By Mark Felton

MF: One of the first things that comes to mind when I hear your recordings is the breadth of your style. You seem to draw from a remarkable number of sources. Where did you get your start? How were you first introduced to music?

JC: Well, to begin with, I am the youngest of five siblings. We're all musically inclined. With that in mind, I've always had music in all facets in the household. At any given point or any given day I could wake up and hear the whole spectrum, or at least a good amount of the spectrum of music that was available to the world. I could wake up to Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Parliament Funkadelic, the Beatles, Barry Manilow, Kool and the Gang... ad infinitum. I could go to sleep to Duke Ellington, and Count Basie, and Billy Eckstine... ad infinitum, once again. Not to mention what I would hear through the course of the day. So, you know, the music was always available in the house.

To fast forward, how the saxophone came along was I would see it on TV on various instances, and hear it on what was then the premiere Jazz radio station in Detroit, WJZZ. But where it had it's most profound impact was when we had a boarder in our house by the name of Charles Green who currently plays with the group War. He used to play in a late seventies R&B group with my brother Kevin called Nature's Divine. That's how they actually hooked up, as well as going to school with each other. He would have his instruments at the house. And on any given day, I would be able to look at them, you know, by snooping around, waiting for everybody to be out of the way-- a "coast is clear" type of situation. I was fascinated in particular by this alto that he had which was a gold-plated Selmer Mark VI. Just to see all of the ornate engravings, the curves, its shape. Just superficially looking at it, I was like "Aw man, this is beautiful." You'd get the vibe that it's like caressing a woman, even at that early age. So this took place quite a few times and after a series of hijackings, I got caught red-handed with the saxophone in my hands. He was like "Ah hah!" But I didn't do anything to it. I was acting like I was playing it right there in the case. I didn't have the inclination to pick it up, or throw it up in the air, or nothing like that. Well, he inevitably wound up picking out my first instrument, which took place May 8th, 1980. It was an alto, also. It was a King from the mid- to late-1920's. Silver, with a gold bell. I was kind of mad because I wanted a gold saxophone after seeing his. But after looking at Orrin Keepnews' pictorial history of Jazz, and seeing saxophones that look like the one I had, I developed a respect for it and I started taking better care of it. I'd polish it up so that the real finish would come out. Because at the time I bought it, it was black from oxidation. But as time progressed my love of the horn came along. It didn't take very long. I got over that fact right away. It was dealing with the instrument, you know, that's all that really mattered.

MF: And when did you start your formal training on saxophone?

JC: I first started on Baroque recorder which is a... well, it's pretty much a tempered whistle, if you will. It has holes in it to give off different pitches, and what not. It's a very inexpensive way to get you geared towards your home-row keys on a woodwind instrument. I actually started in 1979.

MF: Before you got your first saxophone.

JC: Yeah, and I was mostly dealing with the contemporary band-music scene, rather than Jazz. It involved counting, and rests, and "Mary had a Little Lamb," and little ditties like that. And I kind of got frustrated after I switched over to the saxophone because I wanted to learn how to play Jazz. I wanted to get into playing music, and they didn't know how to teach the music at the time, probably not at this time either. So the only outlet for me at the time was to play along with records. At that time I had "The Billie Holiday Story, vol III" which is an old Columbia reissue, "Basie Jam III," Eddie Harris' "Playing with Myself" on which he overdubs saxophone and piano, "Duke Ellington's 70th Birthday Concert" in Manchester, England. I think I had a couple others, but those were the main ones that I was really dealing with.

MF: So your first exposure to jazz was through swing-era saxophonists?

JC Yeah, and it was a nice palette of individuals. I had Hodges, the whole Duke Ellington sax section, Benny Carter, Lockjaw Davis, Clark Terry. But even at that time, I wasn't trying to just squarely listen to the saxophones. So I was listening to every instrument that was there and pretty much incorporating what was going on with all the instruments.

So then I went from elementary school to middle school and it was pretty much the same situation. There was an old guy there who taught contemporary band music. This time it was with actual instruments rather than recorders. He had us there playing "Counting Fun." I would come in playing what I had learned off a record from the previous evening. I would just play stuff up and down the horn, you know? And we would get to a new note like every day, or every other day. He'd say "O.K. now we're going to learn how to play low B-flat." I'd say "Aw man, I already know that one," and lay out the note. He'd say "Smart mouth!" and grumble. But I just wanted to be accelerated. I just want to play Jazz. The music.

I was on the brink of giving up out of frustration because there was nobody who could formally teach Jazz on the elementary or intermediate school level. But my brother Kevin had played a couple of gigs with Donald Washington, a man who was to become my teacher, musical father, and mentor. He said to him "I have a younger brother who wants to play the saxophone." He arranged a date to go over and have an evaluation lesson so he could see what point I was at and expound upon there with my lessons. And that went real well. I was finally talking with somebody that knew what was going on. He headed the first group that I was part of, jazz-wise, called Bird-Trane-Sco-Now which was an organization of young individuals ranging from seven to seventeen years old. The youngest member was his son Kevin Washington who started playing drums at four. The whole family plays. His wife, Moms, is a classically-trained singer, she also plays flute, and his daughter Donna sings and plays flute as well. When lessons started happening, they were full rounded lessons. I would start out with longer tones, and get the horn warmed up and the chops together and all. Then we'd go on to band numbers, you know, tunes just like I did at first [in school]. But, all of a sudden we'd put that book away and then we'd be into learning improvisation and the various scales and modes. That's what I was into, as well as listening to various records that he had. You see, that never happened in lessons in school, I never heard of that. He would go without looking at the clock because that evaluation lesson I guess left an indelible mark on him that showed promise in me. He only charged five dollars a lesson. That was just to say that there was a price, pretty much. Talking with him later, he said he would have did it for nothing. It was a family affair; that's my Pops right there. Because if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be playing at all. He just never would look at the clock. Sometimes the lessons would bubble over to two or three hours. That's dependent upon what he had to do. That's the only reason why he would cut it short. Because either he had a situation of his own that he had to play or he had to take his folks somewhere.

MF: In terms of developing your style, who were some of the saxophonists you listened to early on. Who might you count among your greater influences?

JC: I kept my ears open. Once again it wasn't just saxophonists that I was listening to. And I think this also reflects on things that I had heard earlier before I even played. Parliament/Funkadelic is in there. I just saw George Clinton when I was in Holland for the North Sea Festival. I think I've seen him before, when my brother Kevin used to play with him back in 1976. I told George about the song "Aqua Boogie" on the "Motor Booty Affair" album. The reason why the song came up is that I had had an early allegiance to Parliament Funkadelic just because I dug what they did. This is one case when it was really made evident. We used to go to elementary school singing "Trumpet City" and all the other songs that they'd come out with [sings a funk bass-line]. ‘Cos I'd wake up hearing it all. Waking up to Bootsy Collins. So it'd still be with me on the way to elementary school, you know? But with "Motor Booty Affair." My brother brought it home one day and I heard "Aqua Boogie" and it has this bird call on it, you see, going "Harrk Harrk Harrk!" The tune first started out and it was coming out of a funk ballad called "You Are a Fish and I am a Water Sign". Immediately it goes into this [sings the opening vamp to "Aqua Boogie"] and this bird call comes out of nowhere. I kept the whole album on, but I especially liked "Aqua Boogie" and the first song, "Motor Booty." So I went to school the next day with all this music fresh on my mind. But I kind of discarded it when I got to math class cause we had a pop-quiz that she just sprung on us. We had to take one and pass the others back. She said "Begin." and it got fiber-optic quiet up there. Like you could hear the class clock humming at the front of the room. All of a sudden, from the back-burner of my mind comes the "Aqua Boogie" tune [sings opening vamp]. And when the bird song comes in, I filled it in. I was totally oblivious to what was going on, and I shouted "Harrk Harrk Harrk!" Everybody turned around at me laughing. And the teacher, who was nearsighted, she had these big glasses on, turned around asking who did it. Everybody pointed at me. I had to write two-hundred times "I will not make bird calls in class." I told George this and his response was: "Yeah, you really suffered for the funk, man." He's really been an influence in a round about way. But when I finally got to Pops, he had me listening to all the so-called "Avant Garde people" (I hate those terms). I always dug Anthony Braxton, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Albert Ayler. So in essence, I actually had the opposite poles going. Ayler on one side and Hodges on the other. Bird and 'Trane came later, in retrospect, now that I think about it. As far as really digging into Bird, that really came later, not too much later after that. So I had the whole continuum at my disposal, in that sense. I never really relegated myself to just listening to funk saxophonists, or one particular generation of saxophonists. Or for that matter, one generation of instrumentalists or vocalists. That always kept my scope open to acceptance to various facets of music, as well as wanting to participate in them.

MF: When you listen to the older musicians talk about learning their music, they always talk of learning from the generation right before them. Now, as we've entered into the age of technology, with greater access to recorded music, many musicians are able to draw from a grab-bag of musical styles.

JC: I find that in a sense, most contemporary musicians may know about past individuals, but don't apply them in practice. "Oh, I know about Hawkins, this that and the other." You know, they know he existed, and all that, but just don't apply him. It's sad, but true. They say that they are in the tradition in order to legitimize their music.

MF: Well that's part of the current dialogue about jazz. Many critics, and musicians alike, argue that the younger generation of musicians are just latching onto past styles and rehashing old ideas. What do you see as the difference between reshaping or integrating the past and just reliving it?

JC: For me, rehashing the past-- unless it's a tribute to the greatness of an individual by quoting him verbatim, note for note-- is a hindrance to music. Look at Trane, for example, a whole lot of individuals do that. When I first came here as a musician in '88 I attended a jam session that was headed by Justin Robinson, an alto player. On this particular night he had six tenor players. I went down there with my baritone. Now if you had your back turned, it sounded like one long Trane tenor solo. The only thing was each one of those cats mounted that mike. The only thing that gave it away was the time it took for each cat to come up to mike. So if it's one of those situations, then I'd have to say the past is a hindrance. But if it's a situation where you're acknowledging the past and you're embracing it and you're incorporating aspects into your outlook, or giving it you're own mannerisms. Like Lockjaw, for example, they used to call him little-Ben, after Ben Webster. Now that I'm listening to Ben-- I just opened up a compilation of Ben Webster's from '31 to '44-- I can hear the direct influences from Ben over to Lockjaw. Like the certain scoops that he played, the aggressiveness, or roughness that went into producing the tone. I dig it. There's always going to be a continuum. Like Bird on tenor, for example, you can hear all the influences that Bird had tenor-wise. It really wasn't evident in his alto, but as soon as a tenor was in his hands, you could hear the Chu Berry influence, you could hear the Prez influences, and you also hear the transition that's being forged into his own sound even on the tenor. As long as there is some sort of transition, and you get into your type of music, you're able to make your own mark with these particular elements, I never see it as a hindrance. It seems to me that there used to be a point in the media, they'd be glad if somebody was playing the music much less worrying about whether somebody was copying somebody else. I'm not saying that we should be glad just that somebody is dealing with the music, the music is going to be dealt with, regardless.

MF: So what are some of the elements that you've incorporated into your music?

JC: Vocal qualities, which is the first directive that an instrumentalist should have is to try to integrate as much of a vocal style in one's playing as possible because it transforms the inanimate object and makes it sing. I feel that a whole lot of that has been lost over the years because of the emphasis on technical facility. That pretty much puts the music on a common denominator and takes out the upper echelon of elements such as personal style. Anybody can play a G-scale [sings up and down the G-scale]. Everybody sounds the same-- or close to the same-- on something like that. But when it comes time to personalize it, and there hasn't been any emphasis on that personal stamp, it's lost. In addition, as I was saying earlier, I also listen to other instruments like piano and guitar, for their chordal qualities. At certain points in my music, if feel obliged to play more than one note at a time on my saxophone. A lot of individuals say that's not possible unless you're playing overtones or something like that and if it is possible, it's a gimmick. By saying that something is a gimmick they trivialize it. But in a whole lot of cases, those that say it's a gimmick are those that aren't onto it or can't do it themselves. They just dismiss others for being able to do it, or even aspiring to do it. Anyway, I try to integrate this meaningfully into what I am dealing with and I get off on it, and so do some who listen to it. It's something they never heard in a sense that is meaningfully being integrated into the tune. Like with 'Trane's "Harmonique," he was only really dealing with two pitches. That's where you have to start with multiphonics. I've integrated 'Trane's "Harmonique" and tried to go on from there. It actually started from fingering the wrong note some time ago back in '85. I went to finger B-flat and somehow my finger opened low C-sharp along with closing B-flat and a bunch of notes came out! It's like that cat on the Muppet Show looking into the bell [mimes looking into the bell of his horn with surprise]. So I started looking into other ways of getting that effect, experimenting on my own, just so I could have a vocabulary in dealing with that. You have your regular vocabulary which is the actual range of the instrument (let's say low B-flat to high F). Then you have a whole other vocabulary that deals with your altissimo. Then I have this multi-noted vocabulary that deals with whatever my embouchure can give out.

MF: Getting back to the vocal qualities of the instrument. Clearly, developing a human sound was a primary concern to most Swing saxophonists. As a saxophonist, you were judged by how expressive your "voice" was on your horn.

JC: Yeah, and I think that most of that can be attributed to the effect that Louis Armstrong had when he started scatting. As well as to female vocalists, like Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith.

MF: It's an element that regained it's importance among saxophonists in the Sixties. Individuals like Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman were trying go beyond traditional techniques and speak through their horns. Would you say that their approach has influenced you music?

JC: Yes, definitely. They have taught me to keep my ears open for anything, and it doesn't necessarily have to originate from my instrument. Anything from a rat pissing on cotton to loudest bullhorn, and anything in between that gamut. You know, from the Big Bang on down. It's just the freedom that was involved in playing the music of their time, as well as the structure that was involved. When I hear the term "free music" I wonder, "well, now, how did that term come about?" There are still organizing principles. It is free in the sense that there doesn't necessarily need to be a tonal center or any chord references. Anybody in an institutionalized setting would have to have [chord references]. Otherwise, they are walking a musical tightrope and they can wind up looking stupid. In a whole lot of instances they do. But nevertheless, you have to be fearless. I'll tell you one situation it's actually happened in. Blues Alley-- my first stint with Wynton-- December 14th '85, and we were playing "Chambers of Tain" which was a dual modal piece. It had like a line. He first soloed, in the key of C minor; and then there was a little interlude that went down before the tenor player soloed. And the tenor player soloed during the interlude. I soloed during the interlude. I was playing what I think would normally be expected-- the Trane licks and all that stuff [sings a quick solo]. Then we got into the main frame of the tenor solo, which was in A minor and I kept playing with the polytonal scales [sings another two bars of his solo]. All of a sudden from there, I just went "out," you know? [sings another bar in A minor, and then launches into an atonal flurry of notes]. And all they were doing behind me was slamming on the A-minor "clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk." Then I brought the tune back in with the little motif before you get out of the solo and then it was off the to the piano solo. Wynton and them were like "we're going to take a little break right now." It was the end of the set. We went upstairs and he said to me "Don't do that again. You do that again and I'll just have to stop the band." And if I was totally brought up in an institutionalized setting, to have that happen, to have the band stop, I would have been piped. I wouldn't have known what to do. There would have been no harmonic cushion, there would have been no rhythmic cushion, nothing. I would have been buck-naked trying to do something. But, I grew up, once again, in the Bird-Trane-Sco-Now situation listening to individuals of various periods that were confronting time and space in the solo sense as well as in the strong internal ensemble sense. To meet that particular challenge... you know... like we'd be playing open in the Bird-Trane situation and then all of a sudden Pops would just get the spirit and gravitate towards one individual. He'd tell everybody else to just lay out and point at an individual. When that happened, you just had to go for your own from there on. So that's the type of situation that I grew up in. He'd knock everybody else out, and that was your cue to just solo. And those situations always stuck with me to the point where I've learned how to go ahead and deal. So with Wynton, I thought "cool, you want to stop the band? Fine." I would have taken it out, brought it back in and ended. That's the type of confrontation that I often deal with. So what he would have considered a humiliating experience, I would have embraced.

MF: Indeed, you make it a regular practice to take on such challenges in your own music as a bandleader. You share a kind of mutual understanding with the other members of the quartet which promotes taking the music out and bringing it back in. How long have you all been together, now, three years?

JC: With Craig, yeah, it's been about three years. And I've been playing with Tani and Jaribu since '84. Back in Detroit Institute of Arts chamber music recitals. We actually became a trio the Summer of '90 at the Moers Festival. We were part of a Detroit showcase and we ended getting like four encores, curtain calls. It was it.

MF: And your history really shows in your playing as a band. They move with you and anticipate which direction your going.

JC: Well the thing about Tani and Jaribu, in particular, is that I grew up hearing them. They were like Detroit heroes in the group Griot Galaxy, a group comprised of bass, drums and three saxophones. They were seriously dealing with odd metres and also open spaces. They're the ideal rhythm section to have. It's one thing to be able to hone your swing chops and already have your out chops. But it's another thing to have your swing chops and not really develop your out chops. Because it's already in a lot of people's minds that it's not feasible for them to make that transition. I've noticed that. With Tani, Jaribu, and Craig, all of the facets are there. Although, it's always a work in progress.

MF: And what was it in Craig's playing that initially drew your attention?

JC: Actually, I met Craig back in '89 in Detroit. We were playing a concert at this place called "On Stage"-- it's a club out there. We were playing this tune by Charles Tolliver called "Household of Saud" I was soloing and Craig and I had this nice rapport going on. And the rapport became such a direct dialogue between the two of us that the rest of the group just laid out. It went on for about ten or fifteen minutes. It was he and I just dealing and we brought the tune back in after about fifteen minutes. It was a serious vibe going on up there-- one of those "you had to be there" situations. He was smacking the piano; I almost threw my horn down on the ground. It was happening. I told him, "We definitely have to keep in touch. If a cool situation comes about definitely give a holler." A little while later I hooked up with Lester [Bowie] and we did the first two DIW records. That's how I first hooked up with DIW Records. A little while after they called me up and said that they had eyes on me doing a solo thing. That's how "JC on the Set" was born. And that's when I called Craig.

MF: You've worked in a lot of different musical contexts. I know you've worked big bands, like Lincoln Center Jazz and Mingus Big Band, as well as saxophone ensembles with Julius Hemphill and Frank Lowe. What kinds of insights have you gained from each of those contexts? Are there any challenges specific to the contexts that you've discovered?

JC: Well, in terms of playing together, that's always a particular challenge. We were coming into the music from different directions. But we always managed to get a homogeneous sound, you know, like different ways to look at the blues and various forms of rhythm changes.

MF: And here you're referring to Hemphill's saxophone ensemble?

JC: Yeah. In particular, yeah. It is always great hearing saxophone ensembles. When I first heard the World Saxophone Quartet back in '82 it was another realization of the viability of saxophone, this time as a solo instrument backing itself. I really dug it. A little while later I got involved with the Detroit Saxophone Choir, which started out as being eight saxophones but then, bit by bit, as the funds and as the members started dwindling ended up as five. We did our last hit in '88. That same year, I got my first big saxophone, although I'd been playing bass saxophone since I was fourteen. To hear that bass saxophone at the bottom of everything-- you know that homogeneous sound of baritone, tenor, alto, soprano and of course this mug at the bottom-- is a great joy.

MF: And what about your experiences with big bands?

JC: Well, the Mingus Big Band, in particular, with the personnel changing just about every week, always had a high level of nuance. Each rotating member, especially in the rhythm section, had a different way of shaping your solo. You wouldn't play the same solo twice in a month. It's a whole other vibe going on down there. Everybody checks in at given juncture, and it's never the same band twice. It's the same with the Lincoln Center group, but they're more straight-ahead. You've got this many bars, and what not, to keep the structure up. One of the good things about playing in big bands is that you only get to play very short solos. It brings along with it a challenge. I had to economize everything that I wanted to say into like eight bars or a chorus. For example, on "Happy Go Lucky Local" on "Live from Lincoln Center" last year, I had an eight bar solo on a C blues. The first thing that Wynton said was, "we're going to become a train." It came time for the solo and the first thing that I came up with was a multi-noted thing [imitates the sound of a train whistle]. I came off of that and everything was concise and right there. It was enough where I didn't over-exaggerate myself, and that was pretty much because of the time frame. But even in live situations, I had to come up with something new every time. Never a dull moment.

MF: And what do you think is the legacy of the big band approach for today's music? Or, what might musicians learn by looking back to the music of that age?

JC: Well, there's the longevity and professionalism. Like look at the Duke Ellington band; that was decades and decades of refinement. And there was a togetherness there that wasn't imposed. It was a gentle giant type of thing where you're becoming part of a whole that is all done out of this collective love for the music. You had the benefit of playing inside of a section, you had the benefit of going up to bat for yourself, with the section, or the whole band behind you egging you along with their various tones and timbres. That could take you to unknown, uncharted heights. Not to mention the spiritual level that you could reach with other members of the band. Even in smaller ensembles, you can internalize that same vibe. You can get the same feeling out of a quartet or a quintet.

MF: Let's change gears here for a moment. I'd like to talk a bit about all of the saxophones you play. You play a remarkable number of horns, and yet you manage to maintain a sense of continuity-- from the sopranino all the way down to the bass saxophone. Your personal style and your tone are consistent throughout. But clearly, you have something in mind when you pick up each instrument. What are you looking for when you decide to pick up your sopranino, for example, or your soprano?

JC: The thing is, it differs from time to time. I'm not going to have the same set of parameters with each saxophone. Especially not with the tenor. I see the tenor as the middle. I'd have to say the tenor is my universal center, just as Bluiett says the baritone is his. The other instruments are either left or right of that center. And they're all going to be distinctive. I'd like to say that first and foremost. I learned that by watching my teacher play the various instruments. That really struck me when I first saw a baritone up close. I was like, "Oooh, that's the one with the crick in the neck!" And I lit up this particular day. We were going over some of the tunes I was supposed to play and he played baritone along with me. I could hear the octaves between alto and baritone. He said, "we're going to play B-flat triads." I heard that ringing of the baritone and just watched how he positioned himself as he played. He looked at me and said, "Yeah, you feel it down here?" [tapping his stomach] I said, "Yeah!" He also had me listening to musicians like Braxton, Mitchell, and all them, on the various instruments. Even across different musicians, I could hear the qualities of the particular instruments come out, with their personalities injected into it. I think that's what I always strive for-- there's the personalization, but at the same time there's always going to be a nuance with every instrument every time its being picked up and employed.

MF: And when you choose to perform a song on a certain instrument, does the composition itself influence your choice of instrument? For example, what made you decide to use the baritone to interpret "Caravan" on "Jurassic Classics?"

JC: I've grown up playing that song on baritone, actually. And I hadn't really heard anybody deal with "Caravan" on baritone for quite some time in a live recording. That's how that came about.

MF: O.K. I have one last question. It's an open ended question, so you can field it as you see fit. Where would you like to see your music go in the future? In what ways would you like to grow?

JC: First of all, forward motion. In many years, I'd like to see myself dealing with all of the aspects of the music. I don't want to be pigeon-holed or type-cast as a particular type of player. I don't want folks saying "Oh, he's that 'out' player." The cat's just a player. Happy to be a player and happy to be playing on a level worthy of attention. I'd like to remain open. I'd like to be developing new facets to the music and keeping my eyes on the prize, plain and simple.

copyright © 1996. Mark Felton.