Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran: Volume 2: Solo Voices

Gelder

TRUMPET PLAYERS

DON CHERRY

His language like his life is free flowing, a stream that follows the lay of the land and rushes forward from a source of nature. He is full of joy and enthusiasm and his ideas often run ahead of his speech. Thus a conversation with Don Cherry is not a linear, organized event. It takes many contours, and it describes the journey of a remarkable mind and spirit. Just as his music encompasses the ethnic expression of cultures as far flung as the hills of North Africa and the Watts ghetto of Los Angeles, the New York art scene of the ‘50’s and the free community of the diggers in Sweden during the ‘70’s, Don Cherry has always played his own way, a very personal music. Starting as a trumpet player and then moving to the pocket trumpet which he made famous while working with Ornette Coleman’s band, Don moved on to flutes, double reed instruments, African string instruments (such as the hunter’s bow) and even became a singer in order to set free his musical voice. Don Cherry is s pioneer in the field of world music, which, ironically, has lead him back to the classical jazz scene in the United States.

Ben: We’ve gotten to spend some time together this past year, working on radio and television programs together, and it’s been revealing for me to get to know you as a person—having lived with your music for many years—because you are as charming, intellectual and humorous as your music is.

Don: Oh, thank you. Well that is one of the problems that I have in America. I haven’t been a part of the media in America, which is something I really want to do more.

Ben: I became aware of you back in the late ‘50’s with your work with Ornette Coleman.

Don: Right, that was a group that we started out in California with Billy Higgins and Ornette and Charlie Haden playing bass. And a lot of the listeners today haven’t had a chance to really experience that group because it’s mostly played with records. We played up until ‘61 together. And since then, we’ve had different meetings and played together on different records.

But when I was first playing with Ornette, I felt, as I feel now, that I was studying with him because he had so much to offer. And he had a lot of persecution and people really put him down because of his music and because of the way he would look. Because in the late ‘50’s, he was one of the first people that I know who had long hair. And he would get a lot of persecution for that.

Where I first heard Ornette was in Watts, where I was raised in Los Angeles. It was at a record shop in Watts. It was like the center of Watts where we all went to hear all the records, and where we would buy reeds and valve oil. It was a musician, Mr. Canard, that had the shop. And they would make congas there and musicians would come from all over because it was really a center. And that’s when there were 78 records. And we couldn’t buy all the records, but we could go an hang out and listen.

And I remember walking towards (the store) and we were about two blocks away and heard this sound! Me and a friend of mine named George Newman that plays alto saxophone and we were raised together. And we had heard about Ornette because of Janie Cortez, who was his first wife and a very prominent American black poet. She was like George Newman and my guru, where she would lend us records and we would take them home and it would be Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk or Bud Powell and we would learn the songs and bring the record back and play the song to her. And then she would allow us to borrow another record. And sometimes, we would even play parts of the solos because we all knew the solos. If not play them, we could sing them. So that’s where I had heard about Ornette ...

And I remember when Charlie Parker came to Los Angeles, and I had the privilege of hearing him three times ... once with Stan Kenton’s band and once in concert with him and Chet Baker and Lawrence Marable and Amos Trice, and I think Harper Cosby was playing bass, and then again I heard him at the 5/4 Ballroom ... and Ornette was to go sit in with him at the Tiffany Club. And Ornette’s saxophone wasn’t a new saxophone and he had it all taped up with rubber bands and he wanted to borrow a saxophone to go play. So he asked George Newman. Actually Janie did, to let Ornette use the saxophone to go play with Charlie Parker. And when he got to the club, they wouldn’t allow him in because of his long hair.

So that never happened. But they did meet. And I was so happy to hear Bird around the period because it was really something to hear. We had been hearing records, but to hear him live like that in person ... and we were very young. I was like sixteen or 7teen years old at the time.

Ben: The interesting thing is that a few years later when Ornette finally did get recorded, and there was a firestorm of controversy about him, there were some comparisons of him with Bird, in terms of his use of intonation and the way he extended the blues form.

Don: Well you have to understand that Ornette was coming from Texas and Texas has some very strong culture in saxophone playing. Some fantastic saxophone players have come out of Texas. And we were all like the students and listening to Bird. And even when we started playing together, we would have a set, a medley of Charlie Parker songs that we would play. And actually Ornette would not play the same phrases as Bird but he knew the concept and would get the sound of the phrases. You know, have a tribute for Bird and still sound like Ornette Coleman.

Ben: Ornette talks at one point in the liner notes to one of his early records about getting the human sound and how important that is. And he also talks about rhythm being like breathing, something that rises and falls ...

Don: And another wonderful thing was around that particular time in Los Angeles, Edward Blackwell was there. And Edward Blackwell and Ornette would play together a lot. And I can feel within the compositions of Ornette that Blackwell’s concept was inspiring Ornette for the way that he wrote. And when they played together it was something so special.

And Blackwell at that time had a small set of drums. Like he had a tom tom for his bass drum. It looked like a miniature set of drums. And it was something I couldn’t understand, what made his playing so different. I mean, he was from New Orleans, and you know Edward Blackwell used to tap dance in the street, so he had that New Orleans feeling in his playing. But he always made mallets and practice pads and he was always practicing. And he has this independence, which is the real concept that he’s playing.

But, when he plays you don’t hear a crash ... it was so clean because of the control that he had developed. Everything he played was very clean and so you had to really play, and swing, in order to play with him. And when he hears the sound, he knows how to make it swing. Or which direction you’re going.

And that’s what made the group special. We could play the compositions of Ornette and improvise from the compositions and create forms in our improvisation. Not just stick to the standard AABA form, even though maybe the songs were made that way. But the feeling of the composition, and the way it was moving, and the groove, the swing that it had, was what we would pivot off of in our improvisation. So that was the only different thing in the way that we were playing was that we could improvise and create forms. And the rhythm section was down enough—they had elephant ears—where what direction you would go, the musical, natural direction, they could follow and accompany. And then they would lay something that you would follow. So it was a give and take.

Ben: How is this related to the concept of Harmelodic playing, which is a term Ornette has used to describe his music.

Don: Well, with us playing without a piano ... on the first record, we played with a piano and Walter Norris was the pianist who is a grand piano player, coming from Tatum and Bud Powell, that source ... but afterwards, with us playing without a piano, we had to play phrases where the harmony could be heard. And the harmony we’re speaking of in relation to chord changes. I mean, Thelonious Monk is another good example of that because his melodies are where you can hear the harmonies in the melody, and you can improvise from Monk’s tunes from the melody or from the chords. You know, you have two to work from. But in the harmelodic concept when you improvise you play phrases where you can hear the harmonies too.

And the human side was more of the sound. Because in jazz music, it’s the sound that swings. I mean, the rhythm is coming from the rhythm section, but the actual sound is what really makes it swing. I mean, Lester Young is a good example of that, how he would play the simplest of phrases but his sound had it swinging, you know. You can feel the swing within the sound.

And Ornette would always write the compositions down, which a lot of people didn’t know. And he had his own way of notating where he didn’t use bar lines. Now he has a clef, a harmelodic clef. There’s a treble clef and the bass clef and the figure 8, which is the harmelodic clef. And to really explain it, Ornette is writing a book and it’s better for him to explain it.

But I can tell you one story. When we would learn compositions, Ornette and I, and we would learn it in unison, then I would play the composition and he would write a harmony. And his harmony would end up being a melody. So the melody that I’d be playing from the beginning would end up being a harmony. So when we were playing in later years, with Dewey and three pieces, he would write a third part. So Dewey, the third part, would end up being melody and the other two parts would end up being harmony. So when you listen to pieces like Skies Of America, for example, where he had a whole orchestra and he did that, it’s really something. To me, I believe this piece is one of the absolute musical pieces of our times. And that’s a good example of how the harmelodic system has developed.

But if musicians really want to learn the harmelodic system, they have to study with Ornette, and the best way is to study Ornette’s compositions.

Ben: In harmelodics, then, you improvise off of the intervals and the relationships ...

Don: To the sound of each note, yeah

Ben: Each note is the tonic ...

Don: And the swing of each note too. Like (he sings an Ornette melody) ... the movement, you can feel how it’s moving. (Sings more). That’s a whole little composition within itself. And you’re working in C there, but it’s ending in A flat, the last phrase. Where it’s starting out in G minor and it goes into C and resolves.

So you can feel the swing in it. And the rhythm section can. Like we would never count a tune off, like say one, two, three, four and then go. We’d feel each other and then hit right on it. And then that’s the way we could feel the tempo, what it would be. And we could play the compositions in different tempo and they still would have a different kind of swing or different story to tell in relation to it.

And then when we opened up at the Five Spot, every night, Ornette would bring at least two to three tunes that we would play that night. And we would go over them before the gig, play one each set and then play them all together. Or play one as a check at the end of the night.

Ben: When you opened at the Five Spot in New York, it was quite an event. And you played there for several months ...

Don: Yes, it was very unusual to play in New York at one club for such a long time. And there was always two groups playing.

Ben: Some people loved what you were doing, they called it the shape of things to come, which later became a title for an Ornette composition. And there was a lot of excitement about the spiritual basis of the music too. Of course many critics and musicians hated what was happening. Every night must have been something else.

Don: Yes, that’s true. At that time, a lot of musicians thought that we were just playing completely free and hadn’t really studied. But I think that once the musicians realized that it was notated first and memorized, and we would play compositions that we would practice forward and backward, and we always were studying the law of intervals...and the swing was one of the main important things of the music ... and that spiritual side that you speak of is just the honestness. And it’s something that we could never explain.

Ben: What was the scene like at the Five Spot? I know a lot of musicians were coming around to check the group out.

Don: Yeah. And a lot of artists. It was mostly the support of the whole art scene. Painters from the Cedar Bar, you know, de Kooning and Bob Thomson and Larry Rivers, LeRoi Jones and poets like Ginsburg. It was just the whole scene, Jackson Pollock and Hans Hoffman was the whole inspiration of the art scene at that time. I can remember Chamberlain, many other names come to mind because everyone came at one time or another. And musicians from Thelonious Monk to Miles Davis and Coltrane came a lot. And Mingus and Phineas Newborn and Max Roach, they would come and sometimes they would sit in. Even Lionel Hampton came one night and sat in.

Something was really happening, and the Jazztet was playing opposite us. Randy Weston was playing opposite us. I mean it kept changing with the different groups and musicians. And then it was a period that because of the cabaret cards, Billy Higgins had to leave and Charlie Haden had to leave. So that’s when Scot LaFaro came and that’s when Edward Blackwell came.

And we had both known Scot LaFaro in Los Angeles. Because there was a time when Scot LaFaro and Charlie Haden lived in a garage and each one had an apartment on each side. And I used to come there to play, and I’d stand in front of the door, and I could hear both of them practicing. And I didn’t know which door to go into. (Laughs). And the thing about Scotty is that Scotty always played the top, and he was the first bass player I know that used the technique with all his fingers, as a guitar, and plucking. He sounded to me like he was in the cello clef. Where Charlie was the opposite. He played in the bottom. And Charlie had that country-Western gospel sound, coming from the Ozarks, and Scotty was in the classical tradition. He turned me on to a lot of composers, like Kodaly and Stravinsky.

I mean, between Scot LaFaro and Steve Lacy, those were two teachers that really turned me on to contemporary classical music. Actually, Ornette and Blackwell and I had all been contacted by the people that were working with Harry Parch. And Harry Parch was a composer who made his own instruments and made his own studio. We went to San Francisco and stayed in his studio and it was the first introduction to Harry Parch and his music. And he never had his music recorded at that time because he felt the technology wasn’t ready. And when he would do his pieces, they would be operas, and so it was a certain production, and he would make the instruments also. And that sort of opened it up for ethnic music.

Ben: This whole area you’re talking about is that intersection where the avant-garde is synonymous with ethnic music, is synonymous with technology at the cutting edge of musical theory, it’s a great musical stew ...

Don: Yeah, of what’s happening now in music. You can really feel it. But I remember like me and Ornette went to hear, in the ‘50’s, at UCLA when Stockhausen played a piece. I remember he (Stockhausen) came out and said, well he shouldn’t play his music because the architecture wasn’t really that good at Royce Hall, but that he had traveled so long he’d do it. And that was one of our first introductions to electronic music.

Ben: You once told me that around this same time you met and played with Miles Davis in Los Angeles.

Don: Yes. Well, you know I had been listening to Miles for years and had been a fan. And one night, I used to have a gig in Hollywood on Sunset at a club called the Renaissance Club, and Billy Higgins and Leroy Vinnegar used to play trio there on Monday nights. And around this time Miles Davis came out with the group with Cannonball, Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers and John Coltrane. And they played for two weeks and that particular Monday night they were off. And we were playing at the Renaissance, and I had just gotten the pocket trumpet. And we were in the second set and all of a sudden somebody tapped me on the shoulder. On the bandstand. And I turned around and it was Miles. And he had his hand out, he wanted to try my trumpet. And also, the rhythm section, when Leroy and Billy Higgins get together that’s really something cooking, and so he (Miles) played something on my horn. And then I played some and then we both played and so he spent the whole night. And that was when we first really got a chance to meet each other.

And then in later years, when we were in New York, he would come in and he would have the waiter bring a little note up. And he says, Can I play your horn...Miles Davis. And he would come in and sit in with the group with Ornette. And what he liked to play was a song called When Will The Blues Leave. And it was always great to hear him and be around him. I’ve always loved Miles’ playing and the way he’s developed.

Ben: And particularly lately, where he has maintained his sound and moved into the area of electronics, this reminds me of some of the things you were talking about where there is an intersection of the avant-garde with ethnic music and technology.

Don: Yes. He’s within the last few years really developed a lot within the technology side. As a trumpet, he’s always had it anyway. But he’s gone through the technical period, and now I feel what he’s doing, he’s balanced the two out.

Ben: You also mentioned John Coltrane coming by the Five Spot and I know that Ornette and the scene you were on in New York had a real impact on his playing in the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s.

Don: Well yes, and I remember that when I first came to New York, I stayed with Steve Lacy. And Steve Lacy is a person that collects books and is very much into the art scene. One of his favorite painters is Dubuffet. And he only played soprano saxophone. He just mastered the soprano saxophone. And we went on the road (with Ornette) for a while and came to Chicago to play, and we came a little earlier because Trane was playing. So we came a day early to hear Trane before we opened up.

And Trane was playing soprano saxophone, that was the first time. So I called New York City on the phone in the club, I think it was the Sutherland Lounge, and I said Steve, listen to this. And I put the telephone for him to hear, and it was Trane playing soprano. And so Steve said, So that’s why John Coltrane asked me what key the soprano saxophone was in, because he was going to get one. And he knew it was Trane, you know, over the phone. And that was one of those bright moments of contact with all of us as artists.

And then later we recorded together, Trane and I.

Ben: It was a wonderful record called The Avant-garde, with Percy Heath on bass and Edward Blackwell on drums. I remember particularly you did the Ornette Coleman composition The Blessing.

Don: Y es, and this is something that I just figured out myself. You know Trane has written a song called Naima. And the first phrase of The Blessing contains the first phrase of Naima. So I was thinking that maybe, in some kind of way, he felt how the phrase and the intervals were moving to write Naima. Even though I know it was inspired, with Trane, probably by a more spiritual (moment). Because his compositions came to him as a message.

And you know, John Coltrane was one of the first musicians that actually said, publicly, that he played his music for the spirit of music. And when he reached a certain enlightenment, it changed the whole scene because of him being a vegetarian and meditating and everything. And everyone became more aware of health and balance and life. And there was a whole period where we all went through that to survive. But he was one of the main persons to really set an example. He didn’t speak about it, he just set an example.

Ben: Around this time, you also went to Europe for the first time.

Don: Yes, I went to Europe with Sonny Rollins. And the way that happened was after playing with Ornette, and he made a change in his group. And I had went back to California and I was out there going crazy in Los Angeles. You know, California is the kind of place that if you play like somebody else, it’s good. But if you’re original, well then you have it real hard. And that’s one of the reasons that Ornette really had it hard, you know?

But around the time when I was young out in California, there was musicians like Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray and Hampton Hawes and Harper Cosby—who was one of my teachers—and the bass player Lawrence Marable.

And then I remember when Max (Roach) came out there with Clifford Brown and I met Clifford and became very close with him, and he really helped me a lot. He always said that to play a trumpet you have to really be in shape like an athlete, and he was always that way. And I remember he used to say If you’re reaching for high notes and you miss them, go back, keep going back, keep going back. And they would play songs like Jordu and Daahoud, I would call Brownie up the next day and he would give me the chords over the telephone so I could practice them.

Ben: That was back in the early ‘50’s ...

Don: Right. So actually, being in California at that time was special, because things were really happening. And me coming through that scene, with Wardell and Frank Morgan and going to Jefferson High School and Horace Tapscott was there, and all the musicians were on the scene at that time. I mean, I could sit up and just name names for ever. But you know, it was also the other scene over on the other side, the Cool side with Shorty Rogers and Chet Baker. I mean that scene was really alive in Los Angeles.

But when I went back the other time there was nothing really happening in the ‘60’s. And I was going crazy. But Sonny Rollins came out and he had a group with Jim Hall and it a was more quiet, conventional type of group. And after the gig, Sonny felt like playing more so we used to drive and I would take him to different spots in California, by the sea and in the mountains, where we would practice together until the sun would come up. And so he said he would like to send for me in the future, you know, and I thought it would be wonderful, and then he left and went to San Francisco.

Then about two weeks later, he called and told me to come to play with him in San Francisco. And I had been out in California and I was really out, you know, I don’t think I even had a horn. I was just like down. So I finally got a horn together and went to San Francisco to play with Sonny Rollins at this club. And I had all these feelings in me and just one night I played, and I was out. I played too much, or whatever. And the group was very cool. Cause you know Jim plays very good but he was very cool. And I needed the release to be free, because of what I was going through. And so Sonny, that night he paid me for the whole week and said, Don, I don’t think it’s going to work out. (Laughs).

So then I went back to Los Angeles and he said he would send for me. And he went back to New York and a month passed. And he called and he said, Are you still free? And I said yes. And he said, Well, stay on cue. And I waited and waited and waited and finally he called. And the funny thing is that I had got a job at United Airlines, because I had wanted to get back to New York. So I got a job bustin’ dishes. And I remember they had a magazine called Mainliner. And you know, like I’m going around taking things off the tables and this airline hostess is sitting up reading this magazine and I look at the cover and there’s my picture on the cover!

So anyway, the job was too much because it was so far, the airport from where I lived, that by the time I would get there and get back home it was time to go to work again, you know. Because there was no busses. The busses stopped in the ghetto late at night. So when Sonny sent for me to come, finally—and that’s when we came to make this record at the Village Vanguard called Our Man In Jazz—when I was leaving Los Angeles on United Airlines, all the people that worked there saw me leaving. And they said, Where you going? What do you think you’re doing? I said, I’m going to New York, and they said, Aw, you better get on back in the kitchen. (Laughs). And I was getting on the ramp going to the plane, and you could see the kitchen from the ramp, and I waved at everybody. And they were standing there with their mouths open.

And I came to New York and we made this record. And Bob Cranshaw was playing bass and Billy Higgins and Sonny and myself. And no piano. And then that group went to Europe. And that was in ‘63.

We went to Rome first and stayed there for a week. And Sonny had suits made for everybody, tuxedos, and we took off for every major city in Europe. And that’s when I met Albert Ayler.

Now when we were speaking in relation to the whole spiritual side of the music, Albert Ayler was one of those persons that really had—and to the end—there was something that he had to do and his life was dedicated to doing it. And when you heard his sound, it would make you feel you were in the church. It was real what we call gospel sound, but he was a jazz player. And he had been in the army and had got out of the army and gone to Russia. Then he came back and was living in Sweden. And Moki, my wife, they were very good friends. They inspired each other and it was quite a period around that time. Because Cecil Taylor came to Stockholm at that time. And Albert was staying in Stockholm and they played together.

And then afterwards, he came to Copenhagen. And that’s when I met him, in Copenhagen. He was waiting on the sideline from the stage after the concert, and he asked me did I want to go to a session at the Montmartre. So I said sure, and so then we went to Montmartre and at this session was Don Byas, Dexter Gordon, I think Niels Henning was playing bass, at that time he was very young. And Albert and myself. So we played a jam, you know, a blues or something, and then they played a medley. And Albert didn’t play on the first tune, just me and Dexter and Don and the rhythm section. But then they played a medley of ballads and everybody played a ballad. I think I played something like I Cover The Waterfront and then I heard Albert Ayler, his sound come. As I remember it—now me and Billy Higgins, we argue about it ‘cause he was there too—and I thought he had played Moon River like (sings opening line), but it was like the primal scream. And that’s a whole different thing about when the music actually started screaming. But at this particular session, I heard him and chills went up my spine. Billy Higgins says that he played Summertime, which is a piece that Albert could really play too. But I remember that it was Moon River.

But anyway, it was just like that same feeling when I first heard Ornette at that record shop and we could hear him two blocks away and Ornette was trying a number 4 reed. And it was like that same feeling of something that’s so familiar, but it’s for the first time. And that particular period was important for me because I met Albert, and I met Bud Powell, and I met Johnny Griffin in Stockholm.

I went back to New York after that in ‘63 and I came back to Europe six months later with John Tchicai and Archie Shepp, Don Moore and J.C. Moses. And then I came back to New York and then went back to Europe again with Albert. I remember Albert and Milford Graves came to my house and asked me if I wanted to go to Europe. And after that Albert came back to New York and I went to North Africa.

And that was my first time of going to another country where it’s a different time and a different smell.

Ben: Was that when you encountered what many call world music for the first time, as opposed to American music taken to another country or European music?

Don: Yes. And that’s a part of what I’ve been involved in the last few years also.

I mean, in growing up, my parents have American Indian background, so I’ve always been listening to different American Indian songs and trying to have that feeling in my whole way of life when I was young, making teepees and bow and arrows and my first drum. But going to North Africa was like the first time I was in a country where I lived ... I went to Jujuka, which is a village of music. And there’s a painter called Amrah, who lives in Tangiers who’s from Jujuka, and he plays music too. And we met in Tangiers and he said, You play music? You must go to Jujuka.

So when I went up there, it’s in the mountains, you can’t drive up there, you have to walk. And I remember you have to take sugar to the village and then the man of the store, they have a meeting where they accept it, and the sugar and you, you can stay. And they would have a little hut that you would go up to every night and play. You know, sit up and cut the kif and they would just play music almost all night. And they would be playing those pan or double reed instruments and the flute, which is the ne, which you play from the top of the cane, of the bamboo.

And this is where I started really being interested and living with the music. And it’s an Islamic country so I was really trying to study Islam at that time. Which is an endless study also. But the thing is, some of the older musicians would learn me songs, which has been inspiration for other music that I’ve done in later years. And later, Ornette has even been there and recorded with the pipes and some other English musician who has been there. I think it was Ginger Baker or something, many years ago.

But it was one of the great experiences in my life. Before that, living in America, I was always raised around people from Mexico so I always played in Latin bands. And then the whole harmony that’s happened between the Latin people and Black people, which is very important and has been an inspiration in jazz music all the time, with Charlie Parker and Machito and Dizzy Gillespie and George Russell. I studied with George Russell, and with Kenny Durham, he’s another teacher of mine. And Gunther Schuller, and, when we went to the Lenox School of Music, Herb Pomeroy who teaches orchestration at the Berklee School of Music. That was when me and Ornette went to the school in Berklee.

But the experience in North Africa was really strong enough for me to continue, and I became very much interested in playing the flute. And the voice. And after that, I returned to Stockholm. And in Stockholm I really realized from studying more. In Europe, there’s many people there from other lands, and many Europeans that travel a lot and study other instruments. And I started, some kind of way in my Karma, finding them and we were finding each other.

Moki and I, we started something called Organic Music. A movement incorporated. And we would go from city to city and give concerts. And we would spend time working with people in that city and then we’d have a concert that was open to the people of the community. And there would be us and other people that were playing different instruments or doing poetry or dance. And Moki would do the environment, and this was where we started really working on giving performances where we were using the environment. Moki would make tapestries and it was like ecology because she would find different pieces of fabric. And she’d always have a scissors and she would cut pieces of fabric and people would give her things, so the tapestries were not only paintings and environment and color—because Moki’s concept is that color is light—but they would also be songs.

Because when I was teaching in Stockholm they would have classes and people teaching dance or Montessori school would all come to these classes. And we would be studying together. And you can’t teach anyone how to improvise but you can make a format for people to be able to play, like an empty canvas. That’s what I call some of the motifs or the forms. And I was always looking for the basic forms, like from the blues changes, the 12 bar blues, to 8 bar blues changes, to certain Caribbean forms. And we would work from those forms and we would improvise from them.

So we started traveling around, and we traveled all the way down to France and gave performances and met a lot of the people in Europe that now are established in jazz music and now what we call world music. And I remember like realizing the different ways of playing the bamboo. Like in Japan they play the shakahachi from the top and the sakina in South America they play from the top. We use the transverse from the side. And I started realizing how the bamboo has little pores. And when you’re playing, you’re not just playing through the tube but it’s to vibrate the pores. And you really can understand that when you see a double reed instrument like the oboe from different countries, from Slavic countries and the Arabic countries and even in Italy, parts of Italy and Sardinia, they have this double reed. Which is very powerful and electronic. And I even started putting the double reed in the trumpet at certain times because of the possibility of creating the drone.

So all these things we started exploring and studying.

Ben: And you became part of a group that really broke out the concept of world music.

Don: Yes, there were musicians in Sweden that I was playing with that had studied in Africa. One musician named Ben Berger had studied in India. He studied tabla and merdungam, which is a drum that’s played from both sides, where the table is like the same drum cut in half. Tabla is very classical and it’s like tap dancing, it’s related to the art of tap dancing. Which is a very high culture in America, tap dancing. And I always loved to dance. I felt that my expression in music was either to feel nature and have the picture of nature in my mind and heart and soul, or to express dance and movement with the phrases I would play.

You know, people always ask you, What do you think about when you play? and that’s what I think about.

And there was Christa Botine who first showed me the Dusonguni, which is the hunter’s guitar from Mali. It has six strings with a calabass and a skin over the top. And the strings are made from fishing nylons. And then you have a little rattle at the top. And you play different phrases, and it’s either like a harp, like a bass, like a guitar or a snare drum, all in one. And Christa Botine, we played together and he learned me the traditional rhythm. And I have a friend that went to Africa, and went to the Mountain of the Moon with the pygmies, and when he was in Mali he had two dusongunis made and had them shipped to me in Sweden. And one day the mailman delivered this big box and so that was the beginning of when I started playing this instrument.

And I went to India to study voice. And you know, in Indian music they have certain tals of different beats, you know 16, or 6, or 7, or even 11 and a half. But you know, you always have the cycle and you come back to the one. The one is called the sum. And when you’re playing a piece, you never finish at the end. If you have a cycle of 16, you never finish at the end of the 16, you finish on the one again. So that to me that was something that was very exciting. In realizing how you play with the one. And then getting involved in African music it became more clear to me how you come off the one or you come to the one.

And Ornette’s music is that way. That’s like when I said we never count the song off because we always come off the one. You know, Paul Chambers was a bass player that when he played, there was something about his playing that was different, I felt. And that was because he would always play a little ahead. And that’s something that makes the music transcend. It’s to be able to know the one and how you work with the one. And then this thing of tones and not just notes. And that gets more into the human feeling.

Ben: It’s like the music is always happening and we just have to tune in to it, or as Coltrane said, the music doesn’t belong to anybody, it just passes through us all ...

Don: You know recently I had an experience in Paris of meeting John Lee Hooker. I even played with him. I had my dusonguni back stage and I played it for John Lee Hooker, and right away he just started singing the blues with it. And so it shows how the essence of this instrument from Africa is related to the blues. I mean the real blues. It’s really all one music.

*       *       *

MILES DAVIS

The following interview was held on a warm January afternoon on the terrace of Miles Davis’ beach house in Malibu, California. I had gone to the house with Miles’ record producer, Tommy LiPuma, who had told me that Miles’ reputation for being a difficult man to talk to was not necessarily true. From the minute Miles opened the large wooden front door to his house and invited us inside, it was obvious that this was the case. In fact, when Tommy introduced us, Miles inexplicably gave me a hug. Throughout the interview, which took place during the afternoon and, informally, continued well into the evening, Miles was gracious, humorous and extremely generous with himself and his time. The interview began with us sitting across from each other at a table, with a bowl of potato chips in between. Miles had a sketch-pad in his lap and was drawing with a large magenta felt tip pen.

Ben: As we’re talking, you’re starting to do some drawing. I know that drawing has been a big part of how you’ve been spending your time for the last several years. Have you always been involved in drawing?

Miles: Yeah, my father taught me and my brother. Actually, I showed my brother how to sketch. My brother can see anything and draw it right off, you know. But he doesn’t have any imagination like I have.

Ben: So imagination is ...

Miles: That’s it. In everything. Imagination.

Ben: My impression is that your drawings are related to your playing in some ways, the gestures ...

Miles: What it is is balance. If you make a drawing on a page, you have to balance it, you know. And that’s the way most everything is. Art, music, composition, solos, clothes, you know, when you dress up ...

Ben: Balance.

Miles: Yeah, a little over here, a little there, a little there.

Ben: I first noticed your sketches on the cover of one of your record albums a few years ago. Is drawing something you’ve always done, has it always been part of your artistic process, or did you become interested in it again later in life?

Miles: Yeah, you know, I stopped for a while. I really started to sketch again after I married Cisely. Because she takes so long. You know how actresses are. They take so long to get ready for anything, you know. Rather than scream at her, I just started sketching. Especially on planes. After we had a close call going to Peru for the Miss Universe Contest. The plane dropped about 2500 feet and then dropped another ten00 feet. And you know everybody was ... some people were crying. A lot of celebrities were on that flight. And then I started sketching, you know, cause it really scared me. That’s really a trip to do that, to go through that.

So now when I fly from New York to California, sometimes I sketch. Most all the time I sketch. If I don’t go to sleep, I’m sketching. And I’ve done sketches that took me five hours, you know, to finish. But it relaxes you, you know?

Ben: Are you spending most of your time in California these days?

Miles: Most of the time I try to. I try to stay here because of my circulation. It’s good for my circulation. The cold weather really does a number on my skin in New York, and the air’s dirty, the streets are dirty. But that pace in New York, I love that pace. I would never live out here all seasons. Just in the winter time. Either here or the south of France.

Ben: You really are part of the greater art community, not just the music community. You’re one of the few American jazz musicians to have made that transition.

Miles: From what to what?

Ben: From being thought of as a player to being thought of as an artist.

Miles: Oh, yeah. Well you know, if I was thought of anyway else than that, I wouldn’t want to be here. If I couldn’t contribute. You know, I was telling some friends in Sweden if I couldn’t do anything to help, even if I was in some other form of art, if I couldn’t discover something or help the art, or find a new way to do it, you know, I wouldn’t want to be here. I would just want to be dead. If I couldn’t create. There would be nothing for me to live for. If I couldn’t maybe write a composition that I like. Not somebody else; that I would like, and my friends would like. And they say ‘Yeah, Miles, that sounds good’. If I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t want to be here. It’s selfish, I know. But geniuses are selfish. (Laughs)

Ben: Part of your genius it seems has been to take groups of musicians and put them in challenging situations. Looking back over the output of your recorded work, the newness a lot of times stands out as much as anything. You’re creating situations that force musicians to rely on their instincts rather than their habits.

Miles: That’s right. It’s the groups of people that you associate with, you know. It’s not all me. It’s them. People like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, those people that I work with. They’re talented people. Especially when they get in their creative period. People have creative periods, periods where they (snaps his fingers three times), like that, you know? And then if they could just wait on that, or recognize it when it’s there. I recognize it in other people. I recognized it in Wayne Shorter and Herbie and Chick, Keith Jarrett, Sonny Rollins, different people, you know, Philly Joe, Red Garland. George Duke. He is something else, man. See, I saw that. I heard that. You know, he reminds me so much of Herbie. If Herbie would just slow down a little bit. George has great talent. Have a potato chip.

Ben: Thanks. (Eating sounds.) Again, part of the message of your music seems to be be yourself, and you use minimalism to achieve this. Like those pretty notes you play, as opposed to a lot of notes.

Miles: Pretty notes! If you play a sound you have to pick out ... it’s like the eye of the hurricane, you know? You have to pick out the most important note that fertilizes the sound. You know what I mean? It makes the sound grow, and then it makes it definite so your other colleagues can hear and react to it. You know what I mean? If you play what’s already there, they know it’s there. The thing is to bring it out. It’s like putting lemon on fish. Or vegetables. You know, it brings out the flavor. That’s what they call pretty notes. Just major notes that should be played.

And rhythms. I used to, a lot of times, I would tell Herbie to lay out. He wrote a couple of pieces that were up in tempo, and rather than have him play the sound for me, I played the sound for him to listen to, you know? The sound of the composition he wrote. Because if you have too much background, you can’t play an up tempo and really do what the composer tries to give ... to me. And I try to give to the fans and music lovers.

Ben: You talk about the sound of the composition, as if a song has a central sound to it, a sound source.

Miles: I try to get his sound, whoever is writing the composition. If I’m going to play something against that, I have to get the sound that he wants in there, without destroying and blowing over it, so as not to bury it. You know what I mean? So it takes a lot ... it really takes a long time to do that, you know. But if you’re leaning that way, it doesn’t. But if you aren’t, and somebody tells you?

When I was about fifteen, a drummer I was playing a number with at the Castle Ballroom in Saint Louis...we had a ten piece band, three trumpets, four saxophones, you know ...a nd he asked me, Little Davis, why don’t you play what you played last night? I said, What, what do you mean? He said, You don’t know what it is? I said, No, what is it? He said, You were playing something coming out of the middle of the tune, and play it again. I said, I don’t know what I played. He said, If you don’t know what you’re playing, then you ain’t doing nothing.

Well that hit me. Like bammm. So I went and got everything, every book that I could get. To learn about theory. To this day, I know what he’s talking about. I know what note he was talking about.

Ben: What note was it?

Miles: It was a raised ninth. I mean a flatted ninth. (Laughs).

Ben: This conversation about the sound of the composition brings to mind the recording Kind Of Blue. As you know, Kind of Blue is probably the number one jazz record on virtually all the jazz critics’ lists.

Miles: Isn’t that something.

Ben: Does the success of that record surprise you, Miles? It seems to have been such a simple record in a lot of ways.

Miles: Not back then. Because Bill Evans, his approach to the piano brought that piece out. He used to bring me pieces by Ravel. Like the Concerto for Left Hand and Orchestra. Have you heard that? It’s a piece Ravel wrote for his friend who went to the army. He came back, but he was a pianist and he lost his right hand. So Ravel wrote a piece for Left Hand and Orchestra, for piano.

And Bill used to tell me about different modes, which I already knew. And we just agreed on something and that’s the way that album went. We were just leaning toward ... like Ravel, playing a sound with only the white keys ... and it just came out. It was like the thing to do. You know what I mean? Like an architect, all of a sudden all of the architects in the world start making circles, you know, like Frank Lloyd Wright. All his colleagues are leaning the same way at the same time, you know?

So it was Bill, and it was made for Coltrane, you know, that kind of thing. Because I used to give him a lot of chords. I would give him five chords to play in one chord, and I would tell him he could play either way. He was the only one who could do that. But I got it from Rachmaninov, modulating from key to key. Bill and I used to listen to Bartok and, ah, what’s his name, who wrote The Fire Dance?

Ben: Khachaturian?

Miles: Yeah, Khachaturian. I would give Coltrane little chords like that to play, you know, against one sound. You know, instead of saying like D dominant 7th, or something like that, you could play under the chord, over the chord, or a minor third up from the fifth of the chord, you know?

But is has to be a dramatic player like Trane was, who can just turn you on with the sound of one note, and a group of notes. The only two people I ever heard doing that was Charlie Parker and Coltrane. You know, that’s the only two that I ever heard in my life do that.

Ben: You mean the rhythmic freedom in the way they run changes?

Miles: Coltrane didn’t start playing like that until ... A girlfriend of mine in France, one day she said Miles, these guys want to talk to you; they want to give you a trumpet or something. So I said, I don’t want to talk to anybody. She said, They just want to talk to you and maybe you can pick out a couple of trumpets that you want. So I said, OK. So I also got a soprano sax for Trane. And he never put it down. It was on a tour with Norman Granz. He played soprano sax in the bus, in the hotel, every day, all day, 24 hours a day. And he got that sound. And then I gave him those chords and he just went, you know? Because he wasn’t playing like that before. Sometimes a player plays so loud that it locks in with the sound that he left. You know, like bammm. It blocks out everything else. So I gave him all these options. I mean, it sounds technical, but you have to think like that if you’re an artist, you know. You have to know how to do different things.

Ben: Hearing you talk about this session, I am struck by the fact that like Duke Ellington you would prepare music for your players, rather than bring music to them and say play this. Your music really does come out of the people you are hanging out with and recording with.

Miles: Yeah, that’s right. Duke is one of my favorite composers. Just lately, I have been hearing in my head Rain Check, that he wrote.

Ben: You mentioned Coltrane’s sound on the soprano saxophone. At one point, Coltrane said that he had been hearing a higher sound in his head, but that it wasn’t until he got his hands on the soprano that he was actually able to realize what he had been hearing internally all along.

Miles: Right. See, it takes a long time for guys to develop. You know what I mean?

Ben: How come nobody else can get your sound? It’s a simple thing, a gesture almost, but it is very difficult.

Miles: I have my own sound, because when I was like this (gestures with his hand low to the floor) my trumpet instructor, I loved the way he sounded. He was Black and he used to play with Andy Kirk, and the low register like Harold Baker. And you know, I just leaned toward that cornet sound, you know, like Nat Adderley plays cornet? But it’s just a sound. And it’s popular. (Laughs) You know, like years ago, composers ... the reason you read about Beethoven was because he was the one they could understand. The other ones, you know, that they couldn’t understand, they didn’t get mentioned. So my tone must be the easiest for somebody to hear. You know, like Louis Armstrong, that kind of sound.

But you see, your sound is like, it’s like your sweat. You know, it’s your sound. Lester Young had his sound. Coleman Hawkins, Clifford Brown, Fats. You know, there’s no more sound today. Freddie (Hubbard) has a sound but it’s ... during those days when you didn’t hear anybody to copy, guys got their own sound. But now that you have so many records and cassettes, it’s not about sound, you know what I mean? That’s the reason they can put the sound in a keyboard (a digital sampling device). But it’s the White sound in the keyboard. It’s the white trumpet player’s sound in the keyboard.

Ben: You can’t put the black sound in a digital sampling keyboard?

Miles: Nobody’s done it yet.

Ben: That’s an interesting point, that before there was such wide recording distribution, people were forced to develop their own sounds.

Miles: Forced to play without ... they didn’t have anything to listen to, you know? But you would watch guys play an instrument and you would like the attitude, the concept, the way it looks, they way they hold it, the way they dress. But nowadays, they have ... I saw maybe three trumpet players in Lionel Hampton’s band, and they were White, right? They all sound alike. Wynton (Marsalis). He doesn’t have a distinctive sound. But Freddie almost has. Woody Shaw is a real creative trumpet player. He’s like Dizzy. They might do anything. I mean you can still get a good solo out of Dizzy ‘cause he’s ... he really turned my brain. And Charlie Parker. You know those guys, they did a number on my head. As far as me learning.

Ben: How did they do it?

Miles: They just opened it up.

Ben: You mean just hearing and watching them?

Miles: See, what they were thinking, it put a stamp on what I was thinking, that it was OK to go like that.

Ben: You mentioned people getting excited just watching a player. I remember you said one time that we could know everything there was to know about your playing by watching how you stand.

Miles: It’s a certain way, like when I play, sometimes if I play about that high from the floor (holds his hand out three feet above the floor) it’s another sound that you can get ... there might be one over there (raises his hand higher), may be one up there, but I never go any higher than that. Standing straight up maybe.

But I found out in Julliard that if I stayed any longer, you know, I was going to have to play like a white man. I was going to have to act like a White man toward music. The direction, you know what I mean, so I left. Because there was certain things you had to do, or a certain way you had to play to get in there, to be with them. And I didn’t come all the way from St. Louis just be with a white orchestra. You know, I turned down a lot of those.

But I found that I could go my own way. I said to my friend Freddie Webster, I said, Freddie, I’m going back to St. Louis... And he was one of those who said, "Man, you know if you go to St. Louis, back to St. Louis and them hooges and crackers there, you’re