Bill Watrous, 1939-2018

From the left: Wendell Brunious, Dennis Mackrel, Jerome Richardson, Keter Betts, Monk Rowe, Bill Watrous, Rick Montalbano

Readers may have noticed my absence from writing this blog. All my spare time has been spent preparing uploads for the Fillius Jazz YouTube channel, where complete interviews have been posted for more than half of our oral history sessions. The death of Bill Watrous, however, has returned me to the blog. My interview with Bill, viewable here, was comprehensive and congenial, but there is more backstory to be shared about my association with him.

In the spring of 1999, in true cosmic fashion, Bill’s promo kit arrived unexpectedly on my desk just as I was seeking a trombone player to participate on my upcoming recording of “Jazz Life.” This album of original compositions would eventually include myself plus six members, three of whom are now deceased: bassist Keter Betts, saxophonist Jerome Richardson, and now trombonist Bill Watrous. Rounding out the ensemble were Rick Montalbano, Dennis Mackrel and Wendell Brunious. Before I started the archive project I had always assumed that artists of the stature of Bill Watrous would be unavailable to me. However, every artist I contacted happily agreed to the engagement. I learned along the way that jazz musicians always have dates in their calendars to fill, and a gig is a gig. Bill proved to be full of positive energy as well as the consummate musician. He entertained the group with his personal cache of jazz stories, while treating the music as if he was in an L.A. recording studio. One of my favorite moments on the recording is during the improvisation section of BeyondCategory at the 2:34 mark where Bill seamlessly extends Wendell’s last improvised phrase, then launches into his own striking solo. As trumpeter Joe Wilder said of improvisation, you always want to make a smooth transition, as perfectly exemplified in this moment.

Our paths crossed again at jazz conventions, and over the years we exchanged phone calls where our lengthy conversations extended beyond music and into the ups and downs of everyday life. Oddly enough, Bill’s wife Maryanne occasionally referred to Bill as “Monk.”

Bill’s passing caught me off-guard. He always struck me as younger than his years, probably due to his distinctive Price Valiant haircut, penchant for jean jackets, and his poignant observations on current events. Adios Mr. Watrous, and thank you for our friendship.

Inside the Studios, Part IV

Our look at the studio scene will conclude with a few more scenarios experienced by some of our Archive interviewees.

Trumpeter Joe Wilder had the skill and work ethic to become an integral part of the studio scene and found that he could have played sessions almost nonstop. His professionalism led him to self-limit his participation in order to maintain his skill level. Joe observed some musicians who couldn’t resist playing every possible session they could.

Joe Wilder

MR:    I remember you talking a little bit about some fellows who would try to cut corners and play the game of booking two sessions at the same time.

JW:    These were guys who were counting every penny they could get. And someone would call you for a jingle date, a television commercial or something. And they would say well can you do a date from 10 ‘til 12. And the guy would say yes. And someone else would call and say “yeah, I’ve got a date that goes from 12 o’clock until 3, can you make it?” Now he’s got a date from 10 ‘til 12, and he’s like 15 blocks away from the other studio. It’s no way he’s going to get to the other gig on time. And so the guy would say yes to the fellow. Instead of saying I won’t be able to make it because I’m already busy, he’d say yes to the guy that has the 12 to 3 date, and show up on his date at maybe a quarter to one, and say jeez, you know I didn’t know that the other date was going to go overtime or something, not calling to warn him of it or anything, just to make the money, rather than saying let somebody else make it. There’s enough for all of us, and there was at that time, a lot. Sometimes we did three or four jingle dates on the same day. And it got to the point where, in my case, I wouldn’t accept more than three because sometimes you’d go on one and it would be so easy that you felt like you were robbing them, and then by the time you got to the fourth one it would be something so hard that you wish you hadn’t started playing the instrument. So I knew that I could handle three in one day, but four was rough.

Bass trombonist Alan Raph, who was noted in our last blog entry, further described the musical rat race which could cloud one’s judgment:

Alan Raph

AR:    At that point I was juggling. That’s the story of my life, juggling. Keeping [Gerry] Mulligan happy when I had to send a sub to the first set at Birdland every night because I was playing a Broadway show. I was doing “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” which let out at 11. And Mulligan started at Birdland at 9 or 9:30. So Benny Powell used to sub for me. And I came in and did the second [set] and did the night. I’d finish at 4:00 and then go home and get up early and do a couple of dates and do a show and do that again. It was kind of interesting. But juggling. Keeping one contact while you make another, and then honoring the commitments. If you overbook, and you do this all the time, you book something that’s right on the tail of something else and then you have the problem of trying to get out of the first thing a little bit early or come to the second thing a little bit late. And there’s generally a way. I mean I only once or twice had to resort to outright subterfuge. I remember once breaking — my daughter at the time had a little plastic cow and I broke its foot off and put iodine on it. In the middle of a rehearsal I reached in and said, “oh man, I just broke my tooth.” I managed to get out of rehearsal. I left the trombone on the chair, just to make it look really good, and I went out, took my other trombone and went and did a brass quintet date Uptown. Every now and then I’d have to do something like that but not too often.

Studio work almost always paid better than the average club date, and musicians sometimes became overzealous in their quest for the extra bread. Saxophonist Kidd Jordan spoke about playing studio sessions in New Orleans, and how the players collaborated to earn a few extra dollars.

Kidd Jordan

MR:    Did you just show up and play?

KJ:    That’s right. And we had the head. They didn’t have any arrangement. We’d put a head arrangement on it and we’d go and put something on it after they started singing.

MR:    Was most of that stuff done with everybody there? Was it live?

KJ:    Oh yeah, you had to do that. And then we had a trick, you make a mistake this time, you  make a mistake the next time, and keep going round and round so you’d get overtime. ‘Cause there wasn’t no punching in, I mean everything had to go down, the vocalist, the band, the whole rhythm section so everybody had to do it. So we got our formulas for that too, and all the sessions was union sessions and we had a formula for that also.

Kidd described a now-obsolete way of making recordings: band and vocalist recording together and horn players creating a head arrangement on the spot. As technology changed, recording methods kept in lockstep. Trumpeter Lew Soloff of Blood, Sweat & Tears described how one of his signature solos was constructed:

Lew Soloff

MR:    When you did the solo on Lucretia Macevil, did they make you play a bunch of them and then choose?

LS:    God that solo, there were so many touches in that solo. Bobby Colomby produced that tune, and he would punch in here and punch in there, and that solo was very, very constructed by Bobby. I mean I like the way it came out, but it was very constructed by Bobby and I always used to think that that was wrong, but I don’t think it’s so wrong. I mean I don’t want to mention names, I don’t want to give it away, but there’s a lot of incredible pop records that are made and they’re constructed that way. My favorite playing, for the record, on that is just where they fade me out. That’s when I start to really go, just before they fade me out. I’d like to hear what I played after that.

You can listen to Lew’s solo here, starting at 3:56 in this version. It sounds like a brilliant one-take performance, which was the goal. Listen carefully to the fade out. Lew does one of those musical quotes which is still keeping me up at night, trying to figure out its origin.

Much of the music these accomplished musicians were called upon to record was harmonically simple and musically unchallenging. The jazz musicians who stayed out of the studios — either by choice or by lack of qualifications — sometimes looked askance at their colleagues who were thriving in the studio scene. Drummer Panama Francis spoke about his friends’ perception of his studio work in rock ‘n roll:

Panama Francis

PF:    By the jazz musicians I was called that rock ‘n roll drummer. It was a put down. Like we’d be in the bar at Jim and Andy’s and I’d walk in the door and they’d say, “ohhh, here comes this rock ‘n roller.” They didn’t realize how much money I was making, but when they found out how much money I was making, they was knocking the door down to make them records. But anyhow, two years ago they honored me, they gave me $15,000 and a plaque. And I went to make my acceptance speech and all I could say was “ladies and gentlemen“ and I bust out in tears, uncontrollable. Because I was hurt by the jazz musicians who knew me and knew that I worked in bands and heard me in jam sessions, and they went along with the white musicians who labeled me a rock ‘n roll musician. Because they never heard me play no jazz, because I was in Harlem all the time see, with the big bands. So they didn’t get a chance to hear me on 52nd Street. So they thought that this was all I could do, you know, that I was only able to play rock ‘n roll. And my so-called friends and brothers that knew different, never stood up and said well no man, he can play something else. I never got called for a big band date, I never got called for a jazz date. That was a label that was laid on me that wasn’t fair, because, I mean, I was able to play, you know, at the age of 13 I was playing in bands. I wasn’t playing no rhythm & blues — I was playing in bands, playing arrangements and things. But I knew how to play this music, because I used to play in the church. Just like rhythm & blues became rock ‘n roll. It’s like the word “funk.” That was a dirty word with black people. You told somebody to “funk” you’d be ready to fight. But the jazz critic heard the term being used by musicians, and they thought it was hip and it caught on. So they said, “he sure plays funky, doesn’t he.” I remember the time you used that word that you’re liable to get your teeth knocked out of you. I mean that wasn’t a nice word.

I’ll conclude this series with a brief anecdote of my own. A close friend in Utica, Bob Yauger, operated a respectable studio where I assisted as a producer and studio musician. I would often overdub a keyboard or sax part for local bands searching for their own moment of stardom. On one session I showed up with my saxophone and the producer said, “all we need is one screeching note in this two-beat break in the song.” He did his best imitation of a motivational coach and hyped me for the moment: “you rock, you’re the man, you can do it” and other similar blather. Fortunately for me, the note happened to be a high A, transposed to my alto sax, a high F#, slightly out of the range of the horn but a note that I could squeeze out with appropriate intensity. I donned the headphones, and when the moment came I screamed out a high F# for all I was worth. The producer was ecstatic. That was it. I was done — 15 minutes in and out — a first take. The question arose, what do I charge for one note? Do I charge for just the note? What about the money I saved the band for doing my part in less than a quarter of an hour? I honestly can’t remember what I ended up making for that session, but I was grateful that the producer was not one who said, “that was perfect, let’s do it again.”

That’s a wrap on our studio sequence.

Inside the Studios, Part II

The heyday for the recording studios, especially in New York, was from the early 50’s through the 60’s. Musicians who were adept on their instruments and who had excellent sight reading skills found work plentiful, and often enjoyed up to four discrete sessions in a single day. Many interviewees spoke of their work in the studios at this time. In this part, I thought it would be interesting to outline the qualities that put musicians on the first-call list for session gigs.

As echoed in our last blog by Tom McGrath, being on time was the first requirement for getting that call. Joe Wilder recalled some advice from his father, about how he should conduct himself as a musician:

Joe Wilder and Monk Rowe

JW:    I guess I got it mainly from my father, who was a musician. My father played with a lot of the bands in Philadelphia and he was a stickler for being on time. He used to pound that into my brothers and me. You know it’s better for you to come one hour early than to come one second late for something, and he would use as an example, there was a drummer that played with one of the bands he played with. And the guy was a good drummer. And he said, “you know the dance starts at 8:00 and we’re all there,” and he said, “and we’re all sitting on the bandstand ready to play and the drummer isn’t there. He comes at 8:15.” He said, “he knows it takes him at least 20 minutes to set up his drums.” He said, “now what sense does that make? What excuse is that?” And then he would say, “you know just because you’re black doesn’t mean you have to show up late.”

When musicians speak of another musician and say he/she has “good time,” everyone knows what is meant. Usually this refers to a bassist or drummer who keeps a steady beat and is able to play with feeling while avoiding speeding up or slowing down. Being a successful studio musician required a different “good time,” the ability to be punctual without exception.

Bassist Milt Hinton got in on the ground floor and was one of the first black musicians to be accepted in the studio scene. His wife, Mona, spoke about the work:

Mona Hinton

MH:    It didn’t make any difference whenever a contractor would call, it could be, he never said who it was for. He would call and say, “is Mr. Hinton free at 10:00 on Tuesday” or whatever it is, and I had an appointment book, and, “yes he’s free.” “Well have him at RCA Victor or Capitol or Columbia Studio at such and such a time. Now when he left home he didn’t know whether it was a rock ‘n roll, whether it was with Stravinsky, whether it was with Barbra Streisand, he didn’t know who it was for. Guy Lombardo, you know, it could be anybody.  And these were the people. He just went there, they put the music up there, and he had to be on time, not looking for a place to park or not adjusting your strings. When that conductor’s baton came down across his nose you were there to get that first note.  And so Milton believes in punctuality. But these are the things that got him started. And once they knew that he was qualified, he could read anything, play anything, and so he just started getting more work than he could handle. Milton made his first recording date in 1930. And he has worked with every group of musicians, every generation, from that day up to the present day.

Mona alluded to Milt’s versatility, and his attitude that any music placed in front of him was worth playing well. Pianist Dick Hyman shared a similar opinion about doing what was necessary to serve the music, regardless of one’s personal taste.

Dick Hyman and Monk Rowe

MR:    What kind of people did you play behind?

DH:    Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown, Lavern Baker, The Coasters, The Drifters. I remember that terrible record “White Christmas” that was so popular.

MR:    Did you play on that?

DH:    I did. But we did all that stuff. And if you asked me what we thought of it, we always — we said to each other can you imagine, in 20 years, this was in 1955 or so, in 20 years people will be saying to each other, “listen darling, they’re playing our song.” And you know that’s exactly what happened. All of that funny music that we laughed at became classic in rock. And go figure it out.

MR:    Well musicians who’ve never done studio work may not realize that you don’t have to like everything you play on in a studio. It’s not possible.

DH:    No, no. What you have to like is being able to play it well.

MR:    Correctly, yeah.

DH:    And you do your best no matter what it is.

Dick Hyman wore multiple hats in the studio: pianist, organist, orchestrator, percussionist on occasion, and general get-the-job-done guy.

MR:    So if you listened to the Oldies station —

DH:    I do.

MR:    Are you likely to hear yourself?

DH:    Very much.

MR:    Can you tell me a couple of spots that I might hear?

DH:    Yeah. Johnny Mathis, there’s one — there’s a famous Mathis record that begins with a piano figure. “Chances Are.”

MR:    “Chances Are.” Yes. That’s you?

DH:    That’s one. Yeah. And then there’s another one that I whistled on for Johnny Mathis. And there’s another Bob Allen song.

MR:    “Wonderful Wonderful.”

DH:    Right.

MR:    That’s you whistling is that right?

DH:    That was one of my — well you know I had made my own — I have to admit — hit record of “Moritat,” which then became known as “Theme from the Three Penny Opera” and then finally became known as “Mac the Knife” in 1955 for MGM as the Dick Hyman Trio. And I whistled on it as well as playing an instrument called the harpsichord piano. So it became known around town that I was willing and I was capable of whistling. Willing to undertake it and capable of doing it without running out of breath. So I found myself being called to be a whistler on dates and I promptly joined AFTRA, that is the singers union, because their scale was higher than the musician’s union, and on a good day I might collect both scales on a single session. So I’m the whistler on that and I’m the whistler on something with Marion Marlowe , something called “The Man in the Raincoat,” one of those spooky third-man theme type recordings.

MR:    Was it a lip whistle or was it a teeth whistle?

DH:    No, no, no. The teeth whistling we left to Bob Haggart.

Studio musicians rarely saw the music in advance that was to be recorded. In the studio, time is money, and even the smallest mistake could require another take. Contractors soon learned which musicians had the chops, the punctuality, the versatility and the correct attitude. Drummer Bob Rosengarden shuttled between an NBC staff position (including membership in the “Tonight Show” band), recording dates, and the Music Director position for “The Dick Cavett Show.”

MR:    I was going to ask you when you showed up for a day at work at NBC, did you know what was in store for you that day?

Bob Rosengarden

BR:    I had no idea and couldn’t have cared less. I mean I just showed up. I always came from, in those days, because there weren’t that many good musicians, new guys who could play. I always prided myself and it’s not false modesty or anything, that I liked only two kinds of music — good music and bad music. So I didn’t mind having to play a polka, it didn’t really bother me, I can do it well, and I had a classical, musical background. So I found myself again slipping and sliding, right back into the NBC Symphony. Because I was one of the new boys. And there was a conductor there at that time by the name of Arturo Toscanini. Dumb luck.

MR:    But you were ready.

BR:    Oh, yes. I mean you sure as hell better be ready. And the old man couldn’t see too far away, you know you had to be right there. So he would look over and he’d make some gesture. And hopefully I’d figure out what it was he wanted me to do or not do. And [Johnny] Carson adopted us. I mean he loved Doc [Severinsen]. I still every once in a while hear from John. And again, slipping and sliding we were doing record sessions all the time, you know, every day. And we all saw each other every day in recording. We used to do three record dates a day, and a television show, every day. Seven days a week. It was a wild and wonderful time.

In our next blog we’ll take a look at some remarkable studio moments ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.

The Color of Jazz

The Benny Goodman Quartet

Our interview strategy for the Hamilton Jazz Archive was without an explicit agenda. We hoped to provide a comfortable venue for musicians to share recollections and opinions formed from a life in music. It became clear early on that certain topics appeared frequently. These themes included life on the road, learning to play jazz on the bandstand, improvisation, swing, and the role of race in jazz. It is this last topic on which I would now like to shine a spotlight.

I like to think that race does not matter in jazz, or at least that we have outgrown the time when it did, and that the world of jazz is now as democratic as the music, by definition, has always been. I also would like to believe that race does not matter in politics, sports, obtaining an education or in any aspect of American life. Or, in the sunny optimism of singer Jon Hendricks, “So when somebody asks me about race, I say what time does it start?” For Mr. Hendricks, the word “race” indicates someone or something moving quickly around an oval-shaped track. As we will see later in a more complete quote, Jon Hendricks refuses to recognize a racial problem exists. While I have the utmost respect for Mr. Hendricks’ outlook, eloquence and humor, I fear that it is not reality and probably never will be.

Nevertheless I am heartened by the message voiced repeatedly by many artists interviewed for the Archive. Their stories inform of us of the racial inequities that accompanied bands in their cross country tours, the ludicrous situations with venues, restaurants and hotels, and the social mores of the time that were enforced by peacekeepers and bean counters. But the stories also put forth a unified message that once musicians make it to the stage and studio, talent and personality trump age, gender and race.

Jazz musicians and band leaders were not immune to whatever racial inequalities and restrictions were in place. These impositions varied from one decade to the next and from one region of the country to another. Making a living as an entertainer could be an adventure in more ways than one. Interviewees shared some of their stories about incidents that happened before one note was played.

The most beloved couple in jazz have to have been Milt and Mona Hinton. Milt “The Judge” Hinton played bass on thousands of recordings, circled the globe with Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway, and blessed us with photographs of his fellow musicians that only an insider could have taken. Mona and Milt opened their door and hearts to countless musicians and could invariably be found at the center of a circle of friends and admirers. Mona Hinton accompanied Milt in tours with the Cab Calloway band in the 1930’s and spoke of those travels in this interview conducted in March 1995:

MH: Well, unfortunately, due to the climate of our society, the blacks and the whites were segregated. And it made it very difficult, especially when we were traveling in the south. Because frequently we would run into Glenn Miller’s band or Tommy Dorsey’s band, or some of the well known white bands. They were staying in nice hotels. And unfortunately the black musician would have to stay on the other side of the tracks, usually in someone’s home, or in a hotel that was not very good. And as I say unfortunately, frequently the owners of the hotels, they would take advantage I mean of the black musicians. They knew that we could not stay in places, and we’d run into places with rats and with the roaches and with the bed bugs and whatnot. So under those circumstances it was not good. Frequently we would go in towns and I would have to go out in the black community and try to help find rooms for the musicians in Calloway’s band, and sometimes it was very, very — the places where we had to eat were just intolerable. And as I say, we made it.

Both Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington often solved this problem by hiring their own Pullman cars enabling the bands to travel, sleep and eat on their own terms. When confronted with such slights, Duke was known to say, “no one is going to make me change my pretty ways.”

Sometimes just arriving at the gig could present an obstacle. Trumpeter Joe Wilder was a member of the Lucky Millinder Orchestra in 1947. Like Milt Hinton, Joe Wilder emotes a sense of dignity and class with a wry sense of humor that served him well throughout his career. I asked Joe about touring the south with Lucky’s group in this interview from October 1998:

JW: We were in South Carolina [with] Lucky Millinder. Lucky was a very nice fellow. He was not a musician, but he had a lot of natural talent for selecting the right kinds of tunes and tempos and things of that nature. But we had — I think six of the members of the band were white. And we arrived early in South Carolina at this hall where we were going to play, and suddenly up drove the sheriff with his deputy in the police car, and he says “who’s in charge here?” And so Lucky said “I am.” He said “well I’m just here to tell you there’s not going to be any mixed bands playing down here in Charleston.” And Lucky looked at this guy, and Lucky — you know the reason I think they called him Lucky, he would take a chance on anything — he looked this guy dead in the eye and said “this is not a mixed band.” And some of the guys were blonde with blue eyes you know, there was no way in the world anybody would have mistaken any of these guys for being blacks you know. And so he went to each guy. I think if he had said “are you black?” he might have gotten a different answer. But he went to each of these guys and asked, he said “are you colored?” And each of the guys, going along with what Lucky had said, would say yes. And so he would shake his head. And finally the last of the guys he asked was Porky Cohen, who was our first trombone player. And he had a slight lisp. And when he asked him, now Porky is responding more emphatically than the other guys, and he said “why thertainly” with this lisp. And at this point we had all been starting to chew on our tongues and everything, trying not to break up because it was so ludicrous. And you could see the ground tremble, we were trying not to let the sheriff see it. But anyway he turned to the deputy and he said “well I guess if they all say they’re colored, there ain’t nothing we can do about it, is there, Jeff?” And so he said “no sheriff.” And they got in the car and drove off. And we played that dance that night. It was very funny. And it might, as I mentioned to you, it might have been the first time that an integrated band played there. It’s very possible that that was the first time.

Despite the best efforts of law enforcement and promoters, the music had a way of overriding the rules, both written and understood. Vocalist Ruth Brown made her mark in jazz, blues and R&B. As a band leader, she experienced her share of troubles on the road. Arriving at the gig did not mean those situations had ended for the night. In March 1995, Ruth related what a typical gig could be like:

RB: Well most times we worked warehouses and barns, and nine times out of ten that didn’t have what you call the “second balcony.” If we were lucky to play a county hall or an auditorium sometimes, they had a balcony, and in that balcony was called the spectators. These were the whites who bought tickets to come in to hear the music but were not allowed to come on the dance floor. Sometimes it was vice versa. The whites would be down and the blacks would be up in the balcony and not allowed to come down. But in places such as barns, warehouses, where there was just one level, they would separate the races with a rope, and I say, a clothesline was what it was, an oversized clothesline. And most times someone had taken a huge cardboard and written “Colored” which was the definition of our ethnic group at that particular time, and on the other side the card would say “white.” And the white spectators were allowed to dance on that side of the rope, and the black on this side. But what they did not anticipate was that the music generated such a joy, people got to dancing, the ropes would fall down, I seen it happen many times. And people would continue to dance, and just wander in to each other’s space. Nobody would say a thing for a moment, and then it would occur to some official that, uh oh, the rope is down and they’re dancing in the same space, and we can’t have that. And then somebody would run up on the stage and say “stop the music” you know and they’d just stop the music and go back and put the rope in place, and you had to go back on your given side.

Ruth and her band were once pulled over for going five miles over the speed limit. Suspicious because of the high priced car they were in, the troopers made the band prove they were musicians by getting their instruments out and playing on the side of the road.

The race card could be dealt both ways as drummer Louis Bellson learned. He was the only white player in Duke Ellington’s Orchestra in the early 1950’s and was once asked to become “non-white” so the band could keep him on stage. His quiet manner only gave more weight to the wisdom of his words when I met with him in April of 1996:

LB: In 1951 they had the Big Show of 1951, which consisted of Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan and Duke Ellington’s band. They were the three big stars. Now besides that they had Peg Leg Bates, Timmy Rodgers, Stump and Stumpy, Patterson and Jackson, all these wonderful acts — tap dancing acts. It took us a week to rehearse that show, playing with Nat King Cole and Sarah, Duke, and all these acts. So after we finished rehearsing for a week, Duke finally discovered that hey, we’re getting ready to go down to the deep south you know? And in those days, you had segregated audiences. The whites couldn’t play with the blacks at that time you see. In those days it was “colored,” you didn’t use the word “blacks” see? So now the big problem is, Duke called me in the dressing room and says “what are we going to do? I can’t find a drummer to take your place, because it would be a week’s rehearsal and the guys that can do it, they’re all busy.” So Duke says “you mind being a Haitian?” I said “no, okay, that’s all right” you know. So we got through it okay. It was a little tense, because the situation was still down there, and the audience, because they told Jack Costanzo with Nat King Cole he couldn’t appear because of the racial thing you know. But some spots it was a little rough you know. But we got through it. I think through Ellington’s peaceful ways and the wonderful attitude that the band had kind of rubbed off on everybody. But still it existed.

MR: Well it’s nice that the music had a part in helping that situation to move along a little faster I guess.

LB: Well we played a gig in Mississippi and there the townspeople were wonderful, they came to the rescue, where we couldn’t stay in certain hotels and so forth. I mean these people came from wealthy families too. They had Strayhorn and Duke and Clark Terry stay in one house, and Carney and Russell Procope and myself in another house, and all on down the line. Beautiful homes and they fed us. So along with the bad there’s some good too. And these were situations that we got over, we dealt with it. Sometimes it’s almost like a slap in the face but you realize what the situation is and you go straight ahead because you’ve got something to do that’s valued and I think when you do that you realize that none of those things should bother the musicality of something. It’s the fact that whoever’s playing that music doesn’t make a difference, let’s play it and show where the peace and love is.

Trumpeter Red Rodney pulled off a similar ruse when he became an “Albino Red” for his southern tour with the Charlie Parker Quintet.

In the 1930’s, when big band jazz was the popular music of the day, an important breakthrough occurred. Pianist Teddy Wilson often played intermission piano between sets of the Benny Goodman Orchestra. Because he was black, he left the stage when Goodman’s musicians entered. At the urging of jazz promoter Helen Dance and despite warnings from his management, Benny Goodman thwarted convention and hired Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton to perform with his band. With drummer Gene Krupa, this quartet become one of the most recorded small groups of the decade. Jackie Robinson’s entry into major league baseball nine years later drew more press, but Lionel Hampton and Jon Hendricks both touted Goodman’s integrated quartet in their interviews, conducted back to back on October 18, 1995:

LH: I was the first black musician to play in a white band. See and Teddy Wilson was playing with Benny, but he used to play when Benny used to take intermission, and no white musicians was on stage, then Teddy would play, by himself see? So I was the first one, legally, to break that tradition down. But you know the funny thing about it, there wasn’t no black and white playing together no place. Not in pictures, moving pictures, not in baseball, or football, no kind of sports. The Benny Goodman Quartet was the first mixed group and we were the first integrated group, the first black and white group.

MR: Was that ever a problem playing in certain parts of the country?

LH: No, no. Because we all played good music. And Benny presented us in a professional way. We were four in his organization, and it would be noticeable that we were soft. And the people liked that. Some of the ovations that he used to get, it was the sound.

MR: Jazz especially was so important in breaking some of the racial problems down.

JH: Absolutely. Benny Goodman is an American social hero. He is a hero in the development of American society. Outside of music, Benny Goodman is a social hero. Because his love for the music was so pure that he just did not understand why he couldn’t have Lionel Hampton in his band, and then Charlie Christian and then Teddy Wilson you know. He just didn’t understand that. And the bean counters and the accountants and the lawyers, they tried to explain to him, “Benny, you’ll lose your show, they will not renew you on the ‘Camel Caravan’ if you do this.” So they gave him all those very hard and fast business reasons. But he refused to understand it. He said “I like those guys.”

MR: They play the music I want, so they stay, right?

JH: So he did what people have to march now to achieve. And it’s because of the power of the music, a love of the music.

Eventually the integration achieved on stage found its way into the New York City recording studios in the person of Milt Hinton. At a record date, every studio musician had to prove they could get it right the first time, could handle any kind of music placed on the stand and be punctual and versatile. In the studio, ability is color blind. In his book Bass Line Milt relates how a chance meeting with Jackie Gleason helped make this happen for him:

MH: It was during my slow period that I ran into Jackie and his manager, Bullets Durgon, on a street corner downtown. He asked me the usual kind of questions, “Whatta ya doing? What’s going on?” Instead of giving him the standard show business answer I said, “Nothing.” Jackie turns to Bullet and said, “We’re doing a record date tomorrow, put Milt on it.” Bullets tried to explain about contractors but Jackie didn’t want to know. “I don’t give a damn about contractors. Call whoever is in charge and tell him I want Milt there tomorrow.” The next morning I showed up at Capitol. There must have been 50 musicians in the studio. I’d recorded before but never anything this size. Besides, I knew from the minute I walked in, I was the only black. After the first few takes, we took a break and a couple of the musicians came over and introduced themselves. By the time the date ended I felt much more comfortable. The contractor came over, complimented me, and asked if I’d do the next session to finish the album. I didn’t even wait to get the date and time — I just nodded yes.

After all the societal hang ups are acknowledged and stories are told, the question of ability finally arrives. The comments and anecdotes I listened to in these interviews on this subject seemed genuine and heartfelt. The experiences and influences that set these musicians on the jazz path ran the gamut from the church they attended as a child to what station the radio in the house was tuned into at night. To these artists, qualifying a jazz musician’s success by adding or subtracting points because of their race would be an insult. By championing the ultimate importance of the individual, these musicians bolster their own accomplishments and give us a reason to take faith in the power of the art form. Early in the project, I admit to feeling ill at ease bringing up the question of jazz and race. I soon understood that it was okay to talk about it and that there was nothing awkward about the subject that these men and women had not lived through and had long ago drawn their own conclusions.

Selecting the “best” quotes from the rich material in the archive collection is an exercise in futility but I have settled on one from a musician who’s career included being a bandmate and a leader and who shared the stage with both the first and the current generation of jazz musicians. Saxophonist Frank Foster visited Hamilton College as an artist-in-residence after stepping down as leader of the Count Basie Orchestra. He shared these thoughts with me in April of 1998:

FF: I don’t think every person born into this world is a jazz musician, and I don’t agree with — somebody’s got something out that says anybody, everybody can improvise. I don’t go with that.

MR: Oh that’s right, there’s a series, Anybody Can Improvise.

FF: Yeah. I don’t subscribe to that. But it’s an individual thing, it’s not a racial thing. We have such a melting pot here, we’re all into each other’s culture. Okay, I contend that jazz was born in America as a result of the black experience. Now nobody in the world could ever convince me that that isn’t true, okay? But now as I said before, we’ve got this melting pot where we’re all into each other’s culture. We can emulate one another, and we can relate to one another, and talent wasn’t just given to whites or blacks or Latinos or Asiatics or whatever. Every racial ethnic group has talent. And all God’s children got rhythm, some more than others. Look man, I know some black folks who can’t clap on two and four. One-two-three-four. ONE-two-THREE-four. I know some cats who can’t do this [claps]. On the other hand I know some white folks, every time will say [claps] and vice versa you know. So we’ve all got talented people and we’ve all got some no-talented people. Every ethnic and racial group has somebody blowing a horn that should put it down and forget it and be a plumber or a postman or something. But when I hear somebody who’s not black perform on an instrument and that person is good, they are good, regardless of what somebody else black might say — oh he can’t play, she can’t play, that’s it. Man, it hurt me years ago, one of my trumpet players, are you familiar with Lew Soloff? Well this guy just put Lew Soloff in the garbage can, “he can’t play, he never could.” And Lew Soloff is a monster. Lew Soloff can play anything, can play jazz, can play lead trumpet, he can play in a section, you know, he can just do anything that’s necessary for a jazz trumpeter to do. Big band, small group, whatever. So when one of us can do it, give us the credit. When one of them can do it, give them the credit. I don’t feel threatened by anybody. If you can play and you’re white, great, let’s play together. If you can’t play and you’re white —

MR: Go play with someone else.

FF: Yeah. If you can’t play and you’re black, get out of here.

Frank’s comments remind me of my own feelings about playing music when I had the good fortune to play a series of gigs in 1998 with Claude “Fiddler” Williams. If you had attended one of our performances you would have seen then 20-year-old blond bassist Genevieve Rose swinging next to “The Fiddler,” who toured with the Terrance Holder Band in Oklahoma in 1928. Claude and Genevieve were bookended by two middle aged white guys, Syracuse guitarist Mark Copani and yours truly. The dynamic quartet was the perfect blending of musical and cultural elements, and musically one of the most satisfying of my career. Or as Louis Armstrong summed it up, “There are good cats and bad cats of all hues.”

Earlier I alluded to the wit and wisdom of Jon Hendricks. He is an artist worth studying, either in the recordings of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross or with his own recent releases. In our second interview in January of 2000, he talked about his father (a member of the clergy), his hometown, and the big picture:

JH: My father had an aura and an authority about him that people immediately respected. When he died, by that time I had married an Irish girl. When he died I took my wife to the funeral. And when I drove into town the town was buzzing, because it was in Kentucky. And they stopped me a couple of times and says “whatchall doin’ here boy?” And they’re looking at my wife. And I says “I’m Jon Hendricks, I’m here for my father’s funeral, Reverend Hendricks.” And they said “oh Reverend Hendricks, okay.” And I went to the funeral. It was incredible. And at the funeral, half the town was there, and fully half of the people in the church were white people. That’s how respected my father was. And I remember sitting with him one night and there was a local white preacher who used to come over in the evenings and sit and talk to my father. They would be sitting in these rocking chairs on the porch. And one night the preacher says “Reverend I just wanted to discuss something with you.” And my father says “what was that?” He said “well I just can’t help it,” he said, “I just feel that my people are better than your people.” And the rocking kept on, and I’m waiting. And my father said “well Reverend,” he said “do you believe in God?” And so the white preacher said “well you know I do.” And my father said “well then what’s your problem?” And the rocking kept on. And not another word was spoken. And I said whooooh. He got right to the heart of the matter. Because that’s the key. We still talk about a problem. There is no problem. There is no racial problem if you acknowledge God. Because if you acknowledge God then you are looking at another child of God. So what are you talking about? If you’re going to separate from that other child of God because of this mythical term you have here, you are acting in an ungodly way. So when people ask me about race, I say “what time does it start?”

At jazz conventions and festivals we witness the current jazz melting pot. Thousands of musicians, educators, students, promoters, producers and publicists of every race, age and gender converge in the name of jazz. Many of them hope to grab a piece of the small pie that jazz — now officially recognized as an art form — occupies in the music market. It is an uphill battle, but as in any artistic endeavor, originality and skill will earn the spotlight.

Societal shifts often occur imperceptibly. Music frequently serves as a catalyst for social change. The sentiments expressed by these interviewees are now being evidenced in the political arena, where the ability to compete is now unencumbered by ethnicity or gender. Talent wins the race.

Thoughts on Improvisation

The study of jazz has come a long way from the days when saxophonist Don Menza was a student at a State University of New York at Fredonia and related that the practice rooms were adorned with “No Jazz Playing” signs and only half jokingly added that practicing jazz was considered a felony, playing Dixieland was a misdemeanor. We can witness the many and varied approaches to teaching a skill that had previously been passed on for many years through listening and imitation. Jazz theorists have codified and analyzed the art of improvisation to a point where it is possible to put a name and justification on almost every lick and phrase. Yet there has always been a mysterious magic to what great soloists do. Countless artists have created lasting extemporaneous musical statements long before modes, enclosures and symmetric diminished scales were considered part of a jazz musician’s vocabulary. In my role as director of the Hamilton College Jazz Archive I often asked interviewees to try to relate their thought process during improvisation. The following are excerpts taken from those interviews.

Clark Terry is a true statesmen of jazz and has long believed in the value of jazz education. Clark was interviewed in 1995 by his friend the late Joe Williams. Clark responded to a question about the role of music theory in creating an improvised solo. He takes us back to a time before musical terms were labeled and intellectualized.

Clark Terry

Clark Terry: You have to remember that years before people who came into this field, years before they knew anything about theory or harmony, composition, counterpoint, etc., they gave in to their feelings. And they were indulging in, for lack of a better term they called it “get off.” This is long before the term “improvisation” was coined, pertaining to playing music. They used to call it “get off,” which simply meant that the first chorus you played a melody, and thereafter you’d use the melody as a guidewire to simply superimpose extemporaneously a melody around this given melody. So you “get off” the melody. Even then the guys were giving vent to their feelings and expressing themselves and they would use certain things that would help them get from point A to point B. First of all the one thing that we teach our students today regardless of how much theory or harmony or composition will get in their brain, they’ve got to know when to use it. They’ve got to listen for when to use it or how to use it. Heads loaded with something they don’t know how to use it, don’t know where to use it or when to use it. So this is a lesson that we try real hard to get our students to understand. Back in those days, they didn’t know anything as you mention about these technical terms. They had nobody around to teach it. But they were determined to give in to their feelings and express themselves, and “get off.” So what’d they do? They played the Blues as the main vehicle, and they played the standard tunes, and then superimposed melody around it. But on the Blues they figured out a good way to give vent to their feelings is that somebody had to change the melody, even without knowledge, to figure out, there’s the tonic, that’s the one; then you go up the scale, one two three, that’s the third, they’d lower that a half-step, that’s the minor third; you go up one, two, three, four, five, lower that, so you’ve got a tonic, a minor third, a flatted fifth, and they didn’t know then that it constituted a half diminished. All they knew is they called them the “blue notes.” “Man you’ve got your blue notes?” “Yeah, baby I’ve got ‘em down, I’m working on F sharp now, I’m going to have that tomorrow.” …. Now you can’t pick out more beautiful and important notes in playing the Blues than those three. Then you go into your seventh. That’s all. Just that one note, those two notes or those three. Because after a while they begin to hear all of the relative notes that constitute the scale, and then they’re going to hear the four, they’re going to hear the flat five, some people call it the augmented seventh the flat sixth, the major seventh, they’ll hear the whole scale then. But after a while they’re going to be involved with playing those blue notes. The tonic, minor third and the flatted fifth, and they got it.

Bill Charlap

Bill Charlap grew up in a musical environment well after the era that Clark Terry describes. Music is often called the universal language and he finds the use of language an appropriate metaphor in describing his thought process or lack thereof when improvising. He also emphasizes the importance of listening to the sounds and the space that surround you in any given situation.

Bill Charlap: One should not be sitting there doing analytical thought when you’re improvising. It’s like language. You don’t think about the next word you’re going to say, you don’t think about how to spell it or what that word is, you just say it. It’s the same for me at the piano. Same for any musician worth their salt as a jazz musician. You think a phrase and you play that phrase. I don’t think, gee that’s the third, that’s the seventh, that’s a dotted eighth, sixteenth, there’s a whole rest here — all the technical things. … I hearken it to language because in language you have to know how to conjugate, you have to know how to speak properly, how to get your ideas across in many different ways. You might say I walked up the mountain, and you might say I slowly walked up the mountain and then I ran and then I stopped and I took a rest, I had a ham sandwich, and then I got to the top of the mountain. There’s a lot of different ways to get there. And I know many different ways, just as you would in a conversation, but you don’t think about it, you just think of what you want to express. That’s the best analogy I can give for what happens when I’m improvising. Behind it is a great deal of knowledge and experience and the ability to listen. The most important thing is to listen to the players around you, or if you’re playing solo, to listen to the air. Listen to the space, and listen to what the space needs. And if it doesn’t need anything, don’t play anything.

Ken Peplowski

Intuition plays an important role in creating your own sound, according to saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Peplowski. Ken also belongs to a younger generation of jazz artists who had access to the growing body of codified information about how to play jazz. His advice on the subject of jazz theory is basically, “learn it then forget it,” a phrase that most teachers would find difficult to pass on to their students. Ken speaks about dealing with “mistakes” and the opportunities they may present. He compares the best improvising to a mystical experience.

Ken Peplowski: A big part of improvising is forgetting what you know and just using your ear and going on intuition. Because sometimes they get very hung up in the schools on, if you have this chord you have to play this pattern over it, this is what John Coltrane did when he played. But the reason why those musicians were famous and why they were so loved is because they were individuals, with their own style and their own sound. And you have to encourage students to explore on their own also. It’s great to learn all this stuff because any knowledge is good knowledge. The trick is later to forget that. It’s like things you feed into a computer and then out comes something else. Whatever you read or whatever you live, it all comes into your music. So you can’t sit there while you’re playing and think about every single chord and what can I play over this? Because the best moments when you’re improvising, you’re actually — I hate to say this — but it’s almost an out-of-body experience. You can actually listen to yourself playing. You’re just sailing through the changes and saying oh, hey, how did I play that?

Monk Rowe: And how do I get out of something that I didn’t mean to play? Did that ever happen to you?

Ken Peplowski: Yeah. Oh, of course. In fact sometimes you can do that. You play little tricks on yourself. You paint yourself into a corner and then you try to get out of it. But as Dizzy Gillespie said one time, “you’re only a half step away from salvation at any given moment.” Because when you look at a chord and you look at extensions of the chord, you keep adding thirds onto the chord, you have every note in the chromatic scale anyway. So it’s all how it comes out at the end, how you resolve a phrase. So to me the object is not to think about every chord as an individual thing, but the whole thing is a big picture. And your object is to get from point A to point B and tell a story and have a flow to it — a beginning, a middle and an end. And getting back to the schools, that’s what I try to bring to the students, to show them how they can maybe assimilate these bits of knowledge they have, and try to find their own way of negotiating these chord changes, not forgetting the knowledge that they have. It’s important to learn that stuff but sometimes individuality is not stressed enough.

Ken is not the only player to attest to this feeling of being a conduit of the music. In a 1994 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Sonny Rollins stated that “There are some occasions where I can stand back and listen to myself play. I’m just the person standing there, moving my fingers. Certain times it’s an out of body experience.”

Joe Wilder

Trumpeter Joe Wilder is the consummate professional and a musician who has performed at the highest levels of classical and jazz music. He echoes Bill Charlap’s comments about the importance of listening and reacting to your musical surroundings and reminds us that a bit of mental preplanning can go a long way in creating effective improvisations. When asked about his thought process he offered his own connection to language and added an athletic metaphor.

Joe Wilder: These things come to you automatically. I mean usually if I’m going to play something while someone else is playing, I’ll try to think of something that I would like to start, to introduce my solo with, and it’s something that’s relative to the nature of the piece itself, and something that fits kind of harmonically with what’s going on. And I usually try to think about that. And I also think it’s just — improvisation it’s like giving a speech or something like that. You have a subject, and your interpretation of it may differ from mine, but it’s still basically the same subject so that’s a theme that you’re improvising around. And you try to play something that enhances it, and also adds a little different flavor to it. So you don’t come in and play exactly what the person played before you. You may even extract some of what he played as a lead in to what you’re going to do, so you get that dove-tailing, and it’s like passing the baton in a relay race. You do it smoothly. You’re running and you pick up the same speed as that person whom you’re going to accept the baton from or pass it to, and you get that smooth transition. If you listen to a lot of improvisation in different groups, they have that smooth transfer from one to the other. That’s the way it comes off.

Dan Barrett

Most serious students of jazz hope to make at least part of their living by playing it. Those of us who are practicing musicians know that what you would like to play and what you need to play are not always the same thing. Trombonist and arranger Dan Barrett is a frequent guest at jazz events across the country and a recording artist for Arbors Records. When asked about what students should practice in their study of jazz he offered some practical advice:

Dan Barrett: I would advise [students] that in their practicing as they’re playing scales and as they’re playing exercises and trying to improve their technique, I would take about 25 or 30% of that time and use it to study songs. And go out and buy sheet music, not just lead sheets with the chord symbols, but shell out the bucks that it takes and go out and buy Cole Porter songs and go out and buy Gershwin songs. And look at them and look at the piano parts, even if you don’t play piano. And it takes forever, I mean if you’re not a piano player, but it’s worth the effort to sit at a keyboard and hear how those inner voices move. And if the student spent a little bit of his practice time, doing that, analyzing these songs by these great songwriters he’d learn how to construct a line. Because after all these are great composers. And what we’re trying to do in jazz ostensibly is to compose, even though we’re composing spontaneously. And I think what better way to learn to compose then examining music by a great composer. So not only would you profit from that knowledge that you can gain by analyzing that music, but also you’ll learn these great songs. Once student said “well this is all well and good, but when are we going to get into the Lydian modes and all of that?” And I say, “somebody else can teach you that better than I can,” and I said “I think any knowledge is good.” And I said “it’d probably benefit you greatly to know about that. But I’ll tell you something. Playing in clubs, I’ve received five dollars here and there to play ‘Body and Soul’ and I’ve received ten dollar tips to play ‘Stardust,’ but I don’t think I’ve ever made a dime to play a Dorian mode or a Lydian mode. So it’s great to know about that stuff, but I think you’d be better off and stand a much greater chance to make a living in a fairly competitive business if you learn these songs and learn them correctly, so you make people happy.

Dan reminds us of the value of studying great and memorable melodies. If we recognize that one way to look at improvising is “composing spontaneously” as Dan states, or “superimposing a new melody over the original” as Clark Terry states, then we might well ask what makes for a good melody.

Slide Hampton

Trombonist and arranger Slide Hampton offers his opinions on the subject of a good melody.

Monk Rowe: What to you makes a good melody?

Slide Hampton: Well like anything else, [it’s] the construction of a melody. The way that it resolves naturally from one note to the other. And of courses you know you have a lot of practice in that all of the great people that came before you that wrote melodies. There’s so many great melodies that started I don’t know how long ago, a thousand years ago even maybe. But to have a melody that a person can listen to. I thought about that recently — a melody that a person can listen to that they never heard before but they still can appreciate it and enjoy it. The beauty of it. Of course you can always enjoy a melody that you know, if it’s something that you like. But to be able to play a melody or to write a melody or compose a melody that people can listen to and say yeah I like that, although I haven’t heard it before. I think that’s one of the things that — the standards that I try to look for in playing or writing a melody.

Conveying the idea that an improvisation can be melodic and enjoyable to listen to may be the most important lesson a teacher can impart.

Bill Watrous

Thoughts from one last interviewee here include two brief statements from trombonist extraordinaire, Bill Watrous. A number of years ago I had the great fortune to be able assemble an all star group to record “Jazz Life” which contains some of my own compositions, and Bill Watrous and trumpeter Wendell Brunious are on the recording. In one instance, on a tune they had never seen, they were able to pull off a seamless transition between solos that reminded me of Joe Wilder’s description of that moment soloists face. The tune is entitled, “Beyond Category” and was written for Clark Terry. There are eight bars from Wendell followed by another eight from Bill.

In addressing my question about improvisation, Bill referred to that 16-bar moment in an interview which was conducted in March of 1999, on the day after that session.

Monk Rowe: Is it possible for you to describe to a younger player what you think about when you improvise? Is it the chords that are behind you? Are you thinking about what you played six measures ago and where you re going with it? Is it possible to put that into words?

Bill Watrous: I’m thinking ahead frankly. And what I’m basically doing is I’m thinking counterpoint as I’m going. And I’m listening to the textures that the rhythm section is putting out. I’m listening very carefully to the bass and drums and the piano and trying to get a mattress to bounce on so to speak. And if everything is planned, understandable, that’s coming down, then it’s not difficult, no problem at all to just close my eyes and go and play. It’s the same with Wendell. Both of us played on one of those tunes that you had the other day, when it was not clear who was going to play, and the changes weren’t necessarily—

Monk Rowe: I was blown away by that.

Bill Watrous: Both of us just closed our eyes and just went with it. See if you blunder ahead all the time, you’ll never get anything. But if you play a little bit and then stop for a second and listen to where it’s going, and go there, there’s no problem. That’s the secret in that stuff. But people that are trying to have this constant ongoing flow, you can’t have an ongoing flow if you don’t know where the heck you’re going.

Monk Rowe: To go there, as you say, you need to have spent some years developing your ear.

Bill Watrous: Oh yeah.

Monk Rowe: What do you suggest to players to do that?

Bill Watrous: I would suggest this: I would suggest that they take those Abersold CD’s and play along and put them on, even if they don’t know the tune, and just try and feel their way through there, not getting into a panic but just going where they suggest that you go. And if you listen, if you really honestly listen, and have the ability to listen, of course that has to be developed too, ear training is one major part of this thing, if you can teach them to hear a tone and produce it on their instrument, and then hear a series of tones and do that. And if you equate what you hear with what’s coming out of your instrument, it makes it a lot easier. It makes it a much simpler job than if you’re just shooting in the dark. You have to close your eyes. I tell a lot of young players, don’t have your nose dripping on the paper man, listen to what this thing is doing, close your eyes and get into the capsule and go there. Just let your ear and your feelings sort of take you someplace. It’s worth trying. And I always get people to try to do that.

I have heard a number of artists suggest that students get their noses out of the music but that’s the first time someone has said they should stop dripping on it.

Lastly, Bill addressed the issue of “playing outside” or “playing free,” phrases that I personally feel are too frequently used to justify unfortunate note choices. I’m reminded of Dizzy Gillespie’s description of an unwanted tenor player nicknamed “The Demon,” who dominated jam sessions at Minton’s. Dizzy described him as “the first freedom player — free of harmony, free of rhythm, free of everything.” Bill was addressing a question about the times when he himself might go outside “it” — in Bill’s case “it” meaning the song and its chord progression.

Monk Rowe: Do you feel compelled to bring it back in?

Bill Watrous: I keep it in sight. While I’m doing it I keep it in sight all the time. Because I feel that if you don’t do that then you’re just B.S.ing everybody. I really believe that. I think that if you’re going to play outside, you better damn well know where the inside is while you’re doing it and keep it in mind and have at least a smattering of an idea as to where you’re coming from. If you’re going somewhere, you better have roots. You’ve got to have them. I think you really do. Yet there’s a lot of players that absolutely don’t care. They have no roots, I mean there’s no anchor anywhere, and they don’t want one. You’ve heard them, you’ve heard these type of players that just ramble on and they hope for a series of happy accidents. And sometimes you get them.

He obviously feels that a sometimes series of happy accidents does not cut it.

I think many non-musicians or even non-improvising musicians have the impression that after they state the melody jazz performers just proceed to play anything they want. But only in what is called “free jazz” is that even close to the truth. Improvising — making it up as you go along — in the context of most jazz performances is accomplished within a fairly structured framework. The improviser first needs to be aware of the time, the beat and the rhythm, or even the most astute note choices will sound off. Even if an improviser chooses to create phrases that seem to conflict with the steady beat — to “play against the time” — they are acknowledging where the time is. Secondly, the soloist is trying to choose from a pallet of notes that match the chords. Depending on the number of chords per measure and the tempo of the song, this can be a daunting task (think Bebop!). Again, the improviser may choose to play “outside the chord” but in doing so acknowledges what is inside. As Bill Watrous said in the last excerpt, “if you want to go outside, you better know what’s inside.”

Also, the soloist is trying to “get off” the melody but has to be aware that the melody was written within a defined and repeated structure — typically a 32-bar AABA form or a 12- or 16-bar Blues. Losing sight of this may find you committing a classic faux pas, ending your solo in the middle of the form thus garnering a mystified look from the bandmates, who know where they are in the structure.

For me, improvising is a type of problem solving (not a particularly romantic description I admit). But if the “problem” of creating something new within the aforementioned parameters is solved melodically and memorably, the romance will come along with it.

My favorite improvisers have had this rare ability to spontaneously create mini-melodies, licks or phrases that somehow sound just right for the moment. There really is no explaining it, for that is what makes it magical. A well known jazz method declares “Anyone Can Improvise.” Maybe. And perhaps anyone can sculpt a marble statue, compose a sonnet or choreograph a pas de deux. But what elevates the very few into that rare place that makes us pay repeated attention? What inspires us to imitate their innovation? If someone figures out what exactly that is and codifies it, I would rather not know. I would rather keep the magic unexplainable.