Kim Clarke

I was not personally acquainted with Kim Clarke before this conversation, and it was fun and enlightening to have this opportunity. Besides being very intelligent, friendly and funny, she is an amazing artist, and has played the bass with an incredible array of artists including Joseph Bowie's Defunkt, Joe Henderson, Yusef Lateef, National Black Theatre, Teri Thornton, Bertha Hope, Robert Palmer, Kit McClure Big Band, Rachel Z, Bigfood, Wallace Roney and Cindy Blackman Quartet, Oliver Lake and Jump Up, James Blood Ulmer Experience, Jack Mc Duff Quartet, Mary Lou Williams, Art Blakey, Evelyn Blakey, Sarah Vaughn, Sheila Jordan, Sam Rivers, Jimmy Heath, George Braith and Space Island, Rashied Ali, Junior Cooke, Clifford Jordan, Tommy Turrentine, Charles Sullivan, Marvin Bugalu Smith, Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Bernard Wright...  

The list goes on and on. Check out: her website. 

The New York City Jazz Record published my interview with her.  Published here is a longer transcript from that conversation. 

While talking about her background and some career highlights, we also want to promote the Lady Got Chops Women's History Month Music & Arts Festival, and it's mission: "To globally elevate Women's History Month through the promotion of women's outstanding contributions (aka Chops), artistic and otherwise, during the month of March." 

In celebration of the 20th Annual Festival they sponsored four scholarships for High School Girls - one in honor of Professor Barry Harris, The Keeper of the Bebop Flame, and the other three in honor of Lillithe Meyers, the owner of the Jazz Spot: the birthplace of the Lady Got Chops Women's Jazz Festival. 

The 2019 festival calendar shows the effect of the outbreak of the pandemic in all the gigs that were cancelled Since 2020, the world has lost so many wonderful artists, including so many associated with the festival, remembered here:  http://ladygotchops.com/dedication.html 

on the phone: February 7, 2020 

Anders Griffen: Are you excited for March? The Lady Got Chops Festival will be underway. 

Kim Clarke: I’m excited because I am a musician and will be working as well. It’s always good to have something to look forward to. This is the worlds longest running virtual festival. 

AG: Oh, yeah? What does that mean? 

KC: Well, Lady Got Chops Festival is still grassroots: free promotion for any woman that’s doing anything in the arts and the production of an event or two. The festival began in March 2003 as a collaborative idea to celebrate Women’s History Month and, between the mother daughter team owners of Jazz Spot and I, to draw clientele to the venue. Lillithe Meyers and Tiecha Merritt provided the venue and I supplied the connection to great women musicians, many affiliated with Kit McClure’s Big Band, and others. I was trying to diversify my economic portfolio by teaching myself HTML, and I built them a website. My son helped me with a little moving graphic, and we put up a calendar. Long story short the place closed in 9 years. After the café closed I didn’t think I was going to do this thing anymore, but a new friend said, “no, I’m booking the Zinc Bar,” so you could do some gigs here and another friend said, “I have a pizza parlor gig, I could give you some of the dates.” And we just kept it going. Every year, since I’ve met the owners of Bean Runner Café, they will support; they will book women for their weekends in March. Some new clubs like Headroom Social in New Jersey is a new one to the concept of the festival. I still use that calendar code on our newer website ladygotchops.com, and design hard copy banners for each participating venue that will hang them. My uncle Kevin, A WTC first responder, sponsored 5 events in 2017.  Last year our large concert at Flushing Town Hall was paid for thru a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts and my Facebook birthday fundraiser. We were able to pay 15 musicians and a sound crew of 3.  As for the free promotion, any women performers, artists, dancers, who want to participate simply inform me, and I add them to the online calendar. 

AG: So, it’s extended outside of New York City at this point.  

KC:  Oh, yes. Vocalist Rosa Lee Brooks, one of Jimi Hendrix’s early girlfriends,  performs at Seven Grand in Los Angeles. Trumpeter Edwina Thorne is at Harborside Festival in New Zealand. Tap dancer Roxane Butterfly in Paris. My friend, vocalist Ludmila Svarovskaya, has a gig in Moscow. Bassist Endea Owens, of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, has four nights at Dizzy’s Coca-Cola with her own band. [Saxophonist] Camille Thurman started with us about six years ago and now she’s playing with the Jazz at Lincoln Center band. I think people are getting used to the idea that women can do this thing. I watched three shows late night last night and all three of them had female bass players, I’m like, “dag, why am I sitting at home!?” 

(laughs) 

AG: I talked to Terri Lyne Carrington, maybe a couple years ago now, and she had all women groups, a trio and a big band she was working with, and said it wasn’t necessarily the goal to put together an all woman band, they just wanted to put together a great band and it turned out that they were all women. Something I read or heard you say elsewhere was that one of the reasons for the Lady Got Chops Festival is for the names of these women artists to be remembered. 

KC: Right. Absolutely. We do need to try to make our mark on society. So this year what I’ve done with the online calendar is I’ve made video links to each of the names, so that people can, when they visit the calendar, they can click on and see what this person does, what they look like, and what they’re doing. And one of the ladies that sings, and I didn’t realize this, but - Angeline Butler, she’s Phylicia Rashad’s sister and I’ve got a video about her - I didn’t even realize that she was a freedom marcher back in the day and she’s doing something at Pete Seeger’s house up in Beacon. So, it’s an interesting mix of folks this year.  Erena Terakubo, I met her through Vincent Herring about four or five years ago, and she had the top jazz album in Japan that year. And we kind of broke out of the all jazz thing.  We got Debbie Knapper, she’s running a successful jam session at the Café Oasis Baldwin for the past 18 years. We used to work with Kit McClure’s big band together. 

AG: How long is it before one festival ends before you’re working on the next one? Are you working on this year round? 

KC: Nope. Absolutely not. [laughs] My birthday is in November, so I do my first fund raiser at Facebook in November and then I put in for… I got the Queens Council of the Arts grant, so that helped us. I try to put the idea out there around my birthday or a little bit earlier, and a lot of strange things have happened in this festival (laughs) strange, and a lot of beautiful things as well. 

AG: This is year 18? 

KC: Yes, this is the 18th year. I’m trying to make it to 20!  Every year I go, “I’m gonna give this up, I’m not gonna do this anymore.” But this year, since I didn’t bother with the pictures, it’s taking some of the pressure off. 

AG: Well, you mention the links to videos, giving visitors to the calendar site an idea of what the artists do, and you mention what they look like, which makes me think about the emphasis on that when it comes to women artists in particular…  Do you see that changing? 

KC: I think as long as women are women, they will always be judged by their physique, and their look and all that kind of stuff. I just think that that’s just a natural phenomenon. But, I’m hoping that the respect level will rise. There are people in this world, women in this world, who have such a great disadvantage. They don’t have basic needs such as food and shelter. I was watching this video yesterday about women who eat these dirt cakes they make in Haiti. They take fat and sugar and flower and dirt from the ground and pound it up and the kids eat it as cookies because they have nothing else. So there’s a big difference in terms of the condition that women are going through. You have the situation in India where you might be married off at 4 years old, your husband’s 30, you’re 4 years old; he waits til you’re a teenager then he’s croaking by the time you’re 20 and then you can’t marry anybody else because you’re a stained woman now. And then your family kicks you out to the street. There are so many different things that…  

Women’s History, yes, we want to celebrate Women’s History, but we also raise the general condition of women. I spoke to Mohini, I posed that question to her, ‘cause I said, “how in the world did you develop so strongly” in a place that is so patronistic in India? Her father is a bass player, so, she probably started at three in a sheltered environment. She probably might not even know what it’s like to live in a situation near the Ganges where you have to bathe in water with a corpse floating by. So she has a different perspective but I’m just trying to shine a light on women’s condition everywhere and hopefully, what do they say? That the rising tide will lift all the boats. I don’t know, I’ve traveled a lot, and I’ve seen a lot of things, and I’m not trying to get into any politics… Man, I’m not going to get into any, like our current national politics, but I will say this, that our financial condition in the western world is largely because of the sacrifices of the rest of the world, in some ways. You know what I mean? The money itself has to be more balanced out.  

AG: In your bio online, I read that your parents saw to it that you traveled to visit family in the rural south and also internationally. 

KC: Right, my uncle was stationed in Spain, so my mother made a whole thing out of it. Yeah. So, I guess that’s the first time I went to Europe. 

AG: How did those experiences traveling in the south and abroad inform your direction … you weren’t really into music yet at that time, is that correct? 

KC: Right, I wasn’t.  But I’m also an only child and I was like, I think there’s some merit in the fact that my grandfather was a musician so that probably got into my bones some kind of way.  But, traveling?  When I was a child, as a black person going into Europe and going into some of those old castles and seeing those old tapestries, and going down in the basements and seeing some of the people, depictions as they were, also going to the Vatican, seeing that, and seeing a lot of different things, I saw ancient things with black people in it.  I’m like, “Oh, okay, so we were here too?”  You know, I’ve never been to Africa, but I’ve been all around Europe a lot.  It’s… I kind of lost myself… 

The travel in the south, that was a whole different situation too because when I was young in the south some people still had outhouses, and I was young enough to see “for colored only” water-fountains and not going into town and all this, and then, now that I’m much older I’m learning more about my family and their conditions you know their history. My mother’s got a book that goes back to 1773 with our family 

AG: Oh, amazing
 

KC: …which is rare for a black family, you know.  So, I’ve been able to trace even further back from there. So that’s one of my avocations is to go and trace. I had my DNA done by 23andme.   

I wanted to see what the, you know, that 23andme will give you a health aspect … because at my older age I watched several - my mother’s one of the youngest of her siblings and I watched her pass away and her younger brother is still with us but he’s going through similar things, similar symptoms, that my mom and her older brother had before they passed. And so I’m able to use all of this information. I had surgery on my hip and so I knew that I had a gene for blood clots, for example. So I said, oh, that’s what all that swelling and that stuff came from with my family. So I’m trying to learn from the past so that there’s no mistakes in the future. I know that’s off of the Lady Got Chops, that’s not really part of it, but just part of my life right now. 

AG: Yeah, that’s right. I was thinking about moving into your background a little bit and maybe we’ll circle back to the month of March, but um… I’ve got so many questions. So you’ve probably worked most extensively with Joseph Bowie and Defunkt?  

KC: Yes, I toured most extensively with them but I wouldn’t say I worked only with them because I’m just doing a lot of stuff with the jazz foundation now. Most of my local work is with, I do a lot of stuff with Bertha Hope and this brother named Rafiq Williamson; and that’s in the jazz arena. Then I usually go and do a session with a friend named Tim Siciliano [guitar and drums] and Rebecca Levinson [piano], and we get together - well I stopped just because I said I need a break before the festival - but usually, once a week we get together and play tunes and keep that honed up for the various gigs that come through the phone. Sometimes I work with Tim; he’ll call me for one of his gigs out on Long Island or something. And then I try and keep in touch with the R&B part. I book several groups - sometimes they’ll want all women, so I’ll do that. I’ve got a project that I’m doing with the Aqua Ninjaz, which features the music of George Duke and Donald Blackman and Jeffrey Johnson, which I really love. They all died around the same time, so I thought of the band to keep their music alive. Aqua, because the color blue, we like the color blue, but Ninjas because our keyboard player was Japanese. She’s not doing it this time ‘cause she’s got another gig, but she’s a pretty fierce girl: Yayoi Ikawa. She’s starting to work with everybody now. 

AG: Oh yeah! I know Yayoi from Michael Carvin’s band. 

KC: Right, right. She’s done that since I met her. I met her at the mosque with Winky? You know Albert’s wife, Winky? The saxophone player? 

AG: No. 

KC: Uh-huh. He’s Duke Ellington’s nephew. He and his brother Flythe, they’re native Queens people, and they’re Duke Ellington’s nephews. I’ve known them for quite a few years and they’ve been working with this man named Mahnad who sounds like Satchmo when he sings. We were doing a performance in the Mosque on 116th Street in the basement [27:09] It’s a big basement and they brought food out, they had a little stage and we played there almost every Saturday for a couple years. So, that’s where I met Yayoi. She’s been moving on, she’s been traveling to Haiti a lot and doing a lot of other things and branching out. ..... 

AG: Well, that’s another thing I wanted to ask about, these idioms. Certainly it’s less so now that musicians, or even the public, would keep jazz and R&B, or jazz and various styles very separate. I know some of my elders really couldn’t be bothered with any so called pop music or R&B or anything that … 

KC: Right. Yeah, I know. I know. 

AG: All jazz. 

KC: Right. 

AG: So, how did you experience that? I mean, you kind of came out of R&B first anyway, right? 

KC: Well, I cam out of R&B in terms of, when I first started playing, I had records and I put the needle back. And that’s how I started. But my teachers - a friend of mine introduced me to the idea of going to Jazzmobile and in my third year of college I came back to New York. I was in two different states before that. I came back to New York and joined Jazzmobile and kind of got into the jazz thing and I met Rodney Jones, he gave me a bow, and I ended up playing an upright, and you know, learning that, yeah, there’s definitely a vibe ... there’s kind of a negative feeling toward between the two idioms. There’s a fear coming from the R&B people of jazz, and there’s a disdain, kind of, coming from the jazz people to the R&B people.  But working with Joe, he kind of just crossed all of that because his brother was from the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which said learn the rules and then learn how to break them. So, they had another thing going, that avant-garde stuff. So, we put the funk in there and we also played straight-ahead.  When I was first out with Joe Bowie we had Ronnie Burrage on drums and then we could get into serious, you know (laughs) street-walking things. We’re kind of like a mixed-idiom band then. Now we have a drummer that’s more a rock drummer, really. So, it’s kind of… he’s very powerful and he’s a good showman. Now Joe is an ex-pat, he lives in Europe. He works with big bands and he keeps the name Defunkt going and people like it.  They wanna do some dancing and freakin and carrying on too, so… Some of the best dance bands I’ve heard are over there. There are some really great big bands in Berlin. I think it was Peter Herbolzheimer, and some of the horn soloists in his band will give you a heart attack. Really great. But I try to keep up on my [unclear] I am definitely involved with straight-ahead. 

AG: Do you think you ever didn’t get a gig or wouldn’t be considered because you played funk? 

KC: Yup. Absolutely. See, I think when we were first getting out there overseas, Wynton [Marsalis] and all those guys saw me playing funk and, I don’t know if they’ve ever heard me play jazz, maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. Because I know I played with Joe Henderson at the Vanguard, and I think I saw Wynton out there. But that whole crew of, what do you call it? The Young Lions crew came through. I had my son right after the last time I worked with Joe, and I stopped hanging out, but I was still playing. I was playing with Kit’s band, playing upright and electric, all these weddings and hi profile parties. So I was working, but I wasn’t in the city jazz scene as much. 

AG: Was that Joe Henderson group the same lineup the whole time? 

KC: No. The first lineup was… well, the first big tour was with Joanne Bracken and Keith Killgo.   

And then we came into town and Joe switched it up and brought Fred Hersch and Al Foster, and then Fred sent another sub I think it was Mehegan? John Mehegan? I can’t remember exactly. But there were two or three piano players over the two weeks I worked with him at the Vanguard. Then we went back out on the road, and Gaby Kleinschmidt was a booking agent in Germany, and said, (imitating enthusiastic voice) “Oh, I love this idea of women…” And Joe was a little upset with Joanne. So he was looking for a female piano player, so he got Renee Rosnes and Sylvia Cuenca. At the end of the tour I was about 7 or 8 months pregnant, and that was the end of that. (laughs)  I think that might have been the last time I saw Joe. I came to one of those gigs and I was asking him, “hey, what are you gonna do about the taxes?” And he ran away from me like I had chicken pox. I was like, “Damn, Joe!” 

(laughs) 

KC: I’m not catching! What the hell… 

(laughs) 

KC: He was funny. He was a funny dude, boy. Oh, my god. 

AG: That band sounded so good. It’s interesting to know how that came together. It kind of wasn’t all Joe’s doing. You said the booking agent… 

KC: No, Joe put the word out and I told several of the piano players that I knew. Renee was working with Kit, and she had just done a professional recording with her band. So her tape was the best sounding one and I guess he liked her the best out of the [five?].  

I don’t know how he got Sylvia’s number. But, that was like her first road tour, I think. I gave her a nickname, “The Squirrel.” I don’t know if you want to put this in there. Because, like I said, I was pregnant and we had got in to East Germany, and I couldn’t get into the bathroom. The coins wouldn’t work in that particular bathroom, because they used different coins, and she jumped over the wall and opened the door for me. She jumped over the door. She kind of, like, climbed up over in the corner and opened that door so fast, and I’m like, “Oh, my God.” And I been calling her “The Squirrel” ever since.  

(laughs) 

AG: What kind of directions did Joe Henderson give, if any? What did he tell you or the group to do? 

KC: Play. He didn’t really give us any direction, just told us what songs he was gonna do. There might have been a couple pieces of paper. But it wasn’t anything specific that was like, you know…. I think he just liked what he heard and he just went on with it. 

The reason why I even got heard in the first place was because Professor Dr. Barry Harris had rented a place which he called the Jazz Cultural Theater on 29th St and 8th Avenue. It was a storefront home of Jazz classes and performances. Kuni Mikami, Craig Haynes and I hosted the Art Blakey Breakfast Jam, which Art played when he was not on tour. 

AG: Right! 

KC: It started at 3 in the morning and went to 8 or 9am. Everybody came down, Michael Carvin, Tommy Flanagan, Philly Joe Jones, Woody Shaw, and all kinds of luminaries who were around during that era, from ’82 to ’86. That’s how Joe Henderson heard me, and I was blessed with “the call”. 

AG: I was fascinated with those videos that I saw of you and Sylvia and Renee … 

KC: But there’s one with Joanne and Keith Killgo. And that one’s - because I was pregnant in the one you were looking at. 

AG: I’ll look for the other one, but I was thinking about Joe, because I see him there listening when he’s not playing, and I wonder of he’s thinking anything. I know he had the spiritual perspective, we’re talking beyond entertainment and opportunity to make some other kind of connection, so… I guess that’s where my question about direction was leading, you know, and maybe “just play” is that. 

KC: Well, that particular tour, for me, was really hard. Because I had to move my stomach to the side and put and twist the bass… and that wasn’t my bass. But the other, the first, the one with Joanne, I’m on my own instrument. With basses, it’s very difficult. I ran into Anthony Jackson on tour and he said, “yeah, playing someone else’s bass is like wearing their underwear.” I’m like, “you’re right.” 

(laughs) 

KC: Does not feel comfortable. So that video that you saw, I was like, “Oh, god.” (laughs) I like the other one better, actually, the one with Joanne. 

AG: Okay. I’ll look for it. 

KC: Yeah. It’s “Relaxing at the Camarillo.” 

AG: Also, looking at your online bio, I mean, some of the names on there, it’s like a veritable who’s who of jazz. 

KC: Absolutely. And most of that was through Barry Harris’s place. And then they would give me a gig or something like that. Most of all those are gigs that I worked with people. I met them through Barry, but there’s a lot of folks missing on there. 

AG: That’s how you hooked up with Art Blakey? 

KC: Actually, no. The Art Blakey Breakfast Jam occurred at Barry’s place, but I met Art Blakey through his son, because I met him as one of the first jazz musicians I ever met at all in life. Art Blakey, Jr.  Then, at Jazzmobile, French horn player Sharon Freeman introduced me to Bertha Hope, and she to Art Sr.’s daughter Evelyn Blakey. As I started getting some chops, they called me for gigs. Art knew me because I worked with Evelyn. And Cobi Narita with the Universal Jazz Coalition - that was all connected with the Jazzmobile. Okay, how can I go back? 

I went to two colleges, out of state, I came to Jazzmobile and met Bertha. I can’t think of her name. My god. She introduced me to Bertha. French horn lady. I can’t think of her name. But anyway, she was teaching at Jazzmobile, and they saw me walking around the halls, trying to figure out what room I should go to and where will I learn something, ‘cause my first class was like nobody in there and they’re just talking about the old days and I’m like, “I’m not learning nothing in here.” So I walked the halls and I walked into Jimmy Heath’s room and I studied with Jimmy Owens over there, and somebody at Jazzmobile told me about the National Endowment for the Arts and I put in for it. Cobi Narita told me what to do, and so I did it and I got a grant to study with Ron Carter and Buster Williams and Lisle Atkinson - I applied three times and got three grants. 

AG: Was Ron Carter at City College at that time? 

KC: No. That was before he was at City College. But I had transferred to City College and I was studying with John Lewis, and Ed Sullivan(? Sulieman?]. I was a pre-med major (laughs). Or a runaway pre-med major. I switched to music and then I switched out of music and just took band c lasses so I could just get my eyes together. Because I wasn’t classically trained, I was trained by ear at first. But I started working with people all over the place, just being on the scene. Being in the city, going to school, and meeting musicians. I got my first upright through a girl at City College who was selling her bass for an overdrawn Macy’s card or something. She sold me a bass that’s the same one I have now. It’s in the shop, getting addressed once again. So that’s my checkered past. 

(laughs) 

KC: But my grandfather, actually, was a musician. He was a vaudevillian trombonist. He had his own band, he played with Cab Calloway, and he passed away in 1966, 67. 

AG: Did you get to see him? 

KC: I met him, oooh, maybe eight times in my life, but I never saw him play. But I knew he had a bass in his house, because when I was little, he told me, I would go up to one of the landings in his brownstone, and he’d say, “pluck it, baby, pluck it.” And I was listening to the sound of these big old strings, you know.  

AG: Wow, that Jazzmobile program was something else. I know that it still exists, but is it anything like it was? 

KC: No, not like it was. 

AG: What happened? 

KC: Well, new leadership and, you know, the founders passed away and their ideas are not exactly the same as the new ideas. I think they’re making it more for children now. But then, people of all ages were walking the halls when I was there. You had to take a test and they placed you in one of two options for your instrument - I guess beginner and intermediate. And then they had a big band at the end of it if your reading was that good, they had bands. They had theory class and rhythm class, and then you’d go to your instrument class. So I studied with Victor Gaskin on the electric and Lisle Atkinson on upright. 

AG: How’s your Arco playing? 

KC: What arco playing? (laughs). Right now? Nothing. But, I mean, I was trained by Lisle. I mean, I could pick the bow up and get back into it, but, I must say, I’m an arco escapee right about now. I’ve been playing electric upright for the past… geez, almost 20 years. And I find that it’s easier for my hands and my aging body. The action is better for me. My regular upright, I just put it in the shop last week. It’s so temperamental and it’s really old and it really cracks a lot and all of that. 

AG: You don’t play it that much? 

KC: Not as much as I used to. No. Like I said, I had two hip replacements, and so now that my hips are more straight, I’ll probably be bringing it back out more.  

AG: What about practicing? Do you practice everyday? 

KC: I try. I try. Especially now that I’m getting ready for Women’s History Month and my project, the George Duke project, I’m trying to get my fingers together for all these crazy baselines that they have. I’ll be getting back to bowing and all that. I’m overwhelmed with so many things. It’s so crazy right now. 

AG: The George Duke project, that’s the Aqua Ninjaz? 

KC: Yeah, that’s that. 

AG: What did you do with Mary Lou Williams? 

KC: That was one of the very first women’s jazz festivals, produced by Cobi Narita, who I met thru Jimmy Owen’s Business of Music Class at the Collective Black Artists Space. During the 80s, I think Jimmy Heath was quoted saying that if it wasn’t for Cobi, nobody would be working. She had produced a newsletter for her organization, the Universal Jazz Coalition, which basically informed everybody on the mailing list who was playing where. So Cobi rented the original Birdland for a few nights - not Birdland on 44th, the one on 52nd Street - and negotiated with the proprietor a specific fee. He was surprised at how many people supported it and wanted to renegotiate, but Cobi stood firm. He was so incensed that he chained the door. I think it was George Wein who stepped in and built a platform in front of their door. We played outside and that’s where I played with Mary Lou Williams, in the sun outside of Birdland on 52nd Street. 

AG: Amazing. 

KC: George Braith is a big person in my life too. I used to play with him in the street. That’s where I met Cindy Blackman and Wallace Roney. My mother was very active in the colleges, with UNCF - United Negro College Fund. Bennett College was her alma mater. She used to raise money for scholarships for the kids to go to school, and I used to be the bandleader, and I’d call up the people that I met, you know. So I got to work with Cassandra Wilson, and Vanessa Rubin came out. I had Renee and a lot of different people. Kat Dyson, guitar player. 

AG: Sorry, back up a little bit, please. How did this happen? 

KC: My mother was president of the alumni for Bennett College, and also an officer in the United Negro College Fund, the New York chapter. So, they did these big fundraisers. Her birthday was January 15th. I don’t know if she invented it, but the Martin Luther King breakfast events, she started at this restaurant La Detente, that’s no longer here. So, I put together these groups of people. George played with me. Wallace, Cindy. I had Gerald Hayes do some. Bryan Carrott. Different people would play with me. Teri Thornton. 

AG: What years would this have been? 

KC: That would be the ‘80s, ‘90s. 

AG: These are all people you had met along the way? 

KC: Right. I mean a lot of things, like, Reverend Geisel at St. Peter’s was instrumental because they would introduce me to the jazz world at some of these funerals. He used to pay us to play, have a bass player play along with certain people. I met Teri Thornton at one of those and started working with her for a number of years. Worked with a lot of different people. But I’m still working to keep vibrant and alive out here. Right now I’m working with Bertha Hope’s quintet.  

and that’s awesome because we’re doing Elmo Hope’s music, and that’s challenging and fun. We recorded a little something. Lucianna Padmore, our drummer, took one of Elmo’s songs and said, “this has hip hop possibilities.” We did something with some hip hop in it. Kind of very interesting, and she put a poem over it. 

AG: Hmmm 

KC: Yeah. It’s really new, for me, ‘cause I’m not a hip-hopper. 

AG: Well, some of that funk stuff is sort of hip-hop adjacent, right? 

KC: I guess. “Jazz is the teacher, funk is the preacher,” said James Blood Ulmer.  Hip hop is the digital baby.  It’s different. They kind of…. Especially with California. California rappers kind of gravitate more toward the funk stuff, I think, than these east coast people. 

AG: Have you been sampled that you’re aware of? 

KC: Not that I know of. I helped Queen Latifah write one of the songs on her Black Reign album and we put a reggae bridge in the middle of it. She wanted to sample Clifford Jordan and I said, “Uncle Clifford?” And she said, “that’s your uncle?” I said, no, not really, but I mean I played with him. So we decided to change the song so it wouldn’t be like you know [coughs] plagiarism. That’s “Winki’s Theme” for her brother that died on the motorcycle. That’s us playing, Rodney Kendricks and myself. 

AG: How’d that come about anyway? How’d you hook up?

KC: Well, Rodney was instrumental in that, I believe. Because, you know, he’s married to Rhonda Ross now, and I did a gig with her, went to Japan with her. Rodney Kendrick was a piano player from Barry’s class. So we all went to Japan. But I think Rodney got me involved with the Queen Latifah thing, I believe. 

AG: There’s a woman that rose to power and transformed herself. 

KC: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 

AG: Anything you’d like to share in closing? 

KC:  I just hope that what I’m doing is making a difference. The Festival remains a low budget yet time consuming effort. I’m not a person raised with a corporate background. I am a freelance musician and a self-trained basic graphic artist/web designer. Producing a festival on the scale of Summerstage or the Afro-Punk Festival would be a dream. The focus would have to be a humane and uplifting one. Perhaps in the near future ...there’s always hope.