Here’s our playlist for the Wednesday, October 9 edition of Ancient/Future radio, heard Wednesday nights 10-midnight on WPFW 89.3FM in the DC metro area, and streaming live at http://www.wpfw.org.

ARTIST/TUNE/ALBUM/LABEL
Charles Brown, In the Evening, compilation
(Remembering Butch Warren)
Butch Warren, A Little Chippie (courtesy of Larry Appelbaum)
Thelonious Monk, Stuffy Turkey, Monk’s Miracles, Columbia
Thelonious Monk, Evidence, Monk in Tokyo, Columbia
Herbie Hancock, Three Bags Full, The Complete Blue Note Sessions, Blue Note
Jackie McLean, The Way I Feel (comp. Butch Warren), Vertigo, Blue Note
McCoy Tyner, Contemporary Focus, Today and Tomorrow, Impulse!
Hank Mobley, No Room for Squares, ditto, Blue Note
(What’s New/the New Release Hour)
Louis Armstrong/Oscar Peterson, What’s New
Rene Marie, Peel Me a Grape, I Wanna Be Evil, Motema
Jeri Brown, Echoes, ditto, Jongleur
Geri Allen (w/Marcus Belgrave), Space Odyssey, Grand River Crossings, Motema
Randy Weston & Billy Harper, Blues to Senegal, The Roots of the Blues, Universal/Sunnyside
Charnett Moffett, Lonely Woman, Spirit of Sound, Motema
Billy Bang, Law Years, Da Bang, Tum
Steve Khan, Blues Connotation, Parting Shot, Tone Center
Jamie Baum Septet, Nusrat, In This Life, Sunnyside

contact: willard@openskyjazz.com

This year marks my 4th decade doing weekly jazz radio shows for community and public radio stations. Currently my Ancient/Future show airs Wednesday nights 10:00pm-midnight over WPFW 89.3 FM in the DC Metro area, and streaming live at http://www.wpfw.org; from 11:00pm-midnight is our weekly feature What’s New/The New Release Hour. Here’s the playlist for October 2, 2013:

ARTIST / TUNE / ALBUM TITLE / LABEL
Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton, Joe Turner’s Blues, Play The Blues, Warner Bros.
Duke Ellington, Daybreak Express, Duke Ellington Centennial, RCA
Duke Ellington, Across the Track Blues, Duke Ellington Centennial, RCA
Clifford Brown, Take the ‘A’ Train, Complete Emarcy Recordings, Emarcy
Jon Hendricks, Little Train of Iron, Salud Joao Gilberto, Reprise
John Coltrane, Blue Train, Blue Train, Blue Note
Christian McBride, Dream Train, People Music, Mack Avenue
Bobby McFerrin, He Ran for the Train, Vocabularies, Emarcy
What’s New/The New Release Hour
Roberto Fonseca, 7 Rayos, Yo, Concord
Ahmad Jamal, Silver, Saturday Morning, Jazz Village
Gregory Porter, Free, Liquid Spirit, Blue Note
Trilok Gurtu, Jack Johnson Black Saint, Spellbound, Sunnyside
Michele Rosewoman’s New Yor-Uba, Perdon, 30 Years, Advance
Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet, Melambo, Latin Jazz/Jazz Latin, Patois
Monsur Scott Harlem Quartet, Song for My Father, Come Over,

Host: Willard Jenkins

Ain’t But a Few of Us
Black music writers tell their story…
Anthony Dean-Harris

I first encountered the young writer Anthony Dean-Harris via his very active jazz-based blog at http://www.NEXTBOP.com. Just to give you a sense of where he’s been coming from with NEXTBOP, here’s how he characterizes the site: “The philosophy of Nextbop isn’t just about promoting jazz to jazz lovers. Nextbop is about appealing to everyone. It’s about promoting jazz to the world. It’s about showing the indie rock crowd, the punk rock crowd, the hip hop crowd, the R&B crowd, the bluegrass crowd, and so many other scenes that this kind of music is great and it’s not so far off from what you’re used to hearing.” Being all about jazz audience development here with the Independent Ear, and with my work in general, that philosophy certainly struck a chord with this editor!

As with any upwardly mobile, energetic young striver, change is afoot for Anthony Dean-Harris, news he conveyed recently. “I, in consultation with my partner Sebastien, have decided to end Nextbop at the end of this year in order to oversee the blog at The Art of Cool Project (http://www.theartofcoolproject.com), a non-profit organization that puts on jazz and jazz-related shows in Durham, NC,” with their first festival in the works for April 2014. “Starting [in October] posts for Nextbop will post simultaneously at Art of Cool so as to get folks comfortable, eventually heading there by next year and to grow its audience.”

Clearly Anthony Dean-Harris was a fresh new candidate for this latest installment in the “Ain’t But a Few of Us” series of dialogues with African American jazz writers…

WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO WRITE ABOUT SERIOUS MUSIC IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I’ve always loved jazz and grew up around it and I knew I’ve wanted to be a writer since high school when I knew I wanted to go to Trinity University for college because of its jazz station, KRTU San Antonio. However, I didn’t get a scholarship to Trinity, though I did get one for Morehouse College. So I ended up going there and my family soon followed me up to support me, experience the American black mecca [Atlanta] themselves, and keep costs low (or at least as low as one can in an area with a significantly higher cost of living than San Antonio). When I graduated from Morehouse in 2008, the recession had just hit and my family decided that since I was done with school, we’d all head back from Atlanta to our hometown of San Antonio.

Once home, I got involved as a volunteer with a city council race and met the late Kathy Clay-Little, a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and publisher of the community newspaper African-American Expressions. We were talking at the campaign office one day about her plans to put on a small jazz festival on Fathers’ Day and who she should try to book. When she learned of my love of jazz, she asked if I’d like to cover concerts for her paper. I gladly said yes and one of my first assignments was to attend the annual KRTU spring concert with her, including the opening VIP reception. It was there, before the evening’s performer Ramsey Lewis, that I met many of the folks who ran KRTU. Those folks said I should have a show there, especially since one of their hosts was leaving soon. Over the next few months, I eventually ended up taking over The Line-Up, posting the playlists to my personal blog.

It was around this time that I ran across sites like Nextbop and NPR’s jazz blog, A Blog Supreme. ABS’s editor, Patrick Jarenwattananon, posed a question to a few folks in the jazz scene, asking if they were to share ten albums of jazz music with a newcomer to the genre, which albums would they choose, however all the albums could only be from the last twenty years. Nextbop’s founders, Sebastien Helary and Justin Wee, had a great list and that’s when I was impressed by the site and its potential. I also put together a list unsolicited and sent it to Jarenwattananon, who graciously posted it to the site. That’s how Sebastien ran across my blog with its playlists from my radio show and my writing from college back when I was on the newspaper staff as opinions editor. Seb contacted me about writing for Nextbop and as time went by and we grew a rapport, and as he learned that my college journalism background was perfect training for managing and growing the site, I eventually ended up as Nextbop’s editor and my role as writing about jazz music pretty much cemented.

I can see God’s hand in a lot of this, leading me from one role to another and making me incredibly happy (though still pretty poor, but I get plenty of new music and see a lot of shows in support of this community, so it all works out).

WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED WRITING ABOUT MUSIC WERE YOU AWARE OF THE DEARTH OF AFRICAN AMERICANS WRITING ABOUT SERIOUS MUSIC?
I can’t say I was aware of the dearth of black writers on jazz music, but I can’t say I was too surprised by it. The genre has been growing and changing a lot over the century of its existence, and as it goes with pretty much anything, it’s all too common for blacks to be shut out or limited from telling our own stories, framing our own narratives, or just giving our own perspective built from our backgrounds. Fortunately, it’s a bit easier for us to change this as the internet has democratised access and ability to do so but the work continues.

WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT’S STILL SUCH A GLARING DISPARITY – WHERE YOU HAVE A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF BLACK MUSICIANS MAKING SERIOUS MUSIC BUT SO FEW BLACK MEDIA COMMENTATORS ON THE MUSIC?
I don’t like to think there are so many countervailing forces oppressing black journalists in this regard (there might be some who are indeed doing so maliciously, but I don’t want to cut wide swaths like that), but I do think that it could mostly be the public’s lack of familiarity with black voices. Much of my work focuses on contextualization– we are what we see everyday. We cannot know what we have not been exposed to and we’re experts on those things that surround us. There may very well be newspaper, magazine, and web editors who simply aren’t around voices of color who may be aware of black jazz (and R&B/hip hop/soul/etc) music and don’t even know that they don’t know this. In an increasingly nicheified musical landscape where people can read only the coverage they want to read, it may be getting easier to get our voices out there but difficult in entirely different ways to get work into disparate eyes.

DO YOU THINK THAT DISPARITY OR DEARTH OF AFRICAN AMERICAN JAZZ WRITERS CONTRIBUTES TO HOW THE MUSIC IS COVERED?
I definitely think this, largely because of contextualization. Take for example Kanye West‘s recent appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The following day, there were many posts on music blogs linking to the performance– the standard web aggregation coverage of the day without much substance added to it other than “Watch this video!” It may have been noted that Charlie Wilson was present and singing, but a black voice well versed in Wilson’s body of work could have noted how many of Wilson’s trademark “shabba-dabba-tweet-tweet-tweet”s (and one or two “ooh’-weeEE’s) he ad-libbed. Of course, white writers who aren’t exposed to the back catalog of The Gap Band may not have even noticed this merited mentioning because they don’t know what they don’t know. This is how that added black perspective affects the discourse.

For black music to be, as it always has been, a crucial part of culture, informed people must also be part of the discourse about the music’s impact.

SINCE YOU’VE BEEN WRITING ABOUT SERIOUS MUSIC, HAVE YOU EVER FOUND YOURSELF QUESTIONING WHY SOME MUSICIANS MAY BE ELEVATED OVER OTHERS, AND IS IT YOUR SENSE THAT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE LACK OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY AMONG WRITERS COVERING THE MUSIC?
Since I’ve been writing about jazz, especially as I’ve run my own publication, I’ve come to realize essentially how this job and the attention given to some artists over others natually occurs. I’ve realized some of the seemingly trivial things like appealing album art determines whether or not I’ll devote attention to an album, or when an email hits my inbox at just the right time for me to care, or how important having a good press release and readily accessible songs to stream make spreading the word more appealing to me. Seeing the inner workings of music journalism like this helped me realize the whole industry functions like this to some degree, and this doesn’t even take into consideration how it all works in other genres or larger publications who may pay more attention to SEO optimization than merely discussing quality music and informing the masses of talent that needs a voice. The inner workings of the machine and its simple extension of how we as people pay attention to things explains so much about why music journalism is how it is.

So taking added diversity into account in this regard adjusts things a bit because it’s easy to assume people of different cultural backgrounds would have their respective attention drawn to different works. It’s the nature of the beast.

WHAT’S YOUR SENSE OF THE INDIFFERENCE OF SO MANY AFRICAN AMERICAN-ORIENTED PUBLICATIONS TOWARDS SERIOUS MUSIC, DESPITE THE FACT THAT SO MANY AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS CONTINUE TO CREATE SERIOUS MUSIC?
When it comes to how black publications cover music of this sort, I don’t like to think of it too differently from how mainstream white publications cover mainstream pop music in comparison to other more sophisticated kinds of music. I’ve been so immersed in the world of jazz since I’ve been listening as a child, but especially since I’ve been involved in Nextbop and radio hosting at KRTU, that I have forgotten that this music does indeed have a tendency to be rather inaccessible. My listening to music for musicality, dynamism, quick decisions made on the spot, communalism between musicians, and other aspects that don’t bore me like simplicity does is distinctly different from how many others listen to music, searching for quick, visceral connection and catchiness. Every culture has this sort of dichotomy in its art and I’m loath to say black art may have this problem more than other cultures, though black culture’s influence on culture at large does shine a different sort of spotlight on the matter that is at times distressing.

HOW WOULD YOU REACT TO THE CONTENTION THAT THE WAY AND TONE OF HOW SERIOUS MUSIC IS COVERED HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH WHO IS WRITING ABOUT IT?
I’d agree with this in much the same way writing about essentially anything is affected by who is doing the writing.

I’m a writer who loves not only music but also television and film. I’m one of those guys who uses the word “showrunner” a lot and cares about Aaron Sorkin’s oeuvre and things of that sort. When people ask me why I care about these sorts of things and how I remember details about television like I do, I tell them it’s all part of being a storyteller. In one’s family or circle of friends, there’s always some person at dinner — a guy back in college, that crazy uncle, a fellow bar patron — who tells stories in a way that makes people listen. Maybe the person describes things ornately, maybe s/he uses wild hand gestures, maybe s/he has a great voice. Whatever it is, the storyteller has attributes that makes his or her stories unique and appealing. A person tells a story in his or her own way that people remember, that causes them to come back for more. If a storyteller has a tendency to talk about interoffice relationships, or uses a camera to show the story, or uses the internet to talk about what happened at a jazz club in New York, these are all different ways to tell a story. I always try to understand that each medium lends itself to different strategies and means of performing the same function– there are people out there who want to hear what the storyteller has to say.

IN YOUR EXPERIENCE WRITING ABOUT SERIOUS MUSIC WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME OF YOUR MOST REWARDING ENCOUNTERS?
The most rewarding experience I’ve had since running Nextbop was putting together our first unofficial day party during the South By SouthWest festival in Austin, Texas, this last March. It was the first event I had ever organized and we had bands of renown local to Texas and throughout the world agree to play a little burger place built from a reformed car garage. It was humbling that such talented people like Australia’s Hiatus Kaiyote and Canada’s BADBADNOTGOOD would agree to play such an event for a clear novice like me at something like this, and moreso that it was attended as well as it was. I’m looking to put on another party this coming March without me being nearly as exasperated as I was the first time around, but after the dust cleared and everyone who was there had a great time, I could step back and marvel at just what happened. Writing is such a solitary act (and writers, like many artists, are often very critical of themselves to the point of self-loathing). So to throw an event where people actually show up and enjoy what it is that you do and are happy to say so is extremely satisfying.

Though lately, I’ve really enjoyed editing the work of others for Nextbop. There are essays like Jon Wertheim’s critique of trumpeter Nicholas Payton‘s contentious nature, or Ben Gray’s series looking at original versions of jazz songs and comparing them to cover versions, or just being blessed to post anything Angelika Beener writes that makes me immensely proud of Nextbop and what it has grown to be over these few years.

WHAT OBSTACLES HAVE YOU ENCOUNTERED – BESIDES DIFFICULT EDITORS AND INDIFFERENT PUBLICATIONS – IN YOUR EFFORTS AT COVERING SERIOUS MUSIC?
Since I’ve mostly been working as my own editor and manager since taking up music journalism, the most difficult part of all this is learning the ropes about all this on my own. Arranging interviews, obtaining press credentials for events, keeping in contact with publicists, and things of that sort is still a fish out of water thing for me. Another part of that, though, is figuring out how to make all this a viable business. Nextbop has been a labor of love for four years now and has yet to make money. I’ve been working on selling ad space to change that, but this, too, is one of those roles in the business that’s new to me. Running the whole business and learning the trade has been a lot to tackle, and though it’s been slow going, it’s sometimes a comfort to realize what I’ve picked up along the way in doing so.

10. WHAT HAVE BEEN THE MOST INTRIGUING RECORDS RELEASED SO FAR THIS YEAR?
Laura Mvula‘s Sing to the Moon
Thundercat‘s Apocalypse
Gerald Clayton‘s A Life Forum
The Stepkids‘ Troubadour
Butcher Brown‘s a & b-sides
Terence Blanchard‘s Magnetic
There’s definitely a lot more but I’ll get to that in the next few months around the time for year-end lists with the rest of the Nextbop staff.

DC-area based songstress/conceptualist Alison Crockett is a decidedly 21st century artist. I say that because here’s a woman who combines the political sensibility of a Nina Simone with a craft based on equal parts Sarah Vaughan and Jill Scott, blended with an approach informed by extensive work with artists ranging from DJ/producer/mixologist King Britt and the tightrope walking saxophonist-composer Greg Osby. Added to her many and varied experiences she brings exceptional music education from Temple University and an MA from Manhattan School of Music.

Alison’s latest recording is Mommy, What’s a Depression? – certainly a title that bears further exploring by inquisitive minds. There’s a strong sense of studio craft on this record, from the various news broadcast and speech samples and attention to such critical issues as immigration, to the use of technology more generally associated with hip hop and pop than with someone with her improvising skills. And dig the musicians she’s working with here; they include keyboardists like Marc Cary and Orrin Evans, the too often overlooked versatile/powerhouse drummer Terreon Gully, and his brother bassist Carlos Henderson, who alternates those chores with the ubiquitous Burniss Travis, alto saxophonist-keytar exponent Casey Benjamin (from the Robert Glasper Experiment)… and those are just a few of her fellow travelers. So what’s up with Alison Crockett? Read on…

Give us a little background on yourself and your singing efforts and activities.
I have been singing for a long time. I started off as a pianist but frankly didn’t want to practice as much as it took to get good so I moved to voice. That’s a little tongue and cheek, but still true. I started off singing straight ahead jazz in college and fully expected to do that for my life. Then I started working with DJs in Philly and it all changed. I worked with King Britt and Sylk 130 and was dubbed with the moniker, Ms. DivaBlue, an alter ego I have to this day. I then went over to Britain and recorded with Us3 and became their first vocalist. I was also recording with Jay Denes at Naked Music doing electronic lounge music. Meanwhile, I was putting out my first solo project, “On Becoming A Woman…” which started out as the EP “Azure”. The track “Like Rain” became very successful garnering a lot of praise from especially style makers like Gilles Peterson. I toured a lot, sometimes with my first daughter as a baby. All during that time I was working with kids and adults teaching, writing, arranging and conducting music. I decided early on, if I was going to be a musician, I was going to be a musician and that’s what I have done.

With the release of “Mommy, What’s a Depression,” what number is that in your discography? (For Alison’s complete discography visit www.alisoncrockett.net)
It is number 5. I did a Jazz EP titled, “That’s Where You Go“, “On Becoming a Woman…“, The Return of Diva Blue, (a remix record of On Becoming a Woman), “Bare“, and the present record out now.

There’s an obvious sense of narrative to this record, a sense of political inner-connectedness between the selections, starting with the title. Give us a sense of what you were after in putting this release together.
I have to get to the title later, because it won’t make sense if I say it first. My brother and I had a lot of political conversations and we were both news junkies. He suggested that I put my political thoughts to music. Originally it was to be a semi-tribute to Nina Simone; more of the spirit of her rebeliousness and originality. We were trying to capture all my interests in Jazz, Blues, Funk, and soul. I started off singing straight ahead jazz and then moved into Acid Jazz, Drum n bass, soulful house, and soul music. Each song I chose makes a statement about what I was thinking about an issue of the day. While we were planning and recording the record, the Great Recession hit, so there was even more material to deal with. “Gentrification” was my experience in Brooklyn being both the gentrifier and the gentrify-ee so to speak and the frustration that the people from the neighborhood feel at the changes occurring at their expense. I used the “Political Medley” to highlight what I saw George Bush do during his presidency. I just thought he did whatever he wanted, and screw what everyone else thought. He could take the country to war by saying whatever he wanted, which I thought the song “I’ve Got the World On a String” illustrated perfectly. When I heard Dinah Washington doing “Backwater blues”, the only thing I could think of was hurricane Katrina and the fecklessness of the response in spite of all the suffering. Then Obama dropped the ball totally in the same region during the oil spill a few years later. And all of that was tied into the world needing fossil fuels which has increased climate change which plays a part in the difficulties with the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana.

“H-U-M-A-N” came from the war in Iraq. We Americans can’t take it if one of us gets a hangnail, let alone death. However, if someone in another country dies, it’s doesn’t seem all that important. Though that is not completely true, when news reports were coming out about the American Soldier death tally at about 4000 it was really saddening. But then, the next number came out about Iraqi deaths and that was over 100,000! I started thinking about who we care about and what makes us care. We can see so much suffering, but as long as it doesn’t touch us personally, they are other and not truly human to us.

Each song is something in my life: being a hard working mom, having dreams for the future, being frustrated about political punditry and how self serving it is, being depressed about the present. Which brings me to the title of the record. My brother and I battled about it for months. But the news came on one day and my daughter heard about a depression, because they were talking about what was happening with the recession and how this was the worst economic downturn since the great depression. She asked me what a depression was. I tried to explain it to her. I was telling my brother about it in an off hand way and he said, that’s what we should call it. “Mommy, What’s a Depression?” I said, no, no, no, no…there’s got to be something better. But it stuck because it fit. This is a retrospective of what we as a nation have been going through for the past 10 years. It’s been really tough and who are the people that are going to be changed by it? Our children. I was going through all of this as a wife, mother and musician. My music has always been about sound pictures; snapshots of the moment. These songs are snapshots of this time, like you would see on CNN or Frontline, just done musically.

I have been performing the record as a one woman show recently and have been having the conversation with people through music about what it has been like. It makes an impact, because no one is discussing our recent past experiences with real talk. Events that have happened have changed peoples lives radically and the show has been like a release valve for me and hopefully others as we slowly climb our way out of the morass called the great recession. I’m continuing to expand and refine the show as I go until it gets to the point where literally it talks about the American dream that is not broken, but certainly has a flat tire or some problem with its engine for the majority of us.

You’ve got some first class partners working with you on this record, talk about your fellow collaborators on this disc.
I have been blessed to have grown up with some really wonderful players. I have to say that Terreon Gully made “H-U-M-A-N” what it was. I had the chart written and told him the feel and he destroyed it; pounded it into the ground. The greasiness he laid on tracks like Gentrification and the smoothness of I am a Million made everything feel so good. Then I had my Philly contingent on most of the jazz recordings. I have played with Orrin Evans, Mike Boone, and Byron Landham my entire adult life. We played gigs together when I was a young adult and so I know them and their sound well. They gave Trouble in the Lowlands the stank groove that only Philly cats can give. Marc Carey and I actually went to high school together and didn’t re-connect until I moved to Brooklyn. He has such a touch and deep understanding of how to make the piano sing. Casey Benjamin was my pianist for years and we did a tour together when my first record came out. His chord choices are epic! He puts a touch on music that makes it really unique. He made my song, “UR” on my first record into an epic journey literally with one chord change. He is brilliant. Trombonist Greg Boyer and I met while doing a workshop in Maryland, where I now reside. I asked him to listen to what I was working on, and would he be interested in doing the horns for “Talkin’ Like You Know”. He agreed and a classic was born. [poet] Ursula Rucker and I go way back to the King Britt and Sylk 130 days when we were on the record “When the Funk Hit’s the Fan”. She is my favorite performance poet. She has a way of putting words together sonically that sounds so real and uncontrived; unlike some other performance poets. I just like to listen to her talk. Then my brother, Teddy Crockett and I have been working together since we were born….

Clearly you’ve also decided to explore different means of sonic enhancement on this record, like the studio effect you get with “The Old Country”. Talk about that element of the release.
This record was to be a melding of all of my influences and that included the electronic influence. My brother, who produced the record, decided to go crazy in the best way possible. He decided to use auto-tune on my voice in a way that a lot of pop stars were using at that time. So we decided to put it into the song. We also wanted to create the picture of a a kitchen or a restaurant and a person listening to a radio about the immigration debate that was and is still raging at the time. Computers and processors allow you to make almost any sound you want, so the song morphs into a modern electronic lounge jam which I loved which represents to me the past and future melding as the issue continues to morph and change as we get deeper into the issue. Teddy also did this dope thing with the bass in “Nature Boy” where he ran the acoustic upright bass track that Mike Boone did through a processor to get the sound that you hear now. He used the same skills a producer would use in electronic music and Hip Hop by sampling aspects of the live recording and looping it so it could sound old and new at the same time. With “H-U-M-A-N”, we struggled with changing it at all. The live version was so ridiculously good, we didn’t know whether to leave it alone or not. Then Teddy went into mad genius phase and came up with the very same usage of auto-tune on my voice that he did on “Old Country” and it turned the song into a version of machine and man waring with each other about what is human. Originally it had no background vocals, but I loved the idea of the 2nds and suspended chords which added to the machine/robotic feeling even more. We are both sci-fi, star trek and star wars fans so it The effects makes a collage of sound that sonically can be overwhelming but gets the point across as much as the words do.

www.alisoncrockett.net

“Ed Blackwell is one of the major drum influences of the twentieth-century. Through his connection to the African diaspora, his so-called avant garde drumming implied all world music, ancient to the future.” Master drummer Billy Hart

In the late 1960s-early 1970s the ancestor Chicago tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan produced a series of recordings as part of his “Dolphy Series.” Those recordings were originally slated for a partnership Clifford forged with a book publishing company called Frontier to release his series. That never happened and Jordan turned to Stanley Cowell and Charles Tolliver‘s indie imprint Strata-East Records. The crown jewel of the series was Jordan’s long out of print Glass Bead Games date.

A couple of months ago ace record producer Michael Cuscuna asked me to write liner notes for a box set he was planning for his important Mosaic reissue label. When Cuscuna detailed the contents of this proposed Clifford Jordan box set, I was delighted to learn that one of the discs contained a previously unreleased session led by the distinctive, late great drummer Edward Blackwell. Born in 1929 in New Orleans, Blackwell was a true keeper of that distinctive New Orleans drum beat that encompassed such a rich tradition going all the way back to the root source of jazz and including what is popularly known as that distinctive “second line” rhythm; those rhythms which propelled the second line of traditional New Orleans funeral mourners cum revelers who solemnly followed the funeral cortege and brass band to the internment, then joyously danced their way back from the cemetery to celebrate the deceased.

Ed Blackwell was an upholder of that flame of the first order. He along with fellow trapsman James Black propelled a coterie of restless mid-20th century explorers who sought to expand the New Orleans jazz craft from the classic traditional approach to a more advanced sensibility reflecting the developments happening in New York and other environs that ushered in the modern jazz era. Blackwell participated fully in these various developments with players such as saxophonists Harold Battiste and Nat Perrilliat, pianist Ellis Marsalis, and clarinetist Alvin Batiste.

Blackwell, who passed from kidney complications in 1992, became one of the most singular drum stylists on the New York scene after first relocating from NOLA to L.A. then to NYC on the heels of the Ornette Coleman Quartet’s auspicious migration in 1959. Billy Higgins held down Coleman’s drum chair when the band first ventured East, but Blackwell took over in 1960. In 1970 Blackwell took up residency at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and throughout that decade well into the 1980s he contributed his formidable rhythm pallet to the bristling Coleman alumni unit known as Old & New Dreams, alongside Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, and Charlie Haden.

Preceding that, in 1967 Ed Blackwell was part of the Randy Weston band that made a historic 18-country State Department-sponsored tour of Africa. Based in part on popular demand for their return following an incredible final tour date performance in the capital city Rabat, in 1969 Ed Blackwell’s family joined Weston and his children in making a home in Morocco. In our many interviews in prep for Weston’s autobiography African Rhythms, Weston recounted several stories about Blackwell. One of the most amusing concerned Langston Hughes’ will, which insisted that Randy Weston play a set at the great writer’s 1967 funeral.

As Randy recounts in our book, “…When [Langston Hughes] died… 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 was at a funeral home in Harlem. It was a big funeral home that seated over two hundred 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, Bill Wood [nee Vishnu Wood], 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. …We played one hour of all different kinds of blues and in between selections Arna Bontemps read some of Langston’s poetry. …Two weeks later I got a phone call from [Langston’s] secretary, who said, “Randy, I forgot to tell you, Langston said to be sure the musicians are paid union scale.” So despite his superstitious protestations, at least Ed Blackwell got union scale for that unusual gig!

In preparation for the Clifford Jordan/Dolphy Series Mosaic box set liner notes, I spoke with Weston and three drummers – DC-based Peabody Institute drum professor Nasar Abadey, Allison Miller – who had spoken glowingly about Blackwell at a listening session at Tribeca Performing Arts Center last winter alongside Carl Allen – and Lewis Nash – to get their sense of Ed Blackwell’s impact. Look out for the Mosaic box later this fall, but for now I wanted to share Weston, Abadey, Miller, and Nash’s insights on Ed Blackwell.

Ed Blackwell & Charlie Haden

What was it about Ed Blackwell’s drumming that worked so well with your music?
Randy Weston: We were the first ones to play opposite Ornette [in quartet w/Cecil Payne on saxophone] at the Five Spot when he first came to NYC; Leonard Bernstein was there that [opening] night and I wanted to punch him out when he said loudly that Ornette was better than Bird! The first time I heard Blackwell was with Ornette. Blackwell had that special thing New Orleans drummers have – that dance beat; it’s a spiritual thing – and Ed had that – he would do all that polyrhythmic, complex thing but he always had that dance beat.

When did Blackwell and his family join you to live in Morocco?
RW: Blackwell brought his wife & children; we wanted to escape that nonsense (drugs, etc.) in New York. He had that unique ability to mix those rhythms smoothly; he still had that New Orleans pocket, that stemmed straight from Baby Dodds.”

Any fond memories of Blackwell from that tour?
RW: When we played in Rabat, Morocco at the Cinema Agdal – the last concert of the whole tour – Ed’s New Orleans beat took the audience out. He shook up the audience; that concert and his drumming is the reason they wanted us to come back!

Nasar Abadey on Blackwell:
Ed Blackwell was a very quiet humble man. Whenever I had the opportunity to watch and to speak with Mr. Blackwell it became clear to me that he was prominent in introducing the New Orleans sensibility to modern jazz drumming. Of course, this was in line with Vernal Fournier and James Black among others.

What I learned from him in my conversations was his intention to relate to the tradition of always relating to a song’s melody and form by playing it on the drums and not only playing time on the cymbals. He would break away from keeping time to embellish the melodic structure with the snare, toms and bass drum and then continue to the cymbals to resume time keeping. Later you would hear the young Tony Williams explore this concept in Miles’ band. But what was so remarkable is that he did this with various drum rudiments and phrases steeped in the New Orleans style of drumming heard in Congo Square located in the French Quarter and in other venues around the city. These rhythms have become known as the New Orleans clave and cadences originated in Africa.

One more very important point; Mr. Blackwell studied with Mr. Max Roach when he got to New York and Mr. Billy Higgins studied with Blackwell when he arrived in New York. Mr. Billy “Jabali” Hart first made me aware of this fact and in was corroborated in my conversations with both of these gentleman. This thereby established the pecking order and importance of Roach’s influence. Listening to Higgins (“Sidewinder”) and Williams (“Freedom Jazz Dance”) you can hear the legacy of Mr. Ed Blackwell!

Ed Blackwell & Don Cherry made a series of duo recordings

Allison Miller on Blackwell:
I first heard Ed Blackwell with Ornette Coleman on This Is Our Music. I immediately connected to this music. It felt so good! It feels so good. I love the way Ornette, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell sound together. They sound like a true band, a group of exploratory musicians pushing boundaries together, improvising together, trusting each other, and sharing similar values on and off stage. Another element of connection to this music came from a certain Southern affiliation. I am from Texarkana. Coleman is from Fort Worth, Cherry from Oklahoma City, Blackwell from New Orleans, and Haden is from Iowa City but grew up playing country music. We Southerners feel the beat in a unique way. When my southern “green” ears of 18 years first heard This Is Our Music, I heard and described it as Free Country BeBop! It just blew me away and immediately stamped a smile on my face.

Ed Blackwell’s drumming makes me dance. I can feel his News Orleans roots in his entire approach to improvisational music. He has such a propulsive, buoyant, and joyful feel. His ride cymbal melody is wonderfully loose and I love the way he supports Coleman, Cherry, and Haden, while still participating with the melodic and rhythmic interplay being passed around the bandstand.

My second aural adventure on the Blackwell train was The Avant-Garde, with John Coltrane, Don Cherry, Percy Heath, and Ed Blackwell. This is when I really discovered Blackwell’s melodic sensibility. He takes a wonderfully melodic and swinging solo on Monk’s Bemsha Swing. This solo is filled with rudimental prowess and virtuosity but he never strays from the melody, feel, or form. It is true mastery.

As I said before, I then became obsessed with Blackwell and it became a personal journey of mine to procure every single recorded moment of him, as a side musician and leader. Some of my other favorite recorded moments of Blackwell are: Dewey Redman and Ed Blackwell’s Red and Black in Willisau, all Old and New Dreams, Cherry’s Complete Communion and El Corazon, Coleman’s The Art of the Improvisers and Beauty is a Rare Thing, Karl Berger’s Just Play and Crystal Fire, Blackwell’s What is Be Like?, [Joe] Lovano‘s Sounds of Joy and From the Soul, Archie Shepp‘s The Magic of Ju-Ju, and Jameel Moondoc‘s Judy’s Bounce.

Blackwell’s musical journey never plateaued or settled. He continued to search and explore new ideas, later incorporating polyrhythmic West African rhythms to the drum set and swing feel. His drumming is vertical yet propulsive. He approaches rhythm from the ground up, layering multiple rhythms, creating a palette of hypnotic, melodic, and percolating ostinatos (vamps). He sounds like an orchestra of drummers. I can only imagine how amazing it must have felt to make music with Blackwell.

Blackwell’s insatiable curiosity and exploratory nature inspire me to continue my creative journey as a jazz drummer and composer. I am moved by his ability to marry tradition and the unknown. His unwavering groove has become the soundtrack to my life. He is my “go to” listening experience. I feel the earth in Blackwell’s music.

Thanks Willard. I enjoyed writing about Blackwell. Now I am going to go listen to him.

Ed Blackwell according to Lewis Nash:
I first became aware of the great Ed Blackwell from his recordings with Ornette Coleman, then on the Eric Dolphy/Booker Little live at The Five Spot sessions. My first encounter with him in person was in Phoenix, AZ during the late 70’s, not long before I moved to New York City. I was playing with a saxophone and drums duo which opened for the group Blackwell had come to Phoenix to play with, Old and New Dreams. I was of course excited to hear him play, and to top it off, he was going to play my drums! In addition, the saxophonist (my friend Allan Chase) and I were asked to pick up Blackwell and company (Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Don Cherry) at the airport and bring them to their hotel. One of my most vivid recollections is that after we had the group in the car and were leaving the airport, Dewey Redman immediately asked if we knew where he could get some barbeque!

Anyway, we had some nice conversation on the way to the hotel, and Blackwell asked about the drums. I assured him they were fine (a nice set of rosewood finish Gretsch) and he seemed happy to know that. Later that night, after he’d heard me play, he was very complimentary about our opening set, and told me that he really enjoyed listening to me play the drums. That was such an awesome thing for me to hear from a great drummer that I greatly admired! I asked about having a lesson, but there really wasn’t enough time the next day before they had to leave.

I heard Blackwell play many times after I moved to New York, but the next time I had an opportunity to really hang out with him was at a jazz festival in Japan during the late 80’s. We finally had a chance to sit down together at a drumset, and he showed me a lot of the things he had worked out and talked about his 4 way independence concepts (hands and feet playing four distinct rhythms simultaneously). He sat down and wrote out several rhythms on a sheet of paper (which I still have) and explained to me what each hand and foot needed to do, then he demonstrated. It was great!! He also talked at length about Max Roach and what a master he was, and how Max was a major influence on his approach to the drums. Billy Higgins said that Blackwell was like a scientist at the drums (Higgins , and I have to agree completely. The way Blackwell combined and executed rhythms was masterful and required a high level of skill, technique and focus. For me he was a perfect balance of scientist and artist, as he not only had the technical skill necessary, but also the artistic sensibility to make the rhythms dance and feel good. Blackwell was one of the most swinging, grooving musicians to ever sit behind the drums!

Ed Blackwell’s other records as a leader: