By Don Williamson
ALLABOUTJAZZ: Since Atlantic has set up a "press day" for you, you'll probably be answering the same questions over and over again. Is there anything you would like to say that someone hasn't asked you?
JC: The first thing I would like to clear up is that "Chasin' The Gypsy" isn't a Django tribute.
AAJ: A lot of people seem to think that it is.
JC: A label printed for the CD's jacket made it seem that "Chasin' The Gypsy" is that kind of tribute.
AAJ: You developed "Chasin' The Gypsy" in association with Kathleen Battle. What was the concept for the album?
JC: I'm glad you got that one down! [Laughs] It saves having to go over again that "Chasin' The Gypsy" was done under the auspices of Kathleen. The repertoire we were dealing with came from 1935 to 1945 and involved more than one musician. Reinhardt and Grappelli are represented on several tunes. At the same time, there's some Teddy Hill stuff going on, and the CD includes some Cab Calloway references. I use the bass saxophone on the album because that instrument was used during that period of time as well. From a saxophonistic standpoint, the bass is important because it was the first saxophone ever made. The 1920's really were the heyday for the bass saxophone, not only from a Dixieland angle, but also from a commercial perspective. The bass anchored most of the popular bands of the day because of its recording properties. The tuba and the string bass didn't have those properties at that time.
AAJ: Was the bass saxophone taken seriously as a solo instrument then?
JC: Every now and then it was. For the most part, the person who personified the bass saxophone on a consistent basis was Adrian Rollini. Coleman Hawkins played mostly bass lines, although he gave an occasional solo. Along the same lines, so did Sidney Bechet.
Getting back into the 1935-1945 period, it was a very fertile time for the exponents of music who were getting ready to come into vogue. At that time, Roy Eldridge was still with Teddy Hill. Dizzy Gillespie was coming along under Roy Eldridge's influence. Dizzy ended up taking a gig from Roy, and then he eventually went on to play in Cab's band.
Also, Pres heralded in the modern jazz era with his mannerisms when he played with Basie at this time.
AAJ: What about the F-mezzo sax?
JC: That instrument met an untimely death. It was made only from 1928 to 1930. Last year, I got mine by trading my tenor and a couple hundred bucks for the F-mezzo sax on the Internet. I recorded with it for the first time on "Chasin' The Gypsy." Also, I've played it in some music stores.
AAJ: Was it a coincidence that "Chasin' The Gypsy" and "Layin' In the Cut" came out at the same time?
JC: I recorded "Layin' In The Cut" around Thanksgiving of last year. Once we did "Chasin' The Gypsy" in February, I wanted to do the Year Two Thousand thing by keeping one foot in the past and striving for the future. That was the thematic marketing angle for both of the albums.
AAJ: Did you choose the musicians on "Layin" In The Cut"?
JC: We went through a roster of cats and decided it would be nice to check out a certain vibe to see what happens. There was a DAT present at the rehearsal session, and it was pretty much straight ahead. We started playing and said, "Do you dig that one?" "Yeah, that one's good. Let's do that one." We played the tunes back and decided to expand upon them consciously. That's how the album came about.
AAJ: You've played a lot of various saxophones and clarinet, but you haven't played flute very much.
JC: I still play flute, but other than on "The Real Quietstorm," I haven't recorded it much. If I had had time on my last album, an original of mine would have come into play called "Double Dolph Dealings", which is named after Eric Dolphy. It starts out with a bass clarinet part in 9/8. Then the bass clarinet and the bass mirror each other. The flute comes in at a part in the middle to play a serene ballad theme, which represents the fluidity and bird-like aspects of Dolphy's character. The third section of the tune involves the alto. The tune is still being developed, actually. Anyway, the flute was going to be brought into the mix on that one.
I'm also shopping around a couple of flutes so that I can do diagnostics on them to make them play a lot better.
AAJ: Do you overhaul the flutes yourself?
JC: Not as much as I do with saxophones. Part of the ability to work on saxophones came from my enthusiasm in having an old horn, particularly one that needed polishing. In order to do a good polishing job, I had to take everything apart in order to get to it. That's when the fascination with all of the little parts came into play.
AAJ: Now you can recondition a saxophone in a half hour. How did you get the process down so fast?
JC: The improvement didn't happen very fast. It happened by trial and error. I eventually learned about different models that are available. I do a good job. I enjoy finding out the basic things that make a sax tick: cork, keys and springs. I guess reconditioning a saxophone has become my equivalent to fixing a car. It takes a certain degree of tenderness to deal with all of the sax's special parts. There's an immediate satisfaction in being able to repair your horn. There's also a hidden intimacy that's involved with the process as well. If you're playing a horn and all of a sudden a pad goes out, you have to take it to a mechanic who really knows the insides of the horn if you don't. Nowadays, there's a fertile environment encouraging musicians to fix their own horns. Back in the 1980's, there weren't many people who were advocating the joys and practicality of fixing your own instrument.
AAJ: Do you recondition other musicians' horns?
JC: I haven't done that in quite some time. I used to do some overhauls when I first started doing that kind of work, but it's a whole other bag. I mean, those were mostly favors to friends. Now I do a little nip and tuck once in a while for someone who's in the lurch.
However, sometimes I take my instruments to shops in New York when I don't have the time to repair them. The lack of time is the main reason I let other people work on my instruments. That's the elusive commodity required for doing self-maintenance. Just playing the horn is one thing, but maintenance is another. Right now, I have a decent amount of time for repair because I'm centered here now with my wife and daughter.
AAJ: When was your daughter born?
JC: Imari was born on January first of this year. I mention her on "Chasin' The Gypsy".
AAJ: Are you still touring often now that you have a daughter?
JC: Oh, yes. I just got back from a month-long tour for the electric album, and I'll be touring in Europe in late August through November. Sometimes my family will be joining me on tours. At the moment, the baby needs to get a little bit more used to airplanes.
AAJ: Weren't you almost a New Year's baby too--January fourth?
JC: Third.
AAJ: This book says you were born on January 4, 1969.1 (Jazz Profiles: The Spirit Of The Nineties, by Reginald Carver and Lenny Bernstein, page 53).
JC: I'm not too surprised about things being inaccurate. I was fifteen or sixteen at the time I attended Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. I was playing at such a high degree that others thought I was as old as twenty-three. They would say, "Why are you still at camp if you're twenty-three." I had to tell folks, "No, I'm sixteen." At that particular time, the press was giving my age as eighteen or nineteen. It got as wild as twenty-three during that time.
AAJ: Was your family musical?
JC: My mother played piano and violin during my formative years of school. My brothers are musicians too. My oldest brother, Robert, will be in Japan for six months in a group that consists of different cats who are working the circuit. My other brother, Kevin, is still performing too; he plays a lot in the casinos in Detroit. We get together and play every once in a while. The only time I bother to go to a casino is when he or somebody I know is playing there. I don't go there to roll the felt or shake the sugar cubes.
AAJ: You started to play sax when you were eleven.
JC: Yes, I found it through the classified ads in a certain price category in order for it to be affordable. I was able to coax Mom into giving me some money for it after I showed some conviction for playing the sax. She said, "I'll go ahead and get one for you if you find a sax under $200," or such and such.
AAJ: How did you meet Wynton?
JC: Wynton was in Detroit to play with the symphony in March of '85. The Council For The Arts decided to have our high school, Northwestern High, host a question-and-answer class get-together for Wynton. We had state-wide attendance, including the Fine Arts Departments of some of the suburban schools. We had a chance not only to hear Wynton, but also to show off. He played along with our host jazz band. We talked afterward. He actually spent an hour and some change with me. Wynton was flipping over the years that I had been playing because when he played something on piano, I could tell him what it was: E minor seventh with flat five and all of that other stuff. He would say, "Play along with this," and I did.
[Laughs] My daughter is over here grabbing the applesauce.
[To daughter, in a comforting voice: "Yeah, I'm talking about you."]
You know how kids are; she's tightening up. Now she's going back to her milk.
Anyway, Wynton and I spent, like, an hour together and exchanged info. Incidentally, right around this time was when Branford joined Sting. I didn't find out about it until I was on tour in Finland. I happened to turn on MTV at the place where we were staying. I looked up and was like, "Damn, that looks like Branford. What's he doing with Sting?" So then I thought to myself, "If Branford's with Sting, who's playing with Wynton?" I didn't think anything about it after that until Wynton's manager called in late '85 and said, "Wynton would like you to come down and play at the Blues Alley in December." I thought, "Oh, OK. Now I understand."
AAJ: You replaced Branford then.
JC: Yeah, but that wasn't reported in his book. Most of the work I did with Wynton was in '86. I was on the "Hot House Flowers" album and a couple of quintet dates, one of which was at the Premier Center in Detroit. Everybody was, like, full of themselves back then. It was like, "Here, a hometown cat hooked up with Wynton."
AAJ: You kept your home in Detroit until 1990.
JC: Yes. The person I hold single-handedly responsible for bringing me onto the scene was Lester Bowie. When he passed, I started thinking about my experiences with him. A whole family tree of contacts went down because of my work with Lester. To give a brief synopsis of what happened, I was a last-minute addition at a Detroit Institute Of Arts concert in May of '88. I had on a red suit at the time. I'll never forget the first thing that cat, Lester, said after he introduced everybody else: "And we have Santa Claus on tenor and bass sax!"
After that, we exchanged info, and he started talking to me about this group that he wanted to put together. It wound up becoming his organ ensemble. He said, "We'll have a gig in November at Carlos One," which is a now-defunct club here in New York City. His group included Cecil McBee on bass, Donald Smith on piano and vocals and the late Phillip Wilson on drums.
Also, one day this guy came in with a sax pack on his back, and he was wearing dreads. I asked Lester, "Who's that?" He said, "Oh, that's Frank Lowe." I said, "What?" I went over and hollered at him, and we said, "Man, we gotta hook up." That's how the sax ensemble came about.
By meeting Lester, I ended up in '89 going to St. Louis, where I met Julius Hemphill. His Long Tongues group was the last one to play in the Warner Theater in D.C. before it was revamped. I stayed with Julius until a little before his death, actually.
AAJ: How did you form your early group with Craig Taborn?
JC: The primary members grew up in Detroit. A situation came about at the Moers Jazz Festival where I had a chance to front a trio. Of course, Tani [Tabbal] and Jaribu [Shahid] were the cats I used in this trio. We got, like, mad house that night. I did five encores. During the previous year, I had met Craig Taborn when we were a part of a friend's group-Darryl Duncan's. He is a trumpet player in Detroit. Craig went into some Cecil-isms when he was in that group, and we were like, "Yeah!" Craig got into it for something like fifteen minutes, and his playing was so strong that everybody else had to lay out. As a result, under Lester's auspices in dealing with DIW, the album that we did with The New York Organ Ensemble led Kazunori Sugiyama, the A&R cat for DIW at that time, to get back in touch with me about doing a solo recording. That turned into "J.C. On The Set." That's when things started cementing. I started calling up Craig for work because he was the only cat I was messing with on the piano.
AAJ: How do you handle practicing now that you've expanded your family?
JC: I practice kinetically when I'm not able to get at a horn. I try to get in a couple of hours. With the baby here, I'm going to play more around her now. I need to do more of that. She's very vocal now in terms of trying to say certain words, and she listens very well. While she was being carried, she would move around while I played. Later on this season, I'm going to hang at the sessions at St. Nick's Pub and go to the practices in Midtown to check out different axes. I'm taking my daughter with me to Midtown tomorrow to go to a couple of music shops. I have to get a new case for my bass saxophone.
AAJ: You think music is about a celebration and the circle of life.
JC: It sure is. "Conversin' With The Elders" is the biggest case in point about the circle of life. Music helps make that connection.
AAJ: You seem to have a respect for the music that preceded you and the people who created it, like Buddy Tate and "Sweets" Edison.
JC: "Conversin' With The Elders" was an active tribute to the ancestors. So many posthumous things fall on deaf ears. The fact that two of the people on "Conversin' With The Elders" are gone is a trip-out factor. For a while, it seemed that another one was going to be Buddy, especially because he had a stroke after the album was recorded. Buddy has been pretty much off the scene since then. I talked to him not too long after my daughter was born.
AAJ: Do you have any future tribute albums planned?
JC: Eventually, something like that may come into the mix. I'm looking at doing a Billie Holiday thing with a singer and strings. Hooking up all of the manpower for that--string arrangements, string personnel--will take a little doing.
AAJ: You had mentioned truth in music. Where does that come from?
JC: All of the press that has gone down over the years has told musicians what the journalists think about them. Rather than believing the hype at its fullest, I found that a horn isn't going to lie. If you can't play a straight F sharp the way you used to, or whatever, the horn will tell you that in a minute. If you need to tidy up on certain aspects, your horn is going to tell you that. More importantly, when our folks were more in tune with what music should sound like when it comes out of these instruments, they would talk back to you. That type of truth still happens to a lesser degree. Being able to produce a tone is like ground-level truth. Creating a musical concept is even more complex. When you get into loftier sessions, a cohesiveness with your other musicians means that you can bring that cohesiveness and spontaneity on stage. The horn is the best truth serum.
[Atlantic]: I'm picking up now to remind James that the next interview is in two minutes. So, Mr. Williamson, if you would close up the interview.
AAJ: I was covering as much as I could before I expected you to come on the phone. So we can end it at any time.
[Atlantic]: Thank you.
AAJ: Thanks for your time, James, and best wishes in your career.
JC: Take care, Don.
