My name is Monk Rowe. We are filming in Manhattan for the Hamilton
College Jazz Archive. It's a very big pleasure for me to be speaking
with Lew Tabackin today, jazz flautist and band leader. Welcome. LT: Okay. MR: Was that an okay introduction? LT: It was an okay introduction but you don't
have to say "flautist." MR: Yeah? I was going to ask before. LT: You know, we don't have to be so pretentious. Flute player would do. Band leader? Not really. That's kind of like - Toshiko has the advantage. She writes all the music, she conducts, and
she does everything. I play a lot of solos and occasionally call
people up and do a little contracting work. But I'm a pretty bad band leader. In fact sometimes she has to take off. We play a steady Monday night at Birdland
here in New York, and occasionally she might be in Japan and she'll say well do that. So I do it, and it's like if you saw like
a symphony orchestra playing without a conductor. It's kind of like that. If we kind of marshal our forces and really
work at it we can pull it off and there's never another piano player because she doesn't
have a piano book. It's all her own music and she knows her own
music, so she doesn't have a piano book. So it's kind of interesting when she's not
there. But as far as me being a band leader, it's
open to question. MR: Okay. Well at least you're honest. LT: Yeah, I try to be honest. MR: You're one of the few saxophonist-flutists
that started out as a flutist, is that right? LT: Um humm. MR: Kind of in the classical direction? LT: Well what happened I mean I started with
my first instrument actually when I was a kid in the Philadelphia school system. They would lend you instruments. They had a program and they could provide
some kind of a teacher. And I wanted to play, I thought it would be
nice to play something and I thought maybe a clarinet, I don't know why. But I guess I'd seen movies of people playing
the clarinet. But they didn't have one. They had a flute, which I knew nothing about,
and no one knew nothing about, and no one cared anything about in those days. But through default I got the flute. So I fooled around with it. They gave me a teacher who taught me everything
wrong. I mean it's like when you learn things from
the beginning, when you learn the wrong fingerings and the wrong position, it takes a long time
to get rid of those habits. But in any case I started playing the flute. And it wasn't a very serious endeavor, something
to do, I could play in the school orchestra, etc. etc. But when I got into high school, I started
to hear a little jazz. Guys would be playing like, you know after
orchestra rehearsal they'd have five minutes between classes and they'd be jamming a little
bit or after school. And a friend, a next door neighbor had a jazz
record collection and I started to hear some jazz. I was 15. And it was kind of, then all of a sudden music
started having a little bit of meaning. It was more than just something to do. And then I got a saxophone maybe a year later. And that opened up music to me. Jazz music opened up the door to music. MR: Can you remember the kind of jazz you
were hearing early on then? LT: Well the first stuff I heard was, well
since I played flute, a friend next door, he played me some stuff with Milt Jackson,
Frank Wess, you know those things, "Opus de Funk" those kind of - I said wow that's nice. And Herbie Mann had a hit record or something. He did a Charlie Parker, "Little Suede Shoes,"
whatever. Anything I had was very unsophisticated, and
then I would just try to play. I didn't know what I was playing, but it was
exciting. Because you never can quite recapture the
exuberance of being totally ignorant, and just start playing, not knowing what you're
doing. MR: Right. No chords, no nothing. LT: The thrill of it is so incredible, you
can never recapture that naivete. MR: I think I have to quote you on that. I think you just said "the thrill of ignorance." That's a great little line. LT: I mean it's like you play, it's so exciting
just that you're actually playing. It's like when you first hear some music and
it might not have been great music, great jazz music, but it's really exciting. And then when you get more sophisticated you
start to analyze what you like, what you don't like, what is right, what is wrong. So that you can never listen to music in the
same way, which is good and bad. You don't get the shivers so much. It takes an awful lot to really move you. So that's the dues. MR: Right. You studied with some fairly well known names,
including Julius Baker, is that right? LT: No, that's a myth. MR: That's a myth. LT: I didn't study that much. I mean I played in the all-state orchestra,
or whatever it was called, and the all-city or whatever. We used to get together I guess once a week. So if you played in that orchestra you had
a good chance of getting a scholarship. So I got a scholarship to the Philadelphia
Conservatory of Music, which was a really classical, stodgy, stuffy kind of an environment. Forget about jazz music. MR: No jazz in the practice rooms, right? LT: No saxophones. So I had to major in flute. But at that time I was really interested in
playing jazz. So I'd be out playing gigs and trying to learn
how to play. And I really didn't spend a lot of time dealing
with the flute so I was pretty bad. I mean I was like terrible, until I mean I
had a couple of teachers from the Philadelphia Orchestra at that time. But the last teacher I got, his name was Murray
Panetz, who, I think he passed away. He joined the orchestra and I kind of liked
him. He introduced some very basic concepts of
how to play the flute that really appealed to me. And they were things that I could work on
for the rest of my life. It's like I teach - once in a while I give
somebody a lesson. I'm not a real teacher, but I try to give
them a concept, a basic thing that they can work on, and they can do it forever, like
I'm still doing it, instead of spoon-feeding, you know like we do a little of this and then
come back next week and we do a little more. I just give them a whole concept and have
them work on it. And he had some ideas that I felt were really
quite interesting to me. And then I started to get interested in flute
again. Also what happened was that the flute techniques
that I learned from him that were inspired by him, I began to transfer to the saxophone. Because in the 50s most saxophone players
played very diatonic. There wasn't a lot of intervals or octave
jumps. It was something you just didn't do, even
Coltrane didn't do that. It was scales basically. MR: Were you at all effected by the popular
music that was going on at that time, or were your listening habits pretty well set? LT: I missed the pop music period. Like a lot of people that I play with, even
younger people, they all said, most of them started listening to the pop music of their
time and some of them even played other instruments like guitars and electric basses or whatever. And they were involved in the pop music of
their time. I wasn't. I totally rejected it. From the age of 15 I didn't deal with it at
all. MR: Yeah. Because rock, let's see, mid-50s rock & roll
was just kind of percolating and just entering the airways. LT: Well I had no interest. Well I grew up in South Philadelphia. And at South Philadelphia High School was
a hotbed of teenage idols and American Bandstand. MR: Oh yeah that's right. Fabian and all those guys. LT: Yeah. I was a classmate of Frankie Avalon and Chubby
Checker and all those kind of people. So I had no interest in that. It wasn't good for your social life, so that
was a problem, but I mean I was really dogmatic and inflexible and I knew what was supposed
to be happening and what wasn't happening. But it was interesting. But anyway the flute thing began, so I transferred
some flute stuff to the tenor, and I could play two, three octave jumps. I mean I could figure out how to do that. And by using and dealing with the overtones
like you do when you play the flute, overtones are essential to learn, the overtone series. And not that it was a new thing, everybody,
I mean people do that on saxophone also, but I became more aware of how that worked. And when I became aware of how that worked
I spent a lot of time figuring out how to do multiphonics. I heard like Yusef Lateef once play like a
low B flat and overblow it and got the F and he could sustain it. That was pretty hip. So I tried that, and it wasn't so hard to
do, and I figured that if I really worked hard and really tried I could find a way to
get the third in there somehow. So I kind of experimented and found ways to
create multiphonics that - basically that were, I don't know how to describe it - they
were consonant. I mean they were like almost in tune. Like people used to play them just for the
effect. MR: Just for the effect and it sometimes wasn't
very musical. LT: Yeah. I would break my jaws until I found a way
to play, like if I wanted to play from a G triad to a C, I can do it in the context of
the music, which I still do to this day. But I mean it was an interesting period. So we are kind of going around in circles
but basically I started on the flute but I wasn't really into it. When I started the saxophone then I got interested
in the music. And when I got interested in music then everything
started to make sense. The flute - I started to - years later I started
to deal with the flute as a special thing, and I worked on my own. I didn't study with Julius Baker, I listened
to Julius Baker records. MR: I see. LT: I didn't study with Rampal, I listened
to his records. I'm not a good student. I prefer to - you know I used to listen to
William Kincaid and so I used to listen to records to try to get some inspiration and
draw on what I thought was the essence of the sound that people got. Same thing with jazz music. I listened to players not so much to copy
their solos but to get the spirit, to absorb their spirit, so that I could have a repertoire
of spirits and feelings. Like if you hear Lester Young there's a certain
buoyancy that you hear that no one else has, a certain kind of thing. If you hear Hawkins, the severity is so severe. Ben Webster - Toshiko has a great description,
kind of a tragic beauty. Yeah, even he makes himself cry. I mean you hear Don Byas, you hear all the
great players, Sonny Rollins and Coltrane, you hear the essence and you take it in and
then it kind of like cooks and cooks like for years and years and then all of a sudden
it comes to something - hey I actually have my own thing. And then all of a sudden you realize that
actually I have a voice that is actually my voice. MR: Cool. The Grove Dictionary of Jazz had a description
about you. Actually I was going ask you first, if you
could write your own description of yourself, would that be hard? LT: It's very difficult I think. I mean it's really hard to, first of all you
don't know where you fit in the scheme of things, and you don't know how other people
perceive you. I don't know, it would be kind of complicated,
it would be some kind of a schizophrenic simulator or something. I don't know, it's really hard. I can't really describe my playing. That gets me into trouble because I'm really
not quite characterizable in a sense. A lot of people just say mainstream, traditional,
but I'm not, I really don't think I am. I appreciate and respect the tradition. MR: Let me read what this person wrote about
you. He says, "His flute solos incorporate both
an Asian influence and rich classical style. While he's a rugged tenor soloist, influences
include Don Byas, Ben Webster and Sonny Rollins." LT: Yeah, of course, I mean that's true. I mean it's basically true. I would hope that my saxophone playing has
a little more to offer. It's easy to be dismissed. That's why on my last album I didn't play
any flute on my recording, called "Tenority." First of all I thought that one reason, it's
easy to make an album where you play, when you have, like most of the recordings I do
have a fairly limited budget so you're having a quartet setting, which is fine, and you
play a couple tunes on tenor, play one on the flute, so there's built-in variety. It's very easy to make an album that people
feel well they've heard different colors and different feelings. To just play the tenor it's a little bit more
difficult. MR: Yeah. A little bit more demanding. LT: Creating variety without losing the essential
direction. And also I wanted to prove a point, you know,
listen to the saxophone, listen to the tenor. And like when you do more than one thing people
have a tendency to label you a craftsman. Oh he plays the flute, he plays the tenor,
oh he's a craftsman, he's not an artist. A classic, like the classic definitions, I'm
not talking about myself in this case but the definitions of genius always deal with
people who function in a limited kind of approach, like Thelonious Monk is a classic genius because
he functions in a world that is beautiful and in a way so personal and he is what you
get. Thelonious Monk is what he is and that's what
you get. If he dabbled in other things he wouldn't
have as much - I don't know if I'm explaining myself - credibility. So people tend to say oh he must have studied
hard or something, and so he can play the flute and he can play the saxophone. So it's kind of he's not really a - he's just
like a craftsman. I have done some studio work in my day that
also taints people's perception. Unfortunately a lot of people who are supposed
critics and people in power have a tendency to listen and perceive things with preconception. They listen with their eyes. And if you don't fit the demographics you
don't fit, and you actually can do more than one thing. I was put down once because somebody called
me, there was an article - I didn't even see it - "The Zelig of Jazz." MR: The what? LT: Zelig. Remember that movie with Woody Allen? MR: Oh yeah. LT: Woody Allen in this movie he could change. He was like a chameleon. In any environment he would change into that
person. So this young bass player read it and said,
"What does that mean?" And it really irritated me because the fact
that the way I play I hope, I try to make the way I play broad enough to encompass almost
the history of jazz music. I play the same way. The frame is different. If I'm playing with quote unquote a traditional
group, like an all-star group that I'm thrown into, I play - I'm not - I'm playing what
I play it's just that if you have enough sensitivity you kind of like play in the spirit. And it's the same sound, it's the same thing
if you're playing - I used to play with, like in the 60s, with out groups, and the next
day I'd play with Roy Eldridge. And I don't consider that a negative. But the Gary Giddins of the world consider
that a negative. It's kind of like-
MR: Is that because it's harder for them, where they want to put you? LT: They don't know where to put me. And I think it must be frustrating. A lot of musicians have that problem because,
well he's not an innovator, is he a copier? I'm not a copier. I mean people said I tried to do the Sonny
Rollins thing with me. And in fact I used to - I love Sonny Rollins. I mean some of the greatest music I ever heard
in my life was Sonny Rollins playing. One of the great improvisers. It's cliche but it's true. I mean you leave a gig with Sonny Rollins,
when I was a kid, and you're excited and laughing and happy, because his music was so much wit,
and you never knew what was going to happen. You went to a Coltrane performance you were
kind of like mesmerized. You're walking around in a trance. And - I lost track of what I was saying - but
they used to say well he's a Sonny Rollins guy. And of course I was influenced. But I remember Leonard Feather asked Sonny
Rollins, he said, "What do you think about these guys like Lew Tabackin who were so heavily
influenced by you?" And Sonny said, "Well I don't hear that, I
think he's coming from another direction." I am and I'm not. Just like the beauty of when I was listening
to Sonny Rollins, when I finally became, I used to be a Coltrane - when I was a 20 year
old kid I used to be a Coltrane guy. And I started to realize it was stupid to
be somebody else. You know you'd get up on the bandstand and
pretend to be somebody else. So I asked some guys who were older than me
about older players and players, you know some of the giants that I wasn't that familiar
with. And one guy played me a bunch of records like
Lester and Ben Webster, Byas, Hawkins - Hawkins I couldn't understand it was too hard for
me. It was like too strong at that age. It was too different than anything I would
deal with. And anyway I started to listen and experience
that and also Hawkins became actually one of my favorites and a great source of inspiration
later when I was more able to experience - like when you first drink wine you know, your pallet
obviously grows. And in any case, so later on I listened to
Sonny Rollins and then I'd have another perspective and I'd hear things that I'd heard in these
other players, and it gave me insights into how to eventually have my own style. And it's by absorbing the music and the spirit
and the feeling of the people that you can relate to. Like back to what I said ten minutes ago,
it all comes together and becomes something different. And every once in a while one of the elements
kind of shows its head and it's beautiful. So if you're playing, and all of a sudden
you play something and you say where did that come from. That's Hawkins. And it's like somebody, like some spirit looking
down on you, it sounds corny and mystical, but you feel connected. You feel you're really a part of a continuum
and you're a branch of a tree and all the blood is flowing through you and when it pops
out - I mean I was doing a recording, a live recording in Denver, and playing, and before
I got to play, I don't know what happened but somebody was playing a CD or something
before, and like about 30 seconds of Coleman Hawkins popped out. I don't know, unless I was hallucinating. And I heard it right before I was about to
start this tune. And it kind of like it was a strange feeling. And it lifted my music. It was strange. It was like I don't know what. It just all of a sudden, you know I do a lot
of things - kind of like Sonny Rollins, I mean I'm not like Sonny Rollins but I mean
like I adapted a lot of the things that he played and the joy that he did and you just
start playing by yourself, and then like instead of counting off a tune you start playing,
and then you reach a point where you establish a tempo and sometimes you decide on what tune
it's going to be actually, and then the band comes in. I love that way of playing because it's so
organic. I think that was some of the most beautiful
things that I've experienced as a listener, when Sonny Rollins did that. And I try to in my own way, in my own small
way, utilize that concept. I like it. So I heard this thing and I don't know where
it came from and it just like was something that lifted. So I'm really very much, hopefully, in tune
with the masters. So once in a while someone will ask me to
help them with their playing. I'm not a real teacher but I do once in a
while. And I try to tell them that okay, all the
young guys, they have a little sphere of influence. The guys that are in the Joe Henderson sphere,
guys in the Coltrane sphere, guys that are in the - whatever they choose. And they feel there's really safety in this
little area of influence. And I did when I was 20 also. But there are guys that are well into their
careers still doing it. And I try to tell them that if you can expand
your repertoire of experience and experience more listening and open yourself up to - what's
the right word - a larger repertoire of sounds and feelings, then your music can be somewhat
more rich instead of, well being hip. You know the whole concept of art versus fashion. You know everybody has to be hip, it's fashion. Hip today is not hip tomorrow. But art is always hip. Art is forever. I try to tell them that, okay if you can play
one note 50 different ways, you have an advantage. You can express much more than if you can
only play one note two different ways, loud or soft you know. If you can play with a soft subtone, a loud
subtone, a hard tone, a different nuance, a different kind of vibrato, different - you
know it's kind of like when you take - I listen to some Shakuhachi music, going back to the
flute, and you play a note - the instrument's got eight notes, right? You don't have a chromatic instrument. You have to really learn how to do a lot with
one note. And you can create an incredible amount of
emotion and feeling with one note. Or like if you're playing jazz music, if you
only know one note, man you have to do a lot of stuff with that one note. You know there are people that don't know
anything about music or history, and they sit and listen and they can tell you what
they felt and what they thought you were trying to do, and they can nail it. LT: I mean I meet little girls and stuff,
like or old people. And they come and they start talking about
this real shit, real stuff that's important. And it's encouraging. But there are people who can really understand
music, I mean the essence of music, not who played what what year and who was influenced
by who and all this bullshit. MR: Yeah. That's kind of all just the historical logistics
of it. LT: I met guys in Japan that know everything. Know every record date, who was on it and
what time it was, and don't understand a damn thing about this music. MR: That's wild. LT: Or there are people that know everything
about wine and don't have the faintest idea of what the real taste is. MR: Yeah. They just know the vintages and the companies. LT: Jon Faddis knows like, he knows everything. He doesn't drink. He doesn't drink at all but he has, I think
it's his chiropractor or somebody, who is a wine guy, and he's always talking to him
about it. And Jon's got like a photographic memory. So he remembers all this information and he
comes over to me and he starts mentioning this and this and this, and he never tasted
anything in his life. He could be a wine writer. MR: Well let me just ask you about a couple
of things. Did you have any inclination that you would
spend so much time in the saxophone section of the various big bands? LT: It's a good question. I'll put it to you in a - people might be
shocked in a sense, because you develop a history and people have a preconception. But when I came to New York in 1965 and I
would go around and force myself to sit in jam sessions and places where it's possible
to sit in, just because you have to, otherwise no one will know you exist. You have to come up and say here I am, here's
what I do, maybe if you like the way I play I might get somewhere, I might get a gig or
somebody might like the way I play. So at that period, this might sound funny,
if you are white, you are supposed to be a good reader. They assume that you are. If you are black no matter how many credentials
you have, you were a good player but you couldn't read. And if you are white and maybe not that good
a jazz player but you could read. So it was like the stereotype thing. So I go out and I'm playing and trying to
do my thing at these various clubs. And what do I do? I get a gig in a big band. And I'm not really that qualified. I had no big band experience. In New York, like a lot of the young guys,
they'd go out with these little weekend bands, the dance bands, the Buddy Morrows and one
of the Dorsey orchestras or whatever those bands were. But I didn't have that experience. So I'm playing at a place called The Dom in
St. Mark's Place and Philly Joe would be playing, and some great musicians, Kenny Dorham would
be one of the judges you know, like judging the young guys, like if they were qualified. It was a fun time. And so another saxophone player says, "I do
this gig with Les Elgart, and I can't do it, would you do it?" So I start playing. I go out for two weeks with Les Elgart and
then he recommends me to his brother. At that point I learned to not play in the
rests you know. MR: That's important. LT: That's important. If you play in the rests you give yourself
away right away. But it was a trial and error situation. And then an interesting thing happened. To this day I don't know why this happened,
but I got a call to join Cab Calloway's reunion band. I mean trying to put together as many of the
old guys as he could. And I am 25, maybe 26 by then. And I show up in New Jersey and I go into
the dressing room and there was what appeared to be really old guys. I don't think they were that old now in a
different perspective. I see this guy on the floor doing pushups
and it was Eddie Barefield. MR: Oh yeah, he was a real strong fellow. LT: Yeah. He was doing pushups. And I see all these old black musicians. And like I'm this wimpy white guy. But it was a fantastic experience. Eddie became very helpful to me. He became like a bit of a mentor. And the lead alto player, his name was George
Dorsey, who has the most beautiful sound, he was wonderful. Sam Taylor was in the band. MR: Sam "the Man"? LT: Sam "the Man" Taylor. A guy named Garvin Bushnell who played the
oboe in the Puerto Rico Symphony and stuff. I mean he was a pretty accomplished guy and
highly regarded. And it was a wonderful experience because
Cab Calloway had a great library. He didn't play too often on the gigs, it was
always "Hi Di Hi Di Ho" and "St. James' Infirmary" to death. But when there weren't many people in the
house he'd let the band go and play all these Buster Harding charts, sax solos like in "Cherokee." And at that point I learned to tune in to
the lead alto player. It's a lost art now. Now jazz music has become so academic that
you have a written page and people read it, even to the point now where you almost have
to kind of notate whether it's a straight eighth note or it's a swing eighth note or
- there's so many ways to play eighth notes. In those days, at least that was the end of
a period in a sense that you follow the lead alto player. The music was a guide. When it was sax only, when the saxes were
playing, it's like an improvised solo. I mean a sax solo, it's almost like someone
would play a solo and it's orchestrated for five saxes or whatever. and the lead alto would play it the way he
would play it, not always precisely the way it was notated. So you have to develop a radar system with
the first alto player. If you respect him and you respect the music
and you really develop a real contact. It's almost like a communication, which was
good and bad. Because I loved to do that but on the other
hand as far as precision reading, that was another thing. And so my experience in sax sections, you
know I mean was by default in a sense. And I enjoyed it in certain contexts and I
started to - when I came to New York the Thad Jones and Mel Lewis band had been in existence
for maybe a year or less, and I sat in with Elvin Jones once and with Joe Farrell, it
was his gig, and he started sending me in on stuff for him with Thad and Mel's band,
the same kind of situation, not being that great a reader. But that was a wonderful experience, I mean
that was really so open. I never forgot my first gig, one of my first
gigs with that band, I think I might have been playing the other chair at the time. And there's a tenor solo and I'm playing,
I'm reading the changes, scared to death, trying not to step on it, and the whole band
stops. And I didn't know - I thought I must have
played so bad it stopped the band. And I just kept on playing fortunately. Because he would do stuff like that. He would just stop the band or cut out people. And I didn't know the modus operandi and I
was - what happened? But my experience in bands, it was kind of
like, it wasn't my first choice to play in big bands. Jazz players always want to play in small
groups obviously. Big bands are something you do - some people
really love big bands. It wasn't my background. I love Duke Ellington, I love early Count
Basie, before the tutti band, to be honest. MR: Before the which band? LT: The tutti band, you know before all the
big charts. I like the late 30s, the Lester Young period. To me that's the essence of swing and incredible
beauty. But I don't know, sax sections, I like the
old style sax sections. MR: Well can I assume it was partly an economic
decision too? You can't just keep turning work down because
it's not exactly what you intended to do. LT: Oh no, are you kidding? You're trying to survive. And I enjoyed it naturally, I'm not putting
it down but basically it's like the Peter Principal. You know like you hear somebody and you like
the way they play jazz and you put them in a big band and there's nothing to play. And where there may be a lot of guys that
could read that part better, but that aren't given that gig. But it's funny, it's a funny situation. But it was cool. It opened up a lot of - I had some really
wonderful big band experience and I played with Duke Pearson's band which was wonderful,
because we had a great rhythm section, with Micky Roker and Bob Cranshaw. Duke sometimes he didn't even play the piano
that much, he'd be out there searching out the ladies. But it was a family band, it was like a family. And we played - again, the music was written
but we didn't play it. We found a way to play that was personal. I remember when Duke Pearson came to Los Angeles
I was living there at the time and he decided to do a couple of gigs and put together a
band and start rehearsing. And everybody, we were all mainly studio oriented
players. And they were playing the music exactly the
way it was written and it sounded strange. And then I said we never played music like
this. I mean that's the beauty of a quote unquote
jazz band as opposed to a studio band or what later in school they refer to as stage bands. A jazz band is - the only way you can justify
a jazz band being a jazz band is obviously to have improvised solos, but also to have
a certain leeway in interpretation of the written note. The note has to become personal. Okay, this came to mind, it might be helpful
to anybody who's a player, they might want to think about it, because I was playing in
another band that Al Cohn had, a great saxophone player, he was one of my early influences,
a wonderful musician. And I was playing what they used to call fourth
tenor, now they say second tenor, it was fourth tenor, it's the fourth voice. It's the most difficult voice in the sax section. MR: It's interesting you say that. You get all the hard-
LT: They always put the worst guy or girl, usually a girl, and they put her on fourth
tenor. The fourth tenor is tough because like you're
the bridge between the baritone and the rest of the section so you can't get that real
kind of hard, ugly sound on the low register. You have to develop a full low register to
balance, to make that transitional thing. Anyway I was playing and it was an experienced
baritone player sitting next to me. Roger Pemberton, he was playing baritone in
that band. And he gave me a really great compliment which
I never forgot because I never thought of myself as a section player, it wasn't my main
interest at this time, I didn't have much experience. And he said, "You know you play your part
like it's really music. You play each note like it's important, and
with feeling. So even though you have a fourth voice, it's
not perfectly melodic and like the lead voice, still-" That why Ellington's band, the sax
section was so great. Everybody played as an individual and the
whole was greater than the sum of its parts. It's a cliche but that was the case. If you just play that music like it's just
a note, it doesn't work, it doesn't live. So the responsibility, if you're going to
play in a section, you should play in a section, and do it right and not - it's easy to say,
hard to do - but try to play whatever part you have like it's really important. And then if everybody does it then it becomes
beautiful. MR: Excellent advice. LT: I see that all the time. They put the weakest player on the fourth
tenor and then they ruin the sax section like that. When I played with Duke Pearson's band, the
saxes were me and Frank Foster were the tenor players, and he played the bottom tenor, which
was right. Because at that time my sound - my sound changed
through the years - at that point it was kind of, I was still in a little kind of Coltrane
- the sound was kind of bright, and it was kind of the end of a period for me. And Frank had this lovely, big sound and a
full sound on the bottom. So it would have been foolish to reverse the
chairs. MR: Now did you guys decide that? Or did Duke Pearson recognize it. LT: It's an interesting question. I don't know. Probably Duke. I never thought much about it because it seemed
so right, it seemed like the way it was so correct from a musical point of view that
I didn't question it. And that's probably what Duke had in mind. He was a very sensitive guy and he was always
very careful about people's feelings like that. If Frank got one more solo than I did on a
gig he'd call me up and say, "Oh I'm sorry man, Frank's family was here." And I'd say, "No, come on, it's not a problem." But I always appreciated that. MR: If my recollection is correct, in 1969
I was going to school in Fredonia, New York, and The Tonight Show band came to play for
some dance or something. And I believe you were in the saxophone section. LT: '69? MR: Or it could have been '68. LT: Well it's possible. I didn't play in the Tonight Show band at
that time. In '69 Arnie Lawrence, a friend of mine, he
recommended me to do this project that Doc Severinsen had which was a kind of a smaller
show type group, supposedly geared to play college concerts and stuff, and it was like
singers and dancers and six horns, which was kind of, it wasn't that great but it was interesting
because my income went from, in those days, from 4-5 thousand dollars a year to like 19
thousand dollars, which doesn't sound like a lot today, but it was quite a big jump in
my financial situation, mainly because it meant like mostly doing weekend gigs. But what I did get a chance to do is I would
do substitute work on the Tonight Show. The Tonight Show was a staff orchestra. They had a set orchestra, but I could do subs,
which was a great experience. Because that band, like in New York, was like
the Rolls Royce of television. I mean that was like a very great learning
experience, there was so much integrity in that. I never experienced that when the band moved
to California. And then also it led to other gigs, like I
did some work on the Dick Cavett show, because you meet different people. So all of a sudden, but it's possible that
I might have done a gig with them, although I wasn't a regular member of the Tonight Show
band. It's possible. You would have noticed because I was like
much younger than any of those guys in the band, and I probably had a beard or something. MR: Yeah. I'm pretty sure you were there, and I know
it could have been a sub situation but I remember Jerry Dodgion. LT: Oh wait, that wasn't the Tonight Show
band. MR: Well some of these guys were there. Because I remember thinking wow, what a cool
thing. I know Grady Tate was there. Maybe it wasn't even the Tonight Show band,
maybe it was a kind of conglomeration. But there were some major players. LT: It could be, yeah. Was it Clark Terry? MR: Clark was there I think, yeah. But at any rate, you've had a T.V. experience,
the solo album experience, some studio experience. Does it get easier to make a living as a jazz
musician? You mentioned this one instance where your
income really went up, but that was kind of a non-jazz-. LT: Exactly. When you look at, like a I had a little discussion
with a friend of mine, Peter Washington, about one of his heroes, George Duvivier. And he was very proud of the fact that George
was a great bass player and he wasn't like a show biz kind, he was an itinerant musician
and a great bass player. And he made a nice living. And I said but Peter, you realize that a lot
of the money he made was from studio work as a utility musician, playing television
shows and record dates. And that's the situation that actually existed
quite a bit in the 50s and toward the beginning of the 60s when they had a lot of studio bands
for jazz musicians. Because the music of day, like all the singers
would make a record, it was a jazz-oriented, even the pop singers, they utilized jazz musicians. So you had a crossover, a period where guys
would function as studio players and jazz players. Now it's a separate arrangement, which is
probably good, but that's the way it is. As far as me making a living today, as opposed
to then, well I mean it's difficult in a sense because music has changed. I mean the concept of marketing in approaching
jazz music has changed. There's a lot of lip service to the fact that
jazz is finally recognized as an art form, but the practical reality is it's being marketed
as pop music. So we have who's hot and who's not and record
companies saying well we don't promote young musicians, young people won't listen to the
music. It creates this whole demographic problem. It gets difficult where it shouldn't be difficult. But people from my generation have to really
fight in a sense to maintain and develop - I consider myself in the process of ongoing
development. I'm not - I have to get better. And the only way to get better is to play
a lot. You know play, not just practice, to play
so I'm kind of connected too. The income thing is important, it's secondary
to the ability to keep on working. The more you work the more you develop. So it's all kind of connected. So for a jazz musician today it's very difficult. If you're fortunate or - I don't know if it's
the right term - if you have support by the powers to be in the record companies etcetera,
it's helpful. But there are pitfalls to that. It's not a - it's a difficult time. MR: If you or Toshiko or some of your other
friends wanted to get a date, let's say at the Iridium or Birdland or Sweet Basil's,
what do you have to do to make that happen? And is it hard? LT: Yeah, it's hard I mean in a sense, unless
you really - well the band plays every Monday, but that's a special thing, at Birdland. So I'm doing a date of my own next month. And I have a little trio, and we actually
have a group, we play together. We have a repertoire and we have a communication,
and it's a group. Now I go and say I want to do a weekend. Well, we need an all-star group. Say well why? I mean most of the all-stars just don't sound
that good to me. People don't care. Names. They want to see names. So I have to make a compromise, and I at least
have to have another player added to the group to build up the interest. So Nicholas Payton is doing it. He's a wonderful young musician, and that's
fine. But at this point, in one's life or one's
career or however you want to look at it, to have to deal with that kind of situation
where in order to get a gig you have to hype up, or use another hook. And I know when I play, my music is accessible. I don't play - it's not an intellectual experience. I try to be a communicator and kind of have
a dialogue with the audience. I don't play in a vacuum. And I usually have no problem. Wherever I go, whether it's in Europe or Asia
or Canada. But oh well, in New York I'm competing with
the Blue Note and they're having blah blah blah blah blah. And then the record company Blue Note is taking
over the world - you know with Blue Note we're all - they can reissue all the old records
and not pay anything for them. And then you have Verve. And meanwhile people who are not affiliated
with a major company are like, well if I want to get a gig at a club I'd have to really
work very hard and keep on pitching, and I'm not good at that. MR: That's a very right on statement you said
about the marketing. I hadn't quite thought of it like that, but
I even noticed, I went down to the Iridium last night and there's an application on the
table for the new Blue Note Visa card. LT: Wonderful. MR: And from an audience standpoint, I have
to say that it seemed that the music was almost being marketed out of touch because I spent
$50 last night, and I'm not even a drinker, and I heard exactly one hour of music, and
I think four songs actually. And I love the music, but as you said, I don't
think the group - I won't mention names - but I don't think the group was a working group. I can see a certain amount of looking back
and forth, who's going to do what now on the stand. Great players, but still, how many people
can afford to do that to support the music very often? LT: It seems like, I miss the heyday. Toshiko had a chance to go on the road with
her group and stuff, and played all the different clubs that existed throughout the country. And the way she described her own experiences,
there are things that she observed, and things that I observed as a listener when I went
to clubs as a young person. A group comes in and plays and if it's maybe
not a hot group at the time, people like it, they come back the next time. So if you do good, if it's the first time
you play at the club, maybe the audience is small but people really like it and say this
is happening, and they'll come back next time. And you develop an audience. Here it's like everything's got to be a sure
thing. And also many times they'll spend a fortune
for a sure thing. I won't mention names, but I know groups getting
a horrendous amount of money to play a week, and they have to fill the club every set every
night, which they can't, and they wind up losing money. Where if they hire me, it doesn't cost them
so much bread, and they'll make a profit. But it's not high profile enough. It's not like a Joshua Redman or whoever is
hot at the period, one of the young people that are being promoted. But they've alienated the audiences that's
the sad part. The older audiences, they've heard the stuff. They're not impressed by the toy jazz groups
that they hear. They've heard the original. So they'll still go home and listen to the
CD player or their records, they even have records. And why should they go out and spend $200
or $150 to hear something that they've heard better before. Why should they do that? To young people it's still jazz music. Young people, it's still kind of a little
bit too intellectual for them. It's not rock & roll. No matter how they market it it's only going
to attract X amount of young people. So I think they're going about it the wrong
way. But who am I? I think if they leave it alone and let it
be art music for people who really love it and appreciate it, instead of trying to make
it a higher level of pop music. MR: Let me just wrap up here with the piece. [audio interlude]
MR: You recognize that of course? LT: Yeah. MR: Now, I have two quick questions. One is easy - or probably you wouldn't be
able to do it - if someone could write that solo out, could you play it? LT: No. MR: Okay. That was easy. LT: I mean I play it in the band, Toshiko
writes really hard stuff. MR: Yeah, I've noticed. LT: And one time she did an arrangement of
a thing on "Indiana." I wrote this thing for Don Byas kind of based
on "Indiana." And she transcribed one of my solos from one
of my recordings and I had to play it. And it's really hard. And it's not my hardest solo either, it got
harder as it went on, but that wasn't that hard. Also she changed the key which made it really
hard. But my reading skills are really deteriorated. MR: But even from a technique standpoint,
I mean that's a burning thing. Just I'm fascinated by the ability not only
to conceive of something like that, but to pull it off technically. LT: Well you know what's interesting is like
people are always talking about technique. When I was very young there were a couple
of players that I really liked. And I'd hear them, the local guys in Philadelphia,
I'd hear them warming up and they sounded terrible. And it was not like they could really play
that good. And all of the sudden the rhythm section starts
and they start to play and this beautiful music comes out. Execution is great. And what the truth of it is is that it's mental
clarity. If your thinking is clear - thinking is not
the right word - but if your control of the music in your brain and your concept and your
heart, you find a way to get it out. It's like you could be practicing like all
the time and have this great technique, and then if you're not clear on what you're trying
to express or what you're trying to play, especially on a fast tempo, nothing is going
to come out. So it's not so much the technique, it's the
clarity of thought I think that is really the key. Many times I say boy I haven't played, and
I feel terrible. And then for some reason my thinking is clear
and I feel like I'm not distracted. Concentration is probably the more correct
word. If the concentration is good I find that execution
isn't so much a problem, it's just moving your fingers. I mean you can move your fingers fast. What did Charlie Parker say? Somebody asked him about the secret to how
great he was and his playing. He said, "Well you bite down as hard as you
can on the mouthpiece, blow as hard as you can, and move your fingers as fast as they'll
go." So I mean that's basically it. It's the concentration and clarity of thought
that transcends actually the technique. So I mean I couldn't read that. MR: It's not supposed to be read. LT: I mean if you look at the stuff people
have played, I mean look at some of Dizzy Gillespie's stuff. Some people transcribe it. It's impossible. Dizzy wouldn't even know where to start and
nobody else would. I mean that's why improvised music is so wonderful. Sometimes you kind of like transcend your
abilities. Like sometimes when things are really happening,
you say where did this come from? I mean I never practiced this, I never thought
about it, it just comes. And like you do things that you can never
recreate, so it's very important. MR: Well that's a good note to end. And I appreciate your time today. It's been fascinating talking to you and you've
expressed some things in a way I haven't heard before. LT: Well that's good. I always feel that whenever I'm involved in
some academic situation like maybe a clinic or a master class, I try to be honest and
what I feel is something that is an alternative way of thinking about things. Because the education system has a tendency
to put things in a very controllable context and you know there's only so much you can
do. But if I can present a personal - well this
is the way I think about playing, this is how I play, there is another way of thinking
about music besides what scales go with what chords. It's the whole creative process, you know,
what goes on in your body and your mind and your feeling. And I think I can make a little contribution. MR: Well thank you. I appreciate it. I enjoyed it.
