Joe McPhee Interview

AAJ: When you were first getting involved with music—well, performance— in your twenties I guess, you know, the availability of electronic instruments was quite different. Were you sort of a hobbyist with electronics to an extent?

JM: With electronics? Yeah, I was always fascinated with electronics—all kind of electronics, and I always tinkered with things. One of my first experiences was—in the army I built a portable record player and I had a transmitter, which I connected it to a radio transmitter, which I could play my recordings over the radio to the people in the barracks, and I would play Coltrane and Eric Dolphy and stuff, and make it come in on their—because I'd block out the other sounds, you know, cause, although it was small, inside the building, would be powerful enough to block out certain stations, and I'd play that stuff, and nobody could ever figure out where it was coming from. [laughter]

AAJ: Congratulations!

JM: And since it ran on batteries I could it do it, you know, they said "Lights out—turn the lights out; power off", you couldn't hear anything in my room, but—

AAJ: That's hilarious!

What was it like, actually, getting your hands on records when you were in the army and that kind of thing—trying to keep up with what was happening in the jazz world?

JM: It was a bit difficult. I would suppose virtually impossible as I remember—I wasn't able to find—I found a few things, but not very much, and I was stationed in Germany, so that made it doubly difficult. I took my portable recorder with me, which allowed me to play stuff for a while, because there was a difference of current- -50 cycles here, 60 cycles there—which changed the pitch of the music, even if you used a converter, so I bought eventually a turntable there, a record player—"Hi-Fi"—with these little detachable speakers, which was fine over there, and I brought it back and I couldn't play it because the pitch was wrong when we played it here. But I took a lot of stuff with me—you know, things that I was interested in—a whole collection—and there were some other people who had recordings and I listened to things there, and then I read Downbeat magazine and found out about how certain people were talking about Anti-Jazz and hating Coltrane, and hating Eric Dolphy, and saying that they were not playing real music, and that argument went on and on, and introduced to Ornette Coleman and why he didn't work and blah blah blah and so on like that. So then I heard about Albert Ayler and what was going on in various places, and it intrigued me, so of course the first thing I did was look for the music they were castigating and try and determine for myself whether I liked it, and I said, "I like it, and I don't know what they're talking about"; I had no idea why these people are carrying on like this; I guess it sold magazines or something—I don't know.

AAJ: Especially now, I think, for younger people, who, when they're first learning about Jazz, they learn about the whole history at once, and so you don't have this sense of—it's harder to appreciate why Ornette, and maybe even Albert Ayler, were actually considered to be, you know, radical, cause now it's so accepted...

JM: Yeah, a lot of the elements that were a part of their music is a part of pop music; it's been co-opted. Also, I was in an army band, and we had a certain job to do, and I went to an army band training school, because my experience, my training in music, was limited to what I learned from my father; and I played in high school and grade school; I went to band classes and I played all the time, but theory and harmony, I didn't take in school. I learned that in the army band, and the army band school was very intense, and dealt with those things, like traditional harmony and composition and stuff— ear training and things like that, which were great; it was like being in accelerated college courses. And then I'm thrust into this band in Germany, and all we did was—from the time we woke up in the morning until the evening—was rehearse. You know, we rehearsed band music, and light concert music, and stuff like that—and virtually denied any opportunity to improvise; in fact, we were forbidden to—it was just not to be done, so we did it on our free time, and we played in some little clubs and stuff, and we had a project where we'd have to compose things and play them, you know, once a week and stuff like that, so we kept ourselves going.

AAJ: So if you weren't in the army, you might not have had an opportunity to have such an intense musical education?

JM: No, probably I would've stopped playing. Maybe I would've come back to it at some point. In fact, I had no intention of playing music in the army; I wanted to study electronics; that was what I was qualified for; I went to school for that; I thought I could get some kind of practical application, you know, for a background that would get me a job at IBM or something, and I went once on a field trip—because I was studying electronics in college, electronics technology and stuff like that, and I thought I'd get this background—I went to IBM on a field trip and absolutely hated it; I hated everything that had to do with it; it was tedious, and awful people; I said, "No, man, this is not for me". And the army was an accident, with the music, because I did have that background and I qualified for this school in electronics. They said, "Okay, but we don't have an opening now, and you're finished with basic training—what do you wanna do? We need trumpet players; if you wanna do that: fine, we can take you now; otherwise you'll end up in the infantry"—"That's a no-brainer; I'm not going in infantry, and I'm not going to be in some tanks and all that crap—No! trumpet!": I ended up in the band school.

JM: I played in a band that was sort of like a soul band; it was called Ira and the Soul Project, and the other saxophonist, Otis Green, was in it. Strangely enough, in 1974, when we were doing this recording I mentioned called Pieces of Light, with John Snyder, we took a break and we went to this little French restaurant that was just down the road from where we were recording. And while we were there, Otis Green, the alto player, came into the place and we saw him and I waved and I said "Otis, what are you doing here?", and he was looking very confused and so on, and he said "You know, I have no idea". He said "I was driving by and I went down the road and suddenly I slammed on the brakes, turned around, and came back here." He said "I've never been in this place before in my life and I don't know why I'm here now." And he said "But, you know what, I was looking for you Joe; I'm going to have to leave"—he worked for IBM—he said "I'm being transferred some place and I was looking for you to see if you would take my place in this band. Would you be willing to do that?" I said "Yeah, okay." So I ended up playing with that band for about five years—Ira and the Soul Project. So that was very strange. It was the end of the CJR recordings, and CJR of course helped to begin the Hat HUT recordings...Ira Frazier was a singer, who sang in sort of the style of Marvin Gaye, and we had a drummer, guitarist, a Hammond B3 player, and myself. We played on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights in a club that was called the Monte Carlo in Poughkeepsie, and before Ira showed up to sing—and people dancing; it was great—there'd be a jam session.

AAJ: Actually, while we're kind of talking about soul and rock and things like that, you know, it's really interesting to think about this aspect of dancing to music, and there's like different ways of enjoying music and things, and I guess over the years your music went in the direction where you wanted things to maybe be a little more subtle. The sort of grooves and everything you might've played at one time might have lost their appeal, but do you ever have a feeling that you might want to recapture that sort of simple, straight-ahead kind of groove?

JM: No, because you can't go home again. I mean that was something that happened at the time. You also noticed that—in the progression and stuff—that in those early things there was a drum—in fact there were two drummers on that, and a bass player, and a groove and a beat, and blah blah blah, and it was music for dancing. Eventually I moved away from—there was no drummer, and no bassist—on the Trinity recording there was no bassist; there's a pianist and drummer, but no bassist, because the two bass players I had decided that we weren't playing real music, and he couldn't be bothered with that because it was threatening his ability to work in other contexts, so he didn't want to do it—"okay, fine, go away; we don't need you". When I played with Raymond Boni, there was no need for a drummer because Raymond is so rhythmic, and there was no need for a bassist too, because he carried all of that; he was an orchestra in itself. And then I found that drummers just got in the way; there are some wonderful drummers, and I've played with some really great ones—Hamid Drake is one, and I've got recordings with him, and so on like that, and that's another thing, but I don't see the need to keep stating the beat and all like that—it just gets in my way; it's for somebody else. And I played with—for example, on this Topology [points to the Topology CD on Hat ART], there's a drummer, but he never plays drums; Pierre Favre is an incredible percussionist and he had a whole stage full of stuff, but he never played drums, you know, he didn't have to state the beat and all that stuff; he just played percussive things and created environments for the music to happen. Music for dancing— people can dance anytime they want to anything I do; you know, if the spirit moves your groove, you get up and dance, but it won't be something that you can forget—you know, like, forget about what's going on because the beat will always be there and locked in— no, the beat's in your heart, so find it. That's what it's all about.

AAJ: Actually, when you play with Dominic Duval and Jay Rosen, they're definitely not stating the beat; it really feels like you're equal partners, and you know, not worrying about any sort of background/foreground...

JM: No, that's true—that's exactly it. And in fact if Jay wants to play something that has a beat and wants to lock in on that, that's fine; we can deal with that; I mean that's a part of all what's going on, and it's all material to be used in the whole process, and that's fine; I don't have a problem with that.

AAJ: These two records [In the Spirit and No Greater Love] are really self-explanatory; from the first note it connects you with something that is more familiar than a lot of the other music that you play; it connects you with like sort of the larger community that you live in, where you have a lot of people who may not have an interest in the more exploratory music you do, but these harmonies, these tunes that...

JM: Well, some of the melodies that are familiar would catch your attention; for example, we play a Monk tune or something like that, people say "oh yeah", you know, there are people who just collect Monk tunes, who don't care what it sounds like, just collect them and stuff like that. Well, this, melodically—it was a quieter way of playing; it was an area of music that—ballads and blues and stuff like that—I love playing ballads. If you're a so-called Free musician or Free Jazz musician, you don't very often hear a lot of modulation; things are usually at a certain level, a certain tempo, a certain whatever— perception of whatever speed is about, and playing 8 billion notes and so on like that, but you can't hide in these things; you cannot hide in a ballad; either you can play or you can't, you know, and things at slower and that are melodic, and a lot of blats and bleeps and all like this are considered to be very modern and very in, and very chic or whatever, but it's only a part of what the whole spectrum of the music thing is as far as I'm concerned, and if you're playing melodically, some people would be ready to just as well dismiss you as if you're playing the other stuff. But if it makes you feel something; it moves from one place; you've gotta feel something; you cannot be indifferent to it, you know; it makes you feel something, then that's fine. And if people say "oh well, we lost you know because you did that", too bad; I don't know what I'm going to do next time.

The Bluette [Mcphee, Joe Giardullo, Dominic Duval, Michael Bisio] played at the Vision Festival in May—music's totally different—very very energized and so on—the same people, but we'd just come off a tour, this Albert Ayler project tour in France, so Michael and Dominic had bonded; they had locked up, so it was really great, and Joe [Giardullo] was just leaving that evening to go to Poland, with some friends over there, so he was up and so on like that, and I think it's interesting. Also, the fact that Joe plays flutes; I think his flute playing is extraordinary, and that gives another dimension to this music. In fact, Bob Rusch was not terribly enamored of the flute, and made some disparaging remarks [chuckling]; for example, he made this joke—he said "you know the definition of a hole- in-one?"—he said this to Joe—he said "no, whaddya mean, a hole-in-one?"—cause Joe's a golfer—he said "what's your definition?'—he said "it's when you take the flute and throw it in the toilet and it never hits the other sides." [much laughter] "Whoa! What?" Not only that, when I said Joe Giardullo's on the recording session, he said "Uh, what does he play?". I said "flute." First time I invited Joe to come to CIMP was the first recording with Evan Parker and Evan's trio and so on like that; I was invited and there was only a few people invited and there was just gonna be guests, and Bob said "bring an instrument; maybe you can play or something", and I said "yeah, and I'd also like to bring my friend Joe Giardullo", and he says [with immediacy] "nope, can't bring him"—"uh, okay, I won't bring him". [laughter] So then I said "Joe's on this"—"What does he play?" "Flute." "No, no flutes; I'm not interested in flutes, so it came to do it and he said "what's the instrumentation?"; I said "two basses—Michael Bisio, Dominic Duval, Joe Giardullo, and me"—"Giardullo—what's he gonna do?"—"He's gonna play"—"ahh, I don't know about that"—"he's playing, okay—he's ON THE GIG! [laughter]. And he said, "so, fine", and we joked and carried on—he likes Joe—it's fine; he makes no more disparaging remarks about the flute, except, you know, he's a pain-in-the-ass sometime and he just wants to needle you [laughing].

AAJ: [following a brief discussion about dance together with music] I've recently become really attuned to that side of music I think after watching certain musicians that seem to have this element of dance as sort of an inherent part of what they're doing, and I'm thinking in particular of Barre Phillips and also Toshi Makihara—it seems like there's really an incredible crossover between the music and the dance, and there's an elegance in the movements. Are there any musicians that you've experienced that with yourself?

JM: Cecil Taylor. He's very much into dance and movement and so on. But then, you know, he's interested in, I think, that element which combines or brings together the architectural thing and the music, and these forms and moves and shapes and so forth that dance presents, I think is like architecture in motion as far as I'm concerned.

AAJ: Architecture in motion—hmm, that's nice; I like that. I was actually thinking about sculpture in motion when I was seeing Toshi's solo performance the other day, where he was exploring all the different things you could do with those basic pieces of metal and things, you know—taking them apart and moving them around.

JM: There's a reference in that "Eroc Tinu" [poem written by Joe that appears in Intervals: the Poems and Words of Musicians, edited by Hershel Silverman and Steve Dalachinsky] to dancers, but the reference is to deep sea dancers, and there I'm referring to the middle passage and slaves being thrown off the ship and that sort of thing. But there's another poem—I don't know if it's in there—called "Tree Dancing", and "Tree Dancing" is a little poem about something I observed one time as a storm was approaching. I was sitting on a porch at a friend's house. Across the field, you don't see the wind but you can see the effects of the wind through the trees. And there were these tall trees that looked like the long legs of dancers, and as the wind came through, it was like these fingers that came through and began to move, and they started to move like that and sway, and as the wind became more violent they moved back and forth and they looked like these dancers with incredibly wonderfully choreographed movement, so my poem was because—as it was also becoming night, and there was a full moon—it goes like this:

Sometimes
when the moon is high
and the air is a fresh light green,
They do.[chuckles]

AAJ: [echoing] They do.

JM: Trees dance.

AAJ: That's beautiful. Thanks.

Actually, talk about poetry and dance—what about the visual arts? I'm quite curious to hear what you think about that.

JM: Well, I've always been influenced by painters and so on. Craig Johnson, who started CJR records—he was a painter—he is a painter—he lives out in Seattle now, and a very friend close of mine, Alton Pickens, who taught at Vassar College in the Art Department there—he passed away in 1991—he was a marvelous painter, and some of his pieces are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. And a couple years ago, I did a program dedicated to him, sort of celebrating his life and his art, at a place called Merkin Hall in New York, and I had what's called my "wind and string ensemble"— Dominic Duval, a cellist named Monica Wilson, Rosie Hertlein on violin—Dominic played an instrument called a Hutchins bass, which is on Dream Book, and Joe [Giardullo], and we played music in which there was no written parts, only prints of Alton's work, and descriptions of his work that I gave, because he lived at my house, actually, for maybe 8 or 9 years. He had an accident and fell down some stairs and became sort of paralyzed, lost his memory, had this amnesia and so like that, and I sort of looked after him—that was another reason why I didn't do any recording for a long time. And around the time that happened, my mother was very ill with terminal cancer, and I was looking after him at his place—his apartment and so forth—and running home—I was also working at a factory at the same time. So it became very difficult—life became very difficult, and Alton was living in a place where his landlord wanted to turn his place into some commercial space or something, and it became so difficult I just moved him in to live with me, and so my mother died and so on like that, and to help him kind of regain his memory and get back to—because he had a studio and he got back eventually to working in his studio and painting and so on. We had many conversations about art and about philosophy—he was an extraordinary person, and, in fact, when I went to Europe the first time, we stopped in this little bar to have a beer and he said "Well, what are you going to do in Europe?', and I said "Well, I'm going with a synthesizer", and he said "What's that?". I said "It's an electronic instrument; it has these wonderful possibilities", and he looked at me and he became more and more agitated, and he said "Well, what does it do?". I said "Well, it can do this and it can do that and so on", and he was furious; he stormed out an went back to his studio, and he said "When it can make some music, you come back here and tell me something, but possibilities—don't tell me about possibilities", and he put on a Pablo Cassals recording of Bach cello suites from 1939—it's an amazing recording, and we sat and listened to that and so on, and he said "Now, play something for me", so I put on an Albert Ayler recording with "The Truth is Marching In"—he loved it; he said "Now that's music—you do that". So that's why I told you when I went to France and we ended our tour and went to the American Center, I played "The Truth is Marching In" because it was at his place. That's how that's connected.

JM: But I also like cooking, because for me it's the same process. But then you deal with taste, and this also involves improvisation, because I can take basic ideas in various cultures and various cuisines and so on like that, and I try to remember what it was I tasted and what went into it and try to approximate it and then to move away from or come closer to it, and so I'm a very good cook—and then I can give it to people and it's like a concert.

AAJ: In what capacity did you work at Hat HUT?

JM: From 1981 to 1985 I was a vice-president of Hat HUT records, whatever that means, in charge of promotion and marketing. And we established a branch of the company in West Park, New York and I worked in the office there. And I was supposed to be a liaison between the musicians and the company, in addition to the promotion and marketing and stuff. And I had a lot of hope that I could effect some kind of real, meaningful connection between the company and the musicians, but it didn't work out that way, and in terms of distribution and sales of recordings, it didn't help very much either, because radio didn't work, distribution was abysmal, and, you know, jazz is a small part of the whole spectrum of the music industry and the particular genre that we're involved with is even more infinitesimal part of that. No matter what I did I couldn't effect anything. And then I found that the worst part of it was I played a lot less—almost didn't play at all. It was an interesting experiment.

AAJ: Going back to something sort of related to your recent recordings with the Bluette group, there's this topic of religious music, and it seems that throughout all human history and all human cultures, music has always been intimately connected with people's religious practices, and especially in America, and especially with the jazz tradition there's a very large connection between certain religious communities and certain musical communities, and I was wondering, you know, if you fit into this pattern yourself.

JM: Not really; I think it's more about spirituality than religion, and in that sense, I think it's tied and it's about spirituality in the community of people, humanity, more than religion—religion doesn't interest me—formalized religion and stuff like that, but in terms of jazz, most particularly coming out of a Black culture, where the church is a very important part of it. For me personally in particular, I didn't come from—I came from a family that are immigrants to the United States—my parents came from the Bahamas— I'm the first of my family born in the United States—and they came from an English background with an Episcopal church, as opposed to the Baptist church—didn't hear a whole lot of Blues and so on—the music I listened to was from the Caribbean and so on, so most of the music I got in terms of jazz was through my friends when I was a teenager and stuff like that. My father liked jazz and he played—he met Dizzy Gillespie once, and I have my mother's uncle—Alfonso Cooper was the leader of the group called the Savoy Sultans, which was a very famous band in a period which was between sort of Count Basie kind of things and so on—it was called a jump band...

Visit Joe McPhee on the web.

Photo Credit
Sittng by Serge Vincent
Playing by Steve Glabman

Comments