Billy Hart: A Hart of a Drummer

BH: Luiz Bonfá! I got a chance to play with those guys. You know what I mean? When the thing took off, either those guys played at his club out of gratitude before they came to New York, or after they went to New York, they would come back and would play at the club. So, now I have an understanding of bossa nova—even if I don't know it's the samba yet—that none of my other guys, none of the rock 'n roll guys, knew [and] none of the jazz guys knew. But, I was just lucky.

I played with this guy Buck Hill, but Buck Hill was friends not only with Gene Ammons, but Sonny Stitt. So, playing with him, they would come down to play. And I didn't do great, but here I am playing with Sonny Stitt; I'm playing with Gene Ammons, this is in Washington D.C. [and] while I'm playing with Luiz Bonfá and The Isley Brothers! There I am.

Butch Warren, we went to high school together, well, he's a year ahead of me. He graduates and goes to New York playing with [trumpeter] Kenny Dorham's band, with pianist Steve Kuhn and those guys, comes back for a minute and gets the gig with Monk. Jimmy Cobb [drummer], from Washington D.C., at that point he joins Miles. I get a chance to see who ultimately becomes my biggest inspiration and my reason for playing—John Coltrane. Now when they play in Washington, for some reason the only major jazz club is in a residential neighborhood five blocks from my house—five blocks from my house! Everything else has been way downtown. It's like a jazz club being around the corner from here. I mean total residential neighborhood. I'm trying to remember what the name of that club was because there were a few live records made there. Ahmad Jamal, Buddy Rich...And what's the name of that club? I can't think of it. That's where everybody played.

I got a place to see Art Blakey and [his] transitions—I heard the band with Johnny Griffin and Bill Hardman and then he comes back and it's Lee Morgan and Johnny Griffin, then it's Lee Morgan and Benny Golson. This is way before Wayne [Shorter]! I'm 17 years old [and it's] five blocks from my house! They didn't have air conditioners like this. They had those fans in the window. I couldn't really get in. In the wintertime, if you just wanted to freeze, you could just stand right outside by that fan and hear the music like a stereo system. I was young enough to hear Coltrane's sheets of sound. I heard Bill Evans in that band. I'm just standing right there. I'm hearing all of this. Buddy Rich! All of them. I can't tell you what that means. I could just stand there and listen to this.

Horace Silver, and Horace liked to practice a lot; Louis Hayes was in the band, and Junior Cook, Blue Mitchell. I see Louis Hayes, as my school bus stopped right in front of the club. I get off the bus, I see Louis Hayes standing there. I go in. I'm like, wow, "Are you going to rehearse again tomorrow?! He says, "I hope not! I said, "I can't come hear the music, but man I heard the rehearsal! So the records come out, and I heard the rehearsal. And there was no Berklee and all of these schools, but [that's what] it was for me. So you ask me, "What might make me a little different?

OK, now, I play with Buck Hill, so I go to these jam sessions, I'm sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old. And I finally get a chance to play this jam session with Buck Hill, the top guy in town, and nobody knows who I am. One tune is OK, the next tune I turn the beat around. Now I'm embarrassed, it hurt. I'm looking to go into a corner and cry, and as I'm going there, somebody grabs me and says, "Remember kid, it takes three of us to make a rhythm section. It wasn't all your fault. I look up and it's this woman, it's Shirley Horn. Shirley Horn actually plays the piano without the facility of Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal, and now I'm not going to know it until I move to New York years later but my time and my understanding of that is enough to get me into the scene just like that, because of her. Buck Hill and all of that other thing, too. But that knowledge of jazz, that I sort of took for granted because she was a local person, playing with her was unbelievable, it was like playing with Oscar Peterson or Ahmad Jamal. Now, put all that together and you begin to see whatever it is that makes me.

So, Quentin Warren, related to Butch—a funny relationship—he graduates from my high school too. And the day after he graduates, he goes with Jimmy Smith. When Jimmy Smith comes to—of all places—Washington D.C., Donald Bailey has left the band for a bunch of reasons and the drummer they wanted couldn't make it, his mother got sick or something, and so he came to Washington without a drummer. But Washington D.C. is a drummer's town.

So the drummer he wanted was a guy George Brown, there were a couple of George Browns, so they used to call him "Dude Brown. And he had played with Illinois Jacquet and all those kind of guys and that's where he was, he was out with Jacquet. Now Jimmy's in Washington with no drummer, right? So Quentin recommends me, [because] we went to high school together. And Jimmy says, "Oh my god, I'm desperate now. So if he makes the first night, I'll let him have the rest of the week. Just so happens, it's a gig for two weeks, so if I do alright the first week, I can have the second week. I guess I did OK.

Now I'm playing with Shirley Horn, and I'm playing with Jimmy Smith. So I go to California with Shirley Horn, San Francisco, and I meet some people who live in this house. Dig this: Jimmy Lovelace, Dewey Redman, Joe Lee Wilson, they're all living in this one house. So, I'm with all these guys, and before I can get a great relationship going, Jimmy Smith calls me in California, and I have to go to Europe, to Paris. So, I'm in Jimmy Smith's band for three-and-a-half years. It's based on the fact, the same old thing, that they wanted to play crossover, he wanted to play crossover. The scene, and I know the whole scene, the scene is like Creed Taylor the hot new producer of crossover stuff, he's at Verve. Jimmy Smith leaves Blue Note, and goes to Verve. Creed Taylor hooks him up crossover kind of material.

Now, they need somebody who can do the gig. He wants somebody like that. And I can do that, because I played with all these pop cats. There's only a few of us my age that can do it as I learned: there's Maurice White with Ramsey Lewis who ends up starting Earth, Wind & Fire, then there's Billy Cobham with Horace Silver—you know what he became, there's me, and Bruno Carr who had been with Ray Charles and with Herbie Mann, and that's almost it. The rest of the guys are more jazzy or whatever.

Now because I know that when I leave Jimmy Smith, because I'm leaving now, now I'm not only in love with Coltrane I'm in love with Ornette. I want to do that. When I leave that, before I can get it together to move to New York, I get with Wes Montgomery—for the same reasons. Then the next thing you know, Wes dies, but I did get a chance to move to New York. Now I'm playing with Pharoah Sanders, and that's what I really want to do! But then I get this call from Eddie Harris for the same thing [as what I had done with Jimmy Smith and Wes]. So, I end up with Eddie Harris. I finally leave Eddie Harris and make a few more records with Pharoah Sanders because that's the closest thing I can do to Coltrane, although Coltrane actually asked me to join the band—I was just terrified. He wanted me and Rashied...

AAJ: ....After Elvin left.

BH: Yeah, because I was always there.

AAJ: I was going to ask what drummers you were shadowing as other drummers have shadowed you...

BH: I love Coltrane! I love Coltrane. I love Coltrane!

AAJ: So, did you ever get an opportunity to play with him?

BH: No, he asked me. I just couldn't do it. I didn't have the courage, what it takes. And that's important to have that kind of courage. That's another thing about why I'm not what I am, because that's important to have that kind of courage.

AAJ: To know when you have it too, to know your limitations at a certain time and what you can handle...

BH: But Rashied wasn't the first, there were some cats in Washington that ended up joining the original [New Thing]...like I went to college with [alto saxophonist] Marion Brown. So, he came back from New York, and said, "Man, there's something different going on. I know you like Elvin and Tony, but there's a guy named Sunny Murray that you better take a look at.

So because of him, I was able to check out him and Albert Ayler. I would come to town with Jimmy, and I would go looking for these guys. I would say, "Ah-hah! As much as I knew about Higgins and Blackwell, Blackwell began to show me and tutor. Blackwell's a teacher, he taught Higgins. He likes to show you. So, he showed me. Then of course Rashied goes with Coltrane. Now, that's everything, that's the New Thing and he's with Coltrane. That's the way I want to play. In fact that's one of the problems I began to have with Jimmy is that I was young and crazy enough to say, "But I'm going to do some of this. He said, "Oh God!

I remember [drummer] Papa Jo Jones came and sat in and he said, "Why can't you guys be like this? What's wrong with you guys that you want to...[laughs] So, anyways, there was Rashied and Coltrane, and my love for that. So, I just followed John all the way into that. So what happened after that? I had just moved to New York, I played with Pharoah [Sanders] and Eddie Harris, then I was the hot new cat on the block for a minute. Within about two months, I ended up making a record with Marian McPartland first, and who was next— I guess it was McCoy [Tyner]. I did Asante (Blue Note, 1970) with McCoy. Then I don't know why they couldn't find Jack [DeJohnette], but I got a call on my phone—as I was walking out to McPartland's gig—from [Joe] Zawinul. They were all in the studio, so I did Zawinul's record Zawinul (Atlantic 1970). Then I ended up doing Herbie's [Hancock] record Mwandishi (Warner Bros.1970). Then I did Odyssey of Iska [Blue Note, 1970] with Wayne [Shorter] all in that same period of time. And then I ended up with Herbie's band. So, without going any further, hopefully that answers your question...

AAJ: The only aspect, that maybe I'm unaware of, is what about any experience you may have had in big bands?

BH: Whoops. Let me tell you about Herbie Hancock. He ended up getting David Rubinson because he was so advanced. The only problem as far as I'm concerned—Weather Report, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Herbie and those guys: Tony [Williams] and Herbie—those guys, that's their vision; the commercialized version gets to be that the real seed of all that is Herbie and Tony. I was there, so that's my viewpoint. So why am I saying that? OK, so I'm in Herbie's band, I'm joining Herbie. The first day of the gig, David Rubinson puts his arm around my shoulder when nobody's looking and says, "I'm so happy you're here. I've been telling Herbie to get a rock and roll drummer. Even with that, it was like my crossover ability that followed me! None of these guys now think of me like that. In fact, I never really played consistent bebop vocabulary until I joined Stan Getz, which is a reward in itself because so many people had jumped on that other bandwagon. There was no Lewis Nash or any of those guys then. I was the only one—maybe me and Al Foster, so that's how I ended up making thirty-three records when I left Stan Getz. I had learned that vocabulary.

AAJ: It seemed like Toshiko Akiyoshi in the '70s, that was the beginning again for big bands...or was it the low point in big band history, as it seemed like the '70s could definitely have been a low point?

BH: It was on one level. But the Monday night band [Village Vanguard's] was there. All my boys were in that band, too, you know [saxophonist] Billy Harper.

AAJ: Did you play in that band?

BH: No, not with that band, but I played with Frank Foster's band. I decided I wanted, I needed, to do that. When I first moved to New York, Sam Rivers had a big band with baritonist Hamiet Bluiett. I rehearsed that music a lot. After I left Stan Getz, I was in Gerry Mulligan's band. And that was very important if you look at Birth of the Cool, or the fact that the original Mel Lewis-Thad Jones band was originally the Gerry Mulligan Dream Band. All those guys were in that band—Clark Terry and all those guys, and then it became the Mel Lewis-Thad Jones band. I joined Gerry Mulligan's band. I did some big band stuff with Clark Terry. But the main big band stuff was Frank Foster.

AAJ: Do you find that playing in a big band maybe doesn't offer as much freedom as playing with smaller ensembles for a drummer?

BH: Well, it depends on who you are, and how well you know that language. That's a language. That's a historical traditional language. Buddy Rich didn't seem to have any trouble getting around a big band. Sonny Payne, Davey Tough, you know what I mean? No. Just knowing the language...Louie Bellson. Those guys. There's a language there that just takes some study, and certainly being in it...

AAJ: Certainly one of your greatest strengths is your versatility.

BH: Well, do you see how lucky I was? To be in DC, not only for the beginning of what we take for granted. Funk, rock—I was there while it was being innovated. I knew the innovators. I could tell you the names of the guys who innovated that stuff. The Motown, Stax, Chess in Chicago—I was part of all that. I saw all of that. Then there was the Brazilian stuff. If I lacked anything, it was really the Cuban stuff because that's just resurging now. The original Cuban stuff was in the '40s with Dizzy and Bird and those guys, which is really Art Blakey, Max, AT [Art Taylor], Philly Joe [Jones], all those guys were a product of that kind of thing. I sort of missed that. I sort of got it from them but I didn't see the authenticity. I got the authenticity with the Brazilian stuff. Now I'm going back to that. But yeah, I've just been so lucky to have been there to have seen all of that.

AAJ: Talk about Quest, and how you met up with Dave Liebman and how that came about?

BH: OK. I do On The Corner. [Steve] Grossman was the saxophonist. Miles used to have family spats with these guys. And as mean or strong as Miles seemed to be, he was soft in some areas because the guys would get fed up with him and just leave, not show up or whatever. And he would take them back. So, this particular day, Grossman didn't show up, so they called Liebman. So Liebman's on On The Corner, and Liebman ends up in Miles' band.

AAJ: That's the first time you played with Liebman?

BH: I think so. Yeah, I didn't know him. I was on a whole other scene. I wasn't on the New York scene, you know that scene: the Michael Brecker-Bob Mintzer-Bob Berg-Chick Corea-Keith Jarrett scene. I meet him and then Beirach, because they had a band which was basically Beirach and Liebman a lot, and Al [Foster]. Al had played with Miles. Somehow, something happened, we were on a gig together with Pat Metheny, that thing outside of Denver, a ski resort I can't think of the name right now. And they heard me play for the first time and they realized I would fit their program. They liked me; they knew me. But liking, that's a whole different story. They had a Japanese tour, at the last minute Al couldn't make it. Miles came up with something. So they called me. Al was busy with Miles, so they just decided to stick with me. And of course, that was right up my alley: Coltrane, Miles, and Ornette, and Albert Ayler, just contemporary everything, everything! That's it! Outside of Herbie, that's the happiest I've ever been musically. And Richie Beirach, like me, is an unsung hero.

AAJ: He lives in Germany?

BH: He does now. If you think harmonically, he's as advanced as Herbie, Chick, Keith, Paul Bley, McCoy, he's all of that. Solo piano, advanced harmonic harmony—Webern, Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Stockhausen. He's got this whole thing and certainly Liebman is 12-toned, and Ornette and later-Coltrane. Nobody wants to touch Coltrane after A Love Supreme, and he's into Meditations suite! Here we go—that's right up my alley! If nothing else, they saw how happy they made me. And that lasted for twelve or thirteen years. We made five or six records.

AAJ: So when was the last time you guys got together?

BH: Fifteen years ago!

AAJ: Fifteen?!

BH: It's hard to believe it's been that much time.

AAJ: So, whose suggestion was it to get back together? [the group played a special reunion gig in September 2005 at Birdland in New York]

BH: They just released some new live stuff we did. Just released it this year, so we just decided to do it. Live stuff! Just sounds like a drum solo with accompaniment. But Liebman likes that kind of stuff. And plus I don't play like that anymore. You know what I mean? It's embarrassing...it sounds like [jokingly makes static/white noise sound as drum sounds]...Even with the band Quest ending fifteen years ago, of course I still ended up making four or five records with Liebman, four or five with Beirach; and the bassist [Ron] McClure, six or seven. In fact I was in the studio with McClure yesterday, so the band broke up for everybody but me! [laughs]... [and playing] with Saxophone Summit [with Liebman] certainly affords me, well it does what I want it to do. Now, there it is again: I get to use my level of Coltrane.

AAJ: It's always moving...You seem to always be developing, alone for the fact that you're playing with so many people, and also you have this interest in all these young guys. It must be interesting to go back and listen to yourself on recordings through time.

BH: You know it's never good enough. Maybe now and then I would enjoy what the rest of the band did. I'm pretty much self-taught, so all the little things that you end up learning, of course you get stuck with that. You're so pleased with learning this little thing that you stay with that and next thing you know you really look like you're even older. Like I remember I had a conversation the last gig with Saxophone Summit that Michael [Brecker] was on and you know Michael he's a quiet kind of guy, so he gives me this big compliment. I just say, "I'm sort of just trying to play like Baby Dodds. He said, "Man, I'm trying to say that you're one of the guys, like Al [Foster] and Jack [DeJohnette] and Tony [Williams] and now you want to talk about Baby Dodds, now?! He didn't say that, but that was the look on his face. But I had! I had just discovered this Baby Dodds thing. I said, "Oh man. WOW. That's how you... [laughs]. "

But it is important. It is important. Those are the kinds of things that cats like Al Foster and those guys knew all the time, Tony Williams, too. I didn't know that! It's always these things that I'm learning. I'm chasing the newer things and I'll hear a record every now and then and I'll say, "God, I was already playing that! I thought I was just trying to learn this now. So I must have stumbled on it by osmosis or something. I must have just learned it in the situation, in the moment—which explains that too, that it can be gotten like that. Everything isn't academic. I think you kind of get academic as you get older.

AAJ: That's a downside, being over-academic... People are relying on that rather than the osmosis and the feel because they're overly academic. It's the feel you lose.

BH: That's what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying now. I know Nasheet [Waits]. He's still saying, "Mr. Hart I'm saying, "Come on, man! ...EJ Strickland, too.

AAJ: Are there any instrumentations, or contexts you prefer not to play in or with? You've accompanied Shirley Horn, and I heard you once with Judi Silvano. I don't know how many other vocalists you've played with?

BH: A lot. A lot. Because I was playing with Geri Allen...[on] this record we just did with this lady from California named Mary Stallings...that record just came out...We already played at the Blue Note with Geri and Wallace [Roney]. But Mary Stallings is the latest one. I was supposed to make Judi's record, but with my schedule, I made the rehearsal [laughs]! What other singers? Well, Shirley Horn. The first time I was ever on an airplane, the first time I met Buster Williams, was with the Betty Carter gig. Buster and I met on that gig. Even then she was getting these young kids because I couldn't have been more than 20. Betty Carter—Buster I met on that gig. And that's how I got in Herbie's band. Because Buster recommended me. Buster, I love him...

AAJ: So there's no context you'd ever not consider?

BH: No, no.

AAJ: That's another aspect is that you talk to a lot of musicians, and they're very particular. It's almost limiting in that they're not as open-minded with playing in all these different contexts, different places, different people. They know what they're good at, and they're comfortable doing that, and it's this sense of comfort....

BH: That's what I'm saying. I think that's an advantage.

AAJ: You think? I think it's an advantage what you do. You play in any context and people respect that.

BH: Maybe my enthusiasm. Just how well can you do that if you're so scattered. When you get a guy who can do that! Isn't that a good definition of genius: The ability to concentrate on one thing at a time?

AAJ: Yeah, but the downside to that...would you rather be a genius doing one thing for your whole career, or somebody who is just great at everything and is growing as time goes on.

BH: There's a bunch of those guys, but they grow out of the media. Look at Frank Wess. Look at Kenny Dorham. The last years of his life, he had really grown. But who talks about him? [And] well, Frank Foster's not playing anymore...

AAJ: Like Hank Mobley. When Hank Mobley died, he was penniless.

BH: That's one thing. If you don't establish yourself as one thing, thinking it from my side sooner or later, that's detrimental, it's dangerous—with the exception of [Billy] Higgins. He just worked himself to death. Who didn't love Billy Higgins? You talk about someone who had it all!

AAJ: You know that last Charles Lloyd recording that Higgins played before passing away shortly thereafter?

BH: That's what I'm talking about. Who was really listening to Higgins? The more I got, the more I got into him. You end up chasing Down Beat. That's what I like about your paper. I don't know how you have the capacity to see all of this. Bill Dixon [a recent AllAboutJazz-New York cover story subject]? [laughs] You know, Robin Kenyatta? Whoah!

Hart's quartet with Ethan Iverson, Mark Turner, and Ben Street is at The Village Vanguard April 11th-16th, 2006

Selected Discography

Quest, Of One Mind (CMP, 1990]
Sonny Fortune/Billy Harper/Stanley Cowell/Reggie Workman/Billy Hart, Great Friends (Black & Blue-Evidence, 1986)
Billy Hart, Enchance (A&M, 1977)
Miles Davis, On The Corner (Columbia-Legacy, 1972)
Herbie Hancock, Mwandishi (Warner Bros, 1970)
Pharoah Sanders, Karma (Impulse!, 1969)

Photo Credits:
Top Photo: John Abbott
Second Photo: C. Andrew Hovan
All other photos: Dragan Tasic

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