Selected Portions of "Music Profiles*
ABDU SALIM
Abdul Salim
Instrument: Tenor Sax, Flute & Piano some percussionBorn/City: 1949, Gilmer, TXFirst Influence: Not jazz; Cannonball Adderley, Oliver NelsonTypes of Music Listened to: All Kinds.First Gig: High School all instruments, with Lou Bennett at ClubCalle Arial, his own band.Favorite City/Club: Be Bop in SevilleWhere is Jazz Going? The leaders are Coltrane and Rollins. If it’s jazz, it’s done by Blacks.If it’s done by whites, it’s not Jazz.AS Doug is responsible for Lou coming to Europe. He was about to be picked up for child support in Baltimore, MD. He got there ahead of time, Doug lent Lou $30 for fare to Europe. Doug saw him 5 years later at the Blue Note, in Paris, listening to Shirley Scott. He came up behind him and said, “where’s my $30. Lou ordered champagne for everyone and had a good time. CT That happened to us in Berlin, we needed money for our trip to Asia. We had a ticket but no money. Doug lent it to us. Did Ira mention this to you?AS I talked to Lou and it turns out its not the same guy I thought it was. This is the guy that Lou was telling the joke about the mule. He’s the guy that ran the “Soul Hole”.CT spells the nameAS Right it was the place where all the Black GI’ hung out; He wouldn’t tell another mule to get up if he was sitting on his lap?CT What happened to Doug? See interview with Lou for more on Doouglas. (known as Dug)What instruments do you play?AS I play saxophone. But sax was one of the last instruments I started to play. I started as a kid and by ear without any lessons or reading a lot. I played most wind instruments, and piano. I know the notes on trumpet it’s just the mouthpiece thing. I started on trombone.CT You play alto and tenor?AS I play tenor and soprano. Alto is another style, like all the instruments, everybody is an individualist, but you gotta take into consideration the history of the instrument. And on alto you gotta take in consideration Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt, and a lot of people that I haven’t really studied. Tenor things don’t sound the same on alto.CT So it really is a different attitude.AS Yeh in a language, each instrument has its typical thing. CT Typical repertoire, would you say?AS Yeh, yeh, and its really difficult to get around the great alto players without playing some Charlie Parker. Even if you go modern you have to take into consideration Eric Dolphy, and some of the other guys that I really haven’t studied.CT Would you be classified like them if you played that instrument?AS No, no they tried to classify me when I first got here but now they really don’t classify me. At first they said I played like 'Trane' because I play a lot of notes. Some of the people who really listen know this is not true. But you can definitely hear that I’ve listened to ‘Trane’ and to Dexter Gordon. Dave Liebman made that comment the other night. “You really have that Dexter sound”. It’s that when you start on the instrument you don’t know3 basically how things go so you take things from other people who already play the instrument. Yours comes out a combination of all of that. But it still sounds tenorish. My alto playing doesn’t sound that altoish, and I’m really not that interested anyway. I think, well a lot of them say it; I definitely try to do it. Look for an instrument that fits his own voice range. And I really wanted to be a singer before anything.CT I see. That is an interesting point.AS Tenor and trombone that’s more or less vocal range. And I play soprano because it’s an octave higher and I needed to do things higher.CT Do you think that you think vocally sometimes when you play?AS I do. In fact, while I’m not playing, I sing. That’s the whole thing. That’s why I’m practicing with this plastic reed, it will do everything that a sax player normally has to do. It will pay all of the notes well and clean and everything; but when I get into my personal things, which are vocal things, the lip trills that you’re not supposed to do on tenor, etc.CT That’s why you sing while you play flute like the bass payer, Slam Stewart?AS Roland Kirk did it too.CT Exactly. Tell me. Where were you born?AS Texas, spells it out G I L M E R, it’s near Tyler and Kilgore.CT Who would you say were you’re your 1st influences?AS Ooo, the first ones actually, they weren’t even tenor players. I lived in a place where there was no jazz on the radio well during about a year, there was a program on every Sunday. On a black radio station and they played Ray Charles’ big band. Hank Crawford, you know, Jimmy Smith the organ stuff it was that kind of stuff; it really wasn’t jazz. And maybe about 1 or so jazz albums filtered down to me; I found them, you know, I didn’t have a record player, so I’d go to my buddies house to listen to them. Cannonball Adderly with Nancy Wilson, and that was one of the first. The other one was..... Who’s this trumpet player? Joe Newman, and Oliver Nelson did a thing together that I liked. I had those but I really couldn’t listen because I didn’t have a record player. In 67, a few months after 'Trane' died, was the 1st time I heard Coltrane. A friend of mine brought an album back from Viet Nam “Someday My Prince Will Come”, Miles Davis. So I taped in on a reel-to-reel tape. I didn’t have a tape player either, but I took it with me a year till I finished high school. I went to Houston and college. A friend of mine and I broke into the band room and stole a turntable and a tape recorder. Since I didn’t have any records, he took the turntable and I had this tape. We taped a couple of other albums for me to listen to with Miles Davis. The other albums were kinda rock albums: Blood, Sweat & Tears. So now I had 2 albums to listen to. I listened to Miles Davis’ Someday My Prince Will Come I listened to it every day for 2 years. The only album I had. I knew all the solos on the album; piano solos, bass solos, drum licks, everything. The entire album. I never really studied it or wrote it down. I just listened to it. So my playing is really based a lot out of that album. The mixture of lines or sound and attitude I was trying to get, was more like ‘Trane’. He really impressed me because that was the 1st time I had heard it. The one that I understood most on the album was Hank Mobley, because he played some lines that you can hear; so it’s really, I’m listening to him now and I noticed that just about everything I play, he plays uno?CT So a lot, then came from that album?AS Once I got to Houston and hear on the jukebox, all the time, people like Cannonball Adderley. Wes Montgomery, uh, Lee Morgan had a few things out, Eddie Harris had a lot of stuff out, Les McCann, and the college thing was enlightening. The guy started the jazz program the year I got there. CT Where was that?AS Texas Southern, And then I started learning some stuff the Oliver Nelson was doing; some Oliver Nelson arrangements; I had an album with Oliver Nelson on it; I wasn’t into reading the credits. I didn’t even know his name. I didn’t know anything about jazz. I liked it, uno, the little I’d heard and I liked the word and the attitude I was left out of it until late. CT You really didn’t start off as a jazz player?AS No, no, like I started my group when I was in the 7th grade. I was 14 yrs old. I was a drummer. I didn’t play saxophone and then the next year we got a drummer and I played guitar. But I still can’t play guitar. The Beatles were out then and I bought a guitar. I tuned it to a dominant chord; you move your fingers up and down the fret so I did that for about ½ year. Finally, I got the saxophone. It was weird because we were changing band directors and I wanted to play sax from the beginning, but they didn’t have one; my mother said she couldn’t buy one but she bought me a trombone which I broke but I went to school a few weeks in advance to get my uniform and the music so I’d have it learned by the time of the 1st football game. And I just lied, they asked me what instrument I played and I said saxophone and I had 2 weeks to learn it. I was playing baritone horn by then which had the same part as the 1st tenor on all the marches so I already knew the parts; I just had to find where the notes were.CT An aside re Carolo Gonzales[i]AS He’s been in jazz all his life; he loves it. He’s not that much of a natural but he has been hanging out since he was a kid. He studies everything. So they use him for a lot of technical advise. They get a lot of these old videos and they don’t know who is on it so he assists in that regard; he writes liner notes on albums in Spanish for a lot of the albums they sell over here. His artistic name, he calls himself Carlondaz. He works on Entre Amigos.CT Entre Amigos, is that on every Sunday.AS Every Monday, they repeat Mon or following Sun early am. Yeh, Sifuentes was their last night (at Abdu’s & Lou’s gig) he puts on the show.CT Sifu Abdu calls him.AS The idiot with the beard; I can’t stand him. Now that I’ve been down here (in Madrid) so long, he’s not that bad; cause I seem him all the time. But he’s such an idiot!CT What was he doing there?AS He presented us at the concert last night.CT A jazz Festival at a discotheque?AS We play discotheques quite a bit. It’s terrible for sound.CT You didn’t have to have a sound system?AS It’s weird too because the people who did the sound did the concert in Huelva and I was talking to 1 of the guys. He said “remember me?” Huelva 2 Joshua Edelman. 3 Josh had flown in from Madrid. I’d flown in from Barcelona. We don’t need a sound system, we’ll just go. This was back in May. I said have you heard Jimmy? 4 You put a mike on him and you couldn’t hear anyone else (laughs) so they decided to give us some sound since we were going to play. They put mikes on us while we sat up. They tried to be standoffish. Well, John McLaughlin got his stuff set up and said “since they’re late, set my stuff up and once it set up, don't touch anything.” They said we got direct orders from John McLaughlin not to touch anything I said, who is he? The General of Huelva? You’re gonna pay him he can’t really say shit! But they couldn’t touch anything, so I said we’d set up behind him. If he needs the sound, let 'em have it; we don’t need sound. I’ll play right thru it. So they gave us sound. I wasn’t about to leave 380,000 pts. 5 I was just going to walk away from this because my stupid driver’s van broke down? We got there in time; it’s just that they expected us not to get there at all—since we got there just before time to hit. The owner/promoter of the festival had taken it upon himself to announce that we weren’t going to play. So we had some people hassling us during the first number, you know, because they were mad and thought we weren’t going to show up. You hear it on the tape, yelling, I ignored him and talked right over him and pretty soon, once we got to “Song for My Children” the other people got upset with him and so they kicked him out. Shut up and listen! I don’t like these mikes that they clip on to the saxophone, with a regular mike, I can back up, etc. Once time I found myself almost backing off the stage. Laughs, and I said it doesn’t sound any softer because the mike is pinned to the Saxophone.CT When was your first gig on saxophone? You’ve been playing since high school. Better still when was your first gig where you thought you were beginning to play how you wanted to play?AS Oh shit, that wasn’t until recently. I really didn’t start like feeling I could play professionally until I started playing with Lou or at least until I started doing my own concerts here. Before that I was in the military for so long. Before that 2 years in College where I was playing clubs and doing like, uno Tina Turner, James Brown or whatever was out; the funk thing; and I played jazz in college cause I wanted to study it so I went to the navy after 2 years of college, at 20, and I had a job so I really couldn’t consider myself professional. I played everywhere I went. We’d be stationed here-okay I’d go out and find the best local band in town, and play with them. My band played clubs on the weekends and I did my regular gig. So when I got over to Spain I started working really and getting paid well; But I still was sounding about the same? And I still had my Navy gig! It’s just that over here (in Europe) people paid better. After, well in Korea, I decided seriously that I wasn’t going to give up on Marrying Rosa. Because she was torn between me and another. She hadn’t seen me in 4 years. There was another guy from Denmark that was trying to win her hand so she was all confused and I had almost given her up and married a history teacher of mine and such, so it got to the point where I said it’s time to be a man; you either do what you know you’re going to do or you just let everybody else run your life. So I said I’m gonna get the woman I want, and I’m going to do the job I want and I’m gonna tell everybody else to take a hike.CT So this changed your life in other words.AS Yeh, it had been in the process especially after the paralysis. But at that time I decided well, I’m divorced now; my kids and everything are with their mother. I can probably send them enough money and everything. Me, personally, I don’t need any money. CT Were your kids teenagers by then?AS No this was in 1983, the oldest is 16 and this was about 7 years ago. CT There weren’t babiesAS No they weren’t babies, but I felt that I could cause I was sending them, like and my ex-wife, like, um $300 per mo per kid plus paying her tuition thru nursing school. So I told her when I got ready to get out of the service, she had about out 3 months left of school and I said you’ll have to take care of that by yourself. But $300 I thought I could keep sending a while and I did, however, I got over here and 3-4 years of not working….CT That’s tough!AS Smiling, but I’d send it whenever I could like when I got my VA checks and everything. I’d send like a year at a time and stuff like that; but they stopped afar a while, too. But it was just that I decided no more anything except music. And then, uh, I’d almost planned to compromise and play some of whatever I could to get my name started. I got here and there was a lot more jazz than I expected. After a while I decided well this is it! I’m not playing anything except what I want to play. And that’s that! And you know with my religion and other things, I got used to fasting and everything. I don’t have to eat My wife lives here, her parents are not going to let her starve; she had a little job; she worked for her mom. I’m going to keep practicing until I do this better than anybody else. I knew from the beginning I’d have to compete with the Spanish, and naturally, they are gonna get the work. Well, I don’t want there to be any question any competition. I’ll be completely better than anyone else. Just practice. I didn’t accept or look for work for a while tile after the kid was born because then the clubs started to die out; they didn’t really pay anything anymore; I was in the conservatory to be able to get the V.A. CT You were studying in Seville?AS Yeh,CT they mailed your GI bill check to you?AS Yeh, I had to lie about it.CT Well, you do what you have to do.AS But we still got it and so the thing is I couldn’t miss classes. The checks came but so did surveys to the conservatory asking questions like Does he attend classes? How is he doing? And all that shit. So I couldn’t be running around like I am now doing gigs. I’d have to be in Seville, and in Seville, there are no gigs. So I didn’t work. I just stayed home and practiced. I got up every morning and practiced and my in-laws looked at me like I was some idiot letting my wife run up and down the streets borrowing milk from here and there. CT You made a decision, you had to do one or the other.AS Like I play I couldn’t go out and demand a lot of $. And they won’t let me do anything else in this country so I had no choice but to stick with it until I could do it well.CT How did you meet Lou? Did you guys sit in together or did someone introduce you?AS I sat in with him the 1st time I was down here working with Dave Thomas. I always stayed in, well both of these places are closed now a hotel on C/Arenal, Hotel Internacional, a couple of blocks up the street was the jazz club Café Arenal ! 84 or 85; a nice place. I didn’t really now Madrid so it was the only place I went. I went from my hotel right down the street to the club. One night Lou was playing. My thing was organ players; the best groups to play in were always organ player groups So I really wanted to play with him and I didn’t want to bug him. I’ve always been like that….I don’t listen to……….as luck would have it, he went on a little break and was sitting in the back rolling a little joint. That’s when I discovered we roll the same kind of joint. 6 We got to talking about that but he was a different person; he was thinking about quitting. He was really down. He had done what I did and that was spend a lot of years getting his shit together and as soon as he got it all together and was burning, things went bad. Doctors gave him cortisone and that killed it. He can only pay with 3 fingers of his hand. Then, Klook died.CT How long were they together?AS They were together, for 25 years. And so the concert people started treating him differently. Like a little local European. He was #1 in Europe for a long time and was not about to start with this shit. He didn’t seem to be in too good a humor that night so he scared me. I asked him if I could play and he said ‘yeh”. Then right after that, 2 or 3 other guys asked if they could play. Then he started to complain about all these young vats and they play so many solos. And I’m an old man; and my legs, I have to play bass, etc. So I made up my mind I’m playing 2 choruses and then I’m going home. So I did that. I got up and played Bye, Bye Blackbird for 2 choruses and I didn’t say anything to him the rest of the night. There were a few Americans that came thru there and they were talking to him. And they were talking kinda rough. And so I said this is a mean old man so I’ll leave him alone. But I said well uno he’s playing with Vlady Bas and I said well good grief, he’s gotta recognize that I play better than Vlady Bas.. 7 I don’t care what So I just told him if your over here and you really need a sax player and everything, call me! And he didn’t say yes or no. He said if you get any gigs down your way, you call me! I said, well, okay. So, I thought about it and I thought about it but I really didn’t think he meant it because I thought he was just trying to get rid of me. And I forgot about it. About a year later, he called me and said, Abdu, I’m going to be down in Almeria. In Andalucia, pretty soon. So if you can hook up anything in Seville, I can run over there and do it since I’ll be here already. So I said, Oh, great I ran out to the 2 clubs in Seville, to the Ayuntamiento (where the city’s cultural affairs concerts are produced) and everybody and said excitedly, Lou Bennett’s coming to Seville so what are we going to do? I normally charged 12 mil for a quartet in those days, okay, what Lou Bennett normally charged in those days minimum for himself He said he couldn’t come for less that 12 mil because I’m 2 people. I said well, I understand that so me and Jimmie>>CT Jimmy Castro?AS Yeh, because he was still in Seville practicing on 2 cardboard boxes. (laughs) We were going to play for free just so Lou could come and we could get a chance to play with him.; (Softly) Abdu stated but nobody was interested! Well, maybe in a few months. So he didn’t come and I lost that opportunity. And I went thru a trip with my band. They kicked me out! I needed a group and these were the only guys I knew so I stayed away from them for a while; I stopped speaking to them. So they called me up and said we got a gig I Almeria, will you come? They lied again, I had a gig in Almeria and they wanted a gig but the people wanted me so the band called and asked if I would play with them. I went because I wanted to find out what the problem was. I didn’t understand why I was put out of my band. They never explained it to me but I think they just got bigheaded. But I got them all in the same hotel room and I asked them and everybody denied it. “How is it that it didn’t happen? I ended up selling my alto flute because I didn’t play in the Madrid Festival with you guys and I was scheduled to play. Don’t tell me it didn’t happen, and for no reason; because it happened. No, it wasn’t my idea, it wasn’t anybody’s idea.CT Well, what did happen? You mean, they had a gig and they didn’t tell you!AS Yeh. They had the gig and I was on the gig and everything was decided. But two weeks before the gig, Manolo came by my house and told me that the band had decided that they didn’t want me to play. This is after I had recorded their album for them and everything.CT And who was in this band?AS Jimmy Castro on drums; Manolo Gallegas, 8 on bass, Chano, a piano player and a guitar player, a super, bland guy, named Perfumo.CT What was the name of the group?AS Hix Cadiz was composed of the ones that recorded the album. They won the 1st national jazz competition with my tunes and my coaching.CT Say it again.AS It’s a play on words. A long time ago, Seville was called Hix Cadiz; something like that; and they put the two together because 2 of the band members, Jimmy & Manolo are from Seville and two band members, Chano & Perfumo, are from Cadiz so Hix Cadiz and they went to the festival without me because it was for people under 31.CT So the name of the group is Hix Cadiz (spells it out)AS Or cadix but you can’t find the album anywhere. And the group doesn’t exist. Once I stopped working with them, they may have done 1 or 2 more concerts. They only worked because I was in the group. They didn’t realize that. They weren’t real jazz musicians. They still aren’t uno. But once they found Chano who was the strongest Spanish soloist that they had ever seen. They figured now they don’t need Abdu. They ran on out there and they fizzled out in about a month.CT Oh, I see this is something they decided.AS So I went to Almeria to put the band back together. They had this association. Amigos of jazz down there. They broke it up too. They got drunk and fought among themselves and they split up. But, uh, at the time this guy Dionicio, he was president. He was bragging about all the good stuff they were going to be doing in the future; and all of this and he had us over to the radio station on radio talking about all this stuff that he’s done; building himself up and all the stuff he is going to do and “in a few weeks we are going to have Lou Bennett to come.” We were being interviewed and he asks what do you think of Lou Bennett? I said well, I haven’t heard him a lot but we’ve talked together a few years ago; a little about working together but it never got a chance to materialize. He said, “You know what would be really interesting? If you could come here with Lou Bennett”, because Lou was telling everybody what a great musician I am and everything. I said “oh yes appearing together would be very interesting. And I said I’m not a member of Lou Bennett’s group I just can’t come in and put myself in his group. If you could arrange it and he doesn’t mind-=-I’d love to play with him. And I’ve got to talk to him this weekend and so I’ll let you know. He said this over the radio. And after I got home he called and said “Lou said he’d like to play with you.” And I went crazy. I called Carlos and started asking him what tunes did Lou play? None of which I knew and the 2 or 3 that I knew, he played them in other keys. I went to pieces. I got out my real book in d flat; and put all my shit together. I ran down to Almeria a day early to practice and the day of the gig, I’m waiting on Lou from about 10 am in the front of the club. Lou gets there about 7 or 8 pm that night. We are supposed to play about 10. He says “Hi, how ya doing?” Damn, you are a big one, a big N____RCT Oh Lou is real worried about the Gig!AS I helped him put the organ up and shit. He’s messing around with wires and shit and I’m standing around with my horn saying well what are we going to do? Well yeh, yeh, yeh. Well, are we going to rehearse? And he goes to eat. I’m still standing around with my horn. I didn’t even eat or anything. Finally, he comes back and I say I’m ready. We’re gonna run over a few things/ No. cause he goes to the bar. Now it’s about 11pm he stays at the bar til 11:15. We’re to hit shortly and the place is packed. I said Oh, shit; I know we’re not going to rehearse. I didn’t know what to do or what was going to happen. He gets up on the stand and doesn’t say a word to me. He just started paying.CT Yeh, the way he did the other night.AS Yeh, the way he always does; just starts playingCT Does he play a chorus or half a chorus?AS Uh huh, usually an introduction and if he wasn’t sure whether or not I knew the tune, he plays all or most of the tune ad lib and then he’d start and if I didn’t come in right away, he figured I didn’t know the melody and he’d play the melody and let me play the 1st solo.CT Rolls with laughter after seeing this in action 2 days earlier.AS Then the next day I’d know that melody because I had my Walkman and I recorded everything and I’d be in the hotel room all night long working on that for the next day. Then the next day he wouldn’t play that. I’d ask what are we going to play the next set, Lou; and he’d say ‘with ears as big as yours, I can play anything I want”. I said no you can’t man. There’s a lot of tunes that I don’t…..don’t do. That started Lou laughing. Oh shit. The 2nd day he had some chick from Paris there; she got him a lot of work. She used to be Blue Mitchell’s girl friend and she goes for musicians. And she had come there or she was coming there anyway. I was nervous; I had gotten up there, I didn’t know what he thought of me; he wouldn’t say anything. I was looking out my hotel window and I see him downstairs; he was bringing his car out and I went running down with this piece of joint, (Laughs). I said, can I help you. And he got out some papers and handed them to me. Look this tuff over. I’m putting together a group; we’re going to do some different kind of blues. We’re going to d a tour around France. Me? Well, it might be a little of a hassle because of the distance. You live so far away. I don’t care, man; I’ll get there. You tell me where it is & I’ll get there. We’ve been working together ever since then. It was just a natural thing the more blues he played, uno, the more I’d just kinda relax and start dong that—and stop trying to do all. A lot of fancy stuff. One day, I think, we were riding in the car and he told me “You know you ought to leave all this Jewish shit alone”. He said you’ll never be able to compete with them”; they spend all their life in school. “And everybody can’t sound like Coltrane, there was only one! None of them, not one European can do what you do! Why don’t you do that! Work on that and you’ll be working the rest of your life. They’ll never be able to do that; I don’t care if they spend the rest of their life in school”. So, I kinda uno, got an inkling of that and like I said, as time went on, he started giving me a lot of examples and that’s basically what Klook explained to him. Cause he was with the same little attitude outplay everybody with chops – outplay them with music! Man, play the real black music; that’s what Europe brought us all over her for! Because we played black music; now, they’re trying to make it European, but what they really….it’s because they can’t play it black.CT When you say black music, what do you mean?AS The music that makes them happy, music that swings; instead of showing them how fast your fingers are, uno, play something that’s got some feeling. Like I said, a vocal sound instead of 16 little notes. Do some big ones that really get there; that shake you for a minute. That’s the kinda stuff that moves ‘em and drives ‘em crazy; and they can’t do it! So, since they can’t, they try to substitute that with a lot of intellectual shit. What they really want is what we got. I hadn’t realized, well I knew it, but I didn’t know it. Nobody had ever put it in those words. Uno, it’s the obvious thing but you didn’t say it. I hadn’t really analyzed it, but that was it.CT Lou’s a good mentor in that respect.AS I’m completely different, Lou has taught me. He’s been my greatest teacher. Without sitting down at any instrument, just on the trips, riding along in the car, talking about things; cause he was there in all of it and letting me in on it cause I wasn’t. cause, like I said, I lived way away from the jazz. I didn’t hear much of it. I didn’t know any of the cats. He knew ‘em all.CT He was a big asset to you.AS He was all in it. Like I said, the first group I ever played with was an organist. A blind fella.CT Do you remember his name?AS Jack Todd, a white cat.CT From Texas?AS Erie, PA. That’s when I got up to Norfolk. I didn’t play in a jazz group till 79. That’s when I started playing jazz.CT Mmm, that’s 10 year ago. Is there a favorite city to gig in that you liked the best? AS Oo uh, it’s kinda hard for this reason: like I say, I try to keep it in the line of jazz; I can’t say for the money or anything, but just because of the public and the relationship I built there and the time I spent there I’d have to say the “Be Bop” Club in Seville. It’s a small place. It’s dirty, it smells they don’t pay and everything; but I did 4 months straight in there and with the public, well, I communicated with the public. That kind of communication exists rarely between artist and the public. My tunes, I wrote them right there in front of them. I cam in there and tried em out when they weren’t finished yet and every thing and they know all, everything. They came to our rehearsals so I can do really little subtle things and they remember way back when. It’s really fantastic. Anything that I do they react immediately. Even Lou saw that when we played a festival there. Seville, probably, that’s the best place I’ve played jazz in.CT Do you think that’s one of the better areas for jazz?AS I think it could be uh, it could be just because of the folklore thing; the tradition the type of things they like there; uno, it goes really well with their lifestyle. The problem is you have to organize these things and market them and everything; and that’s out in all of Andalucia. 9 I said that in the paper and they got mad at me. It’s the old mentality but it's like that. They got in right after Franco died. Some of them were there during the Franco era; it’s the old mentality. Some of the people are not that alert in fact they are not that involved in community stuff and in politics; these old guys they get in these offices, they get everything running their way, get the $ routed to where they want it to go and they got so much power and influence and they make people think that they are it. Nobody really bucks them. This is not the concrete thing; but this, is the kind of attitude that goes on where a few people run everything and they have everybody convinced that that’s all that there is. So, nothing goes on. Nobody’s real kinda up and at ‘em like up north or here (Madrid). People who have been use to business in other places say, “this has got to function this way.”’ But everybody kinda takes it as business as usual. If it comes out over the radio well then that’s the way it is. They kinda sit there and shut up. Nobody does anything. So, there’s no live music in Seville, now.CT What do you think of jazz and where do you think it’s going?AS That’s something that I just discovered lately. That it’s going somewhere and I don’t know. But one thing that I just have to break down and admit is the new generation – Marsalis and these guys-I don’t think what they’re doing is really……..is what it’s going to be in the future; but I think it’s leading to it. They’re going to go so far into this academic trip that it’s going to become very clear to everyone that this is not it; and there is going to be a radical change. Pow! And everybody’s going to go back to the real thing. And still it won’t be like it was because all these guys gut schooled and the very black that they go back to, will have a different head. So it’s going to change and these are the guys that will change it. It looks like that to me.CT Because most of those guys are schooled, that is they read; that kind of thing?AS And most of the other guys weren’t. They were poor, they were playing because they couldn’t get a job anywhere else. They got into drugs real early. Most of them didn’t finish high school and stuff. So this is a new breed of people.CT And yet the younger blacks, according to some—Horace Silver, for one, and Art Blakey, have said it—they can’t find young Blacks that want to play jazz.AS Yeh, That happens, also, because well see, the jazz, the big or biggest part of jazz—that’s why I keep insisting it’s black. It’s a social thing. From the beginning, back in slavery times, they wouldn’t allow us to speak our languages because they didn’t understand us and they knew we had to be saying something. They weren’t completely stupid; they knew we had to be scheming on them. So, they made us speak English; so, what we do because, like in Nigeria, you walk 3 blocks and you can’t understand what the people are saying. I went to school with over 400 Nigerians and if they didn’t or couldn’t speak English, they couldn’t speak to one another. There are so many dialects! It’s a natural, African thing, so other tribes can’t get into your secrets. So, we spoke English, but they still couldn’t understand us. We spoke Be Bop; we spoke jazz, and we were using the English words but they had different meanings. And the music was the same thing. We played their phrases, their music but it meant something else. Jazz will take its’ direction through pop music and all that; and besides, they musicians can’t do it all by themselves. The artists have never ‘done it’ by themselves. It was always brought about by a social thing. It’s just that the artist, we are the leaders in the social thing, when the things comes to a head, over there (in the USA), between the races, and stuff, again, once they finally realize that they didn’t really give us shit; they faked us again. They did some fancy footwork and then they stopped and it’s right back where it was. Once all of that builds up again and the pressure, uno, and people start, uno, once they start really resenting the whites again, then naturally, everything black becomes further away from the whites. It’s always like that. They go back to doing their hair nappy where it doesn’t look like a white person’s. Once they start going back that way again, the music does too. Cause the musicians are the ones out there saying: we must do this – now! What’s in this? James Brown came out – cut your process and all that. How you gonna get respect? It’s the musicians and then every, uno, the whole social sect will move this way and the music’s got to wait on that, too. But meanwhile these guys are trying to do it from the music standpoint now. Wynton and these guys “we’re going to take it somewhere else” (that’s what they say). It can’t go by itself. It’s never gone by itself. Our music has always been linked to the social movement, always. So, it’s like simmering and waiting on the rest of the shit to come to a head. Something will happen ‘cause things are getting too far out. But it’s always been linked to that. That’s why I can’t explain that to the white cats cause they, well. I am talking racially but they always think that I’m talking about it………….it’s the blood. It’s the blood. It is because of what they do. Because of this blood, you make me live this life. But it’s really when you put it down to concrete, it’s a cultural, social thing. Uno?CT It has to be.AS Uno, a white person could sing and play and talk just like a black person—if he grew up in a black family? And everybody knew that he grew up in that black family and treated him just like any man, no matter where he went. Really he could play just as good as anybody else and sing just like us; he’d talk like us. He’d walk like us and everything. It’s the only thing he’d know. He’d grown up in that family, and these were the only parents he’d known. His parents are black! Even if he didn’t come from black parents. They raised him; he came up around us, he ate our food; he suffered our bullshit and had to go to our schools and learn like us. CT Then, he could play?AS He’d be just like us. CT That reminds me of a musical mentor we had, Joe Derise. The same situation you’re speaking of happened to him. He talked about this with a sense of pride.AS But that’s the ONLY way!CT Why? Because of the religious aspect, the family background?AS The WHOLE THING! It’s your life! We’re playing our life and a white person who lived a white life cannot tell a black story, he can’t; he can tell you a version of it. He can tell what it looks like to you from out there. But unless it’s from here (in your heart), you can’t tell it unless you are in here: Inside the Black Experience! That’s why I insist that it’s black because you don’t find white people quite that in love with the music. They’ll marry one of us and take us up to their neighborhood. But to come down there…you don’t find that many of them. Wynton Marsalis said it: he was talking about the critics and everything “but they don’t approach the music with enough humility”. Compositions: Blue Jay, Barrio Alto. Bop Seville. The Path of the Light. Rosa Sin Espinas, CD: The Path Of The Light . Footnotes 1 Lou Bennett’s drummer; Lou named him “Sir Charles” 2 Huelva, a city in northern Spain know for it’s jazz fervor 3 Joshua Edelman, a jazz pianist from New York that worked at the Café Central with various group, including Latin 4 Jimmy Castro, one of Spain’s best time-keepers 5 100 pesetas to $1 at that time6 Determined by Barrio a contest of sorts.7 Vlady Bas – a Catalan saxophonist; and Father ofa real fine singer, Paula Bas.8 Manuel (Manolo) Gallegos, played with IC29 A region in Spain, where a very strong Moorish influence abounds Music Profiles is available in paperback form from MLE Publishing. If You are interested, please contactme at claudia@ic2productions.4t.com www.ic2productions.4t.com
