Amiri Baraka
Yusef Lateef
Blues People @ Fifty :
Composer Steps
“For Wha?”
Off At 93
Winter 2013/Spring 2014
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Javon Jackson, Eddie Henderson, Steve Turre, Javon Jackson, Eddie Henderson, Steve Turre, Buster Williams, LewisBuster Nash, Williams Bobby Watson and George Cables Bobby Watson and George Cables Javon Jackson, Eddie Henderson, Steve Turre, Buster Williams, Lewis Nash, Javon Jackson, Eddie Bobby Henderson, Steve Lewismore! Nash, and and much Watson and Turre, GeorgeBuster Cables Williams, Bobby Watson and George Cables and much more! www.jazzinthevalleyny.org www.jazzinthevalleyny.org and much more! facebook - JAZZINTHEVALLEYtwitter - JAZZVALLEYNY twitter - J www.jazzinthevalleyny.org facebook - JAZZINTHEVALLEY
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African American Classical Music
Winter/Spring 2014 Volume 6 Number 7
Publisher / Editor & Chief Jo Ann Cheatham -Senior EditorFikisha Cumbo
Features
-EditorAgneta Ballesteros -Contributing WritersAmiri Baraka Herb Boyd Jo Ann Cheatham Ed Dessisso Willard Jenkins Eugene Holley, Jr.
Yusef Lateef Steps Off At 93 ........... 5 The Invisible Hand Of Jazz George Russell ......... 8
-Poetry-
That Brooklyn Sound Jeff King ...... 12
Gha’il Rhodes Benjamin
-GraphicsDwight Brewster
Columns
-MarketingDanyelle Ballesteros -ConsultantsEunice Lewis Broome Jim Harrison Greer Smith Ed Stoute Randy Weston
Amiri Baraka
Obituary Amiri Baraka .....19
Page ........... 16
Bennie Powell Ultra Man ......22
“Blues People at Fifty: For What?”
Ella Fitzgerald Steps On Stage ...... 24 Pure Jazz is published quarterly with editorial and advertising headquarters in Brooklyn, NY. Tel/ 718.636.9671. All rights reserved. The authors and editors have taken care to ensure that all information in this issue is accurate. Nevertheless, the publisher disclaims any liability loss or damages incurred as a consequence directly or indirectly of the use and application of any contents.
Space is the Place ...... 26 Back page cover; photographed by Charles Daniel Dawson for Let Loose On The World Celebrating Amiri Baraka. If you would like to get a copy please contact tedlwioson@att.net.
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With The Music In Mind Publisher’s Statement
Dear Supporters, There are many ways to express yourself when someone makes their transition, it’s more regrettable when that person has become a part of your family. So it is with the quintessential Amiri Baraka has made his transition we dedicate this issue to him and his political activism. When I approached him about writing an article for us we did not have a topic in mind. It was the fiftieth anniversary of his book BLUES PEOPLE, so Pure Jazz Magazine decided to ask him what prompted the book in the first place and if the work is still relevant today? You will see here. Yusef Lateef -- Ninety-three years is a vast amount of time to live, for you get the chance to have many lives and to play so much music. It has been written that he was playing world music before the term world music was coined. As writer Herb Boyd stated, “Lateef chose to define his music as autophysiopsychic,” that is, “music from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self.” Yusef Lateef, playing his music all of his life is something we examine. George Russell -- A jazz pianist whose career spanned the “Big Apple” and the “Bang Of Bebop”, which incorporated the idiom of Afro-Cuban drums and was included in “The Birth of Cool”. He created “Cubano Be, Cubano Bop”, for the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, and was part of that band’s pioneering experiments in fusing bebop with Cuban jazz elements. Russell is a man of our times. Ella Fitzgerald --the first lady of jazz and scat singing-- hit the stage. We find out what happened on that first night; how nervous she was and what kept her going. It was 1934 when Ella took a dare from two girls and signed up to be a dancer for the evening, but changed to singing that night at The Apollo. The rest is our beloved history of Fitzgerald. Jeff King and his band have come together to create what has now become known as “That Brooklyn Sound”. Pulling the musicians together and keeping the sound going is a great story. What a story of a bandleader that has to not only play but also keep the members and the music they create before the public. Readers ask the Pure Jazz Magazine about different articles from our past issues. This issue we bring you Benny Powell, master musician and leader who was know for his ability as a trombonist. The last page is the cover of one of Amiri Baraka’s books, LET LOOSE ON THE WORLD, celebrating Amiri Barak at 75. You may order a copy by contacting tedlwilson@att.net. It is a winner that needs to be read. Enjoy,
Jo Ann Cheatham Publisher
EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT! For the past 23 years!
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Legendary Musician and Composer Steps Off at 93 At the close of his autobiography, Yusef A. Lateef, the renowned musician, composer, and Grammy Award-winning recording artist wrote, “My life has been a series of ‘warm receptions,’ and after a while, it becomes difficult to separate them, to determine which was most rewarding and heartwarming.” Lateef ’s thousands of admirers will ponder now about which of his concerts and recordings were most rewarding for them in his highly productive life. Lateef, 93 died Monday morning at his home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Lateef, a versatile artist of global influence, made his transition peacefully, according to his wife, Ayesha Lateef. “My dear husband was himself an extension of warmth and love towards others,” his wife said. “He saw every human being with the utmost value and respect. He approached all of us as he did his music, with enthusiasm, imagination and longevity.” While Lateef chose to define his music as autophysiopsychic, that is, “music from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self,” his critics and fans heard him as the embodiment of jazz and the blues, and that expressive quality, however termed, placed him among the finest performers and composers of his generation. Born William Emmanuel Huddleston on Oct. 9, 1920 in Chattanooga, Tenn., he moved with his family to Detroit in 1925, settling in the heart of the city’s storied Paradise Valley. It was about this time that his father—for an unknown reason—changed their surname to Evans.
Yusef Lateef
Paradise Valley was basically the entertainment enclave of “Black Bottom,” where the city’s black population was centered, and where William Evans (he changed his name to Yusef Lateef in 1948 and became a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and for the rest of his life he remained a devout Ahmadi Muslim fulfilling requirePure Jazz Magazine - Page 5
ments including the lesser and greater pilgrimage to Mecca) was immersed in a vibrant culture where a profusion of music was part of the daily routine. At Miller High School, he fell under the tutelage of John Cabrera and joined such illustrious future jazz immortals as Milt Jackson. But it was a local saxophonist, Lorenzo Lawson, who most impressed and influenced him to set aside the oboe and drums and focus on the tenor saxophone. Soon, he was so proficient that he had the first chair in Matthew Rucker’s Band, and given the band’s prominence, Lateef ’s reputation reached across the city and all the way to Chicago where he was now a member of Lucky Millinder’s big band. In 1948, along with his adoption of Islam, he joined the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, which included an array of world-class musicians such as James Moody, J.J. Johnson, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, and the amazing Cuban conga drummer Chano Pozo.
to relinquish his job at Chrysler. With Hugh Lawson (and sometimes Terry Pollard) on piano; Curtis Fuller on trombone; Ernie Farrow on bass; and Louis Hayes on drums; for two years the band worked six nights a week and became one of the most popular groups in the city. So popular, in fact, that jazz writers began to spread the word. Ozzie Cadena, a producer at Savoy Records, extended them a contract and their first album was “Jazz Mood.” A succession of albums would follow, alternately between Savoy and the Prestige labels, and it was during this phase that Lateef was able to introduce an assortment of unusual instruments normally heard in various ethnic cultures. From a veritable academy of musicians who were in and out of his ensemble during the nights at Klein’s, Lateef sharpened his musical knowledge, which was bolstered even further by the classes he took at Wayne State University. But by 1959, he was ready for a new scene. “I had done about all I could in the realm of music in Detroit,” he wrote. “There was a scarcity of clubs during this period and to make ends meet I took a parttime job unloading banana trucks. Wheth-
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By 1951, Lateef was back in Detroit with his first wife Sadie, a daughter Iqbal and a son Rasheed. In no time at all he was back in the swing of things performing with a number of groups and at several of the top clubs in town. Among the stellar leaders who requested his presence was guitarist Kenny Burrell. When bassist Alvin Jackson, Milt’s brother, assembled a quartet, Lateef was featured on tenor saxophone and flute, which he had begun studying at the Larry Teal School of Music. The group, including pianist Barry Harris and trombonist Kiane Zawadi (Bernard McKinney) was the house band at the Blue Bird Inn, a legendary jazz spot on Detroit’s Westside. Lateef was fronting his own ensemble by 1954 and began a five-year stint at Klein’s Show Bar. Now with a steady gig he had
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Yusef Lateff Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 6
er you were a writer, painter, or a musician, it wasn’t a good time to be in the city.” The Big Apple was the only option for him and by the early sixties Lateef was a regular at jam sessions, recordings, and concert dates with such notables as John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus, percussionist Babatunde Olatunji, and numerous homeboys such as Lonnie Hillyer, Donald Byrd, and Sonny Red. But Lateef ’s stature grew exponentially during his tenure with Cannonball Adderley’s band, and it provided him with additional experience to form his own ensemble by 1965. Holding a band together while attending the Manhattan School of Music was challenging, but Lateef was equal to the task, earning his master’s degree and continuing to record at a phenomenal pace. Under contract at Atlantic Records where producer Joel Dorn gave Lateef the latitude he needed to express the full extent of his artistry. His “Gentle Giant,” recorded in 1971 was among his most memorable dates and featured bassist Bob Cunningham, drummer Tootie Heath, and pianist Kenny Barron.
And stepping Dr. Lateef did, thanks to Eternal Wind and the tireless Rudolph. Even so, there was time for teaching and composing, to say nothing of his other artistic ventures into writing and painting, and running his record and publishing company, FANA Music. His beloved wife Tahira passed in 2009, Dr. Lateef later remarried Ayesha, and his final days were as fruitful and productive as ever, and he leaves a remarkable legacy of cultural achievements. “I daily and nightly thank Allah for continuing to bless me and to allow me to bring love, peace and joy to the world,” he wrote. And that love, peace and joy resonates with all the conviction his formidable talent could command, and all we have to do is to listen to his music.
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Dr. Lateef is survived by wife Ayesha, his son also named Yusef Lateef, his granddaughter Iqbal, and great grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are in the planning stages.
Nothing was more eventful for him in the early seventies than his meeting and marriage to Tahira at Chicago State University. Winning her hand and defending his dissertation were momentous occasions and the birth of his son, Yusef in 1975, completed a trifecta of jubilation. From 1975 to 1980, Dr. Lateef studied in Africa, mainly in Nigeria where he undertook the mastery of the Fulani flute. In addition to his research and teaching obligations, he was commissioned by the government to compose a symphony and to write a book Printed with permission from the blog of based on his research. Seeking new musi- Playthell Benjamin , written by Herb Boyd. cal spheres after Africa, he embarked on a series of concert dates with Eternal Wind, an advanced group of younger musicians that included Charles Moore, Frederico RaPure Jazz Historic Moment mos, Ralph “Buzzy” Jones, and Adam Rudolph. “Yusef was so open and accessible,” Rudolph recalled during a recent interview. “There was always this love, peace and freedom about him. And you could feel all of this through his music, which defined him in the same as Picasso’s art or Miles Davis’s music defined them. We’re evolutionists, he would tell us and we have to keep on The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, Est. 1910 stepping.”
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The Invisible Hand of Jazz
By Eugene Holley, Jr.
“If America has a future, Jazz has a future. The two are inseparable.” George Russell, From The Subject is Jazz 1957
In his masterpiece, The Wealth of Nations, economist Adam Smith wrote about an “invisible hand:” an unseen force that mysteriously guided capitalism to its position as the dominant economic force of the world. There are also many invisible hands in jazz; those, to use James Weldon Johnson’s elegant phrase, “unknown bards,” who, in relative or complete anonymity, shaped the face of jazz to come. There’s the Legendary Hassan, the Philadelphia pianist whose powerful pianism paved the way for McCoy Tyner; William “Boysie” Lowery, the Wi l m i ng ton , Delaware educator who taught generations of local musicians – from Clifford Brown to Matthew Shipp – and there’s Clyde Kerr, the trumpeter/ educator from the famed New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, who imparted his musical wisdom to Wynton, Branford and Jason Marsalis, Christian Scott, Terence Blanchard, and many other Crescent City musicians. But as befitting of a comprehensive appraisal of those aforementioned artists are, there is one individual who stands out; a man who played with a brass band aboard a ship sailing on the Mighty Mississippi River; who was in New York during Big Apple Bang of bebop and helped merge that new idiom with the ancestral anthems of the Afro-Cuban drum; who was present at The Birth of Cool, and whose iconoclastic music theory still remains relevant today. That man was pianist/composer/arranger/ author/educator George Russell. Born in 1923, Russell would have been ninety this year. he still is not a household name in the jazz world. And if he is known at all, most people don’t know all of his syncopated science of the comprehensive abstract truths. Self-effacing and shy in public, Russell did not exhibit the kind of jazz “swag”
we would see in stars like Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, or Freddie Hubbard. And, he rarely had a working band. One is left to wonder if Russell would have been better known had he succumbed to the alcoholic and pharmaceutical pitfalls of the jazz life. The ambiguity of George Russell’s artistry mirrors his own ambiguous origins. Born out-of-wedlock to a mixed-race couple, Russell was adopted and raised by a black family in Cincinnati. His light, café-au-lait com-
George Russell plexion positioned him in that lost boundary where the racial pigment of our imagination hovers between black and white. His first instrument was the drums, and one of his influential gigs was with the New Orleans bandleader Fate Marable’s band playing second line music on a steamboat ship while he was in high school. He went to the historically black Wilberforce University on a scholarship, where he played in the college band, but left school for the Army in 1941, but discovered that he had tuberculosis, was sent to a sanitarium, but was released prematurely. Russell was hired by saxophonist/trumpeter/ composer/arranger Benny Carter, where he played drums in his big band. When Carter fired Russell to make way for Max Roach, he set the stage for jazz history to be changed. “I got to hear Max Roach. He was too much,” Russell told Steven Cerra on the website Jazz
Profiles. “Max had it all on drums. I decided that writing was my field.” But soon, after his departure from Carter’s big band, Russell was sent to a sanitarium to deal with tuberculosis again, this time, for fifteen months. It was there that Russell would make his mark on the epidermis of jazz immortality. A random conversation with Miles Davis in 1944 planted the seed: the trumpeter asked Russell to help him understand how chords relate to each other. “Miles said that he wanted to learn all the changes and I reasoned that he might try to find the closest scale for every chord,” Russell said in Gary Giddins’ Visions of Jazz: The First Century. While recuperating, Russell pondered long and hard about Davis’ question. He theorized that the C Lydian scale, with an F# instead of an F natural in the middle of the scale – could be heard with equal sonic unity in every culture. Russell believed that utilizing fewer chord progressions and focusing on the scales or modes the chord, would afford an improviser to play more melodically. Russell worked out his theory in 1953 he self-published The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, Volume One: The Art and Science of Tonal Gravity. Though academics, laymen, musicians and musicologists still debate the ultimate truth of Russell’s findings, there can be no doubt that Russell’s theory made him the father of what is now called modal jazz. Miles Davis canonical LP, Kind of Blueremains the eternal standard-bearer of the genre, followed by John Coltrane’sGiant Steps and Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage. “The foundation of the concept is that the Lydian scale is the true scientific scale, in the sense that it gives birth to the basic unit of tonal gravity, which is the interval of the fifth, ”Russell said on his NEA website. Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 9
“That’s how music behaves. There’s nothing there because I like it. I don’t speak as its author; I speak as a conduit. It was already there, but I do think that I was on its wavelength to pick it up.” It was also during that period in the forties and fifties that Russell influenced a myriad of musical inventions and dimensions. In 1947 at Carnegie Hall, Russell, Dizzy Gillespie, and Afro-Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo co-wrote and performed “Cubano Be -Cubano-Bop,” a bravura, big band, tour-deforce that merged the modal Lydian Concept with intricate bebop lines and fiery, Santeria-syncopated conga drumming, and is one of the earliest masterpieces of the Latin jazz idiom. “It was the most successful collaboration I ever seen with three people,” Gillespie said in Alyn Shipton’s Groovin’ High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie. “Because I could see what I wrote and I could see what George wrote and I could see the contribution of Chano Pozo. George Russell came back and spread out what I had done and it was beautiful.” Two years later, Russell wrote “A Bird in Igor’s Yard,” for clarinetist Buddy De Franco; Russell’s homage to Igor Stravinsky, which melded modal jazz with classical influences including the avant-garde composer Stefan Wolpe, predating the so-called Third Stream movement that characterized the work of Gunther Schuller, John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Russell’s first album as a leader, The Jazz Workshop was released in 1956, with trumpeter Art Farmer, bassist Milt Hinton, guitarist Barry Galbraith, drummer Paul Motian, alto saxophonist Hal McCusick and a then little-known pianist named Bill Evans. The importance of the recording cannot be overstated: it highlighted Russell’s Lydian Concept on every track, especially on “Concerto for Billy the Kid,” a showcase for Evans, who before he created his historic trio with Motian and bassist Scott LaFaro, lets his Bud Powell-pranced pianism fly on this Latinized 4/4 workout. What Russell exhibited on The Jazz Workshop was a style of writing that retained what Duke Ellington termed “the feeling of jazz;” where a composition is written such a way that its sounds improvised. In 1957 Russell took his Concept to a higher level with his arrangement of a southern playground rhyme, “All About Rosie,” which was recorded on the LP, Modern Jazz Con-
cert with Gunther Schuller (reissued as The Birth Of The Third Stream in 1996), with Evans featured again as the feature soloist, who goes into post-bop hyper-drive, on the track’s swing-at-the-speed-of-sound tempo. Two years later, Russell released New York, NY, a suite that included Jon Hendricks’ sly vocalese, and “Manhattan-Rico,” an extremely swinging, big band, Afro-Cubop number that sounds as fresh today as it did six decades ago. Russell’s recorded output as a leader was spare. Two of his most critically-acclaimed releases during that decade include Jazz in the Space Age (1960), an echoplexed LP that featured both Bill Evans and Paul Bley on piano and served as a preview for forthcoming fusion work of Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock in the seventies, and Ezz-thetics(1961), with saxophonist Eric Dolphy, bassist Steve Swallow, trombonist David Baker, trumpeter Don Ellis and drummer Joe Hunt, which included surreal, yet soulful readings of Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight” and the Miles Davis/Bill Evans gem, “Nardis.” The Outer View (1962) debuted vocalist Sheila Jordan (who Russell later married) on his evocative, eleven minute rendition of “You Are My Sunshine.” Thwarted by the incredible challenges of trying to have a jazz career in the sixties, Russell left the scene for Scandinavia in 1963, where he taught at the University of Sweden, before coming back to the states at the invitation of Gunther Schuller, who hired him to teach at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1969. Back home, Russell recorded some interesting albums that – while not on the same groundbreaking level of his LPS from the fifties and sixties still exhibited flashes of brilliance. Russell reunited with Bill Evans on the Columbia LP, Living Time in 1972, to mixed reviews. In 1983, he released The African Game on the Blue Note label: an ambitious nine-movement opus that, as he described to Robert Palmer ofThe New York Times, “portrays the evolution of life on earth from the first unicellular organisms to the development and growth of human consciousness.” The piece was also a showcase for Russell’s new pan-tonal Vertical Form Theory; a system of African-inspired polyrhythmic organization. “In an African drum choir, one drummer is the rhythmic gravity,” Russell told Robert Palmer, “while the others gradually layer on sophisticated rhythms on top of this tonal center … Its vertical energy,
getting higher and higher, compounding.” He also recorded The London Concert in 1988 on the same label, with included an incredible, funky rendition of Miles Davis’ “So What,” with a melodic line based on the trumpeter’s famous solo from his Kind of Bluerecording. George Russell lived to receive his longoverdue recognition, when he was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant, and was recognized as an NEA Jazz Master before he died in 2009. And whatever jazz will evolve into during the twenty first century, it will surely have his immortal imprint on any sonic design the music manifests. As he told Gilbert Seldes on the TV1957 TV show, The Subject is Jazz, “[Jazz will be] adventurous, tonally: that is it will be more chromatic; it will be freer in form … more ambitious.” Selected Discography Jazz Workshop, RCA Victor, 1956 Modern Jazz ConcertThe Birth of the Third Stream, Sony Legacy 1957 (Reissued 1996) New York, NY, Impulse!, 1958 Jazz in the Space Age, Decca 1961 Ezz-Thetics, Original Jazz Classics, 1961 The African Game, Blue Note, 1983 The London Concert, Blue Note, 1988
George Russell Eugene Holley, Jr. is a contributor to Publishers Weekly, Down Beat, Newmusicbox. org and NPR: A Blog Supreme.
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Jeff King
“That Brooklyn Sound”
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As the ancestors say, “when in doubt tell the truth.” There are many stories a publisher wants to tell. For me it has been the Jeff King Story. I liked his music as soon as I heard it; so I decided to assign the story to a writer.
those things and more into music. My first or it’s what other people play.” instrument was the tenor saxophone… always that. I What kind of music do you play? worked, saved the money and “Jazz” got the equipment. It cost Do you play anything other than jazz? about $400.” After college “No I’ve always known the music as jazz.” he decided to As we continue talking about The Jeff King The first person did go on the road Band the room is getting set up for the the story, then lost with Laura night’s performance and recording. People it; couldn’t find the Nyro with a are running around but stop and say to interview. The next group formed King, “Nice horn, sounds beautiful. Love Jeff King Band writer I asked to do by Colum- your tones.” it couldn’t keep up with bia Records which the pace. So I decided that since I felt the toured Australia, England and the United What’s happening here is the crowd is in story had to be told I would write it myself. States. He recalls, “They would come by on the sound. It is this sound that makes your house in limousines, pick you up and people hear him. He remembers going to a After many attempts, Pure Jazz Magazine take you on to the airport. There was a lot place called ‘The Hole’, a place in Brooklyn finally got a chance to sit down with Jeff of fire, during those days.” where musicians got together to play and King as he began to record his sophomore talk about the music. He says, “You had to CD-- a live recording session at Brooklyn’s Twenty-five years of fire know where it was, in a little place in the remarkable FOR MY SWEET, an excitdowntown shopping area of Brooklyn. It ing jazz venue located on Fulton Street in “We practiced to be good enough to go on was where musicians practiced jazz Brooklyn, New York. We began by discuss- stage with the giants we were playing with improvisation. Musicians like Kiane Zaing what brought him to the world of jazz. while on the road. Sometimes the group wadi, Steve Coleman, Roland Alexander played in the luggage department of the and others. train from 8AM to 8PM, dying to be on Brooklyn Origins stage too with the masters like the bassist There were all kinds of music even free bop. Wes Anderson, drummer and the Jeff King is a true Brooklynite, born here, Richard Davis.” father of Wes “Warm Daddy” Anderson as was his grandfather and his father. He of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Is the same fire around today? was born in Kings County Hospital, which frequented.” These are the people that he calls “The Valley Of The Kings” his last Jeff learned from “Yeah it’s still name is King. He was raised in Crown the masters. Jeff here now-Heights. His three uncles would visit his Jeff King created the music house often and talk to him and his broth- even more so that has come er on how to be men and how men should because now to be known as interact with other men. It was a good I want to play ‘The Brooklyn time. There were three King children, his with energy, I Sound.’ He brother, a percussionist, lives in the state of want to make continues, Washington and his sister who is an edu- it precise and “Since then cator academician. He attended Nazareth correct.” that location High School, went on to Pratt Institute for has become a does fine arts for two years He took time out to What bakery, but if become a part of the Last Poets when one precise mean? you talk to the of them formed a group called “Groit.” It owners they was a strong group that performed poetry “I want to will tell you that and music and toured around the country. play what I musicians still When Jeff returned home for good he de- hear. I feel it come by trying correctly. ” cided to go to Queens College where he to find ‘The studied as a musician with Frank Foster Hole’.” Where do you and earned his degree. He says, “I guess I was 13 or 14 listening to John Coltrane hear this stuff? The feeling is so on my record player. I don’t know how I much a part of got into painting; it has always been there. “I don’t know. Jeff king that he As I was painting I thought that ‘the music S o m e t i m e s doesn’t seem to will help me with this process’. Little did you hear it or catch that the I know that it would take me away from you dream it Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 13
Music Is My Life Politics My Mistress DVD www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=8097344
Jeff King people are actually feeling the sound of his music. But what is special about King’s music is that it is all about what he hears and sees. He brings it out in the music. This is his music--- how it makes him feel, how it makes the band feel. How it makes the audience feel? King talks “about making the music as clear as possible, concentrating more on tones and pretty sounds. By pretty, I mean more pleasurable so when they hear a tone they know that’s Jeff King. I can tell if it’s Gary Bartz on the first note, Joe Lavano or Phil Woods when I hear a tenor saxophone solo.” How do you select band members? “I’ve always been part of a band. The first one, the name escapes me; but the second one was ‘Brotherhood of Sound’ with Ahmed Abdullah and Henry Threadgill. I started a band about 15 years ago because I wanted to play the way I wanted to play; I wanted to explore how I compose and how I arrange, even though I had the opportunity with other bands it’s something that drew me. It’s demanding and there are a lot of things going on that people don’t see, it’s not just about writing the music or composing the music: It’s coordinating the music to see if the band has enough work, and keeping the same people; it’s seeing if I had the personnel I wanted to play the songs and keep it suitable for the band. The band
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has been in different forms; I perform with my band and a nonette when necessary.” “We did a residency at Solomon’s Porch, a place located in the heart of Bedford Stuyvesant. We played there for four or five years documenting the kind of music we like to play. We were exploring the music and how we were sending it out. We included Curtis Fowlkes, George Gray, Thaddeus Expose and Abdus Sabor.” There is no singing on your CD…. “Why? There is no reason for it, neither for nor against it. It’s not what I do.” How do you select your songs?
steps just to keep playing the music.” Who’s with you tonight? “Craig Harris, trombone we’ve been together twenty years; Duane Eubanks trumpet I like the way he plays; Yoichi Uzeki a great piano player who plays with Ornett Coleman; Steve Kroon, percussionist. If I don’t know it he knows it, if I need it, he got it; Bryce Sebastian, bass delightful tones; the impeccable George Gray, drums and of course Jeff King on tenor saxophone. These masters have impeccable reputations as contemporary jazz giants. The band members are chosen for their uniqueness, versatility and their ability to swing.” The new CD release is out. It’s called “For Those Who Care”.
“If I like it... if I like it, then we will play it and I hope the audience will like it too. You have different thoughts for different King says, “Watch out!” days; you may like something and not get around to it, or you may like something and not get to it right away. Tonight we are going to play a song by Donald Byrd called “Eldorado”; I also like his “Fancy Free”, which I have loved for over thirty years. There’s another one that the audience likes, Michael Brecker who did it with a group called Afro Bop calls it “El Nino”. We may try this; the band hasn’t played it all the way together. The rhythm sections have but I haven’t arranged the horns Jeff King Band @ “For My Sweet” yet.” “Am I a budding genius? Am I going to change the music world? Here’s what I say about the new jazz standards: McCoy Turner created ‘Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit,” that tune was written for jazz. Bill Lee does great jazz things, that haven’t been explored by other jazz musicians. It’s not my concept. “Jazz musicians compose such great music but people don’t hear it because people don’t play it. The system makes the artists famous cause they are great musicians.” What advice do you give people who contemplate coming out to play? “Don’t do it if you don’t love it, I’ve know some musicians who have slept on door
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The Girls in the Band 1920’s and 30’s www.keithloftis.com Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 15
“Blues People at Fifty: For What?” I’ve told this story many many times at many many places! But it always sounds revelatory when I hear it coming out of my mouth. I was a self styled hip student at Howard University in the 1950›s. Me and AB Spellman had heard Bird and Diz (a minute ago) and had even got to Davd Brubeck›s Jazz at Oberlin, which we knew made us super hip, and then thanks to the Blues God (Larry Neal›s invention) our English teacher intervened! Who was that? The great poet, Sterling Brown, who taught at Howard University or over 40 years! And we didn’t even know him. Sterling Brown , part of the fabled “Harlem Renaissance: who taught students like Stokely, Toni Morrison (as Chloe Wofford), Lucille Clifton, AB Spellman, and I and a great many more sat in his class. It was Brown who taught us Shakespere with this sharp interpretation, “S’s work describes the destruction of feudalism and raises the questions the capitalist world has had to deal with ever since.” He was a very great teacher and his teaching still resonates with me and probably to most of the bunch he got through to. For instance, AB Spellman and I were classmates at Howard, and we had heard Bird and Diz and Monk, so you couldn’t tell us anything about the music. We was so hip we had got to Dave Brubeck & Jazz at Oberlin, until the intervention of “The Blues God” (A Larry Neal invention), in the person of Prof Brown, who wanted to know why we thought we were so ultra-hip. “come over to my house’ I want to show you some things” Of course we went, and what he showed us , first, was a whole room with LP’s and the brand new 45”s , laid out by Genre, Performer, Chronologically organized. Of course, it was the Blues. From way back to right now! He pointed to them, as we got as close as we could. He said, “THAT’S YOUR HISTORY”! That’s your history! And it took me a decade to really understand, what he meant. So after getting kicked out of College for preferring to read Garcia Lorca’s Gypsy Ballads rather than Organic Chemistry, then joining the air force because I was too ashamed to tell my parents and so was sent to Puerto Rico as a weatherman and gunner on a B-36, who became’, later, the night librarian, until get-
ting kicked out of the Air Force as Undesirable, because they said I was a Communist, which shows they were visionaries, because at the time I thought I was a Zen Buddhist, the Communism came much later. After the Air Force, I moved to Greenwich Village, where I got a series of small gigs, a legendary book store, Proctor at New York Law School and then as an all purpose stock clerk at a small mostly “moldy fig” (ie , young whites who dug & tried to play New Orleans or as they called it “Dixieland”) music magazine, The Record Changer, where by picking through (literally) thousands of old records and grading them Mint, Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, gave myself an education in early jazz and early near jazz and pop, and novelty, and could identify the old labels, Genett, Vocalion,Oriole, and Black Swan Records, a company founded by and run by Harry Pace, the first Afro American record company in the country, which crea huge hits that featured it’s star, Ethel Waters! I think the motion toward the notion of writing Blues People came also from the catalyst the many sessions sitting around the Changer with some guys who would become well known jazz critics Martin Williams (Jazz Review, Smithsonian) , Larry Gushee (“19th Century Origins of Jazz”), Dan Morgenstern ( Director, Rutgers’ Institute of Jazz Studies), and some other notables whose names escape me now. I was once paid an easily forgettable sum for sorting through another couple of thousands (really) of old Blues and Jazz records for a guy named “Jake The Snake” another dealer in old records generally unliked by the crowd I was running with then, which I heard from many peoples’ mouths as “payback”when his car door viciously swung shut and accidentally took off his foot! But from my first interview for this job in which , when asked about my experience with the music I replied that I didn’t know much about the music before
Louis Armstrong, my prospective employer, Dick Hadlock, the Editor, retorted, “ Neither does anyone else”). From this point on through those running discussions, my overall knowledge about the music deepened helped immeasurably by a Black New Orleans Music loving trumpet Player, Walter Bowe (who once ran through private clubs down there in the hostility laced Little Italy part of the Village with a pistol looking for some white dudes who jumped him. But as soon as I was employed long enough to enter into the tennis match discussions of various aspects of the music with these guys I found out their ideas about the music often did not jibe with my own. For instance in one of our discussions Morgenstern would say “Jazz ended with Duke Ellington!” for me that was absurd , since after the blues and its variations I heard in my parent’s house, and after my infatuation with Doo Wop and the quartets that brought it ,I was brought into young adulthood with BeBop as a BeBopper. My father asked me once, “Why do you want to be a BeBopper?” After I had brought home Bird’s “Repetition”, after my cousin George had given me his brother Sonny’s Guilds and Musicrafts, the premier labels of the new music. And then I was into Diz’ Tin Tin Deo & The Champ and then Monk & Good Bye, Square World!.
In another of those discussions my man Martin Williams who dug Monk which brought us together said , “Billie Holiday wasn’t a Blues Singer!” And this argument lasted throughout our acquaintanceship. “Wasn’t a Blues singer? Man, you’re out of your gourd! But then the argument took me deeper. “It wasn’t 12 bars, AB AB” Yeh, but Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 17
that aint the point, it’s not about the simple structure, it’s about the feeling. So that formalist argument , of people who put form over feeling, you can hear in many genres, writing, painting. But those kinds of arguments stoked my interest in making some kind of personal statement about the music. And now Sterling Brown’s words to me, some ten years before came back in their fullest meaning, “That’s your History. “ That music, Listen they are talking about, telling us and the world, about their lives. And so I began to listen specifically and broadly to the Blues. Because I wanted to get clear on that. The origin and basis of the deepest memory and telling of our real or fancied lives. Of course it led me back to Africa! Read DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk on “The Sorrow Songs”. “Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk-song__ the rhythmic cry of the slave_stands to-day not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised. And above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding , it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people. “ The Souls of Black Folk, The Sorrow Songs. When I finally began to write Blues People. For a year or so I listened to the Blues, very old, to very new. I listened to Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Lightnin Hopkins (one of my favorites) ,Son House, talking about “The Book of The Seven Seals, Peetie Wheatstraw (“The Devil’s Son in Law” , or take yr pick, “High Sheriff of Hell”) going back as far as I knew to go. What I learned was what Sterling had been trying to tell us, that you wanna know the lives of Black people here in the hell hole of the USA, listen to their music They’re telling you about them over and over. And it was always Sterling Brown’s precise analysis that pulled me deeper. The music is our history. It is our chronicle of life lived. How we got from African slaves, a foreign people, to be Afro-Americans, and from our beginnings here as chattel, through the various stages of the Sisyphus Syndrome, as DuBois characterized the Black American Freedom struggle to be, i.e, We struggle with all our might,will, body and soul to push the
great boulder of Democracy sought , for equal citizenship rights and self-determination up the mountain to complete realization and despite overcoming many obstructions , from the whip-crackers and even from those Negroes who as Fanon described don’t want to eliminate their enemies but want to be them -we reach new heights in that struggle only to have our oppressors roll that rock back down on us. The Klan came into existence after formal slavery was abolished. They didn’t need them during slavery? Likewise, the Tea Party and Ku Klux Klan Republicans come into existence after Obama’s victory! But it’s not just old Blues that tells our story since the Blues runs through all our music as feeling if not “form”. It runs through all times and styles, whether Otis Redding or Duke Ellington, rough & tumble or with the proud elegance of Duke’s masterpieces. Today the most avant of the avants still play the blues. But in Blues People we tried to trace the social and political changes that the music helped express. These are the chapter headings : The Negro as Non-American: Some Backgrounds; The Negro as Property; African Slaves,American Slaves: Their Music; Afro-Christian Music and Religion; Slave and Post Slave;Primitive Blues and Primitive Jazz; Classic Blues; The City; Enter The Middle Class; Swing—From Verb to Noun; The Blues Continuum; The Modern Scene. Each one of these headings could be a book in itself! The book itself came out in 1963. The same year as the March On Washington which we hold up as a dynamic turning point in the civil rights movement. It meant that our consciousness had got to the point Dr. King expressed at the March, ie, “America has given the Negro People a bad check”. You know we had said that to ourselves many times. Even Count Basie with his big beautiful band could take ahold of an old blues and signify , “I May Be Wrong , But I Wont Be Wrong Always” and from way back (1926) Richard Jones and Chippie Hill Had already said Trouble In Mind, “The Sun Gonna Shine In My Backdoor one day”! Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone just made it emphatic. But like a lot of Blues I’m sure it came out of slavery!
Amiri Baraka, Poet, Radical Black activist and Social Commentator Available @ Amazon.com Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 18
Benny Powell In the Jazz universe, there are ironic and iconic templates for the gifted minimalist, those who do more with less. Count Basie, Miles Davis, Hank Jones, Jim Hall, Gil Evans, Art Taylor, each a master of ego-free artistic expression, seriously impacted the music in spite of their indifference to musical hype or embellishing aggrandizement. It is ironic to remember these artists for notes not played, as well as the notes they so wonderfully played. It is ironic in the extreme, that their minimalist styles should create irreplaceable musical signatures that outlive their subtle personalities. I call your attention to the gentleman Benny Powell, an humble tailgater in the middle of the sound whether it be Swing, Bebop or the stuff they call New Music. Everyone attests to the fact that, as organist and friend Sarah McLawler says, “Mr. Benny Powell produced his music whenever it was required.” His was old school ethics, where regard for the sound is everything and who you played with codes how people made their living, plus how everybody earned their fame. ‘The Music’ is after all, a universe where one is known by the company one keeps. Such is the aesthetic that we call Jazz, whether we play it or just listen with obsessed attention. Within this realm, Benny Powell is royalty who reigns without the need for fanfare nor the hype of promotion to authenticate his quality. Benny Powell could blow with anybody. From Hampton in the 40’s, Basie in the 50’s through 60’s; Thad and Mel throughout the 70’s and 80’s; with Sinatra and Torme, Sarah, Ella and Aretha, this is all vinyl captured evidence of his artistry and like the other great minimalists, remains beyond his human existence, among the highest pantheon of the craft. Born in New Orleans in1930, right on the seam of Bebop’s predominance over Swing, the Powell trombone carried local diplomas from time served with the visiting bands of Jimmy Lunceford, Tiny Bradshaw, Erskine Hawkins and Bud Johnson. His thirteen years of Basie tenure placed him in the company of musicians (with) the caliber of Frank Foster, Joe Newman, Sonny Payne, Al Grey, Henry Coker, Snooky Young, Frank Wess, Ed Jones and Thad Jones, accounting for an entire period of the Basie organization’s renown.
The violence and pleasures of the years sculpt the world’s image on a man’s stride. It can be heard in his music and the cadence of his speech which are the shadow details of his attitude about living. Benny Powell was the elegance of the male principal, the archetype of grace as masculinity. He was what the old souls called ‘full grown’, having distilled eight decades of life’s white noise into more than the beautiful musical legacy that is the Powell discography. His quiet, enigmatic smile disguised the heavy burden of health issues just the same as it radiated his deeply consuming love of his family. He lived by his own watch words “straight ahead and strive for tone.” He maintained a regal bearing in the way he carried himself whether on the bandstand or on the back of a Moroccan donkey headed to play among the Gnawan people in the Rift Mountains. Doug Purviance, Co-Director of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and fellow bass trombonist, spoke glowingly about Mr. Powell, as being one of the best role models that he ever encountered, as someone who was always a real buddy and someone he admired as much as a person as for his musicianship. He said, “ Mr. Powell would always be the cleanest cat in the room, he had a unique style. He was class and it meant a lot to me that he was a trombone player. Benny Powell could literally change the temperature of a room just by entering it.” Even with a packed freelance career, Powell found more to do with his time than perfect his music. In addition to acting, singing and teaching, Benny Powell devoted considerable energy to labor related activism. According to Bill Dennison, Vice President of Musician’s Local 802, Benny Powell was a founding member of the Jazz Advisory Committee for the Welfare of Jazz Musicians from its inception in 1995: “He dedicated time and energy to insure that younger musicians would experience better conditions than when he started in the industry.” He along with Bob Crenshaw, Jamil Nassir and Jimmy Owens did the trench work to royalty recovery for abused artists, as well as orchestrated the extension of health benefits and pension coverage for multi-employer freelancers in the night clubs and musician teachers at the university level. Seventy-five staff members of the New School for Jazz and the Performing Arts achieved coverage by the 802 contract, thanks to that committee’s efforts. Dennison was emphatic, “Powell’s work certainly made a difference in many people’s lives at a time when they really needed it.” His union Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 19
activism had history on both coasts. Benny Powell integrated the pit bands of Broadway’s theatres and the studio bands of the Merv Griffin Show in television. In 1978, he was a founding member of the Los Angeles Committee on Jazz. He served on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on The Arts, and various arts forums for the American Federation of Musicians. He taught an oral history of African-American music at Barry Harris’ Jazz Cultural Theatre, played for Jazz Mobile and lectured at Long Island University and the New School. Being ‘full grown’ means knowing how to live effectively on behalf of other people because they depend on you. I have written in previous issues of this magazine about the role played by the ‘sideman’, that ancillary crew of people who compose the matrix of the tune right along with the famous leaders. Filmmaker / Concert Producer Gary Keys phrased it as,”Benny was an ensemble player. I could never get past his Big Band hookup. He played a bass trombone with a fat sound that I equate with Basie’s music. Benny’s playing is integral to that sound, indispensable to the music of Basie which I love.” Although he occasionally led groups, Benny was content in the role of a ‘sideman.’ He was the quintessential ensemble player. That is to say that he heard the music and didn’t need additional attention for how he made the music work, from his section of the sound. The Powell career reminds us that not every star shines. Black Holes however, exert their own gravitational pull. He took pride in the fact that he could blow with anybody and perform within the protocols of any particular band. In the controversial historical study, “JAZZ IN BLACK AND WHITE: Race, Culture and Identity in the Jazz Community”, Charley Gerard claims that: “Paying sideman dues is important for becoming a success in the Jazz world.” Gerard is not alone in that assessment. The original aesthetic of the tribe revered the middle values of the group wherein everyone is considered the same, a duplication of everyone else. “I live because you live”, is the first law of the tribe. Individuality was frowned upon as an exception that was best blended into the whole tribal unit. In Jazz parlance we know this tribal aesthetic as the Big Band and it is composed
ironically of stellar ‘sidemen’. Gerard goes on to state: “The ultimate test of authenticity in both the Jazz and Blues world is peer acceptance and there is more to peer’s acceptance than the ability to play music. A musician is judged partly on the quality of his or her experiences; scoring highest by accumulating time spent working for recognized stylists but also for the ability to withstand the negative effects of addictions, racial and gender prejudices, poverty and other travails.” The long haul from playing for King Kolax in the Midwest at sixteen to the ‘adventurous’ worldwide tours with Randy Weston’s Afri-
Benny Powell can Rhythms in his eighties, is more musical authenticity than most musicians ever get to imagine. I am indebted to the August, 2009 Todd B. Weeks interview in the > Musician’s Local 802 Newsletter for Benny Powell’s comments about playing in Big Bands: “I’ve always believed the Big Bands were the incubators for the stars who went on to become great recording artists… The big Bands performed a great function in our society-more than is realized. If it were realized how much Big Bands can prepare a student for other things through discipline, working in a group setting, creativity, etc., there’d be more Big Bands in schools.” “Benny Powell was pure Spirit, greatness of the highest order ” according to Randy Weston, his mentoring band leader of 35 years. “I called him ‘Ultraman’ because of his stamina and his unique professionalism. When I toured Europe with Benny before his transplant, I’d accompany him to dialysis 3 times a week in England, France
and Germany. He would come out of his sessions with his legs shaking, could barely stand. He returns to the hotel and 10 minutes later he’s on the bandstand and playing. I called Benny ‘Ultraman’ because that was his regard for the music.” I asked what Powell meant to Weston’s musical creations and he said: “Benny Powell was New Orleans, that meant he played the Blues no matter what he played. I heard the ancestors in everything he played, every time he played.” Even in creating the music that celebrates Africa in symphonic polyrhythm, Powell supplied the African-American understanding of Swing which includes the retention of Blues, in a fashion that allows us to hear all the ancestors together moving forward. Benny’s blowing was integral to that dynamic. The spirituality of Benny Powell is a recurring element in everybody’s description of his personality. It was mentioned by every one of the musicians who I interviewed as having played with Powell and it is a big part of Sarah McLawler’s description of his association with the Saint Peter’s Church Jazz Vesper Program that she and Jane Jarvis helped Powell administrate throughout the years: “We could always rely on Benny.” Powell was concerned with the healing and regenerative aspects of Jazz and Sacred Music, enough that it was a focus of his attention musically in his later years. It isn’t well known that he and one of his mentors, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, spent much of their free time together on European tours visiting and studying the great churches and cathedrals in the various countries they played. Barry Cooper is this generation’s firebrand in the Powell trombone chair of the Basie Orchestra 30 years after Benny vacated the seat. “I play charts with Benny’s name on them”, states the bass trombonist who was also Powell’s student at the New School and privately. “Benny Powell was my best friend, my brother, my father figure. We spoke every day. He used to say ‘You have 24 hours to be a judge or a junkie. Choose and use the time wisely’. Technically, he taught for hours on ballad and Bebop phrasing. Benny Powell is the man!” In his own words, Powell stated: “I teach how to interact with other musicians in a humane way. I teach how to talk musically to other musicians”. I learned the most about Benny Powell by watching his quiet demeanor on screen in Gary Keys’ feature length documentary, “Remembering Basie.” Bill Bailey, Frank Wess, Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 20
Benny Powell, Frank Foster and Ira Gittler reconstruct the personality of the famous band leader through anecdotes and insights that say as much about the speakers as about Count Basie himself. With a smile worthy of the Sphinx, Powell recalls that Basie wanted written on his tombstone that he was a “nice guy”. He then allows us to understand that he too wants posterity to remember him also as a ’nice guy’. Benny Powell felt it was an admirable thing to have been known for being ‘just a nice guy’. Such was the humility of the person Keys called a “gentle man I met in 1963 while producing the first Jazz Festival at Lincoln Center. It (his gentle spirit) is a major reason why he was my friend and an important element in my film. His gentleness of Spirit will always be with me.” The modesty and discreet elegance I found during my investigation of Benny Powell’s life and legacy has left an indelible portrait on my psyche. As important as his seven decade discography across the landscape of modern music, Mr. Powell represented the authenticity of the music with humility and middle of the note accuracy. He was a lifetime musician, among his many other accomplishments. He supported himself entirely through his musical talent. There is no irony in that. The Powell majesty is earned and fitting. He began on the road at sixteen. I keep hearing his wise comment from the Keys movie: “What we’re doing here is like footprints in the sands of time.” I think of his 80 years well lived with the burdens of manhood, fatherhood, musicianship, the politics of the times , the changes in the music and the shifting sands of opportunity. It all makes me wonder at the distance those footprints go back in time. The ‘nice guy’ Benny Powell’s of the world are like the vertebrae in humanity’s spine. Their delicate presence allows mankind to walk upright against the crude logic of our bestial beginnings. Benny Powell’s life was the mundane steps charting our slow progress towards the Divine, while carrying his message in the language of the Creator. “Everything in the universe has its own vibration and when properly executed is heard as music”. * (*Randy Weston quote)
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Ed Dessisso is a freelance writer and author of Vinyl Man which is a regular column in this publication.
www.drmambo.com Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 21
Obituary: Poet, Radical Black Activist Amiri Baraka, Dead at 79 By Eugene Holley Jr. Jan 17, 2014
Amiri Baraka, a seminal poet, playwright, novelist, Jazz critic and essayist in addition to a long history as a radical black political activist, died January 9, 2014 in his hometown of Newark N.J. after six decades as a complex, controversial and protean American literary figure. He was 79 years old. His funeral will be held at Newark Symphony Hall on Saturday, January 18 at 10:00 am. A viewing at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark will be held Friday, January 17 from 4:00pm to 9pm. PW interviewed Baraka in 2000 at the time of the release of The Fiction of LeRoi Jones/ Amiri Baraka from Lawrence Hill Books. Born Everett Leroy Jones in Newark, N.J. in 1934 to middle class parents, Jones attended Rutgers and Howard University, where he changed the spelling of his name to LeRoi, and he later studied comparative literature at Columbia University. After his discharge from the Air Force, he settled in New York’s Greenwich Village, where he joined
the literary circles of Beat poet, Alan Blues People: Negro Music in White Ginsburg and Charles Olson of the America, Baraka’s first major nonfiction work, published in 1963; a Black Mountain Poets. “theoretical endeavor,” that traced Baraka’s early poetry and criticism the evolution and aesthetics of black appeared in numerous literary and music from, “the neo-African slave jazz periodicals including Naked chants through the primitive and Ear, Evergreen Review, The Record classical blues to the scat-singing of Changer and Big Table. He met Jew- the beboppers.” The book was inish poet/writer Hattie Cohen, whom spired by Howard University Enghe married in 1958. They co-pub- lish professor Sterling Brown’s leclished a literary journal, Yugen, and tures on the importance of jazz and he founded a publishing company, the blues. Totem Press. Baraka’s first book of poetry, Preface to a Twenty-Volume Baraka’s advocacy of jazz imbued his Suicide Note, published in 1961, poetry with a fluid, rhythmic style showed the influence of the Beats, that evoked the rhythmic and imand the genre’s critique of pretence, provisational feel of an impassioned convention and materialism. But jazz solo, married to a fiery and unhis trip to Castro’s Cuba in 1960 apologetically demand for social (recounted in the essay Cuba Libre justice and self-determination. “We in Home: Social Essays, a collec- want poems that kill,” Baraka wrote tion of essays), and his displeasure in his influential 1965 poem Black of the gradualism of the Civil Rights Art. “Assassin poems. Poems that Movement, along with the assimi- shoot guns/Poems that wrestle cops lationist impulse of middle-class into alleys/ and take their weapons blacks, caused Baraka to move away leaving them dead with tongues from the Beats and focus more on pulled out and sent to Ireland.” race and African-American culture. His shift from the Beat poets and
Greenich Village bohemianism to Black Nationalism is evident in his 1964 plays, The Toilet, The Slave, both of which also featured naturalist and absurdist themes. His most prominent stage production, Dutchman, is a one-act play where a white woman seduces an assimilated black man to his doom on a subway train. The play was awarded an Obie award for the Best American Play of the Year in 1964 and was later made into a film.
gress of African Peoples in Atlanta (1972) and the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. Baraka later became a radical Marxist issuing a number of works that reflected his new political caste.
In 2001, Baraka’s poem, Who Blew Up America?, written in the aftermath of 9/11, contained language that was deemed anti-Semitic. He refused to apologize or resign over the incident and he was subsequently stripped of his title of Poet LauIn 1965 Baraka moved from Green- reate of New Jersey. Nonetheless, wich Village to Harlem, where he Amiri Baraka’s activism and artistry founded the Black Arts Repertory influenced generations of writers Theater and School, wrote Home: including Sonia Sanchez, Haki R. Social Essays, a compendium of Madhubuti and Nikki Giovanni. writings dealing with a number of subjects including Harlem, black Among Baraka’s many published literature and a critique of non-vio- works are Black Music (1968), The lence. He also co-edited Black Fire: Music: Reflections on Jazz and An Anthology of Afro-American Blues (1987), Transbluesency: The Writing with Larry Neal. The book, Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/ a collection of works by such noted LeRoi Jones (1961-1995)(1995), African American writers and activ- and Razor: Revolutionary Art for ists as Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Cultural Revolution (2011). Several Toure), Harold Cruse, A.B. Spell- of Baraka’s recent works have been man, and Ed Bullins, marked Bara- published and reprinted by Akashic ka as the father of The Black Arts Books, including new editions of Movement. Inspired by Kawaida, a Home: Social Essays (2009) and philosophical synthesis of Islam and Black Music (2010) and Tales of the traditional African beliefs developed Out and The Gone (2009), a collecby Maulana Karenga – the creator of tion of short stories. Kwanzaa – LeRoi Jones changed his name, first to the Swahili Muslim His introduction to Home: Social Ameer Baraka (“blessed prince”), Essays offers an appropriate epitaph: added “Imamu” a title which means “I have been a lot of places in my “leader,” and finally settled on Ami- time, and done a lot of things. And ri Baraka. After divorcing his first there is the sense of the Prodigal wife, Baraka married Sylvia Robin- about my life that begs to be reson (who later changed her name solved. But one truth anyone readto Amina Baraka). He later moved ing these pieces ought to get is the back to his hometown, Newark N.J., sense of movement – the struggle, and participated in many black po- in myself, to understand where and litical movements, including being who I am, and to move with that unarrested and jailed during the 1967 derstanding.” Newark riots, the Pan African ConPure Jazz Magazine - Page 23
Ella
Steps On Stage
By Willard Jenkins
On October 14, 1934 a somewhat intimidated young woman of decidedly modest means and demeanor from Yonkers, NY crept timidly onto the Apollo Theatre stage. Her name was Ella Fitzgerald and the world of jazz and popular song would never be the same from that point forward. That night she joined the illustrious pantheon of Apollo Amateur Night winners, a subsequent partial reading of which includes Sarah Vaughan, Pearl Bailey, Billy Kenny lead singer of the Ink Spots, Frankie Lymon, Leslie Uggams, James Brown, Gladys Knight, Joe Tex, saxman King Curtis, Wilson Pickett, Ruth Brown, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and Dionne Warwick. Amateur Night at the Apollo Theatre actually started at Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre in 1933, later shifted to the pre-Schiffman era Apollo. Its originator was the indefatigable Ralph Cooper, legendary Apollo master of ceremonies. And if anyone besides Frank Schiffman himself could lay claim to the honorific Mr. Apollo, it would be Ralph Cooper. When Schiffman and his partner took over the Apollo Ralph Cooper was quickly contracted. Given the Apollo’s renowned tough, opinionated and interactive audience, such an Amateur Night policy was apropos for the famed Harlem venue. Amateur Night at the Apollo went viral in 1935 when WMCA began broadcasting it weekly on Wednesday nights from 11:00-midnight. The shows generally included seven or eight contestants plus a couple of numbers from that week’s featured attraction.
Also essential to the whole Amateur Night schematic was an otherwise undistinguished stage hand named Norman Miller, who at the appointed time morphed into Porto Rico, the specter every lackluster contestant dreaded. This by equal turn’s feared and hilarious character was the audience-appointed hanging judge of Amateur Night. If the audience felt you came up short, woe be unto you as Porto Rico, brandishing a blazing cap pistol would give you a quite ceremonious heave-ho to the delight of the audience/jury. At the end of the contest the winners were awarded by audience acclaim as Porto Rico held a cloth over each contestant requesting either audience scorn or their applauded acclaim, the volume of which determined the victor. On that fateful fall night in 1934 Ella Fitzgerald signed up as a dancer to compete on Amateur Night on a dare from two girlfriends. A professional dance team called The Edwards Sisters, one of that week’s featured acts, preceded the 15-year old Ella’s turn onstage. As the trumpeter Buck Clayton, who worked the Apollo with the Basie Band at the time, recalled in his book Buck Clayton’s Jazz World: “The Edwards Sisters were two little geniuses who had been taught to dance by their father and were pretty well known to be the best kid dancers around. When Ella saw that she was to follow the Edwards Sisters she did the best thing she could have possibly done; she decided to sing, not dance.” So when it was Ella’s turn to follow the Edwards Sisters she developed a huge case of stage fright, to which the stage manager insisted “…Do something…” From a 1989 Smithsonian archival interview Ms. Fitzgerald revealed her response: “Actually when I went on the Amateur contest it was a bet, because I wanted to be a dancer and two of my girlfriends – Francis and Doris – we had all planned to go to the Apollo Theatre. We just put our names in… but we never thought anybody would call [their names]. And I was the one that got the call!”
Ella Fitzgerald
After the Edwards Sisters thrilled the audience, “I looked and saw all those people [in the audience] and I thought ‘oh my gosh, what am I gonna do out here,’ I was real thin, skinny legs… and everybody [audience] started laughing, saying ‘what is SHE gonna do,’” Ella recalled. “I couldn’t think of nothing else to do so I tried to sing “The Object of My Affection.” But I was imitating Miss Connee Boswell and I always loved her
and respected her for that [inspiration],” she said of one of her biggest influences from the popular Boswell Sisters singing group. Somebody in the audience, in typically demonstrative Apollo fashion -- like call & response between preacher and congregation in a black church -- hollered “hey, that little girl can sing…” So Ella won first prize, and later proceeded to do the same at the nearby Harlem Opera House amateur contest. Different variations on Fitzgerald lore have been written, but either bandleader Chick Webb’s guitarist, or Benny Carter who legend has it was in the Apollo audience that night, or bandleader Bardu Ali, recommended young Ella to Webb, though Chick wasn’t exactly keen on hiring a girl singer. But Webb relented, tried Ella out on a gig in New Haven, CT and she got the job. Chick Webb, diminutive and frail due to a TB-related spinal infirmity, was nonetheless the king of the Savoy Ballroom and a drummer mighty in stature. He became mentor and later guardian to young Ella and in 1939 when Webb died at 37, Ms. Fitzgerald took over leadership of the band. From that point she grew to become a pillar of American song, with her perpetual youthfulness, freedom, and joy. Ella always looked like she was having such fun; her girlishness, warmth and perfect pitch were her hallmarks, along with an impeccable sense of timing. Her uncanny inventiveness enabled her to hang with even the most wizardly modern jazz instrumentalists. Ella’s ability to make a trifle like “A Tisket A Tasket” one of her trademarks, let alone the mastery she brought to more consequential vehicles like “Mr. Paganini” and “Lush Life” spoke clearly to her mastery. As Duke Ellington said: “Her majesty… all heart… beyond category… total jazz…”
Willard Jenkins is a Jazz Journalist his blog is www.openskyjazz.com
Pure Jazz Historic Moment
The Cotton Club Harlem NYC Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 25
King of Word For Amiri Baraka’s 75th Birthday U was never Ordinary Nor stationary Nor regular U was always Using your pen As sword Fighting/tearing down In-justices in high and low places U was never silent but/even when u wasn’t sayin’ a word Your words spoke endless decades of life and Death on pages as Permanent as the equations of brownskinned Mathematicians encoding Sanctuaries of memories in our veins Your words A drum never losing tempo Escorting us beyond blabbering repertoires of Rhetoric U is OUR poet laureate Cause can’t nobody Slice through the BS like you do Uncensored u stand with DIG-nity Straight from the gut On your tongue the melody of Ancestral footsteps running in horrific discord u say the words the deaf can hear u speak the words that pierce a seeing man’s eyes into building truths
Where the Music & the Universe Meet
By JoAnn Cheatham
The work of Amiri Baraka is enormous and informative. We have included in this section of Space Is The Place, a poem composed by the great Gha’il Rhodes Benjamin entitled “King Of Word”. We have included in the text below: the photograph, a video link for the farewell service for Amiri Baraka and two links that touch on this work. Enjoy.
U 75 now they tell me But what do that mean With a man moving full steam ahead u/down every avenue all at once boiling bleaching the lies out of his-tories’ illusive fabrications fore you even changed your name it was your name waiting for the change that you came to become you been here always scripting out the next revolution documenting how it went down FOREAL “judge a man by his deeds” the old folks say your deeds ain’t nowhere near done but one thing for sure u was never ordinary u was never hesitant sitting wating for somebody else to say what needed to be said u was always adding another word to even the score on the wall …..and so it is written U is King Of Word cause Can’t nobody CHANGE a word u said ©2009 Gha’il Rhodes Benjamin, Let Loose on the World Anthology
Below is a partial listing of Amiri Baraka’s work on the web. If you wish more, keep looking. http://newsone.com/2841378/funeralheld-for-activist-poet-writer-amiri-baraka/ www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/1/10/ remembering_amiri_baraka_part_2_featuring www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls =en&q=Amiri+Baraka+dte+of+death&ie= UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 Pure Jazz Magazine - Page 26
LET LOOSE ON THE WORLD CELEBRATING AMIRI BARAKA AT 75