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Leonard E. Jones: Taking Control Of Destiny

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AAJ: How old was he?

LJ: In 1969 he was 23, 24, I guess. He died and that devastated me. It devastated me in a sense that my other friend, Christopher Gaddy, had died almost one year to the day, in 1968. Charles died in 1969. I didn't want to play anymore and I had met this young German lady who was the executive secretary of this ship. When I got back to Chicago, the situation for me just wasn't the same anymore. I got myself a passport, bought myself a plane ticket and left for Hamburg. I married my girlfriend there, which was not to the liking of her father. Hamburg was very expensive, like now. You couldn't find an apartment. But we did find a place—they call them lofts now. The rent was very cheap. So, we took the top floor at 200 D- Mark. Her father gave her money and I built walls to separate all of this stuff.

AAJ: And you started studying photography in Hamburg.

LJ: Two floors below us was an art school. There was this relatively famous Hamburg artist Rolf Laute. Eventually I got to know him and told him I took photographs. He asked if he could see some of my photographs and I showed him some. He said, 'Well, you should try and get into the Kunsthochschule (art school) Lerchenfeld.' He helped me put together my portfolio, chose the photographs. I took my portfolio over to Lerchenfeld, showed my photos and got accepted as a freelance artist.

AAJ: Wow.

LJ: I had already done some of my best photographs before I even got to the art school.

AAJ: And you still played music in Hamburg?

LJ: First, I had to buy a bass. There was a place in Sankt Georg where they were selling all kinds of used things. The guy had two basses in his basement shop. I bought one of them, for 75 D-Mark. Then, in the art school, I met an English guy named Mick Traynor, who played folk music. Mick and I hooked up. We played folk music. Have you ever heard of the club Onkel Pö's?

AAJ: Yes.

LJ: I helped open up Onkel Pö's, with Mick Traynor, and another folk singer named Arno. I was one of the first people that played at Onkel Pö's. We played for beer. Mick Traynor and Arno—I don't remember his last name, a very good folk musician. That's what we played, folk songs. Later on, Onkel Pö's got really famous— basically due to Al Jarreau. But I wasn't living in Hamburg anymore at the time. I left Hamburg in 1972.

AAJ: Before you left Hamburg, you visited the Art Ensemble Of Chicago in Paris in 1970 and two years later you played several venues in Amsterdam with Wadada Leo Smith and Henry Threadgill.

LJ: Yeah. In 1970, I went to visit the Art Ensemble of Chicago in Paris, with my wife. They were recording some important music at the time and I took photographs. That was my interest. Later I found out how these recordings became some of the most famous that they recorded at the time. Then, in 1971, the Art Ensemble knew where I lived—in Hamburg. They had given my address to Wadada Leo Smith and Henry Threadgill. They came over from Amsterdam. Now, I didn't know that they were in Europe. They had bought this truck. And they said, do you want to come with us on tour? And I told my wife, 'I'll be back' [laughs]. I packed my bass and jumped in the van with them and we headed to Amsterdam where we played the Hilversum Festival.

AAJ: Do you have some memories about that?

LJ: We played at the Paradiso and they wanted us to play on the stage. But we didn't want to play on the stage. We played in the middle of the floor with all the audience around us. I think that was new for them.

AAJ: What kind of music did you play?

LJ: It was pretty experimental. It was what we did— improvise.

AAJ: Did the people come to hear that?

LJ: Oh yes, they did. And then we played the Melkweg, which never had any kind of music that is experimental or avant-garde, free, whatever words I don't like to use. The Melkweg is a place—there is a ground floor, a first floor, and a second floor. You have to go up the steps. When we played there, everybody played on a different floor. Like somebody was on the ground floor, somebody was on the first floor, somebody was on the second floor- -all in the stairway.

AAJ: Is there any music recorded that you did together in Amsterdam?

LJ: No.

AAJ: In 1974, you moved back to Chicago.

LJ: Yeah, in the summer of '74 I returned to Chicago.

AAJ: Did you work again with Muhal Richard Abrams?

LJ: Yeah. Muhal was pretty much my first contact. I'd always had this pretty close relationship with him and his family.

AAJ: Have you been friends or was it more of a close musical working connection?

LJ: We were friends although he was older. From the time when he was teaching me, we became friends.

AAJ: In George E. Lewis's AACM study A Power Stronger Than Itself one can read about an exodus of AACM musicians around 1977. Many of them moved to New York or even farther, to Europe. Was this the time when you moved to New York City as well?

LJ: Yes, I moved to New York in 1977. But before, in May 1977, the WKCR in New York—the Columbia University radio station—was putting on an AACM festival. So, we chartered a bus and I don't know how many people—it must have been at least thirty people, when I went to this New York festival. We lived in the Stanford Hotel down around 32nd and Broadway or 34th and Broadway—somewhere. I used to walk from there to Columbia University at 116th every day. And then you played with whatever groups or ensembles you had been chosen to play with. I don't remember how that was regulated. That stimulated my fascination for New York, these three, four, five days. And later, in 1977, in August, I decided that I would pack up my things and go to New York. I first stayed with Muhal Richard Abrams and his family.

AAJ: They lived already in New York?

LJ: Yeah. Chicago people were pretty much aware of what was happening with Manhattan Plaza, they applied for apartments, got accepted, eventually I got accepted for one.

AAJ: How was the music you played with Muhal Richard Abrams received in New York?

LJ: We were doing so many concerts. We were basically playing in clubs. The first club I played in New York was with Henry Threadgill, George Lewis, Steve McCall, and Muhal Richard Abrams. We played Storyville. Then eventually, we started playing in Sweet Basil's. We played often in there. We had a pretty mixed program. We played some standard tunes and then we do what Chicago people do. It was cool because we had all of these people that would come and see us when we played at Sweet Basil's. The musicians always came. They would be at the end of the bar. There was Cecil Taylor. He loved the band. We had this tune that was a march, and Cecil would always say, 'Play that march, I like that march!' Those three years in New York were really exciting.

AAJ: I'm surprised, because what I read was that in the Seventies the work situation for this music was not very good and the clubs were closing.

LJ: No, no. There was a highly creative scene. I came in just about at the end of the period, where people were playing in lofts. And there were places where you could play— in Sweet Basil's, The Tin Palace, Axis in Soho, Rashid's Alley, a place called Blue Hawaii, but that was short lived. I played at Rashid's and then I did some stuff that had nothing to do (with experimental music)—I played Dixieland. There was a guy that called me for jobs on Eleventh Ave, somewhere in the Twenties, there was this place. These guys would call me. It was a gig. It didn't pay a lot, but you had a gig. We'd play all of those traditional jazz tunes, old-time stuff. I didn't know all of those tunes but these cats liked me and they kept calling me.

AAJ: In 1980, you moved back to Europe—to Munich in Germany. Why?

LJ: My son was having emotional problems. I couldn't neglect that responsibility. That's the only reason I came back. I lived in Manhattan Plaza from 1977 until March 1980.

AAJ: Your son and his mother lived in Munich?

LJ: Yes.

AAJ: Mal Waldron also lived in Munich for some time and—more important in this context—you played and recorded with him after you came back to Germany. Can you share some thoughts about him?

LJ: Once Mal recovered from his nervous breakdown, he had to learn how to play again. And what he had developed is very structured. A lot of people say it's repetitious. That maybe is the case, but there is so much dynamic and variations in these repetitive figures that he played. It was trance-like. It builds up ... it just puts you into something trance-like. I always found that interesting. And when I started working with Mal, it was even more interesting, because I could see how concentrated he was in what he was doing. I could see it.

AAJ: Do you have some details about that?

LJ: You don't necessarily just hear the music, but then you could feel it. I was standing next to him. I could always see he was totally concentrated in his playing. The music was always building. It just kept evolving and evolving. And then sometimes you just hear these little ... it would be a change. You know, it kept building. A lot of people didn't like his playing.

AAJ: People who said he is anti-virtuosic.

LJ: I don't know about all that. He dealt with dynamics, texture, structure and sound in general. It was very creative. There is one duo record that he did with Steve Lacy, Sempre Amore (Soul Note, 1987), which is absolutely fantastic, they go back a long way together, you know.

AAJ: You recorded with him too.

LJ: I did one recording with Mal Waldron— Our Colline's A Treasure (Soul Note, 1987), with Sangoma Everett on drums.

AAJ: I have one more question about Muhal Richard Abrams. Your musical cooperation with him covers a time span of more than fifty years. Can you share some thoughts about your life-long relationship?

LJ: There's a lot of friendship involved, a lot of friendship. But he did a lot of stuff on his own, where I wasn't around—important work on an extremely high level, as far as I'm concerned.

AAJ: Was he important to your musical development?

LJ: He was important to me. He was important to my life, period. Not only him but his immediate family. Those people are some of the most important people in my life. The year before he died, his bassist—Brad Jones—didn't have enough time on his passport to make the tour ... or it was just one concert in Milano. They needed a bassist and so they called me and asked me, would I come fly down to Milano and do the concert. And I was honored, I was honored.

AAJ: Can you share some memories about Muhal Richard Abrams as a person, as an artist, as a musician?

LJ: As a musician? He was thoroughly versed in all aspects of the music. He could play stride piano, he wrote amazing orchestrations, some of the most interesting pieces of written music that you are going to come across. And as a human being he had lots of humor. And he had a sense of direction. He never locked you into something, you were responsible for what you had to do, and that was it. That's how you came to rehearsals and that's how you came to whatever concert you had. You were responsible for what you had to do. He didn't ask you for anything more than be yourself and play the music. That was it and he encouraged you to find your own way/voice in the music.

AAJ: Can you describe his music a little bit?

LJ: The music—it could be—it covers the whole genre. It just covered everything—from the beginning to wherever you wanted to go. The man was just well-versed in all aspects of music. I am very proud to have been associated with Muhal Richard Abrams, very proud. And that he sometimes allowed me to come in and do things. I think in particular with Muhal's Experimental Band. I was there in the beginning, not the very beginning but from 1964 on. I've always been a part of the Experimental Band.

AAJ: Did the Experimental Band continue to be active in parallel to the AACM?

LJ: Yes.

AAJ: Can you explain a little bit why you stayed in Germany, living there for more than forty years now? Are there any particular reasons?

LJ: Like I said, I had a responsibility which I couldn't neglect. I've been through some strange times here. I've done a lot of different things. I played in Dixieland bands or what they're called: the traditional jazz bands. Some of them were horrible.

AAJ: German bands?

LJ: Yeah. But basically, I've been associated with trombone players in Europe, first with Marty Cook and Herman Breuer. Then again there was Lezek Zadlo, Allen Praskin, Gunter Klatt, and Frank St. Peter, all saxophonists. I worked eleven years with Gene Conners. I worked with Lou Blackburn, in his International Quartet with Emil Viklicky on piano, and with (his band) Mombasa. We worked together for eight years. Lou died in 1990.

AAJ: I'd like to learn more about Dialogues: Improvisations For One Bass, your bass solo album that you released in 2011. How did it come to that?

LJ: It was something I had thought about for a long time. And then—over the years, going back to the States, I always visited my mother and I would see my brother. I always thought, 'Oh, my brother is very fragile.' My brother was in the Vietnam War, exposed to Agent Orange, like so many Vietnamese and veterans. He had kidney failure, he was on dialysis. When I visited him, I was thinking, 'He is fragile' and I would tell my mother, 'He is fragile, he could go anytime.' In 2010, he went— real sudden—to the hospital. His wife came, and then his daughter came, and he just went. And that was it. When they called me, I decided that it was time for me to do this solo project. It took me a little while. I just improvised myself through it.

AAJ: There are some experiments with electronic sounds in it.

LJ: Yeah, with non-intrusive use of electronic sounds. If you can find the space in your music and that's what you're hearing, then it's okay. You just incorporate it into what you are doing. The passing of my brother inspired me to do that project. I did the recording, the mix, designed the cover, did the poetry, and I included the photograph—when my brother and I were small children, a dedication to him.

AAJ: Sort of a Gesamtkunstwerk.

LJ: Well, if you will.

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