On January 28, 2021 the woman no less than Nelson Mandela declared “South Africa’s First Lady of Song”, Sibongile Khumalo passed on to ancestry.  I first met Sibongile on a 2005 trip to the Cape Town Jazz Festival, where she was a fixture. This is a woman whose stylistic range was as broad as any – from Verdi operas to the outer edges of jazz expression. 

When I returned to that beautiful country in 2007 I was delighted to see that Sibongile was slated to play the festival again, this time in the company of one of our greatest drummer-bandleaders, NEA Jazz Master Jack DeJohnette.  Jack had assembled a band he called the Intercontinentals, which also included the innovative British trumpeter Byron Wallen, pianist Danilo Perez, saxophonist Jason Yarde, and bassist Jerome Harris.  I’m hopeful that somewhere in his archives Jack has recordings of that band that will be released widely, the band was that exceptional!

As we reflect on the passing of Sibongile Khumalo I thought I’d share a reprise of Suzan Jenkins and my earlier interview with her with Independent Ear readers. 

A Great Voice from the Motherland: Sibongile Khumalo.

The annual Cape Town Jazz Festival is held around Easter time in the Convention Center of one of Africa’s most beautiful cities. When traveling around Cape Town the beauty of the city contrasts starkly with the adjacent huge black township, vivid recollections of the forced evacuation of people of color (eviction is more to the point) from District 6 and subsequent relocation, and the ongoing scars left by apartheid as the country struggles with those wounds to build the perfect democracy envisioned by wise men like the great Nelson Mandela, the beloved Madiba.

Any trip to South Africa for a visiting jazz enthusiast quickly reveals that even during the dark days of apartheid the country was blessed with clearly the oldest and most vibrant jazz scene – particularly where that regards the number of exceptional jazz artists – jazz history of any country on the African continent, bar none. That history not only reveals great instrumentalists like the most well-known figures Hugh Masakela and Abdullah Ibrahim (formerly known as Dollar Brand) and the important historic SA bands the Jazz Epistles and the Blue Notes led by the edgy and distinguished pianist Chris McGregor, but also such important artists as saxophonists Kippie Moeketsi, Dudu Pukwanna, Winston Mankunku Ngozi, trombonist Jonas Gwangwa, and trumpeter Mongezi Feza, but also such contemporary figures as pianists Hotep Idris Galeta and Andile Yenana, and bands like Voice and Vivid Afrika. On the vocal side are such important figures as Miriam Makeba, Nancy Jacobs & Her Sisters, Dorothy Masuka, and Dolly Rathebe.

The most important contemporary South African woman singing jazz is Sibongile Khumalo. And therein lies a distinction; notice I didn’t say jazz singer, but instead a woman singing jazz. Ms. Khumalo is blessed with a gorgeous, operatically-trained voice that is as comfortable singing arias and pop songs as it is rendering jazz compositions. During a trip to the 2007 Cape Town Jazz Festival one of the highlights was a band led by drummer Jack DeJohnette that he labeled the Intercontinentals. That’s because the band boasted Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez, American bassist Jerome Harris, British saxophonist Jason Yarde and trumpeter Byron Wallen, and the centerpiece, Sibongile Khumalo, who acted as both vocalist and wordless improviser throughout the band’s stunning performance. Following the band’s press conference Suzan Jenkins and I sat down with Ms. Khumalo for the following interview.

The first time we were in Cape Town for the festival – in 2005 – we heard a lot of wonderful instrumentalists but we were also interested in South African jazz vocalists. It was recommended that we get some of your recordings. So we found the record you made at the Market Theatre, then I subsequently ordered one of your classical recordings online.

Sibongile Khumalo: The one that came out in 2005.

Yes. It was Duke Ellington who described Ella Fitzgerald as being “beyond category”. It’s obvious that you’re beyond category as well. Tell us about the broadness of your approach to music.

Phew… In 1991 leading up to ’92 I’d been doing concerts with a symphony orchestra, doing oratorios, doing recitals, but also working with a brilliant jazz guitarist who passed away a couple of years ago named Alan Qwela.   Between Alan Qwela and another jazz vocalist who also passed away a year ago I was exposed to jazz as a genre – as a potential for expression. At some point people say ‘…you have such a wonderful voice, why don’t you record something..?’ I’d be like ‘what am I going to record; I just sing what I sing…’ At that stage, early in my career, I didn’t feel like I was singing anything that I felt was important simply because – maybe that’s not the right word – I wasn’t saying things that I had been taught to sing. I was singing “Messiah,” I was singing “Elijah,” some arias from operas from here and there… But it was not something that I thought I could put down in a recording for posterity. I felt I needed to have a voice, some kind of language of my own but I didn’t know what that was.

Pop music, South African pop music – the way that Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Brenda Fassi, Sipho Mabuse… and all those groups were big as well, there was a whole circuit of festivals the same way as you have jazz festivals at the moment. That also was not something that I felt I could quite speak to. So it kinda like happened organically, I started drawing from those kinds of elements that I’d grown up with of choral music, of some of the classical stuff, and I put together a show called “The 3 Faces of Sibongile Khumalo” in ’92. In that program it was elements of the classical world that I’d come from, elements of the jazz that Alan and Sophie had exposed me to, and some of the traditional stuff that I grew up with in the township [Soweto]. And I did bits and pieces of all of that, just doing some Bach, doing some of the choral work – I didn’t see it as scat back then — but incorporating some of the stuff from the operas on top of the improvisations that the guys were doing. It was kind of happening like that. Over the years that has kind of evolved and developed slowly, gradually. Then I sort of fell back to my comfort zone again and I started doing some of the more sort of easy on the ears sort of things with the album before the classical one, called “Quest,” which was drawing on some of the old South African jazz standards without going into the whole sort of stretching out – just singing the music and having a good time with it.

Until two years ago when I was challenged in a sense… Jack said ‘I’d like to work with her…’ I said ‘OK, Jack DeJohnette wants to work with me…’ OK, we’ll see about that; that was my attitude initially. A year ago I got this call ‘we’ve found an opportunity to get this thing going for you and Jack in March 2007 [Cape Town International Jazz Festival]…’ I said ‘March is fine, it’s cool, it’s OK…’ Three months ago I get this call from Jack DeJohnette and I said ‘alright, this is happening…’ I had to start thinking about this; the conversations happened, the conversations happened, and we shared the music, sending each other discs and songs and I started listening and I was thinking to myself ‘I knew Jack DeJohnette was deep, but this is deep, how am I going to deal with this stuff?’

I’m told about Danilo Perez, I’m told about Jerome Harris… Jason [Yarde] I’d met and worked with in the U.K. a few times, Byron [Wallen] I was aware of but not too closely. So I’m thinking ‘OK…’ I talked to people here and told them Jack DeJohnette; this is happening, wada, wada, wada… So I got asked the question ‘well who’s in the band?’ ‘The pianist is a guy called Danilo Perez and Jerome Harris… They said ‘who?’ I said ‘Danilo Perez…’ My son in particular… I told him I’d listened to [Danilo]’s music, he’s such a beautiful player…’ My son said ‘he’s a what? Ma, do you hear yourself?’   I said ‘[Danilo] sounds good; he’s very nice actually…’ My son said ‘Ma, he’s awesome… he’s an awesome musician, are you listening?’ I said ‘yeah, OK, he’s great, sure…’

So that’s how this journey has been to this point. My approach, coming back to that long-winded answer to your question, my approach is informed really by where I come from. It was all of that. What’s happening though with this is that all of these things sometimes happen in a song. Before it was the classical element, it’s the choral, it’s the jazz bit, and it’s traditional… sometimes in the same song everything kind of comes together.

[Which aptly describes what she brought to the Intercontinental project]

Jack describes me as an improviser… I’ve never thought of myself in those terms. And I think it’s largely when you work with people who trust you invariably you have to trust yourself. I have had to look at myself and say ‘oh, so there’s something going on in there, what is actually going on?’ ‘OK, I’ll stretch a bit more, I’ll investigate, and I’ll interrogate this a bit more. The rehearsals have been particularly telling. I wish we had recorded some of them; they’ve just been an incredible journey of discovery for me.

You referred in the press conference to the isolation of the old days in South Africa, pre- 1994 [democracy] creating kind of an inward viewpoint, musically speaking. What do you think that meant for South African music and musicians once this new democracy opened things up?

Initially… we went through a period of confusion, a period of transition which kind of manifested in a sense a sort of confusion about what it was that we needed to be saying because prior to 1994 it was clear we saw ourselves – some of us – as visionaries, or as social commentators, or just being the musicians that were put there to give solace to the nation, or something like that. The message was pretty clear that we were fighting against Apartheid; it was a kind of… cultural activism of sorts. After ’94 it tended to get a bit blurred, a bit confused, because suddenly… ‘Yeah, what are we supposed to be talking about?’ Some people felt guilty about singing about love, or talking about love for instance. Because if you think about a certain song, it’s a love song but it talks about the order of the day, because the song says ‘When the sun sets I will come looking for you… when the sun sets I will look for you in the prisons, in the hospitals, on the sidewalks…’ because that’s where you might have been dumped by the police… So suddenly it was like ‘what are we supposed to be talking about?’ So there was that transition which sort of manifested in some kind of blurred message about what we were doing.

Then when that sort of settled down, suddenly anything and everything was possible and you have young performers who sing love songs, who sing to their mothers, who sing about the children, who sing about AIDS, who perform about whatever message really grabs them, not just from a political standpoint or a social point of view where you need to deal with crime or poverty or AIDS, but to sing about personal things, to do a ‘dear diary’ kind of thing with their music. So that’s what’s happening now, the world has opened up; our world view has opened up. And also this interaction with other people just makes you realize more that actually you’re not so unique after all, you know as an artist you’re interested in the world around you… your neighborhood, your communities yes, but also you have personal issues to deal with as an artist and that’s what’s been happening a little more.

Suzan Jenkins: As you were talking about how you did or didn’t see yourself it makes me wonder whether you were constrained because you came up through a more classical kind of upbringing, if you were constrained by what’s on the paper, this is how you go about doing things; then all of a sudden your brother kind of threw things in the mix and you started hearing more improvisation and whether or not that kind of broke those constraints – ‘hey, I’m supposed to be reading what’s on the paper but actually I know that people improvise on a theme and maybe I can do that…’ That’s just my observation and I’m wondering if you’ve ever thought about that?

No, the constraints came more from just being in the environment socially. The piece of paper still does put some limitations to how you think you can let yourself go. Opera for instance, you’re not looking at a piece of paper but there are certain traditions which, thank God, a lot of opera singers are now challenging and breaking down because it’s not just the beautiful sound that you produce as an opera singer, you need to act, you need to put another dimension to the character; that’s what’s happening to a lot of opera at the moment, so that’s one area where there used to be those kinds of constraints, but not really. The constraints that I was referring to have to do with how Apartheid manifested in the Black person’s mind in this country particularly: that sense of self-loathing and self-hate, and just lack of self-esteem – ‘can I actually do this, am I good enough to do this, why are they asking me…’ that kind of thing.

Jack DeJohnette says he wants to work with me: ‘really, are you sure…’ And it takes awhile to get out of that and say ‘oh, yes, right… there’s something I’m saying here that is making sense to somebody…’ I did an opera role in Oslo about three years ago and one of the guys in the chorus said to me ‘you actually don’t know how good you are, do you?’ Even as recently as 3 years ago there was still the sense that ‘I’m just a little South African girl; please don’t ask me to…’ Yeah, it still happens and one has to constantly work against that self-battering, like a typically abused person. One of the things I learned a few months ago was to change the story in your head all the time, be constantly speaking up to yourself rather than down, and it’s working. I guess everything happens for a reason at the time and this particular experience [Intercontinental project] is working to affirm that for me. It’s kinda like ‘…yesss, sure, it’s working…’ And also being able to have fun with it besides the risk-taking and just being a way of not putting yourself into those little boxes and being insecure and unsure and thinking ‘what do they see in me?’; being able to say ‘you have something to say…, its not right or wrong, it is what it is, so accept that, embrace that, go with it, move forward with it… That’s the kind of boxed in sense, those kinds of constraints as you refer to them , that continue to be a challenge for this country, that will be for this generation at least. Our children fortunately didn’t have to deal with Apartheid the way we did, so they… My daughter knows what happened in ’76 from the history books but my 16-year old is like ‘yeah, OK, so it happened, so am I supposed to carry your baggage for you [laughs] kind of thing…?’

I must tell you a quick story: [my son] came home from nursery school one day, he was about 6, and he was telling me about these girlfriends that he’s got. So I’m looking at this child and thinking ‘you have a girlfriend?’ He says ‘I’ve got two and they really are cute mama..’ Now I’m looking at this child and thinking he’s telling me he’s got two girlfriends and I wanted to ask if they are Black girls or White girls because it’s a mixed nursery school but that’s my stuff, you know? So I’m thinking how do I ask this stuff, so I ask the names of these children, it’s Christine and Natasha, and I’m thinking ‘there’s no Black kid named Christine or Natasha, but I need to be sure. So I ask ‘what’s the color of their hair…’ And he says ‘oh the one is blonde and the other one has got red hair…’ And I’m like ‘oh shit [laughs]…’

But that’s your reality… and not his.

No, it’s not his, he’s just seeing these beautiful little girls and it’s OK…’ But that’s part of the joy, it’s going to take this generation to really get [separatism] out of the way; they need to know – they need to learn so they don’t repeat it and recycle it to other people, however we need to do it in such a way that even as we teach them about what happened, we must not teach them to be that, which is an oppressor, which is a dictator…. And that’s the challenge, but that’s the beauty also of being in this kind of environment at this time because it just makes you so aware of the possibilities of a positive life force.

We’ve done a few [WPFW; Washington, DC] radio series on South African music, this will be our sixth show. As we talk about the music, the thing that continually hits me is the spirit of possibility. Right now you just talked about oppression. From our perspective the word oppression doesn’t even begin to describe what was happening in your country but there’s always been this incredible spirit of possibility and hope [in SA]. As a practitioner, an activist, a woman, a vocalist, can you give me some clue as to how that continued to happen even in the darkest of times… and now?

As an aspirant opera singer, in my last years of high school and university when I was considering my career options, I remember my dad – who was a singer himself involved in music a lot – discouraging me from following a career in opera because it would have meant leaving South Africa because there were such limited opportunities for people of color. I said ‘but how can you say that, because that’s all I know?’ I want to sing, I can teach… and I did teach, I worked as a researcher, I worked as an administrator but essentially I wanted to sing, but that was one of the first things that gave me a wake-up call about what this was. I was like a child wanting to pursue a career in music as a performer.

When I finished university, whatever decisions – because I was so conscious about what was happening around, virtually all of the decisions I made about what I needed to do were politically-driven decisions rather than just career related-decisions. There was no way I was going to teach in a normal primary school because that was government [controlled] but when the opportunity came to teach, or rather when the thought came to teach I ended up working in community arts centers where the money was erratic, you didn’t know whether you were going to get paid at the end of the month or not because we depended upon sponsorships and donations. You couldn’t even plan three months ago, you just were there being present in that moment to do what you needed to do.

If you went and performed somewhere out of Johannesburg and had to drive there you had to go on the road… they have now these one-stop places on the road and you can go to a Wimpy’s [fast food restaurant] and sit down and eat… Back then they had these little shops on the road run by Afrikaners and they had a little window around the back and that’s where you bought your food, that greasy bacon & egg sandwich with a cold polystyrene cup of coffee… things like that. If you needed a toilet you were lucky if you got one, and you would get to your destination that evening and have to perform and give joy to your audience. They don’t know… yes they know that your travel may have been rough, but they didn’t pay that attention, they wanted to be entertained, they wanted to have a good time… So its things like that.

As a woman I’ve been very lucky I suppose in that I’ve always worked with guys who saw me firstly as a musician and not as a woman. I’ve heard of stories of female colleagues who’ve been subjected to all kinds of unwelcome sexual overtures from their colleagues and for whatever reason I have not had that. I see the music first, I see you as my equal, as my colleague, as somebody who’s out there to do what we all have to do equally and whenever there’s been somebody who’s got funny intentions I have a way of looking at people and its like ‘so what is your problem’ [laughs]? I’ve been very fortunate [laughs]. But I know of women who’ve had to contend with rubbish like that and it’s hard…

I think part of it for me personally has been the fact that I always describe my father as the first feminist I ever knew. It was just his attitude to women that he expected me to pull my weight like everybody else. He expected me to be better than my brother. I don’t expect to be treated differently because I’m a girl, I pull my weight like everybody else. People forget sometimes that I’m a women, we’re there, and we’re doing the work that needs to be done.

Select Sibongile Khumalo Discography

Ancient Evenings, Columbia (1996)

Live at the Market Theatre, Sony (1998)

Immortal Secrets, Sony (2000)

Quest, Risa/Sony (2002)

Sibongile Khumalo, Sony (2005) (Brahms and other classical compositions, including by South African composers)

The Greatest Hits, Sony/BMG (2006)

South African jazz is unfortunately hard to come by through U.S. retailers. The best online source for South African music and African music in general is Sterns Music www.sternsmusic.com.

An excellent source for general information, including artist bios (on those mentioned in the preface to this interview and others) on South African jazz in particular and SA music in general: www.music.org.za.

Trumpeter Mike Wade is based in Cincinnati, OH.  I first heard Mike as a judge on the old BET Jazz show Jazz Discovery, a show which invited unsigned jazz artists to compete via video submissions before a panel of judges.  Mike has gone on to perform with all manner of jazz royalty, and R&B notables, as well as within his hometown DC-centric go-go music tradition.  His affiliations have included David “Fathead” Newman, Gary Bartz, Mulgrew Miller, Rene Marie, Marc Cary, Bootsy Collins, and Ricky Wellman.  For his latest release Mike Wade has further expanded his stylistic umbrella to embrace the New Orleans brass band tradition to produce his new Nasty Nati Brass Band release, a Cincinnati take on that indelible sound.  Clearly some questions for Mike Wade are in order.

Mike Wade & The Nasty NATI Brass Band

This record represents a bit of a departure from your previous efforts.  What was the idea and the plan for this Nasty Nati Brass Band record?

 The ultimate plan and concept for The Nasty NATI Brass Band is to pay homage to the Midwest horn bands of FUNK music, capture the rich, syncopated rhythms and joy of the New Orleans second line, blend the strong, driving rhythms of DC Go-Go music (MY HOMETOWN), and last but not least always create and have the presence of funky Latin rhythms as inspiration! These are the four musical building blocks that we THE NASTY NATI BRASS BAND hang our hat on. We plan to record two more CD’s this year (2021). Another TNNBB CD and a TNNBB Christmas CD.

There’s obvious inspiration here from the New Orleans brass band tradition.  What was it about that tradition that you wanted to bring to this project?

 Mainly to create music inspired and enriched with the incredible, contagious ability that the New Orleans second line has to bring people together for a good time, NO MATTER WHAT!

When I hear the spoken word of Dr. G. Scott Jones on this record, I’m reminded of one of the voices in the Last Poets.  Talk about the spoken word element on this record, and particularly your social justice intent. and whether the Last Poets were part of your inspiration.

 Dr. Jones wrote the music for our Tribute to Tamir Rice. I created the groove fir this song and the arrangement. The poet is Maurice Suttles, a former student of mine in high school, that played tenor drum in my Drumline. Maurice has recorded three of my CD’s since graduating from high school.

These are Dr. Jones responses: The melodic concept is influenced by the music of John Coltrane. The desire to include spoken stems from years of studying Gil Scot Heron, The Last Poets, and Charles Mingus.

Our intent for social justice as a group is through music try to get people to listen to each other and understand the pain and suffering that exists in all of the terrible incidents that have taken place and continue to take place among these cases.

 

You’ve contributed several of the arrangements on this record, but have kind of deferred to the whole, rather than have this be a complete showcase for your trumpet artistry.  What was your overall sense of this record in that regard?

My overall sense of not showcasing all of my trumpet artistry on this CD is to SHOWCASE more my ability to produce, bandlead, compose and arrange great music projects to the world. As we go forward in music production, they’ll be plenty of opportunities to add more of my trumpet artistry within our productions, but only if needed and desired through our compositions and concept.

Do you view this Nasty Nati Brass Band as an ongoing project or a special one-time project, and what are your plans going forward?

This recording is one of many recordings that TNNBB plans to record. This is definitely not a one and done band or project. We’re just getting started!

You’ve spoken about your efforts at, as you characterize it: “introduce other talent, musical styles, group collaboration & group musical concepts”.  Please tell us about your work in that regard.

I have a CD called Mike Wade “Reality” where I collaborated with two different production teams and The REALITY BAND who recorded 4 to 5 songs in the studio to finish the CD off. On this CD I challenged rappers to create original raps to original music that also used different arrangements and road maps from top to bottom. I also challenged myself in my approach to these tracks, from creating selective horn parts to heavy or sparse improv. The Band was challenged because we had to sound and do a bit more than just cover our material, we had play in such a way to where the band did not come off sounding dated. In the end, I introduced several new rappers to the world, created some original music that was blended with a few old famous jazz samples and several different styles of music! Mike Wade’s “REALITY” CD is available at www.mikewademusic.net

Is this brass band project something you are planning on taking on the road?  And do you ever envision this as New Orleans-style marching band music that you’ll literally take to the streets?

 The Nasty NATI Brass Band is first and foremost a BRASS BAND! We do funerals, weddings, parades, etc., etc. just like any BRASS BAND for our communities! I have and plan to continue to take the Brass Band on the road. We’ve performed at Blues Alley in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. before the pandemic! We’ve performed in West Virginia opening for the Force MD’s and Dru Hill. We’ve performing in Louisville, Lexington, Akron, Cleveland & Columbus, OH. As far as taking New Orleans second-line to the streets, this group has been there and done that, and continue to do that!!!!!

One of our earliest iterations of Tribeca Performing Arts Center’s ongoing Lost Jazz Shrines series was a season celebrating the unique legacy of Cafe Society.  In 1938 a New Jersey shoe salesman named Barney Josephson sought to open his own nightclub for jazz and jazz-inspired presentations.  He had spent years investigating other Manhattan clubs and what he found was often distasteful, particularly the often discriminatory policies he found regularly.  One classic example he particularly abhorred was the legendary mob-operated Cotton Club in Harlem, where strict club policy found Black artists confined to the stage, along with Black waitstaff and a Whites only patron policy which particularly favored the well-heeled clientele.

Josephson steadfastly sought to open his club as a place where patrons, artists and waitstaff were comfortable mingling openly regardless of race, ethnicity or class considerations.  The result was Cafe Society, which opened in January 1939 at 2 Sheridan Square in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village district.  Billed as “The Right Place for the Wrong People,” Josephson’s club booked many legendary performers for varietal shows.  Opening night included the boogie woogie piano players Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson – known later as the Boogie Woogie Boys – and Billie Holiday.  Later, Cafe Society served as the place where Billie Holiday debuted the remarkable song “Strange Fruit,” the anti-lynching poem which was destined to be referred to as the opening protest anthem of the Civil Rights Era in the U.S.

As part of our 3-concert Cafe Society series at Tribeca PAC in Spring 2003, one concert celebrated the rich saxophone tradition of Cafe Society with a rare NYC performance by Chicago great Von Freeman.  Here’s that concert:

Edwin Stoute: Yes I am, actually this part of Brooklyn – Bed-Stuy – on the other end, on Thompkins Avenue. This (MacDonough Avenue) was the sidity end [laughs]. Where I grew up was the slums. I went to East New York Vocational High School; I quit high school in the last year, ran off to play music, and when I was about 30 I said ‘let me go back and finish that diploma.’ So I went off to Brooklyn Tech and [finished].

When you were growing up in Brooklyn did you have any interest in jazz music?

Oh yeah. When I was growing up my oldest sister got piano lessons and my oldest brother go violin lessons. My bed was in the living room where the piano was, I was four years old. On Saturdays this big German man would come and give my sister a piano lesson, and she didn’t want to play the piano, she couldn’t get away from there fast enough. [But] I was fascinated with this thing [piano], this thing that makes this sound just fascinated me. The minute she was gone I was there diddling around. I couldn’t get away from that piano.

So when did you start taking lessons?

I started taking lessons when I was about 19; I was actually self-taught, in the union, doing gigs… couldn’t read a note!

At what point were you capable of playing a gig?

I was doing gigs from the age of 18, I couldn’t read a note but my ears were always big, so I was able to do calypso gigs, little dances and stuff like that.

So from the time you were four years old you were figuring out the piano on your own?

I started figuring it out by myself. I knew but I didn’t know; like your ears tell you something is the right thing but you don’t know the theory behind it so you really can’t expand on things.

Were you interested in jazz as you were developing yourself as a piano player?

When I was real young I was actually interested in the classical side and at that point I would make up tunes, compose tunes. I couldn’t read the music to play the things my sister would play, so I used to make up my own melodies and figure out ways to play them; that’s actually served me well because I’ve always composed music. I stayed on that direction, so I’ve always been a composer of music – I haven’t made any money at [composing] but I plan to; everybody always likes what I write.

How did you develop your interest in jazz?

That happened when I was about 14 or so, my two older sisters had their boyfriends and they came into the house with these jazz records and I started hearing this music. They played Stan Kenton, some Bird, some Bud [Powell]… So I heard this and went in that direction.

When you say you went in that direction, what did you do?

When I heard Bud Powell… that was it! Bud Powell turned everybody around, especially at that time he was on fire. I was trying to play all that, I didn’t know what I was doing but I was agile, my hands were agile. We used to have little jam sessions around the corner at a friend of mine’s house and the drums were my friend’s older brother had been to the war, he had one of those big shells and made it into a lamp; that lamp became the cymbals for the drum. It turned out the drawer was the drum. We were fortunate because on that block Kenny Dorham used to hang out, on Hancock Street between Thompkins and Marcy. He actually came in the house one day and played for us, we had guys that did that, older guys who would stop in now and then, they knew we were trying to play. We were very fortunate.

What other professional musicians were you aware of around your neighborhood?

There were a lot of them: Ernie Henry, Cecil Payne, Matthew Gee… there were a lot of guys…   There was a guy named Maurice Brown who played drums. There was a guy we called Little Diz, Webster Young, he was around in Brooklyn then and he used to come and hang out with us.

So there were a lot of jazz musicians around the neighborhood?

Yeah, and they’d hear us trying to play and they’d come and hang with us.

What about clubs or bars in your neighborhood, were there any around when you were coming up?

You had so many places it was ridiculous. There was the Continental over on Nostrand Avenue, a placed called the Tip Top – what they played in there wasn’t always jazz, but they had shows: you’d have a comedian, a singer, a band, an MC. The Tip Top was on Fulton Street, right where Boys & Girls High School is now. And there was a club called the Berry Brothers that had music off and on, that was on Fulton Street in the same area. One of the big clubs was the Moulin Rouge, which was on Putnam and Sumner Avenue, which is now called Marcus Garvey Blvd; the place [building] is still there but it’s something else.

What went on at the Moulin Rouge?

Everybody played in there, including Miles Davis; Walter Bishop, Red Garland I remember… This was a place that had a long bar and back of the bar was a long bandstand; they had a white grand piano in there. The places were kept in fairly good shape, especially the places that were jazz clubs. The Moulin Rouge was a good place.

How old were you when you started frequenting these places?

We were frequenting these places from the time we were old enough to get in… 18. We all loved jazz so we used to follow jazz everywhere. I remember me and some of my friends got jobs working for Ruben H. Donnelly as stock boys and what was great about this job was in the wintertime they had you working, but when the springtime came they laid you off – but it was known they were going to hire you back in the fall. So summertime when we were living with our parents we’d get the unemployment checks and we were hanging out at all the clubs, catching all of the music. Thelonious Monk… that’s when they had the cabaret card business and we caught Thelonious Monk playing on Fulton Street at the Elks Club playing a dance because he couldn’t go into a lot of the other venues, and you’d catch him playing places like that. But wherever anybody was, we were there – we hung out, middle of the week, we didn’t care. The Continental on Nostrand Avenue… the Blue Coronet wasn’t happening then, but the Continental was the place then. Turbo Village on Reed and Halsey Street… Freddie Hubbard used to be there playing the Turbo Village when he first [came to New York].

Take a place like the Moulin Rouge… what would an evening be like there?

It was a fantastic evening because they had all of the good jazz groups in there every week.

What time would they start and how many sets would they play a night?

About 9:00 and it was a lotta sets; gigs were 6 hour gigs [back then], so probably 9pm-3am, at least 4 or 5 sets. I remember when I started playing a gig was 6 hours.

Were these the kind of places – the Tip Top, Turbo Village, Moulin Rouge… were these places where you could go into the place, pay a cover charge, and buy a drink and stay all night?

The Moulin Rouge I don’t think even had a cover charge; you could go in there, nurse a beer and stay all night. Sometimes, if we had a little more money we didn’t mind buying a couple of things, but I didn’t drink at that time. There was a place called the KC Lounge, on Gates & Throop, it was an organ room; there were certain rooms that were organ rooms. You had the Baby Grand on Fulton and Nostrand, which was owned by the same people that owned the Baby Grand in Harlem. As a matter of fact one of my first gigs, where I first learned to play for singers, I started working at the Baby Grand in 1960 or so. All we wanted to play was bebop – we were young, we didn’t want to play for no singers! So I got this gig at the Baby Grand with bass and drums. The set-up was they had a comic MC and a shake dancer; the girls didn’t take off all their clothes, they just did a little dance and took some clothes off, and that was quite sufficient for the times [laughs]. They usually had a singer in the rock or blues style, and they’d have one singer who was a jazz singer. That’s what the show was composed of, it was a variety show.

Was it that way at the other clubs?

Not so, the other clubs were strictly jazz, like the Continental was jazz; I believe the Turbo Village was mostly jazz. Places like the KC Lounge, that was organ, blues and that kind of stuff, the organ trios. The Moulin Rouge was strictly jazz,

You began playing professionally at age 18. Did you play any of these clubs?

I played at the Moulin Rouge, but not at the other clubs, and it was later on that I played at the Baby Grand; I got drafted and went into the service and came out at the age of 25, so it was around then that I played at the Baby Grand.

When you played at the Baby Grand, who did you play with?

I played with a guy named Jimmy Chisholm, a good tenor player, and we played for the shows.

So you backed up the jazz singer, the R&B singer…

…And the comedian, and the shake dancer…

So what kind of music did you play in all these situations?

It depends; for the shake dancer you had to play something Latin-flavored for them, but you had these rock singers who came in and they had their music, but most of them didn’t have music. When a new show was coming in we had to get there early Friday night to rehearse. And most of the time there wasn’t really any music, we just did the show. One problem with that is on Monday nights we had to go to the Baby Grand in Harlem because the regular band was off that night and we had to play that show totally cold. The guy that ran that show then was Nipsey Russell, he was a nasty sucker, I didn’t like him. We had this show, we didn’t have a chance to look at the music and rehearse it, just look at it and try to play it. So if you made a mistake he’d talk about people like a dog and I don’t appreciate that.

When you played at the Baby Grand, when would the week start?

Friday night. When a new show came in we were playing six nights a week. We’d play Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Monday nights in Harlem, Tuesdays we were off, Wednesdays we were back playing in Brooklyn. They had a singer’s jam session on Wednesday nights and we had to deal with that. All of the singers – real amateur singers – they all wanted to sing the same tunes that were popular at the time, rock stuff, “Stand By Me”, those kind of things [laughs]. So it would be one singer after another, some of them were so amateur they would change key in the middle of the tune, so we had to follow them around from key to key.

What kind of gig would it be at the Moulin Rouge?

That was a good gig that was a strictly jazz gig. At one time it was my band, other times it was somebody else’s band. A guy I started playing with was Harold Cumberbatch; his daughter [Tulivu Donna Cumberbatch] is a singer now. He played baritone and he hired me to do some gigs with him. As a matter of fact that brings up some different places. There was a place called Ben’s, on Lexington and Sumner [Marcus Garvey Blvd.] Ben’s was a joint that had a raggedy upright piano, and I played there with [Harold Cumberbatch]. And there was a place called Paul’s, on DeKalb Avenue right off of Sumner Avenue [Marcus Garvey]. Paul’s was a nice place; I got a couple of gigs there with Harold, who had a fairly decent name.   His favorite tune was “Stella By Starlight” and he named his horn Stella. Harold was a funny cat.

So who else would you play with during these times?

There was an alto player around named Buddy Williams, he was burgeoning and budding. In fact there was one night I played with him and all of a sudden… you ever hear someone when they’ve just completely got it together? This guy was so beautiful, he played so much. Buddy had just gotten there and it was only a couple of months later he got hit by a car and killed… going to his day job. He played alto and he had such a warm sound.

Did you ever work a day job?

I worked day jobs on and off. I worked for Ruben H. Donnally going up to Mt. Vernon loading mail trucks with 90lb mailbags… I worked all kind of jobs around there. I’d go for a job sometime and these places would look at me and say ‘oh yeah, big black guy, got a job on the platform for you.’

This was also back in the days when soloists would travel the country and pick up local rhythm sections, like Sonny Stitt. Did you ever do any of that?

No, I never did any of that. I once had an opportunity to play with Stitt, but I didn’t do it, at the Blue Coronet. I shoulda just done it because Stitt was a great guy. He was the kind of guy who would see a young cat in the club with his saxophone between sets and say ‘hey, come on up here.’ You weren’t gonna walk in that club with no horn and don’t play. He’d bring you up there and let you play; I mean you know you’re gonna get carved [laughs], but I think that was a great opportunity. He was the kind of guy who was trying to give you an opportunity to come up and be heard.

Did you find a lot of that kind of attitude among the musicians of that time?

A lotta that, a lot of compassion in a different way too because a lot of the older guys were junkies, and we loved them – we loved their music too. When we were still in high school those dudes used to be begging us for change, to get their fix. We’d give them quarters, dimes and nickels and whatnot. But there’s something that all of them said, they said ‘listen, whatever you see us do don’t do it, it don’t do you no good.’ They used to tell us , ‘stay away from this.’ That [warning] served me well. I got into a little bit of mild trouble, but I never stuck no needle in my arm. I remember once I saw a guy stick a needle in his arm, draw some blood and shoot those drugs then fall asleep. Another guy came right behind him, took that needle out of his arm, ejected the blood and shot himself up! I said to myself, these guys gotta be crazy! That’s how AIDS took over.

Take me up through the time when you started developing yourself as a musician in your 20s.

When I really started developing was when I came out of the Army at 25 and got this gig at the Baby Grand. I was real young, never played for singers before, didn’t know a lot of tunes. So every time a new show came in there I was under pressure, I’d have to see what tunes they were going to play and pray that I could get it together because there were some tunes I’d have to go get the book and learn. I was under a lot of pressure but also at the time there was a school called Hartnett Music Studios, it was in Times Square, upstairs, and that’s where everything really came together for me. Because I was still playing a lot by ear, I didn’t know a lot about different chords and structures and how to change them up, but when I went there [Hartnett] every day was a revelation because I was studying composition and arranging and they started teaching you little things about voice leading when you’re writing for different horns to try to make everybody’s part mean something, to make it move… that’s voice leading.

With what I was already doing, when I went there [Hartnett] they’re explaining it and opening it up, and showing me how to expand on things; it was a fantastic time! Even though I was tired because I was working at the Baby Grand and getting home at 3:30 in the morning and getting to music school at 9:00, not getting much sleep so I was tired. But [Hartnett] was so interesting it didn’t make much difference. You can’t be but so tired when you’re dealing with something like that. I learned a lot about music in the couple of years I went there, it opened me right up.

How long did that gig last playing those shows at the Baby Grand?

A couple of years. It was good experience because I learned to play with singers.

Who were some of the singers you played for at the Baby Grand? Did any well-known singers play there at the time?

Not there. Later on I played for Dakota Staton a couple of times, I played with Betty Roche, but not at the Baby Grand. I got a gig at Wells [in Harlem], my first-ever trio gig, with Joe “Bebop” Carroll. Remember Joe Carroll? “The Land of Oo-Bla-Dee” and all that stuff… That was my first time playing with a trio that was a whole different experience. So what happened was the gig was a singer’s gig but Joe was singing bebop so it was nice. The first two weeks [of the Wells’ gig] was Joe Carroll, the second two weeks was Betty Roche.

Did you play with these singers in Brooklyn as well?

No, just at Wells. But I played with Joe Carroll at a few other places, but that was the only gig I did with Betty Roche. She was a beautiful person; as young as we were she loved us because of the way we dressed. We dressed sharp & clean. It was myself and Bob Cunningham, Bob had just come to Brooklyn and that was his first gig. That was the time when you dressed sharp. Cats nowadays get on the bandstand with jeans and what not… forget that, no no. That, I don’t think, should ever happen. I think you do have a duty sometimes to spruce up a little bit.

So what’s the importance of being well dressed on the bandstand?

I feel like how can people look up to you if you come in the place looking like a bum. A lot of people are just there for the music and they don’t care, but there are people that do [care]. If people out in the crowd are dressed better than you, I think that means something. There are some gigs where you don’t really dress up and that’s fine. But the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Sunday evening… I think you put a suit on at least.

Do you think the audience takes musicians more seriously if they’re dressed well?

I think sometimes, but I don’t think that’s the only thing that’s necessary… you gotta be able to play, that’s first and foremost. But being dressed decently, I think that helps, that makes a certain kind of impression.

So what did you do when the gig at the Baby Grand ended?

Muddled around a lot. After that I started playing with Illinois Jacquet, he had a quartet and we would do gigs a lot in Boston and Toronto; we went to Houston one time but mostly it was Boston and Toronto. We went to Chicago and Cleveland. We might be out seven weeks just between Boston and Toronto. There was a place in Toronto called the Town Tavern, and there were two different places in Boston – Lenny’s-On-The-Turnpike was a little joint in Boston.

After your gig at the Baby Grand did you get many opportunities to play around Brooklyn?

I played a lot in Brooklyn. I played a lot of little dances and stuff like that, not real jazz gigs. Sometimes it was the Moulin Rouge. But most of the gigs we played were like commercial things – weddings, that kinda stuff.

Did you get many opportunities to record?

No, I recorded once with Jacquet – as a matter of fact on an album I wrote one of the tunes and he turned me around; they didn’t allow me to play on my own tune; that really turned me around because I had all these ideas about how things should be, but they’re [record company] into their commercial thing. They had this sister play [piano] on the album because ‘she’s more funky’, that’s [producer] Esmond Edwards out of Chess, Checker and Argo Records out of Chicago. When you have certain people that are controlling the music and they have no respect or no feel for anybody, they’re just doing what they think is best because they’re controlling the money, so that’s what happened.

So what other kinds of situations did you work in Brooklyn?

Like I said, it was a lot of weddings; there weren’t a whole lot of good paying gigs.

Did you work at the Blue Coronet?

I worked at the Blue Coronet. I played with Carlos Garnett – he was a Brooklyn boy then. And I did a gig there with my own group; we did a gig with a quintet and a singer, a girl called Gwen Michaels, she was a good jazz singer. We did some of my own music but I never got a chance to go too far with it because the world is just not wide-open like that and I wasn’t as well-known as I needed to get, and I was working in the day. And when you’re working in the day you can’t travel, you can’t get into the real circle of things, you can’t hang out.

Were there ever any opportunities to travel?

There were some, but I had to turn them down. I’d get a phone call, somebody got my name from somebody and they’ve got a gig in Ohio or wherever and I had to turn it down.

That scene that you described in Brooklyn: the Moulin Rouge, the Continental, the Tip Top, Berry Brothers, Turbo Village, and later on the Blue Coronet… How long did that scene last?

That scene lasted from the 60s into the early 70s; everything seemed to break down after we got through the early 70s.

What do you think caused that breakdown?

You know I’m not really sure, but all of a sudden there were fewer and fewer jazz clubs. They had some beautiful places that opened up. There was a place called The Id that opened up in the 70s, it’s now a church on the corner of East New York Ave. and Utica Ave. It was a huge place; it was originally Satellite Caterers and they called it The Id, and it was a beautiful place with a big long bar, real nice place. I’d walk in there and Cedar Walton and them would be playing, Billy Higgins would be laughing at me while he’s playing… They had some hellified groups in there – Charles Davis, Richard Davis…

Why do you think the need for these clubs diminished?

I don’t think the need diminished, I just think there were financial difficulties and stuff and places started to close. All of a sudden that place they called The Id – Satellite Caterers – closed, and that place was hot, the music was HOT in there. The Continental went [out of business] way before; the Blue Coronet was just the Coronet at first… We had jazz at the Brevoort Theatre, on Bedford Avenue and they had jazz sometimes… I played in there. There were just small groups in there. The group that I caught playing in the Brevoort was Miles Davis’ group, the one with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, and Wynton Kelly; they played there for a complete weekend – on Bedford and Brevoort Avenue, one block past Euclid Pl.

Would the movie play before or after the music?

They didn’t have a movie there at all, not when they booked Miles Davis because Miles Davis was expensive. There was a place on Utica Avenue near Park Place called The Fantasy where some top groups, some trios played; Wynton Kelly might be playing in there… That lasted a good while and I played there towards the end of it.

There was a place called The Centaur on Franklin Avenue between Prospect and Park, a lot of people don’t remember The Centaur but Wynton Kelly lived pretty much around the corner and whenever the Wynton Kelly Trio was not playing with Miles you could catch them at The Centaur every weekend; Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. There was a grand piano up behind the bar. If they had recorded what Wynton Kelly played in there it would have run around the world like a shot, that was one of the most dynamic trios I’ve ever heard. With Wynton Kelly everything is going to start swinging immediately! And every chorus it would go to another level, until they got you in your chest and you would say ‘they can’t swing no more than this!’ They got your chest tightening up – and the next chorus, another level… That’s the way they played. That was an awesome trio.

At these places was the clientele strictly black?

Mostly, yeah; that was a black neighborhood and you didn’t find too many white people coming down there. The people that came down there came to hear some music, it was a nice group, and everything was beautiful. This was a place designed to hear music.

Were these clubs you’ve talked about all like that, where people actually came to hear the music and the music was not ‘incidental’?

Most of the clubs people came to hear the music, at that time. They had music in all kinds of places; up along Fulton Street they had a place called the Verona Café. Before you got to Nostrand Avenue there was a place called the Carroll Bar and Lucky Emmett, who was a tenor player, he’d be playing in there. He had a great pianist named James Sykes – they liked to drink too much, the both of them, but heckified players. A horn player would come in there wanting to sit in and he’d say OK. Guy would call “Cherokee” and they’d give the intro and you’d see the horn player get up there trying to play the melody with Lucky and you’d hear [the guest tenor player] scuffling and you’d wonder why he’s scuffling, that was because they played “Cherokee” a mile a minute in B-natural instead of B-flat. So this guy goes up there thinking he’s gonna play in this comfortable key when all of a sudden he scuffles a while then go sit his ass down [laughs].

So what are you doing these days?

These days I work with the Harlem Renaissance Jazz Orchestra, a big band. I’ve been working with them for a few years and we’ve done some things in the park, we’ve done some Jazzmobiles, and every July we close the session at Lincoln Center Outdoors – the Mid Summer Night’s Swing, where they have the bands come out for people to dance.

These places you played in Brooklyn were you playing for dancers or were you playing for listeners?

Sometimes we played for dancers, a lotta times. It could be Hancock Hall, and at one time there was a Sonya Ballroom [currently Akbar Hall]. We used to play a lot of dances at Shadow Gardens [Manhattan], down on the Bowery – a big venue that had a lot of different halls and there were some guys who used to rent out the whole hall and put a different band in every room. That was a busy spot.

Do you ever play the Jazz 966 concerts [Friday evenings at 966 Fulton Street]?

I play 966 usually once a year with my group, and I play my original music. It’s a good audience, they all know me; I used to go in there with a trio and a singer, but I got to the point where I was writing a lot so what I did was I changed everything and formed a quintet in 2005 and now I’ve been going into places with the quintet: Julian Pressley on alto, Keith Loftus on tenor, David Jackson on bass, Butch Bateman on drums and myself. Sometimes when Keith can’t make it I use Gene Gee on tenor.   We rehearse at Donald Sangster’s house.