?
C.P. - oh yes but that was '45, that was later - we'll get to that.
P.D. - I'm just illustrating how far I was behind all this.
C.P. - oh, don't be that way - modesty will get you nowhere.
P.D. - I'm hip. (laughter)
J.M. - so shall we spin this1942 one?
P.D. - yeah.
J.M. - Ok this is "Groovin' High" with Dizzy and Charlie.
J.M. - I guess this is Slam Stewart and Remo Palmieri I guess and I don't know
who is on piano.
C.P. - yes I think that was Clyde Hart.

P.D. - yes I think so,
C.P. - and Big Sid Catlett - deceased now.
P.D. - you said at that time New York was jumping in '42.
C.P. - yeah, New York was; well those days were what you might all the good old
days, you know Paul?
P.D. - oh yeah.
C.P. -gay youth.
P.D. - tell me about it.
C.P. - well, descriptively, just like I was going to say-gay youth, lack of funds.
P.D. - listen to grandfather Parker talking here.
C.P. - there was nothing to do but play, you know and we had a lot of fun trying
to play, you know, I did, plenty of jam sessions, much late hours, plenty of good
food, nice clean living, you know, but basically speaking - much poverty.
P.D. - that's always good, too - no worries.
C.P. - it has it's place, definitely, in life.
P.D. - would you like that sort of situation to have continued indefinitely?
C.P. - well, whether I liked it or not, it really did Paul; I'm glad it finally blew
over of a sort, and I do mean of a sort.
P.D. - yes.
C.P - yeah I enjoy this a little, much more in fact, in having the pleasure to work
with the same guys of the sort that I've met, and I've met other young fellows, you
know, that come along. I enjoy working with them when I have the pleasure to. If
I might say you, yourself, Paul.
P.D. - oh, thanks.
C.P. - I've had lots of fun working with you, that's a pleasure in a million, David,
Dave Brubeck, David Brubeck. Lots of other fellows have come along since that
particular era. It makes you feel that everything you do wasn't for nought, you
know, that you really tried to prove something and...
P.D. - well, man, you really proved it. I think you did more than anybody in the
last 10 years to leave a decisive mark on the history of Jazz.
C.P. - well, I did, Paul but I intend to. I'd like to study some more, I'm not quite
through yet. I'm not quite.... I don't consider myself too old to learn.
P.D. - No, I know many people are watching you at the moment with the greatest
of interest to see what you're going to come up with next in the next few years,
myself among the front row of them. Well what have you got in mind?
C.P.- well, seriously speaking I mean I'm going to try to go to Europe to study. I
had the pleasure to meet one Edgar Varese in New York City; he's a classical
composer from Europe, he's a Frenchman, very nice fellow and he wants to teach
me; in fact he wants to write for me because he thinks I'm more for, more or less
on a serious basis you know, and if he takes me over, I mean after he's finished
with me I might have the chance to go to the Academy of Music out in Paris itself
and study, you know. My prime interest still is learning to play music, you know.
J.M. - would you study playing or composition?
C.P. - I would study both. I never want to lose my horn.
P.D - no, you never should.

C.P. - I don't want to do that. That wouldn't work.
J.M. - well, we're kind of getting ahead of the record sequence here, but it's been
most fascinating. Do you want to say something about Miles Davis?
C.P. - yeah, well I, I'll tell you how I met Miles. ln 1944 Billy Eckstine formed
his own organization. Dizzy was on that band also -Lucky Thompson; there was
Art Blakey, Tommy Potter and a lot of other fellows and last and least, yours
truly.
P.D. - modesty will get you nowhere Charlie.
C.P. - (chuckle) I had the pleasure to meet Miles for the first time in St. Louis,
when he was a youngster he was still going to school. Later on he came to New
York, he finished Julliard, Miles did he graduated from Julliard and at the time I
was just beginning to get my band together, you know, five pieces here five
pieces there. So I formed a band and took it into the Three Deuces for maybe
seven to eight weeks, and at the time Dizzy - after the Eckstine organization
broke up-Dizzy was about to form his own band. There was so many things
taking place it's hard to describe it because it happened in a matter of months.
Never-the-less, I went to California in 1945 with Dizzy after I broke up my band -
the first band l had then I came back to New York in '47, the early part of '47, and
that's when I decided to have a band of my own permanently, and Miles was in
my original band. I had Miles. I had Max (Roach), I had Tommy Potter and Al
Haig in my band. Another band I had - I had Stan Levy, I had Curley Russell, I
had Miles and George Wallington - but. I think you have a record out there one of
the records that we made with Max and Miles, I think, and yours truly, Tommy
and Duke Jordan I think it's "Perhaps". Is it not so? Well this came along in the
years of say '47, '46-'47. These particular sides were made in New York City at
WNEW, 1440 Broadway, and this was the beginning of my career as a band
leader.
J.M. - ok, well, let's listen to "Perhaps".

Transcription by Claire Hiscock Edited by Mel Martin

Frank Foster
by Bob Bernotas
Frank Foster-saxophonist and musical director of the Count Basie orchestra-is an

interviewer's dream. Candid and articulate, he doesn't even need an opening
question. Just push the record button and ...
"I was born," he begins, in his deep, resonant voice, "in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1928-
they tell me-September 23." A good day for tenor saxophonists, it's also John
Coltrane's birthday. "That's the only thing in life I brag about-sharing a birthday
with John Coltrane. He happened to be two years my senior. If I had been born the
same year, I probably wouldn't even be able to walk with both feet on the ground."
Although Foster's family was not particularly musical, they did stimulate his early
interest in music. "My mother used to take me to the summer opera," he recalls.
"They had an opera pavilion at the Cincinnati Zoo, believe it or not, and I saw all
the major operas before I was 10. And she also took me to symphony concerts, the
Cincinnati Symphony. My brother was six years my senior, and he started me
listening to the right thing at about age eight, bands like Count Basie, Jimmie
Lunceford, and Duke Ellington."
Foster began playing the clarinet when was 11 and two years later took up the alto
saxophone. In just a year was gigging with local groups. By the time he was a
senior in high school, Foster was leading his own 12-piece band and writing all
the arrangements. He went on to attend Wilberforce University, near Dayton, and
played with the renowned Wilberforce Collegians. "I did about 95 percent of the
arranging for this group, for three years," he notes. "I played lead alto the first
couple of years and then the final year I played tenor. That was about when I made
the switch from alto to tenor, in the late '40s."
In the summer of 1949, trumpeter Snooky Young, an alumnus of the Lunceford

and Basie bands, heard Foster and hired the promising youngster for a six-week
engagement in Detroit. "It is true, I kind of discovered Frank," Young recounts
proudly, "but he was gonna be discovered anyway. He was a great player, so I was
just lucky when I got him to play in my band at that time."
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Foster was captivated by the Detroit scene. "I saw what a great musical mecca
Detroit was," he remembers, "one of the best stopping off points on the way to
New York. Detroit had such musicians as the Jones Brothers-Thad, Hank, and
Elvin-Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Doug Watkins, Paul
Chambers, Sonny Red. The list is endless." The gig with Young was nearly over
and Foster wanted to stay in Detroit. Luck-bad luck-gave him a reason.
He had gotten into the habit of leaving his horns at the club overnight. One night,
he showed up for work and discovered that all of them-his alto, tenor, and clarinet-
had been stolen. At first he was devastated, but the mind of a young musician
often works in odd ways, and Foster realized he could to take advantage of this
tragedy. "I used the fact that my instruments had been stolen as an excuse to
remain there-to `track them down,'" he admits, with a sly grin. Foster stayed in
Detroit for nearly two years, gigging around the city with Burrell, Flanagan,
Harris, and other young Detroit lions. He never did find those missing horns.
He was having a ball, but it finally had to end. "After dodging the draft for maybe
a year or so," Foster laughs, "changing my address back to Cincinnati, then back
to Detroit, they finally caught up with me, and in April of 1951, I left to go to the
Army." He did his basic training in California, and, on one weekend leave,
discovered San Francisco's surprisingly lively jazz scene.
"I ran into a place called Jimbo's Bop City-all the jazz musicians used to come
through there. The jam sessions lasted from before midnight until six or seven in
the morning. Then after that everybody would go around the corner to another
place called Jackson's Nook, which was like a family restaurant with a piano in the
corner. We'd jam there until maybe ten or twelve noon!
"When I first went into Bop City," he continues, "Dexter Gordon was playing
there. I walked in with a U.S. Army uniform and a silver-plated tenor saxophone,
which was rather tarnished. A lot of people looked at me and thought, `Who's he,
and why?' I asked someone if it would be possible to sit in, and they started asking
me who did I know and who had I played with. I hadn't really played with
anybody, but I'd known someone who had known Sonny Stitt, so I lied and said

that I had played with Sonny Stitt.
"They introduced me to Dexter and said, `This guy in the Army uniform, he says
that he's played with Sonny Stitt.' And Dexter said, `Well, OK. Want to sit in?' He
asked me what I wanted to play, and I said `Cherokee.' He said, Òh yeah? What
tempo?' And I indicated that I'd like to play it in a very fast tempo. So they struck
out on `Cherokee' in a very fast tempo and I managed to keep up with Dexter.
From that point on, I was welcomed into the fold and known all around San
Francisco as `the Soldier Boy.'"
Almost every weekend after that Foster could be found jamming at Bop City.
"One negative experience I had," he looks back with a grin, "was when there was
an edition of Jazz at the Philharmonic appearing in San Francisco. I don't know
who all the people were, all I know was that Pres, Lester Young, was one of the
participants. Very often when the Jazz at the Philharmonic concert was over, quite
a few of the musicians would come down to Bop City to listen to the jam sessions,
and maybe even participate, if they felt like it.
"This one night, somebody told me that Lester Young was in the audience, and so
being young-I was about 22-and being very enthusiastic, I tried to play everything
I knew inside of every four measures. Trying to impress Pres, you know. Later on
I asked somebody, `What did he think?' And they told me that Lester Young said,
Ì don't like him. He plays too many notes.' Naturally, my feathers fell and I felt
two inches tall. That was my first lesson in how not to make a musical statement."
It was heaven for the aspiring saxophonist. Foster was honing his chops, learning
valuable musical lessons, locking horns with the masters. Trouble was, the Army
had been preparing him for Korea, not 52nd Street. Once he completed his basic
training, he knew he would be shipped out, and soon. "Not wanting to be shipped
to the Far East, and having such a nice time in San Francisco," Foster reasons, "I
chose to go AWOL-absent without leave-over the Thanksgiving and Christmas
holidays." After about a month on the lam, he realized that this could not go on
forever. Friends advised that if he turned himself in to a chaplain, he might be
granted some leniency.
"I went to the chaplain at, I think it was, Camp Stoneman near San Francisco," he

recalls. "It doesn't matter, they're all the same, military bases-horrible places. He
said, `What do you do, son?' I said, Ì'm a musician.' He said, `What kind of music
do you play?' And I said, `Jazz.' And he really looked disturbed. `Well, I'm sorry
to hear that, son. You know, what you should be playing is church music,
inspirational music. You'll have to give up that jazz.' Needless to say, I was very
disenchanted with having come to the chaplain."
Foster was sentenced to 39 days in the stockade-the amount of time that he was
AWOL-but he was shipped out to Japan after only five, and then transferred to
Korea. "I would have been a combat infantryman, a rifleman, but I was pulled out
and put in a supply company-it was a non-combat capacity. Even though it was up
near the frontline, I still didn't have to shoot at people." (Or get shot at.) After a
few months, Foster auditioned for the company band and the rest of his Army
hitch was one easy walk in the park.
"While I was stationed in Korea," Foster recounts, "I received a copy of Downbeat
magazine and it had a picture of the Count Basie orchestra with inset photos of
Lockjaw Davis and Paul Quinichette, who were then playing tenor with the band.
I remember saying to myself, `Wow, I would love to play with that band!' This
was around February of 1953." He had no idea that stateside, events were
conspiring to shape the entire course of his life.
Trombonist Jimmy Wilkins had been the leader of the Wilberforce Collegians
while Foster was there, and he often praised the Cincinnati-born tenor man to his
brother, saxophonist-arranger Ernie Wilkins. By 1953, both brothers were
working in the Basie band, which was on tour with singer Billy Eckstine. Mr. B
had sat in with the Collegians during a gig in Indianapolis in the late '40s, and
Foster made an lasting impression on him, as well.
Lockjaw Davis had given Basie his notice and the Count was looking for a new
tenor, so Eckstine and the Wilkins brothers recommended Foster. "They said,"
Foster notes, still amused by it all, "`We don't know where he is, but if you can
find him, he's a good tenor player.' At that time I was still in the Army in Korea,
wishing I could be in Count Basie's orchestra."

Foster was discharged in May of 1953 and headed back to Detroit where the Basie
band just happened to be playing. "I was walking down the street, still with my
army suit on, in Detroit, and I ran into a friend who I hadn't seen since I'd left
Cincinnati. He said, `Hey, Count Basie's looking for you.' And I said, `How can
Count Basie be looking for me? I just got in town and nobody knows I'm here.'
"`Count Basie's looking for you, so you better go down there where he's playing.'"
Wisely, Foster fell by the club that night, and asked for an audition. After two
numbers Basie, a man of few words, told him, "I'll be in touch."
The rest of May passed, then all of June, and as the end of July neared, Foster
gave up hope. "I figured, `Well, I guess they found somebody else.' Then the next
thing, I got a telegram from Mr. Basie with a one-way airline ticket to New York,
and I said, `This dream is really gonna come true.' On Sunday, July 26, 1953 I
flew to New York City. And on Monday, July 27, 1953, a good friend of mine,
[singer] Sheila Jordan took me to Birdland, where Charlie Parker was appearing.
Sheila was a good friend of Bird's and she persuaded him to let me sit in. People
don't have dreams this fabulous!
"Now, at that time, as far as I was concerned, nobody could play like Charlie
Parker, nobody. I mean, he was just God on the alto saxophone, as far as I was
concerned. He did what a lot of seasoned professionals do when they encounter a
youngster-they call difficult tunes at fast tempos. He did this, put me on trial, and I
rose to the occasion and impressed him, and got a compliment from him. That was
better than getting the Medal of Honor.
"On Tuesday, July 28, we left New York for my first gig with the Count Basie
orchestra in Jamestown, New York. Now don't ask any more about where I played
with Basie when! We've been every place imaginable."
When he joined Basie, Foster was a typical mid50s, rough-and-ready, hard bop
tenor. "I came in with this heavy Sonny Stitt influence and Basie right off saw that
I could really shine on up-tempo songs. That's mostly where I performed solo wise
with the band." But even on the fast stuff, Foster often felt ill at ease soloing with
the Basie band although the Count never had any complaints. "I loved playing in
the saxophone section under [lead alto] Marshal Royal," he claims, "but when I

stood up to take a solo, very often I felt that I couldn't fit too well. A lot of times I
felt sort of out of place, as though somebody else should have been playing my
chair, when it came to solos."
True, he was in fast company. Basie's other tenor soloist was the smooth,
confident Frank Wess, whose refined lyricism offered an distinct contrast to
Foster's more strident approach. "I never will forget," Foster remarks, shaking his
head, "my first wife said, `The difference between your tones is that his is
warmer.' To which I replied, `Thanks a lot!' But it was true. He had a sound that
was suited for ballad playing and medium tempo playing, and Basie realized this
early. And my tone was better suited to uptempo songs, like `Little Pony' and
`Jumpin' at the Woodside.'
"I remember once after I'd been in the band a year or two, maybe three, even, I
asked Basie, `Why don't you let me play more ballads?' And his answer was
simply, `You do all right on the fast tunes. You don't need to play no ballads.' And
I didn't argue with that. I knew what he meant, 'cause when I came into the Count
Basie orchestra in 1953, my sound was still not mature on tenor saxophone. I had
the technique down. I had the facility to play uptempo àround the corner,' but my
tone was still not mellowed out."
In 1957, Basie added a third strong tenor voice when Eddie `Lockjaw' Davis, the
hard-driving, gruff-toned saxophonist whom Foster had replaced four years
earlier, rejoined the band. "Jaws was Basie's sweetheart when it came to the
tenor," Foster muses. "He fit the band so well 'til I felt intimidated every time Jaws
played. I even had more of a hangup trying to fit with the band during that time.
And some of my recorded solos with the Basie orchestra are things that I'm not
very proud of."
But Joe Williams, who sang with the Basie band in the '50s, disagrees with
Foster's stinging selfcriticism. "Many times when you're working like that, you
don't hear your work," Williams observes. "You have to hear it objectively, and
much later, and see what you did when you were younger. I think Frank just
underestimates what his contribution was to that band." Williams is right. Just

listen to the Basie band's splendid Verve and Roulette albums and you'll find
dozens of strong, self assured Frank Foster solos.
Already an experienced writer, Foster learned Basie's three keys to a successful

arrangement-"simplicity, swing, and leaving spaces for the rhythm section. One of
the main things he always said to me was, `Kid, swing that music.' In other words,
don't write too many complicated arrangements with all kinds of stuff going on
everywhere. In that way he was almost as great an arranger as anybody out there,
because he was a master at what to take out, what to leave out.
"A case in point is one selection we play now called `Good Times Blues,' which
features trombone and bass as soloists. There was a lot of writing in this-it was
arranged by Ernie Wilkins-a lot of writing in the first part of it, and then there was
this out chorus. Well, Basie took out the whole first segment, he took out
everything but the closing, the out chorus, and he just had solos up until the out
chorus, and it builds nicely. He really knew what to do.
"`Li'l Darlin','" Foster continues, "by Neal Hefti, was brought in as a medium-
tempo, sort of bounce tune. Basie listened to that and he said, `Let's slow that
down and make a ballad out of it,' and it got to be one of the band's most popular
songs. Still is. That was the genius of Basie, to listen to something and decide
what had to be done with it. And the arranger-composer could only have felt
complemented if Basie decided to keep the arrangement, no matter what he did
with it, no matter how much he chopped it up or took out of it."
In his 11 years with the Count, Foster contributed a tall stack of marvelous charts
to the Basie book ("Blues Backstage," "Down for the Count," "Blues in Hoss'
Flat," "Back to the Apple," "Discommotion," the entire Easin' It album), but none
suited the Chief's prerequisites better than "Shiny Stockings."
"I wrote `Shiny Stockings' in 1955 and we had a rehearsal at a place called Pep's
Bar in Philadelphia. We had just arrived in town. Everybody was sleepy, tired,
hungry, and evil. Nobody felt like rehearsing. We rehearsed `Shiny Stockings' and
it sounded like a bunch of jumbled notes, just noise, and I said, `Wow, all the
work I put into this, and it sounds so horrible. I know Basie will never play it.'
And then something very strange happened. He continued to play and it came
together. Finally, we recorded it and, well, it's the very best known piece that I
have contributed to the Basie book.
"Years later," Foster remembers with pride, "Basie gave me the supreme
compliment. Every now and then, he'd say about a chart, Òh, it's very nice, kid,'
and then leave it at that. Well, he grabbed me, he said, `Junior, you know that
"Shiny Stockings"? You really put one down that time.' You couldn't receive a
better compliment from Count Basie.
"It embodies all the things that were important to him. It builds-it starts soft and
ends with and explosion. It leaves space for the rhythm section to do whatever it's
going to do. It has that ensemble writing which the band can sink their teeth into
and really make happen-and a wonderful trumpet solo by Thad Jones." One more
thing: it swings.
In 1964, still disenchanted with his playing, weary of the road, and wanting to
spend more time with his family, Foster left Basie. He freelanced around New
York for the next few years and, in 1970, joined drummer Elvin Jones' group.
Swimming in this more contemporary current, Foster's playing and writing
stretched well beyond the familiar Basie formulas. He took musical nourishment
from contemporary players like George Coleman, Dave Liebman, Joe Farrell, and
Steve Grossman who, at various times, joined him in Jones' two saxophone
frontline. At last, Foster developed what, he felt, was a more mature and satisfying
style. His long held penchant for bebop and blues became wedded to a newfound,
Coltrane inspired energy, modernism, and confidence.
During this time Foster, ever the big band partisan, also began leading his own
band, which he eventually decided to call, with no apologies to Spiro Agnew, The
Loud Minority. "I was definitely making a statement," he insists. "I was all for
civil rights and I got sick of hearing this expression, `the silent majority.' Now
what I understood by `silent majority' was a group of white folks who didn't go
along with the civil rights movement and whose basic premise was, `What do
those people want?' So I said, Ì'm gonna call my group by a name that means the

opposite of the silent majority.'"
For the first few years, gigs were scarce. "The band worked like two or three times
a year" but eventually things picked up and Foster kept The Loud Minority
together until the summer of 1986, when he assumed the leadership of the Count
Basie orchestra. After Basie died in April, 1984, Thad Jones fronted the band, but
he quit in early 1986 due to poor health. For a time, Eric Dixon "led" the band-
counting off and cutting off-from his chair in the saxophone section. But without a
"name" leader, the band was facing financial crisis.
"With Basie not there," Foster explains, "the fee had gone down. They didn't want
to fire all the old members and hire a bunch of youngsters from the Berklee
School of Music trying to play the Basie book and pay 'em less. My wife, Cecilia,
and I went to hear them in Boston and she suggested, `Why don't you offer your
services and see if they are interested?' We had a little meeting with both the CEO
and [concert promoter] George Wein, who's very influential in the music field in
seeing that people get work" or, one might add, that they don't get it. Wein
decided that he liked the idea of "the Count Basie orchestra under the direction of
Frank Foster," and Foster was hired.
So for the past six years Frank Foster has been leading one of the most celebrated
and influential big bands in the history of jazz. Still, it's not his band. He
obviously enjoys the gig, although you can't help wondering if standing in the
shadow of a legend can't get a little frustrating after a while. But Foster is
pragmatic and philosophical. He's just glad to have a regular big band gig. "I don't
feel a resentment," he insists. "I feel like I'm riding on Basie's coattails. It's
because of the Basie name that I'm working regularly, because as `Frank Foster
and The Loud Minority,' I could hardly buy a job with a big band."
Nevertheless, being both the caretaker of a venerable jazz legacy and a creative
force in his own right presents Foster with a dilemma: how to strike the right
balance between the familiar and the original, the nostalgic and the new.
Naturally, the crowds want to hear Basie chestnuts like "Jumpin' at the Woodside"
and "April in Paris," and Foster obliges. But at the same time, he has introduced,

gradually, more and more original material into the band's book.
"When I came back into the band," he explains, "I would say about 90 per cent of
it was Basie's and 10 percent was Frank Foster's. Now the ratio is closer to 50-50.
What I mean by this is, although I'm trying to write in what I term a `modern
Basie idiom,' I'm still adding touches of my own which are not necessarily
characteristic of the so-called Basie idiom. And while I'm going to leave a lot of
space for the rhythm section, and while you always hear `plink-plink-plink' pretty
close to the end of a Frank Foster arrangement, I'm adding some things that
perhaps are a departure from the Basie idiom."
As a result, the Count Basie orchestra is undergoing, as its musical director

describes it, "a gradual transition into a Frank Foster concept." But will it ever
evolve completely into "the Frank Foster orchestra?" Joe Williams, for one,
wouldn't mind that at all. "That is possible," the singer feels, "that could happen. It
would be a nice thing, a nice legacy, if Frank would take it over completely, and
make a presentation of it." Of course, Foster's employer, Count Basie Enterprises,
might have something else to say about that.
The bottom line is simply that Foster is a big band warrior. He fought the good
fight through the '70s, a rough time for jazz in general and a lousy one for big
bands. And now, with The Loud Minority in mothballs, the Count Basie orchestra
is providing an excellent vehicle for the music of Frank Foster. "I have stated
publicly on several occasions," Foster notes, "that I was content with the idea of
devoting the rest of my career to the Count Basie orchestra. Now, barring getting
fired or barring quitting for some reason or barring ill health or whatever, I plan to
just be here. Everybody has their own idea of what `Basie' is all about, I have
mine. I'm going to keep on with that, and yet I'm going to attempt to cater to some
modern tastes and keep the band working.
"But I will say this-if for some reason I am not with the Basie orchestra, either
through being terminated or terminating myself for one reason or another, and I'm
still able to function, The Loud Minority will rise again!"
***
After nine years at the helm of the Count Basie orchestra, Frank Foster resigned as
its musical director in July 1995. Foster released a quartet recording in the spring

of 1997, Leo Rising (Arabesque)-his first American issue in 25 years!-and later

that year, the Loud Minority did begin to "rise again."

Stan Getz
Interviewed by
Mel Martin
This was my first of many interviews for Saxophone Journal and, to say the least, I really appreciated
Stan's patience with me being such a novice.
Stan Getz has been a major jazz soloist and bandleader for over thirty-five years.
His sound on tenor saxophone is one so personal that he can easily be recognized
from the first note. His playing style, which has been described as cool and
effortless, has influenced scores of players, including the late John Coltrane. He
has made countless recordings, among which are classics like the original Four-
Brothers sound on Early A Autumn, and his Focus album with string writing by
Eddie Sauter. Included among these has to be the Grammy Award winning Bossa
Nova records, and countless other outstanding small-group recordings. Now
approaching his late fifties, Stan still displays that youthful enthusiasm for the
music, which has made him the "Dorian Gray of jazz." In this interview, he also
reveals a master plan for jazz education, which will be put into action in 1986 as
Artist-in-Residence at Stanford University. Stan's future recording plans cross so
many boundaries in music as to be astonishing, including pending albums with
his East Coast Quartet, pop albums with Kenny Rankin and Billy Joel, and a
planned collaboration with Leonard Bernstein. We met, for this interview, at
Stan's townhouse in Menlo Park in early October and were warmly greeted by
Stan and his lady of four years, Jane Walsh, who receives much credit for helping
him keep his life in order. As a long-time listener of Stan Getz's music, I've also
had the opportunity to get to know him on a personal level and work with him
over the years. One such project was the most recently co-conducted master class
in jazz at the summer 1985 Stanford University Jazz Workshops. Interviewing
Stan proved to be the pleasure I had anticipated.
file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Getz.htm (1 of 11) [21. 01. 03 00:02:49]

The one question that is most important to me when I think of you and your music
is your sound. Could you fill us in on how you conceived your sound and how you
actually developed this concept?
I never consciously tried to conceive of what my sound should be. I never said, ' I
want this kind of sound!' I believe it was because of the bands I played with from
the ages of 15 to 22. The first one was Jack Teagarden, who we all know played
trombone, but his sound was so great, so...(pause) sort of legitimate, and
effortless. I never tried to imitate anybody, but when you love somebody's music,
you're influenced. Then I was with Benny Goodman when I was 18 and I believe
his sound had an influence on me; such a good sound that he had in those days,
you know? And, in-between I heard Lester Young of course, and it was a special
kind of trip to hear someone like Lester, who sounded so good and almost
classical in a warm way. He took so much of the reed out of the sound. I really
don't know how I developed my sound, but it comes from a combination of my
musical conception and no doubt the basic shape of the oral cavity. I did always
try to get as much of the reed out of the sound as I could.
You mean, hear more of the reed ?
No, just the opposite. I always wanted to take as much reediness out of the sound
as I could and hear more of the breath. I came from an era when we didn't use
electronic instruments. The bass wasn't even amplified. The sound was the sound
that you got, and I discovered that my dark sound could be heard across a room
clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound
always seemed to fill a room. I also did a lot of practice in the Hollywood hills in
the open air. That's God's sound! I appreciate men like Ben Webster and Coleman
Hawkins very much, but I just don't like a reedy sound. I have to work hard to get
my sound because I use a harder reed (med-hard Van Doren). People think that I
play effortlessly. I remember doing a record date with Bill Evans and afterwards
he said to me, you make it sound so easy but when I get right up next to you
you're working hard and making it sound easy! '
Your sound just seems to float, especially on a ballad. Could you clarify how you

go about working out a tune or song and how you find them to play, as well as
develop them for performances?
I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played. But, I
never practiced after that because I was always out on the road working. The only
time I take out the horn, other than work, is to find a new reed. But, in my mind,
I'm always hearing things. Jane (Stan's lady) sees my fingers moving in
meditation and she knows not to talk or disturb me. That's what I call the 'alpha
state.' That's a state of relaxed concentration and effortless creativity. It's not like
an accountant that just adds, it comes off the top of my head. As far as choosing
songs and tunes, I don't write music so I just choose what I like to play.
Does not composing your own music sort of free you as a performer? I often think
it's a bit of a curse to have to play one's own compositions and especially at times
when that particular selection might not be appropriate but it's your's and there
is a commitment to perform them.
I've always regretted the fact that I've never formally studied and learned the
mechanics of writing music. I don't know if it frees me, but it's a pain in the neck
to have to depend on others to write things, or if I have something in mind and am
barely able to tell someone what to play behind me. Most musicians seem to be
able to follow me because I've learned enough chords to be able to play them
without even knowing their names.
I've heard you play some very complex stuff like Chic Corea heavy duty changes.
Are you saying you don't analyze chords, but instead simply play them by ear?
I try to throw the changes away after I've looked at them and play by ear. I don't
believe in playing over the changes, which I may do a lot, but I don't like it.
When I'm really free, I like to play totally by ear, knowing the basic structure of
course.
It's like forcing yourself to let go so you don't use a chart as a crutch. It's the
biggest single problem I encounter with private students on saxophone, at

workshops, and for that matter, at jam sessions.
In the jazz program at Stanford, students won't be taught just from a book.
They're going to play with other good musicians and will have to use their ears
and memorize songs. They don't have the foundation we had. Life is too full of
distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that
was it. We were more dedicated. We didn't have a choice and we didn't have big
allowances. I got out of the Bronx by taking that saxophone in a room eight hours
a day and playing it! Now there's more distractions like movies, video, and sports.
Early on we made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I
still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it's beautiful, but not
necessarily commercial. I remember being assailed by the wife of a famous
trombonist after receiving eight Grammies for a record that I thought was just
beautiful. She screamed, 'you turncoat, you went commercial.' I thought the Bossa
Nova music was just beautiful music. I didn't care if anybody thought it was
commercial. Commercial can be a good word too. It means getting to a larger
number of people. Records used to be documents but now record companies want
'product.' They want to sell a lot of records and guys want to get famous. I never
thought about being famous or having a band. I just wanted to play music.
What are your future plans for recording?
Kenny Rankin was over here recently and I like what he does. We might make a
record. I like some of the tunes Billy Joel writes and some of his tunes are very
nice. I found out through his manager and my lawyer, who are friends, that we
admire each other, so we're going to make a record. I have an East Coast rhythm
section comprised of Kenny Barron, George Gray and Al Foster that I'm going to
make a quartet record with.
Do you have a label in mind?
I don't make records for labels anymore. If I have something I want to do I go in

and play it for the president of a company and if they get enthused, that's it!

Have you any other projects in mind ?
Leonard Bernstein is writing a piece for me. On his 50th birthday he was asked
by Shirley McClaine and Eddie Adams what kind of music he wanted, and he
said he would like Stan Getz and Eddie Sauter to play music from Focus. So they
flew us out to the Beverly Hills Hotel and we played Focus for him. Recently, I
was in Israel playing a benefit for a children's hospital in Jerusalem and Leonard
Bernstein was performing with the Israel Philharmonic and I went backstage to
see him. He said, 'it's time I write something for you.' He's so great! That man is
just brilliant. So that's about it as far as future plans.
It's wonderful to hear that there'll be a project inspired by 'Focus.' It's one of my
all-time favorites and one of the only albums where a great jazz player was able
to maintain a personality and truly improvise with written strings. Could you tell
us about those sessions?
I always liked the Sauter/Finnegan band. I sat in with them once and I loved the
arrangements. When Verve was sold to MGM, I was asked to pick a project, so I
picked Eddie Sauter to write something. I didn't want rearrangements of tunes,
but instead I wanted him to come up with something interesting because he knew
my playing. When you work with a good composer you don't tell him what to
write. If he knows your playing he'll do what he thinks is right. After nine months
Eddie had this idea and it took three weeks to write it out, and that's how it came
about.
How many takes did you do?
Two-thirds of it was done with earphones. The tracks had already been recorded
because my mother had died the week it was to have been recorded and I was
unable to finish the project at that time for obvious reasons. I'm Late and one
other tune was recorded live. The rest were taped and a few months later I
overdubbed the saxophone. I'm not a many take guy. Each time it seems to get
more stale to me. Usually it's the first time because I get tired of hearing myself.
That's the whole thing you're taught in jazz, the spontaneity of it. That's what I

really love about jazz.
Your bands have always had outstanding young musicians in them.. How do you
go about finding these players?
I used to go out and hear players but after I got a reputation for giving a lot of
solo space to developing young players, such as Horace Silver, then people would
come to me. Plus, when you have a good band, if somebody leaves, you ask who
the others would like to play with and if our tastes agree, I tend to go with that.
Who is in your West Coast band?
Right now I'm using Larry Nash from LA on piano, Bob Harrison on bass and
John Guerin on drums.
What classical music do you listen to?
I find something good in just about all classical music. I just heard Bernstein do
Mahler's Ninth Symphony at Davies Hall. It's so great. I just like all the classical
composers. I don't listen to much jazz, mostly classical music. There's only a few
so-called classics in jazz that I want to go back and listen to.
What would those be?
Miles. Those classic Miles dates like Kind of Blue, and Round Midnight with
Philly Joe Jones. They're just tremendous jazz classics! And of course, I've
listened to Duke Ellington a lot. But there is something refreshing about so-called
"classical music." You can play a classical record in the morning and it purifies
your soul (laughs). It's almost religious.
Have you done any video as of yet?
I made one at the Mondavi Winery. It's now in the process of being sold.
Do you feel that video will ever really open up for jazz artists?

I don't know. It seems like it won't considering MTV and such. But, there was an
article in USA Today talking about jazz on MTV and the author stated that he
wouldn't want jazz on MTV, except if there was, and I quote him, "a Charlie
Parker or Stan Getz video without gimmicks, he would buy it." So maybe once in
a while they could show some jazz.
Did you do much TV work earlier in your career during the 50s and 60s?
It wasn't that much, but I must have been on the old Steve Allen Show a dozen
times. It's not a good medium for the music because of camera rehearsals, but I
enjoyed working on Steve's show. He had a director that's now very famous.
Dwight Hemion, who at that time seemed to understand that you don't rehearse
jazz to death to get the camera angles. He would just show it as it was. My
brother Bob was the producer of the Mondavi video. He's the creative director
and producer for public TV (PBS). He used no special filters, just the beautiful
afternoon, the people and the music.
What combination of mouthpiece and reed are you currently using? I believe you
mentioned using a med-hard Vandoren reed.
I'm using an old Otto Link rubber mouthpiece. It was a 5 * but it was worked on
by Ben Harrod. Otto Link had sold the company to him and some of the best
Links ever made were made by Ben. He's retired and now lives in Ft. Lauderdale,
Florida. He's very good and is also a musician and an honest man. He's refaced it
for me. I'm uncomfortable with a rubber mouthpiece. It's too big. Every time I try
a metal mouthpiece I wish it could work for what I want. But I use rubber
mouthpieces because they afford me what I need. I like to hear the brass vibrate
in the sound, not the reed. Like I mentioned earlier, I like a dark sound, which is
contrary to what just about everybody else is looking for. One of the drummers I
was working with (Billy Hart) had also worked with Joe Henderson. We were
working in Chicago and I wasn't using a mike. He said, "I thought Joe would
have a big sound and you wouldn't, but it's just the opposite. Your sound is much
bigger." So what is miked is not necessarily the sound.

When you recorded the ''Poetry" album with Albert Dailey, did you use a minimal
number of microphones?
We only used two mikes. It was recorded in my studio, which I had built on my
estate in New York. It is built of all wood, with window views out in the country.
It has a high ceiling and we used two B & K calibrated mics, one on me and one
on the piano, which went directly into a modified Studer two-track. No mixing
board was involved. I guess that's why engineers and boards came into being
because musicians forgot how to blend themselves. That's why so many use
monitors now. We used to play so that you had to listen to each other and mix
your own thing on the spot. You had to hear everybody more than yourself. Then
vocalists would need some reinforcement and that's when sound boards came in.
Symphonies are recorded with two mikes and Benny Goodman made all those
great records with one or two mikes. Musicians used to mix themselves!
That has become a lost art!
It is and it's a reflection of their musicianship. Maybe it's a combination of the use
of electrical instruments and playing larger venues. When you record, if you use
two mikes properly positioned, it will sound like your two ears are in the room
with the musicians.
There are some engineers who don't understand how to record acoustic
instruments because they want everything to sound as if it's in your face. Do you
generally mike your horn from a distance?
I stand far from the mike and I try not to use one if it's at all possible. Sometimes
we mike the piano a little and of course there's the bass amp. I have to use mikes
to balance with where the drummer is at. You start with the drums. There are lots
of places, however, where I don't use a mike like Fat Tuesday's, Blues Alley, and
the Old Keystone Korner. You learn how to project your instrument and think
projection, try to see the corners of the room. You don't have to play louder, it's
just a certain center to the sound that you can get going through the room. It' s not
loudness but sound, and brass vibrating, or resonance without reediness.
I've walked around the room when you've played and your sound does indeed
permeate every corner.
You get it from playing outdoors a lot. I heartily endorse playing in the open air.
When I was a kid in the Bronx, we lived in a tenement building, where all the
houses were right next to each other. In the summer I would to into the bathroom
to practice with the windows open and it was all tiles and echo. Then somebody
would yell, "shut that kid up !, " and my mother would say, "play louder Stanley."
(laughter) When I left Jack Teagarden I moved to Hollywood and would go up
into the hills with bass and drums and we would play for hours. It was a ball! I
don't think there is the same kind of dedication among younger musicians that we
had. I was married at nineteen and had a kid at twenty, and then two more, and I
had to work a lot. But I always went to the jam sessions afterwards. I played in
rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands. But after the job we
would jam all night. We just had a different kind of dedication than kids do today.
Although, they have records to jam with, but it's not the same thing. Interaction is
what jazz music is all about. That's what I'd like to see happen with the jazz
program at Stanford. You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records,
but you have to play with musicians that are better than you. What needs to be
done is to simulate the atmosphere of a club. Maybe a place in Palo Alto where
four nights a week, under supervision of the teachers, the students can play under
actual conditions. That, plus take the big band on tour to Montreaux and other
festivals. There's a way to train young jazz musicians without having to go on the
road. In the traveling academies I was with, I learned many things, more than
playing music, some of which I regret (laughs). But there's a way to get kids
interested. But every teacher must be a great player.
What are some other prerequisites that you need in order to work with young jazz
musicians and develop them?
First of all, I would need time. The summer programs can be very frustrating. It's
over just as you get going. You need more time; maybe fours years in college.
Guys come on my band for three or four years and they learn. But at Stanford I

wouldn't have it be all music. I would have people like my music business lawyer
Elliot Hoffman who is a genius and handles people like Pavarotti, Cindy Lauper,
Dizzy Gillespie, etc., come and lecture. Somebody who could teach these young
people how to avoid the pitfalls I went through. I'd have sound engineers, people
that could talk about acoustics and sound recording, come to speak. I'd record the
kids and show them the difference between how I sound and how they sound. I'd
give them something to aim for. I'd coach every instrument, including singers and
rhythm sections. One of my piano players told me that every rehearsal with me is
a lesson, so why not do the same thing in school. A certain amount of study,
including reading and writing music, is necessary but you need to play and play a
lot! The program at Stanford is developing and has been funded, and will begin
January Ist, 1986. 1 think Stanford can draw students from all over the world.
People get grants from various countries and then go to New York, getting the
best musicians and spending all their money on a recording. It would be better
spent by coming to Stanford and enrolling as part of a structured program. Like,
for example, the computer programs at Stanford. People come from all over the
world because they're interested in learning the computer.
That raises an interesting question. Have you been involved in any way with
computers in your music?
I did a concerto at the Frost amphitheater at Stanford last summer. It got awfully
lonely up there, playing with four speakers (laughter). You couldn't tell anybody
in the band a joke. Everything was programmed. They can sound like a full
symphony orchestra, plus anything the composer wants. The piece was written by
Dexter Morrow, who is a computer professor at Colgate. What he did was to take
my solo on Early Autumn, plus having me play before he wrote it. Some of it was
worthwhile, but it was lonesome and no interaction. Although, I was glad I did it
and may do it again.
Would you like to say something about your very famous saxophone repairman,
Emilio Lyons?
We were talking about musicians that came from a different era, people that were

craftsmen and artisians. I met such a man in Boston years ago who is a good
clarinetist. Somebody asked him to repair my horn in an emergency. He was so
nervous at the time that he was trembling. Since then, he's become the finest
saxophone repairman in the world. They call him the "Saxophone Doctor. " When
he overhauls your horn you won't have to see him again for at least three years.
He coats the pads with something and they never waterlog or split or leak. He just
spends hours at it. See this flower on my horn, it's not just a cork, it serves a
practical purpose with style. He's a guy|that cares and he comes up with things
like the cork extensions on the palm keys. I would have never thought of that.
What would you like to say to all the saxophone players reading this interview?
Switch to piano! No; really, if you like an instrument that sings, play the
saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice. Of course, it would be best if you
could actually sing with your own voice. The saxophone is an imperfect
instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. Therefore,
the challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument or "voice" that is outside of
your body. I love that challenge and have for over forty-five years. As far as
playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction
of spontaneous interaction. A good quartet, listening closely to each other, is like
a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.
COPYRIGHT 1986 Mel Martin

Benny Golson
by Bob Bernotas
Benny Golson is a serious man who doesn't take himself too seriously. A born
storyteller, he possesses a philosophical bent and a self-deflating sense of humor.
Sitting in his comfortable, carefully furnished Upper West Side apartment, he
discussed his accomplishments with a combination of rightful pride and genuine
modesty.
Born in Philadelphia on January 25, 1929, Golson's first instrument was the
piano, but he gave it up when he found his true love, the saxophone. It's a story he
enjoys telling and he does it in vivid detail. "When I reached 14," Golson begins
to recount, "I went to the theater in Philadelphia and I heard Lionel Hampton's
band, and I heard a fellow named Arnett Cobb. He stepped out to the microphone
and played that famous tenor solo on `Flyin' Home.' And though Earl Bostic was
in the band and playing a `bag of snakes' [on alto], somehow it was Arnett's
playing that fascinated me. I guess it was more gutsy, or whatever, whereas Earl
Bostic was very sophisticated and my mind wasn't ready for that."
"But anyway, after that I was drawn to the tenor saxophone, not even knowing
that it was the tenor saxophone. I just described it as `the saxophone with the
curve in the neck.' My parents weren't able to get me one at that time. They were
not well-to-do and we were struggling as it was. And so, I took to listening to the
radio when I finished my homework-that was long before television-and I would
find myself listening to all these sounds, no matter what they were, waiting to
hear the saxophone solo. It didn't matter to me at that time that I didn't know what
I was listening to-whether it was alto or tenor. I would wait and listen for the
saxophone solos and I just became fascinated by it. You know, in those days it
wasn't chorus after chorus. It was the days of the three-minute recordings, so the
saxophone solo was eight bars, or sometimes only four bars. But to me it was just
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so outstanding, it was so important."
"Then one day, a hot summer's day, I was sitting on the step. It was just about
time for my mother to come home from work, but she was later than usual and I
was wondering if anything had happened. Finally she made the turn at the corner
after leaving the streetcar and I noticed she had this suitcase, I thought, in her
hand. But as she turned sideways, I could see it was elongated, and my heart
jumped. I thought, `No, this can't be. No, this is something else,' because I knew
we didn't have the money. But during those days, you could put a dollar down
and pay a dollar a week-forever-and she did something like that."
"As she got closer, she began to smile, and she called to me, a few doors down,
Ì've got something for my baby!' And then I knew-I almost exploded with joy.
She said, Ì've got a saxophone for you!' Words are anemic to try to describe my
elation. I was overwhelmed completely. I was possessed."
But getting started was not quite as easy as the eager youngster had thought. "We
took the horn inside," Golson continues, "and laid it on the couch and opened it
up-a beautiful, two-tone gold and silver Martin saxophone, which was a first-rate
saxophone, as it turned out. As I looked at this beautiful thing in front of me, I
suddenly became depressed, because I realized that I didn't even know how to put
it together. I thought once you opened it, you were ready to play-not so. You had
to the put the reed onto the mouthpiece, affix it with the ligature, put the
mouthpiece onto the neck and put it all onto the horn."
"Well, I didn't know about that. And so, I was confused, I was frustrated, and yet
enthusiastic all at the same time. So my mother said, in her wisdom, `Let's go
around to Tony Mitchell's house.' Tony had been taking saxophone lessons for
three or four years. We walked from our house around to his place and sure
enough, he was there, and we went in. He saw that I had a new horn-Òh, this is
fantastic!' He says, `Do you know how to play it?' Of course I didn't. So he says,
`Do you know how to put it together?' And of course I didn't. So he took it out
and put it together for me, and as he did, he showed me what each piece was for
and how it fit together."

"So we put it together and he says, `Do you want me to play something?' I said,
`Yes!' He put my neck strap on and attached the saxophone and started to play
Ben Webster's solo on-I'll never forget it-`Raincheck.' When I heard this thing
being played solo in front of me, live, it was so special that I was even more
overwhelmed. After he played a few other things, he took it off and put the strap
around my neck and he says, `Now you try it.' And then I was more depressed
than ever. It sounded like a mule who had been mortally stabbed in the heart.
That sound that I was getting out of this instrument, it was just terrible. You
know, I didn't know anything about it."
"So we decided I needed a teacher, and I got one that was pretty good. This
fellow had been with Charlie Barnet's band and decided that he wanted to settle
back down in Philadelphia and spend some time with his family. But in those
early days when all this happened, it was summertime, and in my neighborhood
all the windows were open. So when I would practice, the whole neighborhood
knew it. And I guess everyone hated me because I was playing this thing very
badly all day long. When night came and I went to bed, everybody breathed a
sigh of relief. But it eventually got better-after four months I had my first gig."
The Philadelphia of Benny Golson's youth was loaded with developing jazz
talent, like saxophonist Jimmy Heath, pianist Ray Bryant, and drummer Philly
Joe Jones. There was another young saxophonist, transplanted from North
Carolina, whom Golson met while he was still in high school, and the memory of
that old friend propels him into another wonderful story. "There was a fellow
named Howard Cunningham that played alto," Golson remembers. "We went to
high school together, and he told me one day, `There's a fellow that just moved
into the projects that plays saxophone.' I said, `What does he play? Tenor?' He
said, `No, he plays alto, and he plays just like Johnny Hodges.' When I heard that
I said, `Really? Just like Johnny Hodges?' He said, `Maybe I'll bring him by the
house one day next week.' I said, `Bring him by.'"
"Sure enough, one afternoon the following week after school, my doorbell rang
and there was Howard and this stranger with an alto saxophone case in his hand.
They came in and Howard said, `This is John Coltrane,' and I was thinking to

myself, `That's a very strange name,' 'cause right away I was thinking about
`freight car, box car, coal train.' We used to call him those names. "I'll tell you,
kids are something. I must have been about 16 and I said to him, `Play something
for me,' as though I were the authority. Innocent ignorance, I guess. And he
whipped his horn out in a flash and started to play Òn the Sunny Side of the
Street' just like Johnny Hodges. And my mother, who was upstairs, said, `Who is
that down there?' I said, Òh, a fellow named John Coltrane.' Every time we had a
session at my house thereafter, she would holler downstairs and say, Ìs John
down there?' And he would say, `Yes, Mrs. Golson.' Before we got started, he had
to play Òn the Sunny Side of the Street.'"
Golson and Coltrane became fast friends. Then, on the unforgettable night of June
5, 1945, bebop invaded Philadelphia. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker
performed on an all-star concert at the city's Academy of Music, and the two
aspiring saxophonists were in the audience. They were never the same. "We
almost fell over the balcony," Golson laughs, "because this music was so new
there was no precedent for it. We were trying to come out of the other kind of
music, you know, Jimmie Lunceford and `Flyin' Home' ala Lionel Hampton and
À Train' by Duke Ellington. We heard this music-I mean, our lives were
changed. And so, we had to get about the business of finding what it was all
about."
"After that concert was over, we went backstage, like kids do, and got
everybody's autograph. It was an evening concert and Charlie Parker was going
over for the first show at a place called the Downbeat. And so, John and I were
walking up Broad Street with him, and John was saying, `Can I carry your horn
for you, Mr. Parker?' I'm on the other side saying, `What kind of mouthpiece do
you use? What kind of reeds do you use? What strength reed do you use? What is
the make of your horn?' This crazy kid stuff, and he was telling it all and I
thought I was getting the real lowdown."
"We got to the club-of course, we were too young to go in-and he said, `Kids,
keep up the good work,' and he went upstairs. We spent the night just standing
out front listening to them play from up on the second floor, and walked home

talking about it after it was over. This was exciting stuff to us, you have to believe
that."
With the memory of that concert indelibly etched in their memories, Golson and
his friends began to explore this exciting, new territory. "It was a slow process,"
he looks back, "because we were breaking new ground. Dizzy and Bird were
breaking new ground themselves, of course-they were way out front. But we were
trying, as kids, to find out what it was all about and we had nothing to draw upon
other than the recordings."
"We had to go through trial and error. That was slow and laborious, but
wonderfully laborious because we enjoyed every minute of it." The following
year Coltrane-now playing tenor-went on the road with alto saxophonist-singer
Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson's r&b group, while his buddy remained in
Philadelphia. But the next year, Coltrane was back in town (and back on alto)
when he and Golson played in Jimmy Heath's highly regarded local big band.
After high school, Golson enrolled in Howard University in Washington, D.C. "I
could not enter the school of music on the saxophone, they wouldn't accept it. I
had to enter on the clarinet-I was a nighttime saxophone player. During the day I
had to practice my clarinet, but when the sun went down, I'd go to the laundry
room in the basement of the dormitory and play my saxophone. So whatever I
learned on the clarinet, I transferred to the saxophone. But it had a great sound
down there. It made me sound bigger than I was."
Howard's music program was, to say the least, conservative. Twentieth-century

classical music was heresy. Even worse, Golson recalls with bemusement, "We
could be expelled for playing jazz on the school premises." He was majoring in
music education and began to minor in rebellion.
"We had lots of rules that we had to follow in the theory of composition. When I
would do my homework, my heart wanted to go in other directions, which would
break the rules. In the music composition and theory class, we got a cantus firmus
one day and I harmonized that thing following my heart. We went to class that
next day, and the professor was in the habit of examining the homework at the

piano in front of the class. She was going over each person's work. Àhhh, Miss
Bryant, this is good, very nice. Mr. Brown, oh, very nice here.'"
"And then she got to mine. At the first chord I saw a frown on her face and she
took the red pencil-slash! She went to the next chord and she looked with some
consternation at the paper. The red pencil went slash again. She went on playing,
and after a while the red pencil was slashing like Zorro's sword. Finally she saw
there was no need to go to the end. She turned to me and said"-he speaks slowly,
elongating every word-"`Mr. Golson, what have you done?' I stood up like I was
making a proclamation and boldly said, `That's the way I heard it!' Of course, that
didn't go over too well."
Discouraged and disenchanted, Golson considered taking some time off and then
transferring to the Boston Conservatory. "But I started to work-I left in my junior
year-and I never got back. I've been fortunate enough to be working ever since."
His first job after he left Howard in 1951 was with guitarist Tiny Grimes. "He
used to play with Art Tatum," Golson explains. "Art Tatum was able to play
anything he knew in any key." Grimes learned that skill from Tatum and he
expected it from his sidemen.
"We played the same tunes every night," Golson notes, "but we never knew what
key we were going to play them in. He would give us a little introduction so we
could determine the key and be ready to play. Some nights I'd hear the piano
player say, Òh, no!' but whatever it was, we had to play it in that key. It was kind
of rough sometimes, stumbling around a little bit, but after a while you got used
to it."
After Grimes, Golson joined singer-saxophonist Bull Moose Jackson's r&b group,
where he met pianist-composer Tadd Dameron. He started writing for the band,
with Dameron's help. "I picked Tadd's brain completely apart, and he let me do
it." After a short stay with Lionel Hampton's big band, Golson took John
Coltrane's place in Earl Bostic's combo.
"This guy was a virtuoso on the saxophone," Golson says with awe, as he recalls
Bostic's skill. "I don't think there was anything he didn't know about the
saxophone. Tremendous knowledge. He could start from the bottom of the horn

and skip over notes, voicing it up the horn like a guitar would. He had circular
breathing going before I even knew what circular breathing was-we're talking
about the early '50s. He had innumerable ways of playing one particular note. He
could double tongue, triple tongue. It was incredible what he could do, and he
helped me out by showing me many technical things."
By 1956 Golson had become restless, so he parted ways with the commercially
successful Bostic. "I got tired of playing that music," he admits. "Although I was
making a living, I wanted to do other things." A recommendation from Quincy
Jones, who met Golson in the Lionel Hampton orchestra, earned him a gig with
Dizzy Gillespie's big band.
"I joined Dizzy without any rehearsal at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C.
And even though I'd heard him on the records and knew what he could do, it's
something else sitting there first hand, being a part of what he's put together and
listening to him play just about five feet in front of you standing in the spotlight.
It was awe-inspiring."
"After that particular show was over, I felt compelled to say something to this
man, but I was embarrassed. I didn't quite know what to say. All I could say as
we walked offstage into the wings was, `Dizzy, wow, you sure were playing!'"
Pondering his youthful exuberance, Golson lets out a hearty laugh. "I could see
that he was embarrassed, too, with the fawning, and he said, Àw shucks, I wasn't
playin' nothin'.' The greatest understatement of the year!"
When Gillespie's band broke up in 1958, Golson decided to stay in New York and
establish himself as a writer. One night, after a month or two of occasional record
dates and commercials, Art Blakey called and asked him to come down to the
Caf Bohemia and sub with his Jazz Messengers. Golson eagerly agreed. "I don't
remember what he paid me. He didn't know, but I would have played for free."
At the end of the night, Blakey told Golson that he would need him again
tomorrow, and the saxophonist obliged. After that second night, the crafty Blakey
asked him to finish out the week. "Without my knowing it," Golson observes,

"Art was sucking me in. When the week was over, he said, `Look, I know that
you want to stay in New York, but I really don't have anybody yet, and you know
the music now. Do you think you could go to Pittsburgh with me? Just one week.
That's all I've got-one week.'
"And I'm really loving the music, so I said, `Yeah, I can go with you.' At the end
of that week in Pittsburgh he said, `Look, I hate to tell you this, but before we go
back we've got one week in Washington, D.C. You think you could help me out,
'cause I really don't know who I'm gonna get?' We went there and played, and
after that I never said anything else about staying in New York. I just went on to
the next gig. He had me."
Golson began to counsel Blakey on a wide range of matters, business-related as

well as musical. "He had such tremendous talent and he wasn't making much
money. I happened to say to him one night, `You know, Art, it's a shame. You
should be a millionaire.' He says,`Yeah, I know. What's wrong?' I'm the new guy
in town, talking to him like I really know what it's all about. I said, Àrt, I see
some things that really need changing.' He says, `Like what?' I said, `Well, Art,
you need a new band.' This is incredible-I don't believe I said this! He said,
`Really?' and he was looking at me with those big, sad cow eyes."
And so, Golson advised Blakey to fire his band-"the audacity," he muses, still
astonished, "the temerity of me"-and rebuild it with three up-and-coming
Philadelphia musicians: pianist Bobby Timmons, bassist Jymie Merritt, and a 20-
year-old trumpet sensation named Lee Morgan. He arranged a Town Hall concert
and a European tour, and beefed up the Messengers' book with original tunes like
"Along Came Betty," "Are You Real," and "Blues March." Golson also cajoled
Timmons into expanding a funky little lick into what would become one of the
signature tunes of hard bop.
"Bobby Timmons on the gigs, in between tunes, he had this eight-bar thing he
used to play. He would play it and we'd always say, Òooh, that's funky.'"
"I starting thinking about it, that funk thing that he used to play. When we got to a
place called Marty's in Columbus, Ohio, I called a rehearsal and I guess they were

wondering why, because we had memorized everything. `So, what are we going
to rehearse?' I said, `Trust me.' I used to always say that, like I was some
authority."
"I said, `Bobby, remember that little thing you play in between the tunes when
you're on the bandstand, and we all laugh because it's so funky? What we're
gonna do, we're gonna use that eight bars with another eight bars, and while we're
here I want you to write a bridge to it.' He said, Òh, that's nothing but just a little
lick.' I said, `Believe me, I think there's something there. We're going to go over
here and sit down and lollygag, and you go on the bandstand and you write a
bridge for it.'"
"So in about 15 or 20 minutes he says, ÒK, I got it.' He played it and I said, `No,
Bobby, you missed it. You've got to get the same feeling on the bridge that you
have on the part that precedes it.' He said, `Well you write it.' I said, `No, it's got
to be you. I'm going and sit down again and you come up with something else.'
"And he did. I said, ÒK, Bobby, that sounds good.' And Lee and I learned it. Lee
and I, for some reason, had the extraordinary ability to play and think and breathe
exactly the same. I wasn't aware of it myself 'til somebody pointed it out. We
played exactly as one."
I said, ÒK, we've got it down. Now we're gonna play it tonight, and I'm going to
play particular attention to the audience and see what it does to them.' We played
it and laid them out. Boy, they loved it. The name of the tune was `Moanin'."
In October, 1958, when Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers recorded "Moanin'" for the
classic Blue Note album of the same name, Golson achieved one of his most
striking feats as an improvisor. As Lee Morgan concluded his solo, he tacked on a
brief seven-note phrase, almost as an afterthought. Without missing a beat,
Golson leaped into his first chorus by repeating that phrase. "It just happened on
that particular take," he recalls. "It just hit me that way. It sounded so good and
it's from a rhythm and blues song that I grew up with-Ì want a big fat mamma.'"
Golson proceeded to work with the phrase, transposing, elongating, inverting it,
and ultimately creating a fully realized 32-bar statement out of Morgan's original
seven notes. It's an illuminating illustration of the compositional resources that

the finest jazz improvisors draw upon, in particular, their ability to develop
thematic material spontaneously and coherently.
In 1959, Golson left Blakey to form his own group. As his trumpet player, he
hoped to hire an ex-Hampton colleague, Art Farmer. Golson called him and
discovered that Farmer was about to leave Gerry Mulligan's quartet and had been
thinking along similar lines. "I had the idea for him to work for me," Farmer
chuckles, "and he had the idea for me to work for him." They decided to make it a
co-leadership and called their new group "the Jazztet."
The brilliant trombonist Curtis Fuller joined Golson and Farmer in the front-line
and, on piano, they hired an 18-year-old Philadelphian, McCoy Tyner. The
pianist still was living in his hometown at the time, so the co-leaders found an
apartment in New York for him and his wife. Tyner enlisted someone to drive
him to the city and was on his way, when, Golson recounts, "I got a call. `We
broke down on the New Jersey Turnpike. Can you come out and pick me up?'"
"McCoy, I don't have a car. What am I gonna do?' Then I said, `Wait a minute'-he
gave the phone number of where he was-Ì'll call you back.' I called John
Coltrane, who had a car. John came out to our house, and we went out and picked
McCoy up and brought him in. A little later, you know, he left us and joined
John's quartet. I said to John, `Fine friend you are. I went out and picked up a
piano player to join our group and you stole him!' We laughed about that for
years."
Farmer and Golson kept the Jazztet together until 1962, when personnel changes
and fewer gigs made it, in Farmer's words, "too cumbersome." Soon, Golson's
restless nature began drawing him into an entirely new realm. Friends like Quincy
Jones and Oliver Nelson were making good livings in Hollywood, writing for
films and TV. They encouraged Golson to join them. He was interested, but first
he prepared. He studied advanced composing and orchestrating techniques, went
to Europe, scored a profoundly forgettable film, returned and studied some more.
By 1967 Golson felt ready for Hollywood.

"Through Quincy," he says gratefully, "I went to work right away at Universal
Studios." TV assignments began to roll in, and soon Golson was composing
music for programs like It Takes a Thief, Mission Impossible, Mannix, the
Academy Awards telecasts-"I can't even remember all the shows"-and
innumerable commercials.
He built a successful writing career, but his saxophone playing suffered. Actually,
it disappeared. "I put the horn down when I went out there," Golson explains. "I
would not take any jobs playing. I said, `My playing days are over. I don't want to
be known as a bebopper because I want to write dramatic music.' So people
stopped calling me." For almost eight years, he never took his horn out of the
case.
But by the early '70s, the old urge returned. "I felt like I wanted to play the horn
again," Golson recalls. "I picked the thing up and it felt like a piece of plumbing,
like I'd never played it before. I had no chops. I had no endurance. My concept
was messed up. I felt like a person getting over a stroke, creatively. Had I known
it was going to take so long to begin to feel comfortable again, I might not have
picked it up." He struggled on his own for a few years and finally turned to Bill
Green, a highly respected West Coast player and teacher, "another Earl Bostic, as
far his knowledge of the saxophone." But even with Green's help, Golson did not
really feel comfortable on the horn until 1982, when he and Farmer reunited the
Jazztet for a few years.
Golson currently is doing less writing for TV, except for commercials-Chrysler,
Heinz, McDonald's, Chase Manhattan, a public service spot about AIDS. Another
recent project is rather more ambitious. This past year, under a grant from the Lila
Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation, he was commissioned compose a three-
movement concerto for string bass and chamber orchestra. Golson designed the
work, titled Two Faces, to exhibit the two musical sides of his soloist, Rufus
Reid, a major jazz bassist with solid classical chops. It premiered in May 1992 at
New Jersey's William Paterson College, where Reid heads the Jazz Studies and
Performance program and Golson was completing a two-year artist-in-residence.

The concerto incorporates both classical and jazz elements, and each movement
allows space for improvisation. "It encompasses everything there is to do," Reid
notes. "To play a piece like this, it's not only a challenge, but having it written by
Benny is really exciting. I can't tell you how fantastic I feel about it. It just puts a
little extra pressure on me to play the hell out of this thing." An original and
demanding work for the instrument, Two Faces, Reid maintains, is "definitely
going to be a significant contribution to the bass repertoire."
Over the years, Golson had made many significant contributions to the jazz
repertoire-"Along Came Betty," "Killer Joe," "I Remember Clifford,"
"Stablemates," "Whisper Not." He is, Art Farmer believes, "one of the most
melodic writers that there has been in jazz. His use of harmony to support the
melody is so great, and the songs that he writes are such a pleasure to improvise
upon. No one makes these songs become standards. They become standards
because people like to play them. They live off their own energy."
Today, Golson deftly balances pen and horn. He plays what could be called a
"thinking-musician's hard bop," deliberate and introspective, more cerebral than
visceral, but never meek and always swinging. And he is feeling "better than
ever" about his playing. "People say, Òh, you don't play the way you used to,'
and I say, `Thank you. I don't want to sound like that anymore.'
"Why continue to sound the way I sounded 30 years ago? That's not moving
forward. Time should become your confederate. You should lock yourself in
tandem with time on its one-way journey, moving ever forward. That's the way
creative people should be moving-ever forward into the darkness of the unknown
where things are awaiting your discovery. That's the adventure. You can play it
safe. Everybody can do what you see in the light. But the real hero is the one that
delves into the darkness."
***
In the fall of 1992, Benny Golson's bass concerto, Two Faces, performed by
Rufus Reid, made its New York premiere at Lincoln Center. That concert also
marked the world premiere of another of his orchestral compositions, Other
Horizons, featuring guest soloist Art Farmer. In January 1996, the National
Endowment for the Arts honored Golson with one of its American Jazz Masters
Awards. And, moving ever forward, he has begun work on a symphony.
1999 MEL MARTIN

Johnny Griffin
by Bob Bernotas
A few years ago a new recording came out that showcased five young tenor
saxophonists. The album's title, inspired, no doubt, by a desire to cash in on the
"young lions" craze so much in vogue, anointed its youthful stars as "young tough
tenors."
Well, there used to be a time when it meant something to be called a "tough

tenor." It wasn't just a title your record label bestowed upon you. You had to serve
your time on the frontlines of jazz, locking horns nightly with cats called Illinois,
Sonny, Jug, Dexter, Wardell, Lockjaw. And when you finally earned the rank, the
other tough tenors-not record producers or agents or publicists or critics-let you
know.
Johnny Griffin won his "tough tenor" stripes in crack regiments like the Lionel
Hampton big band, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and the Thelonious Monk
quartet. In the early 1960s he co-led a quintet alongside that underrated monster of
the tenor saxophone, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Then, in 1963, he emigrated to
Europe and immediately became a fixture on the continent's thriving jazz scene.
Griffin did not return to the States until 1978, when he was coaxed back for a
guest appearance at fellow emigre Dexter Gordon's Carnegie Hall triumph.
Now, every April, the 65-year old Chicago Southsider makes an annual trip to the
US, a highlight of which is a week-long birthday gig (April 24) at Chicago's Jazz
Showcase, either preceded or followed by a week in New York. When he's not on
tour, Griff enjoys his idyllic life in the French countryside, two hundred fifty
miles outside of Paris. "It takes me almost an hour to drive to the nearest train
station," he laughs.
How did you get started in music?

My father had played cornet, although I never saw him play it. I found his
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mouthpiece when I was a kid. I used to buzz it. And my mother played piano and
sang in the church choir for different functions. So there was always music in the
house, jazz, gospel, or whatever. Especially jazz records.
I began to study piano when I was about six. Then I studied Hawaiian steel guitar
for a few years. I started on clarinet in high school when I was 13, all the clarinets,
oboe, and English horn, then alto saxophone and then tenor saxophone.
That was at DuSable High School in Chicago.

Yeah, under bandmaster Walter Dyett. He made me play the clarinets first. I didn't
want to play clarinet, but it's a good thing I did. Clarinet, to me, is the papa of the
modern reed family. And he made me start playing oboe because the oboist
graduated from school and he had this program of some music by Ravel. He
needed an oboist in the band, which was good. It gave me another insight.
But you really wanted to play the saxophone.

My grammar school graduating class in 1941 had a little party for 13 or 14 year-
old kids. [Trumpeter] King Kolax's band played for the party and Gene Ammons
was playing tenor saxophone with the band. And that's when I said, "That's it!"
Just like that, tunnelvision ever since.
Ben Webster was my first favorite, then I went to Johnny Hodges, 'cause I tended
to play alto like a tenor anyway. Then, of course, Pres, Charlie Parker, and Don
Byas, a master. And then I was influenced by Dexter and Wardell Gray and Lucky
Thompson. But I was also influenced by trumpet players, pianists, the whole
gamut. I mean, Charlie Christian influenced me, Jimmy Blanton. So everything
that I heard musically has influenced me one way or the other.
I was playing alto before the bandmaster actually let me play alto in the school
dance band. Outside of school, I started playing with T-Bone Walker when I was
15 years old. T-Bone's brother had a big band and T-Bone was the star of the
show. We played the off-nights in the large nightclubs on the South Side of
Chicagothe Rum Boogie, the DeLisa, and the El Dorado.

Walter Dyett was a big influence on you, then.

He was a big influence on Nat Cole, Gene Ammons, Bennie Green, John Gilmore,
Clifford Jordan, Pat Patrick, Charles Davis, everybody who went to that school.
He was a real disciplinarian with the band. He could become a father-like figure in
a way, too, with his kids.
Well, you can see the results.

Right. I graduated from high school on a Thursday and I was playing with Lionel
Hampton's band on Sunday. Hamp had come by my school for some reason-I
think it was a pep assembly for something, I can't remember-in about January or
February, 1945. He brought [pianist] Milt Buckner and Herbie Fields with him.
Herbie Fields was a clarinetist and alto saxophonist. [Griff likes to accent the
second syllable: "sax-AH-phonist."] The bandmaster had me jam with Herbie and
Milt Buckner and Hamp at the school.
At that time Hamp picked up the late Jay Peters to work with the band, but Jay got
drafted into the service a couple of months later. So when Hamp came back to
Chicago in June to play the Regal Theater he needed another saxophone player
and he looked for me. That's when I transferred from alto to tenor.
All along I'd played with the band on alto and when the band left at the end of the
week to go to Toledo, Ohio, I took my alto with me. I had always wanted to play
tenor, but my bandmaster said, "Oh, the tenor's too large." I was walking on the
stage at the theater in Toledo and the late Gladys Hampton stopped me and said,
"Junior, where is your tenor saxophone? What are you doing with that alto?" I
said, "What do you mean tenor?" She said, "You're playing tenor in the band." So
I went back to Chicago and found an old Conn and rejoined the band.
You played in the Army band during the early 1950s, didn't you?
Saved my life. I had orders to go to Korea. Seven other young men who went in
with me, Afro-American kids, all died. I had my orders to go with them, too.
What happened was, when the battalion was graduating I already had my orders to
go to FECOM, which was Far East Command, to go to Korea. On the bulletin
board in the orderly room they asked anyone with any talent to put on a little act
or something for a show for the officers. The officers were graduating and having
a party.
So I knew some soldiers who could play a little bit, and we got together a little
group and got on the show. And a colonel there was stoned out of his mind. "Put
that boy in the band," he said, the Army band in Hawaii. Other than that, I
probably would have been killed, too.
How did you join Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers?

He sent for me. I met Art Blakey when I was playing with Hamp's band and he
was playing with the Billy Eckstine band. I had seen him with the band in 1944
when they came to Chicago, which shook up the world. We were both in LA in
1945, and somehow, somebody asked me to play this jam session at Billy Berg's
in Hollywood. Art Blakey was the drummer and we had been tight ever since.
When I came out of the service he had gotten Wilbur Ware and Horace Silver to
come and play with him, and he tried to get me to come with him. But I had just
gotten home and I had just gotten married, so I said no. Then he had me come to
do a record date with him at RCA. I think it was the music from My Fair Lady.
That would have been back in 1957, and he demanded that I come join the band,
which I did.
It was fun. Fun, fun, fun, all the time. As it was with Monk, too. It's funny, 'cause
Art Blakey always wanted Monk to come and play with him in his band, and
Monk wanted Art Blakey to come and play in his band, which was ridiculous.
And a year later, you joined Thelonious Monk's quartet.

I had known Monk for ten years. I met Monk through Elmo Hope and Bud
Powell, who I had known for years. I used to go to Bud's house or Elmo's house
and play with Monk. And I used to hang out with Monk. Even when I was with
Art Blakey we used to hang out together after he finished down at the Five Spot.
Monk was one of the most influential and admired-by me-of all the musicians that
I've ever known. He had such a rare sense of humor, not by overly verbalizing. He
could say three or four words that could shatter an hour of malicious gabbing. He
could shatter the whole conversation with just a thing that he would say, the
cutting edge. He'd be walking along with that face, that facade like the Mau Mau,
so the idiots wouldn't bother him. But behind that mask was a very warm,
humorous person.
I'll tell you something he did for me one time. We were someplace and he said,
"See, I can play like Art Tatum if I want." And I said, "Get out of here,
Thelonious! Stop kidding around!" He said, "Well, check this out." He made a
Tatumesque run on the piano and my eyeballs and my ears almost fell off of my
head. He said, "But I don't need that." So he played what he had to play, that's all
it is. He didn't need to be making flourishes and doing pianistic aerobics. He just
played what he wanted to play and he did it perfectly. You never heard him
uptight, man.
Many people fondly remember the "tough tenor" combo you and Eddie "Lockjaw"
Davis had in the early 1960s. For me, the great thing about that group was that
each of you had his own identity. There was never any doubt which one of you
was playing.
Exactly. We really had great contrasts in our styles. I could never understand how
Jaws was playing. For years I was around him-he was like my big brother after a
while. I could never understand how he'd do things. He put corks under some of
the keys! I said, "Jaws, what're you putting corks-?" He said, "I don't need them, I
don't need them."
He didn't use the keys, didn't need them! I'm always looking for a way to put more
keys on it, but he didn't need 'em. He played more for sound than for notes. And
strong. And that style he had, why no one could play that style. Sometimes we'd
call him "Little Ben," referring to Ben Webster, but he was really his own man.
I was amazed at some things he'd do. I thought he was gonna chew up the
mouthpiece sometimes. He did some athletic things, whatever, but the sounds
coming out of that horn! I don't mean like "free jazz," nothin' like that, but what he
could do! That book that Eddie Harris had out, intervallic exercises, why Jaws
could do that with ease. And I know he never saw Eddie Harris' book, 'cause he

was doing that before Eddie Harris ever put it down. Such strength! Wow!
But today, with some of the younger musicians, sometimes it's hard to tell them
apart.
Yeah, I have trouble with that, too. I think it comes from the way the musicians
have to learn their craft these days, being at the universities, the Berklee Schools
of Music. The teaching that they give makes very fantastic technicians with
fantastic abilities to play and to read. But you know, when I came up, and the
other musicians like Jaws, Dexter, Wardell, Jug, jazz was not learned in the
classroom. The "classroom" was playing in public, whether on some street corner,
in the park, in some smoke-filled clubs or whatever. Or in big bands.
I think that you need an audience to bring the personality out of yourself. You
need other people for that. That's why I hate to play in the studio, 'cause I don't
have anyone to play to. When I play I like the vibrations of people, 'cause it helps
me create. I want to see people, not microphones.
So I think that's why it's hard for you to tell most of these young cats apart,
because they've more or less learned technically the same way. It's almost like
having the same teacher. But while I had Dyett as my teacher, I never sounded
like Gene Ammons or John Gilmore or Clifford Jordan or whoever. We learned
how to play out in the street, I mean, in public.
You see, there are no clubs like that anymore. When I went to Europe in '63, there
were clubs everywhere, from Harlem to Brooklyn, all over New York. Now you
have four or five clubs and that's it. And then all these wonderful musicians, they
have no place to play, which is a pity.
Why did you move to Europe?

Problems. Plus I had been well-received in Europe in the months before that.
Coming back to New York I had family problems, government problems, tax
problems. And the way that the supposed jazz critics were promulgating the avant-
garde or "free jazz," I thought it was a bad joke. I thought it was a pity. I liked
some of the musicians, but the playing was making me sick.

I had the chance to go back to Europe and be free without the pressures here,
people telling me what I could do and what I couldn't do, the agents in New York.
And racism. There was such a big difference.
Before I went, the record company, Riverside, said, "Go to Europe. Promote these
records." "Go to Europe for what? I mean, New York, this is heaven." But I went
to Europe and spent three months there and my eyes were opened. You know,
America is very chauvinistic. "This is the world," that's what the soldiers say.
"This is the world. The rest of it is nothin'," which is ridiculous. And being from
the Middle West, you didn't hear people talking about Europe or Asia or anything.
But there's some people over there, too. And musicians-especially now-over there.
Then I went back to Europe, 'cause Bud Powell was there and Kenny Drew was
there. Kenny Clarke was there. Dexter was there. I had a big family over there.
Sahib Shihab, Idrees Sulieman were there. Memphis Slim, the blues singer, was
there. Art Taylor came over the same year that I did. He had been over there
earlier. And a lot of musicians were coming over at that time.
In fact, at any given time I think there are more American musicians living in
Europe than there are in America. They're always coming. Young cats that I don't
even know, that I haven't met, but I keep meeting when I go to Paris because
they're working. Well, the United States, you know what it's like here. Jazz music
has a much higher profile in Europe than it does in America. It's really different
there. I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. I've been coming back for 15 years and I
really know it's true.
So in 1963, there was enough work for you in Europe?

Well, I worked six months at the Blue Note in Paris at a time. You could go
outside of France to Belgium, Holland, Germany-the Germans started waking up
to jazz-Italy, Spain, England, Scandinavia. So in that small area, there was a lot of
music, a lot of venues to play. When I lived in Paris, it was the golden age of jazz
there, at that time.
Is it still good today?

Yeah, really. I've had my compositions arranged for different bands. I played in
Hamburg. I just did 10 titles there five months ago. I'm going to Stuttgart this
summer with the band with five or six titles, to Frankfurt, to Cologne, to Munich,
to Berlin. And then I'm going to be doing some ballads with a string orchestra in
Heidelberg and some things in Holland with the Metropole Orchestra. And I'm
doing 10, 11 concerts with the National Jazz Orchestra of France.
Then I have my groups that I work with, French and Italian musicians in France.
When I go to Copenhagen, I work with Kenny Drew. [Note: Pianist and longtime
expatriate Kenny Drew died in Copenhagen in August 1993.] So it's a good way
to be bobbin' and weavin' through all this. Sure, it's a good life.
You did live in Holland for a while.

Seven years-my wife is Dutch. The weather ran me out of Holland, bad weather
over there. But there's a lot of music in that little country, 14, 15 million people,
because the government subsidizes the small clubs and the musicians straight
away. They subsidize classical music, they subsidize jazz-not rock. And in France,
you have a Minister of Culture, he sees that jazz gets its share of the money.
There's that interest. You see jazz on television. You hear it, of course, on the
radio. All the different FM stations have "jazz hour."
Unfortunately, that's very rare in the US.

This country's changed so much. When I grew up, we had music appreciation
class for eight-, nine-year old kids. I mean, we had to listen to an hour of classical
music every week. It's no more. I went back to DuSable High School where I
learned music. They were honoring my late bandmaster, Dyett, and I had one wish
to see the band room where I had studied. There was no band room, there was no
music department. They cut it out!
And I can't tell you how many kids that program saved, kept off the streets, kept
the kids busy doing something worthwhile. Why is that they always cut music out
when they have any budgetary problems? They cut music out, like it's not
necessary. They don't realize the importance of music for the emotional health of
people. They're so busy commercializing everything. I think that every kid should
be able to play an instrument, even if it only lasts one or two years. A little piano,

a little something. It brings a sensitivity to the soul that will be missing later on if
it's not offered.
You write most of your compositions on computer now. How did you get started
doing that?
I was speaking with Dave Holland, the bassist, when he was doing this Philip
Morris tour back about five or six years ago. He was talking about how he was
using computers as a teaching device, also.
And then I went to Chicago and met my daughter's boyfriend. He plays drums
now, I think, with some rock band, but he was working for some great securities
company or something. They have to watch the markets all over the world and he
was working on computers. He had this Mac in his house. This young man
couldn't read a note as big as this building. But he was doing music for Porsche
automobile commercials with the keyboard he had, 'cause he knew computers.
And I got interested in it.
So I got me one. I play something on the piano and I write it into the computer. Or
I play it in with the synthesizer-but usually I like to write it in-and play it back
through the synthesizer and get all these different variations of sound.
Synthesizers are OK for what they are. I'm an acoustic person, but this gives me a
good idea how acoustic instruments would sound. And of course with the memory
of the computer, which is fantastic, man, I can print all the music out and just
hand it to the musicians, which is much better than my writing it out by hand. The
computer just does it. With the software that they have now for composing, it's
fantastic.
Then I've been talking to Jimmy Heath out at his house and now I've found some
French musicians who are doing it, which really helped me a lot. It just grew. I
can't wait to get back to it with the ideas that I have acquired just in these few
weeks since I left home.
So France really is home to you, now. Do you think you'll ever move back to the
US?
No. I feel good where I am. That's not to say that I would never come back after
all, but the way I feel now, I don't see no reason to go anywhere. I love it where I
am. It's heaven. I can't think of any better place to be, really.
I eat vegetables from my garden, fruit from my garden, and the people are nice
around me. I have my music room with my piano, my computer, my synthesizer
to play it back. That's my "rehearsal band." Of course, it's a safari when I have to
go to work, but when I get back home, it's lovely.
***
Johnny Griffin still makes his annual birthday visit to the United States, with his
week-long gigs in Chicago and New York. But he always returns to his beloved
French countryside.

Joe Henderson
by Mel Martin
Originally published in The Saxophone Journal March/April 1991

Special thanks to Greg Chapman for recovering this issue
Of all the saxophonists that I would like to interview, Joe Henderson has been at
the top of my list for sometime. Since he resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, I
was able to ultimately hook up with him in spite of his extremely busy touring
schedule. I've known Joe personally for quite a number of years and have listened
closely to his music even longer. Hearing him on record, and in person with the
likes of Horace Silver, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Herbie Hancock's
remarkable sextet, and his own groups, Joe has proved to be among the most
inventive players in jazz. His sound and concept reflect the history of jazz
saxophone, yet introduce a logical extension. I had the opportunity to hear Joe's
new band at Oakland's Yoshi's Nightspot. Shortly thereafter, we met at his
spacious home in San Francisco and covered a wide range of topics, including
his earliest influences, his new band, his teaching methods, and his feelings on
new and old saxophones. So, I consider it a great honor to present to readers of
Saxophone Journal, the man best known as 'The Phantom,' the great Joe
Henderson.
To me you're one of the last of the great saxophone innovators. You have a style
that many have tried to emulate, but there's not been anybody as original as you
in succeeding generations. These things don't just fall out of the sky and hit
people over the head, it comes from somewhere. I would be interested in knowing
who your influences were. I know you've been playing like this since you were a
youngster.
That's very interesting. It's difficult for me to blow my own horn (no pun
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intended). I got out of the military in August of 1962 and moved to New York in
September or October. I started making records in the latter part of 1963. Prior to
that I was born in a little town called Lima Ohio, which is about 125 miles from
Detroit. I have nine brothers and five sisters, which is really a huge family. I
remember one of my brothers, in particular, who is a scientist, had this Jazz At
The Philharmonic collection. He was a jazz buff and it was very important and
good for me to have been around that early on, because before I started to play
the saxophone, I knew what the saxophone was a supposed to sound like. I heard
a bunch of people like Lester Young, Illinois Jacquet, Coleman Hawkins, and
Wardell Gray. Lester was probably the first influence that I could single out.
There may have been others that are not clear, it's hard to know where and when
these influences start. But I do remember taking some Lester Young solos off a
record with the help of my brother. This was around age nine. Well, I wasn't
doing it myself, my brother was helping me, having the kind of mind he had. It
used to amaze me later how he was able to do that at that time. We had those 78
rpm records, so he'd take the needle, set it down on the record, and say, "Joe, play
these notes," and he'd let about four or five notes go by, and I'd find them on the
horn. You know, the one that Prez called D.B. Blues, it became very famous later.
So, I learned that and I tried to imitate that sound. Pretty soon I could keep this in
my mind and my fingers could remember where they should be. I remember that
as being the first solo I was able to take off a record.
So, Prez, as it turns out, was probably the first person that I was conscious of
influencing me. I had been listening to Rhythm and Blues, and I had gone through
that generation. I was always around Country and Western music as well. I know
as much about Johnny Cash as I do about Charlie Parker, because I grew up in
that area. This was all we heard on the radio. Sometimes I could dial in these far
off stations, like in Chicago, where I would hear something just a little more
musical. A little more similar to the records that my brother had in his collection,
and I liked this. I knew that this was bebop, and I could differentiate that. I spent
most of my time listening to bebop, and that was what I appreciated most, so this
is what I gravitated toward when I started developing and getting a few things
together about playing the saxophone. I was still quite innocent, it was like a toy
at that point.
When I got a little older I would go out to these dances that they would have in
my home town. When James Brown, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and
these cats would come to my hometown, I'd be there at those dances and I'd be
checking out the saxophone players. They all had saxophones; two or three tenor
players, a couple of baritones. And later James Moody would come to town with
his bands. His stuff was a little more refined with his four horns. He'd have like a
trumpet, trombone , baritone, and tenor or alto or flute. He played all the doubles.
I can remember I saw 'Trane at a couple of these dances. When I was about
fourteen years old he came there with the Earl Bostic band. At that time Bostic
was playing tunes like Flamingo, and a bunch of tunes that he made hit records
of. I saw a lot of people who came to that town, who ten years later from that
time, would be known as jazz personalities.
But, they spent their time paying their dues travelling around in this Rhythm and
Blues circuit. I didn't know that guy was John Coltrane, who I had seen and had
talked to and met when I was about fourteen years old. I also saw Gene Ammons
when I was about fifteen. He was the 'Red Top" guy. You know this tune My
Little Red Top? Yeah, that was classic stuff. Good music. So, my tastes became a
little refined later on.
So, my information and my knowledge is growing because I'm starting to buy

records and starting to hear people like Stan Getz, Herbie Steward, Stan Kenton,
Woody Herman, and Duke Ellington. All this stuff was having more meaning.
And all at the same time I was listening to Bartok, Stravinsky, and Hindemith
because of my one sister's tastes. I didn't know who Stravinsky was, but I knew I
liked the music that I heard.
Later I started meeting other musicians in town, who started showing me things.
I'm learning tunes, my vocabulary is growing in terms of tunes that I had
memorized, and I'm playing dances around town. So, I'm getting into it very
innocently. If I made a couple of bucks playing a dance, that was big money for
me. But the information that I was gathering at that time was the thing that served
me well later. I was getting a chance to play the saxophone at a time when this

was what I should be doing. Nobody had to tell me "Joe, go in and practice your
saxophone." I just did this.
Earlier on, I started writing tunes. When I was about fourteen or fifteen years old,
I wrote my first composition. That tune was recorded on a Bluenote record, the
very first record I did. It's one of the tunes that I get the most recognition for and
it's called Recordame. When I first wrote it, it had a Latin flavor to it. But when
the Bossa Nova came out I changed it to fit that rhythm, which meant that I
changed a couple of phrases around.
I don't know where it all came from, but I've always personally suspected that I
don't have an identifiable sound as a player. I shouldn't be allowed an opinion of
my own stuff, I realize that.
It's hard to appraise your own work. To hear this come from you is very
important to me, as I'm sure to the people reading this article. And to learn that,
wow, you mean he doesn't know that either? You just don't know because you
can't be a critic and a player at the same time.
It really is hard to appraise your own work! Earlier on I wanted to be one of the
greatest interpreters of music that the world has ever seen. If somebody put music
down in front of me, I wanted to be able to interpret this music better than the
writer. I also wanted to be a player of ballads. I really liked to play ballads, as
ironic as that might be. Many times when I play it's kind of a frantic situation.
You made your mark in what was called the 'hard bebop' post-bop era. It was a
harder style to play, the Bluenote style. The whole gang of East Coast players
that were really putting that style down. That's what I came up with. I'm about
five years younger that you, so I came up behind that listening to you, and a
whole bunch of other folks out of that era.
That was a great era. There was a bunch of musical people around during the time
that I was fortunate enough to have been associated with in the studios and on
some gigs. I started to pick up the dice and roll them a bit, taking some chances

with a few notes. Even at that time I didn't think I would have played something
that wasn't musical or didn't fit the context of what was happening with the music.
After I had been in the military, been to Detroit and to college in Kentucky, I
went to New York. I went to New York when I was about twenty-five. Naturally,
when you first get to New York there's these people who try to pigeonhole you by
saying, "He sounds like this, always sounds like that, etc.' There were some
people that heard me who said, "I've been hearing this guy since he was fourteen
years old and he's always sounded like that.' This is even before some of the
people they said that I sounded like emerged onto the scene. Far be it for me to
defend myself and say I don't sound like that. If they say I sound like that, well
then maybe I do. This was a crucial time. How do you defend yourself in a
situation like that? The writers and musicians needed to hear that I was original
and always had been. Their mouths dropped open. Maybe I've been developing
something that's fairly uniquely my own for a long time, but you're not aware of
this stuff, you simply play. I've been a person who enjoys playing the saxophone,
making music, writing melodies, writing compositions, and doing arrangements
of minor importance for big bands and orchestras. But I never try to rate myself in
any kind of way. I let other people do that.
I agree. I have read reviews that said you sounded like John Coltrane, etc. To me
you always sounded like Joe Henderson. You have an iconoclastic style that sets
you apart from other players. You're not consciously trying to emulate, yet you
have influences that are very obvious. I can hear Charlie Parker, and I can hear
Prez in your tone. You do not play in the Coleman Hawkins big brash style. In
addition to this, I hear a lot of individualistic harmonic ideas that nobody else
played at that time, or since. I'm curious, did you study with Larry Teal?
I sure did, for about three years. I also went to Wayne University for about five
years. The year I got drafted I changed to Wayne State University. A lot of
musicians went through that school. Yusef Lateef was there, Donald Byrd, Kenny
Burrell, Hugh Lawson (we were in some classes together). Yusef and I were also
in classes together. He was much older than I, going back to school, and taking a
couple of courses as a non-matriculated student. We used to study together. Yusef

was zooming and he was light years ahead of me in terms of understanding it all.
In the next semester it dawned on me what the teacher was trying to run down in
the first semester.
From about that point on I understood things in the present instead of it being a
delayed situation. There's a point where you understand the information as they're
running it down to you, and there's a point where you've got to do a little research
and then you understand it. Then when Yusef and I studied together I was ahead
of him. I remember feeling good about that, but I also felt good about being able
to help him understand the things he didn't understand. Therein lies the genesis of
me understanding myself as a teacher. I was in this environment that was about
bebop. We learned every Charlie Parker tune that was every written. There was
so much music that came through at that time. Fortunately, my radar was working
and I was absorbing everything. I started understanding things like chord
inversions where you don't have to play chords from the root up all the time. You
can start from the 5th or the 6th or the 7th. As long as you know what the root
feel is about you can turn things inside out taking this combination of notes and
stack them up any number of ways.
What I hear in your playing is that you play intervals that go beyond the 13th.
When you stack up intervals and play the 13th, you get all the hip sounds like the
sharp eleven, and flat and sharp ninths. But, say you take a C13, where you have
a C, and you might have a Bb, a D, an E, and F# and an A. You can go up and
play a C13 oil top of that and it will work. You'll play an F natural on top of that
and it will work. When you're not playing bebop kinds of lines, I hear you play
some heavy arpeggios running through and across and around, sideways, all
kinds of ways, but it seems to me you're playing intervals that go beyond the 13th.
I've heard things in that zone. This stems back from some of the non conventional
sounds and combinations of notes that I first heard through Bartok and
Stravinsky. I started to understand chords, chord movement, and chord
classification in one set of chords; where it all came from and where it goes from
there. Having a sense of composition has served me well, and also having a rich
sense of rhythm, and a desire not to repeat stuff. I consider it one of the worst sins

a musician could possibly commit, to play an idea more than one time. You've
got to keep changing things around, keep inventing, and especially when you're
making records. I came into it thinking of change being a constant thing. I can
remember going onto the bandstand after being around Detroit for a few years,
and consciously getting my brain to start phrases on different notes of the bar,
with a different combination of notes, and a different rhythm. I developed the
ability to start anywhere in the bar and it lent to a whole new attitude of constant
variation. I would start with the first bar, not starting it on one but starting it on
the 'and' of four or the 'and' of three, with a series of sixteenth notes with several
triplets. I would let the first four bars take care of themselves until we got to the
fifth bar, and start that at a certain point of the rhythmic structure of the bar. Then
I'd start something in the seventh bar. What I was developing was a sense of not
falling into that habit of playing the same things all the time. We are creatures of
habit anyway so its easy to fall into them. You practice early on so that habits
don't form which have to be dealt with later, like bad fingerings that you have to
clean up later.
Those are technical processes, but you're also talking about creative musical
processes. Instead of always following the same mental path you can evoke a
different process whenever you want to. Everybody wants your formula. How
many students have come to you and said, 'Joe, what are those patterns?'
And those are the kind of students I don't take. I want to effect the part of their
brain to create these things. When you think about this in a certain way, there is
no formula.
What they hear as a formula is actually something you created spontaneously out
of all of the resources that you have at your command.
The way I teach is memory plus improvisation. I generally don't allow tape
recorders at the lesson, although I will bend on that as it's so much a part of things
now. In terms of them understanding what their creative faculty is supposed to be
about, they don't need a tape recorder. We'll travel as far as their brain can go
during a lesson. There's so much printed material around, fake books, etc., and I

don't remember using those kinds of things. These things tend to become
crutches. I learned the tunes. I've seen people come up on the bandstand and
before I call count the tune off I'm hearing people turning these pages (laughter).
Night after night they're still trying to find this song. I really wish they would
understand that the mind will absorb the music in its time. You can't overload it.
There's so much that can enter into learning songs. Your emotional state and why
you like a particular song.
One can get involved in all those aspects and make it more meaningful when they
play. Teaching allows us to plant some trees, and to keep the art form alive. The
information that was passed on to us helped us to enjoy the planet a little more
through our music.
You recently had a new, young, all female band. Would you talk about them?
These people are young in years, and on a certain level, in their experience. Irene
Rosnes is the pianist and came to New York from Vancouver, Canada. The
drummer is Sylvia Cuenca and is from San Jose. I've known her since she was
sixteen. The bassist is Marlene Rosenberg from Chicago and is twenty-eight.
Now the level of experience of the pianist, for example, is far beyond her age of
twenty-five years. We've all been to Europe three times and will go again. We've
enjoyed a great deal of success out there. These are talented people and they are
doing precisely what they should be doing. They're growing.
The impression I got is that you're allowing them the space to learn and absorb
from a master, and the experience of playing and traveling together.
Somebody has to provide that when you consider their level of talent, so they can
perfect their craft. I plan to record something soon with Blue Note. Although the
uniqueness of the group gets a lot of attention, I'm not trying to make a social
political statement or the like.
I found them very complimentary to your sound. You can be an aggressive player

but your sound texture is generally of a softer nature, and their accompaniment is
really quite suitable. But I have to say that your bassist plays as hard as any I've
ever heard.
I've been on the bandstand with women before and there's some things I do
notice. It's probably a situation that has to do more with experience than anything
else. Jack DeJohnette sat in with us in Paris and he brought that 'manhood' to the
stand. I thought that I would miss that, and maybe I had been missing that all
along. But Sylvia came back and played the way she had developed with us and it
was fine. I really feel its the experience that makes the difference. Mainly, men
have been drummers and bass players. We've always had women piano players.
They aren't trying to be men on their instruments. I have experienced with other
women, however, a kind of going overboard to try and assert the Yang part of
themselves, more so than necessary, to the point of abandoning their own
delicacy as women. I worked with a pianist who would do this and I would
mention it in a real professional way that she was neglecting that part of her
nature.
You were telling me that you received more notoriety for this group than anything
you've done in the past.
In Europe they were coming at me with a battery of microphones and cameras.

Once they hear the music, they are convinced. The writeups haven't focused
primarily on the fact that they are ladies, but they can't avoid it either.
At this point in our conversation we got into a discussion about vintage Selmer
saxophones, sparked by Joe's recent purchases of a 56,000 series Mark VI This
was necessitated by the loss, by theft, of one of his saxophones which was later
returned by one of his students. Also, the ultimate destruction, by fire in an
automobile accident, of his original 54,000 series.
A guy called me from Dallas who knew I would be coming through with the
George Gruntz big band. I called him back and he said he had two Selmers to
show me. When I got there he had them laid out in the dressing room. I had no

idea that this was the vintage horn I'd been looking for. When I picked one up and
played it, I couldn't believe how well it played. When my previous horn was
destroyed, after twenty-six years, I thought it could never be replaced.
It's such a great story how that horn came back to you through Hafez Modir, who
we were both teaching at that time. I'll never forget him coming into his lesson
and telling me about it.
Hafez was totally innocent. He simply came over for a lesson. About half an hour
into the lesson he asked me to try his horn and check his low B. Usually I play
piano and assign lines, a more "here and now approach." I really didn't want to do
what he was asking, so I tried to steer him away from that by giving him more
demanding material. But, he had the right kind of persistence. So, after hanging
on the ropes about another half an hour I said, 'look man, give me the horn.' I
went upstairs and got my mouthpiece and soaked up my reed, and started to play
this horn. There were some thing that only I knew about that identified the horn.
There was a screw right next to the octave key that would work its way out from
time to time and would jab me in the finger. I had it filled down. As I was
playing, these things began to come through. I was sitting there talking to myself
and thinking, 'man, this is my horn!' I didn't want to give the student the
impression that I had flipped out. But, after about fifteen more minutes he wanted
it to be my horn. He called it a case of "the son coming back to the father." I
exchanged another Selmer with him for my original horn. Apparently it had been
purchased a year and a half earlier by a young lady in New York, and I had
neglected to keep track of the serial number. If I had known approximately what
the number was I could have gotten to a similar horn sooner. Someone once
asked me whether or not I felt there was something "magical" about Selmers. I
had to say there certainly was something magical about this particular vintage,
but I feel their more recent horns have lost that quality. After my original horn
was stolen I needed a new one. I was speaking with Selmer's engineers and
discussing what I felt were problems with the Mark VII, which was the horn that
no one knew I was playing.
Johnny Griffin told me he had one for awhile but took it back because his clothes

kept getting caught in the keys.
Their answer was, "the kids want it." I realize these people are busy in their labs
trying to develop new ideas, but please keep making that original product which
so many people were happy with. They had Super 80's for me to try and that's
what I've been playing until now. I'm sure it would be profitable for them to put
out an instrument that sounds and feels good to the player. The Japanese are
becoming very competitive in the musical instrument business. I talk to
saxophonists all over the world, like myself, who are seriously questioning the
quality of the new instruments. After all, our survival is depended on this.
Do you have any final comments?
I'm in constant search of new information and ideas, and I want to make the best
of this short time that we're out here on this planet living this nebulous thing
called life. And I want to plant a few trees along the way and nurture some minds
and watch them grow, as people did for me.
1997 MEL MARTIN

This is a reprint of the Lee Konitz interview in Downbeat Magazine, December 1985. I once took a few seminally important lessons
from Lee Konitz as a teenager and this was one of the techniques he showed me that opened many doors to the world of
improvisation. - M.M.
Lee Konitz: Back to Basics

BY DAVID KASTIN
In Japan, where tradition is revered, and where a great potter or shakuhachi master is designated a "National Living Treasure," Lee
Konitz would certainly be a prime candidate for such an honor. Konitz is a master of the art of jazz improvisation. The alto
saxophonist on Miles Davis' historic Birth Of The Cool sessions, both sideman and leader in an extraordinarily wide range of
contexts, Konitz is a musician of unshakable integrity who has continued to develop and refine his craft. he has also (for the last 40
years) been teaching jazz keeping alive a tradition that for Lee began during his own studies with the legendary pianist, saxophonist,
composer, and theoretician Lennie Tristano.
For Konitz, music is more than a series of tones set in time, it is nothing less than "a life force." Yet, as both performer and teacher,
Konitz has chosen to counter the rather mystical and potentially frightening challenges of improvisation with a set of organically
derived back-to-basic techniques that are a direct outgrowth of his own very profound experience.
At first Lee is reluctant to talk freely about his ideas and experiences as a teacher His reservations seem to stem from a combination
of the musicians natural wariness of words, Lee's innate reticence about self-promotion, and some understandable defensiveness, I
think, about both the questionable status of the working jazz musician and our society's undisguised contempt for teaching. But once
he gets started, Lee Konitz talks a lot like he plays quiet, fluid, thoughtful, yet intense.
***********************************************************************************************************
I studied with Lennie Tristano in Chicago when I was in my late teens. I'd met him and was immediately impressed by him. He was a
blind man, and the communication was unusual in that sense; but he always talked very straight with me. He was a
musician/philosopher. He always had interesting insights when we got together for a lesson or a rehearsal. I didn't know, as yet,
anything about the music as an art form. But he felt and communicated that the music was a serious matter. It wasn't a' game or just a
means for making a living; it was a life force. He got through to me because suddenly I was taking music seriously.
He was the first one to present a method for improvised jazz playing. Almost everyone at some point or other came to study with him
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to find out what he was talking about. I respect what he was doing as an artist, and I'm trying to keep that alive. I'm trying to be true
to product at all times.
The well-educated musician must have the information from the music first of all, and then find out what it all means the names and
the rules and axiom is. All that adds up to a well-balanced musical education. We start out playing by ear, learning everything we
can, and finally ending up playing by ear again. You just absorb it, and it becomes part of your ability to perceive from then on.
In order to play, you need a very solid view of the most basic information: the tune and the harmony (about 10 7th chords); that's all
the harmony we're dealing with in the traditional kind of tune playing. I have tried to find a more organic way of developing and
using this informatlon so that people don't overshoot the mark when in their enthusiasm they attempt to create new melodies.
The goal of having to unfold a completely new melody on the spot and appraise it as you go the closer you look at it, can be
frightening! So I think that first and foremost you have to adhere to the song for a much, much longer period of time. You have to
find out the meaning of embellishment before going on to try to create new melodies. I believe that the security of the song itself can
relieve much of the anxiety of jumping into the unknown.
I suggest the kinds of compositional devices that are available: a trill, a passing tone, an appoggiatura that can bridge one melody
note to another The point is, you're still playing the melody, but you're doing something to it now. And there are many levels of this
process before you get anywhere near creating new melody material.
Starting out as a performer, I had never explored these ideas enough. There I was,just a kid really, playing with all these people
[Miles, Tristano, Mulligan]. It was as a result of that experience that I went back to analyze what made me feel off-balance
sometimes, like I was overextending myself in some way. Certainly with the proper stimulus you can function for a while, and my
spirituality carried me through in many situations. But then: 1 started backtracking, and it was in my own backtracking that it
occurred to me that there might be a way of possibly taking some of the mystery out of the process with more knowingness.
I also base my ideas about practice on the playing of tunes and working with embellishment. So if one is given a two hour period of
time to practice, I feel that a student can play tunes for two hours and end up knowing those tunes better and faster than if he warmed-
up on scales and arpeggios for an hour-and-half and played tunes for half-an-hour. I think, though, that in a daily practice routine
there should be a little section called "go for it!" Even if it's way beyond what you're dealing with just go for it, anytime you feel like
it, and then get back and finish the practice.
I try to address playing the instrument properly, knowing as many of the principles as possible and still being flexible. A player can
choose what kind of embochure is most natural to him, which feels best and helps him produce the sound he wants. But there are
some right and wrong ways to do things. For example, there's a right way of touching the reed to produce what is called an "attack;"
a large variety of ways from the so called "brush," a light brush of the reed, to staccato, the hardest kind of hit, and all the degrees in
between that can be experienced and then brought to the muslc in a personal way.
Then to play a tune like All The Things You Are, what you need aside from the basic information I've outlined is an example of
someone you admire playing a version of it, and, overall, an intimate familiarity with the great soloists, and an understanding of what
a great solo consists of It's the most logical and sensible thing to do if you want to learn how to hear Charlie Parker's music, duplicate
his solos. Listening that closely, you can experience every detail. It's a matter of being able to hear it, duplicate it on your instrument,
write it out, experience it and draw your own conclusions.
I function as a trouble-shooter of sorts when I teach. I can see what's going on from the perspective of a performer. I can bring that
kind of reality to the subject right from the active area of my music-making. So it's got to be more vital than any kind of codified
information or theoretical fact from one who's not able to demonstrate. I have students on all levels and considering my definition of
learning from analyzing recordings, I realize that's what a lot of the players have done to my music over the years. So, I'd have to
consider those people my students, in a way. Recently I joined the staff at Temple University in Philadelphia. I do what's called a
master class and coach a group of students and play music with them. I got the position on the basis of my being a performer first and
that I have to be free to do my tours. It's just what we hope for as players. Often we either have to take the security of a job like this
and stop playing (as some people do) or else find a way to do both. And if a school is really hip enough to know that, you can bring
them something special that way then it's ideal.
Lee Konitz has developed an approach to improvisation based on a 10-level system. The first, and most important, level is the song
itself . It then progresses incrementally through more sophisticated stages of embellishment, gradually displacing the original theme
with new ones. The process culminates in the creation of an entirely new melodic structure. Konitz calls this final level "an act of
pure inspiration." - D.K.
1997 MEL MARTIN

Steve Lacy
I was very fortunate to have caught up with Steve Lacy when he performed at
Koncepts Kultural Gallery in Oakland on April 12, 1990. His very influential
career has spanned some thirty-five years. Steve Lacy's productive, multifaceted
career, judging by the musicians he has been influenced by and the many he
himself has influenced, has been marked by many unique and precious
experiences.
Born in New York City in 1934, Lacy took piano lessons as a youngster before
switching to the clarinet. Enthralled by Sidney Bechet's recording of The Mooche,
Lacy began studying the soprano sax in earnest. After spending nearly a year at
Schillinger House in Boston, Lacy returned to New York and spent 1953-54
working with the likes of Pee Wee Russell, Rex Stewart, Buck Clayton, Jimmy
Rushing, Dicky Wells and Walter Page. Not only did Lacy learn to tame his
instrument's inherent, peevish problems with intonation, but he was among the
first (if not the first) of the soprano saxophonists to transform the "straight" sax
into a woodwind capable of stratospheric flights. Lacy progressed from Dixieland
music to bebop, and ultimately to nonchord-based nirvanas of the avant-garde.
Yet all the while he has maintained his melodic inventiveness and keen sense of
organization as both composer and soloist.
Lacy left for Europe in the mid sixties where he took up residence in Paris, and it
is where he currently resides. He has recently been touring the United States on
an annual basis and his recordings have gained more visibility due to his
contract with RCA. I had never met him or heard him live prior to this occasion.
We struck up an informal conversation concerning his solo recording of an
obscure Thelonious Monk song called Gallop's Gallop. His open, easy going and
warm manner, encouraged me to request an interview to which he responded
immediately by inviting me to his motel the next day. That happened to be Friday
the 13th. Coincidentally that is the name of a famous Monk tune. It was indeed a
great pleasure interviewing the pioneer of modern jazz soprano saxophone. He
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expressed views that were wide ranging, knowledgeable and fascinating.
Why don't we start with you telling me the set-up you're currently playing.
I have a Super Action Series I Selmer that I've had about six years. Before that I
had the previous model, the Mark VI. It's like a car. You stick with one name
brand and trade in the old model for the new one when it comes out. I'm waiting
for the newest Selmer to come out. I'll probably take that and give them my old
one. But I love the old one, it's been great.
You were saying that you feel they have made certain gains but with these come
certain losses.
By now I've gotten used to those losses, and they don't even bother me any more.
They were small things but they really are important. For example, the left hand
pinky action. The difference between the Mark VI and the Super Action was
radical and unnecessary. The Mark VI worked perfectly well. But in order to
conform with the other members of the family, the tenor, the baritone, etc., they
changed all the fingerings on the left hand, including the pinky. For soprano it
didn't make sense to match the roller mechanism. The older ones were a lot
simpler and worked much better. It's like the old thing, "If it ain't broke, don't fix
it." But they fixed it! The overall gains were much more important and I go along
with Selmer and their tooling philosophy and all that. I've tried the new soprano
model which is in preparation now, and it's pretty good.
Do they take your input in developing the instruments?
Yes, they call me before they go into production, when they have a prototype, and
they call legitimate saxophonists, too.
As opposed to the other kind
(laughter).
Really, they call all kinds of so-called experts who test them out and give them

their opinion and advice. Selmer and I are very much in tune, and that's
important. Another important thing about living in France is that the reeds come
from the South of France. This is very interesting. Recently I visited the factory
down south where the reeds I use come from and I got to know the process in
person. It's a small company called Marca (distributed by Leblanc), which means
Manufacturer Anche Reeds Coast Azure. It's like a family concern, and they
sometimes supply the cane to Vandoren.
I don't know if you're familiar, but over here there's been severe reed problems
for a number of years now. Most of the professionals and students alike are
crying the blues pretty badly over lack of good cane. Many well known products
seem to have fallen down badly. They are cutting them fine, it's not that they don't
have good quality workmanship, it's just that they're not getting good cane.
It's a vicious circle. Like it was explained to me, reed is a weed which grows wild
all over this region called the Var in France and only the wild variety is good - the
stuff growing by the roadside and all that. If you try to plant it, it's no good.
That's what they found. They can't duplicate that natural chemistry.
Let's call it spirit, because to me, there is spirit in a reed. It's a living thing, a
weed, really, and it does contain spirit of a sort. And they say these areas make
sound when the wind comes. It's really an ancient vibration.
Apparently, part of what their problem was in obtaining good, wild, French cane
is that land developers have moved in on a lot of that land, and also severe
winters hit the cane crops quite badly. Even Vandoren doesn't get all their cane
from France anymore. They seem to have always had the better quality of cane,
how-ever, I don't always enjoy their cuts. Are there such things as bamboo reeds?
No, cane is not bamboo. Bamboo is different. Cane is rushes, or Rousseaux in

French - Junkus.
When I went to the Roy J. Maier factory down in Los Angeles, I thought that was
bamboo they cut the cane out of.
They are stalks like bamboo, but it's a different plant. Bamboo is not a weed, it's a
flowering plant, but these are weeds that grow wild to about twenty feet. They're
not like bamboo which can make a forest and bloom once in a hundred years.
Bamboo is a magnificent plant. These are crude weeds, this is what they make
baskets out of.
Ah-ha. So you are able to get good French cane, but from a small company.
I order directly from them. I've seen them in Japan, and I believe you can get
them in places like Charles Ponte in New York. Specialized places probably
know about them. But I use very soft ones and I must order them directly.
You use a pretty open mouthpiece, too?
Yes, Otto Link made three identical mouthpieces for me a number of years ago
and I use them. It's a number twelve, and larger than their usual sizes. They
normally go up to a ten. I had an eleven which got stolen so I asked for one a little
bit bigger and that was it.
I heard you play into the stratosphere. Notes that are up there and I'm wondering
how you do that on a soft reed on an open mouthpiece.
It's in the reed. There's a lot more flexibility with a soft reed, so you can go much
higher. A hard reed is limited. After you reach a certain point, the door is closed. I
arrived at using the soft by going through the hard. I used to play hard reeds, and
plastic reeds, and metal mouthpieces, etc. I went through those phases over a
period of thirty years before I gradually arrived at the best solution for me. I can
have the maximum flexibility and sound possibilities. I can release all the
harmonics in the horn without killing my lip. When you go to the moon like that,
it hurts, and you can't do it that often and it's got to be controllable.
I have been listening to you over the thirty years you're talking about and I
always hear a great deal of control in your playing, especially compared to many
current soprano players. Most soprano players obviously play it as a double, and

you have dedicated your life to playing the soprano. Did you ever play any of the
other saxes before?
I did. I started on clarinet. When I went to school, they wouldn't accept clarinet,
so I had to play alto. I got interested in the tenor for awhile, and I also played
baritone and flute. I dropped them one by one because the soprano had so many
interesting problems in it, that it was enough for me to deal with.
I can relate to why a person would gravitate toward one instrument, especially
because at the time you were playing it, hardly anyone else was.
It was wide open, nobody was doing anything with it. It was just laying in the
pawn shops. Sidney Bechet was in Europe, and his student Bob Wilber was
playing the music of Bechet a little bit in New York. He was the only one
touching it at that time. It was like a new instrument. I responded to the sound of
it because it's like the treble clef personified. It's a treble instrument which sounds
like a human voice range. It's feminine, but it can be masculine, too.
I've noticed in the past, and especially hearing you last night, how you make
great use of the low register. Obviously you also have great control of the high
register, but you were playing the low register in a way I hear almost no soprano
players doing, which was intriguing to me.
Yes, I find the low register very fascinating in the soprano because the low
register of the tenor is too low to dwell too long on. But the low register of the
soprano is very mellow and right in there. The soprano has all those other
instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor
elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity. It can sound like a
baroque trumpet, too. It's used instead of the baroque trumpets sometimes for the
Bach Concertos.
Have you been heavily influenced by the great pianists?
Yes. I wanted to be a pianist but I couldn't do it, it just wasn't my thing. I guess I
wanted to stand up rather than sit down (laughter). When I was a kid I saw Art
Tatum and he blew me away so I gave up the piano. Happily, I discovered the
clarinet first then the soprano saxophone when I was sixteen.
You've had working relationships with some great pianists such as Cecil Taylor,
Thelonious Monk and Gil Evans.
Yeah, that was not a coincidence. I worked with Cecil Taylor for six years and a
lot of that rubbed off. I've been working with Mal Waldron on and off for nearly
thirty years. Monk was also a fantastic playing experience. I was associated with
him for a couple of years with the big band and then I worked with his quintet for
a season, about four months with Charlie Rouse. There's a pirate tape and there
are three tunes that were all recorded at a festival in Philadelphia in 1960,
Evidence, Blue Monk and Rhythm-a-ning.
You've seen the soprano come from a completely obscure instrument to one that's
played by many jazz musician's and even pop stars. How do you feel about this?
That's right, more and more. I have a feeling that there's going to be more
dedicated soprano players. I get an awful lot of people that want to come and
study and send me tapes. You see, saxophone is one thing, and music is another.
You must have the music to justify an instrument's extensive use. The problem I
had on this instrument was that I not only had to learn how to play it, I had to
learn what to play on it because there was nothing written for it. I couldn't play
Charlie Parker tunes because they were too low.
Yes, they don't lay right for Bb instruments. I always felt that was alto music.
Tenor's hard too because they just don't lay in the right registers. They're either
too low or too high.
Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register. As I said

before, the soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano, but
at first, it didn't. I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history
of jazz and then worked with Cecil Taylor. When I found the music of Monk I
finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly, so I

started really studying his music but I also studied the songs of Webern because
that also fit my horn. If someone wants to play soprano saxophone all their life,
they must find someone else's music or eventually their own that will make it
worthwhile for them, the public, and everybody.
I think that's great advice even for someone who doubles because the thing I hear
lacking is that they don't really know what to do on the instrument. It's as if they
sometimes try to make it an extension of the tenor, which it sort of is since it's an
octave higher.
Coltrane started out that way. It was like a path upward from his tenor.
Right. I think his influence took a lot of people in that direction. He also had a
particular tone that I think needed more work.
Well, he did, but he got it after about three years. I heard him all the time when he
first started on it because I worked opposite him in the same club. We talked
about some of the problems with it, such as pitch control, but two or three years
later, he had it tamed, it did exactly what he wished it to do. You must subdue the
beast so you can get it to swing quite a bit. Swing is not immediate. You must
first get it to walk, and then run.
How long has your band been in existence?
About twenty years.
You've been expatriated, so you've lived in France since 1970. I still see you as
being very vital and creative and what you call "on the cutting edge" of the
music. There tends to be a viewpoint from this side that people living in Europe
tend to lose that edge a bit. How do you feel about that?
It ain't necessarily so (laughter). You must go where you don't lose your vitality.
In New York in the sixties my vitality was being sapped and stifled and stymied
and subdued, and it was terrifying. It seemed like it was hopeless. Then I went
away for a couple of years, came back, and it was worse. It seemed to open up

and get a little better in the seventies, when I started peeking back. Since then I go
back more frequently.
I think the seventies were a bad period for jazz.
I think it was a period when it was best to be busy doing your own thing because
you couldn't count on any community support. It was a very tough time, yet
glorious. That was when we did the research that was necessary to refine what we
did in the sixties, the breakthrough period, a revolutionary period in jazz. The
seventies was the time when you couldn't continue what you did, you had to make
it go into a more modern direction in a more acceptable way. What we had found
was too chaotic, we had to start shaping it.
If you can describe it to me, what ways did you personally find to shape your
music?
Composition! By finding the appropriate structures to contain the type of

improvisational material that we had discovered. What Monk had was the
appropriate containers. He wrote the lines that made the guys sound good and that
they liked to play. They developed a language and improvisation came naturally
out of that material and it was a coherent whole. That was what I was after. The
saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.
Saxophone is part of that. I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good,
so complete. You could play them over and over again, even just the heads. You
could play them badly and they sounded good!
And he might even have liked them! There's a lot of consciousness about Monk
now, but a lot of us were playing Monk when you couldn't get arrested for it.
What I found early on was by studying his music it made you play differently right
on the spot. If you really learned one of his tunes well and played it with some
people, something new would emerge immediately. It would take you to another
place to improvise.
That's right, that's a very good point. In effect, he was the brains of the bebop

revolution and his pieces were the vehicles.
But a lot of people didn't play them in that era.
What's easy now was very difficult back then to learn and to play. It was very
abstract. When I first started playing his music in 1955, there was just a small
body of people that knew it. It was a very esoteric type of thing, they were
"insiders." But as I learned those tunes from the records, the more interesting they
became.
Do you feel that studying his music particularly helped you to discover your own
voice?
Yes, that was the best model I could find to help me get to my own stuff. I played
that as long as I could before I started to uncover my own sound. I still play his
music sometimes at solo concerts.
I feel that for a lot of musicians who have delved very deeply into Monk, it has
brought out something unique of themselves. It wasn't just that when we started
playing his music that it made us play differently, it led us to another direction of
how to "sing a song."
Monk himself could do that for the players who played with him: Coltrane, Sonny
Rollins, Charlie Rouse and all those great players.
After they played with him, something opened up for them, too. They all went on
to something new.
Yes, that's why I needed to play with him, that's what it did for me. He was a
great leader like that.
I love the work you and a friend of mine, Johnny Coles, did with Gil Evans. It's
always stuck in my ears. How did you come about playing with Gil Evans?
He heard me play as an amateur on the Arthur Godfrey radio show. When I was a

kid I had a Dixieland band on there in 1952. Five years later in 1957 he went
looking for me and called me up and asked me to play on his first album under
his own name. He wanted me to play the lead sound. This was very important in
my life. He was able to recall my sound five years later and then find it. I love
that album.
That's Gil Evans Plus Ten?
Yes. It's a record that sounds better with time. That was the beginning of my
association with him which lasted until his death. We did the duo record just
before he died.
You say he had the ability to remember your sound. I've also heard him talk about
others' sounds. It seems he did much what Duke did which was write people's
personal sounds into his music.
Duke was his inspiration. He heard Duke in person in 1929 with Bubber Miley.
Louis Armstrong also greatly influenced him. He went way back in the music, he
was very well educated, and a great talent.
He seemed to understand the significance of individuals. He did a record which

featured Wayne Shorter on some tracks. I heard this record only in the last year
or so and it completely blew my mind. The record is titled, 'The Individualism of
Gil Evans.' He really appreciated individuals.
He was a collector. He used older players mixed with younger players, and it
worked.
I try not to ask questions that put words in your mouth, but could you offer some
advice to help people develop their own individuality?
Attach yourself to somebody stronger than you and get to the bottom of what they
do. Then find somebody else. I think it is in collaboration that the nature of the art
is revealed. I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who
knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here. I would advise

everyone to start from where you are at this particular moment, and think about
what you do , what you want to do and who you could work with that would help
you get a little further. There must be somebody better than you (laughter)!
I'm quite certain there is. When I hear somebody like yourself say that, it's
interesting because from the get-go I heard in you an immediately identifiable
voice. When I heard John Coltrane play, I heard the same thing; Sonny Rollins
the same thing, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson and all the players from that era
seemed to have all developed that individual thing early on. They got better
playing with the greats, obviously.
You have a point. It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound,
then it's worth continuing. If there's nothing happening in that sound, it's hard to
imagine where you'll get with that. You can get to a journeyman stage, you can
get to be a technician and recreative and all that, but originality and invention
starts with something we haven't heard before.
Would you say it's a state of single mindedness?
It's a new sound. It seems simple, and it's a dangerous phrase, "a new sound," but
I mean it. When I first heard Bechet to me it was new but I realized it was an old
sound. When I tried to get on that train, what I came up with was a new sound
because I really didn't know what I was doing. I was playing the mouthpiece
upside-down for a few weeks while experimenting. Then I got lucky
immediately. I started studying with Cecil Scott in New York, a bandleader and
musician. He used to have a big band, a territory band called The Bright Boys,
and a lot of great musicians played with him. He played tenor, clarinet, piano he
was a great all around musician and teacher. He really helped me get started, he
straightened me out. I studied with him for about a year and a half.
What kinds of things did he lay on you to help you to learn to swing? It's an
important question, because I had this come up with a student. He couldn't swing
if you hung him and it was really a problem.

There again I was really lucky. Where I was working at the time were these so-
called Dixieland concerts where some of the greatest players in the world were
playing, guys like Pee Wee Russell, Dickie Wells, Buck Clayton, Jo Jones,
Jimmy Rushing, Max Kaminski, Cecil Scott and Red Allen and all these great
cats. I cut my teeth in those places. First I was photographing them and selling the
photographs, photography was my game at that time. Then I was studying with
him, then I was sitting in, then I was hired. You can't tell somebody now to go out
and do that because it doesn't exist. Most of those players are dead.
But those were all strong, original voices even if you put them all in the category
of "Dixieland."
There were also schools: the Kansas City school, the New Orleans school, the
Chicago school, especially those three. Plus there were some of the New York
players and some from Washington and all the New Orleans guys. That was very
important for me to be able to work for a season or two with guys like that. Then
Cecil Taylor found me and threw me in the deep waters of the oceans.
Sink or swim, eh? I guess you could say that the regional influences are becoming
more predominant again. Players are coming out of New Orleans, lots of players
have come out of Chicago for years. There was a whole different attitude in
Chicago all along. There are many fine players from here (SF Bay Area).
Yes, it depends on the individuals. It can be anywhere. People should learn that it
can happen anywhere if you have a few individuals who are crazy enough and
can get something going. Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work.
What I learned with Cecil Taylor a bit back then was strategy and survival and
how to resist the temptations and resist getting discouraged because if you're
trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points
and most people give up. If you're well schooled and tough enough, you
persevere, like Monk did. Monk persevered and eventually became quite a star,
making Time magazine and all that. I was working with him at that time. That
music has gone all over the world and is still going very strong. It can happen.
Other people like Herbie Nichols never got to hear his stuff performed and died

young.
I would love to see more individuality developing in this part of the world. This is
a strong subject in my mind.
It depends on what people want. I always had an individual streak; interested in

something not everyone else was doing. I was after my own thing without even
knowing what I was doing. But not everybody wants to do that. Some people
really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in
invention. But performance is part of what we do, too. I'm lucky enough to be
able to be involved in the preparation and the performance. That's where the
saxophone comes in.
Were there a lot of problems when you first moved to Paris?
I would not recommend anyone coming to Paris and hoping to crack it. It's a
rough place. It took me five to ten years before we got to the place where we
could swing a bit over there. We had to start from scratch all over again which
took a while in a strange place to cope, adhere and to surface above the water.
You say the seventies were hard for you, well they were hard here too and that is
why you really have to invent work. In the eighties the work was coming in, and
it still is. But before it comes in, you have to invent it. If you have music you
want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you
can play it. It's called "do or die." In the fifties we rehearsed many times with
Cecil, but only performed a few times. When I had a band with Roswell in the
'sixties doing all Monk nobody wanted to hear about that. Nobody would hire us.
So we went block by block canvassing to find places to play. We played for
peanuts. But we did what we wanted to do, we heard what we wanted to hear, we
performed what we wanted to perform, we learned what we wanted to learn. Of
course, years later the record from that will sell forever. You have to go through
hard times. People don't want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately,
and this is one of the biggest problems in the world. I think it's very important to
go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it and you have to
persevere or give up. The next day you still sound rotten, and it goes on for quite

a while until one day it starts to get a little better. Something is really happening
in a phase like that.
That's really developing a drive that people don't usually have.
You have to sound sad first of all, then maybe later you can sound good.
Do you have anything you would like to add for the readers of this magazine?
The potential for the saxophone is unlimited. I've been working on the soprano
saxophone for forty years now and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you,
the only limit is the imagination. Circumstances can be very important. Find the
right people to work with. You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately
you must perform with others. I've performed solo for twenty years now, but I
don't do much of it, and I don't do it too often, because it's an exceptional thing to
do. If you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music.
Jazz is people's music, a collectivity. Also, never play anything boring, but play
difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your
appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same, so you must keep
stimulating yourself with good materials to keep your appetite alive.
1997 MEL MARTIN

James Moody
by Bob Bernotas
James Moody (just Moody to his friends) is one of the great treasures of
American Culture. He is still an extremely active player who is always stretching
the envelope. He is one of the most unsung influences on all of the jazz saxophone
world. His music has permeated the universe. He was a close associateof Dizzy
Gillespie and was known as Diz' alter ego. They were musical and spiritual
brothers. Thanks to Bob Bernotas, we have Moody's fine interview from the
Saxophone Journal where he speaks not only of his personal history but his views
on the current music scene, life and spirituality. The last time I caught him was at
Yoshi's with Kenny Burrell. My wife Catey and I went there on my birthday (39th
of course :) and I happened to mention this to Moody. Lo and behold he came out
on the next set and sang Happy Birthday to me accapella. Needless to say, I was
floored. What a birthday present! I'm proud to say here is another good friend of
mine, that great humanitarian, saxophonist and flautist (actually flute holder) the
truly great James Moody.
MM
There aren't many of them left, the original bebop masters, those bold souls who
followed Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and worked with them to create a
fresh, modern musical dialect within the jazz language. You could count them on
the fingers of one hand: drummer Max Roach, trombonist J.J. Johnson,
vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Ray Brown, and saxophonist James Moody.
Born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia ("only because my mother- she was living in
Reading, Pennsylvania-went down to Savannah visiting"), and raised in Newark,
New Jersey, Moody first made his mark in jazz when, after his discharge from the
service in 1946, he joined Dizzy Gillespie's fabled bebop big band. It was the
start of a close professional and personal association that would endure until Diz's
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death in 1993.
Moody spent the late 1940s and early 1950s living and performing in Europe.
During that time he produced a genuine jazz classic, his unforgettable version of
"I'm in the Mood for Love." It was the first of many such soulful, blues-inflected
performances by an artist who, among his many gifts, deserves to be numbered
among the premier ballad interpreters in all of jazz. When Eddie Jefferson fit a
hip, stream-of-consciousness lyric to Moody's solo, and King Pleasure recorded it
in 1952, "Moody's Mood," as it is known, became a surprise hit. Moody still gets
requests for it and he always obliges, singing his famous solo in a charming,
slightly off-center manner.
In 1997 Moody was selected for a much-deserved National Endowment for the
Arts Jazz Masters Award. The honor was presented to him in January 1998 at the
International Association of Jazz Educators convention, held in New York.
He also landed his first-ever acting role, appearing in Clint Eastwood's film
adaptation of the long-time best seller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
"I played the part of `Mr. Glover,'" Moody explains, "a gentleman who walks an
imaginary dog for 20 years in Savannah." Could this be the start of a whole new
career for the youthful, over-70 saxophonist? "I never thought about it," he
admits, "but then afterwards I said to myself, Ì'd like to have a part in something.'
You know, I can't be the romantic lead, but," he adds with a wink, "at home I
am!"
When did you become interested in music?
As long as I could remember. My mother told me when I was a kid she had a
washing machine outside of the house that would go "arookata-arookata." She
said that I used to stand by and dance to the washing machine.
Then we moved to Newark, New Jersey. There was a music store around the
corner called Dorn and Kirchner and in the window there was this saxophone and,
boy, I used to go and press my nose up against that window and just look at those

horns. I loved the way they looked. I had to play one.
And then finally I went to the theater one time. I went to see Lester Young with
Count Basie, but he wasn't there, so it was Don Byas and Buddy Tate. I said,
"That's what I want to do." So that's how I got started.
But even before that I always wanted to play a saxophone. My mother's uncle had
a trumpet but it was in the closet. He said, "Here, play this." I didn't want to play
that. I wanted a saxophone. Then my Uncle Louis bought me one. He and another
one of my uncles contributed together and bought an old, beat-up silver alto.
Who were the saxophonists that you were listening to at that time?
The saxophone player I liked first was Jimmy Dorsey. It's funny how your ear
progresses from the standpoint of listening to things. Jimmy Dorsey was my
favorite and then I heard Charlie Barnet and he was playing "Cherokee," and I
liked him better.
And then I went to the theater and I heard Artie Shaw and Georgie Auld was
playing tenor with him and they had a string section, and boy, that knocked me
out! Oh, man, I dug it! Georgie Auld played "Body and Soul." But when I heard
Pres, I mean, that just took all that out. I said, "No, this is the way I want to play."
Lester Young. That did it.
Then I heard Coleman Hawkins and I heard Ben Webster and I heard Chu Berry.
But the funniest thing about it is that they didn't grab me like Pres did. Although
if I had known something about music then, Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry,
they would have grabbed me more.
What was it about Pres that attracted you?
His sound. Oh man, that gives you goosebumps. At least it did for me. And that
was it. Then I heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy. When I heard them I said, "Uh, uh.
No. This is it. This is what I want to do."

But then as I grew older, I stared saying, "Well, wait a minute, now. Coleman
Hawkins, man." He was playing the hell out of the changes. So was Chu Berry.
But I didn't find that out until later. Well, then naturally the thing to do would be
to combine Pres and Hawk together. I mean, really get into them. Anyway, that's
what I'm still trying to do.
You grew up with a hearing loss, didn't you?
I was born partially deaf.
How were you able to become a musician?
Well, I hear what I hear. I can hear low pitches but I can't hear high pitches.
That's why I don't play high on the flute and I don't play piccolo. I can't hear
them. I have to really listen for the high notes.
And that's why I sound like I have a lisp. But I don't have a lisp, I mean a speech
impediment. It's 'cause I don't hear S's. I can't hear them.
How about playing in a band? Is it easy for you to hear the other musicians?
You know what? I can stand here and the band can play and I can hear every
instrument. I can hear every part.
Did you get to play any music while you were in the Air Force?
You see, people have a misconception about where I was in the Air Force. For
me, I was in a segregated service, it was all separate. Like, the only thing we had
was Caucasian officers. You know, the German prisoners used to do KP for
everyone except us.
And there was a "Negro" band. Don't forget, it wasn't an authorized band because
there were no authorized Negro Air Force bands. I mean they had the Air Force
band. But a quarter of the base was black and they wanted to form a band. So
anyway, it was an unauthorized band, but I learned there. I mean, I learned a lot.

You met Dizzy Gillespie while you were still in the Air Force.
I met Dizzy in Greensboro, North Carolina, when he played at a place called the
Big Top, on the base. That's where we used to have our entertainment, at the Big
Top. So Diz came down with his band. And [trumpeter] Dave Burns and I were
talking to him and we told him we were going to be discharged quite soon and he
said, "Well, when you do come try out for the band in New York."
Did you sit in with him at that time?
No, no. We were just there to hear him and we were talking and somehow or
other it came up that we were going to be discharged, Dave Burns and myself,
and he said, "I'm gonna disband." You know, "I'm gonna disband dis band, and
you can come try out." So that's what we did, here in New York.
That was some incredible band Dizzy had.
Wasn't it?
When you look at it now, it's really an all-star band. But of course at the time it
was just a bunch of new guys who were coming on the scene.
Yeah. Right. And people always say, "How did you feel then, knowing that you
were in such good company?" Hey, when you're doing something, you don't
know. I've told a lot of people-my wife has heard me say this over and over-"If I'd
have known what it was, I probably would have fainted with all that stuff." 'Cause
when I joined the band, [Thelonious] Monk was the piano player and Klook was
the drummer, Kenny Clarke, and Bags [Milt Jackson] was there, too.
There's a photo of that band. If you look at the trumpet section, there was a guy,
"Spider," then Miles Davis, then Dave Burns, then Elmon Wright. Then [in the
saxophone section] you see Cecil Payne, me, Cap [Howard Johnson], John
Brown, and [bassist] Ray Brown and [drummer] Joe Harris. And John Lewis was
on piano then.

I joined the band at the Spotlite on 52nd Street. That was really something, to be
sitting there and look up and see Coleman Hawkins at the bar and Don Byas, Ben
Webster, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman.
You spent a few years in Europe during the late '40s and early '50s. Why did you
go there?
Well, I had a bout with alcohol and I had a bout with benzedrine. My uncle was
living in Paris. He was working for the government. He had a position where he
found housing for the military. And so, my mother wrote to him and said she was
concerned about me. And my uncle said, "Well, Sis, send him over here for a
couple of weeks," just for a vacation or something. So I went over there for a
couple of weeks and stayed three years.
And that's where you recorded your famous version of "I'm in the Mood for
Love."
Right. In Sweden.
I was going to ask if you get tired of talking about it. You're probably even tired
of being asked if you're tired.
No, not at all, because it meant so much to me. It's done a lot for me. And not
only then. It's really a compliment to me when people ask about that, to do it.
There's a story behind it, isn't there?
Yes. First of all, I was living in Paris and [drummer] Anders Burman, he
happened to come down to the Club St. Germain. I was down there and I was
jamming that night. He sat in and played with us and he sounded good, man. So
he said, "Would you like to come to Sweden and make some records with us?" I
said, "Sure." He said, "Well, I'll send you a plane ticket." I said, "No, I don't want
to fly." So they sent me a train ticket.

So I went and when I got there we made the records. We had the arrangements
done by [pianist] Gosta Theselius. Then they wanted one more tune. So I said,
"How about Ì'm in the Mood for Love?'" And he says, "OK."
And [baritone saxophonist] Lars Gullen had this beat-up alto sitting by him. I
said, "You mind if I look at that?" He said, "No. Go ahead." So I picked up the
alto and Gosta Theselius said, "Well, let me go in the restroom." So he goes to the
toilet and he jots down the harmonies to "I'm in the Mood for Love" while he's
there. And he comes out and we do it in one take.
And the reason why it starts that way [he sings the "There I go, there I go"
beginning of the solo], I'm hesitating because I didn't play alto then, I played
tenor. So when it started, I'm just trying to find the notes. And people said, "You
must have been inspired." My inspiration was coming from trying to find the
right notes! That's what it was. That was in 1949.
So after that you started playing more alto.
After that, when I came back to the United States, I had to play alto. It was a hit
and people wanted to hear it exactly like it was played on the record. So I played
that over and over again.
Let's talk some more about Diz. There's this image that so many musicians talk
about-Diz sitting at a piano somewhere working out harmonies, figuring out
chord changes, showing other musicians what is possible. It seems like he was
always thinking about music.
Oh listen, if we'd walk into a place and there was a piano anywhere, Dizzy would
walk in and usually that was the first place he'd go. And he'd sit down and he'd
start playing one of his things. I heard a lot of his compositions like that before
they were made. "Brother K." and "Tin Tin Deo," I heard those songs before they
were put on records because I heard them when he started. And he used to look at
me and point to the keyboard and say, "Moody, this is where everything is-right
there."

And Diz told me that he and Monk spoke a lot about the minor seven-flat five. He
said Monk was the one who showed him that. So if he saw a Cm7b5, he would
think of an Ebm6, rather than a Cm7b5. He said, "That way I can deal with chord
better." And then when I started looking at it I said, "Oh, that's right." Listen to
"Woody 'n You." All those are minor seven-flat fives. [He sings the intervals in
the chord changes]. See?
That's another thing. The kids nowadays, especially going to school, they come
up, they learn the changes. When I was coming up, man, I didn't learn changes
until late. So I still haven't reached my peak yet, really, playing because I'm still
learning how to connect changes.
So what I want to do now is get back with the changes because a lot of times
people just play off the melody. But then in order to get into the meatier stuff,
you've got to be able to play those changes. Yeah.
After you played with Dizzy's quintet in the 1960s you moved to Vegas and
worked there for a number of years. Why?
The reason I went to Las Vegas was because I was married and I had a daughter
and I wanted to grow up with my kid. I was married before and I didn't grow up
with the kids. So I said, "I'm going to really be a father." I did much better with
this one because at least I stayed until my daughter was 12 years old.
And that's why I worked Vegas, because I could stay in one spot. You know,
when you're doing one-nighters, you're leaving, coming back. This way I could
play and come back home.
What was the gig like? I know it wasn't jazz.
No. I started at the Flamingo and my first show was Sandler and Young and
Leslie Uggams. And then we did Tony Bennett. And then they brought me over
to the Hilton and over there I did Liberace, Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, the
Osmonds, Glen Campbell, Charlie Rich, Milton Berle, Dinah Shore, Mike

Douglas, Bill Cosby, Lou Rawls, Ike and Tina Turner, Connie Stevens, Jack
Carter, Paul Anka.
Was it frustrating for you, not playing jazz?
Well, my mother always told me to take something and turn it into an asset. You
know, learn something from it if you've got to do it. So I said, "Well, I'll play this
music and it'll help me play the horn better and I'll be able to learn to read and all
that." And I was trying to learn the clarinet, 'cause you've got to play clarinet, too,
there. You've got to double. So that's what I did. Inside I really wanted to play
jazz, but you can't do both things. So what I did was I tried to turn it into an asset.
And you know what? All that helped me now.
Were there other jazz musician working in Vegas at that time?
[Trumpeter] Red Rodney was there and [trombonist] Carl Fontana was there,
yeah. We were in the same band at one time. And [trombonist] Tommy Turk was
there, too.
So how did you get back into the jazz scene?
Well, what happened was, when I got a divorce I drove back to Newark and
stayed at my mother's house until I got an apartment in Newark. And [pianist]
Mike Longo got me some gigs. There was this woman who was booking, so she
booked me with the Mike Longo trio and that's how I got back on the scene.
Are you encouraged by the current music scene?
Well, there are many, many wonderful jazz players, so jazz is in good hands as
far as the players are concerned. But there is a saying, and it's old hat: "Blessed
are those that run around in circles, for they shall be called Big Wheels." They
should be presenting jazz so that people would be able to listen to it and know
this is good music and it will make you grow, but they don't do that. They're not
interested in the music. They're interested in money.

And it's a fool that does that because with something that's profound, as profound
as jazz is, if it were played so people can really hear it and know what it's all
about, the company would grow immensely. In more ways than one.
Look, you've got all these people on the stage last night. I'm talking about the
American Music Awards. What music? I mean, there was no music at all. And
when it comes to rap, to me "rap" is "to talk," OK? And to me, rhythm isn't
music. Music is harmony, melody, and rhythm combined, together. So what they
do is, they make money off this and they think it's something new, called rap.
But you see, the devil has the world in his hands right now and the only way
people are going to survive is to go spiritually, with God. My wife, Linda, and I,
we're Baha'is and Baha'is believe that there's one country and mankind is one.
That's what we believe. All this other stuff about different races and your kind
and my kind, that's bullshit.
And the reason I'm saying that is because there's no other way to describe that.
You can take all the best words you can say with the most profound, eloquent
speakers, but there's no way to say what I said except saying it's a bunch of shit.
That's what it is.
And jazz is gold, platinum, diamond. Jazz is wonderful. You go to a jazz concert,
do you see anybody want to kill someone or shoot someone or start a riot? That's
because, first of all, music is supposed to express beauty. But the music that they
play now, you feel like you want to kill somebody when you hear it.
And you have all these people in the high positions, and the low ones, too, that
could really elevate everyone if they put something on that was decent. And when
I say decent, I mean some decent music. And that's what jazz is. But the majority
of the people, what they listen to today is a bunch of shit, and I'd like for you to
put it exactly like that because there's no other way for me to say it. It doesn't
sound like "doo doo," it sounds like shit.
People think that they're hip and wise and aware and they know what's

happening, and they don't know from a hill of beans. You know why? When a
magician is doing his tricks he lets you see one hand. That hand is moving and it
takes your eye off, while the other hand does whatever it does.
Well, in music what is it that makes people think that the louder something is, the
better it is? What is it that makes people think that smoke going all over the stage
and chicks shaking their butts or guys with their pants pulled up to their crotches
makes the music better?
And why is it that when someone plays a note and holds it for nine hours-one
note-people think it's great? And why is it when drummers are banging on a drum
set, people are going wild for that stuff, waving their hands up in the air like, "Oh,
boy, this is it"? That's a bunch of crap. None of that is any good. Buddy Rich was
right when he said, "All that music, rock and roll and that stuff, is played by
morons for imbeciles."
Every jazz musician that we know, man, spends just as much time studying, or
even more, than a doctor or a lawyer. I mean, he's practicing. And then some guy
comes along, "Like, I think I'll buy a guitar and I'll be a star next month." And
that's what it is. Turn the electricity up loud and bang, there it is.
What do you practice? What kinds of things are you working on?
Things I don't know. And what is it I don't know? There's many things. I don't
know scales, I don't know chords. Yeah, I know C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, or B-C-D-E-
F-G-A-B. I know to play them from every degree of the scale. But you could look
to eternity, man, and you'll never find everything that there is to play on those
things.
But whatever the bridge is at hand that I have, I try to cross that and do what I
have to do for that and then go back to the regular things, because I've had a
saxophone for over 50 years and still can't play it. You know what I'm saying? I
mean, as long as you have the instrument you try to play it. Some days I wake up
and I say, "Hello," and the saxophone says, "I don't know you." And what you

have to do is you have to persevere. And a lot of times you say, "Oh, man, I'm
playing and nothing's happening," and then a month later you say, "Wait a
minute, I couldn't play that before!" So it's a challenge constantly.
Do you like your own playing? Do you like your own recordings?
No, not particularly. No. If I do something I say, "Oh, that was nice, but I wish I
could do better. Much, much better."
Do you work on sound as well?
Oh yeah, yeah. I work on everything. I work on sound, execution, technique,

endurance, 'cause all that goes with playing music.
What do you recommend for sound?
Long tones. And you know what else? Like right now I'm looking at "26-2" [by
John Coltrane]. So I would advise a musician if you're playing something like
that, play it legato. Because there you're holding the notes and you're going over
the different keys and you're getting flexibility and you're getting endurance and
you're getting your strength in your lip.
When you're playing that thing legato and slow, not only does it give you the
execution-because in order to execute fast you've got to play slow-and endurance,
but it's good for ear training. You see? And I would advise anyone that plays
anything to be able to sing whatever it is you play.
And anything I play, I also play backwards. No matter what it is I play, I play it
backwards. It does something for your ear.
How did you start playing the flute?
Yusef Lateef said to me one time, "Moody, why don't you play flute?" I picked
up his flute and I really didn't enjoy it. I didn't dig it. Then somehow or other a
couple of years later I acquired a flute in Chicago. I wasn't particular about the

instrument and it wasn't that good a flute. I would go to the hotel room and fool
around with it, just for the heck of it. I did that for about a month and then I made
a record on it.
Flute 'n the Blues.

Right. That's it. I really never studied the flute, although I had help from many
beautiful people. Anybody that played flute, I'd ask them to help me-Hubert
Laws, Joe Farrell, Herbie Mann, Brother Yusef. And I still don't have the sound
like flute players have, but the more I play, my sound becomes a little bigger and
better.
So I just got a flute and started "spittin'" into it not knowing what I was doing.
The fingerings, some of them, seemed similar to saxophone, and I just blew like
that and that's how I started. But I think whenever you start a new instrument, you
should immediately get a competent teacher. Get a teacher and learn.
So you don't consider yourself a serious flute player?
No, no. Hell no. I don't consider myself a flute player. Man, I'm a flute holder. I
am a saxophone player who also plays the flute. I play flute, but I don't play flute,
I'll put it that way. That's the way I feel about it.
Do you have any advice for saxophonists who want to double on flute?
Play as many different scales as you can and play them as best as you can. Play
them over and over, because repetition is the thing that really gives you
familiarity with an instrument.
When I say scales, I'm not just saying "C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C." Play them forward,
backward, from each degree of the scale going up, each degree coming back.
Whatever note you might start the scale on, go through that scale and connect it
with another scale. And I mean minor scales, modes, the pentatonic, the minor
seventh-flat five-every scale that you can think of-and then synthetic scales that
you make up yourself. Practice them!

The flute embouchure is different from the saxophone, but that's not a problem.
The first thing I tell anybody is if you're going to play something, go ahead and
do it. Get a teacher and do it. But don't start by thinking about the problems,
because if you think there's a problem, there'll be problems.
It's the same thing with the smaller size of the flute. If you want to play an
instrument and you pick it up and the keys are where they are, learn how to play it
that way. You've got to get the feel of a new instrument. But you can't start by
saying, "The keys are so close together," or, "The embouchure isn't the same."
Repetition brings familiarity.
And as far as intonation in concerned, I think it's what you hear. If you do have a
problem with intonation, it's because you don't listen to other people. You're
supposed to listen to who you're playing with.
You occasionally use synthesizer on your recordings.
Yeah. Crazy about synthesizer. As a matter of fact, Marc Copeland used to play
synthesizer with me. He made some records on it with me, and they were good
ones, too. Then it pissed me off because the producer was telling me that people
don't like synthesizers. I said, "People don't, huh?"
Well, it's like anything, if it's used well, people like it.
Can I tell you something? How do you know when it's used well? Do they think
that I would have someone play a synthesizer with me who wouldn't use it well?
See what I mean? And he used it well. You know what? They still didn't like it.
And you know why? They wanted me sound like I sounded 50 years ago. "Yeah,
we want something straight ahead." Just because you're a certain age, they want
you to be like that.
Like a lot of times, I play and they put me with a lot of old people. Just because
I'm old doesn't it mean I think that way. I want to grow, too. When you stop
growing, you're finished. But you know, and it's all those people, people that

don't know, that are always telling me this. Like producers.
Is there anything that you haven't done in your 50 plus years in music that you
would like to do?
Yeah. Play really, really good. I'm serious. I want to really play really, really
good. And I would like to be able to have a group that I could work with all the
time, just over and over. Because a lot of times, you work this club, that club,
then you go do some gigs with different people, you pick up a group here, there,
there, and it's not the same. You can't grow. I mean, you grow, but it's not the
same.
When it's this guy and that guy, you don't know what it's going to sound like. And
a lot of times you go somewhere and work, and they'll put you with people who
they think will work together. That doesn't go. You know, playing music is like a
marriage. Can't nobody pick a wife for you or a husband for you. You've got to
do it yourself. You know what you like, man.
Any final thoughts?
Jazz is a spiritual music, and anything that's spiritual can't go along with what the
devil does, OK? And for me, that hard metal rock and that stuff, that's the devil's
music. And Baha'i believes that when you play music, you're praying.
There's so many good musicians out there. Every musician I hear can play, and
play well, too. And I just hope that all musicians that are playing now will let God
take over and be more spiritual rather than going along with the things that drive
you towards the devil. Because the world is really screwed up everywhere.
And most of all, learn to love yourself. Then when you love you and you tell me
you love me, I'll believe you. If you hate you and then you tell me you love me,
you're lying.
I wish everybody well. And most of all, study, practice. Just because you learned
something and think you know it, I mean, you don't really know it. I don't care
what you play as well as you play it, it could be played a thousand times better.
So strive for that.
1999 MEL MARTIN

Rufus Reid
by
Bob Bernotas
Reprinted from Jazz Player Vol.5, No.1
Rufus Reid is one of the world's greatest bass players. At least this is what I read
in Downbeat about two years after I witnessed him buying his first bass from a
friend of ours named Malcolm Groves who was the bass player in our high school
jazz band at Sacramento High School. Rufus built his reputation in Chicago, but
he went to high school with me and many other fine musicians in Sacramento,
California. The bandmaster, Aubrey Penman, was an inspiring figure and great
organizer. Rufus was a quiet little cat and played third trumpet. Every now and
then he would stand up and take a little solo and us hotshots would turn around
and go "yeah!". So the world lost a trumpet player but gained a great bassist and
educator. A number of years later, I ran into Rufus at a clinc he was doing at the
University of California at Berkeley. He was up there with an afro and speaking
eloquently about the bass, jazz and improvising. I walked up to him and
congratulated him on finding himself, a truly magnificent event. I used to listen to
him a lot with Dexter Gordon at the old Keystone Corner in San Francisco and
later with Stan Getz. In the last few years, I had the opportunity to work with him
on several fine occasions and he was my bass player of choice for my Benny
Carter recording. So it is with great pride and admiration that I present an
interview with my good friend and colleague the great Rufus Reid, courtesy of
Bob Bernotas, for you to savor. MM
Jazz critics love to call this or that bassist, "the anchor of the band." It's one of
their most well-worn, and least apt, cliches. A far more fitting metaphor-still in a
nautical vein-would be that the bassist is the rudder of the band. Harmonically,
bassists have to navigate through the often dense and deep chord changes, finding
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the notes that give each chord its character and stringing them together smoothly.
Rhythmically, bassists must steer a steady course amidst the unruly eddies and
currents of jazz polyrhythms.
So, in brief, the bass player's job is really very simple: just play the right notes in
all the right places. Then, after all the other players have had their say, the
bassist gets to solo. And nobody does all of these things better than Rufus Reid.
From his days in Chicago during the early 1970s to his current and longtime
tenure on the New York scene, Reid has built a reputation as one of the most
reliable, respected, and sought-after players in jazz. Clearly, when you've been
the bassist of choice for masters like Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, James
Moody, Kenny Burrell, Art Farmer, and J.J. Johnson, well, you must be doing
something right. Alongside his countless sideman gigs, Reid, in partnership with
drummer Akira Tana, co-leads the quintet, TanaReid.
And as if all that were not enough to occupy one busy bassist, Reid is a dedicated
jazz educator. Since 1980 he has served as director of the Jazz Studies and
Performance Program at New Jersey's William Paterson College. He also is an
active clinician and private teacher, the author of two books on bass playing, and
a former panelist for the National Foundation for the Arts. In recognition of this
long record of service, the International Association of Jazz Educators, at it's
annual convention in January 1997, honored Reid with its Humanitarian Award.
BB
Did you begin on the smaller string instruments, like violin or cello, as many
bassists have?
No, I was a trumpet player. I was a brass player, actually, from junior high school-
mellophone, euphonium-but only by default, because they ran out of trumpets.
But I eventually got the trumpet in high school. And then I was in the Air Force
Band as a trumpet player. So on one level I guess you could say I was a
"professional" trumpet player, but that's really a misnomer.
I think I always had an affection for the bass, but I didn't really get into it until I
got into the military and I had a lot of time to practice and I ended up teaching

myself.
So you found your true instrument relatively late.

Yeah, I was between 18 and 19. When I was in a band in high school, whenever
we took a break I always went over to the bass player and kind of fooled with the
bass a little bit. But I never really thought of it as something I would do, until I
was in the military and had a lot of time and there was a bass standing in the
corner. That's where I started.
So I had an affinity for the bass. I was much more comfortable with it. It's funny, I
knew less, but I actually could do more on the bass. So it was much more
satisfying.
When I quit the trumpet I was actually playing better than I ever did play. I was
never a lead player, but I was a good ensemble player. But in retrospect, I wasn't a
very good trumpet player at all. Jazz-wise, I was trying to sound like Miles or
trying to do some things Louis Armstrong would do, but only because I had a
good ear. I had no idea what they were doing until I really began to work with the
bass. Then I began to get into chords and understand that stuff.
Did you get to study bass formally in the Air Force?

I was basically working on my own. There were some guys in the military that
actually helped me. Even though I was a young player they liked my time-feeling
better than the bass player who had the job. 'Course he didn't really care about it
anyway. And then I did some studying with a retired Japanese bass player from
the Tokyo Symphony when I was in Japan.
But I didn't really study the bass until a couple years after getting into the
instrument-I mean seriously. I had gotten hooked, so to speak, and so I said,
"Maybe I better get serious, get me a real teacher and buckle down." I lived in
Seattle for about three years after I got out of the service because my brother lived
there. And so I studied with James Harnett, who was the principle bassist at the
Seattle Symphony at the time. So that was really my first real formal study,
although it wasn't jazz. It was just learning the instrument and playing orchestral
stuff.

So the military was a really wonderful thing for me, whereas it's not a real fond.
memorable event in a lot of people's minds. It really helped change my whole life.
I met some wonderful people and I had some great experiences.
You began your real professional career in Chicago.

Right. I finally went back to college when I was up in Seattle. I went to Olympic
College, which was a two-year community college, and then I moved to Chicago
in 1969 and I finished up at Northwestern, which was great because it was a
heavy-duty music school. So I really had to bear down. And then in Chicago, I
became kind of the house bass player for the Jazz Showcase. I was there about
seven and a half years, and five of those years were pretty intense.
Who were some of the people you played with there?

Well, every week there was somebody-Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Kenny
Dorham, Booker Ervin, Curtis Fuller. That's where I met Kenny Burrell. That's
the first time I got to play with Dexter. Illinois Jacquet, James Moody. Moody and
Gene Ammons used to do a lot of sparring together, so did Sonny Stitt and Gene
Ammons. And of course, Harold Land and Bobby Hutcherson. Eddie "Lockjaw"
Davis, I used to play with him a lot. Zoot Sims, Al Cohn. You know, anybody
who came through town. So there was always something for me to get involved
with.
And most of the people didn't have a book. They came in and called tunes.
Chicago was a "tune town," and if you worked, you had to know a lot of tunes. I
wouldn't say that everyone who came in didn't want to rehearse. Harold Land and
Bobby Hutcherson came into town demanding a rehearsal and were very
particular about what they wanted to hear, and that was really very intriguing to
me. And consequently those were the two people that took me to Europe for the
first time. The Showcase, that was an education in itself, every week.
I would get records if I didn't really know the person's music, the way that they
played, 'cause I would assume if they made this record, this was the way that they
played on a gig, which was not necessarily the case. But at least it was a start.
And so, in a way I was beginning to get a reputation on people's lips. Chicago was

a very, very strategic period for me.
What were some of the skills that you needed to develop in order to cope with that
sort of situation?
Well, as a rhythm section player I think part of the job description is really being
pliable, being flexible enough to find that sweet spot in a person's rhythm, where
they place the beat. And as a bass player it was a challenge. I never really thought
about it so much, I just did it because I had to. It was something that made sense
to me. I tried to connect with all the people I played with. But it was a real
challenge to try to play with everybody.
Were there any particular musicians with whom you worked who were especially
challenging?
Well, Harold Land and Bobby Hutcherson really did it harmonically, and they
were a lot more modern, let's say, more modal, in what they were doing,
especially during that period, although they had this incredible bebop core. But
Bobby Hutcherson was doing all these things with Andrew Hill and stuff earlier
which harmonically were really open. That was probably the most demanding
thing.
I did play with Joe Henderson a little bit at that time, and his music was harder. I
mean, it swung and everything, but harmonically it did other things. It was harder.
You know, playing the blues with Gene Ammons, I mean, it had a big, fat groove
and that was really the most important thing. On Joe's stuff, that was important,
too, but harmonically you had to be more on it. So that was challenging for me.
So it seems like versatility is the most important quality for any bassist who wants
to work a lot.
I think so. And being able to hear, because a lot of times I came up playing and
there were no books, there was no music. And a lot of times I couldn't see the
keyboard. They'd ask me if I know the song. I'd say, "No." So they would just
start the tune. "Well, I'll play a chorus and you just come in." I had to figure out
what key it was in, whether it had a bridge or not, and fumble my way the best
way I could. In a way, the first couple choruses might have been pretty chaotic,

but at the same time I learned how to really hear changes, and then remember
sequences as they go by.
So retaining events that were happening was important for me. And I think most
people liked me because I caught on real fast. This musical savvy is unwritten, but
it's there, and a lot of young students today really don't understand that. You don't
have time to analyze anything, you've just got to go with the flow, 'cause you
gotta play! So to me, that has been my survival kit.
My tentacles were always out. Always. I think that a lot people, that they get
complacent and they get comfortable and their tentacles kind of recede and
sometimes they forget how to get out. And then all of a sudden these people don't
have their senses anymore of how to survive. They can't think fast enough. But as
bass players we have to think fast, because we have that ability to completely
sabotage the band immediately, harmonically, rhythmically, or both.
And It's the bass line, or the attitude of the bass line, I guess, is really what makes
a tune work. I think, maybe, a lot of bass players don't give enough consideration
to the clarity of their bass lines.
What gives a bass line clarity?

Well, the first thing I tell students is they should always play as if there is no one
else in the rhythm section. Assume that there is nobody else to clarify the tune
harmonically, meaning a pianist or a guitarist or whatever. They also should
assume that there is no drummer, that their time is good enough. So without
playing chords, we are able to make the listener hear something that's not
completely all there. Just to say, "Well, I just want to walk a bass line," that's a
cavalier way to think about it.
One thing about the players who are successful, you know, Ron Carter, Buster
Williams, Eddie Gomez, Dave Holland, is the clarity of their playing, and I think
my career has been able to benefit from that. I feel I could play it as if no one else
was around and someone could transcribe my bass line and say, "This must be
this chord." If you can get that clear, then you have arrived, so to speak, at

understanding the sounds.
I spend a lot of time talking about making a bass line satisfy me. It can satisfy me
academically, it can be "correct," but when I play something and I flinch, that
means I didn't like it or I wish I hadn't played it or whatever. There's no "perfect
line," right? But it has to be satisfying. So I actually may go from one bar to the
next and say, "Well, there's something about that I don't like," even though I know
it's correct. It's not wrong. But then I just maybe flip an octave or change a note,
and then I say, "Yeah, I'm satisfied there."
As a player, when you begin to improvise you don't have time to analyze stuff. So
I advocate that a person really should sit down and write out a lot of lines. Not
necessarily transcribing, say, one of Ron Carter's lines, because he did those.
Transcribe your own lines and then say, "Why did I do that? I don't like that."
Well, why didn't you like it? "I don't really know why. I just didn't like it." So you
change it. And if you really are meticulous enough it should take you about a half
hour to write out just one chorus, quarter notes, that would be totally satisfying.
I think bass players end up having to be magicians, you know, illusionists,

because they end up making people believe they're hearing more than they're
hearing, hearing more harmony, hearing implied harmony that isn't really there.
And that adds a lot of color.
But that's because, I think, some of the greatest bass players that I've studied, like
Ray Brown, he's a good pianist. Red Mitchell was a wonderful pianist. Ray
Drummond is a wonderful pianist. People don't hear him play, but he's kind of a
frustrated pianist. But that's why when he solos, he comes up with these other
notes. And the more I became friendlier with the piano and began to understand
the way harmony moves, then my lines were better. My implications were better,
more clear. And my soloing was better.
One of the problems we have as bass players is that we're supporting everybody
with this bass line, but when it comes to our solo, there's no bass line. So
consequently we end up feeling that we have to play a solo which is really more
of a glorified bass line. And it ends up not really being as melodic as one might

like it to be. Now I'm not saying that I want that support from the pianist, because
I don't really want a piano player to walk a bass line while I'm playing, although
sometimes, depending on who it is and how well they are able to do it, it may be
very nice.
I guess this is why most bass players tend to play in the upper register, because it
gets them in the realm of where they feel people will believe that they're soloing,
as opposed to being a "bass player." But I tend to still play in the lower registers,
even though I could play in the upper register, like an Eddie Gomez or a Niels-
Henning rsted-Pedersen or like John Patitucci, now, in particular, or like Michael
Moore, who play a great deal in the upper registers of the instrument
predominantly. I'm more down in the gut part of the bass.
I suppose your big breakthrough came in 1977 when you joined Dexter Gordon's
quartet.
It was an incredible period for me. It's been over 15 years now since I left his
group, for sure, and I'm still reaping the benefits of having played with him. As
loose as he was, he was still clear when he played. He wasn't, as you know, a real
technical, dazzling kind of a player, but he had an incredible sound and he was
demanding enough when he played. He had this huge, robust sound and Eddie
Gladden had this huge, robust sound on the drums, and George Cables had this
huge palette at the keyboard, so I didn't have a choice. And we began to really
work very well together. I really felt I was an integral part of that band.
Dexter was great. We got along fine. It was easy to travel with him. He was so
laid back all the time but we never missed any airplanes, I don't know why. And
he was not a malicious kind of guy. I was always paid, well and on time. And
when he played, he played. Forever.
He was an extremely intelligent man. He came from a well-bred family, his father
was a doctor. He would read the newspaper every day and he was always on top
of current affairs. He had a lot of thoughts about a lot of things. So it was really
nice to be around somebody like that.
And it was a strategic time for him, too, kind of a second chance, in a sense,
coming back to this country and actually reaping some of the things that he should

have had a long time ago. So I had four years of really a great time. We were
busy, we were playing a lot and traveling a great deal, and it still has really fond
memories.
I eventually left the band because as we became busier, it was more difficult for
him to really take care of business sometimes, because of his physical condition.
He was still drinking too much and still dealing with some of the drugs, and it just
got to be a hassle. I was actually having difficulty dealing with that, so eventually
I left before it really got funky, because I loved him so much and I wanted to
leave all the good stuff in place.
That was around the time you joined the faculty at William Paterson College.
What is your role there?
I am the director of the Jazz Studies and Performance Program at William
Paterson. This is my eighteenth year, which is hard to believe. As director of the
program I replaced Thad Jones, who was artist-in-residence,when he decided to
move to Europe. He was a full-time person, but at that time there was no degree
program. So the idea was to create a program that was different from any other
program, if that were possible, and have a real connection to the marketplace,
because of our logistic set-up to New York, and then set up a curriculum that I felt
that was more realistic to the bandstand.
Realistic in what way?

In that, you're not just studying the music, but preparing to be able to hang on the
bandstand. In other words, we're really developing the students' ears, instead of
giving them a test and then grading them on the test and saying, "OK, you're a
good player." We wanted to create an atmosphere so that once they got to the
bandstand it wasn't a culture shock. And I felt that from my experience, good,
bad, and indifferent, we would be able to show the students what works and what
doesn't work.
I learned on the bandstand and you don't have time to analyze, you have to deal.
But as students, we feel that we can stop and we can analyze stuff, we can
rationalize, or whatever, and that doesn't work in the real world. You don't get a

second chance, sometimes, if you can't prove that you actually have some savvy.
And so, we have created the environment where the students perform in a couple
different groups learning a lot of repertoire, a minimum of 25 tunes for each group
with no duplications. So that's 50 tunes, plus their private lessons.
In a nutshell, I helped develop the curriculum that worked-and some of the stuff
that didn't work, we tried it again. And yet, what I do best is play. Even with the
educational thing, what I do best is to play. So when I teach, I play and I talk
about what I'm doing. This is basically why I was hired, because I was able to
communicate, and I enjoy that. It has been a challenge, but I get a chance to work
with a lot of young players and see them develop. And it's made me into a
stronger player.
When students come into the program, what do they need to learn most of all?
Most of them, they want it now, without working for it. A lot of the young
students, their priorities are in the wrong places, in my mind. Not everyone,
obviously, but there are a lot of students who really want to become famous
before they actually know how to play their instruments. This is one thing that
Wynton Marsalis has made very evident, being more knowledgeable about a lot
of things. On one hand, it's been great. On the other hand, it's made some students
put their priorities in a different place because they want a manager and they want
a record contract, but they don't have anything to manage yet nor do they have the
experience.
In May 1992 you premiered a remarkable piece at William Paterson, a three-

movement bass concerto by Benny Golson, Two Faces. Would you like to talk a
bit about that?
I hadn't really worked that hard since I left school. It was fantastic for me, first of
all, that Benny Golson, of all people, would write something for me. He was
asked to do it through the auspices of the school. I had worked with him with the
Jazztet and with his quartet and different things, so he said, "Yeah, that sounds
great," and we went to work. It was over 700 measures, you know? And it was
fantastic. It actually was the greatest thing for me because it made me utilize all
the things that I had studied in school, in the orchestral fashion, and yet it also
utilized all the things that I do as a jazz player.

When I began to really "go underground," so to speak, working on the concerto, it

felt so good. My hands felt good. I wish I could have played it a couple more
nights back to back. I really feel that I could play Benny's piece better now,
although I still need to go back in the woodshed with it, but it made me realize
how much music I didn't know, and how much I wasn't connected with my
instrument. I'm constantly thinking about it, 'cause I would like to record that
piece. But that was a highlight of my career, to have that, basically, dropped in
my lap.
In the last few years you had been working with J.J. Johnson. Has he really
retired?
He's serious. Our last concert was at William Paterson, November 10 [1996]. He
hates to travel, always has, with a passion. And he feels that he doesn't want to
come out and play less than he would like you to hear him. He's been very
adamant about that, extremely concerned about not being up. And of course when
you hear him, you say, "What are you talking about?"
Well, he's gone out on top, which is rare.

That's what he wants. He said, "There are a lot of my colleagues that ended up not
playing as well," I mean really bad, and he says, "I don't want to do that." And
he's made enough money, I guess, that he doesn't really have to. I won't say that
he won't ever play out again, but he's not going to travel with the band anymore.
What impressed you most about working with J.J.?

Just his focus. And when I worked with J.J., when I worked with Benny Golson,
these were incredible gentlemen. Kenny Burrell. They are elder statesmen.
And Art Farmer?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, these are absolute gentlemen, and I think a lot of the
young players don't see enough of that kind of person, not only as heavy-duty
players, but as people.
One of the first records my brother gave me was Walkin' with Miles and J.J., and I
could sing his solos. I was 16. Now, for me to play with him was really fantastic.

So I had this vision when I went to the first rehearsal. I had all these expectations
and it was even more. It was unbelievable. He was very meticulous. After the
rehearsal, I didn't even have to do the gig. The rehearsal was so satisfying and so
wonderful.
When we played together that first night people thought we had been together for
a long time, because J.J. is so very meticulous. He's a ponderer. He really ponders
about how the whole picture looks, not only his part, which he's extremely
concerned about, but how it all works. That's why he hates jam sessions. He hates
the unknown.
We were on the road, and there was one very good concert, one of the real
exceptional ones that I remember, and they were all pretty good. This was outside
of Amsterdam and the place was packed and it just went nuts. The next morning, I
woke up and there was a note under my door. It was a handwritten note from J.J.
saying, "Thank you for last night. You played your butt off." And that really
messed me up.
So I had some really wonderful people to learn from in my career. Eddie Harris
was my first boss. Everything he said, he did. All he wanted you to do was to be
on time and play good. You always got paid on time. So he spoiled me. Nancy
Wilson spoiled me. I never had any problems with Dexter. I never had any
problems with J.J. They set a precedent for me.
So this is also something that we talk about at the school with the kids. I say,
"You don't have to be abused by a lot of people just because you're a musician." I
guess it's easier said than done, but I say, "Many of the problems that we as
musicians have, we've allowed them to happen." If you look good and you come
in on time, you don't have to allow a lot of the crap that we end up having to take,
out-of-tune pianos and all that. You have to learn to speak up, but then you also
have to back it up. The bottom line is, you have to be able to play, all the time.
I mean, Eddie Harris played good every night. And Gene Ammons and all these
people. James Moody, man, you better be in good shape to play with this man.
And J.J. was consistent every night. So he demands you to be the same.

You do get the chance, occasionally, to work as a leader, or co-leader, of your

own quintet, TanaReid. Why don't you say a few words about that?
Akira and I are in our sixth year collaborating. We're working on some new music
for a new album, which we hope will be recorded later this year. So a lot of my
energies are really on that band, because I haven't been this happy in a long time,
as a leader. Although I'm being hired, now, for who I am, on other people's gigs I
still have to play the way that they want me to play. But with this band, I play the
way I play, and it's been very gratifying.
1998 MEL MARTIN

Wayne Shorter
by Mel Martin
Wayne Shorter is one of the most unique and influential saxophonists and
composers performing today. He has spawned a whole new generation of
musicians whose musical efforts reflect his profound and lasting influence. His
career spans several generations, from his early VeeJay and Blue Note
recordings, through his work with Art Blakey and Miles Davis, as well as his work
with the seminal fusion group Weather Report, and his own very creative groups.
I was able to catch up with Wayne at a concert with Herbie Hancock at the
Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. It was the first time Wayne
and Herbie had played together in an acoustic setting in quite some time and was
a delight to hear them as they explored some well worn standards. They came up
with some of the most interesting music I've heard in a while. They were on the
same bill as the Mike Brecker band and some others. Wayne had just that day
purchased a 75,000 series Mark VI tenor and this was his first opportunity to try
it out. In the dressing room backstage Mike, Herbie, and I were all admiring this
instrument which, for all practical purposes, looked brand new with the original
lacquer intact.
More recently, I heard Wayne performing with his own band at Kimball's East,
and once again was blown away by his absolute creativity in what is loosely
regarded as a "fusion" context. He was also playing a tenor which he had
previously owned, and had it gold plated. He was playing compositions from
different parts of his career with as much freshness and vitality as one could.
Wayne has a kind of poetic and creative way of speaking which I've attempted to
capture in print, however, one really has to hear the inflections and tonal
qualities inherent in his human voice to appreciate the full meaning of his words:
much as the way he plays. This interview covers a wide range of topics including
many reflections on his contacts with some of the great saxophonists that were his
mentors, as well as his views on making music. The conversation begins,
appropriately enough, on the subject of saxophones.
file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Shorter.htm (1 of 10) [21. 01. 03 00:08:43]
The Mark VII is a very heavy horn. It makes you use muscles that are not
necessary. Your muscles get tired; muscles that don't even lead to your fingers.
Johnny Griffin was telling that he was playing one and the sleeves of his clothes
would get caught in the side keys. He said it played good, but it messed him up.
Uh-huh. And also the high register top notes had a tendency to crack. It's just not a
thoughtfully built instrument. The one I have now I just got today. It was built
somewhere around the late fifties or early sixties. That's the kind of horn I had
when I was with Art Blakey and Miles Davis. All horns are different, but I heard
this particular one had sat under the bed of a grandfather for twenty years. A lady
walked in the store with the horn and said, 'Her grandfather's horn was up for
grabs.' The store owner knew right away that was one of those saxophones that
has "it," whatever "it" is. I think Coltrane had one of those horns.
He had a Selmer Balanced Action didn't he? But later on he got a VI. That certain
vintage of Mark VI was certainly a good one.
Yeah, it makes you feel like a violin player. It makes your hands feel like you're
doing something violinistic or pianistic. Other horns made today are geared
toward some kind of honking and rock 'n rollish, muscular chainsaw results on the
bandstand. Why not have that Stradavarius spirit with every instrument? Every
instrument should be a Stradavarius according to the desire of the player. People
have different desires. Some don't even care. It's good to know that there is a
workmanship that's equal to performance. Or there was workmanship that existed
that in my estimation is equal to the highest performance that someone can do
with or without an instrument. I don't know what happened to all that. Maybe
there were some patent arguments; people wanting to copy that and not paying the
royalties due. I bet if I look it up there was a court suit and all that.
I don't know. I think maybe it has a lot to do with manufacturing costs and the
care it takes to make a good instrument. The guy making it really has to follow it

through.
The Mark VII I have is good. It has another kind of sound, heavy kind of sound.
The first horn I ever played was a Martin. I remember playing that horn on a stage
with Sonny Rollins in Newark, New Jersey at a place called Sugar Hill. I was in
the Army and I had a weekend off. This was when Max Roach and Sonny Rollins
were playing together, right after when Clifford Brown died. I walked into the
club in uniform and Max waved to me to come on up, but I went home and
changed clothes first (laughter). We played Cherokee real fast. A guy named Pete
Lonesome recorded that. What a name! He was from West Virginia and as far as I
know he still has that recording somewhere. Pete, please contact this magazine.
He put the mic right on the stage. Pete Lonesome. Anyway, the saxophones I had
were ripped off from me. Three times. One time I was with Coltrane. We went
from New York to New Jersey. He had a gig there with Miles Davis and he
wanted me to ride with him. He asked me to come over to his house a lot at that
time, and that night he had a gig. He said that the last time he was at this place
somebody stole his horn. It's a funny thing. I went into that same place a later time
with Art Blakey and The Messengers, and wouldn't you know somebody stole my
horn, Curtis Fuller's trombone, his raincoat and his goulashes! He said, 'What
would somebody want with my goulashes?' His driver's license and all that was
taken also. He didn't feel so bad when I told him someone took 'Trane's horn too.
Then he calmed down. When I was with Miles' band somebody stole my horn
from the limousine in which it was locked. It was a professional job. They stole it,
and relocked the car. Miles said, (Wayne imitates Miles' raspy voice) 'That's the
shit. Professional!' (laughter) But he helped me to get a new horn. He laid some
bread on me because we were working non-stop then, and I got the horn. I paid
him back real fast. He was surprised.
I remember one night you were playing with Blakey at the Jazz Workshop in San
Francisco and you had an old Bundy that was falling apart, with rubber bands
and glue and Art came over and asked me if you could use my Selmer, which you
did for a set.
Yeah, and that's when I joined Miles, with that Bundy. He called me and said,

'Come to California.' I was living in New York at the time. Miles said, 'Bring what
you've got.' He sent me a first-class ticket and I flew to California. Within a
couple of days we walked on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. But before we walked
out, he said, 'Do you know my music?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, "Uh, oh!" So we
went out and the first thing we started off with was Joshua. I played the harmony
parts with him. We went through a lot of things and I knew them all. I had worked
on that music at home, plus I had been checking Miles out since I was fifteen, as
well as Bird. Including the body English and the sound and how the two played
together. I got a lot of my ensemble work together with Lee Morgan and other
people.
I've got your first record on Veejay Records, 'Introducing Wayne Shorter' and
Lee's on there, as well as Wynton Kelly, Paul Chamber, Jimmy Cobb. There must
have been at least four or five of your compositions that nobody's ever heard
since. Hardly anybody plays them, but they are really good compositions. You're
one of the most prolific writers. I went through my record collection, knowing we
were going to get together, just to think about things. I must have more records
with you on them than any other single player, and I've got a large collection.
You've had a very prolific career and I admire it greatly. I've also been checking
out your new records which are a whole new step. Maybe you could talk a bit
about what you've been doing with your own bands. It seems to me that you're
obviously having a great time exploring the new technology and the new
instruments which are available.
Yeah, just having some fun. What seems like new music is only what I already
thought of in the first place. The word "jazz" means to me no category, but when
you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the "jazz emblem"
or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you
keep fermenting the 'fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to
me means no category, then I've got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds
like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it's what I wanted to do in the first
place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed
something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but
expression really doesn't mean anything to me because there's a lot of work which

goes into building a drama and then it's up to other people to offer "expression."
Expression is such a nebulous thing.
I have seen some of your scores and it's some of the most detailed music I've ever
seen. So I know what you do is not a random thing that just falls off accidently.
It's something that you've thought about in great detail.
I'd say composing is improvisation slowed down. I'm working on something now
that I'm trying to finish. If you want to call it classical, go ahead. I won't even
have to play on it. It's for full orchestra and we did part of it in Japan already.
Richard Stolzman was the guest soloist. He and I played together with the New
Japan Orchestra, which is Seji Ozawa's workshop or home orchestra. In that
orchestra there were Europeans and everything, all mixed, not just people
indigenous of Japan. We had fun, and they recorded it somewhere with the
microphone under the stage, so I've got the first seven minutes of it. I'm working
on it now and I'll complete it soon. When I was with CBS, they were talking about
Sir George Solti conducting this piece. I'm not with CBS now. I had a manager
who ended it while I was on the road. When the cat's away, the mice will play
type of relationship. That happens all over, managers dealing and piling up
contracts and they say, 'Well, we keep you working!' Now I'm record contract free
and manager free.
I'd be interested in knowing how you feel about a lot of the current generation of;
let's use the term jazz players, but there's a lot of young cats who are really
paying their obligation to you both in compositions and in playing. I hear it a lot.
There are older cats, too, but in my understanding, the young generation, the
"Marsalis generation" let's call it, is heavily influenced by you. How do you feel
about that? You must have noticed?
Well, it's almost the same as a lot of these classical composers who think, where
do you go after Stravinsky? In the world of music, you don't hear any real
explosive turn of events. I think the place where you might hear something
explosive like that would be in jazz action.

But there hasn't been any real explosions in jazz for at least twenty, maybe twenty-
five years.
Right, but I'm saying that should be a place where you can expect something like
that to happen. What I think was happening was in the whole spectrum of musical
styles and everything. There is an inconspicuous change that doesn't always have
to be explosive. I heard a song written and sung by Melissa Manchester. I always
liked Melissa, and this song she did at this five hour show called our Common
Future with John Denver, Christopher Reeves (Superman), Diana Ross, Herbie
and Joni Mitchell and those people. Melissa did a song early in the program. I was
just talking with her yesterday. She was saying she doesn't write a whole bunch of
music, what she writes is usually simple, and what she's aiming at writing now is
for adults. In this song she made the hair on hairless people move (laughter). We
didn't come on until last, so we went back to the hotel to watch the beginning. The
phone would ring, 'Did you hear that?' We had a suite and people would knock on
every door saying, 'Did you hear that song by Melissa Manchester?' Later on my
wife met her backstage and my wife grabbed me and said, 'This is Melissa.' I said,
'Who wrote that?' Melissa said, 'I did.' I gave her a hug and said, 'I want it!' She
just sent it to me last week. This song she wrote is a departure from her
"Woodstock Superstar Rock 'n Roll" stature. It's called Sometimes I Feel Sorry
For God. It's not recorded yet, so she sent me the demo. I think I'm going to cover
it. It's a moving song. It really touched everybody. So, it's that kind of
inconspicuous evolution that's going on. It makes it's mark just as much as an
explosion. If an explosion happens, it kind of means that everybody's dumb
because they didn't see it coming.
Musicians like yourself obviously were influenced by certain elements, but your
talents were fully formed by the time you hit the scene as far as I could judge from
your first album. And I heard you right along from when you were first with
Blakey through Miles. Your talent has always been there as an individual. You're
very identifiable as an individual in your writing and in your playing. A lot of cats
now are checking out what's gone before them almost to the point of not
developing their own individuality as much. When Ornette hit the scene there was

a real individual, like when 'Trane hit the scene, and when Sonny hit the scene.
You knew from the time those guys were nineteen years old that they were strong
individuals making strong statements. You just don't seem to see that as much any
more. There's some really strong young players.
Most of the players, when they hit the scene, were really well versed in Charlie
Parker. Sonny Rollins still has the respect. I can hear it in the spiritual respect that
he adheres to when he was digging Charlie Parker and Bud Powell.
That's what Joe Henderson said, that in Detroit you knew every Charlie Parker
tune, even to just show up at a jam session. In fact, it goes back to Lester Young.
The great players listened to Lester Young. I've been checking him out since I was
about fifteen. When I was in the Army I got ten days off, so I went to Canada, and
he was playing at the Town Tavern. During intermission he came down to where I
was standing at the bar, the place was packed, and he said to me, 'You look like
you're from New York.' I had a pin-strip suit on (laughter). I was trying to get a
drink at the bar and he said, 'Do you want some Cognac?' I said, 'Yes.' He said,
'Let's go down to the wine cellar and get some real cognac!' He grabbed two big
water glasses and went down there. I went back to camp and I told these people.
They said, 'You were talking with Lester Young?' And then about five weeks after
that he passed away. I also knew his niece, Martha Young, who has passed away.
I also saw him walking in at a theater in Newark, New Jersey. It was called The
Grand Auditorium at that time, but it's now called The Masonic Hall. He was late.
Everybody was up on the bandstand playing: Charlie Christian, Stan Kenton's
band, Charlie Parker, and all that. He was walking through the theater lobby with
a kind of upward slope on his pork-pie hat, a long coat with wrangling sleeves and
what we called Studebaker shoes, and he was moving just as slow as he wanted
to, you know. He had the look on his face like, 'Hey, isn't this the way it's
supposed to be?'
You know Sonny Rollins, and you also knew Coleman Hawkins. Could you share
some interesting stories about these two jazz greats?

Sonny Rollins and I talked quite a bit when were on the road in Japan riding the
bullet train, the busses and all that. We didn't talk about music all that much. We
talked about health and being healthy. He'd say, 'you've got to take care of your
health!' We talked about the time he fell off of the stage. His wife, Lucille, is
always with him and was very concerned. He was still carrying his tenor and
soprano while getting on the bullet train. I said, 'Sonny, haven't you got anybody
to carry that for you?' He said, 'Instead of eight weeks, I'll make it two weeks.'
Sonny doesn't like to do long tours any more.
Coleman Hawkins and I used to sit together all the time we were on the road in
Europe years ago. He'd say, 'Get yourself a mouthpiece made,' in a gruff voice. He
was into custom made mouthpieces.
John Coltrane was a big influence on you. You mentioned earlier that you used to
practice with him?
Yes, when I left the Army I was working with Horace Silver, like for a couple of
weeks. We were working at this one place in New York and this lady came up to
me and said, 'My name is Anita. My husband wants to meet you.' I was back in
the kitchen working on my horn and she went back and got her husband, who was
John Coltrane. She said, 'He likes what you're doing.' He said to me, 'You're
playing that funny stuff, all over the horn.' He invited me to his house, so I went.
It was very nice to meet him because I knew he was the only one that was on to
something musically that was moving. When I was in the Army we used to go to
DC and see Miles with 'Trane and Cannonball. So I went to his house, and they
wouldn't let me leave! They were cooking and we'd sit and talk about life, and
he'd play the piano, and then stop, and then we'd compare horns. He'd say, 'That's
a nice horn, but if you can get one of those old mouthpieces ... I think you have to
shake that horn up, separate the molecules.' I later looked around horn shops for
the kind of old Link mouthpiece he recommended. Anyway, after that, John called
me, Freddie Hubbard, and some other people to work with him at Birdland on a
Monday night. The group opposite them was Cannonball's group. They were both
still with Miles, but that was their off night. People twenty-five years after that
said, 'That was a hell of a night!'

So it was you, 'Trane and Freddie .
Yeah, and Cedar Walton, Tommy Flanagan and George Tucker. And then who
walked in the door but Elvin Jones, so he sat down on the drums. We were
playing all this new stuff. We were actually playing Giant Steps.. John had written
Giant Steps by then. I was like walking through it. And then we did some
standards. Cannonball's group would come on with the rhythm and blues thing,
then we'd come back on with the new thing, looking to the future. After that, John
said he wanted to leave the Miles Davis group and move on. He told me, 'The gig
is yours if you want it.' But, that's about the time I joined Art Blakey instead.
You had been with Maynard Ferguson a little bit, right? Did you ever play with
Monk?
Hmm... maybe one time sitting in at The Five Spot with Art, but I can't remember
many details. I played with Bud Powell once at the Olympia Theater in Paris. It's
a recording.
Were those musicians much of an influence on you? To me, you are as

individualistic as Monk was. You're
both composers and idiomatic in your own right. Was Monk much of an influence
on you?
I liked what Monk was doing. It was very spiritual to state what you're going to
state and not just jump on a band wagon. Monk would say, 'Stick to your guns.'
Musical influence for me came from movies, the way people acted on the screen
or the stage. I would think, 'I want to do something the way Humphrey Bogart did
in that movie.' When Marlon Brando would do something I'd say, 'Wow, play
that!' Or a total movie that was done well and got into your life. I'd get so into the
film I'd forgot I was in the theater. The idea is to transcend music. And also to
transcend the academia of music. Something else manifests, something else takes
place. Theoretically you can say that any sound is neutral, but with the human
element and the response or reaction, any song begs to differ.

Then you're saying there's something beyond the mechanics of music. You're
looking to find that other element and to literally play to it.
Yes. Like when you get in a cab sometimes and people know that you are a
musician, they will turn to a music station right away. We were driving to the our
Common Future thing, and Andy Summers from the band The Police was sitting
next to me. When the driver turned on the radio, Andy said, (using a British
accent) 'Would you mind turning that off please? I'd rather listen to the music of
life for a change?' I don't play music (recordings) when I am at home. One thing I
could never do is play something over and over again. If I have it, I know it's there
to be played over and over, but to actually confirm this "something" the value of
playing it over and over and over again is like a web that's spun but you can't get
out of it. When you become neutral the music is more alive than you. That goes
for anything, even eating too much ice cream. The ice cream is very much alive,
but you're dead. The same with liquor, cocaine, and drugs, dwelling on something
so that you have to end up in an institution.
You don't want to lay that on the music. Some people get very attached to what
they are trying to do, and it's an easy trap to fall into; to get so involved with that
music.
Three attachments usually need to suffer. That's what a guy named Sokyamuni
said about three thousand years ago in India. I don't usually talk about music that
much. I'm doing a lot of drawing and painting now.
As I remember, you did cartoons as a youngster. I've seen these somewhere. You
had mentioned to someone I know that you had your original cartoons laminated
so they would be saved.
Yes, I'm doing a lot of that now as to make an effort to put 100% of myself into
all the other aspects of living.
Photo of Wayne Shorter and Mel Martin by Catey Martin
COPYRIGHT1992 Mel Martin

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MEL MARTIN'S JAZZ and SAXOPHONE WEB SITE

Reprinted from The Saxophone Journal January/February 1991

Volume 15, Number 4

One of the great pleasures of doing interviews is getting to know other

file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Bill%20Pierce.htm (1 of 13) [20. 01. 03 23:58:16]

Then I went to college and I never considered that I would be able to be a

After high school I went to Tennessee State on a work-study scholarship, and by

By that time my family told me to go to Berklee College in Boston, which I

file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Bill%20Pierce.htm (2 of 13) [20. 01. 03 23:58:16]

Who was teaching at Berklee at that time?

Joe Allard was at Berklee?

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The Boston Underground!

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Do you do much writing?

Do you ever pass some of your tunes onto your students?

When did you actually start teaching at Berklee?

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Did you study cat's solos or transcriptions?

file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Bill%20Pierce.htm (10 of 13) [20. 01. 03 23:58:16]

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COPYRIGHT 1991 Mel Martin

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This thoughtful, soft-spoken native of Lawrence, Kansas, began his musical

file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Bobby%20Watson.htm (1 of 8) [21. 01. 03 00:00:11]

Watson believes that it is unnecessary for an aspiring jazz musician to earn a

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discovering talent within himself he was not really aware of."

file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Bobby%20Watson.htm (4 of 8) [21. 01. 03 00:00:11]

evolution of his sound. "He keeps working on articulation, he keeps working on

Watson reflects on the difficulties of being a leader, "trying to keep a band

So he works for himself, as if any creative artist in a business controlled by pony

file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Bobby%20Watson.htm (5 of 8) [21. 01. 03 00:00:11]

`I should be doing this, I should be doing that.' So wherever I am, I deserve to

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Bird interviewed by Paul Desmond

P.D. - yeah, how to play any horn.

C.P. - yeah, that I don't think there's any answer to...

P.D. - like the way you were speaking, John.

file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Desmond+Bird.htm (1 of 9) [21. 01. 03 00:01:18]

P.D. - yes, that's what I wondered.

P.D. - Oh - yeah. I guess that's the answer.

C.P. - that's the facts anyway. (chuckle)

P.D. - yeah, they do. They just go out...

J.M.- It isn't necessary to do this.

J.M. - I'm glad to hear you say this.

C.P. - that's absolutely right.

P.D. - what other record?

C.P. - which one shall we take this time?

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J.M. - Why don't we listen to it then, and talk about it?

P.D. - boo-koo horn?

file:///D|/My%20Documents/EDUCATION/INTERVJUI/New%20Folder/Desmond+Bird.htm (4 of 9) [21. 01. 03 00:01:18]

P.D. that's quite a collection.

P.D. - I'm hip. (laughter)

J.M. - so shall we spin this1942 one?

J.M. - Ok this is "Groovin' High" with Dizzy and Charlie.