This is Part 2 in our ongoing series of anecdotes from the book African Rhythms: the autobiography of Randy Weston, Composed by Randy Weston, Arranged by Willard Jenkins, forthcoming, published by Duke University Press.

In one of the early chapters of our book Randy talks about the influence of the ancestor grandmaster drummer Max Roach.  Max was a few years older and at the time (mid-late 1940s) much more experienced on the jazz scene than Randy but the two were fast friends and frequently hung out at Max’s place.  Recalling those times, here Randy details a Miles Davis encounter.

    "…Like I said, there were a lotta giants around Brooklyn back then, many of them living in my neighborhood.  I mentioned [pianist] Eddie Heywood, who lived directly across the street.  Max Roach’s house was two blocks away.  George Russell was living in Max Roach’s house at the time.  Miles Davis, who was the same age as me, had just come up from East St. Louis and he was a struggling young musician who didn’t have any money at the time, so he lived in a small place in the neighborhood on Kingston Avenue with his wife and young children.

    I used to hang out at Max Roach’s house on Monroe Street all the time.  Max’s house was a magnet for the new generation of musicians who emerged in the late 1940s, what the writers and fans called the bebop musicians.  I remember George Russell would be there working on "Cubana Be Cubana Bop", which Dizzy Gillespie later made famous with his first Afro-Cuban flavored band.  Miles would always be there at Max’s house as well because he was working with Charlie Parker at the time and Max was the drummer in that band; Duke Jordan, who was living in Brooklyn, was the pianist and Tommy Potter was the bassist.  So Charlie Parker’s rhythm section was all Brooklyn guys.

    I remember a really nice moment with some of these guys.  In 1947 when the great trumpeter Freddie Webster, who was a big influence on Miles, died so prematurely, George Russell, Miles Davis, Max and me all got in my father’s car and we drove out to Coney Island by the ocean.  While we strolled reminiscing on Freddie, Miles took out his trumpet right there on the beach and played a beautiful tribute to Freddie Webster that I’ll never forget!"

Stay tuned to this space… more anecdotes, further Adventures of Randy Weston coming soon…

As mentioned in the recent I.E. entry which marked the first installment in our ongoing series of anecdotes from the forthcoming book African Rhythms: the Autobiography of Randy Weston, Composed by Randy Weston, Arranged by Willard Jenkins, to be published by Duke University Press in ’09, I’ve been holed up in New Orleans for the month of November (concluding Thanksgiving Day) putting the finishing touches on the book manuscript.  Friend, fellow WWOZ broadcaster and intrepid real estate agent Middie O’Malley referred me to a most agreeable studio apt. rental at the Hotel Storyville on Esplanade Avenue (an ideal location for those New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival trips I might add).  As I originally suspected the Crescent City has been an ideal place to complete this work; sans motorized transportation my bicycle has sufficed in this fairly compact city, the studio has offered the necessary peace & quiet quotient with a location convenient enough to various creature comforts, and the city certainly offers enough diversionary possibilities to effectively stave off stir crazyness; not to mention the Storyville is two blocks from the French Quarter, and the Marigny is across Esplanade from the Quarter. 

    Those diversions commenced shortly after arrival.  Lacking time or inclination to stock the kitchenette after a late afternoon flight arrival, I made the short stroll over to Frenchman Street.  Navigating the usual Saturday night revelers and assorted knuckleheads in the thriving Marigny brought the convenience and familiarity of the kitchen at NOLA’s best music club Snug Harbor, arriving just in time to catch the second set.  This night it was the always rambunctious and entertaining Willem Breuker Kollektief from the Netherlands, one of the sturdy and enduring jazz unitslegacies from that part of the world.

       Certainly staying on the Treme side of Esplanade Avenue in November would yield some Sunday afternoon Second Line action.  Sure enough later that first week the good folks at the Backstreet Museum (located on St. Claude Avenue in the historic Treme community, reputedly the oldest African American community in America) posted notice of that Sunday’s parade, the 25th anniversary Second Line of the Sudan Social & Pleasure Club.  Fellow writer Larry Blumenfeld and I made it over to Villere Street for the three brass band processional down to St. Bernard Avenue, touching base at several sites in Treme including nearby Sweet Lorraines and trumpeter Kermit Ruffins’ joint.  Hard to beat a good Second Line for no-cost fun.

    Later that afternoon a short drive over the St. Claude Bridge to the Lower Ninth Ward’s depressing  post-Katrina ghostliness did afford an encouraging look at several of the new homes built by Brad Pitt’s admirable Make it Right project.  From this perspective the actor’s effort is no rip-off or publicity-grab; it’s the real deal).  Despite the Lower 9’s continued gap-toothed appearance (street upon street of a house here, four slabs there, another house here, three weed fields there and a thorough absence of basic human needs services… you get the picture), these homes are starkly colorful and architecturally unusual amid the previously unyielding vacant tableau.  Spotting a resident on his balcony Blumenfeld engaged the gentleman who had moved back to the Lower 9 a few months prior and pronounced himself quite pleased with his new home.  Another effect of these new homes is that unfortunately they make the wasteland effect even more profound in a peverse sort of way.  Make it a point of visiting the Lower Ninth Ward on your next trip to the Crescent City.

    Also visible in the proud yet slowly rising-from-the-muck community were several visual arts installations under the rubric of Prospect 1, an ambitious, diverse and largely quite successful citywide exhibit of 81 artists from 39 countries in approximately 25 locations scattered around the city.  Host spaces range from gallery spaces and museums to an auto repair shop and assorted street corners and vacant lots.  The Lower Ninth Ward is appropriately the scene of several Prospect 1 installations.  The first site we located on the rather byzantine map devoted to what is referred to as P1 was adjacent to that first phase of Pitt’s "Make it Right" re-housing project.  Guided by the map we drove up to one of hundreds of blank lots in the Lower 9 to our first sampling of P1 installations, the Ladder to Nowhere… which about describes its impact… nowhere; a rather uncomfortable metaphor to what the Lower 9th Ward has tragically become amidst its historic neglect.  Rounding the corner, like a wilting flower amongst the overgrown weeds sprang another of P1’s signposts, outside the ironically named Battleground Baptist Church — established in 1868 — which appeared completely shuttered, leaving us wandering aimlessly around the lot wondering ‘where’s the art’?  On second blush perhaps Battleground itself is the P1 contribution of this particular street corner, which actually might be appropos.  Or was it the metaphorical sign of the times announcing that the Battleground congregation is "now worshipping in Center City"?  Another of America’s equivalent to the ruins of Pompeii, or going even further back in time, calling to mind the civic criminality of the Nubian treasures sunken under Egypt’s Aswan Dam project.

    Two more stops on the P1 map — reading same is an exercise in artistic construct unto itself — revealed more ho-hums.  However across the street from one of the installations sat the most rewarding stop on our journey — one which didn’t appear to be part of P1 — the L9 Gallery.  This modest house/gallery was the gem of the afternoon.  Operated by the spousal photography duo Shandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun, we were welcomed by the mild-mannered, informative Mr. Calhoun and thoroughly taken with the couple’s exceptional black and white photos of classic NOLA black neighborhood scenes, with a nice sampling of brilliant images of New Orleans musicians.  The eyes drifted immediately to a wonderful piece featuring the late patriarch Danny Barker and his grinning young protege Kermit Ruffins, and a raucous jam session piece with a youthful Dr. Michael White blowing clarinet.  Another part of the collection was a series of pieces that brought home the bleak realism of life inside the walls of the notorious Angola Prison and outside on the chain gang.  By contrast were several of the same images from the original pieces that were partially destroyed by the flood; the effect was not unlike the fractured-beauty experience of your first exposure to ancient ruins.  When visiting the Lower 9th Ward, which is scene to several encouraging redevelopment efforts, including a monthly farmer’s market and other hopeful social service activities, pay a visit to L9 Gallery — you’ll be all the richer for the experience.

    Mid-month Dr. Michael White, true keeper of the traditional New Orleans jazz flame as sacred trust, presented a program dealing with the African origins and connections between New Orleans music and the Motherland on a lovely late Saturday afternoon at Xavier University.  This was ably accomplished through White and an author’s opening remarks and driven home by contrasting sets of New Orleans drum and dance and a performance by drummer Seguenon Kone’s traditional African drum & dance ensemble.  Kone, who I had experienced on a prior Friday evening showcase at the Maple Leaf, has relocated to NOLA from Cote d’Ivoire via Orlando, FL.  He specializes in the three headed, tri-pitched dun-dun drum and a balaphone that he straps on and joyfully mallets.  Joining him was a countryman on djembe and a third hand drummer from Senegal.  They appear poised to take New Orleans by storm. 

    Later in the week Seguenon conducted the debut of his Africa-New Orleans connection at Snug Harbor.  He and his fellow percussionists were joined onstage by New Orleanians Jason Marsalis on vibes, reedman Rex Gregory, bassist Matt Perrine (a real 360 degree bassist equally at home on tuba, acoustic bass, and bass guitar), and Dr. White.  At first blush the traditionalist Michael White (hear his excellent latest disc  "Blue Crescent" on the Basin Street label) might seem like a fish out of water in this context, but he dove into the grooves with considerable relish.  Initially it seemed that perhaps Gregory was inviting a sonic train wreck in endeavoring to team his soprano sax with White’s keening clarinet, but they achieved remarkable synergy.  Marsalis was the glue, the bridge between these distinct traditions on vibes, gleefully dropping liberal quotes in particularly fine balance with his instrument’s African ancestor of the mallet family, Seguenon’s nimble balaphone.  Clearly this is a project that bears development, and from the outward joy of the participants and Seguenon’s growing Crescent City profile (he showed up again, this time with his folkloric unit, at that Saturday’s Rampart Street fair)… his evolution on the NOLA scene bears close watch.  He’s probably a lock to grace one of the stages on next spring’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

November 21 brought the jazz component of The Christ Church Cathedral’s annual All The Saints "festival of healing, celebration and jazz".  That evening’s free concert for an appreciative SRO audience delivered the now-customary annual performance in the sacred space by the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO).  Led by the audacious trumpeter Irvin Mayfield, one of the most tireless civic hustlers and largely positive self-promoters I’ve ever interviewed (for a JazzTimes @ Home feature several months ago), NOJO is an ambitious 501(c)(3) built along the lines of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra; no surprise given that Mayfield is an avowed Wynton Marsalis acolyte and protege.  The music on this occasion, laden with the blues and Crescent City grooves, came almost exclusively from Mayfield’s pen; some of it apparently sprung at the 11th hour on the band, as announced openly by the leader as an ongoing bit of MC inside joke that grew a bit tiresome; if you’re going to perform an annual concert of this magnitude… rehearse, rehearse, rehearse…  As had been the case with their jazzfest performance last May, clearly one of the ongoing highlights of any NOJO performance is the brilliant work of clarinetist Evan Christopher, whose solos seem to transcend all that came before and lift the band to new heights.  While much of the critical buzz these days regarding the clarinet seems to center on the deserving young Anat Cohen, I’d advise you not to sleep on Evan Christopher, who is also quite an adept tenor player; seek out his records at your own reward.  Another anecdotal highlight of the evening was provided by vocalist Johnaye Kendrick, clearly the most promising of the current Thelonious Monk Institute student body. 

THE ADVENTURES OF RANDY WESTON

For the last several years I’ve been thoroughly immersed in the deep, broad and multi-faceted challenge of working with pianist-composer Randy Weston on his autobiography.  I’m very happy to say that our book, African Rhythms: the autobiography of Randy Weston, composed by Randy Weston, arranged by Willard Jenkins, after our many travels and painstaking work — not to mention the fact that neither of us is retired and must still work for a living, which stretched the project out a bit time-wise — will be published by Duke University Press in 2009.  NEA Jazz Master pianist-composer-bandleader Randy Weston is very much the underrated and somewhat overlooked artist whose story is full of life’s twists and turns, all informed by an abiding African-centricity that is arguably without peer in the jazz world.  His life has been touched equally by not only Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins and Melba Liston, but also by J.A. Rogers, Marshall Stearns, Cheikh Anta Diop, and the Gnawa Masters of Morocco, plus all manner of high masters, seekers, seers, soothsayers, and spiritualists across the globe… musical and otherwise.   

Thus we begin a series of anecdotes in this space from our book African Rhythms, leading up to the publication date.  One important figure in the life of Randy Weston is the great poet-author-social commentator and world traveler Langston Hughes.  You’ll find several mentions of Randy in Arnold Rampersad’s epic two-volume biography of Hughes and the pianist-composer speaks very fondly of his experiences with the writer, such as this tasty anecdote from their friendship.

    After "Uhuru Afrika" [Weston’s 1960 opus recording for United Artists, since reissued several times including most recently as part of the Mosaic Records "Randy Weston Mosaic Select" box set; for Uhuru Afrika Langston Hughes penned the liner notes and wrote lyrics for the suite’s lone vocal selection "African Lady"] Langston and I stayed close.  In fact when he died in 1967 at a French hospital in New York his secretary called and said "Randy, in Langston’s will he wants you to play his funeral with a trio."  I thought ‘man, Langston is too much!’  They had some kind of religious ceremony someplace else, which I was unable to attend.  But the ceremony Langston really wanted and had specified in his will took place at a funeral home in Harlem.  It was a big funeral home that seated over 200 people with chairs on one side of the place.  In the other room was Langston’s body, laid out in a coffin with his arms crossed.  The band was Ed Blackwell [drums], Bill [Vishnu] Wood [bass], and me.  They had arranged for us to play in front of the area of the funeral home where the guests sat, surrounded by two big wreaths.  Ed Blackwell got very New Orleans, very superstitious about the setting.  He said "man, I’m not gonna touch those flowers.  It’s weird enough we’re here in the first place."  So we had some guys move the flowers so we could set up the band.

    The people filed in and had a processional to view Langston’s body.  Lena Horne was there, so were Ralph Bunche, Arna Bontempts, and a whole lot of dignitaries.  We set up the band and I went outside for a minute to get a breath of fresh air.  Langston’s secretary came out and said "OK Randy, it’s time to start."  I said "where’s the minister?"  He said "there’s no minister, you guys start the service!"  I stayed up all night the night Langston died and wrote a piece called "Blues for Langston" because I knew he loved the blues more than anything else in the world.  He and Jimmy Rushing, those two guys really made an impact on me about the importance of the blues and what the blues really meant.

    Before we played I stood up and said "well folks, I wrote this blues for Langston Hughes since he loved the blues so much, so we’re going to play the blues."  We played one hour of all different kinds of blues and in between selections Arna Bontempts read some of Langston’s poetry.  The funniest thing I remember about it was that Lena Horne told me later "ya know, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know whether to pat my foot or not…"  But the story is that Langston put us all on.  Two weeks later I got a phone call from his secretary who said "Randy, I forgot to tell you, Langston said to be sure the musicans are paid union scale!"

Stay tuned to this space for further anecdotes from African Rhythms, detailing the rich life and singular life and times of NEA Jazz Master composer-pianist Randy Weston.  As the longtime member of Randy Weston’s African Rhythms band, trombonist  Benny Powell has said "…With Randy Weston we don’t play gigs, we have adventures…"