William Parker
It would seem that William Parker would need no introduction at this point, but there's always a wider audience. Even for those familiar with his music, there's been some informative writing published in the last few years. The day after the interview published below, The New York Times published, "The Irreducible William Parker." Also that month, a fill-length biography was published: Universal Tonality - The Life and Music of William Parker. About a year later, Jazz Times publshed, "William Parker Keeps Refining His Approach to the Bass—and Music."
Lots of his recorded music can be explored at Aum Fidelity and Centering Music.
William Parker and I both made our first recordings with Frank Lowe, albeit almost 25 years apart. We first connected around the turn of the millennium when I was still playing and hanging with Lowe. I joined a large ensemble on the lower east side where William was trying out some different ideas.
This interview was the first time we spoke in quite a while, and it was just a few months before the new trio recordings we made with Chad Fowler for the Mahakala label - Thinking Unthinking and Broken Unbroken.
via Zoom: February 7, 2021
William Parker: [singing off camera...walks up and sits down] Okay. Alright, good.
Anders Griffen: What's that you're singing? Sounds good.
WP: Ah, I was just singing "It will take some time to awake the dead". That's a riff off a song from that MLK thing I did a couple years ago.
AG: I heard you yesterday on Dave Sewelson's program.
WP: Ahh, you were listening to that, huh?
AG: That was good. Kinda a playful mood or something. Not as serious as some of the online talks I've attended in the last few months. You said something about going out in your younger days and coming home at like 3 in the morning and your mom would have a meal for you and stuff.
WP: Yeah, that's true. One of the things - I was living in the projects. Claremont Projects in the Bronx. And, you know, when you're young - 16, 17, 18 - sometimes you don't understand where your parents are coming from as far as like… Okay, well, in one sense it's like my grandfather did not know how to read or write. He was a sharecropper. He lived in Orangeburg, South Carolina. I was visiting him in the summertime. And he had this land and he had a mule and we'd go out and we'd be plowing his cotton. And my mother I think came to New York. My Grandfather had two families. She had nine, maybe 7 or 8 more brothers and sisters. She was the oldest, so she took care of her brothers and sisters. And then, somehow she came to New York when she was a teenager, I guess. A late teenager. And she did domestic work down there. She worked very hard. And so she wanted me - in those days it was like your parents wanted you to do better than they did. Now of course some parents, if you're Black and you come from an academic background, you know, and you're going the college route, that's what you're supposed to do. Our route was, okay, you're successful if you don't go to jail, you don't get on drugs, and you finish high school. Then, if you can get a civil service job, that was the joint.
Okay, so there was that part working - I mentioned my mother. My father, he came up to New York, I think when he was 12 years old. He hitch-hiked from North Carolina. He worked at a bowling alley as a pin setter. It’s where when they didn’t have electric pin setters, people set the pins. I noticed my father never ate chicken. From the south, you know, you don’t eat chicken, “What’s going on?” But he worked at a slaughter house, and he didn’t like the idea of eating chicken. It was not his favorite thing. But, somehow he was into music. And, particularly, he was into jazz music. He had a scrapbook of photographs of jazz musicians, prize fighters, baseball players, politicians, and he was into black culture. How he got an interest in that, I don’t know. But, they did - my father introduced me to music through listening to the music of Duke Ellington every night, and he actually wanted me to play in the Ellington band. So, when I did start playing music, I was allowed to practice all day long. Now one of the things that practicing all day long did was that they knew where you were. So at one point it was like, okay, my mother, when I wanted to get into little league, there was no little league in our neighborhood. There was no organized sports, so we had to go uptown to Van Cortlandt Park to try out for this team. So, 6 o’clock in the morning, she gets me up and we go up to Van Cortlandt Park - it was certain things she did for me that I didn’t really grasp at the time. So at the same time she was saying, “I want you to do better.” It wasn’t to take away my freedom. She wanted me to do better than she did. So she was supporting me in the way she could while at the same time. My mother was 83 when she died. And I - this is in South Carolina - and one of the things she said - she had pancreatic cancer - and in the bed she said, “Did you take the test for the Post Office?” And by then I had been playing around the world and doing all these things, but at the same time it didn’t register that, at that particular moment anyway, that this was what I was locked into doing and I was going to be doing that the rest of my life - playing music. But what I’m saying is I understood why she did what she did and how she reacted to things and what she wanted. And at the same time her and my father met at the Savoy Ballroom listening to jazz. So I just have to thank them for not pushing me too hard. It was always like, “okay, we know where you are. You’re not getting into trouble.” When I left to go downtown to play music, they didn’t know where I was and they would worry, but I remember I had a gig with Kenny Dorham, and my mother wouldn’t let me out of the house to do the gig. It was at a club on 116th street in Harlem. And I had met Kenny Dorham. I guess he was ill then. I don’t know if he had cancer, but I met him up at the Jazz Mobile. He said, “come down to this gig and play”. I couldn’t get out of the house. I was very obedient. We lived on the 4th floor, so I couldn’t jump out the window and sneak off to do the gig. ‘Cause I might not be here today.
AG: So when you’re coming back - 3 in the morning or whatever it was - when I heard that I wondered if you were coming back from playing or checking out music or both.
WP: Always playing. Always playing. I never checked out too much. You know I checked out music, but I was never a checker-outer. My schedule was thus: I would leave the Bronx about 9 o’clock, and when I had money I would leave maybe a little later because I’d take the - they had this car down to 3rd avenue L. This was like 1971. And they had the Bronx X55 bus. And I’d take the bus to the train. And I remember one day I was taking the bus and I met the singer Jeanne Lee at the bus stop. I met her and Gunter Hampel at the bus stop. Later on I would meet them again and play with Jeanne Lee. I would go downtown whether I was walking or taking the bus. I’d go to a place at 614 E 11th. A place called the Firehouse run by a musician named Alan Glover; we called him Juice. He had a band called The Juice Quartet. And we would rehearse and play his wonderful, he had wonderful music. And we would play his music with a piano player, Kassa Allah, and we had different drummers named Phil King, Abu Kalla was also the drummer; sometimes Ali Abulli. And we would rehearse from about 11 to about 1 or 2. Then after that I would walk down to Studio We, which was 198-195 Eldridge Street, and James Dubois, the trumpet player from Pittsburgh, and Juma Sultan were two of the people running that place. And then you began to meet musicians. You know, I met a lot of musicians down there. And you’d play until you know 5 or 6 o’clock. And then over to Sam Rivers’ place, Studio Rivbea. Go down in the basement there and listen to music, play music. This is about ‘73 actually. And that was like taking another class, okay? Then after that, you’d finish with Sam’s around 1 o’clock and walk over to where the Waverly Theater was over on 6th avenue. There was a basement downstairs underneath the theater that a drummer named Roger Bairs had rented, and I’d go down there and play with Billy Bang, Daniel Carter, Dewey Johnson, the trumpet player, Earl Freeman Jr., the bass player, trumpet player named Alik Baraka and many others would come through there, and we’d play until the wee hours of the morning. And we’d talk about how music was going to save the world.
That was the beginning of developing an aesthetic of the purpose of music. Just by saying what we’re going to do and music music music. Then, I’d eventually walk or take the train back to Bronx, New York. Flip that around, maybe I’d take the next day off and then go down the next day. And that was kinda the schedule. ,At the firehouse I met drummer Billy Higgins. I was playing a duo with Omo(?) who must have been 7 or 8 year old drummer - son of Alan Glover. And I was playing with him and I heard this other drum thing, and it was Billy Higgins. And we began to play duos. And at the same time, Andrew Hill walked in. So, I met Andrew Hill. They all lived in the neighborhood - Billy Higgins lived in Brooklyn at the time. A lot of musicians: Frank Lowe, Rashid Sinan(?), Charles Brackeen, Benny Wilson… I have to remember Rashied Ali, because he was in the center there, playing with Rashied. So I would go out to Billy Higgins’ house in Brooklyn to play duos with him. He lived on St. Marks. I guess it must have been St. Marks Avenue in Brooklyn. And again this was all learning. This was my school. This was jazz individuality, complexity, simplicity, world music, my music, their music class. And every day was something new. I’d run into Sunny Murray, Charles Tyler, a drummer named Steve Reid, played a lot with Ahmed Abdullah. Earl Cross. Later down the line, Grachan Monchur III, I played with this singer Maxine Sullivan - you know, “you take the high road, I take the low road”. All in one day. You play with these people, you talk to these people, you meet these people. Everybody had a different music. Everybody had a different way of putting the music together.
Don Cherry. I met him in 1974 and I played at the Five Spot with him in 1975 for a week. And throughout the years I played with him I used to do gigs with Don Cherry and Allen Ginsberg, which sometimes I leave out and sometimes I remember it. When I have to remember it, I speak about it. When I don’t remember it, I don’t mention it. But, in any case, it was all a wonderful experience at that time. Because it was music music music, 24/7. There was no Lincoln Center Jazz. There was no New School Jazz--maybe there was; I don’t know. But it wasn’t academic for me. The academy was the academy of the streets. Which was another place on 7th St on Ave A. We had the University of the Streets. We had jam sessions up there. That was run by a guy named Mohammaed. And there were some Yaya’s there. There was Big Tall Yaya, alto saxophone player from Harlem. There was another Yaya, who eventually came from DC. Donald Ayler, Sonny Simmons, Frank Lowe, Frank Wright, Marion Brown, Steve McCall, John Gilmore, Marshall Allen. And I met all these people and they were all wonderful. In 1973, I met Cecil Taylor. I played with him in 1974 at Carnegie Hall. So that’s the setting for me. And I was just very lucky to be there and to be able to do all these things.
And in the meantime, you’re developing a language. You know about language, you know about the architecture of music. You’re beginning to get into the healing properties of music. You’re getting into what comes through you and what you want to be involved in. And at that time you had many musicians - I mention some musicians in the book like Clyde Cotton and Kwami Lacumi, who I played with who were never, you know - Carl Lombard aka Pelican, Dr. Shalto, he had four names - and they were guys who would never be recorded in history books because they were part of what we call the mystery systems of music. And they didn’t really record, but they really were full of the spirit. And the training ground was playing. When you plucked up your instrument you didn’t stop until 2 hours had ended. We were playing long, hard sets. Inspired by Coltrane’s Meditations, “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity. Well, not so much Spiritual Unity. We’re not in there listening to that, but The Truth Is Marching In. That kinda stuff. And, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, you know all of the music we were listening to. It all had vibe and it all was smokin’.
AG: I guess maybe talking to Alvin Fielder sorta emphasized this idea that jazz or you know this kinda music comes from mentorship. He was kind of unhappy about the jazz education, jazz in the schools. I used to ask a lot of people about that, because I didn’t go to jazz school. I’d go to jam sessions or play with my peers or whatever. I read on your website about some bass players you studied with, and I wondered how formal some of that was, if it was different with everybody, and how much did people like Richard Davis, Wilbur Ware, Jimmy Garrison, how much were they part of the scene that you just described?
WP: Well, when I got my bass, the first bass player I met was Charlie Haden.
AG: Were you a teenager at this point?
WP: Yes. In fact I hadn’t even gotten a bass yet. So I told him I was going to get a bass. He told me he learned how to play the bass by playing along with records. He said he didn’t go to music school. Though you read articles that say he went to this music school and that music school. Basically he said he learned by playing. And so I began playing along with records before I even got the bass. I had a steam pipe in my house, and I’d play along with the steam pipe. And I got some books and eventually I purchased a bass. And, let’s say I knew I had to learn the instrument, okay? Not learn the instrument because I wanted to at that moment be able to play every music that existed in the world. It’s just that I knew the music I wanted to play by that time. I wanted to play avant-garde jazz. I didn’t want to play Miles Davis jazz. I didn’t want to play Herbie Hancock jazz. I loved that kind of music - everything on Blue Note I loved. But what I really loved was ESP. You know, I LOVED that. That had a thing of mystery and edge to it. You know, Sunny Murray, you know. And so that’s what I wanted to play. And I just said, okay, I’m just going to give myself up to destiny and see where things go and what leads me where.
So I went down to the Jazz Mobile, which was at IS 201, 132nd street and Park Ave. They had a program down there. A lot of musicians were in the Bronx who played. I think Roy Campbell was down there at the time, trumpet player, and Sinclair Acey, and maybe Olu Dara had come into town and was down there. You know, a lot of people popped in there, but the teaching was staff was professional musicians. The trumpet teachers were Joe Newman, Lee Morgan, even Alan Shorter was teaching up there for a while. Curtis Fuller, trombone, Benny Powell, trombone. Jimmy Heath, Bud Johnson, Frank Foster, Sonny Redd, teaching reeds. Ted Dunbar, guitar. Albert Tootie Heath was very cool. He was teaching up there. Freddie Waits was teaching up there. If you were in the Union and you were a musician, one of your assignments was to teach at the Jazz Mobile that week. And, so, Paul West the bassist from Dizzy Gillespie’s band ran the whole program. He was brilliant. My first period up there Richard David was teaching the bass class. Every teacher approaches music differently. Richard Davis was playing in the symphony orchestra the time. He was playing with Sarah Vaughan. He was playing the Mel Lewis / Thad Jones Orchestra. He was doing all kinds of music. Every day was a musical adventure for him because he was trained to play all kinds of music. That’s how his destiny was. He ended up studying here and here. You know, he learned stuff. I remember him saying come down to the Village Vanguard and look at the charts for the band so you can see what’s going on. I guess anybody else would have jumped. Oh man, going out to the Village Vanguard? I wasn’t familiar with the Village Vanguard too much except Coltrane: Live at the Village Vanguard. But, I never went to the Village Vanguard. I kept saying what about Archie Shepp? What about Albert Ayler? When are we going to play some of that? He said “not here. We don’t do that here.” That’s what the teachers would always say. They didn’t tell me, “that’s great music, and you’ll get to that. Just learn these fundamentals first and you’ll get to that.” And they didn’t say, “go down to the village to this club or that club. Tonight check that music out.” So they didn’t really discourage me but they didn’t really encourage me. That wasn’t their job. You had to learn chord changes and how to play jazz. That’s what they were teaching. You know, how to play “Night in Tunisia.” Not “Phase 1,2,3,” Sunny Murray, or “Bells” from Albert Ayler. They weren’t teaching that. Though, what was interesting was when Alan Shorter and Lee Morgan got together up at the Jazz Mobile. I’d go to the bathroom and Lee Morgan would be on one side of the hallway and Alan Shorter would be on the other side, and I’d say “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” and Alan would say “this is my class.” Alan Shorter was, you know a lot of people slept on him but he was a very interesting guy.
I got as much as I could at the Jazz Mobile and then everyone at that time was going. The main thing I learned was people were beginning to say, okay, Paul Chambers. We’re going to play like Paul Chambers. And so I listened to Paul Chambers. And I said, “well, there’s no way in the world I’m going to play like Paul Chambers”. You know I could transcribe or play like… and then it began to dawn on me that I wasn’t supposed to play like Paul Chambers. I needed to find my own way of playing.
So the next thing I did was - and also through the Jazz Mobile, Art Davis came through, and Milt Hinton. You know, I learned something from Art Davis. I learned something from Milt Hinton about, if you’re playing a C blues, just play one note. Just play C. Just stay on C, and you can’t go wrong. And to me that was interesting. But, I left there and I looked in the Village Voice and Jimmy Garrison was advertising bass lessons. He lived on West End Ave, so I went to his house. He had this book called Simandl bass book. It was a classical book. He taught out of that book, and I think again I wanted to play what I wanted to play, but I went and learned some stuff about the bass. But at that time, I was a little bit more independent, obviously, going down town, listening to music, playing music.
That would be like 1972. I was going to his house, and the JCOA. The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association was doing these workshops at CAMI Hall, which I have flyers for, and also at the Public Theater. And Leroy Jenkins did one, and Leo Smith did one. Actually on his, he had Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden, and Paul Motian playing with him. And he did a big band. And Braxton, Reggie Workman, Warren Smith. Then Alan Silva did one, February 1971. And Carla Bley ‘71. Roswell Rudd ‘71. Anyway, it was around that time.
After that, I began to meet people. I met Gato Barbieri. I met Roswell Rudd. Just by hanging out listening to the music. And then resurfaced with meeting Charlie Haden again a couple of times. Just talking about music. In fact, Charlie Haden I gave my first book of philosophy, you know, I have that book Who Owns Jazz [Chad: I think it’s Who Owns Music]. The embryo of that book was written in the 70s. And it was hand-written book and hand-stitched. And I made a copy and I gave Charlie Haden the first copy. I would like to get it back. I guess it’s too late to get it back. Just to see what it looks like. It had to do with purpose, with the music coming through you. With being a conduit, with the healing aspects of music. So I gave him a copy. Then, from Jimmy Garrison, I went and studied with Wilbur Ware. And Wilbur Ware was living on 11th street between B and C. I would just make appointments with him and see him, and go to his house for a listen. His thing was “Don’t sound like me whatever you do”. He would play a phrase and give me the bass and give the bass back. If I played it like him he’d say “wrong.” If I played it the way I wanted to play he’d say “that’s it!”. And that happened all the time.
We would hang out. And he would go down to Studio Rivbea sometimes. He was playing with Sunny Murray, and I’d finish gigs for him. So I’d be sitting in front and he’d be playing. Sunny Murray would be playing free music, high energy. Then Wilbur Ware would just step out and say, “I’ll take one now,” and he’d play “Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise.” Then he’d say “I’m done!” and point to me and I’d finish the gig for him.
So I was hanging out with Wilbur when I could, but it was a learning experience about individuality. About being you and not being a corporate. Not being a professional corporate person, but being an individual. And maybe you needed extreme exposure to being an individual at that time so you could have the strength to be an individual. And to have security and not be insecure about what you do and who you are.
And then I met a lot of bassists. I met Sirone, Norris Jones. Dave Izenson. He was on the Lower East Side. It was just a great experience. Over at MUSE, where Reggie Workman taught, the children’s museum, I saw a concert once with Reggie Workman, Ron Carter, and Jimmy Garrison. They all played in 3 different groups on the same bass. And they all sounded different on the same bass. And I told Ron Carter this, and he didn’t really remember it, but I said, “no, it happened.” But it showed me that it’s not the bass, it’s the person. Wilbur never had a fantastic bass as far as I can remember. Wilbur had an aluminum bass at one point. You know this big white bass. He had all kinds of basses. But he always sounded like Wilbur on bass.
So you begin to put 1 and 1 together. And you put a 2 in there and a 3 and a 4. And that’s how you put it together. You know Elvin Jones had a record called PUtting It Together with Joe Farrell and Jimmy Garrison. That’s what it was about. It was about putting it together not generically but putting it together for you.
Could one say “Well you’re not a bass player because you can’t play everything. You can’t do everything”. That’s like saying you’re not a human being because you don’t speak every language in the world. You can’t sew. You can’t cook Chinese food. You know how many things human beings can’t do but still they’re great human beings? So you can exist not knowing a lot. You don’t need to know everything to make great music. You have to be just open at that particular moment for some great music to come through you.
AG: The thing about the quality of the instrument reminded me of the Lickety Split.
WP: Uh huh. I remember the Lickety Split. Yeah.
AG: I used to go to the jam session there and it’s a beat up drum set in rough shape. I was struggling with it. I was pretty green anyway. But then Charlie Persip came in and he just made that thing sing. It sounded beautiful. And that was a big lesson in, it’s not the drum set because he made that thing sound beautiful. And then that thing with playing like yourself reminds me of being with Frank Lowe over in France in the late 90s. I was trying to learn these tunes. We had some rehearsal time before the tour. I was trying to figure out the shape of them and he was getting all stressed out because I wasn’t really playing. I was trying to figure out the tune. So he went outside to smoke a cigarette, and I just started messing around getting comfortable with this drum set. He came running in and said “Just like that! Play like you’re playing right there. That’s how you play it.” And at the time, I didn’t know what that meant, but I was loose and free and he was saying come to the music like that. Not like you’re trying to figure it out.
WP: mmhmmm
photo by Maurice Narcis ©2021
AG: I wonder… like, you mention how the culture does not go into some of these people. I mean, that’s the thing that it would be nice to change if there was a way for them to experience, you know, the light that you experience when you’re making music. I mean, isn’t this one of the ways that music can address the moment, by trying to reach people like that?
WP: Look, you can get up in the morning and say, okay, wow, there's no live music, but what’s this record? Okay, we can put on Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, which is a record they say everybody rediscovers. Or put on A Love Supreme and you could listen to it in your room and come out that room and say, man… You got like a light glowing over your head, man. What happened? And that’s not even listening to live music. That’s listening to music that was recorded 50 years ago. But still the value of it rings out. There’s a light in there. So music can change a person. You know, you don’t have to go through no steps. You can become enlightened in one second where you just begin to see things differently. It works in all kinds of ways. The thing is, it’s difficult. It’s hard, but at the same time it’s right there. The same moment. You know like, “How do I learn to listen to this music?” You don’t have to learn anything. Just listen to it and Bam! All it has to do is break through a crack in your facade and it goes right to your heart and you’re saying, okay, I get it now. And then all the ducks, as they say, can fall in a row. And that’s all you need is all the ducks in a row.
AG: I thought I heard you saying… There was a talk you had with Mixashawn and Fay Victor - I can’t remember who all was there back in October - and everybody was talking about Music and Activism. And I thought you said something like, if children heard this music, felt this music, maybe… I thought it was something to the effect of, it’s harder to have an effect on an older person who’s set in their ways, but maybe if children were exposed to it, maybe they wouldn’t turn into these power-hungry machines. Does that sound familiar?
WP: Well it’s a theory. And that’s the wonderful thing about life. It’s like you have one kid who’s grown up in an environment where they have the culture and the music. And then, wow, that kid runs into the crack pipe. Then you have another kid whose father’s on crack and mother’s on dope. And they just go right through that stuff. It doesn’t touch them one bit. Their environment, you see, it’s because they’re blessed. We’re all blessed. We all have different gifts. And our journeys are so different. So, I mean, yes., if every child had… because people are shaped and bent, that’s why every child has to have an equal opportunity to express, experience, the best in creativity. Inspiration… We have to feed the thing. We just need to be inspired. And then develop a sense of, like, we can walk on the grass and feel the blades of the grass. Now why does this person feel the blades of the grass and stop and look at the flowers and see something beautiful, while this other person just walks on the grass going to rob a bank or something, going to foreclose on the mortgage of somebody’s house. Because we have to train our senses. That’s what education’s about: training our senses to be sensitive to each other and to nature, and that can happen. So let me reroute that question and answer that you can have an affect on people. I’ve been going to Vermont. Living in Vermont, every day you wake up and see a mountain of green. It’s gotta have an effect on you. You get up in the morning and you walk through hypodermic needless and glass and barbed wire fence. But somehow the spirit gets to you wherever you are. That’s why we use the phrase, “the sky is always beautiful”. That came to me in the sense of somebody in the middle of a war torn zone. Bullets are flying all over the place, and they sit back for a minute and they look up at the sky and the sky is beautiful. All this is happening, but the sky remains beautiful. And that’s hope. No matter where, you are and what’s going on, it’s right there waiting for you. The sky. It’s always there. It’s always there. You just have to let yourself go and you can get there.
And that’s where life becomes equal. No matter what advantages you have. No matter how you’re trained. The sky is there. And you meet the right person and get the right inspiration you can get to where you need to get to. Because you don’t have any blockages. You see a lot of people have blockages. It’s like they just can’t… you know, one person plays a phrase and it’s magic. Another person plays a phrase and it’s like, yeah, nice phrase, but there’s no magic. How can we get to the magic? And that’s what the real education is: how to train people to at least accept magic and get to it. Because that’s what makes music move people: the magic. The magic! And so that’s what we want to do, and you need all the help you can in an environment. Can everybody get to the magic? Why not? Is it like some people are born magical and some people are not? No! It’s like we have to know... the reason you’re not getting to the magic is 'cause you’re playing bebop. You’re copying Charlie Parker. You’re playing 32 notes or 40 notes when why don’t you just try one sound... and then see what happens. And then try another sound. See where your language is. See where you come from. Y ou see we all come from clans. That means, say you reach a guy and say, “why do you play so loud?’ I mean, I wake you up at 3 o’clock in the morning and say let’s go play and you play loud. I wake you up at 6 o’clock in the afternoon and you play loud. You play loud every time you play your instrument. What’s the problem? And then he says, “Well, I come from the Loud Clan. My grandfather played loud. My grandmother played loud. My great grandfather played loud. My great grandmother played loud. My uncles play loud. We come from the Loud Clan. Now if you want somebody to play soft, go talk to that guy. He comes from the Soft Clan. And if you want somebody who can play loud and soft, go talk to the Loud and Soft Clan.”
And then you say, well, why do you play that way? Why do you play that phrase all the time? And then you have to investigate why you play that phrase. There was a guy who used to play Bb. Wonderful musician, but he’d only play in the key of Bb. Then he found out in an article one day that they went into a black hole in space and the pitch there was Bb. And we couldn’t talk to him anymore. He said, “I told you; and as life goes on, you're going to see that Bb is the key that opens up the wonders of life.” And if you believe that, then say, “I only play in Bb. If you’re playing in the key of A don’t hire me. But I gotta follow my destiny and do what I think I have to do.” And that’s what you have to do. You have to end up playing the way you play, because you don’t play to please anybody. You don’t play to be popular. You have to play the way you play. You know, the way you breathe. The way you walk. The way you move your head. You have to do what you have to do. And it’s not so much, okay, at the end you find that, you know, I guess I should have had better posture, you know, have this and that. Okay. Things lock in but the thing is more that the message in what you play… I mean, Clifford Brown died when he was, what, 24? A lot of musicians die young. ‘Trane died young. Albert Ayler died young. You know, so... You don’t know what’s in your life but if you’re sincere and you love people and you love music, that’s all you do.
Now you mentioned Frank Lowe. Now Frank Lowe was a sweet guy. He was a very gentle guy. Cat should have never been to Vietnam. Should have never gone. Big, big mistake. It really hindered his life later on. But, underneath all of that, man, Frank was a... He was a little insecure, but he was sweet, and what a sound! And the music that was coming through him was just great. Just great. And, his early period, even when he went through his middle period where people said, “Frank don’t play like he used to play.” But Frank still had a tone. And he was a guy that the magic was coming through. They said, “Well, Frank was not an all around saxophone player...blah blah blah.” Later for that. That’s what I loved about Frank Wright. Frank Wright, he knew what he was here for and he would say it: “My name is Frank Wright. I’m here to bring a spiritual message to the people of the world. I do what I do and I am what I am.” You know, and Frank Wright, man, that thing was working all the time with Frank Wright, and he was really something else. And if you never played with him you wouldn't know. And then you play with him… Jimmy Lyons, man. Jimmy Lyons was, whoa! I mean, it’s like fantastic. So, the thing is that, uh, you know uh... yeah.
It’s great to have known certain people. You mention Al Fielder. Al Fielder was something else. And you say, "why in the world is, they never knew him and now he’s gone." I think about how Henry Grimes came back, and I just regret that I didn’t really get to - due to circumstances - I didn’t get to hang out with him and know him. I couldn’t get to really like… and then I said I should have just not let it, broken past that. You know, but he… that was a big mistake. Not breaking past his… he was like surrounded by a fence. I should have broken through the fence, and now he’s gone. Denis Charles used to tell me, “Yeah, man. Henry would come by the house and we’d listen to music all day and he’d never say a word. And then Cecil would always talk about Henry. And, now you say, "well, man I didn’t really get to go hang out with Henry and listen to music and just hang out...and feel the guy." I should have done that. Part of that was just being busy trying to do what I did and part of it being... not messing with Henry’s world, if you know what I mean, his world. With the little blink, you know what I mean? I should have bypassed that.
AG: That’s the thing about sharing your stories, right? I mean, you’ve got your three books of Conversations and, oh there was something you guys were talking about yesterday. Jazz Babylon or something? That’s more stories and stuff. You just talk about being close to certain people and feeling that. That’s definitely part of the motivation for having some of these conversations and remembering people to the world that didn't get to meet them or something. I love telling stories about Frank. I spent a lot of time with him toward the end of his life and you know just a unique character. I want to say that musicians are particular in that way, but it doesn’t have to be a musician, I suppose, but somebody who is tuned into their individuality in that way will make you feel something like that.
WP: Well, you know when you tune into your… you don’t even know you’re tuning into it. You're just being yourself. People will look at you from the outside and say that guy is a unique person or she’s a unique person. And they’re not even aware of it. They’re just being themselves. And that’s kinda how it rolls, you know? So, I think what to pass onto young people is, don’t be afraid to, if you really, really feel something, then do it. If you feel you should play something, or play this way, and you really feel that way, and it’s important to you, even though you might not know all the reasons, then you should do it. And there’s no way I can fail you in my class, not that I have a class, that I can fail you for being yourself. Well, you say, “I was failed because I wanted to be myself.” And not everyone is supposed to do everything. Certain things... you studying to be a carpenter and you don’t believe in screw drivers, you have a problem. Am I lying? How can you build anything? Well you say, “No, I don’t need a screwdriver. I need a knife, and I need to put a joint and a clamp on this and it’ll work just as good as a screwdriver. There was a point in life when there were no screws and there were no screwdrivers, and people got along. So, if you’re willing you can do what you want to do and just get support, and believe in yourself and play your music. Everyday, you got up in the morning and you say, there’s nobody in this room but me, and you play the meditation on your flute, on your trumpet, on your drum, about world peace, and believe that it’s getting out there to everybody in the world. And you say, “there’s nobody listening to me, man, why do I keep doing it?” Because the sun keeps rising, and the trees sway in the breeze, and birds sing. That’s why I do it.
photo by Maurice Narcis ©2021