Tag Archives: John Patitucci
For John Patitucci's 56th Birthday, a 2009 Conversation for www.jazz.com; an Uncut Blindfold Test For Downbeat in 2002; and a "Director's Cut" Article For DownBeat in 2000
For master bassist and composer John Patitucci's birthday, here's a trifecta — an extended conversation in 2009 that appeared on the now-extinct 'zine http://www.jazz.com; an uncut Downbeat Blindfold Test in 2002; and a "director's cut" of an article that I wrote about John for Downbeat in 2000.
-_-_-_-_
John Patitucci (Aug. 12, 2009):
TP: Let's start with the Remembrance trio project. I read the bio. It started when you were doing a rehearsal at Joe Lovano's home for Communion back in 2000, and Brad Mehldau wasn't there for part of a rehearsal, and you liked the feel of the trio.
JP: We were up at Joe's pad, and it was glorious. He has a high-ceilinged thing in his house upstate. We walked in there, and we just figured, "Oh, let's do this without the piano and just rehearse." We started playing and we looked at each other, like, "what…?" It was amazing. You can't contrive that. I don't care who it is. It could be all-star people, things that look good on paper, and you get together and the chemistry isn't quite there, or there's different conceptions that don't line up. This was just instantaneous. Ever since then, whenever we saw each other, I'd say, "Man, remember that?" They'd said, "Yeah, I remember that; we've got to do…" We'd always talk about, "We've got to do a trio thing, we've got to do a trio thing." So finally, I'd been also… I always wanted to do that anyway. Any bass player in jazz, if you ask them, probably would say it's something that they would be interested in doing, because it just sounds so good to have that air and space in the music. But finally for me…I had been listening, obviously, to Sonny's records for a while. I'd always loved the one with Elvin Jones and Wilbur Ware, Live at the Village Vanguard, but also the stuff with Max Roach and Oscar Pettiford is just amazing on <i>Freedom Suite</I>. I thought that I've waited, I'm going to be 50 this year—maybe this is it. Because I can't wait forever. I guess my first philosophy was wait til I get a little older, and maybe I'll have some time to get a little stronger before I attempt to put something… This is a heavy thing for me. With trio, there's a legacy and a history, and you don't want to come out of the gate sounding like you're just doing a retro homage to these great records—even though they're worthy of all that. But I didn't feel that I wanted to do something that would be copying, but something that would be in tribute but also trying to add some other colors and personal things, if I could, to add some other things in the mix.
TP: You stated a whole interview's worth of themes there. You mentioned waiting until you're strong enough…
JP: Which you can never be.
TP: But for someone of your reputation and experience to say that is interesting. Also, you're speaking about the overall sound of the record, which is very specifically a hardcore jazz date, with that feel, whereas many of your recordings with Concord have dealt with Afro-Caribbean feels, classical music, numerous configurations. You even mentioned in an earlier bio that some people like one sound within the record, whereas you like variety. You'll probably contest this assertion.
JP: Yes, it's interesting you'd say that. I read in some reviews that people didn't get some of the other sounds on the record. They said it's a straight-ahead blowing date. One guy said, "This is a humble record, it's modest," but the you get to "Scenes From an Opera," where all of a sudden there's a string quartet and an alto clarinet, and that's not like a straight-ahead blowing date at all. That's another color introduced. You could also argue that not only on "Scenes From An Opera," but also "Mali" has the West African influence, "Messaien's Gumbo" there's New Orleans…
TP: I didn't say a straight-ahead blowing date. I'm thinking of one sound with three musicians, with whom you blend together all these flavors in a very 21st century way, an organic way that reflects your experience.
JP: But it's interesting that I had a review that said "this is a simple, straight-ahead record." I thought, "Did you listen to the same record that I…" I guess because on some of the things we were paying tribute to those things that Sonny did in a very organic way—the way Joe is able to improvise and play with such authority and Brian's feeling. I understand that. But to me, that's not the only thing this is.
TP: Let's talk about putting together the repertoire, the arc of the date. Are most of them recent tunes, written with this date in mind?
JP: I write all year round, every year. I just write. I write classical commissions. I write tunes. I write pieces for piano. I just write as much as I can, within my crazy schedule. I try to remain a work in progress as a composer, trying to compose and expand. However, I did know who I was writing for, for this. So over time, as I gathered things, I knew that it was going to be Brian and Joe. I mean, I knew that years ago, when I decided this is a project that we're going to do together at some point. Then other things crept in. I kept thinking, and would think, "Oh, this would be good for that." So as I collected more things, the things that sounded like they would go with this project got lumped into this area over here, which became the record.
Some things were late additions. Like, the piece for Michael Brecker was the result of me, over a year ago… Last baseball season, I sat down in my living room to change the strings on my 6-string bass, because I had to do a gig—and it's pretty tedious. So I had the game on while I was changing the strings, and as I was tuning up a couple of strings, this drone thing started happening, and I thought, "Wait a minute…" Then, the Yankees were losing, and I turned it off. "Wait a minute; what's this?" I found this little thing, with these voicings around this open G-string in the middle. Something started happening, and I said, "Wait a minute, I'd better write this down." I thought maybe this is a little interlude on the record somewhere. Then after I started writing it, I decided, "no, I want to record this. Something is here; I don't even know what it's going to become."
But the interesting that happens, which is part of the recording process that I love, is that I try to approach the recording process, even though I compose things also improvisationally… When we went to do the string octet… My wife and I were going to do the string octet, which was four celli and four basses, and she and I overdubbed them all. We figured, "Ok, we'll get a baby-sitter, we'll go to the studio, and we'll knock out the string octet." Then I thought, "I'll try that thing I'm thinking, and see what happens." But we had the time constraint—the baby-sitter is only a few hours. So we did the string octet, and we were pleased with that, we took our time, made sure everything was right. Then I said, "well, I'll just give myself a little time on this thing and see if it develops; if it doesn't develop, I won't use it." I brought my piccolo 6-string bass as well (this is for "Remembrance"). I figured, "well, I'll try it." So I put the thing down, then I thought, "Let me double it with the regular 6-string bass," and it sounded like a 12-string guitar. I thought, "Wow, that's kind of interesting." Then I put a couple of passes of a sort of recitative melodic statement over it, and that's when it hit me. It became this really emotional piece, and it felt like Mike. It felt like me trying to process… I don't want to get too heavy about it. But it definitely spoke to me about something emotional, and I thought, "That's for Mike."
TP: When did the "Remembrance" theme become the overriding idea? Because the recording is a suite of homages to various people who have gone.
JP: That happened organically. As the tunes came together, the tunes suggested, "Well, this is really for…" Some of them I had already titled before I knew I was going to do a whole record on this theme. It just happened naturally that a bunch of these tunes… I thought, "Well, that's what this record is; it's become this." Things kept happening. We kept losing more people, and I thought, "wow, I've got to make a statement." But it's not only that. Like I say in the liner notes, it's to honor the people that we still have, who are still making strong music, because oftentimes people wait until the person dies, and appreciate them then, which is sad. Now we have people like Sonny who is still creating incredible things, Wayne Shorter obviously, all the people I mentioned there. So it's also remembering to honor them now, and also remembering to be present. This is something in my spiritual walk, in my growth as a person spiritually that I'm trying to get better at, which I think is a challenge to all of us—to be present in the moment, not worry about the future, not get stuck being always nostalgic about the past and being locked there, and actually be here right in this instant. That's the way these guys play, too, and that's the way playing in Wayne's band is—it's very present. People are really aware of the time that we have together, and we really try to live it to the fullest and cherish it. I didn't want it to be a totally mournful thing where people are supposed to get the record and mourn. No, that's not what this is. You can hear it in the music. It's a celebration of that inspiration.
TP: Do you see this in any way as a companion date to the previous record, Line by Line, which was primarily a trio with guitar and augmented by Chris Potter? Are there relationships between the two?
JP: I didn't really think of them that way, no.
TP: You had seen Line by Line as a companion to the previous recordings.
JP: Right. Because it also had expanded orchestration and writing for strings. Line and Line and Songs, Stories and Spirituals were a couplet to me. This was something other… Although it makes sense to me that it came out after Line by Line, because it was time to change up the orchestration. I had done two records where I had written extensively for a little bit expanded formats. I thought I'd pare down and see if, as a composer, I could still make orchestrational colors happen with a more limited number of people. That was a challenge for me. A composer should be able to get orchestrational variety with a couple of instruments or many. Of course, these guys have so many colors that you could put one of them on the stage by themself, and you have a world of color. So I wasn't really worried about getting enough colors with Joe and Brian.
TP: Before we talk about your simpatico with Brian Blade, with whom you've had an ongoing relationship for a decade, talk a bit about your connection to Joe Lovano.
JP: I fell in love with Joe Lovano's playing when I heard him on John Scofield's recordings. Sco and I have a history together. I've always loved John's playing. I was a fan. I used to transcribe his stuff when I was in college; John influenced my playing. My brother is a guitarist, so a lot of guitar players influenced my playing on the 6-string bass, because of the way they approached harmony and lines. Wes Montgomery was one that hit me. Pat Martino. Benson, Sco was one of my heroes. I used to see Abercrombie quite a bit, too, in the late '70s and '80s.
Anyway, Sco's records with Lovano with Bill Stewart. I love Sco. And we've played together quite a bit now; every once in a while, we get together and do something else. Now was a big deal for me, because I used to love that quartet with Joe in it, whether the bassist was Dennis Irwin, or before him Marc Johnson played a little bit, and Charlie Haden played on some of the records… Man, Joe's playing…man, this guy is amazing. We would run into him on the road and hear him. "Man, this guy, he's special." So I had wanted to do something with him for years, and in fact, I probably would have hired him for Now, but I didn't want it to look like I had just hijacked John Scofield's band—it was Bill Stewart, John, and if I'd used Joe, it would have been way too much.
TP: Another convergence about this and Line and Line is your use of the electric 6-string. On a lot of the recordings prior to Line by Line you were playing primarily acoustic, and then doing an electric feature at the end of the recital.
JP: Yes, there would be two or three tracks maybe.
TP: But on this record and the previous one, the 6-string electric is more integrally orchestrated into the flow.
JP: When I moved back to New York, I was trying to dispel… Part of the reason why I came back was obviously to play with all these players. As a composer, there's no better pool of incredible artists than New York for the music I want to write and want to play. But the other part is that I felt I was getting pigeonholed a little bit. Some people would say, "He's that fusion guy." What are you talking about? I've been playing bebop since I was a teenager, and playing with older musicians, too, who were amazing already in my late teens. So I felt that was a strange thing, and when I moved back to New York I was really excited. What happened was that the stereotype got shattered to the point that people literally would say to me, "Oh, you play electric bass? I didn't know you did that?"
TP: You told me a story about a woman contractor called you for a gig…
JP: Yeah, a contractor. I said, "What do you want me to bring?" "What do you mean?" I said, "Do you want acoustic bass, electric bass, fretless? What do you want?" She said, "You play electric bass?" I said, "Okay! I guess the stereotype is erased." I didn't want to totally cancel out on another part of what I do.
But I also wanted to put a viewpoint out there that's not often expressed, it seems, that in this music there is a place for the electric bass in a musical way and in an organic way. It doesn't have to be that when you pick this up, all of a sudden it's this loud, thrashing, bright kind of edgy sound. It can be a warm, organic kind of thing that really works in the music. Obviously, Steve Swallow has been doing this for many years, asserting this viewpoint. But not many people have that viewpoint with that instrument.
TP: Observing your musical production this year, how relationships and continuities play out over time. For example, the trio with Jack DeJohnette and Danilo Perez—you recorded and you performed with them. You played with Wayne this summer. You played trio with Roy. You played trio with Ed Simon, which is an important relationship, though less high profile.
JP: I love Ed. He was in my band for quite a while.
TP: Then also this band. So your current musical production gives us ample opportunity to discuss your past. And the trio with Lovano and Brian Blade embodies so many flavors of 21st century jazz. Of the people you've played with this year. Wayne Shorter… Well, Wayne Shorter you first played with when you were living in Los Angeles, and played with him periodically…
JP: Since 1986.
TP: Talk about how that experience has evolved.
JP: Early on, when I was playing with him, it was mostly an electric bass gig. We were doing the music from Atlantis, and we'd play some with the acoustic bass, but mostly it was electric, and then we went on the road where oftentimes it was only electric. We were playing very orchestrated music, where the basslines were all massive, incredible. That was fun. But the interesting thing was coming out of… I had started to do stuff, I had done some records of my own and been playing with Chick a lot, and then in 1991 I did a number of weeks with Wayne, including one here in New York at the Blue Note. We're standing on that small stage together, and I had that 6-string bass, and he's right next to me. The solos he was playing… A lot of the tunes in those days were really heavily written, but then the solo sections would be open, one chord or something. But the things he would create off that were just staggering. Then he'd turn to me and say, "want some?" It was good for me, because night after night, I had to try to do something after he would chisel one of these granite, monumental solos of doom. Then I didn't know what to do. I started to feel like my stuff was really trite. I realized I needed to get to a deeper place, because when he plays, he can with one sound destroy you, just emotionally. Just one sound placed in a certain way. One note. I was finding that I needed more of that in my playing. I felt I really wanted to get to the place where I could tell a larger story. It was good for me. Because he was very encouraging. He used to give me a lot of room to blow. He liked the bass to stretch. He would turn to me and say, "Yeah, Paganini—go ahead, go ahead." He was into it. But it made me realize that not only did I have to learn, how to get deeper… Also, he did it with density, too. That was the thing. He could do it with one note or a million, just like Trane. He could destroy you with one, or his version of sheets of sound, or whatever. You'd be really moved by it. It wasn't licks. There were no licks. So that was a wakeup call.
Then again, when we started the band in the late '90s, I started playing with him again, before Danilo and Brian were in the picture. We did some gigs. He was thinking about doing some expanded form things, and we did…
TP: You did something with the Detroit Symphony, I believe.
JP: We did that. Even before that, we did something for a giant Buddhist festival in Japan. That was a large group, with Terri Lyne and Jim Beard, Shunzo Ohno, David Gilmore—playing a mixture of things. But in the '90s, he started calling again, because he knew I'd left Chick to do my own thing. He always used to call me, all through those years… My wife and I had experienced a still-birth the year he lost his wife. So we had talked, and towards the end of the '90s, we got together and started… he said, "do you want to do something?" I said, "Look, I'm loose. I'm doing some stuff with my own group. Any time you call, I'm there. Absolutely." so he knew he had that kind of love and commitment from me. The other stuff evolved over time.
TP: You mentioned to me that you first met Brian Blade on Danilo Perez' recording date, Suite of the Americas, and you and he have evolved into one of the classic bass-drum pairings over the decade. What qualities contribute to your simpatico, make you such an interesting fit?
JP: Well, we have a lot of shared love of a lot of music, and also experience in terms of spiritual things. The way he was raised, and my love for that type of culture in music from the church, in the African-American tradition, and also my faith and his faith… There's a lot of things we share. Sometimes you hit it off with somebody, and there's an immediate click, an immediate connection. You can't contrive it. It's hard to put into words. Brian's a part of my family. What's interesting is that I could feel that… Before I moved back to New York, I was driving in L.A., and a record came on the radio which I think was him with Josh, and I heard him play. I didn't know who it was. I freaked out. I said, "Who is that drummer? That's it." It just hit me. Like, "That's the guy I need to work with." I didn't know who he was or anything, then I found out… Then I started hearing his name a lot.
TP: He started recording with Joshua in '95.
JP: I moved back in '96 and it was right before I moved back, so it must have been '95 that I heard him on a record, and I almost pulled off the freeway. I remember going to a recording session, and Harvey Mason was on it, and he also was saying, "Have you heard this guy Brian Blade?" I said, "Man, I heard him." He said, "That's it." I said, "That is it."
TP: What is "that"?
JP: Well, what is that? That is somebody whose spirit on the drums is connected to all the masters. You could easily say he's connected to Elvin, Max, Roy, DeJohnette, all the guys who have changed the course of jazz drumming and have contributed a voice and a beauty and a power… His musicianship is so unbelievably high, and that's the one thing that I think separates him from most of the guys. He's perfectly happy playing next to nothing or as much as you want. He's got those tools. He can make small sounds. He can make big sounds. He can have a lot of density. He can have absolutely simplicity. He can play any kind of groove you can think of. There's just not that many guys who you can say even three of those guys about.
TP: I guess one of those guys might be Jack DeJohnette, who was integral in your transition from the West Coast to East, and with whom you did the [tk] project this year.
JP: Our relationship started with Gonzalo on the record, Live in Japan. He was very cool, and from that time on, he was the one who schemed to put me together with Danilo Perez. It was his idea. He introduced us at a record date by Eugene Pay, with Mike Brecker. Danilo came to the studio with David Sanchez, and I met them. Jack said, "Yeah, man, you'd better play together." He was on it. He heard it.
The trio with Jack, Danilo and I did a really fun week at the Blue Note. When the three of us get together, it's a whole different relationship. Jack is obviously a force of nature and a very interesting musician for a lot of things. There's a guy who can play the piano and do all this stuff, but also his connection to Elvin, as well as Haynes… But I hear a lot of connection to Elvin. The swirling nature and the big beat. When I play with him, it reminds me… I didn't get to play with Elvin; I missed out on that. I often think, well, maybe this is in the direction of what it would feel like to play with Elvin.
TP: In that trio, the grooves were from everywhere, but distilled in a very personal way. You have gone through periods of getting really immersed in Afro-diasporic grooves, particularly a decade ago when you were playing with Giovanni Hidalgo and El Negro and were really deep into presenting those sounds within your own compositions. On the Remembrance project, the grooves are from Africa, from New Orleans, from various aspects of jazz. Can you discuss how your own rhythmic compass has developed over this decade?
JP: One key factor… Before that, back as far as the record Another World, which was a GRP record in the early '90s, where I did a lot of collaboration with Armand Sabal-Lecco, who's from Cameroon…a lot of stuff on that record was very African. I had gotten into Salif Keita when I was with Chick. When we went to Portugal for the first time, we met an African guy from Angola who hipped us to a lot of stuff. Then when Mike Brecker got with Paul Simon and was hanging with all the Cameroonian guys, he introduced me to Armand Sabal-Lecco. Mike was the one who also suggested to me, "Check some of this stuff out; you'd love this"—I got way into it. Before that, I had played with some musicians from South America. I had played with Acuna and Justo Almaria in L.A., and some other people, and a ton of Brazilian guys.
When I got back east, I started delving into more of the Caribbean stuff, the Cuban and Puerto Rican aspects, and also Danilo was a huge factor in my coming to a greater understanding of this music. He would give me rhythmic exercises. He would teach me how to get inside the three. The three is at the center, the 6/8 is at the center of all the music. It's inside so much stuff. So he would give me little exercises where you could go in and out of the 6/8, within the three, and the pulse would stay the same but you'd be accessing all these different worlds of rhythm. This is what these guys get so great at, and take to such a deep place, where they can… Giovanni and Negro can metrically modulate and do all kinds of things that are so organic and so swinging, deeply… They have a profound understanding of the triple meter, the 6/8, how that can impact the 2 and the 4/4 and big-three. You get into all these multiples of the rhythm. We've been talking about that and doing musical exercises for years. He's helped me deepen my clock with that stuff. It's profound, how good he is at teaching it, too. He's phenomenal at that. He understands it very well. He always jokes. He says I taught him how to read chord symbols and some harmonic things like that, but he taught me a world of rhythmic stuff. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a drummer first. I had hand drums, I had bongos and maracas, and I was singing. I loved the drums. I mean, I had the bass, too. But I remember, even after I started playing the bass, I tried to get my dad to let me have a drumset, and he said no. [LAUGHS] So the drums are something that I've always revered, too. Danilo, too. Sometimes he jokes around, he sits down at the drumset, and we'll play together on the soundcheck. He has a great feeling.
TP: Then this summer you also went on the road with Roy Haynes for the first time in a while.
JP: In a while, yes. Danilo and I had been with him, and done quite a few tours and a record in the late '90s. Roy was in phenomenal spirits. Obviously, it was a little different, because Danilo burst his Achilles tendon, and he's been out of commission for a couple of months waiting for it to heal up. Dave Kikoski played, and played well, and Papa Haynes was charging! In high spirits. We did 9 concerts in two weeks.
TP: I get the sense that playing in this trio in the '90s was very important for you, in a lot of ways. It came on the heels of your move from L.A. to New York, when you were determined to establish yourself on the acoustic bass, both in the public eye and probably in your own…
JP: I was trying to make a statement, to say: "Look, this is a big part of who I am. It's not a peripheral kind of thing. It's not a dalliance. It's deeply who I am."
TP: If anyone had any doubts, all they'd need to was listen to that trio. Could you evaluate the experience? Not only did you interact with Danilo, but you got inside the mind of Roy Haynes for a couple of years.
JP: I'd played with a lot of people, but when I played with Haynes it was kind of like swing finishing school. You felt, "Ok, if Haynes likes it, I guess I'm going to be ok." Because obviously, he's somebody who's played with everyone from Louis Armstrong and Bird, Bud Powell, Monk, Coltrane, all these people, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, We Three—you can go on and on and on. For somebody like that to go, "Yeah, it's feeling good," then you feel encouraged. "Ok, maybe I have an understanding of this music after all. Obviously, if you play with somebody like that, who's been connected to all the things that mattered to you coming up, all your heroes, the whole encyclopedia of jazz in one human being, which is what I call Roy Haynes. He is the living, walking, breathing encyclopedia of jazz. So if you can play with him and he likes it, then you can breathe a little easier and enjoy the fact that something you've been passionate about all your life makes sense to somebody you really look up to.
TP: One interesting thing about the trio at the time is that the group was so open-ended and triological, rather than a piano trio…
JP: Right, it was more an equal voice trio. He gave us a lot of trust and a lot of space.
TP: it sounds that this attitude filtered into your mutual interaction with Wayne Shorter.
JP: The relationship between Danilo and I is another thing that's very special. We're like brothers. We spend a lot of time together in a lot of different circumstances. So for us to be together and working in different circumstances is a source of great joy and excitement. We've had a chance to develop a rapport. That was a big deal for me, because after playing with Chick all those years and working some with Herbie, playing with a younger pianist, even younger than myself, somebody who is really a chance-taker and risk-taker like the guys I was used to… It's hard to find a more adventurous pianist than either Chick or Herbie. Those guys don't care. They'll be reckless, which is great, and I learned a lot from that. Danilo is cut from the same cloth. He's reckless.
TP: You told a story in the Jazz Improv interview about Herbie reharmonizing Roy Hargrove's ballad…
JP: That was at a rehearsal for the Directions in Music project. We were going into Kuumba for warmup gigs for that tour. It was right after 9/11, too. It was heavy. We got on a plane like a week after. My wife was freaking! "What are you doing?" So we flew out there and rehearsed, and we saw Herbie singlehandedly turn a nice tune into a masterpiece, right before our eyes. He just started sitting there and patiently reworking everything. Mike and I were watching him… He started playing, and he got into it. He'd go, "No, this won't do," and then he's changing…Finally, he looks up at Roy and goes, "Man, I'm sorry. I'm changing your tune; is that ok?" Roy goes, "Man, change all of it! Go ahead!" It was turning into this incredible ballad. He reharmonized it from top to bottom.
TP: I've channeled the discussion to people you're playing with, but the reason we're having this conversation is because of your own records and the group you're leading this week, as well as your instrumentalism. So I'd like to talk about bass stuff. Since you've been reemphasizing the 6-string more in recent years, can you speak more to how your relationship to that instrument has evolved since you came here determined to have people know you as an acoustic bassist, and then subsequently wanting it to be clear that you do both—that you're a multi-instrumentalist. When I spoke with you for the bio, you stated that your sound has become brighter, whereas most of your contemporaries strive for a brighter tone.
JP: If you want to speak about preference, just subjectively, I think what happened was this. When Jaco Pastorius hit the scene, he played a jazz bass, which has more of a mid-rangey sound, and people got way into that. Everybody went out and bought a jazz bass, everybody took frets out of their instrument, everybody wanted to be like him. It was interesting, because I loved and respected that so much that at one point I went, "You know what? I'm not doing that. Because nobody's going to play like that guy." That was a voice. That was totally unique to me. So I didn't go that way. I stayed with fretted instruments. Then in '85 I wound up finally getting a 6-string bass, because I'd seen what Anthony Jackson was doing, and I decided I'd go far way from the fretless jazz bass thing, which more of a mid-range bass sound, that I wanted a broader sound on both ends. So with the 6-string bass, you had a low B-string, so you could get the 6-string bottom, and then you could go all the way up with the high C-string and get like a tenor saxophone thing going. So that was my idea about doing something else. I knew that I wouldn't sound like Anthony. Anthony is another very individual voice, very beautiful and very special. So I deliberately took a left turn at that point. Most guys… There was an overwhelming number of guys, especially here in New York… In New York, the whole fusion scene that ensued, it was like you had to play a 4-string jazz bass, otherwise you weren't accepted. People didn't even like 5-string and 6-string basses. They'd look at you like "Yucch." That's what I heard from younger guys who took up the 6 after I did. They said, "Well, maybe you can get away with it, but they tell us, 'no, bring the 4-string; you can't play that in here.'" So interesting. If you wanted to be part of the whole 55 Bar scene in the '80s, you had to have a 4-string jazz bass. But I would come into town with Chick or whatever, I'd bring my 6-string, go sit in with Stern and just play my stuff. I wasn't really bound by that. I was just going, "Well, this is my voice now…" For a while, like a fool, I actually got rid of my old vintage fenders. I just got rid of them!
TP: You're a stubborn guy. A man of principles.
JP: [LAUGHS] But it was originally out of profound respect. Because I would hear these guys trying to play like Jaco, and I was like, "Boy, that sounds like a really bad imitation." When you hear the real thing, it's like "whoa." Why would you want to sound like a third-rate Jaco Pastorius, when he's Jaco, and you're not, and it's going to remain that way, and nobody is going to play like that again. He was that. That was him. It was very special. It was also at a time, that precise moment when he did what he did… Also speaking about Jaco, what people are sleeping on a lot of times is he was an incredible composer. "Three Views Of A Secret." Excuse me. That's a classic. So I have a high regard for him. He's the one who made the fretless electric bass a voice in the music world. What he did was so lyrical and beautiful. I would say, though, when he walked, the feeling is another zone, a more Caribbean, more fusiony kind of walking. A lot of young guys took him for their model for how to swing and walk, instead of going to check out Ron Carter or Ray Brown.
TP: But over the last few years, after several years of not emphasizing the 6-string electric and now bringing it back into the flow more, how… Are there just subtle things?
JP: Pretty subtle, because I never stopped playing it all these years. I just decided that I wanted to also use it in an organic way and continue growing on that instrument as well, so that I didn't stop growing on that instrument, and only grow on… Because I've spent an enormous amount of time getting back into studying classical music on the acoustic bass—and I still do. I put in so much on that over the last 15-20 years that I wanted to make sure that I just didn't let that stop. So I've been thinking about how I want to sound and do things.
TP: You mentioned your affinity for the drums and your father's refusal to buy you a drumkit back in the day. Maybe this provides an opening to talk about your formative years. You're raised in Brooklyn, the East Flatbush area. Large, warm Italian family. Shared a house with your uncle's family—you're on one floor, they're on the other. All the kids are musicians, but the parents weren't musicians. You got your first electric bass when you were 10. You heard jazz the first time when your grandfather was on some sort of job, and he saw a guy moving out of a brownstone, saw a box of records, asked if he could take them for his grandkids, brought them home, and one of the records was Art Blakey's Mosaic with (Wayne Shorter again) "Children of the Night."
JP: Yeah. I was 8 or 9 when I heard that record. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers with Freddie Hubbard and Wayne Shorter—Jymie Merritt on bass. I didn't know what it was, but it moved me.
TP: So jazz enters your consciousness.
JP: Right in there. It was a typical Italian Brooklyn experience. Both sets of grandparents were no farther than 15 minutes away in Brooklyn, so we'd hang out a lot. My grandfather, who used to work on roads in Manhattan, came home from a job site one day with a box or two of records one day. He said, "Look, there was his guy who was leaving his brownstone, he was getting out of New York, he was moving, throwing out things." My grandfather said, "You're throwing away music?" "Ah, I'm leaving New York." My grandfather said, "Well, I have some grandsons; you mind if I take these records?"
He didn't know, but he changed our lives. In addition to <i>Mosaic</i>, there were some of those Wes Montgomery records with Ron and Herbie and Grady Tate. That went in deep. I mean, it just cut through my inability to understand. So when was 12, I decided that I was going to play the bass, and that was it.
When I started playing in Brooklyn…the whole discovery of the instrument… First I was trying to play guitar like my brother. It didn't feel good. I was trying to learn how to read music and all this stuff, and I just couldn't play with the pick. I'm left-handed, although I play right-handed. Then my brother put the electric in my hands, and that started to feel really good, and I started to play by ear and learn things off records. By then, it was the '60s, so you had the Motown stuff, then you had Hendrix, you had Cream, you had blues, B.B. King and all that—a lot of stuff happening. On the radio you could hear a lot of great stuff—Motown and the Beatles and all these other things. So all that was happening, and then in the house, there were Mario Lanza records, opera records being played—very Italian stuff. A wide mixture. For some reason, we even had a Glenn Campbell record. It was a good record, too, actually, because it had those Jimmy Webb tunes; Jimmy Webb was an incredible songwriter. So all this stuff was happening, and it was just part of the thing. I wasn't really aware of anything. I was so young and naive. I just knew that I really loved this.
The reason why I didn't get into anything really organized is because when I was a kid in Brooklyn they had me go to a Catholic school which had no music program. So there was nothing. It was like Miss Petraglia with a beat-up upright piano, who would bring us into a room, and we'd sing songs out of a music book. That was it. We moved to Long Island for about a year-and-a-half before we went to California, and that's the first time I was in a school with a music program, and that's where I was getting snare drum lessons for a year, when I said to my Dad, "I want to play the drums, too." That was nixed. So the snare drum and all that was only about a year of me trying to learn rudiments. But they had a program, so even though I couldn't really read music… One of my friends was a clarinet player, and he tried to get me learn…I played on one tune with the concert band or something. Then I went to 7th grade at a middle school in Farmingville, Long Island, and they had a program, too. They had an after-school thing. One of the English teachers had a rock band. So I played in that for a minute. Then when we went to California, there was big band in 8th grade, which I played in. I could hardly read music. I'd listen to the tune down once, and then I'd learn it and play along.
That's when I encounter Chris Pohler, who became my mentor and remains… For this record, he's the one who sent me a treatise that Messaien wrote called "The Seven Modes of Limited Transposition." He said, "Check this out; you might find something to mess with." I found one of those modes, which is Mode 3, which the whole melody of "Messaien's Gumbo" is based on. So the ongoing relationship… Chris is also the one who challenged me before I did Line by Line and some of those other records… He said, "You've been composing all this music, but now I want you to think about challenging yourself to be like the composers, like Bach, who could generate their harmony purely from counterpoint." So unlike jazz musicians, who plunk down chords and then write a melody, he said, "See if you can incorporate more of that contrapuntalism into your jazz writing." So Chris has had a lot of great ideas over the years, and he's a terrific guy. He encouraged me a lot. Got me into taking classical lessons when I was in college and all that.
TP: You were a double bass major at San Francisco State and Long Beach State.
JP: Yes, I was a classical bass major. I was playing in all the jazz groups, too, but my teachers expected me fully to do my recitals and then go do auditions for symphony orchestras.
TP: Your high school years were an interesting time to be in Northern California, in the San Francisco area.
JP: Great.
TP: The Keystone Korner was happening…
JP: I was there many times.
TP: It was a very eclectic scene. You've told me that you were into the Art Ensemble and the Sam Rivers Trio, you were into Gary Peacock's Tales of Another, you had a sort of out jazz band…
JP: I saw McCoy at the Keystone. At Keystone I also saw Art Blakey, and at the Great American Music Hall I saw Thad Jones and Mel Lewis and I also saw the Bill Evans Trio there. When I got down to L.A. is when I got to see the Sam Rivers Trio and those guys at the Lighthouse. I saw Old and New Dreams at Royce Hall, which was incredible.
TP: Where I'm going is that this notion of being attracted to all the different flavors that comprise the mosaic that is the scene at any given time was already in you…
JP: A long time ago.
TP: Even though that may not necessarily have visible to people who were following your career.
JP: Yes. Obviously, I was playing with a lot of people in L.A., a lot of the older guys. But if I wasn't making records with them, nobody knew who I was.
TP: Three people, among others, who seem to have been consequential to you. Freddie Hubbard, to whom you pay tribute on Remembrance, and who you played with a fair amount. Victor Feldman you played with…
JP: Even more.
TP: And also Joe Farrell. I'm not clear, but was Joe Farrell your bridge to Chick Corea?
JP: In a way, yes. But actually, he was my bridge to Airto and Flora's band, which was a very important thing for me. Airto taught me a lot about Brazilian music, how to play it, all that stuff. But I used to bug Joe all the time. I'd say, "Man, tell me when Chick is going to have auditions; I really want to play with Chick," and blah-blah-blah. So I don't know whether he ever said anything to Chick, because actually I wound up getting the gig with Chick through playing with Victor Feldman at Chick's house for a Valentine's Day party that they used to have, and invite a bunch of musicians, have food, and some cats would play. That's how Chick heard me, playing acoustic bass with Victor Feldman's trio in his living room.
I have to say that I learned some important things from Joe. When I first started to play with Joe, the band was Tommy Brechtlein and Kei Akagi, and we were all into Trane's band and all that, and we wanted to just burn all the time. We were totally, like, "Love Supreme" and all the great… That's what we wanted to do. And Joe, he could burn like crazy! But he used to mess with us, too. He wanted us to be able to do other things, too, so he would mess with us. He'd go up behind the piano player, Kei Akagi, who'd be playing like McCoy, and he'd go, "Kei. Bebop, Kei. Bebop." He always had that little thing; he was trying to talk like Jaki Byard. Chick told me that later. Apparently, he got that from Jaki Byard, which I didn't know about til later. But he would tell us little things. Because we wanted to burn! Then he would go, "Ok. 'Laura.'" [SINGS] "Two-beat, two beat." We'd have to play like that. We were like, "Aw, Joe, come on, man!" But it was great, because he taught us a lot about how to deal with all the aspects of what we were supposed to be about, not just we're excited and we want to burn all night.
TP: You were a session player…
JP: Also.
TP: …and a club player… I don't mean the term pejoratively, but you were a journeyman bass player around L.A. and…
JP: I was very young, man.
TP: How young were you when you started playing professionally on that level? In the Bay Area, or did it happen in L.A.?
JP: In the Bay Area I was starting to play with some good people. But when I got to L.A. is when I started playing with all the older jazz musicians. I moved to L.A. in 1982, and I'd already been playing a little in the clubs before that. By the time I got the gig with Chick, I was only 24-25 years old, but I'd bee playing with a ton of people from 20 through 24.
TP: I'd assume that playing with Chick developed your technique on the electric bass.
JP: Also. And the acoustic bass. You had to. I had played with a lot of other people when I got the gig with Chick, and I felt like my improvising… That was one of the things that I felt was part of my voice, playing over changes and being able to play over chords and be a soloist as well. It was an incredible learning thing when I finally went to play with Chick, and his comping was so intense. I felt like his comping was better than my solo. And he was so fierce. I thought improvising was one of the good things that I could do, but the first time he was comping I thought, "Oh my God, I've got to get a lot stronger, man." His comping was blowing me off the stage! It was way better than what I was playing. I had to get stronger physically, too, to keep up that intensity, because that cat could blow all night.
TP: So Chick Corea gave you that feeling in the '80s and Wayne Shorter gave you that feeling in the '90s.
JP: Well, yes. I have to say. Even before that, Freddie [Hubbard] in terms being an endless fountain of ideas. I remember playing gigs with Freddie in my twenties, where he would play rhythm changes. Usually you'd think, "when are they going to stop?"—because we're playing really fast tempos. With him, it was, "I hope he plays another one; what was that?" I would never get tired, because it was just mind-boggling what he could do.
TP: So this whole notion of… I have a quote which I'll read back: "when I was young, like a lot of naive young musicians, you go, 'Ok, I want to be the greatest bass player ever.'" Knowing you a bit, I'm sure you did.
JP: Yeah, I did.
TP: "Then you get a little older, and you realize (a) there's no such thing, (b) there are so many different ways to play and so many guys who bring so much to the table on the music that it's exciting to check it all out. So somewhere in my teens, I probably realized there wasn't any such thing, but I still wanted to aim high. I realized there were certain things I wanted to do on the instrument. I want to have freedom and be lyrical. I want to have a really strong foundation, be able to anchor any group that I'm in, but also, when it's my turn to stretch out I want to contribute." You also mentioned a wish list of people you wanted to play with.
JP: Yes. That's very true.
TP: Now, almost all those things have happened.
JP: Almost. I didn't get to play with Elvin.
TP: How about Tony Williams?
JP: With Tony a little bit. Tony kept trying to get me on these all-star things. It almost panned out, and then he passed.
TP: Here I want to discuss your identity as a leader. You've made these recordings, but I'd assume that the preponderance of your professional activity is still on these sideman situations and less as a leader.
JP: Groups. Group formations. Also lots of sideman still.
TP: One question: When leading a group, do you switch back and forth between identities?
JP: Same person. The nice thing about this particular trio is that I have no stress level being the bandleader. I'm as free as when I'm a sideman with this group. Early on in the process… I started leading bands in 1987. Chick was the one who prodded me to do that. He said, "You've got all this music…" First of all, he got me the record deal. I was writing a lot, but he said, "You're writing all this music; you've got to make a record and you've got to have a band." I said, "Do you think so, really?" and he said, "Yeah, absolutely." He got me the record deal, I did the record, and he said, "You've got to put together a band and do more stuff." Actually, even before that. He had me put together the band even before we made the record. So I was already doing some stuff, but it took me years to get comfortable as a bandleader, because then you're wearing different hats and you're concerned about the whole of the music, the business of it, and all that. So for me, the goal is always to be as loose as when I'm when I'm just a sideman and don't have to worry about all the responsibilities of presenting the music. In recent years, I'm much more comfortable leading bands, because the guys I'm playing with, we're so close… Like in this situation with the trio, I'm just enjoying myself. I don't have to worry about anything. Those guys are going to inspire me, they're going to take the music new places. There's nothing for me to be concerned about except try to be in the moment with them—and I have to announce a few tunes or whatever, which is nothing. So that is the way I look at it.
I learned a lot about being a bandleader from Chick and Wayne, and their concept, which is you find guys that you enjoy their identity already and then you just turn them loose.
TP: Chick Corea's approach seems to be project-oriented. He seems to operate with multiple files of activity. He does one thing, that's a project, it ends, maybe he picks it up in three years, but then he goes on to another project. In each case, he's putting himself into a different space. Wayne Shorter seems to be operating via a slightly different process.
JP: Although with Chick, we had a band for ten years. For a while, I think Chick was tired of all those projects. When we had the Elektrik Band and the Acoustic Band, he really liked the fact that we had a band that was the same people that could develop over a long track. Even though, yes, he loves doing all kinds of different stuff. He used to tell me, "the reason why I like having a band is because we can develop something over a long…" He said, "I can do projects all my life, all day." That's easy for him. If you give him five minutes, he can write a tune, so a project is nothing. He can write a whole library for a project in a couple of days. Just give him the time in front of the piano, and he's…WHOOSH. So he liked the idea of having a long development phase.
TP: You mentioned that he imprinted in your mind the notion of writing all the time.
JP: Yes, because he was always writing. Also, not being so critical so that you got in the way of the process. He could write a lot. I was really influenced by him in that regard, that whole idea of writing, composing… Like, if you put me in front of the piano, I can enjoy just sitting there and I'll write something. I might not love it, but I can write something in a complete form. He taught me to turn off the critic inside and just let the stuff flow out. Then you evaluate it. Don't stop yourself in the middle. Let it all out, write it down as fast as you can, get the ideas out, then you can play with them and see what's happening.
TP: Did it take a while for you to internalize the notion of turning off the inner critic, or was it not a complex matter?
JP: I'm pretty loose about when I write. I can write quickly and everything. I used to joke with Mike Brecker, because we were the opposite. He'd say, "Man, how do you write so fast? You write all these tunes." I said, "Yeah, but Mike, I write all these tunes, but one of your tunes is better than ten of mine." He was very meticulous, and would be like one bar… More the Stravinsky approach.
TP: He suffered over every note.
JP: Yeah. Did I ever tell you the story of Stravinsky at the Hollywood party? True story. Stravinsky at a Hollywood part, some young TV composer comes up to him, "Oh, Mr. Stravinsky…" Stravinsky was being nice. "So, what did you do today, young man?" "Well, I wrote 20 minutes of music." Stravinsky goes, "Wow, that's a lot of music. 20 minutes. Hmm." The young man said, "What did you do today?" Stravinsky said, "Well, I was writing. I wrote 2 bars." The cat was incredulous. "You're Stravinsky. You wrote 2 bars?" Stravinsky looked at the guy and said, "Yeah, you should hear those two bars." So I don't take the fact that being quick is necessarily always a positive. It can be, because if you let the stuff flow out, sometimes it can get out of the way. Sometimes good things can happen when you just let the flow go, and that's what I got from Chick. Stuff was just washing out.
TP: When I interviewed Chick Corea, he said that he didn't get involved in classical music until later…
JP: But he had some classical piano training. Yes, he did. Miss Masullo, in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
TP: Well, thank you for that. But he told that he didn't study it in depth until later.
JP: Probably. Even though he was taking piano lessons and learning classical music, his dad was a jazz trumpet player, so he was…
TP: and he was gigging, too.
JP: Yeah, Chick was blowing!
TP: But both Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter incorporate those interests very seamlessly into their musical production, no matter how hidden or how overt it might be. I think you said that was a help to you…
JP: It was an encouragement. Wayne was always also encouraging me to write and just expand, be really adventurous in what I would write for. He always liked when I would tell him I was trying to write some expanded music, or I had a commission. "Yeah, that's it!" He was always encouraging me not to let anybody put me in a box about what I should write and shouldn't write.
TP: You remarked to me once that you're straddling different genres, that it's sort of what used to be called "third stream," but in a more organic way.
JP: Trying. Those terms are limiting….
TP: Well, you did use the term. But if you can do a third person on yourself….
JP: It's a hard thing to combine those two, because you have musicians that improvise and then you have musicians that don't. So how do you incorporate the two things so that the people who don't improvise can still freely give and be part of a process, and utilize them well, so that they get to do what they do strongly, and then without overwriting, so there's no space for the guys to create some new stuff and improvise on it. That's the stuff that we've been doing with Wayne, with the orchestra, that I think has worked really well. He writes these beautiful, incredible, massive orchestrations, but there is room for us to interact and stretch out and open up sections. That's great. So that's the goal, to incorporate… Some of the commissions that I've written, there's no improvisation at all. It's a piece of modern music that incorporates some of the harmonic language of jazz without laying on these people who have never improvised in their life, "Ok, now you've got to blow." You write it into the music, and they can deliver, because they're used to dealing with the printed work. There's a lot of different methods you can do. If it's something where I've involved playing… Like, Mark Anthony Turnage wrote me a beautiful bass concerto where there's improvisation and there's written stuff, but the orchestra just plays what's written. Yet, he writes so brilliantly, I don't think they feel like they're not doing anything.
TP: Also, since moving East, you've formed friendships and close affiliations with world-class classical players.
JP: Yes, in my church. Larry Dutton from the Emerson String Quartet.
TP: Playing classical music and improvising require different mindsets. At this point of your evolution, how intertwined are the two processes?
JP: historically, it's interesting to note that it didn't used to be that way. There was no division when Bach and those guys were operating. They could improvise fugues, and they were total improvisers. What happened was, as you started to expand numbers, the number of people, it was impossible to do that any more. You had to write things down, because not everybody could improvise. But even in the context of Baroque sonatas, guys would ornament and play on the repeat of the A section—they would add ornaments and do stuff. Some guys still do that. You have harpsichord players that improvise really well. The figured bass, which was the chord changes of that day. So there's a lot of similarities. But once you got out of the Baroque Era and started getting to the Romantic, then the composer became king, and then it changed. So now you have a situation where many classical musicians don't know how to improvise at all. There are varying degrees.
I am pretty open to all points on the continuum. It just depends on how you write. You have to know going in what you want to accomplish, and then go for that. If you know what you want to accomplish, then you'll make the concessions that you need to make in the departments that you need to make them. I wrote a piece, called Lakes, for Ann Schein, who is a phenomenal classical pianist. She's been around a long time. She was one of Rubinstein's proteges. She's so incredible. When she plays a piece, it sounds like she's improvising. When she plays Chopin, it sounds like she's making it up. She's heavy. So for her, I just wrote the piece, knowing that even though she's playing something that's completely written-out, she's going to make it sound like she's blowing. She recorded it on a record called American Composers, which came out earlier this year. This was a big moment for me. On the same record, you have Elliott Carter, who is 100 this year, and Aaron Copland's music, and then there's my piece. Which is hilarious! I was joking with my wife. I said, "Yeah, there's Carter, Copland, and what's that? Is that lunch?" Patitucci. Is that with mozzarella on the side or what?
TP: so many different languages operating simultaneously. Not so many musicians out there are as musically multilingual as you are.
JP: I guess you have to really want to be that way. A lot of people just don't care for that. It's subjective. They like a certain thing, and that's what they like. It's interesting. When I'm with certain people, they like to play a certain way—I like it, too! I like stuff that's loose. I also like hard-swinging music. I grew up listening to Oscar Peterson, too, so I'm just as comfortable playing… I did a record years ago with Monty Alexander, a tribute to Jilly's, and it was just down-the-pike swinging. I absolutely love that. But I also like playing in a really open context, and I also like playing with Wayne and with Herbie. All the different in-betweens. It just depends on the kind of music you love to listen to. If you like a lot of different things, then you kind of have to go, "Ok, now I've got to learn how to do that," if you want to play that music. For me, I never get tired of learning new ways to approach the music, because it keeps me excited about it.
TP: over the next couple of months, I noticed from your website, you have a number of gigs for this music, but most of them aren't with Joe and Brian.
JP: Scheduling is very different.
TP: You'll be using John Ellis and Marcus Gilmore, which is an interesting trio.
JP: They're great. George Garzone is making a lot of gigs, too.
TP: But will Marcus Gilmore playing drums mostly?
JP: Yes. There's one gig also with Teri Lyne Carrington and John Ellis up in Boston in September.
TP: It will sound very different, because this music was composed with Joe Lovano and Brian Blade in mind in certain ways…
JP: Check it out, though. The first time we ran the music before the record, I actually had a couple of gigs with John and Marcus. So they played the music early on. Some of the pieces they saw before Joe and Brian. They were very involved from the beginning, too.
TP: Where I'm going is that for you, as a composer, the ideas of the music have a firm identity outside the personnel that plays it. A lot of jazz music is so personnel-specific, but this is not necessarily the case with you.
JP: Hopefully. Obviously, though, certain kinds of musicians are needed, particularly if you look at the drums in this music. You've got to have somebody who can swing, but also somebody who can play some other kinds of grooves—the African stuff, that New Orleans feel. It's not so easy to find guys who can cover a lot of ground, apart from the singular connection that Brian and I have. That's something that's in its own place for me. So after that, it's another thing. But Marcus Gilmore is a very, very gifted young man.
TP: It puts you in a different position. Rather than playing with peers, so to speak… John Ellis and Marcus Gilmore are superior musicians, but younger musicians.
JP: Well, I'm old enough to be Marcus' father. John, not quite.
TP: And you turn 50 this year. There comes a transitional point for musicians… Well, music is a social art, more than the visual arts or writing, and you make a transition from someone who is identified more by working with Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Roy Haynes, and having done some albums, to the preponderance of your activity being a leader, as happened at a certain point with Dave Holland and other people. Is this something you think of consciously? How proactive do you want to be about establishing yourself…
JP: As a bandleader and so on?
TP: I'll put it this way. Establishing yourself where your own musical vision is the predominant thing. From soup to nuts, as it were.
JP: Well, it has to be tempered with my time with my family, basically. I made a choice a little while back that, yes, I could go and tour as a leader most of the year that I wasn't doing the other stuff, but then I'd never see my family. So I have to balance it, and that's what I try to do. That's also why I took the gig teaching at City College, so that I could choose a little bit more how much I wanted to be gone. There are still, obviously, some things musically that are super-important and I feel I have to do. But I also want to have a presence with my own family. A lot of guys sacrifice that to be a bandleader and make a statement and all that, and that's great. But I'm not willing to sacrifice me being a good husband and father. That's sometimes tricky, because it can be frustrating for somebody who's been recording as long as I have… This is my thirteenth record. I've had bands since 1987. Yet, some people who write about the music say, "well, he's not really a bandleader" or stuff like, "He's not really a composer; his stuff is not that developed." I've had that attitude thrown at me from time to time, and I think, "wow, is that because I'm not out there all the time with my band, going, 'this is what I am,' shouting it from the rooftops, touring like crazy?" Also, when you get to be almost 50, you're think that you don't want to go on the road all the time. I like going on the road. It's great. But I'm not going to do it like I did when I was 25. So those are choices, and those choices have consequences. You're not as in the public eye, so you're not going to be poll-winning and all that kind of stuff. That doesn't happen unless you're out with your band all the time, saying, "Look, this is my vision." I still have a vision. It's a very strong viewpoint, and I don't feel like I'm not taking it seriously. It's just that I'm not willing to be on the road 8 months a year to do it. So I have to temper it and do it over a longer period of time, a slower arc, I guess.
TP: there's something about the road that seems to inhibit R&D. Perhaps it hones a point of view. But when you're off the road, there's space… As Corea puts it, the eternal child aspect can perhaps be expressed more readily if you're not on the road all the time.
JP: Yeah, when you're on the road all the time, and you're moving and moving and moving, and doing and doing and doing, there's not as much… Well, now it's a little easier to compose, with the computer. But you need time to just be home. And also, it's nice to be home in a place like New York, because there's a lot going on. You don't feel like you came home and there's nothing happening.
TP: How much of your time is teaching, how much is practicing and composing, how much is performing, and how much is parenting?
JP: I don't even know how to break that down.
TP: You don't sleep.
JP: Yeah, sometimes you don't. That's the drag about when I'm in the semester time. It can be really rough. I have to get up at 6, help the kids get their stuff for school, and then you go and teach on the days that you teach, and the days that you don't teach you're trying to practice or write or whatever. Or I go early to get my parking place by the school, then I go in and maybe I'll practice a little bit before school starts, and then deal with the students. Sometimes when you come home, you're just burnt. Some days are longer than others. What I do this semester will be coaching two graduate ensembles and two undergraduate ensembles, and 6 or 7 bass students. That means that sometimes one day is heavily loaded. I might have to get there by 7:20 to get my parking place. This semester, school will start at 10 o'clock, so I'll practice and do some stuff before that, and from 10 to 1 is ensembles, and then private lessons until 5. The other day might be a little shorter. Those are intense days. You have to really be on. Then sometimes, when you come home at night, if you're working on a particular thing and you're writing with a deadline, or if you're working on a piece and you have to practice, you stay up til 2 in the morning. Man, when 6 o'clock rolls around, it's not fun. Sometimes I just can't do it. Sometimes I have to do it. I just power down a few espressos, and go down in the basement and work, and pay the price the next day.
TP: When you're 55, let's say, five years from now, do you envision your life breaking down in the same way? Do you expect maybe less sideman work, or…
JP: I don't know. I know I'll keep expanding writing and keep expanding as a player, and I'll continue to write my own music and keep having bands. But I'll continue to play with Wayne as long as he wants to keep doing it—and other people, too. I'll continue pursuing the writing things also on the side, and hopefully get a chance to play some concertos with orchestras again, like I've had recently. And keep shedding. Writing, shedding… That's just on the musical side. But there's also the personal aspects of being involved with my wife and my children and our church. There's a bunch of stuff going on there, too.
TP: So your roots are firmly in the New York area. You're from here, you lived West, but it sounds like the West Coast was never quite your vibe…
JP: No. I liked the Bay Area quite a bit. But when I moved south, which is where I spent most of time in California, that wasn't me. When I came home to the New York area, I felt like, 'Man, I'm home again; this is great." They say you can't go home, but you can.
John Patitucci Blindfold Test (2002):
1. Joe Farrell, "Bass Folk Song" (from MOON GERMS, CTI, 1972/2001) (Farrell, flute; Stanley Clarke, bass; Herbie Hancock, electric piano; Jack DeJohnette, drums).
[INSTANTLY] That's Stanley Clarke. And that's got to be from the '70s. This could be the band with Chick and Joe Farrell. That's what it sounds like — Chick, Joe Farrell, and I'm trying to suss out who the drummer is. Airto was the drummer in that band. Could be. It's easy to identify Stanley. His sound, and particularly his touch. I grew up hearing a lot of his music. After Ron Carter, Ray Brown and those guys, when I was in my teens, when he came on the scene, someone turned me on to a Chick Corea record, and it blew me away. He's a very individual voice. This is a nice record. I'm not sure which one it is, unless it's the first one with the dove flying over the ocean. It's not an ECM record because of the way it sounds. The recording is different. I like it. It's great open energy. These guys were playing together a lot. It sounds very free-blowing; they're just reacting to each other. They're just vamping out! It's great. [Do you have stars for it?] I was thinking about that. I don't really like the idea of stars… [But can you?] I'm going to give everything five. The other thing, too, is I'm kind of anti-criticism. [But we're talking about your aesthetics.] I can't do that. It's like grading… But I can make a lot of comments, which I think are more valuable than trying to, you know, grade papers. Just for the feeling… I'm trying to remember the record. There's one record Stanley did before the solo album that people know, and this could be that one, which was called The Children of Forever, with Pat Martino and all those guys, but it… I thought the keyboard player was Chick, but now that he's playing a solo, it sounds like Herbie. If it's Herbie, that kind of changes thing. But it still sounded like Joe Farrell to me. The drums? I also know that he did some stuff with Tony Williams. The hi-hat is going on all fours; that's Tonyish. But in this period…it could be Tony. Yes, that's Herbie, totally. That's great. I don't know this record, though. I'm trying to pin down the drums. It has Tonyish elements in it. But in that period, too, a lot of guys were influenced by Tony, like Lenny White and… But if it's Herbie, it could be Tony, because I know Stanley played with Herbie and Tony, too. In this period of time, in the '70s, I thought on acoustic bass Stanley was particularly sharp in those days. He sounded really on the top of his game. He was really strong conceptually, and playing with a lot of conviction. And real interesting. Great rhythmically. Everything. They get all the stars! Whatever you want to give them, they get all of them! It's refreshing. I haven't heard this vintage of this guys in a while. [AFTER] Oh, it's Joe's record. I know the record. I know the tune especially. But I still don't know who's playing drums. It was Jack? But I still don't really… It's Jack from that period, which is what fooled me. Not as dense as later Jack. But I love all periods of Jack. It sounds fantastic.
2. Ray Drummond, "Miyako" (from The Drummonds, PAS DE TROIS, True Life, 2000) (Drummond, bass; Renee Rosnes, piano; Billy Drummond, drums; Wayne Shorter, composer)
Nice. Those slides… This is a little trickier for me. I don't know why. It sounds like a Wayne tune, but I can't remember the name. If not, it's one that's really influenced by this 3/4 tune that Wayne wrote. It sounds very influenced by Herbie and that kind of trio playing, but it doesn't sound like Herbie to me. There's something different about it. And when the bass player was doing some slides earlier, it sounded like he was influenced by Ron, but it doesn't sound like Ron to me. [BASS SOLO] It's not Ron at all. Boy, this is tricky. It's a woody sound. I like the sound. Nice lines. Mmm, wow. This piano player is familiar to me, but I'm stumped. I almost feel like I've played this tune… Whothe heck is this? That's a Herbieistic lick and everything, but I don't think it's Herbie. Beautiful. Real sensitive. Great trio playing. I really like it. I should know who the bass player is. It sounds like the influence of Herbie and Ron and Tony kind of playing in the trio, but I don't think it was them. [AFTER] It was Wayne's tune. The Drummonds! I almost guessed Renee at one point. They get all the stars, too. I love that. I should have known it was her. The bass threw me, because I usually can recognize Ray. I love Ray's playing. Yeah, it was happening.
3. Miroslav Vitous, "Miro's Bop" (from UNIVERSAL SYNCOPATIONS, ECM, 2003) (Vitous, bass, composer; Chick Corea, piano; Jan Garbarek, tenor saxophone; Jack De Johnette, drums)
That sounds like Chick. That last lick was a Chickie lick right there. And it sounds like Michael Brecker, or somebody influenced by him. Oh, it's not Mike. Somebody influenced by him, definitely. I thought the bassist might have been Eddie Gomez first, from a little vibrato thing, but then I can't tell you yet. He hasn't soloed. It's a nice sound. The drums sounded very Jack-ish to me right there. But the tenor player is tricky, because it sounds like Michael, but I'm not sure. [I'm sure the tenor player wasn't influenced by Michael Brecker.] Oh, okay. But that's Eddie. It sounds like Eddie, with that little… Well, maybe not. Whoo, nice! Oh, wait a minute. That kind of facility; it could be Miroslav Vitous, too. I like it a lot. Okay, contemporary… The saxophone almost sounded Garbarek for a second there. It could be Garbarek. The bass sound… It's great bass playing. This is not easy. [AFTER] The bass could have been Miro. [It was.] Yes. That would be Miro, Jack, Chick and Garbarek? [Yes.] Because sometimes, in the attack, in the percussiveness, Eddie can get into that kind of thing, too. But the tone was different. It had another thing on it, that Miroslav thing on it. I loved the piece. It was definitely influenced by that Miles kind of thing in the '60s, with the bursts, and the way the bass was kind of coming in and out. Was that Mountain… No, it's not Mountain In The Clouds. I don't know which one it is. [When did it sound like it was done?] It sounded like an ECM recording. It sounded like the '70s to me. [It's a brand-new record.] You gotta be kidding! Great. Cool. It definitely has that older feeling, though.
4. Joe Zawinul, "East 12th Street Band" (from FACES AND PLACES, ESC, 2002) (Zawinul, keyboards & vocoder; Richard Bona, bass; Bobby Malach, saxophone; Paco Sery, drums & percssion; Alex Acuna, percussion; Amit Chatterjee, guitar)
I love this. It's got the African vibe. It could be Zawinul, his thing, just from the sound. Sounds like Zawinul's band to me. I'm not sure which vintage. Victor Bailey plays like that, but Richard Bona has that kind of vibe, too, with the short notes. They wree both playing all through this time. Victor was in and out of the band, and Richard was in the band for a while. That phrase was Victorish, down at the bottom. But Richard plays like that, too. Very nice. It's Paco Sery on drums, the African guy. Great vibe. It's hard to tell which bass player it is. I've known Victor for a long time. I think I met him when I was 19. Whether it's Richard or Victor, it's great playing. If he takes a solo, I can tell for sure, but I don't think he will. I've heard Richard play some, but that sounds more like Victor to me. I can't be sure. I'm going to get in trouble with Victor if I guess wrong! "What do you mean? You couldn't recognize me after all these years?" Post-Jaco. Fantastic. [AFTER] It's Richard? Fantastic. But there's a similarity in the approach for sure. [Do you think that approach has to do with their own approach, or with Zawinul's music?] That's tricky, because Zawinul was influenced a lot by Jaco's stuff but also the African stuff, but also the Africans were influenced by Jaco. It's great playing. When I heard the first groove, I thought of Richard because it was very African, but the more it loosened up and got more jazz, it kind of sounded more like Victor. But Victor has a lot of stuff in him from everywhere, too. So it's very difficult to pin down. Again, lots of stars.
5. Masada String Trio, "Meholalot" (from THE CIRCLE MAKER: ISSACHAR, Tzadik, 1997) (Mark Feldman, violin; Eric Friedlander, cello; Greg Cohen, bass; John Zorn, composer)
This is great. And it's fun. There's a lot of groups popping up like this, acoustic string groups playing more rhythmic music in the last 10-15 years or more. But I'm not familiar with all the… I know the guys around New York, like Mark Feldman is an improvising fiddle player, but I don't know their styles. I know a little bit of Mark's playing, but he wasn't playing solo so much when we've played. He plays in Abercrombie's group, too, but I don't know it's him. It's a guess. I'm just throwing out names of fiddle players who improvise. I like the abandon of it. And the cellist I've played with who I know improvises is Eric Friedlander. But I haven't heard him blow that much. I've just played with him, and I know he's good. He can play. I heard his solo album, which I liked a lot, with Stomu Takeishi, the bass player. I like the idea of the orchestration, too, using the pizzicato rhythmic stuff. The bass player sounds great, but I don't know who it is. He's sort of the rock holding it together, and it he sounds really great doing it, too. Nice and woody. Earthy. It's fun. I like the fact that they're not playing it safe. It's tricky with a bow. I do a lot of playing with the bow, so I know. Once you pick up the bow, to put something across rhythmically takes some doing. It's not easy to do. And they're just going for it. They're not safely trying to do it right. They're just going for it. And I love that. It's got kind of an Eastern thing happening on it, too, which I dig. I love when they break down to the pizzicato stuff. But I have no idea. [AFTER] So it was Zorn's stuff. That's great. I've heard some of Zorn's music before, on WKCR actually. I know Greg Cohen, and he's a great bass player who has a broad musical scope. All the marbles for them. I think it's great. I like that they were charging. It's no prisoners and here we go!
6. Ray Brown, "Stella By Starlight" (from WALK ON, Telarc, 2002) (Ray Brown, bass; Geoffrey Keezer, piano; Karriem Riggins, drums)
[ON INTRO] Beautiful sound, right away. "Stella." Somebody with a little flexibility on the instrument; right away I can tell you that, by the way he just tossed off a couple of things, musical, without even trying. Somebody who is definitely also… The triplet licks were very Ray Brown-esque. But the sound isn't…it doesn't sound like Ray Brown. Just somebody who is, like we all are, influenced by Ray Brown. The sound of the bass is a little different. I'm not going to make a quality judgment on the sound, because I like it. It's just a different recorded tone. Ray's been recorded so much, he has a lot of different sounds, but it doesn't quite sound like Ray to me. The triplets is one aspect of what they're doing. This is tricky. I feel silly. I can't tell you who the piano player is. [BASS SOLO] Now we're going to figure out who this is. He has that flexibility like John Clayton. But I can't say definitively who that bass player is. The piano player played some interesting harmonic stuff, too. [AFTER] I'm stumped. It was Ray Brown! The sound didn't sound, to me… I guess I was in the right ballpark. Ray and John Clayton, that's pretty close. But the sound threw me. He was playing all the licks, but the recorded sound of the bass threw me. Once he played those triplet licks and I said, "Oh, it sounds like Ray…"
7. Steve Swallow, "Ladies Waders" (from THREE GUYS, Enja, 1999) (Swallow, electric bass; Lee Konitz, alto saxophone; Paul Motian, drums)
This is based on "Out of Nowhere." [BASS SOLO] This is great. From the sound of the bass, it sounds like Swallow. It's an electric, but it sounds acoustic. And I can hear the pick, because he uses a pick. But it sounds like Swallow; he's melodic, beautiful, killing… Is the alto player Slagle? I can't tell you? It almost sounded Ornetteish. Swallow is one of the few electric bass players who sounds like a jazz musician, a real, bona fide jazz musician. All the stars for Mr. Swallow, always. Wait, who is the alto player? Sounds more like Konitz now. That's crazy! I'm trying to zone in on the drummer now. It could be Motian. Fantastic. Paul Motian, amazing. I love it. It's just trio, but it sounds huge! I love that. And a very interesting tone. Because Swallow's tone has evolved over the years on electric. And this is even thicker than before. It's hard to get a thick tone in that way. He's got a very special touch and sound because he's playing with a pick. All the marbles.
8. Ornette Coleman, "Mob Job" (from SOUND MUSEUM: THREE WOMEN, Verve/Harmolodic, 1996) (Coleman, alto saxophone, Charnett Moffett, bass; Geri Allen, piano; Denardo Coleman, drums)
It's interesting, the rhythmic thing on this one, because they're trying to imply time without playing it. They don't have the bass mixed up quite loud enough. It sounds kind of like Eddie, but it's back there. Bow with some effects on it, too. It's kind of cool. Oh, wait a minute. Sometimes Charnett does this stuff with the bow with the effects, too. I can't hear it that well. If it was by proxy, I know Charnett is playing with Ornette now. It could be the reason they're trying to imply the time without playing it. Denardoish. It could be Ornette. It's Netman and Ornette and Denardo. But the piano player I can't hear. All the stars just for the sound of Ornette even. Ornette sounds great. Attitude for days. It's interesting to hear Ornette play blues like that, sometimes when he gets into that head. Fort Worth! It's really strong. Whoo! Now the bass sound is coming into focus. He's coming to the fore. It's nice and woody, too. But I couldn't hear that before. I can't give you a guess on the pianist. Sounds like what happened is the snare drum is mixed very forwrd, and it's kind of tricky to hear. [AFTER] Geri Allen? She's fantastic. I like her writing, too.
9. George Mraz, "Up In A Fir Tree (Na Kosate Jedli)" (from MORAVA, Milestone, 2000) (Mraz, bass; Emil Viklicky, piano; Billy Hart, drums; Zuzana Lapcikova, voice, cymbalon)
I know what this record is. It's unfair, because I was listening to it last month. It's George Mraz with the Moravian guys. It's beautiful. It's a great idea to do this. I love this, that he did something for the homeland. This is really nice. George sounds terrific on this, and he's really well recorded as well. It's woody and a nice sound. George was one of the guys that I grew up listening to as well. I listened to Ron and Ray and Sam Jones and Paul Chambers and Percy Heath and all those guys, but then I also listened to Stanley, Eddie, George, Dave Holland, Charlie and Miroslav. He's sort of in that generation, as the next thing that happened. As a bassist, too, dealing with the instrument, he's fantastic. His pitch is so beautiful, and he plays beautiful with the bow. On this record, there's some stuff with the bow that's happening. Yeah, he sounds terrific. I especially love him in that group with John Abercrombie, the quartet with Richie Beirach and Peter Donald. He was killing in that group. All the stars for George.
10. Trio De Paz, "Baden" (from CAFE, Malandro, 2002) (Nilson Matta, bass, composer; Romero Lubambo, guitar; Duduka DaFonseca, drums)
Beautiful. Is this Trio de Paz? Yeah, Nilson, Romero, and Duduka. They get the serious vibe on it right away. It's like a switch. Boom! Nilson sounds great on this. As soon as the first bar, Nilson Matta… The swing of that style of playing is immediately evident. Bass players from Brazil understand that the whole essence of samba comes from the surdo drum. That's where our part comes from, the big drum with the mallet. So that has to be in there. That's the root of what they're doing. They might be doing stuff around it, but they know how to make the backbeat of Brazilian music happen. Even though Nilson is doing a lot of hip decoration and all kinds of other stuff, the groove and rootedness is always there. And Duduka sounds amazing. These guys have been playing together a long time. It's great. There's an art to doing that on the drums as well; making those beats sound like that. All the stars to the boys from Brazil.
11. Michael Formanek, "Emerger" (from NATURE OF THE BEAST, Enja, 1996) (Formanek, bass; Dave Douglas, trumpet; Steve Swell, trombone; Jim Black, drums)
I like the composition right away. Great drummer. [BASS SOLO] Wow. That's all written out. That kind of flexibility reminds me of Dave Holland. Not necessarily his sound. And also the freedom. Dave certainly was part of a lot of seminal recordings of some open music that was… A great bass player, too, whoever this guy is. I don't automatically flash on a name. The trumpet player sounds familiar, but I can't… It's kind of Kenny Wheelerish there, but the sound is different. Wow! It almost sounds like it could be European cats. Bugt it's hard to say that, because there are cats who play with that sensibility here now, and it's cross-pollinized — almost the Classical way of getting around the horn like that. Nice trombone sound, too. The bass player and drummer sound great together. I'm not sure who it is, though. It could also easily be a night at the Knitting Factory. It sounds Downtownish to me. It could be a lot of guys. There's some really strong cats like Mark Helias and Drew Gress… But I know it isn't Drew, because the context isn't… Another guy is Mark Dresser. I'm guessing, though. [This is a guy who I think you were about two years behind when you were coming up in the Bay Area.] Jay Anderson? Jay was right ahead of me. [AFTER] Mike sounds fantastic. He was playing with Freddie and everything. Was the drummer Joey Baron? Jim Black? He's great. I know his playing. Formanek sounds incredible on this.
12. Ron Carter, "Blues In The Closet" (from STARDUST, Blue Note, 2001) (Carter, bass; Roland Hanna, piano; Lenny White, drums; Oscar Pettiford, composer)
"Blues In The Closet," huh? [AFTER FIRST CHORUS] That's Ron. The lines. The architecture. Even though his sound has gone through various incarnations over the years, but also he's one of my main… This is modern Ron right here. It's more of a blended sound now. In the '60s it was all microphone. Then I got the feeling in the '70s he got into the pickup and there was a certain sound. This is both kind of put together. Sounds great. He has a great sense of humor, too, when he plays. Nice brush stuff, like Lewis Nash-ish, but it's not him. Ron made some trio records with Billy Cobham, but that's not Billy. Harvey Mason? All the stars for Ron.
John Patitucci (DownBeat) – 2000:
During John Patitucci's decade with Chick Corea, when he began to make his mark as a consummate six-string electric and acoustic bass virtuoso, his deep connection to and affinity for jazz's main stem was somewhat muted. So listeners who think of him solely as a premier Fusion man, fluent and elegant in the electric idiom, may be caught off-guard by the emotional range of the searing compositions and savvy improvisations that mark Patitucci's three recent acoustic dates for Concord and the mercurial interplay and rooted foundation he imparts to a rampantly imaginative new trio session with Roy Haynes and Danilo Perez (Verve).
A fixture in Los Angeles since 1980, Patitucci left Corea in 1995 to pursue personal projects and plot future directions. In quick succession, he married, and decided to move to New York to begin a family and satisfy creative hungers by plunging headlong into hardcore jazz. "If anybody was really listening, I don't think I ever sounded 'West Coast,'" Patitucci remarks from the well-equipped basement studio in his comfortable new home just north of New York City, a half-hour drive from the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the working-class neighborhood where he spent his first 12 years. While we wait for a pot of orichette and lentils (pasta fagiole — from a family recipe) to reach the proper consistency, Patitucci, who at 40 has the compact muscular frame and focused alertness of a prototype baseball catcher, expresses his disdain for being pigeonholed.
"People labeled me with the term 'Fusion' and I resented it," he says. "I came up in jazz a lot…well, everything from R&B to Classical to free music inspired by the Art Ensemble of Chicago. My major in college was Double Bass Performance, playing Classical music and also in the jazz groups, and from my early days in Los Angeles I played with Victor Feldman, Joe Farrell, Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and a lot of other older guys. Though I started on electric bass when I was 10, I didn't get back into electric until after college, when I realized that I had to get both instruments together to get work. For a while with Chick and on my earlier recordings I played a lot on the six-string bass because it was a new instrument that I wanted to explore. I've always been after the line. Either it's a line that's interesting, that has shapes and dynamics, flows, is musical and lyrical, or it's just scales — no matter what speed you play it. I aim high, and there are certain things I want to do on the instrument. I want to have freedom and be lyrical. I want to have a strong foundation and be able to anchor any group that I'm in, and when it's my turn to stretch out, I want to contribute."
Patitucci honed those qualities during his productive tenure with Corea. "Whatever label people put on Chick's music, it was always creative and amazing, and I learned a lot playing with him," he emphasizes. "He got me a record deal and encouraged me to write. During my last three years I only played in his acoustic groups — the trio and quartet. It was more a practical matter than not wanting to play the electric music. He was very busy, and I didn't want to do double duty on the touring. I felt I hadn't shown a huge part of my personality on my records, though I'd been giving hints, and I wanted to experiment and explore and demonstrate some of this other music that I have inside.
"I started to realize that a lot of the people I wanted to play with more extensively were in New York. There are a lot of great players in Los Angeles, but the town is geared towards Pop music and the movies, and there isn't much support for people who try to reach and stretch. In New York it's not rose-colored glasses, but there's an amazing concentration of creative musicians, an actual scene, more than anywhere else in the world. Stylistically and artistically, I always felt like I belonged here; most of the bassists who are my heroes, the diverse musical minds on the instrument — Ron Carter, Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, George Mraz, Scott LaFaro, Dave Holland, Charlie Haden, Mingus, Steve Swallow, Jaco Pastorius — who influenced the way I hear and play lived here. I was more than a little concerned about coming back to the town where my heroes work, and I certainly was respectful of the scene. But I got encouragement from people like Michael Brecker and Jack DeJohnette, who told me I'd be fine. Finally I decided there was no point in waiting any longer, never doing it, then wondering, 'Boy, maybe I should have tried to go home.' So I did."
After moving to New York, Patitucci recorded "One More Angel," "Now" and "Imprint." On the latter, which could not have been conceptualized nor executed anywhere else but New York City, Patitucci presents the full scope of his comprehensive aesthetic. He assembles and deploys in a variety of configurations a cast of first-tier improvisers with whom he interacts on a regular basis — young tenorists Chris Potter and Mark Turner, pianists Danilo Perez and John Beasley, trapset masters De Johnette and Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez, and state-of-the-art hand drummer Giovanni Hidalgo. He offers them a set of original compositions that span a capacious terrain of ambiance and groove, from spirit catching drum chant to aria-like ballads, incorporating a flexible template of rhythmic signatures.
"John is able to write simple tunes — simple in a good way," notes Potter, a veteran of Patitucci's ensembles since 1993. "Interesting things happen, it zigs when you think it's going to zag. But it seems he's learning to pare down to essentials, so that the themes are very memorable, singable melodies, and the way he constructs the changes makes it very open for the soloists. It seems his band concept is to have a clear framework for a tune, and then hire people to do what they do over it. John's gigs are fun for me because I'm encouraged to explore whatever I'm into; I'm not straitjacketed into one kind of style. He's a fountain of energy. He wants it to be loose and take off — all the right things. You feel that force behind you when you're soloing, that he's on your side — on the music's side. He's thinking about the music in a larger way, how to orchestrate it so it's going somewhere, so it makes sense."
"The way John is writing is a marriage of Latin and Jazz; you don't know where one stops and the other ends," adds Perez, Patitucci's partner in the Roy Haynes Trio since 1997. "He can paint. He uses all the different styles of music, and can deal in any situation. You can go electric, acoustic, swing, jazz, Latin — it clicks in every situation we've worked in. John's ability to play Latin music is amazing; he isn't uncomfortable playing on the one-beat, which is the way Latin musicians play. He always takes the musical approach. He has a lot of facility, really great technique, but he doesn't put it in your face all the time. He knows when to use it and when not to. He isn't an egotistical player at all. He's always finding ways to instigate situations, always doing something, always thinking, 'What can I do to make this better through my function?' And talk about playing in tune — my God."
Patitucci stokes the fires throughout the recent bebop-to-the-future Roy Haynes Trio release, switching on a dime from foundational to soloistic functions with relentless intensity and almost devotional consonance. "I've played with a ton of different drummers over the years," he notes, "and I've tried to sustain an attitude of keeping the doors wide-open, enjoying everybody's ideas of playing the drums and molding in and learning from it. I like to try to get inside the rhythm section and lock in with the soloist, without preconceived ideas. I mean, you play the way you play anyway, and hopefully you do find your voice. But it's so much richer if you're open to be the catalyst. As the bass player you're sitting right in the middle of the music. It's exciting!"
The pasta fagiole is delicious. As dinner winds down, the conversation turns to Patitucci's Italian heritage. "Culturally I feel very identified with it," he remarks. "My father was a big opera fan, and played opera records in the house. I think the Italian fascination with the lyrical delivery of a melody definitely influenced my playing. My upbringing gave me an aesthetic of being thankful for certain things, and also the sense of art as something that's important in the day-to-day aspects of life."
After dinner, Patitucci peers out the dining room window into the twilight at his snow-blanketed backyard, honing in on the dimly outlined snowman he'd constructed earlier that day with toddler daughter Sachi Grace, an indefatigable 2-year-old who keeps metronomic time on the basement trapset. "Jazz got into my soul when I was so young," he reflects. "It touched off something in me. I love the improvisational aspect of it, that there's room for individual expression and the excitement of actually co-creating stuff on the fly. That's magical. There's nothing like it, and I wasn't willing to let go. I had plenty of opportunities in L.A. to go pop, but it didn't hold me emotionally.
"This is the most exciting time of my life. I love it back east. I'm home again. You can't make snowmen in California."
Filed under Bass, Blindfold Test, DownBeat, Jazz.com, John Patitucci
Tagged as Bass, Brian Blade, Danilo Perez, George Mraz, Jaco Pastorius, Joe Lovano, John Patitucci, Michael Formanek, Miroslav Vitous, Nilson Matta, Ray Brown, Ray Drummond, Richard Bona, Ron Carter, Stanley Clarke, Steve Swallow
For Bassist John Clayton's 62nd Birthday, a DownBeat Feature From 2010
John Clayton, who continues to make his mark as top-tier bassist, composer and bandleader, turns 62 today. I had the pleasure of several conversations with him in late 2009-early 2010 when researching and composing a feature piece for DownBeat, which I append below.
One of John Clayton's favorite sayings is that he doesn't do stress. "I'd rather roll up my sleeves and get the job done," Clayton said. "I might have to go without sleeping, deal with difficult people, maybe have people scream at me—but it rolls off my back."
It was the second Tuesday of January, and the bassist, 57, was anticipating the final installment of an eight-night run at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola with the Clayton Brothers Band, which he co-leads with his brother, Jeff Clayton, to be directly followed by two days in the studio to record The New Song and Dance, a follow-up to Brother to Brother [Artist Share], a 2010 Grammy nominee. He had arrived in New York directly from a week at Umbria Jazz Winter in Orvieto, Italy, where he performed four duos with bassist John Patitucci and another four with pianist Gerald Clayton, his son.
On the previous evening at Dizzy's, the only screaming came from a packed house of NEA Jazz Masters, who ate salmon, drank wine and mineral water, and rose up and hollered in response to a surging, well-paced set. "That band is great," 2010 awardee Kenny Barron said later, summing up the prevailing opinion. "It reminds me of why I wanted to start playing jazz in the first place."
Such approbation made sense: Since 1977, when the Claytons co-founded the unit, they've connected to the hip populism and presentational values that defined the musical production of such predecessors as the Adderley Brothers, Benny Golson's Jazztet, Horace Silver, the Ray Brown-Gene Harris Trio, and Count Basie. Now they're a pan-generational ensemble, with forty-something trumpeter Terrell Stafford sharing the front line with Jeff Clayton on alto sax and flute, and twenty-somethings Gerald Clayton and Obed Calvaire on piano and drums. At Dizzy's, CBB articulated old-school aesthetics in a non-formulaic manner, addressing sophisticated harmonic and rhythmic raw materials with a sell-the-song attitude and acute attention to detail. John Clayton radiated the cool, composed affect of which he spoke—alert to all the nuances, he smiled encouragement at his band-mates, goosing the flow with consistently melodic basslines and ebullient, surging-yet-relaxed grooves.
"When I was 16, I studied with Ray Brown," Clayton explained. "Milt Jackson was like an uncle to me at 17. Their music was extremely deep and serious, yet they had no problem allowing the joy that they were deriving from it to be expressed on their faces and in their body language."
Known as Ray Brown's protégé since those years, Clayton holds an undisputed position in the upper echelons of bass expression—in addition to his considerable jazz bona fides as both an ensemble player and soloist, his peer group gives him deep respect for having held the principal bass chair with the Amsterdam Philharmonic for five years during the 1980s.
"One of John's talents is picking things up quickly—understanding concepts," said Jeff Clayton. "I practice long and hard. John practices smart—always has. In preparing to audition for the Amsterdam Philharmonic, he just added another hour or so to his practice.
" I was practicing a lot anyway, so I just added the orchestra audition material to what I was practicing," Clayton said matter-of-factly. "Classical is just another kind of music. You've still got to push the string down to the fingerboard. You have to play detached notes or legato notes, forte or piano. Now, the instrumentation or the groove or some other aesthetic might be different—you learn those things."
"I've always been analytical," he added. "I'm more comfortable if I try to figure out why the characters in a situation say what they do or act as they do. Rather than play something from my lesson 300 times, I'll play it 50 times, and each time analyze, say, what my elbow or wrist is doing."
Clayton has applied his penchant for compartmentalization and mono-focus towards mastering various non-performative aspects of the music business—indeed, he does so many things so well that it is possible to overlook how distinctive a niche he occupies. "John is a visionary, who says, 'Five years from now, I'll be here,' and then gets there,'" said Monty Alexander, with whom Clayton spent the better part of three years on the road during the middle '70s. "When John says he's going to do something and then it transpires, it's not by chance," his brother adds. "We would write down goal sheets and follow them; once we've made it to ALL of our goals, then we set new ones."
One platform is the area of composition and arrangement for small groups, big bands, and orchestras, a craft that Clayton learned in the crucible of the late '70s Count Basie Orchestra. While in Amsterdam, he continued to refine his aesthetic, creating charts for a radio big band. Upon returning to Los Angeles in 1986, he found steady work in the studios, and set to work establishing himself as a film writer.
"I was involved in a lot of film sessions as the only African-American musician in a 75-piece orchestra, and I thought as a writer I could help change that situation," Clayton said. "But when it looked like the doors were starting to open, it became less interesting to me. I realized I was getting into it for the wrong reason; I'd be focusing on a lot of music and an environment that doesn't define me. If you're lucky enough to work with the great directors or producers, then fantastic. But to work with unqualified shlocks who are telling you what to do, and have no taste in music… I always say that jazz saved my life. I don't make the kind of money that a successful film writer makes. But I smile a lot."
Instead, Clayton focused on establishing the Clayton-Hamilton Big Band as a primary locus for his musical production, transmuting vocabulary from various Count Basie "New Testament" and Woody Herman arrangers, Duke Ellington, and Thad Jones into his own argot in the process of creating a book. As the '90s progressed, he served as arranger-for-hire, producer, and conductor on numerous recordings and high-visibility concerts, adding to his duties administrative responsibilities as Artistic Director of Jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1999 to 2001. While multi-tasking amongst these activities, he also taught at the University of Southern California (he retired at the end of the 2008-09 academic year), developing a comprehensive bass pedagogy.
In discussing his first principles as a bassist, Clayton referenced his initial encounter with Ray Brown at a weekly "Workshop in Jazz Bass" course at UCLA in 1969, which he rode four buses to get to.
"Ray came through the door, took out the bass, and showed the whole class what we had to learn," Clayton recalled. "He played every major scale, every minor scale, all the arpeggios in every key. Later, he brought in recordings of Charles Mingus, Richard Davis, Ron Carter, Israel Crosby, George Duvivier, Sam Jones, and Scott LaFaro, none of whom I'd ever heard of. He saw how hungry I was, so in love with the whole thing, so he'd invite me to his recording sessions or club gigs in the area. I can pick out Ray in the middle of a 150-piece string orchestra. But he still has lessons for me, whether about tone, how to handle a groove from one tune to the next, and on and on."
Mentorship evolved to friendship and ultimately productive partnership in Super Bass, the three-contrabass ensemble that united Brown, Clayton and Christian McBride from 1996 until Brown's death in 2002. Most tellingly, Brown bequeathed to Clayton his primary bass—Clayton played it at Dizzy's and in Orvieto. "It's like a talisman," Clayton said. "It's as though by touching this instrument, I am infused with confidence, not egotistical, but as if to say, 'You're touching this bass, the music needs this, you can supply this.' I tell my students that creativity begins from nothing and silence. When you touch the instrument, before you play a note, allow some silent moments so that you are immediately cool and chill and calm—and THEN give the music whatever it demands."
"I'm playing the piano, and standing next to me is this patriarch guy, caressing everything and making what you're playing better," Monty Alexander said, recalling Clayton's comportment as a 22-year-old in his trio. "Sometimes I got mad because I wanted to say, 'Hey, respect seniority here!' He had a way about him that just made you happy to play."
"My dad finds a way to translate his approach in life better than a lot of people," Gerald Clayton remarked. "He's got such a big heart, he's thankful for the situation, and he brings that energy and love and honesty into the music. Even if he's telling you to do something, it's more like an invitation—sort of intimidating but loving, like a big bear."
Asked to comment on this patriarchal trope, Jeff Clayton said: "Our mother raised seven kids as a single mom, worked ten hours a day at the Post Office, went to choir rehearsal, taught the junior and senior choir Tuesdays and Fridays and went to church all day Sunday, and took one class per semester, one night a week for 12 years, and got her degree in theology. As the oldest brother with that many kids, John had to be responsible."
"Billy Higgins used to say, 'You don't choose the instrument; the instrument chooses you,'" John Clayton said, "I think that surely applies to me. People look to bass players as glue. We're the go-between for the egos of the drums, or the piano, or the vocalist, or the trumpet—we understand where everyone is coming from. That molds your personality, and you move more towards what the bass represents."
Clayton's personal rectitude and groundedness, his impeccable craft, his insistence on privileging ensemble imperatives above solo flight, his staunch identification with the bedrock codes of jazz tradition, can impart the superficial impression of aesthetic conservativism. But his comments on what he considers distinctive about his voice reveal an incremental sensibility.
"The changes and contributions I make to the structures we work with are inside, subtle, upper-level things," Clayton said. "I was inspired by the way Israel Crosby, with Ahmad Jamal's trio, superimposed within his bassline a tune on the tune he was playing. Or when Monty played a solo, the way he would anticipate my bassline and harmonize it before I created it. Now I'm listening to Terrell, and create my bassline based on a melody fragment he's just played in his solo.
"Our ultimate goal as musicians is to become one with our instrument, and singing is the barometer that tells us this is happening. In fact, any time that my playing starts to go south, all I have to do is remind myself, 'Oh yeah, I'm not singing,' and it automatically clicks back into place."
Prefacing his first Orvieto duo concert with Patitucci, Clayton introduced his partner as "a faucet that turns on and turns off and plays melody." It could have been self-description. Performing such iconic bass repertoire as "Tricotism," "Whims of Chambers" and "Ray's Idea," songbook chestnuts like "Squeeze Me," "Body and Soul," and "Tea For Two," and baroque music, they engaged in open dialog, intuiting each other's moves, playing as authoritatively with the bow as pizzicato, taking care to stay in complementary registers, switching from support to lead on a dime.
"It was the best musical experience I've ever had playing duos with a bass player," Patitucci said. "He's a consummate musician. The pitches lined up, which made the sonorities much richer; he's so well-rounded that you could throw up anything and read through it, and it worked."
The father-son duos at Orvieto proceeded along similarly open paths, the protagonists addressing blues, spirituals, standards, and originals by Clayton fils with abundant reharmonizations, and polytonal episodes, with a stylistically heterogeneous stance. Pere Clayton kept things grounded with a relentless pocket and elevated the mood with a succession of transcendent arco solos, including an introduction to John Lewis' to "Django" that channeled Bach in grand Koussevitzkyian fashion.
"Each situation is about passion," Clayton said of his unitary interests. "You immerse yourself in that language, and try to make it part of what you do, because you're so crazy about it. I love classical and jazz styles 50-50, and I think that's what you hear."
On The New Song and Dance, the Clayton Brothers place tango, New Orleans streetbeat, and complex time signatures into the mix towards the notion, as Jeff Clayton put it, "that swing is part of a large cauldron of many ideas that we are allowed to visit in each song." "It shows the wide span of creativity that the group represents," John Clayton said. "The project is pushing me in ways I haven't been pushed before; my brother's songs don't sound anything like songs he wrote four years ago. Gerald stretches us, too. If people thought they knew what we sounded like, they're going to be surprised with different sounds.
"The things I write for the Clayton Brothers that I'm less happy with lean too close to being over-arranged. I always look for that balance to have it organized yet allow for a lot of freedom. With the big band it's a little different. I want it to be a blowing band, but then other times I'll write a chorus with no improvisation at all."
Clayton anticipated a light touring schedule over the summer, the better to focus on expanding "Red Man, Black Man"—a programmatic 2006 opus commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival as a collaboration between the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra and Kurt Elling, that year's artist-in-residence—from a 25-minute investigation of the affinities between Native American and African American music into a concert-length performance. To frame Elling's reading of original lyrics and poems apropos to the subject, Clayton orchestrates a Shawnee tribal stomp ("the singers were using call-and-response, the notes were primarily the blues scale, and the shaker pattern was CHING, CHING-A-CHING, CHING-A-CHING, CHING") with radical techniques—the musicians blow silence, the saxophone section plays the transcribed stomp with wood flutes, chains and anvils strike the ground at measured intervals to represent a chain gang.
"I'm interested in different cultures and their music, and always tried, somehow, to incorporate them in what I do," Clayton said, citing an unaccompanied bass feature that combines "Lift Every Voice And Sing" with "Danny Boy," and, on a meta-level, the fall 2009 release, Charles Aznavour and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra [Capitol Jazz-EMI], on which Clayton's subtle arrangements—the guests include pianist Jacky Terrason and Rachelle Farrell—reimagine the iconic chanteur's hits, and some choice new repertoire, in a swing context.
However his milieu evolves, Clayton does not intend to be left behind. "In the big band era, there were way fewer choices," he said. "Now we can listen to so many categories of music. Many young musicians say, 'There's too much for me to absorb and learn and be held responsible for.' I think, 'That's great—get busy."
Filed under Bass, DownBeat, John Clayton
Tagged as Bass, DownBeat, John Clayton, John Patitucci, Ray Brown, Umbria Jazz
January 1, 2014 · 11:20 am
For Andy Gonzalez' 63rd Birthday, an Unedited Blindfold Test from 2000, a WKCR Interview From 2006, a Downbeat piece from 2016 about the recording "Entre Colegas", and Three WKCR Musician Shows from 1990, 1991 and 1993
Best of birthdays to the master bassist Andy Gonzalez, who turns 63 today. A co-founder of the Fort Apache Band with his older brother, Jerry Gonzalez, Gonzalez' c.v. includes protracted gigs with Dizzy Gillespie, Eddie Palmieri and Manny Oquendo's Libre. His influence is palpable on such next-generation swing-to-clave bassists as — among many others — Avishai Cohen and Hans Glawischnig. I had the opportunity to interact with and be educated by Andy at least a half-dozen times during my years on WKCR, particularly on such subjects as Cachao and Arsenio Rodriguez, upon whom he would expound with great erudition. I'll have to transcribe those cassettes one of these days. Meanwhile, here are the proceedings of a DownBeat Blindfold Test that Andy did with me around 2000, and a WKCR interview from 2006, when the Fort Apache Band had just released their excellent CD, Rumba Buhaina. [In 2020 I've appended — at the bottom of the post — the transcript of three WKCR Musician Shows that I did with Andy in 1990, 1991, and 1993.]
Andy Gonzalez Blindfold Test:
1. Ray Brown, "St. Louis Blues" (feat. Ahmad Jamal, p., Lewis Nash, d), "SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS…ARE THE PIANO PLAYERS" (Telarc, 1995) (5 stars)
Well, it's somebody like Ray Brown or somebody that LOVES Ray Brown on bass. I hear a lot of Ray Brownish things. [AFTER] [Why did it take you so long?] I had to hear more of him. At first I thought it was somebody younger, but then I started listening to what he was playing and I said, "Wait a second." This is somebody who has some depth to his musical history just by what he played and how he played it. It had to be somebody like Ray Brown. I'm not sure of the piano player, though. [Any guesses?] Mmm… That's not Benny Green, is it? It could be Oscar. [It's the same generation.] Oh yeah? [AFTER] I didn't hear much of the trademark Ahmad Jamal things. That was quite nice. It gets 5 stars out of me. Ray Brown is one of my heroes. Of the bass players from his generation, like Oscar Pettiford and Mingus… I thought he's the one that… There's Blanton in his playing, but I think he took Blanton beyond Blanton. Mingus I thought sort of took it the other way, and he used a lot more physical kinds of things about the bass, like imitating growls and doing wilder things, where I think maybe Ray Brown is more blues-based. There's a lot of blues in his playing. Not that Mingus isn't, but… And Pettiford was… It's like three distinct voices to come out of the same era, and to play with a lot of the same people in the Bebop era and stuff like that. But very distinct voices, all three of them. But those are the same generation.
2. Sam Jones, "O.P." (Israel Crosby, bass; Joe Zawinul, piano; Vernell Fournier, drums), DOWN HOME (Riverside, 1962/1995) (4 stars)
I'm going to take a stab and say it was Doug Watkins playing cello. No? He did do a cello record. [This is someone who is a contemporary of Doug Watkins who did…] Sam Jones? That was the second person I was going to shoot for. Because I realized he had done a cello record way back, but I can't remember the circumstances. I only managed to cop a couple of Sam Jones records, especially on Riverside — those were a little harder to find. For some reason it made me think of the Doug Watkins record. I think Yusef Lateef is playing on it. When I heard the flute I thought maybe it might be him. [Any idea who's playing bass and drums?] That wasn't Jimmy Cobb? Something made me think it was Jimmy Cobb, the way he was riding the cymbal. [AFTER] You know, Israel Crosby is credited with taking one of the first solos on bass on record, "Blues For Israel," with Gene Krupa. I mean, an actual bass solo. It's a whole thing on the bass. This is the early '30s. The pianist was Zawinul? Forget it. I would have never guessed that. I thought the piece was nice. It was kind of bouncy and airy. I thought Sam Jones was very articulate on the cello and very tasty. As a matter of fact, I never heard him take any bass solos that sounded slick, to tell you the truth! — from what I've heard of Sam Jones. That was excellent cello playing, just so far as getting across the cello. I'm wondering whether he used the cello the way it's supposed to be tuned, in fifths, or the way Ray Brown did and some other cello cats did was retune the instrument in fourths to make it like a bass and easier to play. Now, that might be the case, because he seemed to get around the instrument pretty good. Playing in fifths takes a little bit more knowledge of how to get around the strings. So that's an interesting question to find out. From what I heard, it sounded like it was tuned in fourths. Four stars, for Sam Jones especially.
3. Brian Lynch, "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face," SPHERES OF INFLUENCE (Sharp-9, 1997) (5 stars) (John Benitez, bass; Jeff Watts, drums; Milton Cardona, congas; David Kikoski, piano; Donald Harrison, alto saxophone)
Wow! I've grown accustomed to her space face. That was a beautiful arrangement, man. It was gorgeous. It sounds like it was a trumpet player's record, because he's got the lead — and a big fat tone. I'm trying to think of who it could be. The drummer was on it with the Latin stuff. He was playing the right kind of beat. It wasn't clave! And the conga player was holding his own. He's just an adornment more than anything else. In the seconds where there was Latin rhythm, he played well. The bass player did okay. Gee whiz. Fat tone on a trumpet is what was getting to me. I was trying to think who has a fat tone on a trumpet. It doesn't sound too dated. So let me see, who has a fat tone on trumpet these days? Terence Blanchard has a fairly fat sound. So does Nicholas Payton. They have kind of fat tones on the trumpet these days. [What trumpet player might think of that type of arrangement?] Now, that's a good question, because there was a lot of depth to that arrangement. It stretched the tune out, it stretched out the phrasing of it, and also took it in different places. It gets five stars from me, because it was an original and unusual treatment of the song. Because that's not an easy song to… It's a pretty song. Not too many people, except for someone like maybe Sonny Rollins, have attempted to play that tune. And then I thought it was nice having the tuba in the orchestration. That was really pretty. [AFTER] That was Brian Lynch? No kidding! I didn't even think about that. Excellent. I'm surprised I didn't recognize… Well, John Benitez didn't give anything that I could recognize him on. Milton, well, that I could hear. It was very nice. I enjoyed that.
4. George Mraz, "Star-Crossed Lovers" (Renee Rosnes, piano), DUKE'S PLACE (Milestone, 1999) (5 stars)
I sort of wish that the bass player would have bowed the melody at the end again, because he played it so beautifully at the beginning. Good bowing technique is like studying a whole other instrument. And he had superb control of that bow. I mean, he really sang that melody superbly, man. Right there that's five stars for me, because I'm quite a fan of good bowing. I wish I could bow that well! But like I said, that's a whole study in itself. It's one thing to pluck strings and use your hands to get tone and sound, but to use the bow and get the vibrations that the bow makes, and use your hands in that sense, it's a whole different way of playing the instrument. Whoever that was playing the bass, I really couldn't tell you, but I thought that he has an excellent bowing technique. [AFTER] I figured as much. That's bounce, man. He's got beautiful, beautiful bowing technique. It bounces! Gorgeous bowing.
5. Ornette Coleman, "Women Of The Veil," THREE WOMEN (Harmolodic, 1996) (Charnett Moffett, bass; Geri Allen, piano; Denardo Coleman, drums) (3½ stars)
Oh, shades of Ornette! I don't think it was Ornette, but it was quite a bit of Ornettethology! Even the trumpet player sounded like Ornette! I don't know who it was, but it sure sounded like an Ornetteish kind of thing. I wasn't that thrilled with it. It was all right. The bass player sure didn't sound like no Charlie Haden, that's for sure. [AFTER] It was Ornette? Charnett Moffett was playing the bass? This was recent? Who was playing the trumpet? [Ornette.] Ah, so I was right about that. The piano is what threw me. I'm not used to Ornette with a piano player. 3½ stars for that. I've heard Ornette play with more… I like Ornette when there's more emotion in his playing. Remember the Town Hall concert, "Sadness," things like that? That really moves me. And the original quartet moves me a lot, with Charlie Haden, Blackwell and Don Cherry. All that moved me quite a bit. And Ornette over the years, man… I always dug Ornette. I like him best in smaller situations, not with all the trappings. I don't like Ornette with a piano player. I like him without piano.
6. Ron Carter, "Samba De Orfeu," ORFEU (Blue Note, 1999) (5 stars) (Bill Frisell, guitar; Stephen Scott, piano; Payton Crossley, drums; Steve Kroon, percussion)
It was nice to hear a bass guitar "surdo" and "casaba." To me I would have dug it if they had added a tambourine. That would have really put the rhythm section a little stronger Brazilian. But they left the space open, which is okay. The guitar player wasn't Brazilian; that's for sure. And the bass player sounded like Ron Carter to me. [AFTER] Of course! Ron Carter, one thing, he's got a great sense of humor. Throughout that solo, he's a shameless quoter, a quoter of obscure melodies! I get a kick out of it. I mean, that's like… Unless you know these melodies, you just… He quoted really obscure songs, like "Popeye, The Sailor Man" and "I Want To Wash that Rain Right Out of My Hair." You have to know a lot of music to be able to quote these things, and he quoted quite a few different little tiny pieces of melodies from all kinds of things in his solo. It was nice. Five stars. Ron Carter is one of my heroes. I grew up listening to him, and I know him a bit, and he's quite a nice man. One thing I've got to say is that I've learned a lot from listening to Ron Carter over the years, especially when he was with Miles. His perception of how to play bass in a rhythm section for that band was unique, and it really influenced me a lot. Even playing Latin Jazz it influenced me a lot, because just the kind of thing that they had going as the quintet with Miles, this kind of ESP thing that they had going, is something that most bands strive for — that kind of empathy and mind-reading between the members of a band. That's something that they brought to a high art. And Ron was very instrumental in making a lot of that happen. I'll always love him for that, that's for sure. So he gets my five stars.
7. Dave Holland, "Jugglers Parade," PRIME DIRECTIVE (ECM, 1999) (3½ stars)
I'm going to take a wild stab? Is that Avishai? He likes things that have odd meters. Is it a bass player's album? Is it Santi? I remember him writing things that sound like this. Wow. So far I made two guess, and both of them were wrong. I'm not that big a fan of odd meter kind of things. But it was put together pretty nicely, and if the bass player composed this… Most bass players make good composers, just because of the fact that they always provided the bottom of things, the bottom of the harmonies, and sometimes the bottom of just rhythm and melody. So I am pretty happy when I hear bass players' compositions and arrangements, because it's like they have a different perspective on things and they hear things different. Most bass players who I know who write, it's usually very interesting. And this was no exception. It was interesting. But like I said, I'm not a big fan of odd meter things. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I've got the clave ingrained in me to the point where it's like… And also, I grew up in the era of real hardbop-swing kind of things, so anything that has odd meters isn't… It's just a preference of mine. I'm not that particularly fond of them. I would give it 3½ stars. So who was it? [AFTER] That was Dave Holland?! I would have never recognized him. I would never have thought that it was Dave Holland. It didn't sound like the kind of music that he used to play before. There's something to be said for bass players that write. Because like I said, they're coming from a another perspective.
8. Richard Bona, "Konda Djanea," SCENES FROM MY LIFE (Columbia, 1999). (5 stars) (Michael Brecker, tenor sax)
That was very nice, man. Richard Bona. I met him a couple of years ago. I think he was touring with Zawinul. We just ran into each other on the road. But that was lovely. You can hear the influence of the African string instrument called the kora, which is a harp kind of instrument. I can hear that influence in how he approaches the bass. He's playing it almost like a guitar, but playing it like a kora. Just the figures that he's playing, it sounds like if he was strumming on a kora. It's very pretty. Five stars.
9. John Patitucci, "King Kong," IMPRINT (Concord, 1999) (4 stars) (Danilo Perez, piano; Horacio 'El Negro' Hernandez, drums; Giovanni Hidalgo, percussion)
Well, I recognized a couple of people in there. I think that was El Negro playing the traps, and it could have been Giovanni playing the congas. It could have been. Those are my cohorts, man. I know those guys intimately. Is this Patitucci? I had a feeling it was him, because I heard he had done something with the Latin thing. He was cool. Was this his tune? The piano player sounded a little familiar, too, but I wasn't positive. I was thinking that it might be Danilo. What made me think it was Patitucci was when it got into the groove part, he was sticking to a pretty generic kind of groove thing. Unless you're really sure of the clave and how to mess with it, I would imagine that's what you would do just to… Because Negro and Giovanni can get very intricate on you, and if you're not dead-sure where you are, they can throw you off in a minute. It's like the clave thing with them is that they know that so intimately. I've played with them so much that I know what they're about. Sometimes it's better to be safe and stick to what you know you can do within that framework. So it was cool. The saxophone player I don't know. It sounded like a Michael Brecker or someone like that, but I'm not sure. Chris Potter? Okay. There was something in his tone that reminded me of Michael. But I guess that got a four out of me.
10. Eddie Gomez, "Footprints," DEDICATION (Evidence, 1998). (3½ stars)
Mmm, "Footprints." That tune, ever since it came out, it's been a favorite of all us musicians. Especially when you're in school and stuff, everybody… It's easy to play and easy to jam on. I was just about going to high school when that came out. I don't really have a clue. 3½ stars. The bass player to me sounded like somebody like Alex Blake or someone like that. Because Alex Blake has that kind of facility; he likes to do those kind of crazy runs and stuff. Oh, it's not? I figured as much. I just thought of him because I ran into him the other day and I hadn't seen him for a while. [The bass player and you have the same alma mater.] Music and Art? He must have graduated way after me, though. Before me? Really. Hmm! I know Eddie Gomez went to Music & Art? [That's him.] Really? That doesn't sound like the Eddie Gomez I remember. It's recent, huh? I'm a lot closer to the Eddie Gomez of Bill Evans days, and he didn't play like this. He played different. Eddie was an amazing, amazing musician, and he got along so well with Bill. They were really mind-reading each other. It's sort of like the same thing that happened when Scott LaFaro was in the trio. I got hip to Scott LaFaro maybe four or five years after he passed. He passed in '61. I got hip to him early on because when I was 14 I was studying with Steve Swallow. I was in junior high school. He was the first one to turn me on to Scotty. Then I used to go and check out Bill Evans at the Vanguard a lot, and Eddie Gomez was playing the bass there. So I was just amazed at the facility that Eddie Gomez had at the time. Because he didn't quite do what Scotty was doing. Scotty liked to mess with counterpoint and things like that a lot more. But Eddie was all over the instrument, which was amazing to me. I'm surprised I didn't recognize him. I would usually recognize Eddie Gomez, because he's a guy I've been following since I was a teenager. 3½ because as many times as I've played "Footprints," there's a lot more things that you can say with it than was said there.
11. Roy Haynes, "Trinkle Tinkle," TE VOU! (Dreyfus, 1994) (feat. Christian McBride) (3½ stars)
It's nice to hear pretty much the arrangement the way that Monk and the sax used to play the melody. The only thing, after a while that three note figure at the end -DINH-DUHT-DAH gets annoying. Other than that I liked it, but I didn't care for too much, and to hear it through all the solos was a pain in the ass after a while. I would have preferred leaving it out and just play it, because it doesn't do anything. It sounds like it was a novelty effect more than anything else. The drummer sounded like someone like Tain. I didn't think it was, but it sounded like someone who can take it a little out like Tain can. But I couldn't tell you who the cats were. [AFTER] It was Roy Haynes' record? I'm surprised why he kept that figure, man. It sounds annoying. Is the bass player Ed Howard? Christian? I thought it was him while he was playing, but I just didn't think he did anything… And it didn't sound like Roy Haynes either to me. Is it a new record? Unusual. Like I said, it was pretty much in the Monk tradition. I would left out that BINH-BAHT-BAM. I'll give 3½ because it was well played. Who was the alto player? Donald Harrison! He played well. I wouldn't have recognized Roy Haynes. It didn't sound like him. I heard him the last time a couple of years ago, and he's always been Mister Taste. And it was tasteful…except for that. I don't mind if an effect really adds something to the music, but that didn't really add anything to Monk.
12. McCoy Tyner, "I Want To Tell You 'Bout That," McCOY TYNER WITH STANLEY CLARKE AND AL FOSTER (Telarc, 2000) (3½ stars)
I knew it was McCoy from the getgo, because it's unmistakable, just his tone, his touch, and the kind of things that he plays. Although I felt it was kind of like… It's like when you're trying to get like a funk kind of thing going, you know, almost making an attempt to get like some radio play. The bass player wasn't Avery? I don't know who it was. [Someone you might think on electric.] Stanley Clarke? Yeah? He did play a figure that did make me think it was Stanley Clarke. But I said, "Mmm, let me see…" Who was the drummer? Al Foster? I sort of came up at the same time as Stanley Clarke, and I've been watching and listening to him since the early days when he was with Chick. He's a fine bass player, man. He's been moving around in different worlds and playing a lot of different kinds of music, but I have deep respect for him as a bass player. He's a great bass player. I don't think this is one of McCoy's better efforts. Just for playing sake, I'll give it 3½ stars.
13. Avishai Cohen, "The Gift, DEVOTION (Stretch, 1998) (3 stars)
I don't know if I could tell you who that is. It wasn't exactly a toe-tapper. The soprano had a dark kind of sound. That's an unusual duo, the trombone and soprano. It's not something you hear often. I'm at a loss. 3 stars. [AFTER] That was Avishai, huh?
14. Red Garland Trio w/ Paul Chambers, "This Can't Be Love," IT'S A BLUE WORLD (Prestige, 1958/1999) (3 stars)
It sounded like a few people. The first name that came to me was an odd name, Monty Alexander — which is weird. But that's the first name that popped into my head. I heard flashes of Erroll Garner, I heard flashes of a lot of people in there. I probably do know who it is. Who was it? [AFTER] That didn't sound like Paul Chambers? You know what? This must have been towards the end of his life. That was '58? Paul Chambers articulates a lot better than that — for me. I've heard plenty of Paul Chambers. Maybe it was the rosin. Because when you put a certain kind of rosin on the bow you get a certain sound, and different rosins give you a different… When you pull the bow across the string, it gives you a different… This was kind of a rough sound for Paul. Paul usually gets a smoother attack sound on his bowing. But I do know that it has to do with the kind of rosin that you use. Some rosin makes the bow across the strings sound a little rough; it grabs the string a certain way so that the sound comes out rough. There's another rosin that the sound comes out a little smoother. This sounded kind of rough to me. Really. Because Paul Chambers articulates a lot better on things I've heard him on before than on this particular piece. From hearing Paul on his best records… This wasn't his best. It didn't move me that much. 3 stars.
15. Cachao, "El Son No A Muerto," MASTER SESSIONS, VOL. 1 (Epic, 1994) (4 stars)
That was Cachao, and that was Nelson Gonzalez on the très, who learned to play the très in my house. I brought home a très from Venezuela in 1970, and he was a frequent visitor to my house. He was self-taught on guitar. We started studying Arsenio Rodriguez records together, and he learned how to play the très in my house. I'm the one who got him the gig with Cachao in the middle '80s when he did his big concert at Hunter College. I loaned him my bass and I was at most of the rehearsals, and I got Nelson involved in it. Because they didn't have a très player originally for the descarga section. That's my daddy, Cachao. This particular tune was kind of subdued, there was not much happening for him. The best way to catch Cachao sometimes is live. I wish they would record him live. This was part of the records that Emilio Estefan put out? I don't think he's the best producer for that genre. First of all, I didn't like the balance of the sound. It could have been a lot better. I'll give it 4 stars because I like Nelson's playing on it. Was that Paquito d'Rivera on clarinet and Nestor Torres on flute? What about trumpet? It wasn't Chocolate. It was? That was a very subdued Chocolate. It didn't sound like him. And his trademark notes that he likes to play aren't there. Something tells me there was maybe some weird chemistry going on in the studio.
Andy Gonzalez (WKCR–Feb. 23, 2006):
[MUSIC: "This Is For Albert" (Rumba Buhaina)]
AG: We did a couple of albums where we had to find a way for Jerry to play the horn with Joe Ford, and after he'd state the line, he would take a solo and then jump on the drums. Because there was no overdubbing; this was recorded direct to two-track. That was interesting, to say the, to see him manage the jump back and forth.
TP: It is one of the great sights in jazz to see him jump up from the conga drums after he's been abusing his hands for 5-6 minutes, and immediately launch into an improvisation. Even more so when it's a ballad
AG: I don't know how he does it. I like to play percussion instruments, too, but I will not play them because it makes my fingers stiff to play the bass. I don't know how to he gets to manipulate his fingers that well right after playing hard congas, and pick up the phone and play.
TP: He plays hard. You and your brother have been playing trumpet and bass and congas for close to 50 years…
AG: A long time. I'm 55, and I was 13 when we started to play music. A little more than 40 years.
TP: And you've often played in the same bands over the years. With Eddie Palmieri for several years, with Dizzy Gillespie briefly in the '60s, as well as the Apaches.
AG: Jerry was also in the first band I ever recorded with, which was Monguito Santamaria, who was Mongo's son. Rene McLean was in that band, and Jose Mangual, Jr., was in the band. Jerry was part of that band for a minute, too.
TP: Let's talk about the history of the Fort Apaches. Ten years ago, you were playing a lot around and New York and touring, but things changed, Jerry moved to Spain, and the opportunities to play are less than they had been.
AG: Well, we have been playing some. Jerry would come in occasionally to do it, and there would be a tour set up, and some… The band has been working on and off. It's maybe not as much as we could because of the distance between us. But we still get together enough. And it sounds like we'd never been apart, just because of the chemistry involved in the band.
TP: It's one of the innovative bands of late 20th century jazz, influential on two generations of musicians from South America, the Caribbean, Spain, who heard your ability to fuse Afro-Caribbean diasporic rhythms with jazz harmonies. It's hard to say if anyone was the first to do anything, but recordings like Rumba Para Monk and things before that have had a tremendous influence on the way jazz sounds today. These ideas were exotic in 1988; now it's the mainstream.
AG: They were even more exotic in 1979.
TP: There are a few streams to discuss. One of the history of the Fort Apache; the other is the present. Let's stay with the present for the moment, and the new recording, Rumba Buhaina.
AG: A lot of people don't understand that "Buhaina" was Art Blakey's Muslim name. In the late '40s, quite a few musicians in jazz were either converting to Islam or flirting with it. It's just like jazz musicians are always the first to move to things that would probably help them get away from the American stereotype of what a musician is supposed or what a spiritual person is supposed to be like. So Art Blakey took the name "Buhaina." I don't know what it means, but all Art Blakey's closest friends and associates would call him "Bu."
TP: I believe that the Jazz Messengers name came from that same origin. Unlike your exploration of the music of Thelonious Monk, Rumba Buhaina explores a number of composers, of tunes primarily from their classic period, say '58 to '65.
AG: That was the music that influenced us a lot. We used to go hear Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in person, and that was one of the key groups of those years. Just to hear Art Blakey be as authoritative a drummer… He was an amazing teacher. He didn't have to tell you anything. He showed you. You just listened to him play, and it was all there to hear. We learned a lot from listening to what he had to offer, and how a drummer is so much the accompanist, and how he sets the pattern, sets the standard for what is to happen in the music. That's something that really stayed with most musicians who came up around that time. That's why we always consider Art Blakey one of the true teachers of the music.
TP: He was also a musician who distilled African musicians within a swing context on the drumkit, with cross-sticking figures and polyrhythmic patterns woven within his arrangements.
AG: I thought Art Blakey had such a strong force, a force of nature that reminded me a lot of field recordings that I had of tribal music from different parts of Africa. You'd hear, say, a drummer who would be talking on the drum, and not only the pitch, the timbre of the instrument and the way certain instruments…you would communicate a message with that way of playing. I could feel that out of Art Blakey, too. There's a certain force that's coming out of that. I immediately identify with it.
TP: During those years, were you also paying attention to the records Art Blakey was doing with drummers?
AG: Oh, yeah.
TP: Orgy In Rhythm, a couple of volumes, and the names are escaping me of a couple of others he did, where he played with the late Ray Barretto…
AG: I was just going to mention Ray Barretto. He also did a tribute to Art Blakey a few years ago. In fact, I think there's one tune on the record that we also did. His concept was a little different than ours. First of all, when Ray Barretto first started getting back… He wasn't playing much salsa any more, and he started to develop a Latin Jazz band. I know he paid quite a bit of attention to Fort Apache and what we were doing, and I think he took part of that as a role model. Which we were quite honored that he would use us as a model for what he was doing.
TP: But as far as putting the Fort Apache touch on this repertoire, how did the ideas evolve and come to fruition?
AG: We had the idea years ago. We thought of it as one of the many projects that we had in mind to do. There were other projects, too, that never came about for various reasons. Like, we wanted to record an album with Jose Silva, better known as Chombo, the Cuban saxophonist who was probably like the Ben Webster of Cuban music, and a masterful musician. We were just about setting that up when he had a stroke and he was no longer able to play. We were already starting to pick out the material. When you have a band like the Fort Apache band, you, have a lot of options, and there's things that pop into your head about what this band could do, what we're capable of doing. Because everybody in the band is a great musician, and we're capable of a lot of things.
TP: But Rumba Buhaina is what we're addressing.
AG: Yes. Well, the idea for the Art Blakey tribute… We started thinking about it, and then all of a sudden we had a few days at Sweet Rhythm to play… Before we went into the studio we played and rehearsed for a few days. That's pretty much the way we did the Monk album, too. We played and we rehearsed different concepts on different tunes until…
TP: Were they tunes that seemed to lend themselves to dealing with the different rhythmic signatures that you bring to your arrangements.
AG: We tried to think of ways of approaching the music… Everybody contributed ideas. That's the way we get it together. It's pretty simple. From all our experiences, individually and collectively, it was pretty easy for us to put it together.
TP: Let's step back to 1991, the album Moliendo Café, and Larry Willis' tune, "To Wisdom The Prize."
AG: I like that album a lot, for a few reasons. One of them was that Miles Davis had just passed away, and we had… We thought about it a lot because he was such a strong influence on us also.
TP: The album is dedicated to the percussionist Guillermo Barretto. Art Blakey had just passed. Charlie Palmieri had just passed. Dizzy Gillespie shortly thereafter. George Adams as well. All are mentioned on the inner sleeve…
["To Wisdom The Prize" & "Along Came Betty"]
TP: On previous shows, Andy has brought literally a suitcase filled with recordings, primarily obscure and little known, great gems. A lot of this material is now available on CD so it's a bit easier to track down…once you get the CD. Next week will you be playing primarily this repertoire or digging into the whole book?
AG: I've got a feeling we'll dig into the whole book, but we are going to feature some of the tunes from the new album.
TP: Earlier I mentioned that there are two streams to talk about, one the new recording, Rumba Buhaina, but for listeners… As you get older, you come to grips with the notion that younger listeners don't share core experiences. A lot of hardcore jazz fans may be unfamiliar with how you and Jerry developed your ideas about music, and what in your personal histories led to the formation of the Fort Apache Band.
AG: Jerry got his first opportunity to record in 1979, and that was an album under his own name called Ya Yo Me Cure, which in English means "I have been cured"—whatever that means. The title track of that album was something that Frankie Rodriguez, who was a percussionist who passed away a few years ago, but was a very talented person and very close to us… He was part of Grupo Folklorico, and he was into culture really deep. I had a record of pygmy chants from Africa, and he heard one chant that was done by kids. It was like some children's chant. He heard it a few times, and started singing "Ya Yo Me Cure" to it, just putting those Spanish words to the chant itself, and we made a guaguanco out of it. That was a precursor of what Fort Apache became.
TP: But by then, you'd been professional musicians for more than a decade. Eddie Palmieri, Dizzy Gillespie…
AG: I played with Ray Barretto while I was in high school, '69 to '71. In between that time, me and Jerry worked with Dizzy Gillespie. So we were getting arond. I was still in high school, and Jerry was coming out of college.
TP: Were Eddie Palmieri and Dizzy Gillespie people who helped push you along conceptually?
AG: It was kind of a mutual thing. We were well aware of Eddie Palmieri; we were big fans. But we brought something new to the table.
TP: What was that?
AG: Well, a different sensibility. The sensibility that Eddie Palmieri had before, when Barry Rogers was part of the band, and Barry would bring the harmonic element… When he's taking a solo, you can feel there's something that's really in the jazz world, and it's very spontaneous and very heartfelt, and there was a lot of feeling to it. That's one of the things that we learned a lot about, and something about jazz improvisation, that nothing was thought out before time—it was just off the cuff. Whatever came to your mind that you thought was hip enough, that's what you would play. So we had started to do those kind of things with Eddie. We took Eddie's band into some new places where he hadn't ventured before. We all used to hang out at my parents' house in the basement apartment on Gildersleeve Avenue in the Bronx, and Eddie Palmieri used to come over and Barretto used to come over… If that basement could talk… Dizzy Gillespie used to come over. We used to have jam sessions there all the time. Out of all that stuff, out of a lot of experimentation, came the music we wanted to play.
TP: Both of you had been deeply into folkloric music for many years. How did you get involved in… Was folkloric music just always there, or did people point you towards recordings and connections?
AG: Well, there's different types of folkloric music. There's folkloric music for dancing, and it was more a commercial music that was provided for dancing, but it still had quite a bit of folklore to it. That was the soundtrack of my childhood. Family parties, things like that. There was always a collection of good 78s that everybody used to dance to, like Machito, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, Cortijo Y Su Combo from Puerto Rico with Ismail Rivera singing, Mon Rivera… This was primarily folklore in the Puerto Rican vein and in the Cuban vein. Sonora Matancera, which was a Cuban band. That's the stuff we grew up with.
TP: When did you start breaking that stuff down?
AG: That came a little bit later, because that's something we got used to hearing. But we didn't start breaking it down until we became more schooled in music. Both of us went to High School of Music and Art. They give you theory. They give you how to analyze a piece of music, and what happens in these number of bars, and then this section comes, and things like that. But what happened was, when I was 13, we had already been listening to Cal Tjader records for a while… Jerry was two years older than me, and he was starting to play congas, and he was also playing trumpet, and I was playing the bass, and we put together a Latin Jazz quintet like Cal Tjader's. We started working with it. We started playing… In that music, we were trying to emulate the Cal Tjader sound and what they were doing, which was quite spontaneous and very jazz-like. They always had good pianists, and Mongo and Willie Bobo were heroes of ours. So that was pretty much how we started and where our taste was as far as playing music.
It wasn't until I got to play with Ray Barretto's band that I really started studying what came before, especially Afro-Cuban music. Or Cuban music. The term "Afro-Cuban" that's bandied about now as THE term, because everybody wants to point towards Cuba as the birthplace of a lot of the music—but I don't know. I think it was maybe a little more to do with the Caribbean experience. Not just Cuba. Cuba was dominant, but there was also a lot going on in Puerto Rican and a lot going on in other places, too. And New York was the magnet the drew a lot of elements to it. A lot of great musicians from different parts of the Caribbean were moving to New York and bringing their music with them.
TP: How long did you play with Dizzy Gillespie?
AG: Almost a year. 1970.
TP: what sort of experience was that? Was he playing primarily Cuban-influenced repertoire…
AG: No, he was mixing it up. We had an interesting version of his band. At the time, when we joined the band, there was no trap drummer. There was just Jerry playing congas, and I was playing the bass, George Davis was playing guitar, and Mike Longo was playing the piano—and Dizzy. I was playing my Ampeg baby bass. Now, Dizzy insisted upon a bass player who could play Latin rhythms and some jazz comfortably. That's how I got the gig. I was only 19, and I was thrilled. We traveled a bit. It was amazing.
Dizzy was not one to… If you would sit down with him and you wanted something explained harmonically, he'd sit down at the piano and show you. But as a bandleader, he had this great instinct about talent, and he knew when he put a group of people together that the chemistry was going to work.
TP: Rhythmically did he have anything to show you, or did…
AG: We had things to show him.
TP: What sort of things did you show him?
AG: I remember working in Harlem with him one night, and we were doing a week at the Club Barron—and we brought Nicky Marrero to sit in on timbales. We played one of his tunes (I forget which one at the moment), and after he took his solo, he went by the bar… The bandstand was near the bar. He went by the bar, and we doubled the time on his tune, and we were smoking, the rhythm section was cooking, man. Then he comes up behind me and whispers in my ear, and he goes, "Where's one?" In other words, as much as he'd been influenced by and heard quite a bit of Latin rhythms, and he'd been surrounded by good rhythm drummers, sometimes you can know a whole lot and still, if you divert your attention for a minute and come back to it, you go, "Wait a second; my hearing just turned around or something; I'm not quite sure where it is." So while I'm playing and we're cooking, I just looked at him and I go, "One." He goes, "Oh, ok." Heh-heh. Dizzy was a sweetheart. I loved him.
TP: So as kids, you're soaking up the music at home. It's part of the daily fabric of your lives. You're listening to all the jazz records as they come out…
AG: And we were lucky enough as kids to journey out the clubs and hear this music in person. I saw Trane play. I wanted to see the quartet play, but they had already broken up. I saw one of his last performances. I saw everybody play. I was quite a regular in all the clubs. I used to go down to the Vanguard to hear the Bill Evans Trio, and I'd go to the Vanguard on Mondays to hear the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. And Slugs was one of my favorite jazz clubs in the world. That was THE place. That had an atmosphere, and the music was exceptional. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers used to play there regularly. Lee Morgan, his band used to play there. I saw so many bands. I forgot that we got to play with Kenny Dorham for a year, before Dizzy… Actually, about the time I had started playing with Ray Barretto, I was playing with Kenny Dorham.
TP: I think Jerry has related that when he was auditioning for New York College of Music, he encountered him…
AG: Kenny was trying to get his degree so he could teach. New York College of Music started a jazz program, and they were givimg full scholarships to jazz musicians, and all of a sudden, a lot of musicians jumped in that school. They had a great big band. Great musicians there. So Kenny Dorham was studying there, and he was in Jerry's trumpet class. The trumpet teacher was a classical teacher, and he failed Kenny Dorham. Failed him! I couldn't believe that. Kenny Dorham could have taught him a few things. But we've been blessed, man. We were blessed that we were really accepted by a lot of people, and taught as well. Just by playing together with someone, you give a little bit of your knowledge, and you get knowledge back in return. There was quite a bit of activity going on for musicians in those days.
TP: It also seems that the cultural politics of the '60s would point people in the direction of incorporating folkloric music into the fabric of their everyday activity and professional work.
AG: Of course. I saw Olatunji. Olatunji had a group of drummers and dancers, and we got to hear that. There was a lot going on. But there wasn't much Cuban folklore. Because of the Revolution, the radio stations wouldn't play much of that music. But around 1969, Felipe Luciano, who was part of the Young Lords, he got a position to start a radio program on WRVR. I had met him while I was with Barretto, and I was studying Cuban folklore with Rene Lopez, who was one of the producers of Grupo Folklorico Experimental. We actually programmed the first month of shows. The first bunch of shows were midnight to six in the morning. We got calls from people saying, "what are doing playing this great music, and I've got to get up for work in the morning—are you guys nuts?" Then after a few months, finally, we got the ok to do our show in the afternoon. That was the beginning of… We did quite a bit of teaching by playing the music and talking about it, and opening that door that was closed to a lot of people about Cuban music. There was a lot of live performances…
TP: Then you started doing it yourself, and Grupo Folklorico came into the picture…
AG: Oh, yeah. Well, that was a given. When you're exposed to all this knowledge, it becomes part of you, and you want to do it—and especially if you have the skills to do it. It's like anything. When you're studying music and you're listening to records, it's a communication, and you pick up on the message that's being sent to you.
I heard this next tune on a videotape of a rehearsal in Matanzas, Cuba, that somebody gave me, of a folkloric group that was doing bata stuff, which is the hourglass shaped drum where there's three different drums of different sizes, and they have chants going on with certain drum-beats. So there was one that was done in honor of the deity called Elegua. Elegua is the keeper of the crossroads, and is the one that opens and closes all your paths. So most ceremonies begin with Elegua. When you do a ceremony in that genre, you start with Elegua.
So I heard this chant, and it stayed in my head, and I started playing bass to it, and I figured out two sets of changes to the same melody. That's what we use as our basis for improvisation. The first set of changes is a pedal tone, and it just stays in that pedal. It's open. It's kind of what McCoy Tyner or Trane would do. Then the second time we run the melody down, there's another set of changes to it. So I came up with that, and then we developed it into a composition.
["Elegua"]
AG: The reason I played "Anabacoa" is that it's a tune that had been done by a few Cuban bands, but the one that caught our attention, and that's why we wanted to play it, was the recording by Arsenio Rodriguez Y Su Conjunto, and their version was slammin'! That's where we got our inspiration, but then we took it to another place. And then we had the great Manny Oquendo playing one of his really classic timbal solos. It goes back to what we were talking about Art Blakey being the authoritative drummer. Well, Manny shows that he's in that same league. He's a very authoritative drummer.
TP: The primal feel and the sophistication together.
AG: Together, yeah.
TP: That quality could describe Fort Apache, which has been doing it for 27 years, on and off…
AG: Time flies.
TP: We'll move to 1988, and a live performance by an expanded edition of the Fort Apache Band, that was documented by Enja, in Zurich, titled Obatala. I've treasured this recording for some time; it's an expanded version of the Apaches… Mad percussion.
AG: When we started the Fort Apache Band, it had a large percussion section. But it was very difficult to work with that kind of ensemble, because booking it wasn't easy. It was a lot of people to fly in and put up in hotels and so on. It was a financial decision and an artistic one to break it down to the bare essentials, which was a quintet and a sextet.
TP: Who did the arrangement of "Justice."
AG: Jerry and I heard a riff on a Cuban record by Frank Emilio, who is a great Cuban pianist, and he had a riff on this record that was so intriguing, and we said, "Wow, this sounds like 'Evidence'—because "Evidence" has such a quirky rhythm-melody to it. I said, "Wow, let's see about putting these two elements together, and this is what came out.
[END OF CONVERSATION]
It may surprise bass maestro Andy González's many fans that Entre Colegas (Truth Revolution) is his first leader recording. Now 64, González boasts a vast and distinguished discography that includes ten recordings with the pathbreaking Fort Apache Band, in which he and his older brother, conguero-trumpeter Jerry González, masterminded a singular marriage of the harmonic language of hardcore jazz and the hand-drum rhythms of Afro-Cuban musical. Another nine albums document the pathbreaking four-trombone dance band Conjunto Libre, which he co-founded with iconic timbalero Manny Oquendo in 1974, after both left the employ of Eddie Palmieri, who González joined after two years of steady employment with Dizzy Gillespie.
"Andy is easily most influential Latin Jazz bassist ever," says Truth Revolution Records co-proprietor Luques Curtis, a bassist whose own burgeoning career embodies González's multilingual aesthetic. Curtis, 32, and his older brother, pianist Zaccai Curtis, met González twenty years ago after he heard their kid band play charts of such Fort Apache classics as "Moliendo Café" and "Obsesión" at a concert. "Andy came to our house afterward," Curtis recalled. "He hung with us all night, playing his music and hanging out. After that, Andy would visit for a day or two a month. No money. He explained to us what happens during the coros, and how Afro-Cuban music is shaped."
González has suffered the travails of aging—in 2004, the toes on his left foot were amputated due to complications from previously undiagnosed diabetes; at the beginning of 2015, he began three-day-a-week dialysis treatments. The Curtises—whose label had built momentum with releases not only by their Curtis Brothers group, but diverse artists like vocalists Sarah Elizabeth Charles and Eva Cortés, trumpeters Ray Vega, Jonathan Powell and Carlos Abadie, and timbalero Ralph Irizarry—responded to the second medical event by generating a project with their mentor.
González decided to present a pan-stylistic, strings-oriented program that he describes as "Django Reinhardt visits Cuba and Puerto Rico," with long-time partner Nelson Gonzalez on tres, Cleveland-based Orlando "El Mostro" Santiago on cuatro, Brooklynite Ben Lapidus on guitar and tres, and Cuban emigree David Oquendo on guitars and vocals, as well as Abadie, the Curtises, and a host of hand percussionists who render the rhythms with precision and elegance.
"I just maintained the rhythm and kept the styles together," González said, understating the effect of his enormous ears and harmonic erudition in maintaining quality control. "I was more concerned about sound than the style—when it's good music, it's good music, and that's the name of the game." He attributes his ability to get through the proceedings to acupuncture treatments that alleviated the stiffness attendant to dialysis; indeed, he plays so impeccably that it's hard to discern any impairment.
"Andy always has a clear idea how he wants things to be, and gets musicians who can execute but also do their own thing," said Lapidus, whose erudite program notes offer significant value-added. "He leads, but he's also unbelievably supportive. He's played in so many situations and so many styles that he was able to pull off what most people could only dream about doing."
González compared the session's ambiance to the atmosphere he and his brother generated at impromptu mid-'60s gatherings in the basement of his family's house in the South Bronx. It was a destination for a Pan-American cohort of the famous—attendees included Gillespie, Machito, Kenny Dorham, Jackie and Rene McLean, Carlos "Patato" Valdes, Rashied Ali, Larry Young, Ruben Blades—and obscure, attracted by the brothers' global perspective and predisposition to treat jazz and Afro-Caribbean styles not as separate entities but as extensions of each other.
"There were elements of that spirit—to play with abandon and grab some of the jams," González said. "I played with as much abandon as I could. If they want me to do another record, I'll see if I can think of something else to do."
Andy Gonzalez Musician Shows, WKCR – Feb. 28, 1990; March 13, 1991; Dec. 1, 1993:
[February 28, 1990]
[Fort Apache, "81"–from Obatala, Enja, Zurich concert, 1989]
ANDY: This record came about through our association with Matthias Winckelman. He's one of the producers for the Enja label out of Germany. The Fort Apache had done a previous recording for them which was another live concert, in Germany, during the Berlin Jazz Festival in which we participating as well as Libre — Libre was participating on a different night in the same festival. The night that Manny Oquendo's Libre…it was performing on a bill with Alberta Hunter, Bobby McFerrin… Dino Saluzzi, a bandoneon player who is Argentinian, I imagine. Or is he Italian? I'm not sure. He does modern tango, of which I've gotten to participate a bit with Astor Piazzolla, who I got to record with. But that's another thing.
Getting back to Matthias, we were fortunate to be invited to play at the Zurich Jazz Festival, and the performance was recorded and just now released on the Enja label. This is my brother Jerry's band, and he's playing trumpet, flugelhorn and congas; John Stubblefield on tenor; Papo Vazquez on trombone; Larry Willis on piano; Edgardo Miranda on guitar; myself on bass; Steve Berrios on trombones and bata, chekere and coro. We had some guest percussionists — Milton Cardona, Hector Flaco Hernandez, and Nicky Marrero.
We've pared down the band a bit, but we do occasionally put together a whole ensemble with a huge percussion section. We've been trying to function on a smaller scale and trying to keep that energy level up. It seems to be working.
TP: How long has Fort Apache been functioning? What's the genesis of the Fort Apache Band?
ANDY: Actually, the genesis goes back a long ways. Jerry and myself, we've always been… We grew up playing Latin Jazz and also listening to it. One of the earliest records that I remember listening to was a Cal Tjader record. That kind of playing fascinated me. So it was something that we grew up with. All throughout the years we've formed different groups, or have been part of groups that were Latin Jazz oriented or in that vein. So we're part of that music. So this is really a continuation of that process.
TP: But you're also interpreting Monk's music. Rumba Para Monk is extremely distinctive.
ANDY: I think anybody's compositions that we touch will come out with that sensibility to it, just because that's the kind of music that we do.
TP: How long have you been playing the bass?
ANDY: I started playing the bass in elementary school. I was 11 years old or so. I started playing professionally at 13. It took a couple of years to learn the instrument, and I started working with bands. My father bought me an Ampeg baby bass for Christmas on my 13th birthday or something. And I started gigging right away. That was a gigging axe. If you had an Ampeg baby bass and an Ampeg amp, you were in business. Jerry had his congas, and he was already playing the horn, too. I was 13 when we had our first Latin Jazz group, which was a sort of Cal Tjader band, a quintet.
TP: You played that type of material?
ANDY: Yeah, we did some of Cal Tjader's material and then some original stuff. The guy who was our mentor, a fellow by the name Llewellyn Matthews, Lew Matthews who right now is the musical director and pianist for Nancy Wilson… We grew up together, and he was really the guy who moved us into real playing of real serious Latin Jazz at a very early age. So we were blessed in that sense.
TP: This is the Bronx in the early 1960s. What sorts of gigs were you and Jerry doing?
ANDY: At the time we were doing small gigs here and there. School dances and occasional church dances. They were mostly dances, that I remember, but we used to play our Latin Jazz, and since it had a danceable beat, that was all people needed.
Coming up is a live performance by Manny Oquendo's Libre. Manny Oquendo is I guess the Art Blakey of timbales. He's one of the real greats, with a very distinctive sound and style. We've had this band together 15 years; this is our 15th year. It's very special. It's hard to put into words how special it is, and it's a shame that certain people are asleep on it, that shouldn't be. They should be moving more towards roots and culture instead of trying to get too commercial. But that's always been the case. That doesn't mean that we won't be around. We'll always be around. This is live in Holland about 18 months ago, when we visited Holland for a little bit. Hopefully we'll have a chance to put the whole concert out on an album someday, because it was well-recorded, as you'll soon here. This is "Asia Minor."
[Libre: "Asia Minor" (Machito) – Steve Turre on shells;
TP: Next up is a live performance by Grupo Folklorico Experimental.
ANDY: That started in our basement as a jam. The Gonzalez household was a 24-hour jam all the time. We had a lot of music going on there, all the time. That was sort of our laboratory to experiment and come up with stuff. We used to invite a lot of great musicians to come and play with us.
TP: Who were some of the people you were coming up with?
ANDY: It was just the musicians we were playing with at the time who were out of the professional bands of the moment. Those were the years when… I had already played with Ray Barretto's band, Dizzy Gillespie's band, and I was involved with the Palmieri band at that time, and my brother was also. We were playing with a lot of great musicians, such as Chocolate Armenteros on trumpet and Jose Rodriguez on trombone, and Barry Rogers… A lot of the people who were very strong figures in the 60s period. So we got to learn quite a bit of stuff, and also we contributed a bit to what was the status of Latin Jazz at the time. We were freeing it up more, because we were also into Miles and we were into the free jazz movement of the 60s — we were listening to a lot of that music. We used to apply a lot of the things of that, and try to combine things. Sort of a mixture. It was like a laboratory. We used to experiment.
Grupo Folklorico came out of our deep respect for and our study of the roots of our music, which have their origins in African music, Afro-Cuban music in particular, and the religious music of that particular thing held a big interest for us. Also, the rumba, guaguanco and the son — those elements were all the roots of what our music is today, in one way or another. It's felt. You can probably say that for all of Latin music. But Latin Jazz has those roots plus the jazz roots. The two musics are fairly…I guess you would call them cousins, because they sort of come out of the same experience of the African diaspora, the slave trade and what happened after that, and their individual developments in whatever country the slaves were in.
Out of all that study came this particular group of people. It began as a jam and it turned into something a little more serious when Rene Lopez managed to get a contract to record us for Salsoul Records. They were big in disco, but they had a Latin label, Salsoul Salsa. They signed Grupo Folklorico, and not too long after that they signed Manny Oquendo and Libre, and we did four albums for that record company. They're all out of print. I've heard of people offering up to $100 for a copy. In fact, the President of the company asked me for a copy! So imagine!
TP: But the masters are still extant. They could be reissued.
ANDY: Oh, sure. At one point the original tapes will be…they'll make a deal to have that stuff put out again, especially on CD. I'd like to hear that stuff on CD, maybe remixed. I'd like to remix some of it myself, because I know CD you can really get more. We had limitations. When you mix for an album, you have to limit yourself, but a CD lets you loose to really explore the full sonority of the music.
TP: Andy, I think we've piqued everyone's interest, those who remember the albums and those who don't know about Grupo Folklorico. And you've brought a live date.
ANDY: I found this in my collection of tapes, and I'm not too sure where we performed this. I think it was in El Barrio on 110th Street or 109th Street and Third Avenue. There's a park there where we performed. We didn't do too many performances, but the ones that we did do were pretty memorable, and we always had a lot… As a matter of fact, I think once we performed here at WKCR. I know people who have those tapes, and one of these days we'll bring them up and play them.
Anyway, Chocolate is playing, Frankie Rodriguez, Willie Garcia is singing, Henny Alvarez, Virgilio Marti, Jerry, Gene Golden… A whole bunch of people. It's a tune by Henny Alvarez that we never recorded, by the way. So it's a real treat for the collectors. It's called "Ango."
[Grupo Folklorico, "Ango"]
ANDY: There's been talk of that band getting back together. It's been almost 12 years since those records came out and since we'd played. We're all around. Most of us are around. Hopefully we'll get to have a reunion and maybe make a new record. Because there's certainly quite a bit of material, and everybody's grown in the last ten years, so I'm sure there will probably be a lot of interest for a new record.
TP: We have another tape cued up from the seemingly endless store of tapes that Andy brought up.
ANDY: I thought I'd turn people on to a music that is a favorite music of mine, and that is the Afro-Cuban music of the 1950s, which is a very rich period. The band I have cued up… I'm going to play a couple of cuts of radio transcriptions from… The bands in Cuba all used to broadcast live on the radio. There were a bunch of them that had regular daily programs, and there were a few dancing fanatics from here who'd go down for vacation in the 50s, and bring their tape recorders and record some of this stuff. The first tune we'll hear is "Buena Vista and Guaguanco," and this is by Chappotin Y Sus Estrellas. Felix Chappotin was one of the great, great…along with, say, Chocolate and another trumpet player by the name of Florecita… He was one of the great stylists, soloists in Cuban music. He was part of the Arsenio band. When Arsenio decided to move to New York and make this his home base…well, Chappotin stayed with the original band. This is a transcription of that original band — Chappotin Y Sus Estrellas with Miguelito Cuni singing, who is one of the great soneros who ever existed.
[MUSIC: Chappotin-Cuni, "Buena Vista and Guaguanco"; "
ANDY: That style of music, the slow guaguanco, the son montuno, that's all the creation of Arsenio Rodriguez, and his influence is all over that music. The first cut was a live transcription that Manny Oquendo had in his collection that he'd gotten from the bass player who worked with Arsenio…
TP: Arsenio, given the level of historical memory people have, we need a surname.
ANDY: Arsenio Rodriguez. I take it for granted everybody knows. There's a whole new generation who doesn't know these things.
Arsenio Rodriguez was a gentleman who played the tres. The tres is a 9-string instrument that's similar in sound quality to a 12-string guitar. The strings are in octaves. He was a master of that instrument, and also a master composer of many forms, utiliziing all his roots, his folkloric roots of Afro-Cuban music. He was one of the greatest exponents of the music. He was a very prolific composer. One of his tunes, "Bruca Manigua," was a big hit, a world-wide hit for Miguelito Valdes when he was with the Casino de la Playa Orchestra, which was a band that made quite a bit of noise. Then what happened was that Xavier Cugat heard a lot of that music and brought Miguelito Valdes to sing with him. Then they recorded it again. Then they recorded quite a few things of Arsenio's. They even brought in Arsenio for a few recording sessions.
But Arsenio's style, the conjunto style of three trumpets and bongos, maraccas, claves, singers, rhythm guitar, and a tres and a piano, that whole sound…there's something very unique about it. It was basically a development historically from what was original a son. A son was an early form of dance music that there was no congas, there was only bongos — bongos, maraccas and claves and guitars and tres and singing. That was it. Then they added one trumpet. Then they added two trumpets. Then Arsenio came and added three trumpets. Then the bands in New York added four trumpets. We're talking specifically about bands like the Tito Rodriguez conjunto and the Tito Puente conjunto. They added the fourth trumpet.
We're going to spend this time doing a little dedication to Tito Rodriguez who passed away on this day I think in 1973. I had the good fortune to record with Tito Rodriguez before he passed away. I guess when I write my book about the giants in the industry who I've gotten to associate with…
We'll hear something from Tito Rodriguez Live at the Palladium, the second album, Returns to the Palladium. It's titled "El Que Se Fue." This is when Tito had his big band. It's one of my favorite cuts of his band in action. Manny Oquendo is in the rhythm section playing bongos. Then we'll hear something of the conjunto with the four trumpets.
[MUSIC: Tito Rodriguez, "El Que Se Fue"; "Chen Charengo Ma']
ANDY: "Chen Charengo Ma" is a tune written by Giusti Barreto(?), at least he's taking credit for it, but that's an old folkloric thing going back to the different tribal things of Afro-Cuban… They had the religious music. Then they had the abakua, which is a sort of secret society, sort of related to the Masons, sort of a self-help group, but very secretive and very ceremonious, and they had their own style of music, which was quite different than the religious music that they call the santo music, the santero music. But that particular thing, they call it palo. That's a sect of the Congolese tribe. Imagine how far that had come if you traced the development of it. That's something that goes back… The palo is sort of the Congolese folkloric roots going back to the Congo. So imagine that came all the way up through Cuba, surviving all that way, and then Tito Rodriguez has made a mambo out of it. It got into popular dance music of the 50s. To this day, a lot of the traditions of the folklore, the roots, come back to us.
My roots in Latin music are those of growing up, listening to these records of Tito Rodriguez and of the Machito band and Puente. Those were the three big ones, the ones that made the greatest impact in Latin music in the 50s. They were the Young Turks. I guess we're the Young Turks of this generation.
I just wanted to play the music that influenced me, music that I like, and that's pretty much it. We'll run the gamut, playing stuff from different records that I've brought and different tapes of live stuff. I guess that's the way we're going to pass the next hour and 45 minutes.
TP: You have Machito cued up next.
ANDY: I wouldn't go on a radio program with music and leave out the Machito orchestra, which was one of the greatest organizations of any band that ever came out of New York City. It's really a New York product, but it was Afro-Cuban in nature. All the innovations and everything they've done are so countless. This is the Machito band in 1953 or 1954, for the Seeco label, and the tune is "Mambo Sentimental."
[MUSIC: Machito, "Mambo Sentimental"; "Que Bonito Puerto Rico"]
ANDY: That was "Que Bonito Puerto Rico," "How Beautiful Is Puerto Rico." I guess that's one of the golden periods of the Machito Orchestra, because there were a few. Some people feel that the original Machito and his Afro-Cubans from the early 40s was THE band, and then other people feel that this period, which was 1953-54, was one of the great periods. I like it all. I don't have any distinctions.
Talking about "Cabonitos Puerto Rico," I'd like to get into it a bit. I've had the good fortune to be associated with and have recorded with quite a few great figures in Puerto Rican music also. I do love my Cuban music, but I will never put Cuban music over another music. I like all musics the same. But the music of the land of my origin…I wasn't born there… I'm Puerto Rican. I love all the music of Puerto Rico also. So I've had the good fortune to record over the years with quite a few of the greats of Puerto Rican music, such as, say, Rafael Cortijo, who along with his singer, Ismail Rivera, were I guess the greatest exponents of the bomba and plena rhythms. Those were the Afro-Puerto Rican rhythms.
The plena specifically…they use the three panderetas, which is sort of like tambourines without the jingles (that's what they look like anyway), tuned to different notes. The songs are usually about… Well, the plena was a device used at the turn of the century to be the sort of newspaper. They used to make up daily songs having to do with what was going on, either in politics or maybe the latest gossip, things like that.
I had the good fortune to record with a group… This record had just come out on the Shanachie label, and the group was called Los Pleneros De La 21. 21 is a bus stop in Santurce, Puerto Rico. That's where a lot of great pleneros grew up and sort of plied their trade. So this is Puerto Rican folklore, and we're going to hear a tune that's called "Canta El Gallo." Now, Gallo is a gentleman that is one of the singers of the group, and he just passed away recently, and at his funeral he insisted that they play bomba y plena, and all the pleneros all over the city came. They converged on a funeral home on 116th Street, and they played in front of his coffin. It was the most incredible thing. Your hair stood up. It was quite emotional and quite deep.
Anyway, this is El Gallo. I'm glad that the Center for Ethnic Folk Arts was able to sort of sponsor this recording for Shanachie Records of Los Pleneros de la 21.
[MUSIC: Los Pleneros, "Canta El Gallo"; Quarteto em Cy ; Gil Evans, "Manteca"]
[SIDE 3]
ANDY: I happen to like the way Gil Evans arranged that. What intrigued me the most was the way he set up the chords and the melody for the bridge, and he used that as the intro of the tune. That was beautifully done with the flutes and stuff; it's one of my favorite moments of Gil Evans' arranging.
TP: You took us on a long trip on that set.
ANDY: We were in Puerto Rico for a minute. We played Los Pleneros de la 21, the Pleneros of Stop 21, which is a bus stop in Puerto Rico. Then we went to Brazil, about the year 1975, a quartet of female singers called Quarteto em Cy. That group was very influential. They came up around the time of the bossa nova craze, but they always sang in these beautiful harmonies. What they did on this record, it's an anthology of popular Brazilian music composers. They would do medleys of each of these composers' tunes. This is a medley of a composer by the name of Antonio Maria, and they did three of his songs. The arrangement sounds like Gil Evans. That's why I played it, because I wanted to play the Gil Evans cut after that, which was "Manteca"… But to show you that the Brazilians are doing some fantastic things with harmony. They always had a thing for melody and harmony that was quite distinctive and quite different, and it's always been a favorite music of mine. If you can find that record, snatch it. It's Antologia de Musica Popular de Brasil.
Before that we heard Peruchin, whose real name is Pedro Justiz. He was the piano player with quite a few big bands in the 40s and 50s. In the 50s he was primarily featured as a solo pianist and as a piano player with a band called Orquestra Riverside. This was a 10″ album that's very difficult to find, and this was his first solo recording session, just piano and rhythm…
TP: You mentioned, Andy, that this was from 1949, which I couldn't help but think was the same year that Bud Powell recorded "Un Poco Loco."
ANDY: Peruchin was one of the greats, one of the true great stylists in Cuban music. He had his antennae out. He was listening to everybody. Especially the older pianists like Art Tatum. You can hear where he was influenced by American jazz pianists.
TP: He does "Over The Rainbow" on the other side of that 10″ album.
ANDY: It would be interesting to compare that with Bud Powell's or someone's.
Before we heard Los Munequitos de Matanzas, which at the time when they recorded it were known as Guaguanco Matancero. One of their tunes that they had recorded earlier was a big hit. It was about comic book characters. So they adapted that name and they call themselves Los Munequitos, which means the "cartoon characters." But this is one of the great… Matanzas is a very rich, fertile area of Cuba for music and culture. Their percussionists are just superb. It's something extraordinary and quite different than other regions of Cuba. So that was "Guaguanco Matancero."
TP: Now we'll shift gears again, and listen to a recent live recording that Andy participated in.
ANDY: I did a duo piano and bass gig with Larry Willis, at the Terrace at the Village Gate, a street-level bar. It's a nice little gig. We played just jazz standards and stuff like that. We had the good fortune of having Steve Berrios, who plays traps and percussion with the Fort Apache Band. He brought his trapset down and sat in with us. This is a tune that I happened to record, and I was quite surprised at the fidelity.
[MUSIC: Andy-Willis-Steve, "All Of You"]
ANDY: That was the Larry Willis…I guess trio. We were doing a duo, and we had the pleasure of having Steve Berrios sit in with us on traps. (Jan. 1990) That was a nice gig to do. It was a lot of fun to just do bass and piano. It was quite challenging, because you're just left up to your own wits, and there's no other rhythm, so you have to provide the rhythm. It worked out pretty well.
TP: Larry Willis has been doing most of the piano playing lately with Fort Apache.
ANDY: Yeah, for the last two years, almost three. The pianist before that was Kenny Kirkland. We've been recording with him lately for his first album under his own name. I guess you'll be seeing that sometime in the future.
I wanted to get back to Libre, which is the band I most often work with. We're going to be doing quite a bit of stuff coming up in the future. On our agenda is a new recording session. We'll be doing some traveling; we're going to California this summer, and the Atlanta Jazz Festival. Hopefully we'll get to Europe again soon. We haven't been there in about a year. I want to play another cut from one of our European adventures. This is from the Holland concert also. I think this is "Yevala(?) Pa Rincon"
[MUSIC: Conjunto Libre, "..(?).. Pa Rincon" – Steve Turre, trombone]
ANDY: That was Libre, a very good indication of what we do sound like and the power that we put out when we play. In 99% of salsa in New York today you won't hear that kind of playing. You won't hear that kind of power and that kind of swing. It's a shame that people are asleep on that. Because this was done 18 months or two years ago, and if anything we've gotten even stronger. I think the little message to all the people out there listening is if you want bands to… You have to support the bands that you like and that you want to see around so that they keep working. Some of the Latin clubs are tied up. They have these little cliques where they only use certain bands. But the public is really the final arbiter of who they want to hear. So I would put to te public that whenever they hear… If you're big fans of ours, come out. Come out to our gigs. When you hear announcements that we're playing places…
Let me clue you in where we're working this weekend. Manny Oquendo's Libre is performing Friday at the Tapestry, which is in the Bronx on Westchester Avenue, very near the Parkchester housing complex. It's easy to get to — the #6 train that goes up Westchester Avenue. Also on Saturday we're going to be performing at the Circle Theater, which is the newest club in the Bronx. It used to be an old movie house, and they tore out the insides and rebuilt it into a supper club, a very nice supper club where you'd be proud to take your old lady out to dinner and dancing and stuff like that.
This is something that I haven't heard. I've been recording a lot with Kip Hanrahan. He's the guy who started a record company, and his first release was Jerry's record, Ya Yo Me Cure. Since then he's been involved in quite a few… He's turned into a sort of producer-composer. He came up with a concept based on the world music concept, putting elements together that most people would not have thought of, like, say, a Haitian guitarist, a Latin bass player, a jazz vocalist, and things like that. I did a couple of European tours with Kip, and lately we're doing quite a bit of recording. I just did a trio recording with John Tchicai, a name from the free jazz past, and Smitty Smith on drums and myself on acoustic bass. That was quite interesting.
We'll hear something that I'll be hearing for the first time, a recording I did with Kip's band – a Duke Ellington composition, "Love Is Like A Cigarette," with Carmen Lundy doing the vocal. But she doesn't do the vocal with the band; she does it apart from the band, which is an interesting concept.
[MUSIC: Kip Hanrahan-Carmen Lundy, "Love Is Like A Cigarette"; Astor Piazzolla, "Knife Fight"; [END OF SIDE 3]; Astor Piazzolla, "Leonora's Song"]
ANDY: Those were tangos by Astor Piazzolla, who is probably the foremost composer of tangos. He was sort of the rebel of Tango, the guy who took Tango specifically away from a certain sensibility that the Argentinians had, and he modernized it, added a different kind of sensibility to the music. Although there's no improvisation in his music. It's all written out. Every single note is accounted for. There's nothing improvised on it. But it was one of the highlights of my career to get to record this record with him. I had never recorded Tango in my life. But I had been aware of Astor Piazzolla, and I had been listening. So when Kip called me to play bass on the session, I was scared, but I was happy to do it. And I was VERY happy that Astor liked my playing. For a Nuyorican bass player… I guess it has to do with all the influences, all the music I've gotten to hear here, based in New York, which everything comes here — this is the capital of the world.
TP: I won't challenge you on that. Kip is also a son of the Bronx as well, so he'd be aware of some of the same things. The album is called The Rough Dancer in the Cyclical Night. It's on American Clave Records. We heard "Leonard's Song" and "Knife Fight," which followed Carmen Lundy's a cappella "Love Is Like A Cigarette."
ANDY: Tango came out of the bordellos of Buenos Aires, of Argentina. It's not supposed to be a very sedate music; it's kind of a rough music. The best of Afro-Cuban music and the best of jazz was very close to that same element, the element of the nightlife, the bordello life, the pimps, the booze, the drugs — that was all part of it.
TP: It has that edge.
ANDY: Yes. There's a certain "live life quick" because you don't know if you'll drop the next day — that kind of situation. But I was quite happy to get to record this kind of music, which I never thought I'd do.
TP: I think you have cued up, though I'm not sure, is music by Cachao.
ANDY: Not quite. This is Orquesta Aragon from Cuba. This was a live radio broadcast from the late 70s. This tune is called "Sin Clave Y Bongo, No Hay Son" – it means, "without the claves and bongos, there is no Son." That's Aragon's tribute to the son, and the lyrics of the son talks about how it's been such a strong rhythm and a dance rhythm, and it's been around for quite a while, and it will never die because it's such a strong tradition. It's part of my background, too, and it's music that I love. I love to play it, love to dance it, love to hear it.
[MUSIC: Orquesta Aragaon, "Sin Clave y Bongo No Hay Son"]
That was Orquesta Aragon, with Richard Egues on the flute and Orestes Varona, who was one of Manny Oquendo's influences, playing bongos, which was a rarity because he's a timbal player, and he was one of the greats. He passed away a bunch of years ago. Now Orquesta Aragon has a lot of new members in the band, and it's not the same any more. Nothing stays the same, but we were fortunate enough that this band broadcast a lot and they recorded a lot. So the great era of Orquesta Aragon is preserved for all time.
TP: right now we'll hear some of the most recent results of Andy's long years of study, a track from each of two albums that have been put out by Fort Apache Band, as well as a promotional piece for Mayor David Dinkins.
ANDY: Dennis Rivera, the President of Local 1199, the Hospital Workers Union, hired us to produce a jingle, a Latin music jingle for the Dinkins campaign. So we came up with a little cute ditty. I wrote the melody. Manny Oquendo, as most of the time, comes up with the perfect idea, and then we built a song around it and an arrangement with Papo Vazquez. This is the Dinkins Jingle.
[MUSIC: Dinkins Jingle; Fort Apache, "Nutty"]
That was "Nutty" by Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band. That concept for "Nutty," when we were rehearsing the material for the album, I was the one who came up with the concept of playing it as a son montuno, because that's a favorite rhythm that I like, and it seemed to blend well with the melody of "Nutty." So that's how we did that.
TP: It's from a recording titled Rumba Para Monk, which is a studio date comprising all arrangements of Monk tunes. [ETC.]
ANDY: I was quite a frequent visitor to this station and other stations, too. But as time went on, I was just too busy to be here. Hopefully I won't make myself so scarce in the future.
[MUSIC: "Jackie-Ing"–Enja, Obatala, 1988]March 13, 1991 (on Cachao):
[MUSIC: Descarga, "Criolla Carabali"; "Tunas Se Quemo"; "Bailando Entre Espuma"]
TP: You've done this before. You know the deal.
ANDY: I know the deal. I was up here last time for the Machito Festival with Manny Oquendo, and we did a pretty good show. Here, my partner in crime is Joe Santiago, who is another one of the bass players of my generation. We're the ones who always… I guess we're always giving credit where credit is due, and the cat that we picked up a lot from and learned a lot from, not so much by, say, going to his house for lessons or anything, just by listening to what he was playing… We really learned a lot from Cachao. To this day, there's things to learn from listening to the kind of bass playing that he was doing, no matter what period, because he has such an extensive career, going back to the late 1930s. It's an incredible body of music that he put together, and he sort of defined bass playing. Afro-Cuban bass playing was brought to a high art.
TP: It wasn't just Afro-Cuban bass playing. Cachao is a world-class improviser.
ANDY: Oh, of course. Not only that. See, he comes from a family of musicians, and many of them were bass players. I heard there's, at recent count, 40 bass players in his family, including his mother and father. So we're talking about somebody that really knows the instrument. Not only that. When Cachao was young and just growing up, he was playing percussion instruments, too. He started out playing bongos. But naturally, he was playing the bass around the same time period, and bass playing in Cuba at that time was mostly in the danzon bands, the charanga bands, the tipica bands of the period. That was sort of the national dance music of Cuba, was the danzon. He has a rich tradition in that idiom, and it calls for a lot of classical style playing, such as bowing the bass instead of, say, plucking it. The plucking part was more percussive. That's more the Afro-Cuban side of things. But the bowing of the instrument, as in any symphony, or any classical situation… He has the same kind of technique as the best of classical music.
So I guess Cachao to me is probably the most well-rounded, all-around bass player that I've ever heard. Because he can do all. He can play with a symphony, he can play with a tango band, he can play with any salsa ensemble, any Afro-Cuban ensemble. His knowledge of rhythm is so extensive, and he can just fit a part to something, either drum-wise or bass-wise.
TP: Another aspect of Cachao we'll focus on is his compositions, which number in the hundreds.
ANDY: Yes, because he used to write a lot of danzones for the Arcaño band. That's the band he used to work for — Arcaño Y Sus Maravillas. Jose Antonio Arcaño. He was a master flute player. And the leader of this band, Y Sus Maravillas, were the "marvels" of the age. At the beginning, they were called Los Maravillas, or de Las Maravillas del Siglo, which means "the marvels of the century." This band really… In that band a lot of innovations took place. The creation of new forms of dance music, and new ways of playing it, and new combinations of rhythms and combinations of sounds in the rhythm section, including… You can hear Cachao bow the bass, slap the bass, play all over the instrument. It's incredible; incredible to listen to this.
This is a whole part of the history of music, and I am surprised that jazz scholars who really studied the 30s and 40s and have a lot to say about the 30s and 40s, or even, say, the early New Orleans days…that they are not really hip to what was going on in Cuba. They mention it barely. It's mentioned, like, "Yeah, this was going on, too." But they really didn't dig deep into that side of the African diaspora, or whatever you could call it, the African side of things. And they should have been more attentive to this.
TP: Certainly, musicians from Cuba and from the Caribbean made their mark on jazz music, but they were not particularly identified as that – they were identified as jazz.
ANDY: It's also some cultural conditioning involved. Because I imagine for any jazz fan of that time to hear a danzon with the violins and whatnot, it would sound a little like hokey to them. It would sound like something else. But they were missing the point. And the point is the rhythm. And that's the total point. To this day, still jazz cats have trouble getting behind the rhythm and how Afro-Cuban music works. But this is the master, one of the masters of any era.
TP: We'll be having 2 hours and 43 more minutes of elaborations on this theme, with Andy Gonzalez on Cachao. Let's talk about the three tracks we heard at the top of the show.
ANDY: This album is one of these strange records that came out in the early 60s, after the Revolution, of tapes of Cachao's jam sessions, which he had done quite a few recording sessions. The personnel on some of these tracks, like, Yeyo Iglesias on bongos, Tata Güines. Papin also played on some of this stuff. The pianist wasn't Jesus Lopez, who used to play with Arcaño's band, so it probably was Orestes Lopez, Cachao's brother, who along with Cachao were the musical directors and were responsible for the majority of arrangements in the Arcaño band. In the Arcaño band, Orestes played the cello. The instrumentation is 3 violins, flute, cello, bass, piano, and timbales — no congas at the beginning. The bass sort of held up the bottom and with the timbal and made it sound full, like the conga wasn't really needed. He would slap the bass sort of like a conga, too. All those things are incredible.
I've been for more than a year now trying to hook up a way to get Cachao in concert together with Milt Hinton. We're talking about some serious slap bass technique in jazz — in American Jazz and in Afro-Cuban music. Now, one of these days I'll have my dream come true. But I've been waiting for that. I've been mentioning it to promoters, and they all say it's a great idea, but so far nobody has acted on it. But that's one of them I want to try to do.
The tunes on this album… It's on the Maype label. It's funny, Cachao… I'm glad that these records exist. But the companies that put these out were like bootleg companies. They used to rip off the musicians, and never pay them a penny for their stuff. So as much as I like the presence of having the record around, it's a drag that Cachao never really makes any bread off these records. And they've been in print for 25 years, so it must be somebody's making money.
Anyway, the tunes that we heard are "Criollo Carabali." That's an old Afro-Cuban chant of the abakua sect, or what would you call it… That's sort of the Afro-Cuban version of the Masons. It's an all-male society dedicated to preserving and sort of keeping each other cool. In fact, in the early years, they used to buy each other's freedom from slavery. So that's a chant of that style of music, abakua.
"Tunas Se Quemo" is sort of a descarga montuno, very simple. The tres player on this record is Niño Rivera, who is probably the most modern of the tres players and the most influential, besides Arsenio Rodriguez, who is probably THE influence on the tres. All these names I'm mentioning are just giants. Giants in Cuban music. Cachao was in there, too, as the giant of giants.
TP: We have cued up a collaboration between Cachao and Eddie Palmieri.
ANDY: This is not my favorite tune from the record, but Cachao gets a little solo in it, and I like the way he plays here. He's a driving force in any band he plays in, but the collaboration with Eddie Palmieri was… I got to see that band live, in person, quite a few times, and I was thrilled by that. Joe, when was the first time you saw Cachao play live.
JOE SANTIAGO: Tito Rodriguez Orchestra.
ANDY: Same with me. I saw him with Tito Rodriguez Orchestra. I saw Tito Rodriguez' Orchestra at the Embassy Ballroom on a Sunday afternoon in 1964. I was playing my first big-time gig. It was Federico Pagani, he was like the daddy of promoters in… He brought the Latin dance downtown to the Palladium and all this stuff. He's like a legendary figure. Well, he was throwing these Sunday afternoon, all day,10 bands on the bill, and he hired our little Latin Jazz group. I was about 13 at the time. We were the tenth band on the bill. So we played, a little quintet, we made 50 bucks. But at the top of the bill was the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra, Eddie Palmieri La Perfecta, Joe Cuba Sextet — the hot bands at the moment. So I got to see them for the first time. I saw Cachao play for the first time. I saw Manny Oquendo playing with Eddie Palmieri's band for the first time. All that was great. The Colgate Gardens in the Bronx. Neither one of these two places I mentioned exists any more.
Anyway, this is the Eddie Palmieri band with Cachao. This was recorded around 1968 or 1969 – "Ay Que Rico."
[MUSIC: Eddie Palmieri, "Ay Que Rico"; Orquesta De Fajardo, "Fajardo y su Flauta"]
ANDY: That was actually Los Treyas Cubanas, but it's a tape that ended up in Miami and came out under the title of Fajardo, who was the leader of that band until he left to come to the States. So that tape actually isn't Fajardo at all playing there, but the tune and composition and everything is Cachao's. The title on the album is Fajardo Y Su Flauta, but the original title is "Julio Y Su Flauta" — Julio Guerrero, who was the original flute player who played in the Estrella Cubana band. But that's a really nice, laid-back version of that. There's another version that Cachao himself recorded of this tune that's a little faster. But this one, they gave it a nice tempo.
We're going to hear now a long, 18-minute cut. It takes a whole side of a record. It's from the Descargas at the Village Gate, Live — the Tico All-Stars. This particular descarga is "Descarga de Contrabajoas," the jam between the bass players. And the two daddies are here — Bobby Rodriguez and Cachao.
Now, Bobby Rodriguez was a whole other style. I think Bobby and Cachao were probably the two main influences on my playing (and probably Joe's, too, I guess). They were the cats, man. They were the ones with the best technique, the prettiest way of playing. Bobby was very pretty in his sound especially. There's a very pronounced difference in their tone quality. Even the way they hit the strings is different. Bobby has more of a bell, clear, ringing kind of note thing, and Cachao is funkier, a little more street when it comes to plucking the strings and slapping the bass and whatnot. They're playing two Ampeg Baby Basses here. Tone-wise, they still get their tone out, but sometimes the sound can be a little strange. But they do some great stuff here, and they just talk to each other back and forth.
TP: The liner notes attribute this to May 1966.
[MUSIC: Cachao-Bobby Rodriguez, "Descarga de Contrabajos"; "El Fantasma Del Combo"]
ANDY: Israel Lopez, Cachao, the great bass player of Afro-Cuban music. The track we just heard was one of his many descarga, or Cuban jam session recordings. This one is on a strange label called Musicalia. Even the cover is real strange. It says, Cuban Music In Jam Session, Cachao, in big letters, and then there's a photograph of two dancers, a lady who has on a bikini-like outfit, her arms look like they're crossed or tied together, and then the guy is leaning down, and it's shot in the woods somewhere — a very strange photo. Anyway, it's a great album for the things that are on it.
The tune we heard was called "El Fantasma Del Combo." All those little effects and all the…that's right out of Cachao's ideas about doing things. I was fortunate enough to participate in something that he did years later for the Salsoul label. I've been to a few rehearsals where he puts these things together, and he just comes up with these crazy ideas. He sets up the percussion and everything the way he wants them to start off. He orchestrates a jam session.
Which is in contrast to that mish-mosh of a thing at the Village Gate, which I don't care for that much except for the things that Cachao and Bobby Rodriguez get to play on it. But since it was out of their control, a lot of other things were happening that really had nothing to do with… Just good playing. But I just think that track is valuable for their work together, because it's very rare when two bass players play together on a record — it's usually just one bass and that's it.
Now we're going to start delving into Cachao's past, in the real early days. We've mostly been listening to 50s and 60s work. We're going back now to 1938 or 1939, I believe. The original source of this bass solo is a Koussevitzky concerto, Koussevitzky was a Russian composer and a bass player, and he used to write for the bass. They took this piece of music and adapted it for a bass solo in the Cuban danzon tradition. We're going to hear two versions of this. Cachao recorded it in 1938 and then recorded it again in 1957 or so. We're going to hear the early version, and then you'll hear the newer version.
[MUSIC: Cachao, "Canta Contrabajo" (1938 and 1957)]
ANDY: I made a slight error. The first tune that we heard on my tape of real early stuff, I believe it was called "Al de Lante(?)," Cachao as musical director along with his brother of the Arcaño Y Sus Maravillas band of 1938 or so. I'm not positive of the exact date. We'll now delve into that particular time period, because there are so many innovations going on, not only on the bass itself, but the transforming of the whole rhythm section happened in that band — and Cachao had quite a bit to do with it. In this time period, there was no conga drum in this style of band. The conga drum was sort of a lowly… They weren't given much attention. They considered it a very street instrument, and it wasn't accepted in the salon de baile, in polite society dancing, of which danzon was a strong part. But in the Arcaño band, the conga was introduced around 1946-47-48, that time period.
We'll hear the band before the conga drum was introduced, from the very early Arcaño recordings. These are all done around 1938-39-40. There is no conga drum, so the bottom of the band is in the hands of Cachao, and in the hands of Ulpiano Diaz, who was the timbal player in the band. Listen particularly to the interplay between Cachao playing what they call the tumbao, the bass figure, plus he'll be slapping the bass. You'll hear slaps. You'll hear little things that sound like percussive effects, like from a conga drum, but they're not. They're from the bass. That in conjunction with the left hand of the timbales, which plays a beat that's a very bass kind of sound…those two things are the bottom of the sound of this band. And it's 3 violins, a cello, flute — the great Arcaño himself on the flute, a tremendous flute player, with a very distinctive, sweet style. And the great Jesus Lopez on piano, who was one of the more, I guess…how would I call it…the chops — Mr. Chops. This guy was sort of the Art Tatum of his day, but in an Afro-Cuban way.
[MUSIC: Arcano Y Sus Maravillas with Cachao, 1938-39]
ANDY: That was a good dose of early Arcaño and then the last tune was "Buena Vista Social Club," which is from the El Gran Cachao album on Kubaney Records (1958). This is I guess what the Arcaño band would have been like 20 years later, from the period that we were listening to the old 78s. For the recording, Cachao some woodwinds. You heard bass clarinet, you hear a clarinet; it added an extra texture to the sound of the arrangements of the danzon, of the strings and flute sound. So that was a pretty nice thing that he did on that record.
Now, the earlier cuts… I know all the melodies, and I'm a little vague on the titles. I wish Rene Lopez was here to help me out with the titles on some of these songs. But they were all Cachao's arrangements. Although on the 78, I guess if you really listen closely, you can hear all the things Cachao is doing on the bass to make that bottom happen in the music, because there's no conga…
ANDY: …that's where all his musical background really comes from. And then, the other side of Cachao, which is the street musician, who used to play bongos in little street ensembles and whatnot.
We're going to hear a very historical recording, mainly because of the fact that we have… This is the record entitled Patato y Totico. It was recorded on Verve Records, and Teddy Reig produced it. Patato Valdes is well known to jazz fans. He's been recording on jazz albums with Art Blakey and Max Roach and all these people since the middle 50s. But he got together his own recording session with Totico singing, and he managed to get Arsenio Rodriguez and Cachao on the same session.
[MUSIC: Patato-Totico-Cachao-Arsenio, "Mas Que Nada"; Descarga, "Rendencion"; Gran Orquesta Tipica, "Mambo Tipico"; Cachao, "Maria Elena"; Eddie Palmieri-Cachao, "Busca Lo Tuyo"–skips]
ANDY: Sorry for the scratchy record, but I couldn't get a better copy of this. That was Cachao playing with Eddie Palmieri in one of Eddie's best bands. Manny Oquendo playing bongos, and Luis Miranda on conga, and Barry Rogers taking a tremendous trombone solo…
TP: I guess you play that one a lot, Andy.
ANDY: Yes, this particular copy of the record I found in a budget bin somewhere, and it was used. I didn't think it would skip on the tune, though. I couldn't find my other copy. It's one of those records that I used to play a lot, and my good copy got lost. But you could hear the driving force of Cachao in the Eddie Palmieri band. It was just such a good-sounding rhythm section — Cachao and Manny and Luis Miranda and Eddie on the piano. A driving rhythm section.
Cachao during his career… When he came from Cuba and settled in New York, he worked with quite a few bands. He did a lot of freelance work, did some symphony work. He did spend a good I guess two years or so with the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra, and recorded a few albums, did some touring. They tell me he wrote some charts for the band that they never recorded, which I would have liked to hear. In particular he wrote a danzon that I'd like to have heard, a big band arrangement of one of Cachao's danzons. But I'll have to wait until Tito Rodriguez, Jr., digs it up out of his father's extensive library of arrangements.
During the time that Tito Rodriguez had Cachao in the band, which was a tremendous period for the band… The Tito Rodriguez Orchestra was always a top-notch unit. Other players around that time… He always had the best — the best accompanists in that band. So imagine that Cachao would be playing, and then he managed to steal Rene Hernandez away from the Machito Orchestra, and quite a few other players of note. Like, Mario Rivera used to play the baritone sax in Tito Rodriguez's orchestra at the time. Also the lead alto was Bobby Porcelli. Just some great musicians.
TP: Before we play the next recording, by Tito Rodriguez, please run down the music we heard before the Eddie Palmieri track.
ANDY: Before the Eddie Palmieri thing, we heard a tune called "Maria Elana," which Cachao wrote for his daughter on her birthday. That was recorded when Cachao was a member of the Fajardo Orchestra, which he spent some time with Jose Fajardo's Orchestra. You can see him on the cover of some of the Panart albums.
Before that we heard the Gran Orquesta Tipica, "Mambo Tipico." This was an album entitled The 64 Professors. What they did was they put together all the great violinists and flute
players and leaders of all the charanga bands in Cuba that were coming up during the 50s. They were very strong. They were the most popular bands. We're talking about the America Orchestra, Enrique Jorrin, just the great figures of the music. And Cachao, his brother Jesus Lopez on piano; Ulpiano Diaz on timbales — people like that. They just all banded together to record a record of… Imagine. Full strings. It almost sounds like a symphony playing danzones. This tune was titled "Mambo Tipico." That's what it was. It wasn't a danzon; it was a mambo of the genre at that time. It wasn't the New York style mambo, which is quite a bit more frenetic and a lot faster. But the original Cuban mambo was a nice, slow-to-medium tempo kind of groove. That was a good example of it.
Before that we heard one of the Descarga albums, a tune called "Redencion," which was written by Orestes Lopez, Cachao's brother.
Now we're going to play something Tito Rodriguez recorded, from a CD called Big Band Latino. I'm curious to hear this because I owned the original record when it came out on Musicorp Records, and I'm curious how they remastered it. The people at the Palladium label from Barcelona, Spain, are very meticulous. They put out some Machito records, and the sound is tremendous on them. The track we'll hear is "Esti Es Mi Orquesta," "This Is My Orchestra," which was a direct cop off a Stan Kenton record by the same name — This is An Orchestra. Tito Rodriguez narrates a whole thing about having a band, and the musicians in the band — he names all the musicians and has them all play something. The arrangement itself is… Well, they adapted just the words Stan Kenton said about having a big band, and they translated that into Spanish, but then the rest of the arrangement is an original arrangement. Cachao gets a nice little taste here, and so do all the other members, some of whom are quite prominent today on the scene. This cut lasts a good 12 minutes.
[Tito Rodriguez, "Esti Es Mi Orquesta"]
ANDY: That was the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra with Cachao on the bass and all the other great musicians in that band at the time period — that was around 1964 or 1965. Tito Rodriguez gave up his big band around 1965 and moved to Puerto Rico.
And Cachao? Well, Cachao always was in demand as a player. He could fit in any situation, and got to play with all the bands really. I saw Cachao play with Machito's orchestra. That was tremendous! I saw him play with Orchestra Broadway, most of the bands. But I guess the bands that he most impressed me with from what I saw in person was the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra, which you just heard, and the Eddie Palmieri band. To me, those were where he really got a chance to shine as a section player, as part of the rhythm section.
We're missing quite a few records that I wish we would have had a chance to play tonight. I guess we're going to have to do Cachao, part 2, and bring in all the stuff that we've been missing. There's a bunch of live tapes also of Cachao with Manny Oquendo and Libre, with two basses. I had the honor of playing along with Cachao last year, doing the two-bass thing at SOB's, at the Village Gate, and most recently at the Atlanta Jazz Festival. Unfortunately, I misplaced my tape from Atlanta. I was tearing the house apart looking for it to bring it here so you could hear it. But I'll have to wait until Cachao, part 2, to play it.
Also, the records Cachao recorded in the middle 70s for the Salsoul label, which he got to play some of his early danzon arrangements, newly recorded in the studio, and he also got to do new descargas, and he brought together people like El Negro Vivar on trumpet… Those were his last record dates before El Negro passed away of a heart attack in Miami. He was one of the great trumpet soloists of Cuban music. Chocolate is on the recording also, the other daddy of the trumpet. Papaito is playing there, and Virgilio Marti — quite a few of the Cuban Mafia in New York played on those records. Unfortunately, right now, they're not here. But we'll get to hear them on another occasion.
But that was the first that people had heard about Cachao in quite a few years. Especially the New York scene, of which he was quite popular here. He got to play on some of the Allegre All Stars things, the Tico All Stars. He took part in quite a few recordings with Charlie Palmieri, and quite a number of sideman dates. So his work as a leader didn't revive until around 77-78, when he recorded the albums for Salsoul under Andy Lopez' and Andy Kaufman's production. We'll get to hear those on I guess our second part. Cachao is so prolific a composer and a musician and a record-maker, although as a leader there are not many recordings.
Also, there's a few that he recorded recently, in the last couple of years, for a small label in Miami. I think the label is entitled Tania Records…as opposed to Fania records, I guess…I don't know. But there's some great, great contemporary Cachao bass solos on those records also. Unfortunately, again, they're not here.
But we do have quite a bit of Cachao's early career and we do have quite a bit of his middle career, which… A lot of people consider that some of his best work took place in the middle to late 50s in Cuba with his cohorts and contemporaries, such as Emilio Rivera. Tata Guines, the great conga virtuoso who took the conga farther than it ever had gone as a musical instrument in the 50s — he's a very strong influence on just anybody who's playing congas today. He was quite a part of Cachao's entourage in Cuba during the time when they were recording those Cuban Jam Session records.
We're going to return to the Cuba Jam Session period now and hear a town called "La Luz."
[MUSIC: "La Luz"]
[MUSIC: "La Luz" (skip)"; "El Manicero"; "Juan Pescao"; "La Luz"; Cachao Descarga-Nino Rivera, "Potpourri de Congas";
ANDY: That was the great Niño Rivera on tres with Cachao and his Descarga group. On bongos of course was Yeyito, and on the congas was Tata Guines, on the timbales was Guillermo Barretto, and I imagine that was Cachao's brother playing the piano. Those are classic recordings, and they are more obscure ones, because the great album that everybody knows is the Descargas In Miniature album, which we don't have a copy of here, but we'll get it for part-2.
All these records were originally recorded… The first Descargas in Miniature were done… The reason they called them "In Miniature" is because they were all done for release on 45s, of which I have a few. As a matter of fact, I didn't realize it until I started hunting through some record bins in Chicago and ran across some Panart 45s of some of the tunes from the first Descarga album. That one to me is the classic of classics. If they ever have Grammys for classic albunms, that should win one, because Cachao really put together a stellar organization, and his ideas and the way he puts little jams together, he really sets them up. They don't just happen. He sets them up real nice.
Basically, the two great recording feats of Cachao's career are the whole thing with the danzon and the tradition, and how he sort of was instrumental in new innovations in Cuban music. And then, the whole thing with the descargas, of which I hear that he wasn't the very first to do a Cuban jam session — there were other albums. But the ones he put together are considered…they're classics of the genre.
We just heard quite a few of these little Cuban descargas. There was one called "Potpourri of Congas," which started to skip so we had to take it off. These are old records, man. Some of them I've played to death for years and years, and unfortunately as best as we can clean them, they still skip.
TP: We made an adjustment on "La Luz." Meticulous cleaning job!
ANDY: I've been collecting records for so many years, you learn that sometimes you have to put some soap and water to it and scrub out the gunk. And they play! You'd be surprised. Vinyl is very resilient. They spring back to life.
Anyway, we'll get back to some early Cachao. We'd like to continue this on another occasion and have Cachao Part 2 with more of his great solo work. Unfortunately we weren't able to bring some of that material with us today. But we're trying to give you an all-around view of how great a musician he is. Hopefully, to those who have never seen him play in public, make a definite attempt to see him in person. He is one of the most dynamic figures to watch while playing, because he does so many things. He's an entertainer. He knows you're watching. He'll do some stuff to dazzle you. Watching him play whatever he's playing, his tumbaos or whatever, and then all of a sudden he'll just surprise you with something and make you go nuts.
We'll hear some of Cachao's arrangements from the Arcaño band. He's playing bass, of course. He doesn't get much of a chance to do any solo work on these records. But, what he does do in the rhythm section, behind the rhythm section, as an accompanist and as just an all-around player, there's quite a bit of very interesting stuff going on. All bass players give an extra ear to this.
[MUSIC: Cachao-Arcaño, "El Nono Toca" and more titles from early 40s]
ANDY: That was the music of Arcaño Y Sus Maravillas, and that last track was called "Cubanita," and that was Los Hermanos Rigual that were singing the front part of the tune. They were pretty well known as a trio singing in harmony. They did some work with the Machito Orchestra, particularly with Graciela on "Contigo En la Distancia."
That's it. We're wrapping it up. We haven't really, except for a couple of instances, shown Cachao in the light of being the great soloist that he is, and that's what I think the 2nd part of our Cachao special should focus on.December 1, 1993:
[MUSIC: Libre, "Imágenes Latinas"]
TP: Tonight we'll focus primarily on a kind of autobiography via recordings spanning 20-25 years. What was that selection?
ANDY: First, good evening, Ted. It's a pleasure to be back here at WKCR. I have a tendency to come up and publicize my heroes. When you asked me if I want to do a show on me… I'm not one to blow my own horn on the radio. It's not my style. But I figured that it's time to do a show on my greatest adventures in music, which there have been quite a few over the last 25-odd years that I've been playing in the business.
The tune we opened with was an original, a poem by Bernardo Palombo that I put music to, and we recorded it on our second album, Manny Oquendo and Libre on Salsoul Records. They went out of business, and those records are hard to find. They haven't come out on CD yet. Hopefully they will. This was something that we're very well known for, which is our descarga jam kind of situations. This was pretty much an invention in the studio. We had an outline, a basic format as to how we wanted to play. That was the late, great Barry Rogers at the beginning of the tune. To me, that's one of his nicest statements on record, that whole beginning of the tune. He really plays it. I asked him to do something specific for me, and that was to imitate a vocal. Like, guaguanco, the beginning of a vocal is what they call the diana, when a singer goes, a-nah-nah, a-nah-nah, a-nah-nah, sort of to establish the key and to establish the mood of the song. So I had Barry do that on the trombone. He did a great job. It's like the first Latin Jazz instrumental diana for a guaguanco. It's really great.
I thought I'd bring up different things I've recorded over the years with Manny Oquendo and Libre; with Palmieri – the two Palmieris, the Palmieri brothers; with Tito Rodriguez; Machito; Puente; and the latest Latin Jazz things that are going on today with Fort Apache with my brother; and Charlie Sepulveda and Hilton Ruiz; and also older stuff — stuff when I was working 20-something-odd years ago with Ray Barretto's band and Eddie Palmieri's band. Things like that, and occasional jazz things here and there.
TP: The first thing you've cued up comes from 1975-76, when you seem to have been quite busy in different bands, a time when a lot of fresh ideas were being formulated.
ANDY: Well, that time was the beginning of Libre. We had started working as a steady band on the circuit here in New York, and we had gone on some trips already — to Africa and Brazil. Now, this particular recording we're going to hear is from that period, but it was with a friend of mine by the name of Bobby Paunetto. He's a Bronx-raised musician, pianist, vibist. I knew him from… He went to Berklee, graduated out of Berklee School of Music, and came back with a lot of fantastic music. But I've always known him to play more or less the same kind of style musically; he's always adhered to that style, even though it's progressed harmonically and he's a great composer. Unfortunately, he's been kind of bedridden…not bed-ridden so much, but apartment-ridden – he's been in his apartment quite a bit. He's come down with multiple sclerosis, and it's kept him from really developing his career as a player. But before came down with this illness, he recorded these two records with a lot of friends and help from family. They're great records, and I think that eventually they're going to be re-released on CD. This is called "Brother Will." He wrote this in memory of his brother, who was mugged and murdered during this time period. This was his putting into music what he felt about the situation. It's Pathfinder Records. The players are people like Todd Anderson, Billy Drewes, Ronnie Cuber is on some of this, Manny Oquendo plays on some of it, and Jerry, myself, Milton Cardona. When we were all up-and-coming, struggling young musicians in the Bronx, Bobby was one of us, and he sort of took his particular sound and concept to another level by going to school and really learning his trade, his art. When he got out of school, this is what he came up with.
[MUSIC: Bobby Paunetto, "Brother Will" (1975); Ray Barretto, "Tin Tin Deo" (1969); Eddie Palmieri, "Adoracion" (1973)]
ANDY: The thing about "Adoracion," which was from an album called Sentido, is that the beginning part was totally improvised. What I came up with was to play harmonics on the strings with my bow. For years after that, people were asking me, "What is that sound?" This was before synthesizers were being used on recordings and stuff like that. So it's an unearthly kind of sound, and a lot of people were freaked by it — they didn't know what it was. But it was me playing the bow.
TP: How long were you playing with Eddie Palmieri? How did you become involved?
ANDY: I was working with Ray Barretto's band, and we worked a lot opposite Eddie. Nicky Marrero was the timbalero in the band at the time. I was always an Eddie Palmieri fan from way back when Manny Oquendo was the timbal player in the band, and sort of the heartbeat of the Eddie Palmieri band. All through the years, the names of Manny Oquendo and Barry Rogers keep on popping up on these records, especially the records that I have anything to do with, because these are the cats — they're the ones who were the movers and shakers of the Eddie Palmieri band. They made things happen in that band. Manny still makes things happen with Libre, and Barry was always one to make suggestions and add to the music to make it spectacular.
TP: That band was pushing the boundaries of Latin music.
ANDY: There's some truth to that. Eddie was a good catalyst for other people to push the band. Eddie was good at sort of being the glue that made all the innovations and things happen. Some of the ideas were his, but the majority of rhythm ideas were from his players.
TP: What are some of the innovations that happened within the Eddie Palmieri bands of that time?
ANDY: Well, one was just the sound of the trombones, a band with just trombones in it, two trombones. That was kind of unique. It wasn't original. Other bands had that sound also. But the Eddie Palmieri band, the La Perfecta, brought it to a height of musical excellence. Barry was in charge of making sure that the music was hip, and Manny was in charge of making sure the rhythm was hip — and Eddie was Eddie, doing what he does. It's a unique sound. That band was really influential while I was growing up, as part of the soundtrack of when I was young.
TP: Since you were a toddler, has your life been suffused with music?
ANDY: Sure. My dad was a vocalist, and he used to sing with bands, and he'd take us to the rehearsals when we were 6 or 7 years old. We were listening to Cortijo y Su Combo and La Sonora Matancera and Machito… The house music, what we'd hear in the house in the day and at the family parties and stuff like that.
TP: Is that the process by which you learned to play, by hearing the music all the time and being around musicians?
ANDY: That's sort of part of it. When you're growing up and listening to the music, you get a feel for it. It became a normal thing to hear that kind of music. What knocked me out is my uncle had a red record. I said, "A red record? What is that?" Fantasy Records. It was Cal Tjader. That opened our ears to another way of playing than just listening to dance music and playing dance music, and tipico, Afro-Cuban-based New York music. This was Afro-Cuban, but it had jazz in it and improvisation, and the sound of the vibes was a very nice, pretty sound. I heard those records when they were new, and that was in the middle 50s. I was just 5-6-7 years old. Even back then, it was a revelation to me. Just the sound of it sounded so nice. I didn't realize until later how much jazz influenced they were. Cal Tjader was a very heavily Milt Jackson influenced…
…in the fourth grade, playing violin. I played violin for a year-and-a-half and then switched to the bass. At that time, the charanga craze was happening in the dance music of New York — the violin sound with the flute. That was pretty prominent. I had no real aspirations to play that kind of music. From the get, we were trying to play Latin Jazz. That was our thing.
TP: Was your brother always a drummer?
ANDY: He started as a drummer, a conga player and trumpet player at the same time. We sort of started coming up in music together.
TP: Before "Adoracion," we heard you in a Ray Barretto band playing Dizzy Gillespie's "Tin Tin Deo." You were young.
ANDY: I was 18. It's from an album called Ray Barretto, Together. It's the first album I recorded with Barretto, on the then-fledgling Fania label. Fania hadn't hit its stride yet as the big salsa label. I lasted in the band about a year after that recording, and then I left and went with Dizzy Gillespie's band; me and my brother joined Dizzy Gillespie's band. We stayed there for about 8 months, toured a bit, played a lot in the city. That was a great experience playing with Diz.
TP: Had he heard you with Ray Barretto?
ANDY: He'd hired my brother first to play percussion. Then they needed a bass player who could play without getting lost in the rhythm. They had a couple of bass players play in the band, but Dizzy wasn't satisfied with how they were approaching the rhythm, so Jerry recommended that I come in. I came in and…
TP: Was he emphasizing Afro-Cuban things, or was it the full range of what he did?
ANDY: It was a unique band. There were no traps, which is unusual for a jazz band at the time. It was Mike Longo on piano and George Davis on guitar, myself, and Jerry on congas — and Diz.
TP: No timbales.
ANDY: No. Just the congas. And it made it. For the kind of music Dizzy was playing at the time, which was… You've got to remember at the time, we were still immersed in the boogaloo era, kind of rhythm-and-blues with Latin rhythm combined kind of thing. Dizzy was reflecting some of that sound in his music.
There was one tune that made some noise and is still remembered these days from the album we did. It's called "Olinga." I think Milt Jackson covered it and a few other people covered it. So that's one of the points in my life that I'll always remember.
TP: It must have been a harmonic education for you.
ANDY: Of course. Matter of fact, I didn't think I was ready to play with Diz. But he would egg us on. He was very generous with his time, as far as showing musicians what they needed to know about his music. He was just the funniest person you could ever know, and great to be with. He got along very well with all of us. To show you what kind of person he is, he met my parents when he hired us, and he'd come by the house every now and then, and my dad and him became pretty good friends. Then we were out of contact with Diz for a while because he was busy doing stuff. With the U.N. Band, they were down in Puerto Rico at the time that my dad was hospitalized. Diz found out about it and called my dad at the hospital to find out how he was and whatnot. I'll always remember that about Diz, how nice and sweet a person he was.
TP: Also at the time, there was so much activity… Wasn't Kenny Dorham also someone you performed with?
ANDY: Yes. We were close to Kenny for about a good year, and we were playing almost every day. At the time, they had passed…well, they had anti-poverty funds, and they set up schools. I was teaching bass, Jerry was teaching percussion, and Kenny Dorham was teaching trumpet. We didn't have too many students, so we'd play every day, just for our own enjoyment. We got to play a few gigs, too; we formed a little Latin Jazz quintet. That was another education, because K.D. was an amazing musician. Another beautiful, sweetheart kind of person.
TP: You had the opportunity to be around two of the great trumpet masters, as well as experiencing the whole range of Latin music that one would hear at the time.
ANDY: Yes. I was also into the jazz… I got to see Trane play, one of the next-to-last gigs he ever did, at the Village Theater. That was exciting, with the Ornette Coleman Trio and John Coltrane Octet. That's when he had Pharaoh Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison. Jimmy Garrison I got to know pretty well after Trane's death. He lived in an apartment next to a friend of mine, and I was always paying him visits. That's how I got to buy a bass that someone had left in his house.
TP: Who were some of your teachers? Was it pretty much through gigging and practical experience? Or did you have a more formal thing?
ANDY: The Latin side of it was pretty much self-taught and listening to the masters — listening to Bobby Rodriguez, listening to Cachao. Those were the cats. Those were my heroes. They still are.
For jazz, I was fortunate when I was in junior high school… I had the audacity to call Steve Swallow and ask if he gave bass lessons, and I took about two years of bass lessons with Steve Swallow. This is before he made the decision to switch from upright bass to the bass guitar.
TP: Was he with Art Farmer at the time?
ANDY: He was with Stan Getz, Art Farmer, and Gary Burton.
TP: Let's get to another set of music. This one will have a more contemporary slant, and begins with a 1980 album that brought the music of you and Jerry into very clear focus. It's from Ya Yo Me Cure on American Clave Recorda.
ANDY: This was our first attempt at putting out something more or less our sensibilities about things. Trying to improvise, trying to move the music forward, and also keep some roots to it. Guaguanco roots. We were listening to a lot of Cuban music and Cuban groups. Also we were doing a lot of jamming at my house, at New Rican Village, which was a place on Avenue A where I used to be the musical director. This particular album really reflects all this time period where we were doing a lot of jamming and a lot of playing, and we were starting to formalize kind of a direction in Latin Jazz that we wanted to move in.
[Fort Apache, "Agueybana Zemi"; Grupo Folklorico, "A Papa Y Mama"; Libre, "A Chango Y Maria"; Papo Vazquez-Milton Cardona, "Chango Y Yemeya"–Breakout-Timeless]
TP: You've been working with Papo for 15 years or so.
ANDY: Papo has been working with us in different situations since he was 16 years old. That was 1975 or 1976. Well, he's like part of the family, part of our extended musical family of quite a few musicians.
TP: Like many of the musicians you've worked with, and you and Jerry, he's totally fluent in the idiomatic performance of Latin Jazz and Jazz, and can merge them or code-switch easily.
ANDY: That's part of the experience of growing up and dealing with New York City. I don't think there's any other place in the world where we could have so much access to musics as here in New York. When I was a teenager, I used to run to Slugs to hear Jackie McLean or to hear McCoy or hear… We were jazz fans. We had so many musical heroes that used to follow and go hear all the time. And studying history, there's quite a few heroes that… Over the years, you start learning about who's who and who did what in the music, in jazz and in Latin. I did quite a bit of studying. I was fortunate to acquire a large cache, they call it, of old Downbeats, and I started reading each one of them cover-to-cover just to learn about what was going on, what people were listening to and who…
TP: Reading old Blindfold Tests is an interesting exercise…
ANDY: Yeah. Like Miles Davis saying he's going to step on Eric Dolphy's foot the next time he sees him. Things like that. Those are funny.
But I did learn about the different critics who were around, and how they tried to formulize people's tastes. Critics used to put Coltrane down; they used to put Charlie Parker down — things like that. I used to think that was kind of silly. Most critics are…their particular opinions… It seems to me they're frustrated because they're not playing. I don't know what that is. You know, in the Latin world there aren't too many critics. I think that's because they'd find themselves in cement shoes at the bottom of the ocean if they say something bad about somebody! [LAUGHS]
TP: On "Chango y Yemeya," the percussion were Steve Berrios, Milton Cardona and Patato; Papo Vazquez on trombone; Andy Gonzalez, bass; Edgardo Miranda on cuatro; Bill O'Connell, piano; and Mario Rivera.
ANDY: If you'll notice, most of those guys were on the Ya Yo Me Cure record. Like I said, we have an extended family of musicians; we've all been playing together for years.
TP: Before that was "El Chango de Maria," from Los Liberes de la Salsa. That's from a compilation of two sessions by Libre from 1978 and 1979. Papo Vazquez, Jose Rodriguez and Barry Rogers on trombones; Manny Oquendo and Jerry Gonzalez on percussion…so many, and I'm not sure who is on which particular track.
ANDY: Before that, "A Papa Y A Mama" is by Henny Alvarez, by Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental Nuevayorquino. That was a pretty historical record for its time, because it really… When that record was released was when Fania was starting to move up and try to establish their particular sound as the commercial sound in Latin American music, in Salsa, and they were the ones who sort of pushed that name, "Salsa," on the music, because it didn't have that kind of title before. We sort of recorded it, and it became like an antidote to that commercial sound.
TP: Why was that sound objectionable at the time? Or not "objectionable," but what were you reacting to?
ANDY: Well, it wasn't a deliberate reaction to the other kinds of music that were happening. It was just a natural…it was an evolution rather than a revolution. It was something that evolved, partly because of the jams we were having in the basement of my house, including a lot of these musicians. We formulized a group to play folklore and also to experiment with new forms. We played a few college concerts with that, and out of that, with the help of Rene Lopez, we were able to get a recording contract on Salsoul. We ended up recording two albums. The first one was a 2-LP set, Concepts in Unity, and then a year later we put out Lo Dice Todo – "We Say It All." We were true to what the title says — a Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental Nuevayorquino. It's a folkloric group that's experimental, and we are from New York, so it's going to involve all the influences of New York.
It was pretty much Afro-Cuban. On the second album, we did a Brazilian tune by Jose Rodriguez. By the way, he's in the hospital and I'd like to wish him my best. He's not been feeling well lately. He was the powerhouse trombone player to be teamed up…
…or any kind of experimental Latin music until we decided to do this. It created quite a stir, because some of the tunes on these albums are very exciting. To this day, people ask me, "When are these things going to be released on CD?"
TP: I was about to ask you that myself.
ANDY: I have no idea. I've been pestering the owner of the label to re-release the stuff, and hopefully he will do so.
TP: It seems also that the notion of delving into the broad folkloric spectrum has filtered into the contemporary approach of many of your generation of Latin musicians.
ANDY: I'm sure that these records had to have had an effect. They were quite popular when they were released, and they made quite a bit of noise. Everywhere I go, people ask me about them and ask me different things about the recordings, and the tunes, and the people who played on these records. There's been talk of a reunion, like a new recording of Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental. But that's just talk right now. But most of the people who participated in the original recordings are still around, and it's quite possible to get them all together. So who knows?
TP: The next set will focus on some of Andy's musical heroes. The first he's selected, and at the top of the apex, is Cachao, on whose music we've done several radio shows over the last few years.
ANDY: We're going to hear something Cachao recorded in Cuba. This is the second version of this recording. The first he did in 1939 or 1940. It's called "Canta Contrabajo," which means "sing contrabass." What it is, is Cachao's adaptation of a bass concerto by Koussevitzy, who is a great bass virtuoso, who wrote classical music for the bass. Cachao adapted the melody and then put a montuno on it, and he made a danzon out of it, which was Cachao's… The great body of work that he has done is mostly in danzones, original danzones, which is the national dance of Cuba. It's classically oriented of sorts.
Cachao has composed thousands of these danzones, and they're all great, and they're all… I would call them little symphonies, and they have a great deal of original thought in Afro-Cuban composition. That's why I really enjoy Cachao's work. I learned quite a bit from listening to the way he put Cuban clave counterpoint. That's the art of Cuban music, is the counterpoint. It's a whole world of rhythm. That's the world I've involved myself into, and I've been in that since I started, because I realized that's really the study that one has to do to be able to play this music correctly, is really involve yourself of that particular aspect of the rhythm. Clave counterpoint.
TP: It's an extension of the concept of African drumming, which is interlocking rhythms playing against each other…
ANDY: Yeah, polyrhythms, all that stuff. Anyone who studies that… If you put your mind to it, it becomes another language that you can utilize in your music or in your improvisations. This is something I intend to maybe get some literature put out on. I'm working on a bass book now. I think all bass players should study this kind of counterpoint, because it really makes for a varied approach to the instrument. It's not only harmonic, and it's not only 4-to-the-bar walking. It adds another dimension to your playing.
TP: We'll play the selection from album that's autographed to you from Cachao.
ANDY: Oh, yes. That was at the time when we were rehearsing for Cachao's recording sessions on Salsoul. He did two albums, which I don't have here. Also, we were preparing for a concert at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, and that Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental, Cachao and his Danzones, and Manny Oquendo and Libre — we all performed in concert. I was at the one of the rehearsals where I gave the album to Cachao and he signed it to me.
[MUSIC: Cachao, "Canta Contrabajo"; Arsenio Rodriguez, "Kila, Quique Y Chocolate"; Chappotin, "Los Jovenes de la Defensa"]
ANDY: That was the great Chappotin Y Sus Estrellas, with Miguelito Cuni on the vocals. That whole genre of Cuban music is one of my favorites. That's the school that Arsenio Rodriguez sort of started, which was the cut we heard before that — "Kila, Quique Y Chocolate." That was Arsenio's rhythm section. It was a tune Arsenio wrote…in other words, stating that without the rhythm, there just is no Cuban music; there's nothing to it.
The next cut we'll hear is one of my all-time favorite cuts to play for bass players. It's to show you what bass players can do in the music. Some musicians tell me in Salsa that they're tired, that they play the same kind of what they call tumbao, which is a vamp. They are reluctant to move away from the vamp because they think that maybe it might spoil the rhythm or something. But this bass player… I'm not sure who it is. The bass player that played with Arsenio is LázaroPrieto at that particular time. He was quite skillful about playing what Arsenio liked to hear, which was great counterpoint kind of bass lines. The bass player with Chappotin was a guy named Sabino Peñalver, and he was another master of making up these absolutely great basslines that laid right in the pocket, and swung like mad.
Now, this next bass player, I'm not sure of his name. The band was a big band called Orquesta Sabor de Cuba. It was led by Bebo Valdés. They're backing up a vocalist called Pio Leyva. He's still around in Cuba, and he's a popular singer of son montunos and guajiras and stuff like that. Now, he recorded a tune called "Pobre Nicolas," "Poor Nicholas." When the montuno starts on this tune, the bass player starts doing the most incredible things. It's not all about fast or anything. He's just laying down notes that fit right in there. I use this as an example to all my students of how to be free and play Cuban counterpoint and just be right there. Nothing is missing. It's just laying down time in certain ways. It's a great record.
[Bebo & Pio Leyva, "Pobre Nicolas"; Tito Rodriguez, "Me Faltabas Tu"; Machito, "Soy Salsero"]
ANDY: That was an album Machito did for Harvey Averne and the Coco label I think he was doing at the time. That was a strange record. It came not too long after Mario Bauza had departed from the Machito Orchestra. There was quite a controversy about that. It seemed that Machito had an opportunity to take a band to Europe, and there was an argument about… They couldn't take the whole band, and Mario was very upset. He wanted the whole band to go. It ended up that they took a small ensemble to Europe. But I think Machito's instincts were correct. What it did was open the door for Latin bands to appear in concert in the jazz concert circuit in Europe, and that opened the door for all the bands that came afterwards. Machito's band was the first one to appear. Then Puente, and then a bunch of them. The door opened wide open for bands. Now at the jazz festivals in Europe, you'd see bands from Cuba, you'd see bands from the New York circuit, and you'd see the new Latin Jazz artists that are coming out now. Fort Apache has been there, and Libre has been there, quite a few of the artists are starting to go to Europe now.
TP: Fort Apache recorded for the German Enja label, and Messidor is a Germany-based label that's been recording a lot of contemporary Latin music as well.
ANDY: Yes. It's very popular over there. The festivals usually include at least one evening of Latin American or Afro-Cuban kind of entertainment. It's become like THE popular event at most of the festivals. This album was recorded using Machito and part of his band — unfortunately, without Mario Bauza. It's just strange because it came out around the time this happened. To me it was kind of shocking that Mario would leave the Machito Orchestra to go on his own, because Mario didn't start his band until years later.
TP: The last tracks on the set featured you with Tito Rodriguez and Machito — hits you did with other people. How long did you work with Machito? What was he like?
ANDY: I've worked with the Machito band as a sub, on and off, since around 1970. It was always a pleasure for me. I've subbed with the Tito Puente band, too. What I get a kick out of is playing the classic charts — the classic Machito charts, the classic Tito Puente charts. A big feather in my cap, and I'll never forget it, was the recording I did with Tito Rodriguez. I was 19 or 20. I had been working… I was working with Palmieri, so I was about 21. What happened was that Palmieri was playing a dance opposite the Machito band, and the Machito band was backing up Tito Rodriguez for a special set of music that Tito had, like a show set of all his hits. The bass player who was playing with the Machito band had arthritis in his fingers, and he couldn't be counted on at that moment. He was a great bass player, but just old, and couldn't be counted on to really cut the chart for the Tito Rodriguez show part of the thing. So they asked me to do it. I sight-read the music perfectly, which was to my surprise, and Tito liked it so much that he asked me to do the recording session. The album is entitled Algo Nuevo, and it was Tito Rodriguez and Louis Ramirez, another figure who passed away recently. To this day I really appreciate the opportunity to have recorded with Tito Rodriguez, who is one of my big heros, too. Also, I enjoy the sound of the recording. It was recorded in Media Sound, on 57th Street. It was like a church, a big room. The sound is pretty nice on that record.
Continuing with the sessions… I've done quite a few sessions for other bands as a bass player. I just picked out a few that I could find at the moment and ones I kind of liked. This is one of the earlier things that I did as a session player. I was with Ray Barretto's band. This is Ray Barretto's rhythm section backing up Justo Betancourt and Johnny Pacheco. This is a nice tune that I enjoyed when it came out, "Mango, Piña Y Marañón."
[MUSIC: Justo Betancourt and Johnny Pacheco, "Mango, Piña Y Marañón"; Totico Y Sus Rumberos, "What's Your Name?"; Libre, "Little Sunflower" (1983); Steve Turre-Dizzy, "Toreador" (1993); Astor Piazzolla, "Street Tango"]
[END OF SIDE 3, INTO SIDE 4]
TP: All featured Andy and are from recordings made during the past 10 years.
ANDY: [Astor] was another feather in my cap. I was always a fan of Astor Piazzolla, because he was the…I guess you would call him the rebel of the Tango. Some innovations that he did were not quite accepted by the Argentinean diehard Tango fanatics, but I thought it was great music. When they called me to do this session, I was like, "Wow, I don't believe it; I'm going to record with this guy, and he's one of my heroes." Another hero. I was lucky to record with the man. He passed away this past year. I recorded on his last recording session, which I think will come out this year sometime.
"Toreador" from Sanctified Shells featured Dizzy Gillespie's last recorded solo. Carmen Turre, Steve's mother, played castanets. She plays them very well, and she knows her music. She was on it, boy. She was telling Steve, "Listen, in bar 39 of this, do you think that rhythm is correct?" She's really knowledgeable. She's an amazing lady. I hear there's another shell album in the works due to the popularity of this one, so I'm looking forward to it. I've appeared with Steve and this group, the Sanctified Shells, in a few concerts. We just did the San Francisco Jazz Festival recently.
Our version of "Little Sunflower" is already a classic. A lot of people told me it should have gotten a Grammy when it came out. [Montuno records] We have a new one coming out soon, Manny Oquendo and Libre, "A Hora." It should be in the stores within a month or so.
Totico Y Sus Rumberos did that old doo-wop standard.
[MUSIC: Charlie Sepulveda-David Sanchez, "Nina's Mood"; Fort Apache Band, "Interior Motive" (from Moliendo Café]
Filed under Andy Gonzalez, Blindfold Test, DownBeat, Interview, WKCR
Tagged as Andy Gonzalez, Blindfold Test, Brian Lynch, Cachao, Christian McBride, Dave Holland, Dizzy Gillespie, DownBeat, Eddie Gomez, Eddie Palmieri, Fort Apache Band, Jerry Gonzalez, John Benitez, John Patitucci, Paul Chambers, Ray Brown, Richard Bona, Ron Carter, Roy Haynes, WKCR
Stanley Clarke: Uncut Blindfold Test
To be on the road seems to be the default condition of the virtuoso bassist Stanley Clarke, who turned 60 today. Having spent much of the past year-and-change touring with three of his own ensembles, the forty-year veteran launches his seventh decade tomorrow with the second, European leg of a four-stage mega-tour with Chick Corea's reconstituted Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy edition of Return to Forever, with Lenny White on drums, Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and Frank Gambale on guitar.
Clarke's bona fides are too well known to require recitation here. I met him about 18 months ago, when he consented to sit for the DownBeat Blindfold Test in his midtown hotel room, using his Mac laptop to listen to the selections. There were time constraints, so I presented fewer selections than would normally be the case.
PROLOGUE: "There's a few musicians I know who absolutely, in all the years I've known them, have never said a bad thought about another musician, and one of those guys is Herbie Hancock. He's a guy who could get a pass on saying, "that is a piece of shit!" He's such a great musician, he's done so many monumental records. I've been with Herbie where he's talked about some of the most, for lack of a better word, amoebic musicians. He'll say, "But see, that's nice." He could even say, "Man, nice shirt that guy has on. Cool instrument." I really respect, and I'm trying really hard to adopt that way of looking at music. It makes you look deeper. Then again, why should someone have to have spent so many hours, as I did, playing the acoustic bass or studying with the teachers I had? I had this problem when I first listened to hip-hop music. "They're not playing anything!" but then once I got into it, looking at how these guys grew up, what they had and what they were able to do with just what they had, it's totally legitimate."
1. Christian McBride, "The Wizard of Montara" (from VERTICAL VISION, Warner, 2003) (McBride, acoustic and electric bass; Ron Blake, tenor saxophone; Geoff Keezer, piano, keyboards; Terreon Gully, drums; Daniel Sadownick, percussion)
I have no idea who that is. I don't want to know why I want to say maybe it's Avishai Cohen, but I don't think it's him. It was a good band. The composition was really good. I thought that the bass player swung pretty good. The drummer sounded young to me, though. Could of swung a little more. But there wasn't a lack of enthusiasm; I'll give it that. It was pretty enthusiastic. Was that a bow solo in the middle or was it an electric bass? I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure whether it was something processed. That was nice. Also, there was something that, being an older guy, I'd say sounded almost like a ring modulator, which is unusual for straight-ahead music. But actually, that was refreshing, because it was something different. The track had a good feel. It was really spirited. When I listen to straight-ahead music, swinging music, the most important thing to me is that it swing, and on a swing scale this was a good 3½ stars.
2. Ben Wolfe, "Jackie Mac" (from NO STRANGERS HERE, MaxJazz 2008) (Wolfe, bass, composer; Marcus Strickland, tenor saxophone; Jesse Mills, Cyrus Beroukhim, violin; Kenji Bunch, viola; Wolfram Koessel, cello; Luis Perdomo, piano; Greg Hutchinson, drums)
I liked that. It was swinging. These guys sound like they've swung a lot in their lives. They don't sound like young guys to me. But then, who knows? I liked the string attempt there. It's always nice to hear in swing music…I always like it when I can hear something new, something refreshing in there. A cool composition. I liked the whole tone aspect there. The bass player was nice, but I wish he was recorded better. I always get upset when I hear basses who are not recorded well. He played some notes that were really nice that were buried a bit—the piano accompaniment was louder than the bass at certain points. But it was a good recording. 3½ stars.
3. John Patitucci, "Messaien's Gumbo" (from REMEMBRANCE, Concord, 2009) (Patitucci, 6 string electric bass; Joe Lovano, tenor saxophone; Brian Blade, drums)
That was a nice feel. I liked it. The bassist was playing the 6-string bass really nice. When it went into the real upper register I thought it was John Patitucci, but I'm not good at naming people, so then I thought it wasn't him either.. But everyone seemed comfortable with that way of swinging. The drummer was really good, I thought. The tune was cool. The thing I liked is that there was a lot of space, and the tune was based off of a bassline. I love great basslines, and that was a really melodic bassline. That to me is a sign of a good bass player, if he has a good bassline. Matter of fact, I still hear that bassline ringing in my head. Very creative, and the space was really good. 3½ stars.
4. Reggie Workman, "Medea" (from Trio 3, TIME BEING, Intakt, 2002) (Workman, bass, composer; Oliver Lake, alto saxophone; Andrew Cyrille, drums)
Was there an extra percussion, or was it overdubbed? Just three guys? At first I thought the percussionist was another player. The rest of the track was so spontaneous and true, it would have been better if they'd had another guy, rather than the overdubbed percussion—it was like someone put a blanket on it. It was cool. I liked the bow sounds. Do they still call this stuff free-form music? It's not my particular taste, but it was spirited. 3 stars. I don't like to judge someone on their technical expertise, but from what I could hear, the saxophone player had good command. I couldn't tell so much with the bass. The bass could have been recorded better. With the percussion, they used the echo, kind of like a blanket, so the perspective was different than the other instruments. Hard to tell whether they're older or younger musicians. I'm from the time that I listened to the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Archie Shepp, and all. But the saxophone player had a nice tone.
5. James Genus, "I Fall In Love Too Easily" (from Manuel Valera, CURRENTS, MaxJazz, 2009) (Valera, piano; Genus, bass; Ernesto Simpson, drums)
That was really nice. I love the tune. They had an arrangement. They had a great command of their instruments. The bass player was really good; you could tell he's studied the bass well. They played very lyrical. That's jazz to me. The piano was excellent. They had a lot of space. Even though these guys have a lot of technique, a lot of knowledge in what they're doing, the chords and harmonically, they were very patient players. That's a hard to during recordings. Sometimes a recording sounds better when it's relaxed, and someone took their time, and they show some patience in their playing. A really good recording. 4½ stars.
6. Alain Perez, "Donna Lee (Doña Líos)" (from EN EL AIRE, Ayva, 2005) (Alain Pérez, electric bass, vocals, djembe; Iván Lewis "Melón", piano; Kiki Ferrer, drums; Pepe Espinosa, congas; Carlos Sarduy, trumpet; Román Filiu, alto saxophone; Inoidel Gonzales, tenor saxophone)
At first I thought it was Victor Bailey, because I know he likes to take those kind of tunes and play the heads on them. But when it got to the bass solo, I knew it wasn't Victor. Then I thought it might be one of these tribute records to Jaco, and this is one of the tunes he used to do, but then I thought, "No, I don't think that's it either." A little too much percussion. But I really liked the arrangement. The bass player was excellent. It takes a lot of command to play that head. On the solo, I couldn't tell…I wasn't sure whether he was playing on the same tune or not. 3½ stars. That was interesting. I got into the tune, and I thought they were going to continue to go in that direction, but they didn't, which was cool. But he sounded like a different player in the middle.
7. Miroslav Vitous, "Surfing with Michel" (from REMEMBERING WEATHER REPORT, ECM, 2009) (Vitous, bass, composer; Michel Portal, clarinet)
I like what they did with that theme…at first I thought it was a 4-note theme, but maybe an 8-note, 9-note theme. It reminded me a melody that Wayne Shorter would write. At first I thought it was Bennie Maupin, but I don't think it was. I really liked the combination of bass clarinet and the bass. I thought they did a really good job of taking that motif and spinning it around and doing some stuff with it. It was very clear, what they were doing. Their objectives were really clear. I really enjoyed it. At first I thought it was Miroslav, but then, it didn't sound like his bass. I definitely think it's another guy. 4 stars. That was Miroslav? He changed his bass. What the hell? What did he do? During the '70s, I was around Miroslav and Wayne… Miroslav sounds good, man.
8. Ari Roland, "Damonesco" (from NEW MUSIC, Smalls Records, 2009) (Roland, bass, composer; Chris Byars, alto saxophone; Sacha Perry, piano; Keith Balla, drums.)
I can see the bass player. Short guy. Not American. Oh, this bass player is American? Then I don't know him. That was great. It was bebop. I loved it. I liked the piano player, and it was swinging. It was recorded recently, though. I can tell by the sound. Sometimes the engineers haven't done their research on the way the drums should sound in bebop. The snare almost sounded like a drum machine snare. It could have been Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers—everyone might have smiled. I liked the fours, and everybody played them, including the bass player, which usually didn't happen. The saxophone player was excellent. The first couple of notes, I thought he was Lee Konitz, but then I said no. Then I wondered if Eddie Gomez was on the bass. No. The bowing didn't sound like Eddie. But the bowing was great. It sounded like he used a German bow. You could tell that he really had it together. I could tell that these guys are diehards, because everything is exactly like those old records. This tune sounded like a composite of a lot of different types of tunes. But to their credit, bebop is as legitimate as classical music. It's a lot of rules. You could almost say it's finite. It's in a box, and there are things you do, and if you do these other things, it's not bebop. That's a helluva discipline. I give them a lot of credit. 4 stars.
9. Ron Carter, "Stardust" (from STARDUST, Blue Note, 2001) (Carter, bass; Sir Roland Hanna, piano; Hoagy Carmichael, composer)
[1:40] Is that Ron? Yeah! 5 stars. There's a couple of bass players in history who to me are source points. If I hear a bass player that's influenced by Ron, he may have more dexterity than Ron, or have a fancier arrangement, or blah-blah-blah. But Ron is an innovator. Probably 99.9% of the bass players who play out here today all play stuff from Ron. There's Paul Chambers, and you can go back to Oscar Pettiford, Blanton and Israel Crosby, and after Paul Chambers a few people—but a lot of it culminated in Ron, and then after Ron it's all of us guys. Ron to me is the most important bass player of the last fifty years. He defined the role of the bass player. When I was younger, I bought the Miles Davis records and listened to that stuff. As this solo bore out, Ron is a great storyteller. You listen to the song, and it's like somebody telling you a story about something. It's brilliant. Who was the piano player? Roland? He was great. Killing.
Filed under Bass, Blindfold Test, DownBeat, Stanley Clarke
Tagged as Alain Perez, Ari Roland, Bass, Ben Wolfe, Blindfold Test, Christian McBride, James Genus, John Patitucci, Miroslav Vitous, Reggie Workman, Ron Carter, Stanley Clarke