Dexter Payne: All Things, All Beings

AAJ: Okay, so by now we've walked through R&B, the blues, Brazil, and Africa... Next?

DP: Even before my Latin American odyssey, I was starting to hang out with some friends who play Middle Eastern and Greek music. My old friend Cameron Powers (now best known for Musical Ambassadors of Peace) started the band Sherefe, a later incarnation of which I now play in, doing Greek, Turkish, Arabic, and Balkan dance music.

Cameron was a really astute guy. He went to South America and taught himself Quechua in the Andes and then went to Greece and married a Greek woman, built his own guitar and learned that music, then he started learning Arabic music. He's a really brilliant man. His whole thing behind Musical Ambassadors of Peace is that politics is not going to save the world, music is going to save the world.

He and his wife started touring in the Arab world, sending eMails back to their friends in the States to show pictures of them singing Arabic music with people in cafes and taxi cabs and parks, just blowing peoples' minds. Then they come back here, there are Persians, Iraqis, Bedouins, Syrians, more—it's not a one size fits all, there are different cultures, different music, languages, and they're all just people who want to sing a song and raise a family and go to the market. They're just like us. Before the recent war, the Ambassadors sent Iraqi music masters to teach Iraqi refugees in Syria. Now they are helping traumatized people by doing women's drum circles for Syrian refugees. It's a beautiful thing they're doing.

Partly thanks to lecturing by Cameron, I have come to realize that it's the notes "in the cracks" that really get to me. Blues, African, Balkan, Turkish, Arabic was the progression, and I now see it was a search for the "real notes."

AAJ: Search for the "real notes"?

DP: Are you familiar with "just intonation"?

AAJ: Apparently not—please explain?

DP: If you and I sang or played two notes in the same chord together—say a C and an E, a third—we will naturally tune them to each other until there are no beats between them and we make a beautiful, steady sound. That interval is dictated by physics, and it's a simple ratio; I am not sure what a third is but I think it's a four-to-five ratio—the lower note vibrates four times while the upper one vibrates five and it's perfect like that. But if you tune a piano to those notes, you can only play it in certain keys. When the piano was first invented, they would tune a piano to the key you were going to play in, and Mozart and Bach and all the other old masters had specific lengthy notes about the tuning on every piece they played. Go to any music school, you'll never see any of those notes on any of those symphonies.

Because in the middle of the 1800s, somebody figured out how to mass produce pianos and shipped them out all over the world with instructions for "equal temperament"— not the "well-tempered clavier" but "equal-tempered," which means that it is equally out of tune everywhere, but every key is more or less playable. So now, that simple five-to-four ratio becomes five point one five seven six two three four to four point zero five nine two one three. Or whatever. It's not a real ratio that occurs in the natural world.

I don't know all the technical stuff—there's Pythagorean and different intonations—but "just intonation" makes use of those pure intervals. And I believe that people like Fritz Kreisler or Charlie Parker who play music that gets you in your heart and your soul naturally play those intervals. So as Parker is modulating from one key to another in jazz, in each key that he's in, he's playing it true. But if you hear somebody play that Parker solo on piano, it doesn't sound like much. Monk jars us back to ourselves with dissonant clusters (Steve Lacy called them "precious gemstones").

I was called to the blues, where you can identify a guitarist by the way he tunes the notes, and as I got on with my dear friend Don DeBacker, we would talk about "secret notes." We didn't know anything about the technicality of it, we just knew that there were notes that are thrilling. Then country music came around and I played a little bit of lap steel guitar. And I discovered that I could tune the guitar to a machine, but then when I went to play it, I would have to retune, to make it sound sweet.

So there's the blues, there's country, and then there was African music. Twentieth century African music is a funny phenomenon because people have cheesy electric keyboards and all that stuff, but the guy singing or the guy playing the horn is still piercing your heart with the notes that he sings or plays over the top of that. So, there's this juxtaposition—the equal-tempered thing, but somebody has got that other shit in his heart and just cuts right through it.

I'm not a huge fan of Fritz Kreisler, but you hear him and there's a sweetness to it. And probably Itzak Pearlman too. So eventually I end up with Arabic music, which is built on those intervals, Arabic scales which sound out of tune to us because they found a different way around the end of it. I've tried to tune a piano to those natural intervals before I knew anything about it, and you get to the end and there are two notes that just don't jive. Arabic scales are built on those just intervals. And it sounds out of tune to us. But I discovered very quickly that it sounds out of tune in a really cool way...I'm also really into playing a little blues into Kirtan.

AAJ: "Blues into Kirtan"?

DP: Kirtan is still very new to me, too, so I'm sure there is a lot that I don't know about it, musically or otherwise. Kirtan is Indian—more specifically, Hindu— devotional chanting. It's a Sanskrit Hare Krishna sing-along: Very repetitive trance music that gets everyone tuned into a peaceful meditative place and works the place up into a frenzy of dancing and singing through these very simple melodies. Most musicians I hang with steer clear of it, often for good reason, but I was lucky enough to fall into a crew of players with real musical sensibilities and huge hearts. I play clarinet, flute, bansuri (an Indian bamboo flute), and even sneak in my Egyptian nay. If everyone truly "gets there," after every song there's complete silence for maybe two minutes. Kirtan is my newest "blues." I'm thinking of bringing in my bass clarinet, too.

You should hear the Epirota Greek mountain clarinet—there is some blues, brother! Clarinet is the electric guitar of Turkey—people even use a pickup these days! The Turkish Rom comes from gypsies playing clarinet with Arabic scales, killing it! The mix of music currently coming out of North Africa, Istanbul, and Eastern Europe currently is a really exciting blend of jazz and Rom, Turkish, and Arabic music.

And now, as I get into really intricate Greek and Balkan clarinet and sax melodies and ornamentation, I'm relying heavily on technology to slow things down so I can hear what some of those crazy people are doing. But after I "figure it out," I go back to the feel. That's really where I live. 

AAJ: Which musicians have inspired or influenced you and how?

DP: I have been lucky in finding influences from people I meet. Jean Wroble was a jazz pianist in Montana who, at a real young age, rode the train to New York and sat on Teddy Wilson's doorstep until he consented to give her lessons. She hung out at Fats Waller's after-parties and warmed up for Billie Holiday. Tenor man Homer Brown, cousin to Clarence Gatemouth Brown, was in a big band I joined. Lucky to meet amazing people? I am that! 

Taj Mahal, who knew Judy back in the 60s while she was part of New York's Café Au Gogo "Blues Project." When Judy sat in with Jay McShann, Major Holly, and Cleanhead Vinson, I got to hang out with them, too. Billie Holiday and Ray Charles, of course. It took me years to warm up to Nat King Cole, one of my mom's favorites, but I did! Big Joe Turner (who I saw perform), Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters (who I got to warm up for), Bob Marley, and Jimmy Cliff (who I also got to warm up for).

I learn a lot from everyone I hear in person, good or not so good. Of course, I adored Parker, Adderley, Dolphy, Dex, Ornette, Jimmy Giuffre, and I still do. But I never really studied their solos. I don't have the chops. At most I study their melodies and phrasing, not to mimic but because they are just so lovely! I saw Benny Carter and he changed my life.

The first clarinetist I really studied was Paulo Moura. He played the sweetest Brazilian clarinet, and is my hero. I got to hang out with him my first time in Rio, and then again later in New York City. He and Airto Moreira both played on Thiago's first recording. In fact, one of the last things I worked on with Thiago was a collection of his recordings waiting for horn players to dub; Paulo did some and I did some! Steve Swallow, another monster I got to record with, and Carla Bley, who really carries the Monk spirit these days, for me.

Piano players, guitar players, violin players, trumpet players. Tatum, Hines, 'Fess, Fats Waller, Django, Grappelli, Miles. There again, it's the phrasing, the melodies, the shading. So many singers! And so many unknown or little-known people, mostly in other forms, from other cultures. I've been accused, as I play the blues, of cultural appropriate and everything else. I am not abusing culture, or cultures. Me and my friends are sharing them. Celebrating them. All of them! 

AAJ: "So many singers!" Such as whom?

DP: Music is song to me. It's melody. That's what it is. I've never been good at learning cool exercises and then applying them to a tune; I'm just horrific at that kind of thing, both at learning the exercises and at applying them to the tune. It's a double whammy for me. Improvisation, for me, is creating an alternate melody. That's what you're doing, you're composing a new melody as you sing it.

I love good singers. Billie Holiday. Memphis Minnie. Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith. Louis Armstrong, now there's a singer! And that might be a critical thing: There was a guitarist in Kansas City, Sonny Kenner. He played in the movie with Jay McShann (The Last of the Blues Devils, 1979). It turns out he was kind of an R&B guitarist who played some jazz, he sort of bridged that gap there. I was fascinated and I got to meet him and see him play during my Kansas City pilgrimage. He said right then, "The pivotal point in my life was meeting Louis Armstrong." As soon as he said it, it rang the biggest bell, and I said right back: "Exactly—I can hear that, in your playing and your singing!" Satchmo is huge. Satchmo is really, really huge.

Other influences? The "Singing Brakeman" Jimmie Rodgers. Jellyroll Morton. Jack Teagarden. Joe Venuti and Django Reinhardt. Hank Williams and Merle Haggard and Hank Snow and Hendrix. Lee Dorsey. Chris Kenner. Airto Moreira on Cannonball's "Happy People." Ruben Gonzales and early Cuban bands, Guatemalan marimbas, and Mexican Banda brass bands. Atajualpa. My latest clarinet teacher, Alexandre Ribeiro, Hermeto, Arismar, João Donato, Dom Salvador. Um Kalthum, Husnu Senderlic, Selim Sessler. The list is endless!

AAJ: You've traveled literally all over the world. What's your most exceptional "on the road" story?

DP: I'm full of stories. Most exceptional? I hope it's yet to come! But here's one: I was in Lake Patzcuaro, Guerrera, Mexico, visiting a medic I had met who invited me to stay with him in his isolated little clinic when I came there. When I arrived, he said, "I have to work, but in the ejido (village) up the road they're having 'los toros' (literally, 'the bulls') and there are bands playing. Go, maybe you can play with them, it's only a couple of kilometers." I took my saxophone/clarinet box and headed out for the road. 

A pickup truck zooms up. I can't remember if I flagged a ride, or maybe my medic friend talked to the driver, but he's been told I'm taking my horn and going to play with a band at Los Toros. Quick drive and he pulls up to a huge rock enclosure with bleachers on the sides. 

Now, at this point, I'd been in Mexico for almost a year. I'm feeling pretty calm about coming into a new town, finding my way from the bus to the market and then to a quiet "negociante" hotel where the sandal salesmen stay, dropping my duffle bag in a room and then finding out where there is music and food. There always seemed to be someplace to sit in, often a gig within a day or so. So, I learned to take my time, go easy, check out the scene and make friends. No hurry.

But that day was different. As I jump out of the truck, there is a brass-ish banda milling around a dancer in colorful indigenous dress, and the driver shouts, "This guy is here to play with you!" They stop what they're doing, look at each other, shrug, and then shout, "Hurry up! It's about to start!" I run over to look around the banda. They have two clarinets and one sax, so I open my case and pull out my alto. Leaving my case with an instrument somewhere always gives me the heebie-jeebies. The banda starts and the dancer, too. It's not a tune I know, it's an indigenous song in an odd meter. But I manage to lock in on the guy next to me, find a part, and hang on. 

We move out on the field, playing, and she is dancing. There is a pause while someone on a mic makes an announcement, when I notice they are all dressed in the same color as my blue pullover, so I whip off my jacket and I'm "in uniform"—just in time because we start again with a new tune, just as obscure. Then suddenly we start moving; not marching, because even though we're a "brass band," this is nothing like march music. We are leaving the ring, following the dancer, and we don't stop. We lurch down some rocky road (away from my case and clarinet!) still playing for what seems like miles, and into a courtyard where the tune finally ends. A table is set for us to eat. Steaming bowls of tamales start coming out. Everyone puts their instruments in a pile and I think "Oh my God, my selmer! Will they just pick up ANY instrument when the meal is over?" I gingerly put my horn in the stack. 

Ate an amazing dinner. My Spanish isn't up to the task and I stumble and fumble, but they are friendly, and after we eat, we walk back to the bleachers. We sit in one side, and there is another band sitting across the rodeo ring from us. Los Toros begins. There are no clowns to divert the bulls when someone goes down, we are there to divert the audience. We take turns, with the other band, playing between riders.

That other banda was pretty good, and we enjoyed playing together. I found out that they travel all over, and even do weddings and Quince Años parties in the US for folks who can afford them. I also found that both bands were scheduled to play all night at the bar after, so I told them I had another commitment. I have learned to disappear when the drinking starts. Just another day in Mexico.

AAJ: When people write that you have a very warm and lyrical style and sound, what if anything do those words mean to you?

DP: They make me feel warm and happy. I don't pretend to be a jazz king. I do love to improvise, which I consider to be writing spontaneous melodies, and wordless song allows everyone's mind to free up.

AAJ: What does the word "spiritual" mean to you and does it mean anything to your music?

DP: I shy away from the word, but it's the only game in town. Yes, we are animals. But we are also spirits—and other animals are, too! Discovering the depth of that simple fact is why we are here. 

Music, for me, is two things. It is a way to help civilized humans with the discomfort of silence—the real stuff is the space between notes. And first and foremost, it is a prayer for the good of all present, player, singer, and listener. And for those "not present" as well.

AAJ: Your thoughts on the impact of the digital revolution on music, and on the music business?

DP: I'm not too optimistic about what digital has done for us or to us. And I think business is business, and music is music. We all joke about the oxymoron of "the music business" and then lament when it "doesn't work."

We started something in this country, or something was started, and I'm sure somebody else could be more astute about when, but to me it all started with Bessie Smith and Jimmie Rodgers, the first recording stars. Or maybe it started with Paganini—wasn't he the first rock star? But ever since those first "recording stars," things have gotten more and more out of whack.

At first, you had huge "race" and "country" stars at the same time, there was Mississippi Fred McDowell sitting on his porch and The Carter Family sitting on theirs. It hung in there for quite a while, but we've lost the communal, shamanic, healing, magical power of music.

My friend Stanley and his brother Bix, when I hung out with them it was a very formative time for me. These guys were hillbillies from Arkansas and they were really aware of the place where country music and black music not just intersected but where they both came out of the same fountain. Different influences, obviously, but the original country music was played by black people. Black people played the fiddle for the hoedown. They played all that stuff. And there's some real exciting stuff in Memphis—Memphis Minnie and Hi Records— but the real exciting stuff was from Stax Records, with Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper. It was the interface; it was when people from different cultures got together and where they meet is music.

We got turned onto a great under the radar guy. Are you hip to Eddie Hinton? He was a songwriter for Muscle Shoals. Judy and I were doing a duo tour where we drove all the way East to Key West and all the way back. We played Tipitina's, we played in Jackson, Mississippi, and Natchez, we played a lot of funky places. On that trip, we had some time off in Mississippi and we went to Muscle Shoals looking for Eddie Hinton. He wasn't there. They said, "He's in Birmingham living at his mom's." So, we went to Birmingham and found him. Eddie Hinton was living in a room not much bigger than a closet at his mother's house, smuggling gin into the place in these huge flasks that he could put in his coat, and staying pickled and watching Superman and The Andy Griffith Show. We smuggled in some booze for him. And then he tried to put the moves on my wife. He was just this sweet, impish little blonde Alabama boy.

A lot has squeezed out or dried up in the commercial scene. We were around for the height of it—Ray, Elvis, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Lady Day, Bird, Trane, Aretha —but it's inevitable that it ends somewhere. It's just really rough that a bunch of us came up in that and then the ground started melting under us, but there is no way that was not going to happen someday.

When money takes the place of learning, of overcoming obstacles in ourselves, art loses. Everyone loses, it's not a win for anyone. But I also know that music won't die, however much we screw it up. It's a testament to the power of music. Music has power. There are many who try to "use" that power, but it's really not that kind of power. It's the power that music has over us and IN us.

We are not (currently) in a culture that nourishes any of the arts, certainly not music. Almost any other country values music more highly, and yet we have more instruments and "musicians" here than anywhere in the world, and it's not because we are more musical, it's because we are more wealthy. So, to answer: The digital business twist is just part of a natural progression. It is currently not for the better in terms of sustaining professionals. But it will give, and already has given, rise to new forms of creativity. Acoustic music, primarily singing, will never die. The magic will continue as long as we survive.

AAJ: What will you be doing for the rest of 2019 and into 2020?

DP: I stopped trying to hustle gigs a while back. It just wasn't doing any good, felt like I was pushing a rope, and I got about as much work as ever. And it's often more meaningful than just music service, which I still feel is quite honorable, of value to humans, and I actually enjoy it.

For instance, Norman Johnson was introduced to me by my dear friend and an amazing vocalist, Rene Marie. Rene is the vocalist who sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the "black national anthem," to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a mayor's public event in Denver a few years back. (I actually got to play one tune on her album Black Lace Freudian Slip on harmonica!) 

Sitting in Rene's living room, I heard Norma talking about a poem. "You have a poem?" "Do you want to hear it?" I sure got it: It was titled "Things I Didn't Tell You— A Poem For My White Friends." I looked down, turned red, sweated, and shuffled my feet for the next few minutes. But then: A real conversation, one that we continued by eMail. And then I got a message: "I have a new poem. It needs music, and I think you're the person for that."

Norma and I discovered that we lived around the corner from each other. We went to work and

crafted "Like Air," which became the centerpiece for her CD Reflections...Of Race: Poems For My White Friends (2015, Self-Produced). Since that recording, it became the heart of a live show that we have expanded to almost an hour plus time for "audience participation." This is very gratifying work, hand-in-hand with long overdue (and sometimes uncomfortable) self-discovery. I think you'll hear more from Norma this year.

Some other great gigs with people who I really like: There's this open, improvised meditation band that's been ongoing once a month for several years. There's a duo with the wonderful pianist, vocalist and writer Rekha Ohal, who was born in India. I play in a sweet quartet called Marrakech Express with El Yesfi Samir, a Moroccan guitarist, oud player, vocalist, and composer. Just last week I sat in with the amazing Rene Marie and her hot trio plus Randy Napoleon. She and I go way back and I love every chance we get to play together—it's a musical conversation.

I'll be putting together a collaboration with "Little Joe" McLerran from Tulsa in a few weeks. His dad played in bands that I danced to as a teenager and we became great friends. I've watched "Little Joe" grow up and played on most of his early recording, but now he's moving from Big Bill Broonzy to Brazilian choro—with a blues harp player FROM Brazil! I am constantly enriched by Sherefe, a band where I am always learning a ton of (mostly dance) music from Greece, Turkey, Arabic, and Balkan traditions. And I just found out I will be in France with the Lionel Young Band in November.

I am playing more and more nay (Egyptian flute) and getting into playing bansuri, (Indian flute). And more into playing bass clarinet. And enjoying free improvisation with some very creative folks in a couple of different settings, one combined with movement. Here in Colorado, icons Art Lande and Ron Miles are some serious inspiration for free playing and there are quite a number of fine free players around here.

I always have the desire to write, which seems to take a back seat to almost anything else. But I think I have "in the can" a complete solo album recorded in "the Tank," a huge steel cylinder that sits on a hill in an oil town about a five-hour drive from here. You play a note in there (or even scuff your foot) and the sound lasts for nearly 60 seconds. A day in there changes the way you hear and play music forever, and I've gone there on and off for years. It's like Paul Horn in the Taj Mahal on acid! And I have a couple of "remote" writing collaborations going, where we record parts at home and send them back and forth.

I still have a dream to take the Dexter Payne Quintet, the one that recorded Pra Voce and Jazz For All, to new places where they will really be appreciated. They are all great players in all the projects they populate. That DPQ aggregation has a special chemistry and I'd love to show it around!  We have some nice shows coming up this summer.

And thanks to Sindhu, my partner in life these days, I've been getting to Asia to see Taiwan. I've had the chance to meet great new musical friends there AND even reconnect with Kailin Yong, who is currently back home in Singapore. I would love to go back to Turkey, and to Brazil, always. Someday, to Africa. And lately I've been very curious about India. It's a big world!

Fortunately, I can always get out my clarinet, close my eyes, and "take a trip without ever leaving the farm."

Comments