THE INDEPENDENT EAR
Vol. 1 No. 3
Independent Ear Guest Interview:
A Conversation with Kidd Jordan
By Rahsaan Clark Morris
Edward "Kidd" Jordan has been through a lot over the past year. A long-time resident of New Orleans and part of one of that city's many musician families, like many of his friends and neighbors, among them young Chicago trumpeter Maurice Brown who had re-located there, the tenor sax player/educator was a victim of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, losing his house and everything in it. Thankfully, his family was spared, though there was a scare concerning his youngest son, the accomplished trumpeter Marlon, who, as Kidd later learned, had been trapped in the attic of his house for over 5 days and had to be rescued by helicopter. My own experience listening to Kidd's music included the times I would finish work at the Chicago Jazz Fest and would head over to Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge for the after sets where Kidd has been a regular for many years. I caught up with him after his return from a benefit in New York for Hurricane Relief efforts by musicians from the New Music/avant garde community.
The list of creative musicians Kidd Jordan has worked with over the years reads like a who's who of stalwart explorers: Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Ed Blackwell, Julius Hemphill, Alvin Batiste, and more recently: William Parker, Fred Anderson, Kahil el Zabar, Andrew Cyrille, Henry Grimes, and his working group with pianist Joel Futterman and drummer Alvin Fielder, to name just a few. I reached Jordan in Baton Rouge where he had taken up residence post-Katrina.
Rahsaan Clark Morris: How do you feel after all that has happened to you?
Kidd Jordan: You know, I just take things in stride. There's not much I could do about it anyway, so I just suck it up and move on. Material things are not what is so important. Sometimes I do feel low about some of the personal things that have been lost, family portraits and certain mementos, but then I just have to keep going and not think about it. I have to get back to work.
RCM: How is Marlon doing? I heard about his experience.
KJ: Marlon is alright. He just did a gig up in New York with Wynton [Marsalis] and some other musicians, so he is getting his thing back together. [Marlon and his vocalist sister Stephanie Jordan subsequently participated in a special world tour helmed by Jackie Harris under the auspices of Jazz at Lincoln Center.]
RCM: How did the storm affected your ability to work and play your music? I know you work with the Southern University Jazz Ensemble, for one thing.
KJ: I've just finished writing some arrangements for the band. And I still work with the sections of the [University] marching band, the woodwind sections. I probably will still work with certain music students [tutoring]. But, my house is completely gone. My office was completely underwater. Even though they have pumped things out, I think they have even declared the area where I lived a Dead Zone. I lived about three blocks from Lake Ponchartrain [where the levees gave way]. Where I lived was called the Kenilworth section, a nice community, a very thriving community.
RCM: Earlier, you said you had recently made a recording session in New York with [drummer] Hamid [Drake] and [bassist] William Parker. How did that go?
KJ: We had been scheduled to do this gig for a while and it went well. We did some short pieces and then some longer ones. There was a lot of variety [musically] in the pieces. I'm not sure what will be on the CD; it might end up being some of the longer pieces with maybe a few extras.
RCM: Besides playing trap set, did Hamid play frame drum [which he is becoming masterful at; witness his work with Fred Anderson on Fred & Hamid Back Together Again]?
KJ: He played frame drum and a lot of other percussion, and William also played different things and some percussion. So, it went well. I was in New York for the [Katrina victim's] benefit. There were many performers there: Kahil, [baritone sax player] Hamiett [Bluett] and [violinist] Billy Bang really burned on their set.
RCM: I just listened the other day to Kahil and the Ritual Trio [bassist Yosef Ben Israel, tenor saxophonist Ari Brown]. They had played a gig last December at River East in Chicago and they had Billy with them as guest and that set was burning as well.
KJ: Well, they really worked it that night.
RCM: As I said, you lead the Southern University Jazz Ensemble, and when you've come to Chicago in the past, you've played in smaller groupings at the Velvet Lounge, among other places. Do you have a preference for group size and configuration, or maybe I should ask in what context is your voice best heard?
KJ: Anytime you perform, you play off of whatever the other musicians are doing. So I listen. They're listening to me and that's where the music happens. In the larger groups, you have to listen more acutely, but that is the most important part: listening.
RCM: Are there artists that you have not played with that you would still like to play with?
KJ: (Laughing slightly) If you've been around as long as I have, you end up playing with just about all the folks. Yeah, I've played with a lot of these guys. A lot of them were at the benefit. Let's see, Muhal [Richard Abrams] was there along with Charles Gayle, Henry Grimes, and Oliver Lake, Rob Brown, and Roy Campbell, and the poet Amiri Baraka. Quincy Troupe, another poet, also performed with Kahil. He was telling some truth. I remember the concert got started around 3:30 and we played until midnight.
[That many progressive musicians on stage reminded me of the sessions in the early 70's here at the Pumpkin Room on E. 71st Street. I began to run down the names of the A.A.C.M. big band members that would be playing there under the direction of Muhal, and Kidd became enthusiastic.]
KJ: You don't see that kind of big band too much anymore, one that plays almost totally improvised music. I think I would enjoy playing in that kind of band. No charts, really, just musicians, trading ideas and feeding off one another.
Rahsaan Clark Morris is a stage technician and writer who has contributed to the Chicago Defender, Jam Sessions, Afrique, the Citizen Newspapers, the Jazz Institute of Chicago JazzGram, and the Sutherland Community Arts Initiative's Creativity Magazine. He numbers among his writing influences Ralph Gleason, A.B. Spellman, and Amiri Baraka. Rahsaan Clark Morris is a Clarence Atkins Fellow with the Jazz Journalist Association.
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