Julius Hemphill: Marty Ehrlich and Tim Berne Remember a Musical Visionary

AAJ:  A quick question: did Julius arrange and orchestrate the distinctive voices in the World Saxophone Quartet? Did he, in effect, make the arrangements?

ME:  The group was a collective. Julius was part of two great collectives: he was one of the founders of the Black Artists Group in St. Louis and a founder of the World Saxophone Quartet in New York City.  Both included Hamiet Bluiett and Oliver Lake. WSQ recorded wonderful pieces by Oliver, Bluiett, and David Murray. But during his years in the group, it is fair to say that Julius's writing—and the breadth of it—gave the World Saxophone Quartet much of its uniqueness. They were also four dynamic soloists.

TB:  He had that lead-sound thing. That really defined the ensemble music. I talked to him about it all the time. He was extremely frustrated by how slowly things moved. He wanted them to memorize everything. His output was far greater than their interest in learning it. I did not follow them religiously at the time, though I have gone back to the music. To me, it seemed less stimulating than the Sextet and the other settings where he could control everything, especially the writing. As for orchestration, he orchestrated the music as he wrote it.

ME:  His voicings for saxophones made your whole body feel good. If he were alive now, I think he would have a twelve-person saxophone group.  When he left the World Saxophone Quartet and began working with Bill T. Jones, he told me: "I wanted to keep writing for saxophones, and I thought, should it be four or six? I decided on six. I thought about it for 20 minutes and never thought about it again." Things were really opening up compositionally. He wrote for big band; he wrote brilliant classical pieces for the esteemed pianist Ursula Oppens , his beloved partner in his last decade.  He wrote One Atmosphere and a string quartet for the Kronos Quartet. Commissions were coming in, and he wrote Long Tongues, a saxophone opera that began as a large chamber music score. He was blossoming again as a writer. Sadly, because of numerous ailments, his body began to break down. But as Ursula points out, he stayed positive. We would rehearse while he was undergoing portable dialysis; you could see the fluid coming down the tube, and we were playing these tunes. He never complained. He was happy to be there. There were gigs where he performed in a wheelchair. The guy was amazing. From the early years onward, you could feel this continuous opening and opening and opening.

Tim, you had a real role in helping him put on concerts in the '70s and later. You helped Julius release The Blue Boyé on Mbari, Julius's own imprint. 

TB:  I was at the recording. He chose the studio, probably because it was cheap, up in Westchester. We were in some guy's basement: the worst—sounding room I have ever been in, and it was cold. I think it was February. Julius pulled up in this big, long overcoat that probably weighed more than he did. He got a stool, sat down in the coat, never took it off, and did the whole record in one take—including the overdubs. I did not know anything about recording, so I thought: Oh, I guess that is what you do. You do it once and hope for the best. It was mind-blowing. It was fucking freezing, and he was wearing this big-ass coat. I do not know how he did it. It may not be the best-sounding record in the history of jazz, but those overdub pieces—and the way he lined everything up—were unbelievable.

For The Blue Boyé, my sister and I helped him with the package. She did the cover, and Oliver Jackson had this great drawing. I was running the label—whatever that meant—and we sold the shit out of those records. It redefined my idea of success in music.

It was the same with Roi Boyé and the Gotham Minstrels (Sackville, 1977). He had this Nagra recorder and rode around on the subway recording things. I would ask, "What are you doing?" Little things: "I'm going to make these plexiglass music stands for a gig." There was no rehearsal. I would ask, "Are you going to rehearse?" He would say, "Gotta make these stands."

ME: They were so low, you really struggled to read from them standing up, which we were. 

TB: They weighed about six hundred pounds. They were impossible, especially if you were nearsighted—and the edges were awful.

 To me, success is doing something pretty good and getting better. It is not how much I made, whether I am touring Europe, playing Lincoln Center, or having a week at the Stone. It is: did I get better? Am I playing with people committed to what we are doing? Being around people like that, I thought, if this is failure, then I want to fail. Seeing the productivity, always doing something new. He didn't care if he wrote a lot of music, did a concert, and then lost it or didn't copy it. Those were his priorities. I adopted some of that too: the fear of repeating. I think, "Should I play this tune from three years ago?" and I start to get the shakes.

ME:  I agree with that, but as a composer, we now know from the archive that the two most performed pieces in his career were "Dogon A.D." and "Hard Blues." Though to Tim's point, Julius starts adding parts and orchestrating these works for different instrumental groupings. He was always writing new music, but he leaned on a few works for continuity.

TB:  Yes, for sure. 

ME:  At the same time, as Tim says, he was hearing new things, and he was going to do them. That is why he welcomed having his own band. He was not much of a sideman. He could do collectives, or he led. The sideman role did not really work for him.

People ask why I did this extensive archive work and then edited his compositions into publishable editions. The music speaks for itself. Its an amazing body of composition, for starters. I kept the JH Sax Sextet going for ten years after his passing because I couldn't stand to think of this music not being played. This music of our dear friend, for generations of people he befriended and touched.  Dear Friend, one of Julius' most beautiful chorales. Tim has told me about the many pieces of Junior's cheesecake they had in the years he lived in Tim's loft, talking late at night. We are all still talking.

I would never paint Julius as a simple person. He had many facets to his thoughts, including an almost religious side. As Tim says, he was thinking about magic. He would say he wanted his music to have the specificity of mood of Marvin Gaye. I would think, but Marvin had lyrics to give that directness, and then I'd realize that was beside the point. He believed he could create a music—an art—whether as an actor or even a designer of music stands, that would grab you in a transformative way. 

One day he was back from a World Saxophone Quartet tour, and I went to visit him in Ursula and his Upper West Side apartment. We headed out for breakfast and passed an older Black man on the corner. The man said, "Hey, Julius, how you doing?" Julius said, "Hey, I'll see you on the way back." We went to breakfast at his usual place. Walking back, Julius told me, "That's Fred. I always tighten him up when I get back from a tour." The man had a bad leg, as did Julius. I start seeing if I had any change. This was 1983. Julius pulls out a hundred-dollar bill. I put my quarters back in my pocket. He had been taking care of the man—there but for fortune go I. 

One last story, one that gave my mother pleasure for years. I have the feeling Tim will have a similar one.  Around 1985, I had a concert at Carnegie Recital Hall with my Dark Woods Ensemble, which was very important to me. My mother came up from Florida; well, it's Carnegie Hall.  Julius, much to my surprise, attended as well. He rarely came to concerts, as far as I knew. 

My mother knew Julius had been ill and said, "Julius, it's so wonderful that you're here, but you didn't have to come. I know you haven't been feeling well." He said, "Oh, Mrs. Ehrlich, I wouldn't miss one of Marty's concerts for the world." Total bullshit. But he knew how to charm the ladies. 

TB:  He loved my mother and father. My father connected him with surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian. If I said something had to be done, my parents were going to make sure it happened.

AAJ: That is great.

TB:  I found out that Meet the Composer gave grants, and that you had a better chance if you applied from outside New York City. A friend from my old cemetery job was managing Oakwood Cemetery, a nonprofit, so he applied for a grant to bring Julius to Cazenovia, where my parents lived. He got it. I told Larry, "We need a venue." He said he would find a place and publicize it. Julius put together a trio with Ajuramu and Abdul. Ajuramu had a station wagon with the drums, amp, and cello, and we drove six hours to Cazenovia, expecting to stay at my parents' house.

When we got there, I found out Larry had done nothing: no venue, no advertising, nothing. There was just a thousand-dollar check for a concert that no longer existed. I told my mother. She said, "Honey, I can call Cazenovia College," a very conservative girls' school down the hill from our house. This was about four in the afternoon. She reached somebody, drove down there, and got us a classroom. We hauled all the equipment in. There was no PA. I called ten friends from Syracuse and told them the concert was happening, and ten or twelve of them drove up. Julius played this unfucking believable set. Then we had a party at my parents' house. My mother—everybody called her Smitty—thought Julius was a lovely man. I was thinking, the less you know, the better. (laughter) Abdul was off in the corner thinking, "What the fuck is going on?" Ajuramu was grooving. But Julius was so cool with my parents. He was wonderful with them. 

ME:  And speaking of mothers, Edna, Julius' mother, deserves a shout out. She was a force, deeply religious, very sweet, and he loved her dearly. He tells the story that Edna played piano every week in church, but they did not own a piano, and he never saw her practice, so he grew up thinking that making music was, as Tim relates, magic. All part of the picture. 

TB:  And I have to say what Marty has done is unbelievable: the archive, these records, getting Dogon reissued, and this saxophone—quartet record. It is mind-blowing, the sound, the performances, everything. The decision to limit the improvisations in favor of the compositions is incredible.

ME:  Thank you, Tim. In the end, even though we wished Julius had had more time to create than he was given, it is clear he achieved this grand vision for his work.  I think he felt a great satisfaction in this, and it means a lot to have seen and felt this in performance and conversation with Julius.