By Don Williamson

All About Jazz: You're rehearsing tonight for your appearance at the Vanguard?

Ben Riley: Yes, we're rehearsing at a studio on 27th Street. I think a drummer owns it. Our trio will be at the Vanguard for two weeks. Kiyoshi Kitagawa will be playing bass. He's in my group with Steve Nelson too, but we haven't played since Ted Dunbar passed away. So far, my group only has a DAT recording from when we worked two shows on a Sunday evening at Sweet Basil. I haven't found anyone who wants to do anything with the tape. I don't know what made me record the session, but I'm glad I did when I had a chance to get the original group together. I'm talking to a small company in France that may want to eventually release it. I'm not interested in going to the big companies. Kenny Barron is doing a lot with his label now, JoKen, so I may have him release it. My Weaver Of Dreams CD is on JoKen. Kenny has released three CD's on that label: one I did with his brother, one he did with a female pianist, and then we did Weaver Of Dreams. I think he wants to release two more CD's. We're getting ready to release some of Sphere CD's on his label too. We'll start with Sphere on his label and we'll see where we can take it from there. We're going to give it a shot.

AAJ: What about financing?

BR: Well, so far, we've pooled our money because our group is a cooperative. The record label is one of the investments we'll try with some of the money. We've been trying to put away money from each situation so that we'll have capital to work with.

AAJ: Who else does the cooperative want to record?

BR: Well, we haven't actually gotten that far. We want to make sure that we get our things out of the way first because we're going to do another album. We'll probably record it in August because everybody will be available at that time. All of us try to make time for Sphere to handle other projects. For these two weeks, we'll be performing as a trio because Buster will be out for a week or so.

AAJ: Who's writing the material?

BR: Oh, everybody. We'll use some of Kenny's materials that he hasn't used with anyone else. We want to try the music of some other composers too. We usually include one or two Monk tunes in anything we do. Our activity would have been better if we had been able to continue with Verve after they merged. It was amazing because we were sold out everywhere we went, and no CD's were available to be sold there. That's the main reason why we decided to start our own label. Now the conglomerates want part of your music. You can't own part of something you didn't create. All of us in Sphere have been around the block enough times to understand certain terminology. We always sit down and discuss things, and then we let our lawyer handle them. It's impressive to be with a big label, but we had options to separate. So the label took its option. We probably would have done the same thing. The lawyer has looked it over for us, and we've selected a name. The lawyer is searching the name now to see if anybody else has it. When we came back together again, somebody had already taken the name "Sphere." We had stopped using the name when Charlie Rouse died. When we regrouped, we had the use the name "Sphere Quartet."

AAJ: Who's the "Jo" part of the "JoKen" label?

BR: It refers to a young lady, Jo-Ann Klein. She used to be Kenny's manager, and they had set up that label.

AAJ: When did you first meet Kenny Barron?

BR: Oh, boy. He was with Dizzy when I really met him. I was with Thelonius at the time. We used to see each other in different venues, which usually lasted several days. We got a chance to meet one another, rather than the hit-and-miss things going on today. Then Kenny and I worked together with Phil Woods at the Vanguard. That was the first time we played together. When we started the Ron Carter Quartet, Larry Willis made the first week with us. Then he left us, and went with Blood Sweat And Tears. We didn't know who he went with at first. Ron said, "Man, we have to find a piano player." I said, "Look, I think I've got the guy for us. Come on. Why don't you come on down to the club and hear this guy?" I don't even remember who he was playing with. I don't think Ron knew anything about Kenny at that time. We were fortunate that Kenny was getting ready to leave Dizzy. We caught him at the right time in 1977.

AAJ: Is that around the same time that you met Buster Williams?

BR: I had seen Buster, but I didn't really know him until Ron brought him into the quartet to do the two-bass thing. That's when we hooked up Sphere's rhythm section…while we were in the Ron Carter Quartet. We all kind of grew together as a trio. When Ron disbanded his quartet, we all decided to stay together. We just wanted to be a trio, but we kept getting a hard time. They said, "You need a horn," and we said, "Ron Carter didn't have a horn. Why do we need a horn?" We named all of the piano players who didn't have horns. But the people who booked us said that to be more effective we should have a horn. Getting a horn wasn't very easy for us because we had already developed as a unit with Ron. So we tried several different horn players. We started fooling around with Thelonious' music. Paulson's, a new club on 72nd Street, had just opened. One of the owners of Sweet Basil had opened it. It didn't stay open long. But they wanted us as the opening group. So we called Rouse because we wanted to play some Monk music. When Rouse came to the rehearsal, we knew right away that that would be the quartet.

We called the lawyers and drew up the papers. At that time, we even had a classical lady managing us. We were trying to attract a cross-over audience, as the Modern Jazz Quartet did. We tried to get a different venue than the average jazz club. The people in the band were really friends, and that's what set the band's mood on the right track. We were more than just musical partners.

AAJ: Did the members of Sphere get to know each other's families too?

BR: Yes, we even had little events where everybody would invite the families. We're close. Kenny and Buster and myself have been with each other almost twenty years. We brought Gary Bartz into the fold now.

AAJ: And you used to travel with Monk's family when you performed.

BR: His children used to stay with my children. My wife would baby sit them. T.S. and my daughter are still very good friends. They still call each other.

AAJ: How old are your children now?

BR: My oldest is forty-three, and my youngest is thirty-five. My oldest daughter lives in Queens. I have two children who live in Atlanta. And one lives in Cleveland. We have a close-knit family. They have gotten to meet so many people because of my being in this business. They used to call a lot of the musicians "uncle" who came to the house.

AAJ: Where did you meet your wife?

BR: In school. We're from Sugar Hill. She was a dancer.

AAJ: But you were born in Savannah.

BR: Yeah, and she was born in Virginia. My parents moved to New York when I was four. Basically, I'm a New Yorker. I met my wife in the neighborhood when we went to junior high school, but we didn't get to know each other right away.

AAJ: What kind of work did your parents do?

BR: My mother did domestic work, and my father worked for a shipyard. He also worked for Bethlehem Steel, and so I moved to Baltimore for a year or so during the Second World War. Then we moved back to Sugar Hill, and that's where I stayed until I moved out here to Long Island.

AAJ: How did you take up drums?

BR: I started from listening to drummers in marching bands when I was in Savannah. Sonny Rollins, Billy Taylor, Jimmy Cobb and I all grew up in the same neighborhood in New York. Roy Haynes lived around the corner from me when he came to New York. By listening to him, I got to learn a lot of things. And then I studied with a saxophone player named Cecil Scott, who had a band at the Club Sudan in Harlem. It was near the Savoy Ballroom. I could go and sit in with his band. Then I started with another drummer, Phil Wright. Jimmy Cobb and some of the others from the neighborhood would go hear him because Phil Wright could write all of the drum parts from the records. The drummers would play the drums parts he wrote before they joined any bands. They would know what to play even before they went to rehearsals. That's how we started learning: by listening to records and playing along with them, and then by going to jam sessions where the masters would play. Art Blakey used to run one on 110th Street. We got a chance to listen and see. That was the best education that one could get. Whoever was in the jam session would let you sit in, and they would show you things to help you improve your playing. So, it was like going to school because they would always give you a helping hand. They never told you what to do.

They would say, "Have you ever tried to do something like this?" They would explain things, and eventually you would understand that that was how you should play. The first time I met Philly Joe Jones was at a club called Connie's on Seventh Avenue. He came to sit in. I got a chance to meet everybody. Everyone who came to New York had to come to Harlem. Old man Jo Jones took a liking to me, thank goodness. I learned a lot from Ed Thigpen too because I worked opposite him at The Composer. I used to go to Ed's house to practice with him. That's when I really started to get my brush touch together. He claims he is not the reason, but I developed my brush technique and stick touch by watching Ed and listening to him every night. I used to work with Gene Rogers when he was there with Billy Taylor and Earl May. Earl May lived close to me, and the three of us used to get into his Volkwagen with the drums and bass to go downtown to the gig. I sat penned up in the back seat because I was quite small. We did that every day. We spent five dollars a week on gas because he all chipped in. In those days, everybody hung together, especially drummers. If someone new came to town, we would go hear him. Then if we had gigs that none of us could make, we would say, "Use this new guy." That's how drummers got jobs in those days.

We used to hang out with Mickey Roker when he was with Ray Bryant. As a matter of fact, I took Ron Carter around and introduced him to some people when he came to New York. I introduced Donald Byrd to people when he came here too. It was just a tradition that when you saw a guy with a horn case, you start talking to him. That's how I met Donald Byrd. He was standing on 35th Street, and I said, "Are you trying to find somewhere to play?" He said, "Yeah." And I said, "OK. Come on." Back then, you could look at someone and tell their interest in music. I think that's what's missing today: the camaraderie. I don't think it's there with the younger guys today. They don't hang together like we did. Sometime you can hear it in their music because the familiarity isn't like it was. We had competition, but it was artistic competition. Sometimes when I hear groups today, they're viciously challenging one another. That's not music, man. The ideas should be exchanged. The point isn't to try to beat somebody up. I think that happens because of the way the agents and the record companies have gained so much total control. Those guys are trying to own feelings, and you can't own a feeling. If the record companies give out some money, it looks good to the musician. Those musicians have talent! But they're being taken advantage of. They should be allowed to develop. They can't develop when they're told what to play and whom to imitate.

When I was coming up, I tried to study with Alan Dawson. He wouldn't teach me. He said, "You already have a definite approach and a definite idea about what you want to do. Studying with me would only change what you've started putting together. Keep doing what you're doing." I always appreciated that about him because he allowed me to look into what I wanted to do and to find out who I was. Art Blakey used to talk to me all of the time, and he would say, "Sometimes you play so intelligently, as if you're just out of school, and then all of a sudden you go crazy. That's beautiful." It helps when the older people you respect tell you that what you're doing is on the right track. When I first hear people and like what they're doing, I say, "Don't change a thing you're doing. Just try to make it better."

AAJ: When did you start playing professionally?

BR: I started around 1956. I got out of the service in '54. I was a paratrooper. I got married not too long after I got out of the services. I had a job for a couple of years because I figured that that was what you had to do. We had a child on the way.

AAJ: What kind of job was it?

BR: I was working for Eagle Pencil Company. Then I worked for CBS Comprehensive News, where I started doing some film editing for commercials. They had taught me how to put the timing down. As a matter of fact, when Roger Moore started his role as The Saint, I was one of the first guys to put commercials in that show. After a while, they had me teaching other people, who were sent to CBS while I stayed there at Comprehensive News. My wife said, "If you aren't happy, I think you should give yourself a couple of years of playing music. That way, you'll know if you can make it or not." I was working gigs at night and getting up in the morning to start the day job at nine o'clock. Fortunately for me, as soon as I started playing, I got work right away. I never had to go back to a day job. I started with Randy Weston at first, but we never recorded. He and I had worked a lot in Cy Coleman's club opposite Roy Haynes. I thought it would be terrible playing opposite him, but he said, "Calm yourself down. Do what you do best. And don't worry about a thing." After that, I worked with Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt. Also, I worked with Woody Herman for a couple of months. They were going to Texas for eight weeks and Vegas for eight weeks. At that time, I couldn't stay with the band after they got off stage. I had to go into another room. At night, I had to be driven to the black side of town.

AAJ: How many blacks did he have in the band?

BR: At that time, I was the only one left. Major Holley had been in the band too. God bless his soul, Woody called me and said, "I want you in the band, but there are things you'll have to be concerned with. I want you to make the decision on whether you want to join or not." I was eternally grateful to Woody Herman because he was concerned about how I would feel. I told him, "No, I don't think I want to do that." I had just left the segregated Army with the last of the black battalions. Woody was a beautiful guy to work for. He didn't see color. He just saw what you did for the band. I always appreciated that about him.

AAJ: Who did you play with after that?

BR: Junior Mance, Nina Simone and I did a lot of things together. Then I met Griffin, and I went with Lockjaw and Johnny Griffin. Then I joined Sonny Rollins for about a year. Through all of that, I was working with Bobby Timmons, Junior Mance and Walter Bishop, Jr. I worked with those three trios opposite Monk at the Five Spot. I had had no idea that he had been listening to me. All Monk said was, "Who are you—the house drummer?" Then he kept walking, and he never stopped. When Frankie Dunlop left the band, he called me the next day to ask me to do a record date. I thought it was a joke, and he called back again and said, "This is serious. We're here at Columbia, and we'd like you to get your drums together and come." After I went there, he still didn't speak to me. When I finished setting up the drums, Monk came out of the control booth and started playing. He still hadn't spoken to me. He hadn't told me what we were going to play. That's how I got on Monk's Time. Most of the takes on that record are first takes. Monk asked me if I needed some money, and I said, "No, I can wait for the check." He said, "I don't want anybody in my band being broke." So that's when I knew I was in his band. Monk said, "Do you have your passport?" I said, "No." He said, "Well, you better get it because we're leaving Friday." I was jumping up and down when I called my wife. It's funny: I had had a premonition. I thought, "Monk's is my next band." I told that to a couple of friends of mine who came to hear me. I had no idea it was going to happen that quickly.

AAJ: How did you feel playing without any rehearsal?

BR: Oh, it was strange because the first gig we had was in the symphony hall in London. Ronnie Scott had the warm-up group. At that point, Monk still hadn't said anything to me. Before we left the U.S., I had asked Monk if we could have a rehearsal. He said to me, "What do you want to do—learn how to cheat?" And he didn't say anything else to me. By the time we had finished the first half of the show, he said as we were going through the dressing room, "How many people do you think could do what you just did? You didn't know all of the different songs, but you swung through all of that." He said, "How many people do you know who would even be able to think like that? Why would you want to rehearse?" He said, "When you learn all of the parts, you'll play all of the parts." Rouse told me later that Monk had selected me. Everybody had given Monk suggestions about who to hire when Frankie was leaving. Nica was trying to get Billy Higgins in the band. She told me later that after I had been with the band for a while, "I see what Monk saw in you. He selected you." I really felt honored then. Before that, I thought I was just lucky.

AAJ: How long had Monk been listening to you before the Five Spot gig?

BR: I have no idea. But he had been listening to me for at least six weeks while I worked opposite him with the three different trios. Every time the trio changed, Monk would look over at the drums and see me; then he would just walk into the kitchen as he came in to work. We were the warm-up group.

AAJ: You were with Monk when he was on the cover of Time.

BR: Yes. I was with him during his most productive years. We had a three-year itinerary. I went around the world with him two times.

AAJ: How were the overseas audiences?

BR: Excellent. We were almost the only group except for Miles that had no warm-up group. It was just us. We did the program all on our own. So that was a great honor for Monk. Everyone who attended the concert wanted to see Monk.

AAJ: And you thought it was like a religious experience with Monk.

BR: Well, it was spiritual. I couldn't wait to get to work every night because I knew I was going to learn something. If I played the same songs twice a night, they would be different. Monk would make sure that I understand what he was doing before he tried something else. He went on to new music when he was comfortable with the music I had been playing. After a while, I understood perfectly what he was doing. Then he would move on. The only time that Monk changed his library was during the few times that Coltrane sat in with us. Then they played all of those old things that Trane played with him, Shadow Wilson and Wilbur Ware at the old Five Spot. They would play Trinkle Tinkle and all of those songs when Trane sat in. When Trane and Monk worked opposite each other and Rouse was late, he would ask Thelonious if he could sit in. Then Thelonious ran right for the piano and started playing. He never answered you. He'd just say, "You're going to open," and then, bang! he'd be on the piano.

AAJ: Did he ever talk much?

BR: Well, after I got to know him, I couldn't shut him up. He was very worldly. He was interested in the news, and he knew about the different wars. He never said anything until he was around someone he was comfortable with.

AAJ: Monk was shy?

BR: Yes. People always called him weird and what-not. And he said, "I'll let them think what they want to think." My impression was that he was shy, but he talked a great deal with me. Nellie said that the relationship we had formed was unusual. Not only did I work for Monk, but we were friends.

AAJ: He must have been a good family man too.

BR: He loved his children. He was just a different kind of a father. You wouldn't see the love that he gave in the same way that you would in your everyday father.

AAJ: And his children must have felt it.

BR: Well, his daughter Barbara did, but I don't know if Toot did. I think Toot wanted him closer. We used to call Thelonious Jr. "Toot." I think Barbara was more like Thelonious Sr. because she had those rhythms embedded in her, while Toot had to work at them. His daughter died of cancer the year after Monk did. The Monks had tragedies three years in a row. Toots' fiancé died the year before Thelonious did, and Barbara died the year after. Nellie held up pretty well. I call her now and then—not as regularly as I should. I do stay in contact with her. When I'm working in town, I always invite her to hear us play.

AAJ: Have you been involved in the Thelonious Monk Institute Of Jazz that T.S. formed?

BR: No. I've been involved with it only once. Last summer, I went for a week to conduct a clinic in Aspen with Kenny [Barron] and Ray Drummond. The only other thing I did was to select some drummers to be finalists in the drum competition.

AAJ: Wouldn't it make sense to get together some of the musicians who used to play with Monk?

BR: I don't know. There's more to it than the eye can see because you'd be dealing with people who aren't musicians. Those producers hire the people they think they should have.

AAJ: That's too bad.

BR: That is too bad because there are still some people left who worked with Monk. People should be exposed to that music. But I don't get involved with those kinds of things. I'm not upset about it. I just keep going.

AAJ: What was Charlie Rouse like?

BR: Charlie was beautiful. He and Thelonious had almost the same sound. Yeah, he articulated Thelonious' music very very well. We had a great time in that band.

AAJ: Why did you leave?

BR: I think it was time for me to move on. Thelonious had started to cancel engagements, and I started to realize how sick he had become. He had had a cerebral hemorrhage. I had a family and had to keep working when he canceled gigs. Sometimes he would get me off a job that I was on, and he paid me for the week I would be working. He'd say, "Come on. We're leaving." But it was getting close to the holidays when the jobs were canceled. I couldn't afford to do that anymore. I told him I'd have to try something else. That's how we left it.

AAJ: You went with Alice Coltrane after that.

BR: Yes. I was supposed to record with Trane. He died on my birthday, and we were supposed to do some recording that week.

AAJ: That was July 17?

BR: Yes. I was at his house on the sixteenth. He had a recording studio in his house. I didn't know he was sick. I went to his house, and he apologized and told me he wasn't feeling well. He said that he'd call me the next day to reset a date. That was it. He went south that night. Then Alice had me do some overdubbing on some of Trane's music. I overdubbed a part with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. I went on the road for a couple of gigs with Alice. Joe Anderson recorded that group. Ron Carter was on bass, and Pharaoh Sanders played sax. Then Alice, Charlie Haden and I did a tour for Impulse. It was an interesting time because it was a whole musical change for me. I was playing her "Cosmic Sound," as she called it. It was an altogether different thing for me because it made me interpret in a new way. Roy Haynes asked me, "How can you play with her? How do you figure out how to play all of those different rhythms?" Roy took my place one night when I couldn't make it. When I saw him, he said, "OK, now I see what happens." She has so many different parts to play on that you have to find just one rhythm that you're strongest on. Her music freed me to go another direction. I stayed with her until 1979.

AAJ: It seems that you've kept developing throughout your career.

BR: I still am. Thelonious had taught me to always be open for another situation and not to go with a pre-determined plan because you don't know what's going to happen until you get there. So I always tell students, "Just because you sound good when you practice doesn't mean it's going to fit when you get on that stage. You have to adapt to what's happening on stage and to the people you're playing with. Your rhythm is different. Your time is different. So you have to think differently. You have to deal with what's at hand."

AAJ: Who are the young drummers you like?

BR: Well, there are several young drummers who impress me like Lewis Nash. When I first heard him, I told him that I liked the one way he played. When I first heard him, he used to play like different drummers who were in the bands. I told him, "You have something happening yourself. Play ‘you'. Don't play what you heard the other guy play. Use it in your own context." I think Ron Carter played some of the tunes I had played with him so that Lewis could experiment with them and make up his own mind. Lewis told me that he had listened to some of the records when I played with Ron. So he came in with a good idea of what he wanted to do.

AAJ: Do you still teach?

BR: No, I haven't done it in a while. I do a few seminars now and then. Fortunately in a way, I've been busy. I've really enjoyed the last couple of gigs with young people because they're interested in learning. Kenny, Buster and I spent a week in Verona, Italy teaching students. The teaching inspires me because I relearn some things I had forgotten. Pretty soon, I may delve a little into some free-form music.

AAJ: Who would you do that with?

BR: I don't know. I may do it on my own. There are certain things I want to try. Kenny wants to do the same thing, so we may do some free-form. The three of us find some incredible things sometimes—and none of it can be rehearsed. It comes from all of our years of being together and knowing each other's thoughts. It doesn't take us long to meld together. We can not be playing together for a few weeks, but after one set, we sound like we've been together all the time. We really listen to each other. This is one of those rare occasions where you find two other people who share the same concepts. What I like about the group is that as soon as one member finds an idea, the other two are almost immediately on it. We just look at each other and say, "Oh. OK. That's what you want to do." So Sphere is still a good experience. We're looking forward to when the free-form music will be our main program for the year, while the other projects are secondary. We'll talk to different promoters to get our own style in there, as we did with the original Sphere. We may hire a publicist to keep our names in the magazines all of the time so that people can see more of us. If people keep seeing your name, they can't truly forget you.

AAJ: Maybe this interview will help in that regard.

BR: I'm certainly happy to do this.

Photo Credit
Paul La Raia