FROM THE BRIDGE TO CARNEGIE HALL

Friday night, I interviewed saxophonist Sonny Rollins for the Metroitimes, a weekly newspaper in Detroit, MI. It was my second telephone interview with him. I interviewed him in 2005 weeks before his performance at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, MI. Friday night, we talked like inseparable chums at a neighborhood pub mostly about his heroes, his love for playing in a trio format, and his practicing habits.

Rollins remembered our '05 interview, which made me feel special because I know I'm among a vast pool of jazz journalists who asked him to revisit key moments of his life.

Rollins used some profanity only to emphasize a points he wanted to convey.

He cherished knowing saxophonist Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins. To Rollins, they were elegant jazz musicians, and he wanted to be like them.

His comments about practicing stuck to my ribs. As a youngster, he practiced religiously. He say practicing remains a spiritual process. Young musicians need to understand practicing got him to places such as Carnegie Hall.

The above photograph of Rollins hugging his tenor sax caught my attention. Before the second interview, I thumbed through the companion booklet from the box set Sonny Rollins The freelance Years(The Complete Riverside & Contemporary Recordings).

In the photo, Rollins looks meditative as if praying with his horn. The photo captured a certain spiritual quality that I think is telling.

By the way, my interview with Rollins will be published in the Metrotimes Wednesday Oct. 12th.

RUMBLE AT CARNEGIE HALL

I've heard some memorable tenor saxophone battles. "Eddie "Lock Jaw" Davis and Johnny Griffin slugged it out on "Looking at Monk!" and "Live at Mintons". Dexter Gordon and Booker Ervin went toe to toe on "Setting The Pace"

Courtesy of YouTube, I got to witness tenor bout between saxophonist Joshua Redman and James Carter. They're engaged in a battle of will and skill.

If bookies were taking bets, I would've dropped a bundle on James Carter for obvious reasons. Carter is a Detroiter. Secondly, I've never seen a saxophonist of any generation let it all hang out like Carter does during his live performance.

The guy can throw some mean power shots. If you need proof just listen to "JC On The Set" and "James Carter Live at Baker's Keyboard Lounge. If you aren't convinced Carter is pound for pound the one of the best saxophonist of his generation, there's something seriously wrong with your ears.

Redman doesn't have a glass chin. He can deliver some wicked punches. Whereas Carter is a brawler, Redman is all finesse. Just listen to his albums "Wish" and "Moodswing".

This was a blood and guts tenor bout. Carter came out aiming for the head. Redman countered note for note, working the changes to "Straight No Chaser" like a speed bag. The battle was too close to call. I want to see a rematch. Until then checkout this video footage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-00h49-YDE

DETROIT RHYTHM

Playwright Bill Harris

Last Saturday, playwright Bill Harris and I hung out in Ann Arbor. We spent the afternoon shopping for jazz albums. We had lunch at an Indian restaurant where I asked the playwrights about his interest in jazz music, and how it has influenced his writing. Harris has written several plays that have jazz themes. The most acclaimed is “Coda”. His latest work is “Cool Blues” about the life of bebop icon Charlie Parker
--Charles L. Latimer

I Dig Jazz: In all the years that I’ve known you, as many concerts that we’ve attended together, and all the records that you’ve loaned me I never asked you how you got interested in jazz music.

Bill Harris: When it really hit for me I was 13 or 14. Dave Garroway had a radio show from Chicago, and pianist Marian McPharland had an record called at the Hickory House” This was when they had EP’s before there were albums. This program was on at night. I heard McPharland play Friday night, and Saturday morning I went to Sears in Highland Park to look for the record. It was on three EP’s which back then constituted an album.

IDJ: What was it about McPharland that struck you?

BH: I don’t know if it was what she said about jazz or how she played on the album. Whatever it was somehow it stuck with me.

IDJ: Were there other jazz albums that piqued your interest?

BH: Around that time my mother lived in a two family flat. She was down stairs, and it was these girls that lived upstairs. I was interested in the girls that lived upstairs. There mother had these Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie album ‘Massey Hall’. That album really caught my attention as much as the girls did. Somehow I ended up with that jazz album. If you have to began somewhere with jazz that album is the place to start.

IDJ: The cats that you hung around were they into jazz too? Or was it just your thing exclusively?

BH: I had a friend that was my age. All his brothers were older than him. They were really hip. I lived across the street from them. They were into jazz. They knew Dorothy Ashby. They knew the whole generation of Detroit jazz musicians. People would be over to their house. I was there with them, but I was digging what his brothers were doing. They were a generation older, and they were into everything that was hip. I got into Yusef Lateef because they had all his albums.

IDJ: Back then, was jazz popular?

BH: It was the time of house parties. It was the Doo-Wop era. That was the music that they played at those parties. I started carrying an album that held EP’s. I carried Yusef's EPs and ‘Senor Blues’ by Horace Silver. That was my thing because you could dance to it. It was 12 minutes long and you could partner up and dance to it.

IDJ: How did your peers react when you showed up with those jazz records?

BH: The crowd was generally hip. So you could get away with doing something like that.

IDJ: By that time were you a full-fledged jazz junkie?

BH: By the time I got to college jazz was essentially the popular music, and there were places where you could go to listen to the music like the Minor Key. It wasn’t an alcohol place and everybody played there. One week Monk would be there. The next week the Jazz Messengers would be there, and the next week John Coltrane performed. I remember this concert at the Broadway Capitol that was downtown. It was on of those all-star shows. Dinah Washington headlined. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers played. I don’t know if it was my first time seeing them. I just know after hearing them I was blown away. My interest in jazz increased. I saw at this concert how sharp they were. I started to dress like the Messengers. They had these double-breasted blazers, gray slacks, and these boots. They were all-young and were making the music. I was able to see all these people, and it was affordable. I think it cost a dollar to get in to see them.

IDJ: When you got drafted into the army did you keep up with the music?

BH: When I went into the army I was cut off from what was happening.

IDJ: You were only there two years, right?

BH: It easy for you to say only two years when you weren’t in the motherfucker.

IDJ: Are you saying that for two years you didn’t have access to the music?

BH: In terms of live music. The only live music that I saw was in Europe. I was in Munich. I saw Mel Waldron, which was a really hip experience. I was just walking around and saw these signs on the telephone poles that Mal Waldron was going to be playing somewhere. It was this really hip out of the movies kind of thing. I met people that had known Eric Dolphy when he was in Europe. So we talked about that. It was a great afternoon.

IDJ: Did you start writing plays in the army.

BH: I wrote my first play on the way home on the airplane.

IDJ: How has jazz music influenced your writing?

BH: Through rhythm is the one thing. When I went to New York actors would always say that I wrote with a Detroit rhythm. I think essentially what they were saying that I wrote with a bebop rhythm. I always try to be aware of the rhythm of language how people speak, and I use that as the basis for how my characters.

IDJ: What do you think about where jazz music is now?

BH: For me the energy has gone out the music. You have cats that are proficient at recreating. But there is a fine line between recreation and creation

IDJ: Are there any up and coming cats that you have listened to recently who will impact the music like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman did?

BH: Not unless Jesus and God comeback hand in hand. That kind of innovation ain’t going to happen anymore.

IDG: Why do you feel that way? Aren't up and coming cats being exposed to the same kind of training that Bird, Coltrane, and Coleman got?

BH: I think there is lesser of a musical community. Back in the day, in the Detroit jazz community, there was an extended family. Any jazz musician could walk up to a young jazz cat ask him if he knew the changes to ‘How High the Moon’ and if he didn’t know he would get popped upside the head, or someone would pull him aside and show him. So he wouldn’t embarrass himself the next time that he left the house.

IDJ: How did that kind of community outreach get lost?

BH: It got lost through the generations. Plus, older cats just got tired. They have to make the rent. The economics changed. There are not a lot of clubs where young cats can go to hang out with the older cats. And the respect for elders is not there. I think we now live in a time where young cats think older cats can’t teach them anything.

IDJ: Your tasted in jazz music is eclectic. You are not stuck in one era of the music. How were you able to avoid that?

BH: I’m not sure that I understand would you are asking.

IDJ: Well Ralph Ellison, for example, couldn’t get beyond the jazz music of his generation. He was very indifferent and critical of how the music progressed over the years. He said some disparaging things about Miles Davis and the other jazz musicians of Miles’ generation. It was as if Ellison believed those cats didn’t measure up.

BH: I see. I’ve gotten through all that. What I buy now is post-bop stuff. I hung in there with Coltrane until he went way out. That's when he lost me. It was too far out there for me so I left it along. I did listen to Archie Shepp, and Don Cherry. That was kind of the natural evolution because once I found the Detroit Writers Workshop that’s was the kind of music those people were into. They had this in house band with Charles Moore, and Kenny Cox. I would do a reading, and after that cats would set up and play music. In terms of the music and the evolution I’m now into really looking at cats such as Fred Anderson and Ken Vandermark, dudes out of Chicago that are still making interesting music.

IDJ: Did you ever find any of the jazz fusion music interesting?

BH: No! Not in the least. It was too diluted. I still don’t like synthesizers. That sound isn’t interesting to me at all.

IDJ: How would your life be if jazz wasn’t a part of it?

BH: It probably wouldn’t be. I mean it is such a close relationship that it would be like trying to separate babies that are co-joined at the heart.

JAZZ FOLKS THE SERIES

A lot of people are involved with jazz music who are not jazz musicians that I find interesting. The musicians make the music, and what I call jazz folks purchase it, attend jazz concerts, write jazz blogs, create fan based websites for their favorite jazz artists. I see these folks at various jazz concerts, festivals, and occasionally at record stores. I have befriended some of them, and have come to rely on them to keep me abreast of what is happening on the jazz front.

There's this guy that I've seen at every jazz concert I've attended over the last decade. I kid you not. He's a slim Asian guy. He wears eyeglasses. His hair is long, and he normally sports faded jeans and a khaki colored jacket. I've seen him at smooth jazz gigs, avant-garde shows, and straight ahead be bop oriented concerts. Sitting there by himself bobbing his head back and forth soaking up every note of music.

For years now, I have wondered what his story is. For example, where he works? Who introduced him to the music? How he finds the time to attend every major jazz concert in Michigan? And how different his life would be if jazz music wasn't a part of it?

There are more jazz lovers out there. I want to hear their stories.

DAVID MURRAY

David Murray
Scare Ground
Justin Time
***

David Murray has to hold the record for the most albums ever released by a jazz artist. The saxophonist has 223 albums in his discography, which doesn’t include the albums he made with the World Saxophone Quartet, or his work as a sideman. Given the mileage the guys has racked up you’d think he’s dangerously close to running out of gas.

"Scared Ground" is Murray’s new addition to his massive discography, and perhaps his leanest album to date. It’s only seven tracks deep. And there’re no indications that creatively Murray is running near empty.

Stellar cuts such "Transitions, "Pierce City and Believe In Love" show that Murray has mellowed out considerably. That’s not to suggest he can’t still cook when he wants to.

Murray cooks on "Family Reunion" while doing a bunch of circus tricks on his horn, hitting notes from every conceivable angle. "The Prophet of Doom," a blue written by novelist and poet Ishmael Reed and sung with a lot of confidence and sass by vocalist Cassandra Wilson is the best of the seven tunes.

I’ve never been a big fan of the vocalist. She mumbles too much, making it seem as if she bashful or lack confidence. I've always had a difficulty hearing the lyrics she sang. That's not an issue on this albums. She enunciates clearly, and saunters through the songs like an experienced blues singer.

There are several outstanding solos by pianist Lafayette Gilchrist. The pianist style is akin to the late Don Pullen. (Gilchrist will be major force when he finds his own voice.)

Murray has served up a handful of duds out of 223 recordings I’m sure, but Scared Ground isn’t one of them. Murray is nowhere near burning out. He has simply learned how to pace himself.

JAM ON

Wednesday nights at Baker’s keyboard Lounge for the past ten years have been a special affair. The late pianist Teddy Harris led a jam session at the legendary jazz club that became sort of an unaccredited musical finishing school for up and coming jazz musicians, as well as a venue where seasoned vets could keep their chop strong. Along with a bunch of great music, Harris was able to maintain order, which from what I have witnessed sitting in the audience at numerous jam sessions, is uncommon.

In the wrong hands the sessions are nothing more than an outlet for undisciplined show boaters. I don't have enough fingers or toes to count the number of times that I saw Harris stop in the middle of a tune to chastise a musician who jumped on the bandstand to take an unsolicited and less than well conceived solo. Harris required those who participated in the session know the composition at hand from top to bottom before getting on the bandstand.

Harris stopped running the sessions when he got ill. Others tried to fill his shoes. Harris set the bar high. The sessions where never the same after he stopped leading them. Pianist Tad Weed took over, and from what I've heard, the guy did a competent job, but not to Harris' standards.

Now the reins have been given to guitarist A. Spencer Barefield, one of the driving proponents of Detroit avant-garde jazz and a respected jazz man. It was Barefield that put on that wonderful jazz program in the 90’s with his organization the Creative Arts Ensemble. The concerts were featured at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

This Wednesday night was the guitarist's first night running the show. It is safe to assert the legacy Teddy Harris established is in good hands.

Barefield adhered to the straight-ahead brand of acoustic jazz that Baker’s is known for. With a trio that included bassist Don Mayberry and drummer Djallo Djakate Keita, the guitarist was firing on all four cylinders.

Barefield brushed the dust off forgotten gems by Thelonious Monk such as “Ugly Beauty” and “Raise Four”, and familiar standards by Miles’ Davis’ “So What” and “Kind of Blue”. Barefield set on a stool thumping out some beautiful chords. He established a comfortable groove that he didn't deviate from.The drummer, who normally plays with free jazz ensembles, turned down his style a few notches, which made for engaging trio drumming.

Later in the evening, the tenor saxophonist Paul Anderson joined the trio. I'd never heard of him. He just wandered in off the street. I enjoyed his soloing on “Night in Tunisia,” and “Salt Peanuts”. Anderson fit in comfortably with the band. The crowd was small, but they were totally into the music.

It is too soon to predict what kind of mark Barefield will make at the Wednesday night sessions. Filling Teddy Harris’s and Tad Weed’s shoes will not be easy. Barefield is off to an impressive start.

MY LIFE COVERING JAZZ

I love jazz music. Just let me get that out the way first. I’ve been this way ever since my mentor, playwright Bill Harris, loaned me his copy of Eric Dolphy’s album Live at the Five Spot Volume One, and Prince Lasha’s Firebirds. I was so smitten after listening to those albums that I wanted to borrow more. Harris allowed me to do so. In return, I had to mow his lawn every Saturday. He hated doing yard work. That was about fifteen years ago, and I’ve been a jazz fiend since. I’m particularly fond of jazz musicians. The way they dress, their language, their coolness, and the beautiful array of sounds they get from their instruments.

Unfortunately, I can’t play one damn musical note, although I have to admit that occasionally I’ve fantasize about being a jazz pianist with the same facility as my favorite pianists Gene Harris, Craig Taborn, Cyrus Chestnut, and Don Pullen who have me salivating whenever I listen to their playing.

Although I’m not a jazz musician by trade, I feel blessed. For ten years, I have been writing about this music for one of the most respected weekly newspaper in Michigan the Metrotimes. In 1996, The Monitor, a weekly newspaper published my first jazz article. That year Arts Midwest honored saxophonist Donald Walden with their Jazz Master’s award. I wrote about him receiving the distinction. The Arts editor at the Metrotimes got a hold of the story. He liked it, and he asked if I wanted to cover jazz for the paper.

I accepted without hesitation. In 1994, I began freelancing for a mom & pop newspaper based in Detroit. Back then, I wasn’t interested in becoming any sort of musician journalist. I was interested only in writing human interest pieces. My first published story for the paper was about a van club that offered food and shelter to the homeless. The Walden story caught my eye because I was just getting into jazz music, and I thought his playing was something special.

The invitation to write for the Metrotimes was a godsend. I never imagined that I’d get the to interview jazz icons such as Horace Silver, Richard Davis, Sonny Rollins, Branford Marsalis, Kenny Garrett, and many others. I never really thought that I was qualified or deserved to talk with those great artists. When I first called Horace Silver I was so nervous that when the pianist answered his telephone I hung up like a teenager afraid to ask a pretty girl for a date. When I finally got my nerves together, the interview was amazing although Silver had a tough time remembering key areas of his career. Anyway, I felt as if I was listening to one of the old-timers in the neighborhood tell a bunch of stories about the good old days of jazz.

I’ve gotten a lot inspiration from some local musicians that I’ve interviewed. I admire Vincent Chandler, Gerard Gibbs, and Penny Wells because of their determination to be successful musicians.

My favorite interviews were with Ravi Coltrane who I connected with like he had been by running budding for years, and Regina Carter who was warm and eloquent. She talked to me like I was her favorite sibling.

I’ve gotten loads of pleasure from covering jazz. I feel valued when people tell me they’ve been reading my articles for years, and when musicians that I have written about tells me that what I wrote about them helped them to secure gigs. That’s the best form of payment that I could ever receive.

What makes covering jazz worthwhile is the recognition that I get from readers and jazz musicians. Plus, the editors that I’ve worked for over the years trust me enough to allow me to run wild.

My life in jazz life gets better with every great jazz album that I listen to, every up and coming musician that I write about, and every mind blowing jazz concert that I attend.