Photo by Luciane Maia
Mike Zwerin
published in Coda (Toronto) 186 (Oct. 1982)
Mike Zwerin’s first “historical” work took place at the age of 18 when he joined Miles Davis’s Birth Of The Cool band for two weeks at the Royal Roost, in New York, in 1949 (since released as the “Pre-Birth of the Cool” band). Committed to the trombone from an early age, later taking on the bass trumpet as well, he quit music twice to work in his father's steel business. During the second hiatus, he began to write on jazz for the Village Voice, and he continued to work for them for ten years. In 1964, as a member of Orchestra USA, he arranged and produced Mack the Knife and other Berlin Theatre Songs of Kurt Weill for RCA, using a sextet from the orchestra that included Eric Dolphy, Thad Jones, John Lewis, Richard Davis, and others.
In 1969, as the European correspondent for the Village Voice he moved to Paris, where he remained until his death in 2010. He soon wrote for other publications as well, and by the late ‘70s became the regular jazz and pop music writer for the International Herald Tribune. Meanwhile, he continued to work intermittently as a musician; among his projects, early on, was the trio Not Much Noise, with guitarist Christian Escoudé and bassist Gus Nemeth, and later, another trio, Zip, with guitarist Paul Breslin and bassist Martin Ingle (heard on the 1996 French Verve release Gettin' X-perimental Over U). Zwerin was also the author of several books: The Silent Sound of Needles (1968), about a drug rehabilitation center in Harlem; A Case for the Balkanization of Practically Everyone (1975), about the various nationalist movements of disinherited European peoples, such as the Welsh, Catalans, Lapps, Bretons, and others; La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Jazz under the Nazis (1985); and the memoirs Close Enough for Jazz (1983), and The Parisian Jazz Chronicles (2005).
This interview took place at his home, in April 1981.
How did you start out professionally in music?
I was in high school with Kenny Drew, at Music and Art School in New York. We sort of learned together, we used to play with Nick Stabulas, the drummer, who was with Lennie Tristano. Nick lived in Queens near me. Marty Flax, a tenor player who later played baritone with Dizzy’s big band, a beautiful saxophone player, we were all kind of learning together. Brew Moore, Johnny Andrews, they were a little older than us. A beautiful saxophone player named Stanley Kosow, who died a junky. But all like white Prez’s. Those are the people that I started with, my idea was to play trombone like Lester Young, that was what I had in my ear, even after Charlie Parker. I’d still like to do it.
We were playing Saturday night gigs, very small time stuff, and I got a gig in the Catskills for one summer with Kenny Drew, Nick Stabulas, and Marty Flax. We were making $20 a week room and board, in the Jewish Alps. I was so innocent: we showed up there and I was amazed; I mean, Kenny was black. And it had never occurred to me! They were my friends, you know . . . It turned out very well, the people were very nice. It took them a day to adjust and everything was fine.
I used to go around to jam sessions in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Manny’s Music Store used to have a second floor. They had sessions on union floor days, and I used to stop on the way. I was blowing a lot. Tony Scott, as a matter of fact, used to take me out. He was older than me and I was nervous about it. He took me up to Minton’s one night. And I said, “Minton’s, man. I can’t play Minton’s. I mean, you know, those heavy cats are up there.” Blakey---it was Abdullah Buhaina, Blakey was in his Mohammedan period---I mean, he scared me. He played so good and, you know, here I was, this Jewish boy. But Tony said, “Come on, man. We’ll play.” So he took me up there and I sat in, and I didn’t think I sounded terribly good that night. It was three in the morning and Miles was at the bar, and he asked me to rehearsal the next day. I said sure. He was only a year older than me---I was 18, he was 19---but he had already been with Bird for a year and a half.
I showed up the next day, and there was Gerry Mulligan and all those guys from the Birth of the Cool, and we did the two weeks at the Royal Roost. Then I asked Miles if he had more, because it was the beginning of September, and if he had a road trip or more gigs, I wouldn’t have gone back to school. But he had nothing, and I went back to school, and he got the recording date in about November of that year, 1949. I was in Miami by that time and Kai Winding did the date.
The Royal Roost date was never recorded?
There’s a pirate; somebody told me two, I only have one. “The Pre-Birth of the Cool.” I found that in Sam Goody’s a few years ago back in New York.
Had you been familiar with people in the band?
No, I’d never met anybody. I felt like the bat-boy of the New York Yankees who is suddenly pulled into the line-up.
How did you come to work with Claude Thornhill’s band?
Back in New York in the ‘50s, I was hanging around the union floor, and somebody said, “Hey, do you want to go to Texas for three weeks? Claude Thornhill’s looking for a trombone player.” So I got the gig.
I was doing a lot of weekend bands then. I played with Urbie Green’s band for a weekend, Billy May, Sonny Dunham, who played some officers’ clubs in Nova Scotia or something like that. After that, I went to Maynard Ferguson. That was one of the better periods of my life. I liked Maynard, I liked working with him. He kept guys on the band who were throwing up and not showing up, because he liked the way they played. He wanted to swing. And he had an integrated band before anybody, really. You got the feeling with Maynard that he didn’t have a quota, if the guy played good he could have been green. He hired him. Sometimes there were five black cats, sometimes two. I don’t think it went through his head whether there were too many black or white. I’m talking about 1959. It wasn’t my kind of music, it was very frenetic and loud and everything, but everybody got a chance to play, it was fun working for Maynard.
Then I quit to go back in my father’s business for a second time, in 1960, but still played. That’s when I was in a band with Larry Rivers, the painter, we used to work the old Five Spot on 5th Street, every Monday night. The Upper Bohemia Six. Bebop. Larry, a painter named Howard Kanowitz, and we used to do the Allen Eager-Stan Getz routine and get the best rhythm section we could get. We gave Joe Chambers his first job in New York, he had just come into town. Richard Davis was with us. Sometimes we had Dick Katz on piano, mostly it was Freddie Redd. Nobody took us quite seriously. And I was doing record dates for a while, maybe one a month. Jingles. I played with Bill Russo, he had a rehearsal band and we did two records. Other rehearsal bands.
For a time in 1960 I was living in the same building with John Lewis, on 57th Street and 10th Avenue. Miles lived in the same building. John told me one day that he was forming this cooperative Third Stream orchestra, and asked if I’d be interested in playing. I said sure, but I was in my father’s business. So, we used to rehearse on Sunday mornings. Sunday mornings at 10:30, it was funny. Eric Dolphy was in the band, Connie Kay, Richard Davis, Bernie Glow, Thad Jones. The studio musicians in New York who were bored to death and wanted to play good music and Sunday morning was the only time they could do it. Gunther Schuller conducted. And that was Orchestra USA. Everybody got a few shares of stock and we all played. We played a few concerts and made a few records.
I loved this Lotte Lenya record, The Berlin Theater Songs of Kurt Weill. I had wanted to do it but didn’t know how to start. Then one day I heard on the radio a young rock group called The Doors. It was their first record, I think, Jim Morrison sang “Moon of Alabama.” I said, “Son of a bitch. If a rock musician can do it, I’m going to have to get off of my ass.” Because really, that’s a good idea.
So I said to John, “If I give it to the Orchestra, we’ll call it the Sextet from Orchestra USA. I’ll finance the first date. I’ll pay everybody. Scale, though.” I asked him, “Would you do it for scale? If it works and I sell the tape, then we do the second side. Everybody gets paid anyway, I take the risk. But we do a second side, the record comes out, it’s called Sextet of Orchestra USA and the orchestra gets the royalties.” It’s a cooperative, I would get my share . . . The thing has become a kind of classic. People know me from that. It’s one of Eric Dolphy’s better records, it’s certainly very unique.
It cost me $700. Of course, I didn’t pay myself the arranging and I didn’t pay myself playing, or producing or anything. But I paid the studio and I paid everybody else union scale. I did the arrangements: I wasn’t sure of a few things so I went to Hall Overton twice and paid him for his usual lesson charge, and checked out a few ideas I had. Because I was going into a studio and I couldn’t afford any mistakes. He said that what I wanted to do would work, and made some suggestions. I sent people the parts, for the changes, two weeks before. Then we went into that studio and in three hours we came out with side one, which is three parts: “Moon of Alabama,” “As You Make Your Bed,” and “Jakov Schmidt.” And I mean, it’s really good. Eric must have gone over the changes, because he plays the changes inside and outside at the same time, it still astounds me when I hear it. It’s very moving. He’s not playing n’importe quoi [just anything], as they say in French, he’s playing the changes but way outside. And that was 1964! What an ear, it’s just amazing.
Then George Avakian sold it to RCA, after which they paid me for my arranging and my playing, and I recovered my costs. Then they paid for the second side, which was a normal record date. It was weird: it was nine months later and by that time Eric had died in Berlin, and the trumpet player Nick Travis had died. I was the only one in the front line who was still alive. For some reason or other, John couldn’t do it so I had no piano on the second side. It was Jimmy Raney on guitar, Thad Jones on trumpet, and Jerome Richardson on alto and bass clarinet.
There’s another record I’d really like to do, of the tunes that I didn’t get on that record. Even re-do some of them that are on it, because it’s out of the catalogue in America. The only place that it’s in the catalogue, as far as I know, is France, maybe Japan.
How did you start writing about jazz?
I was having this impassioned correspondence with an old friend who had moved to Los Angeles. This must have been about 1962 and we had been talking about Miles Ahead, which had just come out. He didn’t really like it; he stopped with Lester Young and didn’t like the Gil Evans thing. We were writing each other three-page letters and I really liked doing it. I remember it was one of those flashes you get, not very often. I was living in the Village and the Village Voice had no jazz in it. Once in a while Robert Reisner would write, not very often. And I had that flash that I was going to be the jazz writer. It had no basis in logic, because I’d never been published before. I tried and I didn’t get in. I tried again, but I knew nobody. I did a piece on John Coltrane---I’d just discovered Coltrane and was really passionate---and gave it to a friend who gave it to the woman who was the editor then, and two weeks later it was published. The Voice was open like that. So, I was very pleased, I did another one and that was in. Then I met the people and realized that if I kept writing pieces, they would get in. It was totally instinctive.
But I can’t say I really got emotionally, physically involved with writing until Claude Thornhill died. I had worked with Claude a few years before, over a period of maybe a year we had done three or four tours; one for six weeks, one for three weeks, that sort of thing. I had always really admired Claude, those records that came out in 1949 with Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, they’re really great stuff, Gil Evans arrangements. But when I was with him, he was cut down to two trumpets, one trombone, four saxophones, and we were playing stocks like the “Walter Winchell Rhumba.” There were good people in the band: Don Ellis, Don Lanphere . . .
So, when Claude died, I wanted to write my obituary or memoir of Claude. When I got into that, that’s the first time I realized that I started to “blow” with words, where it was really important to me. That’s when I got hooked. That’s when I knew that (a) I wanted to write and (b) that I could do it. Even though I’d never studied journalism and had no experience other than those few months that I had been into the Voice already. It became something with which I thought, plus playing, I could make a living. So, I quit my father’s business, because by then I was trying to play, trying to write, and going to work every morning, and I was going absolutely out of my mind. I was working full-time in the business, but I’d say, “I have a business lunch,” and go off and do a record date. Of course, what it amounted to is I wasn’t doing any of it well, in addition to which I was about ready to have a heart attack. It was funny, though. I was paying alimony and child support to my first wife, so there was no way I could quit the business, I was making a lot of money. But I finally said, “I can’t do it anymore.” I went in one day, again without really planning or thinking about it, and we were having a meeting with the two other guys that were running the company, and I heard the words come out of my mouth: “'I’m leaving.” Once they came out, I was so overjoyed!
It was easy---it’s very funny. I had an expensive apartment and there was an ad in the Voice: “Hollywood director coming to New York to make a movie, looking for apartment,” so I answered that and it turned out to be Francis Coppola, who was coming to New York to make You’re A Big Boy Now, which I think was his first film. His mother came to look at the apartment and took it. In the meantime, Paul Bley called me and he was going to Europe and did anybody want to sublet his loft. So, I sublet Paul Bley’s loft, sublet my place to Francis Coppola, and after the smoke cleared a month later, I realized that I had everything I had before. There was only one difference: I didn’t have to go to work every morning. This was about ‘65.
Then I read that Earl Hines was going to Russia. So I called Stanley Dance, who was kind of the unofficial manager, and said that what I’d like to do, if it was possible, was to go to Russia with Earl and report, just go as a journalist. He got excited, he said, yes it’s possible, we have to check with the State Department, because if was a State Department tour.
We were talking, and I said, “By the way, who’s playing?” He told me, and said, “ . . . and we don’t have a trombone player.”
I said, “Well.” I explained that my Kurt Weill record had just come out, and he told me to call Budd Johnson, who was the musical director. I talked to Budd, he said, “Send me the record,” and I got the gig. So, three months after I’d left Capital Steel, my father’s business, I was in Russia, making $300 a week, which was a lot in those days, besides being tax-free and all in the band, because it was all-expenses-paid. On top of that, we were in the Caucasus some place, and I got a letter through the Embassy courier who arrived with our mail from Moscow. It was a letter from my first wife, saying she got married again. Which meant that alimony and child support were cut to practically nothing. I was so happy, I bought about eight bottles of vodka, and we took it to the gig and I said, “We’re celebrating a wedding!” Nobody asked me who got married, nobody! They said, “Here’s to the bride!” So then I was free, I could do it.
I wrote for the Village Voice on jazz until 1968, and little by little started writing about other subjects too. I had a column, so I could write about anything I wanted, and sometimes my jazz column was about rock or almost anything. People used to put me down for writing about Jimi Hendrix, for example, when I said he was a jazz musician, which I’m very proud of saying, I think before anybody.
I had always liked Europe, from the first time I came here I wanted to live here. So they sent me to Europe, I was a European editor, that’s how I came here. I left on Nixon’s inauguration day: January 20, 1969. It was the day to leave, I figure. I wrote for them for three years, and then we decided to part company.
Have you explored other areas of writing much?
Well, I would rather make a record than write a book, talking about big projects. But I would rather write an article than play a gig. My problem has always been that I’m interested in a lot of things, and to be a really good musician, you have to do that. I’ve never done that practicing for two or three hours a day and then gone out and blow at night. Instead of blowing at night, I’ve gone to a play or hung out with a writer. Journalism is perfect for me, because I know a little bit about a lot of things---I know a lot about some things, like music---and I’m interested in a lot of things. And that’s not perfect for being a musician. In my music I’m going on my raw talent, which I have never developed to its potential, but which is enough to get me by.
Music is my jogging, playing the trombone is my exercise, it cleans my system, I sweat. I really feel I need it physically. I’ve been a musician since I was five. I played the trombone at five, the piano at eight, the accordion at ten, that sort of thing. My image of myself as a musician is very important to me. If somebody asks me, “What are you?” I say musician, I don’t say journalist. On the other hand, I do make most of my living writing and I think I am more suited for it.
As a writer, do you feel some kind of duty toward the history of the music and the musicians?
No, not as far as past history is concerned. Dates, or when did Jelly Roll Morton do this, that doesn’t really interest me. The idea of what makes people play jazz, and what kind of people do play jazz, and how they feel about playing jazz, that’s very important to me and I like to do that. I don’t like to consider myself a critic. If I do something about Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, whether he plays “old-fashioned” is unimportant to me. It’s what kind of person he is, how did he start, his history. Mostly I don’t write for jazz magazines. I write for a general audience, for the International Herald Tribune. So, my idea is to write for people who aren’t jazz fans. Not to preach to the converted, but to get somebody pulled in who will say, “Hey, this guy sounds interesting, I’ll go down and hear him.” To reveal something. And that I do feel is a useful function.
In Europe, how long was your group Not Much Noise together?
On and off for two years. The problem with that was that it was very delicate. It was sort of Modern Jazz Quartet-y. That relies on playing a lot, to get that interaction in music. I could never get enough gigs, we only worked once a month. Also, although I really think Christian Escoudé is a very strong guitar player, he doesn’t like to play free a lot and I do. What I mean by “free” is finding new structures for things: not dropping all structures, but finding new structures. I could only get a maximum of one gig a month, and each time we did it, it was like starting all over again. Because of the fact that there was no drummer, that interaction, it was like a three-part fugue. It depends very much on being close with each other, and through nobody’s fault we weren’t close, because we wouldn’t have played for six weeks. So I was always uncomfortable, I was always worried and nervous, I was never really relaxed. There were a couple of gigs we did, such as the festival in Warsaw, where we played very well. There’s a record of that, on the Polish Jazz Society label. That was at our best.
Besides that group’s other record, on Spotlite, did you have any other record projects with them?
My next idea for a record with that band, and I would still like to do it with another band, is “Suite For Ben,” which would be the various aspects of my son’s life. Which are “Bobo,” which in French means a hurt. “Dodo,” which is sleep, “Caca,” “Papa,” “Mama,” “Bonbon.” There is a “Nono,” that I play with Jean Cohen. The structure is free, the structure is an idea. The idea is saying no to a kid you love. That when you play, you think of that. It’s such a drag having to say no to someone you love, and you have to say no all the time to kids. So it’s an emotion, rather than an objective structure. “Papa” is going to be a bebop tune. I played “Papa” too, with Glenn Ferris, but I’ve never put the whole thing together, I haven’t finished writing the whole thing. But I’ve been writing pieces, I’ve got a draft for a ballad for “Mama,” and if anybody asked me to do one, that would be my next record.
Now I like playing with this quartet I’ve been working with---Jean Cohen on tenor and soprano saxophones, Merzac Moutana on drums, and François Mechali on bass. Because we play the blues, we play ballads, we play free, and that encompasses my life. I grew up with swing, then graduated to bebop, and then free jazz came. That’s my life span, and there are parts that appeal to me in all that. With these guys, I can do that. I don’t like playing bebop all night, for example, I really don’t. I get so bored with Fmin7, Bflat7 . . . on the other hand, I really like to do that once a night, get into a good swinging blues. Everybody’s cut up into little slices, it’s funny.
published in Coda (Toronto) 186 (Oct. 1982)
Mike Zwerin’s first “historical” work took place at the age of 18 when he joined Miles Davis’s Birth Of The Cool band for two weeks at the Royal Roost, in New York, in 1949 (since released as the “Pre-Birth of the Cool” band). Committed to the trombone from an early age, later taking on the bass trumpet as well, he quit music twice to work in his father's steel business. During the second hiatus, he began to write on jazz for the Village Voice, and he continued to work for them for ten years. In 1964, as a member of Orchestra USA, he arranged and produced Mack the Knife and other Berlin Theatre Songs of Kurt Weill for RCA, using a sextet from the orchestra that included Eric Dolphy, Thad Jones, John Lewis, Richard Davis, and others.
In 1969, as the European correspondent for the Village Voice he moved to Paris, where he remained until his death in 2010. He soon wrote for other publications as well, and by the late ‘70s became the regular jazz and pop music writer for the International Herald Tribune. Meanwhile, he continued to work intermittently as a musician; among his projects, early on, was the trio Not Much Noise, with guitarist Christian Escoudé and bassist Gus Nemeth, and later, another trio, Zip, with guitarist Paul Breslin and bassist Martin Ingle (heard on the 1996 French Verve release Gettin' X-perimental Over U). Zwerin was also the author of several books: The Silent Sound of Needles (1968), about a drug rehabilitation center in Harlem; A Case for the Balkanization of Practically Everyone (1975), about the various nationalist movements of disinherited European peoples, such as the Welsh, Catalans, Lapps, Bretons, and others; La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Jazz under the Nazis (1985); and the memoirs Close Enough for Jazz (1983), and The Parisian Jazz Chronicles (2005).
This interview took place at his home, in April 1981.
How did you start out professionally in music?
I was in high school with Kenny Drew, at Music and Art School in New York. We sort of learned together, we used to play with Nick Stabulas, the drummer, who was with Lennie Tristano. Nick lived in Queens near me. Marty Flax, a tenor player who later played baritone with Dizzy’s big band, a beautiful saxophone player, we were all kind of learning together. Brew Moore, Johnny Andrews, they were a little older than us. A beautiful saxophone player named Stanley Kosow, who died a junky. But all like white Prez’s. Those are the people that I started with, my idea was to play trombone like Lester Young, that was what I had in my ear, even after Charlie Parker. I’d still like to do it.
We were playing Saturday night gigs, very small time stuff, and I got a gig in the Catskills for one summer with Kenny Drew, Nick Stabulas, and Marty Flax. We were making $20 a week room and board, in the Jewish Alps. I was so innocent: we showed up there and I was amazed; I mean, Kenny was black. And it had never occurred to me! They were my friends, you know . . . It turned out very well, the people were very nice. It took them a day to adjust and everything was fine.
I used to go around to jam sessions in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Manny’s Music Store used to have a second floor. They had sessions on union floor days, and I used to stop on the way. I was blowing a lot. Tony Scott, as a matter of fact, used to take me out. He was older than me and I was nervous about it. He took me up to Minton’s one night. And I said, “Minton’s, man. I can’t play Minton’s. I mean, you know, those heavy cats are up there.” Blakey---it was Abdullah Buhaina, Blakey was in his Mohammedan period---I mean, he scared me. He played so good and, you know, here I was, this Jewish boy. But Tony said, “Come on, man. We’ll play.” So he took me up there and I sat in, and I didn’t think I sounded terribly good that night. It was three in the morning and Miles was at the bar, and he asked me to rehearsal the next day. I said sure. He was only a year older than me---I was 18, he was 19---but he had already been with Bird for a year and a half.
I showed up the next day, and there was Gerry Mulligan and all those guys from the Birth of the Cool, and we did the two weeks at the Royal Roost. Then I asked Miles if he had more, because it was the beginning of September, and if he had a road trip or more gigs, I wouldn’t have gone back to school. But he had nothing, and I went back to school, and he got the recording date in about November of that year, 1949. I was in Miami by that time and Kai Winding did the date.
The Royal Roost date was never recorded?
There’s a pirate; somebody told me two, I only have one. “The Pre-Birth of the Cool.” I found that in Sam Goody’s a few years ago back in New York.
Had you been familiar with people in the band?
No, I’d never met anybody. I felt like the bat-boy of the New York Yankees who is suddenly pulled into the line-up.
How did you come to work with Claude Thornhill’s band?
Back in New York in the ‘50s, I was hanging around the union floor, and somebody said, “Hey, do you want to go to Texas for three weeks? Claude Thornhill’s looking for a trombone player.” So I got the gig.
I was doing a lot of weekend bands then. I played with Urbie Green’s band for a weekend, Billy May, Sonny Dunham, who played some officers’ clubs in Nova Scotia or something like that. After that, I went to Maynard Ferguson. That was one of the better periods of my life. I liked Maynard, I liked working with him. He kept guys on the band who were throwing up and not showing up, because he liked the way they played. He wanted to swing. And he had an integrated band before anybody, really. You got the feeling with Maynard that he didn’t have a quota, if the guy played good he could have been green. He hired him. Sometimes there were five black cats, sometimes two. I don’t think it went through his head whether there were too many black or white. I’m talking about 1959. It wasn’t my kind of music, it was very frenetic and loud and everything, but everybody got a chance to play, it was fun working for Maynard.
Then I quit to go back in my father’s business for a second time, in 1960, but still played. That’s when I was in a band with Larry Rivers, the painter, we used to work the old Five Spot on 5th Street, every Monday night. The Upper Bohemia Six. Bebop. Larry, a painter named Howard Kanowitz, and we used to do the Allen Eager-Stan Getz routine and get the best rhythm section we could get. We gave Joe Chambers his first job in New York, he had just come into town. Richard Davis was with us. Sometimes we had Dick Katz on piano, mostly it was Freddie Redd. Nobody took us quite seriously. And I was doing record dates for a while, maybe one a month. Jingles. I played with Bill Russo, he had a rehearsal band and we did two records. Other rehearsal bands.
For a time in 1960 I was living in the same building with John Lewis, on 57th Street and 10th Avenue. Miles lived in the same building. John told me one day that he was forming this cooperative Third Stream orchestra, and asked if I’d be interested in playing. I said sure, but I was in my father’s business. So, we used to rehearse on Sunday mornings. Sunday mornings at 10:30, it was funny. Eric Dolphy was in the band, Connie Kay, Richard Davis, Bernie Glow, Thad Jones. The studio musicians in New York who were bored to death and wanted to play good music and Sunday morning was the only time they could do it. Gunther Schuller conducted. And that was Orchestra USA. Everybody got a few shares of stock and we all played. We played a few concerts and made a few records.
I loved this Lotte Lenya record, The Berlin Theater Songs of Kurt Weill. I had wanted to do it but didn’t know how to start. Then one day I heard on the radio a young rock group called The Doors. It was their first record, I think, Jim Morrison sang “Moon of Alabama.” I said, “Son of a bitch. If a rock musician can do it, I’m going to have to get off of my ass.” Because really, that’s a good idea.
So I said to John, “If I give it to the Orchestra, we’ll call it the Sextet from Orchestra USA. I’ll finance the first date. I’ll pay everybody. Scale, though.” I asked him, “Would you do it for scale? If it works and I sell the tape, then we do the second side. Everybody gets paid anyway, I take the risk. But we do a second side, the record comes out, it’s called Sextet of Orchestra USA and the orchestra gets the royalties.” It’s a cooperative, I would get my share . . . The thing has become a kind of classic. People know me from that. It’s one of Eric Dolphy’s better records, it’s certainly very unique.
It cost me $700. Of course, I didn’t pay myself the arranging and I didn’t pay myself playing, or producing or anything. But I paid the studio and I paid everybody else union scale. I did the arrangements: I wasn’t sure of a few things so I went to Hall Overton twice and paid him for his usual lesson charge, and checked out a few ideas I had. Because I was going into a studio and I couldn’t afford any mistakes. He said that what I wanted to do would work, and made some suggestions. I sent people the parts, for the changes, two weeks before. Then we went into that studio and in three hours we came out with side one, which is three parts: “Moon of Alabama,” “As You Make Your Bed,” and “Jakov Schmidt.” And I mean, it’s really good. Eric must have gone over the changes, because he plays the changes inside and outside at the same time, it still astounds me when I hear it. It’s very moving. He’s not playing n’importe quoi [just anything], as they say in French, he’s playing the changes but way outside. And that was 1964! What an ear, it’s just amazing.
Then George Avakian sold it to RCA, after which they paid me for my arranging and my playing, and I recovered my costs. Then they paid for the second side, which was a normal record date. It was weird: it was nine months later and by that time Eric had died in Berlin, and the trumpet player Nick Travis had died. I was the only one in the front line who was still alive. For some reason or other, John couldn’t do it so I had no piano on the second side. It was Jimmy Raney on guitar, Thad Jones on trumpet, and Jerome Richardson on alto and bass clarinet.
There’s another record I’d really like to do, of the tunes that I didn’t get on that record. Even re-do some of them that are on it, because it’s out of the catalogue in America. The only place that it’s in the catalogue, as far as I know, is France, maybe Japan.
How did you start writing about jazz?
I was having this impassioned correspondence with an old friend who had moved to Los Angeles. This must have been about 1962 and we had been talking about Miles Ahead, which had just come out. He didn’t really like it; he stopped with Lester Young and didn’t like the Gil Evans thing. We were writing each other three-page letters and I really liked doing it. I remember it was one of those flashes you get, not very often. I was living in the Village and the Village Voice had no jazz in it. Once in a while Robert Reisner would write, not very often. And I had that flash that I was going to be the jazz writer. It had no basis in logic, because I’d never been published before. I tried and I didn’t get in. I tried again, but I knew nobody. I did a piece on John Coltrane---I’d just discovered Coltrane and was really passionate---and gave it to a friend who gave it to the woman who was the editor then, and two weeks later it was published. The Voice was open like that. So, I was very pleased, I did another one and that was in. Then I met the people and realized that if I kept writing pieces, they would get in. It was totally instinctive.
But I can’t say I really got emotionally, physically involved with writing until Claude Thornhill died. I had worked with Claude a few years before, over a period of maybe a year we had done three or four tours; one for six weeks, one for three weeks, that sort of thing. I had always really admired Claude, those records that came out in 1949 with Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, they’re really great stuff, Gil Evans arrangements. But when I was with him, he was cut down to two trumpets, one trombone, four saxophones, and we were playing stocks like the “Walter Winchell Rhumba.” There were good people in the band: Don Ellis, Don Lanphere . . .
So, when Claude died, I wanted to write my obituary or memoir of Claude. When I got into that, that’s the first time I realized that I started to “blow” with words, where it was really important to me. That’s when I got hooked. That’s when I knew that (a) I wanted to write and (b) that I could do it. Even though I’d never studied journalism and had no experience other than those few months that I had been into the Voice already. It became something with which I thought, plus playing, I could make a living. So, I quit my father’s business, because by then I was trying to play, trying to write, and going to work every morning, and I was going absolutely out of my mind. I was working full-time in the business, but I’d say, “I have a business lunch,” and go off and do a record date. Of course, what it amounted to is I wasn’t doing any of it well, in addition to which I was about ready to have a heart attack. It was funny, though. I was paying alimony and child support to my first wife, so there was no way I could quit the business, I was making a lot of money. But I finally said, “I can’t do it anymore.” I went in one day, again without really planning or thinking about it, and we were having a meeting with the two other guys that were running the company, and I heard the words come out of my mouth: “'I’m leaving.” Once they came out, I was so overjoyed!
It was easy---it’s very funny. I had an expensive apartment and there was an ad in the Voice: “Hollywood director coming to New York to make a movie, looking for apartment,” so I answered that and it turned out to be Francis Coppola, who was coming to New York to make You’re A Big Boy Now, which I think was his first film. His mother came to look at the apartment and took it. In the meantime, Paul Bley called me and he was going to Europe and did anybody want to sublet his loft. So, I sublet Paul Bley’s loft, sublet my place to Francis Coppola, and after the smoke cleared a month later, I realized that I had everything I had before. There was only one difference: I didn’t have to go to work every morning. This was about ‘65.
Then I read that Earl Hines was going to Russia. So I called Stanley Dance, who was kind of the unofficial manager, and said that what I’d like to do, if it was possible, was to go to Russia with Earl and report, just go as a journalist. He got excited, he said, yes it’s possible, we have to check with the State Department, because if was a State Department tour.
We were talking, and I said, “By the way, who’s playing?” He told me, and said, “ . . . and we don’t have a trombone player.”
I said, “Well.” I explained that my Kurt Weill record had just come out, and he told me to call Budd Johnson, who was the musical director. I talked to Budd, he said, “Send me the record,” and I got the gig. So, three months after I’d left Capital Steel, my father’s business, I was in Russia, making $300 a week, which was a lot in those days, besides being tax-free and all in the band, because it was all-expenses-paid. On top of that, we were in the Caucasus some place, and I got a letter through the Embassy courier who arrived with our mail from Moscow. It was a letter from my first wife, saying she got married again. Which meant that alimony and child support were cut to practically nothing. I was so happy, I bought about eight bottles of vodka, and we took it to the gig and I said, “We’re celebrating a wedding!” Nobody asked me who got married, nobody! They said, “Here’s to the bride!” So then I was free, I could do it.
I wrote for the Village Voice on jazz until 1968, and little by little started writing about other subjects too. I had a column, so I could write about anything I wanted, and sometimes my jazz column was about rock or almost anything. People used to put me down for writing about Jimi Hendrix, for example, when I said he was a jazz musician, which I’m very proud of saying, I think before anybody.
I had always liked Europe, from the first time I came here I wanted to live here. So they sent me to Europe, I was a European editor, that’s how I came here. I left on Nixon’s inauguration day: January 20, 1969. It was the day to leave, I figure. I wrote for them for three years, and then we decided to part company.
Have you explored other areas of writing much?
Well, I would rather make a record than write a book, talking about big projects. But I would rather write an article than play a gig. My problem has always been that I’m interested in a lot of things, and to be a really good musician, you have to do that. I’ve never done that practicing for two or three hours a day and then gone out and blow at night. Instead of blowing at night, I’ve gone to a play or hung out with a writer. Journalism is perfect for me, because I know a little bit about a lot of things---I know a lot about some things, like music---and I’m interested in a lot of things. And that’s not perfect for being a musician. In my music I’m going on my raw talent, which I have never developed to its potential, but which is enough to get me by.
Music is my jogging, playing the trombone is my exercise, it cleans my system, I sweat. I really feel I need it physically. I’ve been a musician since I was five. I played the trombone at five, the piano at eight, the accordion at ten, that sort of thing. My image of myself as a musician is very important to me. If somebody asks me, “What are you?” I say musician, I don’t say journalist. On the other hand, I do make most of my living writing and I think I am more suited for it.
As a writer, do you feel some kind of duty toward the history of the music and the musicians?
No, not as far as past history is concerned. Dates, or when did Jelly Roll Morton do this, that doesn’t really interest me. The idea of what makes people play jazz, and what kind of people do play jazz, and how they feel about playing jazz, that’s very important to me and I like to do that. I don’t like to consider myself a critic. If I do something about Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, whether he plays “old-fashioned” is unimportant to me. It’s what kind of person he is, how did he start, his history. Mostly I don’t write for jazz magazines. I write for a general audience, for the International Herald Tribune. So, my idea is to write for people who aren’t jazz fans. Not to preach to the converted, but to get somebody pulled in who will say, “Hey, this guy sounds interesting, I’ll go down and hear him.” To reveal something. And that I do feel is a useful function.
In Europe, how long was your group Not Much Noise together?
On and off for two years. The problem with that was that it was very delicate. It was sort of Modern Jazz Quartet-y. That relies on playing a lot, to get that interaction in music. I could never get enough gigs, we only worked once a month. Also, although I really think Christian Escoudé is a very strong guitar player, he doesn’t like to play free a lot and I do. What I mean by “free” is finding new structures for things: not dropping all structures, but finding new structures. I could only get a maximum of one gig a month, and each time we did it, it was like starting all over again. Because of the fact that there was no drummer, that interaction, it was like a three-part fugue. It depends very much on being close with each other, and through nobody’s fault we weren’t close, because we wouldn’t have played for six weeks. So I was always uncomfortable, I was always worried and nervous, I was never really relaxed. There were a couple of gigs we did, such as the festival in Warsaw, where we played very well. There’s a record of that, on the Polish Jazz Society label. That was at our best.
Besides that group’s other record, on Spotlite, did you have any other record projects with them?
My next idea for a record with that band, and I would still like to do it with another band, is “Suite For Ben,” which would be the various aspects of my son’s life. Which are “Bobo,” which in French means a hurt. “Dodo,” which is sleep, “Caca,” “Papa,” “Mama,” “Bonbon.” There is a “Nono,” that I play with Jean Cohen. The structure is free, the structure is an idea. The idea is saying no to a kid you love. That when you play, you think of that. It’s such a drag having to say no to someone you love, and you have to say no all the time to kids. So it’s an emotion, rather than an objective structure. “Papa” is going to be a bebop tune. I played “Papa” too, with Glenn Ferris, but I’ve never put the whole thing together, I haven’t finished writing the whole thing. But I’ve been writing pieces, I’ve got a draft for a ballad for “Mama,” and if anybody asked me to do one, that would be my next record.
Now I like playing with this quartet I’ve been working with---Jean Cohen on tenor and soprano saxophones, Merzac Moutana on drums, and François Mechali on bass. Because we play the blues, we play ballads, we play free, and that encompasses my life. I grew up with swing, then graduated to bebop, and then free jazz came. That’s my life span, and there are parts that appeal to me in all that. With these guys, I can do that. I don’t like playing bebop all night, for example, I really don’t. I get so bored with Fmin7, Bflat7 . . . on the other hand, I really like to do that once a night, get into a good swinging blues. Everybody’s cut up into little slices, it’s funny.