By Wayne Zade
AAJ: What can you recall about the first time you played music in Japan?
RD: The very first thing I could tell you is that of all the places I'd ever traveled, and I'm a military brat, an Army kid, Japan was the first place where I could not read the street signs. Now, they have the streets marked with, even though it's the Japanese language, Western spellings (though they have not completed that yet). And so back then, this is 1979, 1980, the subways, street signs, general information signs--there was no way to read those unless you could understand the actual symbolism of the Japanese language. That was my introduction to Japanese culture--you couldn't get around. There were changes that were coming, infrastructure changes, to make it more palatable for Westerners.
A second thing that was interesting to me was that the Japanese culture is a very homogeneous culture; racially, culturally, it's not very diverse. It adheres to a very strict standard, and that caught my attention. A third thing is how well organized everything is. Issues like recycling had long ago been addressed. Japan has, in an area roughly the size of California, something like 100 some odd million people, 130 million people, and the Japanese have learned how to fit all those people into a small area. And by the kind of empathy they have with the land--this is very different from the American way of dividing up land and land use.
I wasn't quite prepared for these impressions. I didn't sit down and talk to people about their experiences in Japan to prepare myself to go. But these were the impressions I had right from jump street even before playing any music there.
AAJ: Even though you didn't talk to anyone in particular before you went to Japan, was there a general sentiment among jazz musicians you knew about their travels to Japan?
RD: Oh, there was a very positive sentiment, especially among older musicians--you know, the Hank Joneses, the Roland Hannas, Bob Cranshaws, Roy Hayneses, those kind of people, because their experiences when they first started to go to Japan in the late '50s, early '60s, was that they were treated very much like royalty. Everything was on an extremely first-class level--they were limoed around, they stayed in all the best hotels. Events were planned around them--social events. The upper crust, the royalty of Japanese society, felt it imperative to interact with these American musicians coming to Japan. They felt it was a great honor bestowed on them to have these world masters coming in.
By the time I got there in the '80s, it was a little different, because by that time there had been these crosscurrents. By then you had about a generation of Japanese musicians who were actually practicing the art of jazz. There were older Japanese musicians who really got kind of short-changed because of the adulation of the Americans, and so they weren't doing anything. One of them, for example, would be Sadao Watanabe. Today, I mean, he's part of the cream of the crop. He's a hit in America and the international scene, but in Japan he's a superstar now--
AAJ: "The Charlie Parker of Japan"?
RD: "The Charlie Parker of Japan!" He really is. I did a record date with him once, over there, in Tokyo, with Hank Jones and "Smitty" Smith. We were doing a tour, and one part of that tour was to make a recording with Sadao. And it was total bebop. He was not playing any kind of pop music, not playing any kind of affected music or anything. It was just tunes, and I think a couple of his tunes as well, a couple of his originals. It was fun. He's an excellent musician, he's a fine cat.
But now you've got Japanese students coming over and coming to all the major schools, jazz schools, just the general American educational experience. You have a lot of students from Japan coming and have had that now for the last 25, almost 30 years, maybe almost 40 years at this point. So you have some generations of Japanese jazz musicians now, some of whom live in other parts of the world, including the States, and some of whom of course went back home. And the level of proficiency, the studied proficiency anyway, is quite a bit--I mean, I shouldn't say the level, because the level's always been good; the Japanese musicians have been just as good as anybody else. There are just more of them now, more proficient musicians, and certainly more audience members over there who actually are listening on another kind of level, rather than just, "Oh, I like this kind of music." It's just like "Yeah, that's a b flat," and "Oh yeah, that tune playing you're playing!"
AAJ: Did you play more in clubs earlier in your experience in Japan than in concert halls?
RD: It's always been a combination of clubs and concert halls. Depends on the kind of tour. Certain promoters emphasize mostly concerts, others like to work with clubs, and there are some who kind of mix things up. I've gone over for a number of different promoters, in a lot of different kinds of bands.
AAJ: Has your experience as a sideman been different from your experience as a leader in Japan?
RD: I've never been to Japan as a leader. I've been a member of all-star groups, in which the players are all equals. These are pick-up groups--you know, like Slide [Hampton], Jimmy Heath, Jon Faddis, me, and a drummer, like Winard Harper. And Mulgrew [Miller] or someone. And we'd go over as--let's see, what was the last one--
AAJ: The "Timeless All Stars"?
RD: Well, something like that. There's a new festival that's about three years old that the Blue Note in New York bankrolls. It's called the Ocean Blue Jazz Festival, and it's the last week of August every year. I've gone over a couple of times as a member of the Ocean Blue Festival All-Stars, as an example. So we go over and we just play. I was just over there this past year, doing that with a group that was put together specifically to be that band.
AAJ: Would a group like this play primarily in Tokyo, or would there be a tour set up for other stops as well?
RD: Well, with this one we had a little tour in the sense that we did the Osaka Blue Note for three nights. Then we did a gig in--geez, where did we have that gig? I think it was in--I can't think of the name of the town--
AAJ: Kyoto?
RD: No, no, it was much smaller. Shizuoka. We had a concert in Shizuoka. And tben we had the Ocean Blue Festival, which is north of Tokyo, in fact it's north of Narita. It's in the company town of Hitachi, so it's called Hitachinaka. Hitachi City. There they have an outdoor site where they've been presenting the festival. I was actually involved in the first year's festival. Kenny Barron. Who was our drummer? Can't remember the drummer. Faddis. Jimmy Heath. And Slide, we were all playing. No, Turre. Was Steve doing that? No, Slide was. But I've never been a leader in Japan, so I don't know what that's like. I look forward to doing that someday. My first album, Susanita, did very well in Japan. It was a popular recording there. That was '85, or '84.
AAJ: So then you're primarily played with American musicians in Japan?
RD: Yes. Every time I've gone over, it's been on a tour of American musicians. I've been asked by several groups of people to come over, but the amount of money and the travel issues--they can't afford it, or at least that's what they tell me. Certain conditions will have to be met for me to go; otherwise, I'm not going to do it. One condition, for example, is like business class tickets to get to Japan, because I've had some bad experiences, flying for so long--
AAJ: Twenty hours?
RD: No, it's not that long. From New York direct, it's about 15. Then coming back, you've got the wind at your back so it's more like 13. You leave at noon, coming home, and you get home half an hour before you left.
AAJ: American musicians often have music workshops or clinics to do at schools as they travel. Have you had the opportunity to do something similar in Japan?
RD: No, no, haven't done that. I've done one or two workshops, but always at a festival or at the gig. I don't think I've ever done a music school. Your question kind of stumped me because I was trying to think about places where I've met a lot of Japanese students. But no, that would have been somewhere in the States, or in Europe. Interaction with the Japanese educational system, to tell you the truth, has been almost nil for me. I've never thought about it before. I've never been in any situation where auspiciously we were brought over to have master classes. That hasn't been in the cards. And I'm not sure why! That's a good question, actually. I'm not even sure that much of that happens! I'm sure it does.
One thing that's kind of interesting is that you have several American musicians who for one reason or another are fluent in Japanese. A couple of guys come to my mind immediately: Kenny Garrett is one of them. He decided a long time ago, early in his career, that he was going to become fluent in Japanese. I remember when he was walking around all the time with a Walkman. You had to kind of get his attention if you wanted to talk with him because he was always so busy studying Japanese. It was really fascinating. Another guy is Tim Armacost--of course his reason was that his dad was the ambassador! You probably heard about him in poli sci class--that was Tim's dad, in the foreign service, and that's where Tim grew up. They were stationed in Tokyo for a while. So I'm sure that for Kenny or Tim it would be easier to have interactions with the Japanese educational system because they speak Japanese. One of the issues for students still in Japan might be that their English probably is not good enough, or they don't feel it's good enough, to be able to have a meaningful interaction with visiting musicians.
AAJ: Can you give me your impressions of the recording business in jazz in Japan?
RD: Well, there are two aspects to that. One of them is the Japanese who come to America and record. There are companies that specialize in that sort of thing, actually coming to New York, or coming to America, and having American musicians play. Then there are the Japanese companies that are homegrown--their things are done in Japan.
The marketing practices of Japanese companies are very different from those of American companies. American companies are very--not only cutthroat; they don't have the kind of integrity in the development and maintenance of their business that the Japanese companies have. The Japanese are pretty solid on things like return policies for distributors and retailers. A distributor puts an order in for a thousand pieces of a product--you're not going to have those thousand pieces show back up at the manufacturer. Even if the distributor winds up biting it, he'll bite it rather than send the product back. It's just that kind of market--Japanese business, and the pride of doing business, and people give themselves--they know their market very well. So if they think they're going to sell a thousand pieces, that's what they'll order. And even if they've misjudged the market, they're not going to turn around and say, "Oh, well, I'm copping responsibility for not knowing what my market would have been." On the other hand, if they run out, they'll come running back and say, "Please, I need more."
In America, the way it's set up here, it's like what you don't sell, send back, get a credit for it. A lot of retailers, because of that, just want new product in the door all the time, so they could care less about really even the sales. If the record companies don't in fact come up with promotions and ways of marketing artists creatively, then the retailer could care less, because Tower Records wants to get this product in the door and new product all the time so that it will entice people.
Now of course there are other issues. Recordings have always been more expensive in Japan, just in terms of how much more you would pay for recorded product than in the States, even with today's "high" prices. Prices in Japan are still high, higher than what we pay here. And Japanese consumers have gotten used to that. Now here, of course we have a problem with the fact that everything is much more expensive, so it's driven people out of the stores. People, I think, the general public, is fed up with high CD prices. The days of going in and having a great shopping experience by spending like $30-35 and coming back with four, five, six, seven, ten recordings and not worrying about the one or two you might have bought that might be duds, that you could take back to the used record store or just throw away--those days are gone. And this is replaced by a real frustrated sense even among the so-called knowledgeable consumers, to come home with two pieces, having spent $35, plus tax, and one of them you don't like and the other one is OK, but you know, "What am I doing with this in my collection?" It's a very negative kind of thing.
So Japan has some parts of that but the difference now, I think, is that grassroots development in Japan--it's kind of similar to here, in a funny way, but it's distinctly Japanese. To try to come up with its kind of flavor--they're not selling as many recordings over there either, but their system is a little different because it's much more who's in vogue at the moment, but it's not so much that you could say that the big record companies have a distinct marketing advantage over the small independent labels. That does not come into play in Japan as much.
There seems to be a kind of a solid core of networked people. See, Japan is organized on a lot of different ways that we don't have any idea about. Coffeehouses, and those kinds of places like coffeehouses--there's a tradition. In Tokyo, for instance, you can find a coffeehouse for unemployed actors, OK? So if you're an unemployed actor, even if you're employed, you can wind up showing up there and there's a core group of people. And there will be several other places around the country; one of them might be in a tiny village in the northern part of Japan. But yet people know that that's a place for unemployed actors, by that network. And so they talk, and people talk, and there might be a newsletter or a publication that services that interest. It's totally foreign to us. We don't have any kind of structures that even approximate that sort of thing.
AAJ: Is there extensive radio exposure of jazz in Japan?
RD: No, not at all. In fact, it's even more curious. There are some radio stations in various places, but that is not organized. They don't have the notion of commercial stations the way we do. The government runs a lot of it, radio and television. There's private enterprise, to be sure, but it's not organized quite the same way. And jazz, I don't even know if there's as much jazz on the airwaves as there is in the States.
AAJ: How about television?
RD: There's more probably more television. I know there's more television in Japan on jazz than there is in the States, some commercial as well as educational. I mean, there's just more. There are more programs that are actually recorded--some Japanese, with Japanese musicians only; sometimes there are hybrids. It's not uncommon to turn on the TV and see jazz. We're not talking about every day or every week. But you can turn on the TV and suddenly see Hank Jones's trio behind a Japanese singer or Japanese saxophone player, or Hank's trio by itself playing several tunes as a part of a festival. You're not surprised to see that--I guess that's what I'm trying to say.
AAJ: So, to sum up your experience in Japan, then?
RD: It seems like I've done just about everything--all over, Tokyo, all the major cities. I've played clubs, concert halls, various kinds of concerts. Concerts in large venues, formal kinds of concerts where everybody's tuxed up, TV and it came out as a video disc. I've done tiny clubs where I'm doing a duo tour, just piano and bass, and they're charging $80 a head and the place seats only 15 people, or 35 people, literally. And the place is chock full of people at $80 apiece! But it's tiny and intimate and all that sort of stuff. So I've had a lot of different and varied kinds of playing experiences.
Somebody asked me the other day how many times I'd been to Japan and I answered, "Oh, two dozen times easily."
AAJ: And that's not uncommon for jazz players of your caliber?
RD: I guess. Probably once a year, sometimes a couple of times. I was there last August and I'll be back there in May, 2000. I'm going with Tim Armacost and his quartet. He's an interesting guy, a young guy, probably in his early '30s. He's really into Indian music--taking tabla lessons to learn what that's about. He's really into the rhythms of Indian music. Don't take me down that road, Tim! I'm trying to play 3/4 music, 6/8, and 4/4.
AAJ: You write your own music in addition to performing standards. I read the other day that you have an encyclopedic memory of American songs--a thousand tunes? In the thousands?
RD: Well, you have to remember that this was a big hobby for me because I was a listener long before I was a player. When I was in high school, I would listen to tunes and learn tunes. I'm a child of pop radio of the '50s--Patti Page, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, all the stuff that was the trend. Frank Sinatra--all the stuff that we grew up with, in the pre-television age. Television was starting to creep in, to be the dominant form of entertainment, taking over from the movies.
AAJ: In composing your own music, have you felt an influence of your travels to Japan?
RD: No. The only thing I would say of my recorded output is an arrangement of a traditional Japanese song, Sakura, the cherry blossom song, which is on the Continuum album. I was walking down the street one day--I don't even know if I was in Japan. But the song came to my mind--the one that everybody hears and thinks of as being associated with Japan. Kind of stereotypical. I might have actually heard it as I was walking, and I started humming the tune, and all of a sudden I became very analytical about it. And I said to myself, "Wait a minute! That's really a minor blues! Is that possible? And I said, "Oooh, I'm going to write an arrangement of that." I thought that record might do something in Japan because they'd like that, but no, it didn't do anything.
Overall, then, no, I wasn't influenced by Japan in writing music.
