Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio, Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: you are listening to the world's most dangerous creative.
Speaker 2: Our yesterday is a legendary creative in the vein of
Speaker 2: such giants as Archie Shepp. In order that Coleman and
Speaker 2: Albert Island has pushed the envelope of what music and
Speaker 2: what modal jazz is.
Speaker 3: It's pretty much carrying the culture on his back right now.
Speaker 3: Having made over two hundred albums and recorded collaborated with
Speaker 3: the likes of Max Roach, Coz mahal A, Mary Boraka,
Speaker 3: The Grateful Dad, Saw Williams, The Roots, Gregor Reporter, the
Speaker 3: Plumb Projects. He leads the world Saxophone quartet for over
Speaker 3: forty years. Pretty much He's going to realign the Brave
Speaker 3: New World Trio and come May of this year, his
Speaker 3: new project Francesca will be available for mask consumption for
Speaker 3: us to listen to. Please welcome to the show, David Murray,
Speaker 3: what's my Supreme?
Speaker 4: Thank you?
Speaker 3: So I have to say, and you know I've said
Speaker 3: this to you before. Your biggest champion is no longer
Speaker 3: on this plane with us, But you know I came
Speaker 3: to know you because of my manager Richard Nichols, who
Speaker 3: before I even met Richard Nichols, Rich was like the
Speaker 3: guy that that you listened to on like the free
Speaker 3: jazz station in Philadelphia Radio, and he would constantly play
Speaker 3: levels of spiritual and free jazz that I never heard
Speaker 3: of before. And he would play your records. And even
Speaker 3: though Rich was.
Speaker 5: Talkative, like I rarely heard Rich.
Speaker 3: Talk passionately about things, well only because I meant Rich
Speaker 3: was passionate, but he was also.
Speaker 5: Like to know, Rich is very extreme.
Speaker 4: But he was part of that crew, you know, the
Speaker 4: empty fox hole in Philly Temple University w r T I.
Speaker 4: He was part of that whole crew that that accepted
Speaker 4: us with open arms. During that time. I mean I
Speaker 4: was playing, I was playing with Sonny Murray and Trey's
Speaker 4: Lounge and hanging out in Philly, you know, doing those
Speaker 4: kind of gigs. I had some very early days in
Speaker 4: Philly because I came out from California and people like
Speaker 4: Rich you know, they kind of helped me settle and
Speaker 4: Philly was almost like a second home for me because
Speaker 4: I couldn't go home, you know, because I was three
Speaker 4: thousand miles away. And I noticed that a lot of
Speaker 4: cats in New York, they go to Philly and because
Speaker 4: they felt warm because a WRTI family, Richie and all
Speaker 4: the people there love Wig fam Trick. Even that was
Speaker 4: after he was after but people like that.
Speaker 3: So I'll say, like a month after I met rich
Speaker 3: we had our first music arguments, and by music really
Speaker 3: mainly jazz arguments.
Speaker 5: And you know, the thing was, I was going to school.
Speaker 3: At a time with a bunch of young lions like
Speaker 3: Christian McBride, Joey dem Francesco, Kurt Rosewinkle like all these
Speaker 3: cats who are like now today the establishment, and like
Speaker 3: in order to get those guys respecting high school, there's
Speaker 3: a certain language you had to speak. And of course
Speaker 3: because those guys were younger, they kind of went to
Speaker 3: the route of where Winton was leading jazz and the
Speaker 3: way that rich would just come down hard on like
Speaker 3: no man, like I know you think, and he had
Speaker 3: to put it in ways that I can understand, which
Speaker 3: you know, the time he was like, basically this that
Speaker 3: you're listening to is would basically be like what bad
Speaker 3: Boy is, like how people think, you know, there's there's
Speaker 3: there's a sective people that believe that that's not the
Speaker 3: true real hip hop yeah, real hip hop, and you
Speaker 3: know some people that wouldn't know better.
Speaker 5: It's just like, hey, that's hip hop.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, give me an example of
Speaker 3: what you think it is, and pretty much like he
Speaker 3: just it was important to him that he sort of
Speaker 3: reprograms me to understand your level of artistry. And once
Speaker 3: I fell inside that rabbit hole, I couldn't get out of.
Speaker 3: And it was always richest sort of opinion that because
Speaker 3: of what he saw as the one step forward thirty
Speaker 3: steps backwards progression of where jazz was, was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we only want to hear this forties bird level of
Speaker 3: bop and really not move forward like he felt that
Speaker 3: you and also the M base movement Steve Coleman, Greg Osby,
Speaker 3: like people really pushing the envelope should have been way
Speaker 3: way like he's like he's a modern Coltrane, Like he's
Speaker 3: a living, walking god amongst us.
Speaker 5: Do you ever tire of that kind of.
Speaker 3: Fan worship from jazz enthusiasts, because even when looking up
Speaker 3: your press, like the Village Voice gave you Artists of
Speaker 3: the Decade in NB eighties, you know.
Speaker 4: Well that's because you know Stanley was talking to Stanley
Speaker 4: Crouch he talked a lot and Gary and Gary getting
Speaker 4: listened to a lot what he said. Stanley wouldn't stop talking,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: So I know that Stanley Crouch was her.
Speaker 4: Me was the sixth best drummer in New York. And
Speaker 4: everybody knows that that wasn't true, right, right, So you
Speaker 4: know he said, he said a lot of things, you know,
Speaker 4: and uh when him him and went and hooked up,
Speaker 4: and uh, that was a kind of a stormy situation.
Speaker 4: I'd say they became some kind of jazz police or
Speaker 4: something like that.
Speaker 5: Right. So that's the thing.
Speaker 3: How do you what put him in that position where
Speaker 3: he was that authority figure? Was it Robert christa gal
Speaker 3: giving him that much leeway at the Village Voice?
Speaker 4: Well, he was my English teacher in college, you know,
Speaker 4: Pomona College, California. I mean he had he had he
Speaker 4: had probably one of the most popular courses on Herman Mailville.
Speaker 4: Uh there, her Herman Mailville, the guy who wrote Moby Dick.
Speaker 5: Ok.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and uh yeah, so he's a writer, you know.
Speaker 4: So uh and he was the kind of guy that would,
Speaker 4: uh he gave me a card one time that had
Speaker 4: his his his fingers in a boxing glove on type
Speaker 4: bye and that was his business card, you know, so
Speaker 4: like him and Ishael Reid called me up one time
Speaker 4: and said, hey man, your boy Stanley's going for the championship.
Speaker 4: So you know, Richie knew all he knew about all
Speaker 4: that Richie knew. But Richie was also fighting against that
Speaker 4: because you know a lot of Richie could see through
Speaker 4: all that bullshit.
Speaker 3: Was he that volatile though, because I've heard stories of
Speaker 3: you know, before he passed, Great Tate told me a
Speaker 3: story of like Stanley will be in the Village Voice,
Speaker 3: like having arguments of music with writers and then it
Speaker 3: goes to pugilism levels.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well you know, tell you I like him too.
Speaker 4: But I remember he wrote an article about me trying
Speaker 4: to get trying to find his place too. He wrote
Speaker 4: an article about me in the Village Voice called David
Speaker 4: Murray half stepping what really? Yeah? And when I seen him,
Speaker 4: I talked to him about it.
Speaker 5: You know, I want to I want to approach it.
Speaker 4: To a lot of people. I talked to Winton too,
Speaker 4: I mean I talked to you know. I wasn't scared.
Speaker 5: I was going to say, have you ever had a
Speaker 5: conversation with me?
Speaker 4: And Winton? Had dinner not so long ago. It was wonderful. Look,
Speaker 4: we buried the hatchet, whatever hatchet there was, we buried
Speaker 4: it and come to tell you the truth. And I mean,
Speaker 4: maybe I shouldn't even talk about it in depth the
Speaker 4: way I usually talk about things. But Winton is a
Speaker 4: brilliant young man. And I just remember the first time
Speaker 4: I seen him in Branford. I went to New Orleans
Speaker 4: when the World Saxophone Court test started. Kid Jordan brought
Speaker 4: us down there and we played with London Branch and
Speaker 4: this great drummer, forget his name. It was a pharmacist
Speaker 4: from Mississippi. And I seen these two young men, Winton
Speaker 4: and his brother. They were in this in this class
Speaker 4: of kid of Kid Jordan's and bright eyes. They look brillant.
Speaker 4: Next thing, I know, somebody had said we was against
Speaker 4: each other or something like that. I said, but that's
Speaker 4: that young man I seen there and I which was great.
Speaker 4: You know, there's an article that was in a paper
Speaker 4: in Paris. They translate all the great articles around the world,
Speaker 4: different issues into French, and they put it out in
Speaker 4: a magazine you could buy. You can see it anyway.
Speaker 4: It was They had a thing that said is this
Speaker 4: man destroying jazz, had a picture of Winton, and then
Speaker 4: a lot of article was about me and Winton and
Speaker 4: the argument that we had, back and forth and back
Speaker 4: and forth. But finally in the end, man, you know,
Speaker 4: Winton has done some very beautiful things. Lincoln Center, Albert
Speaker 4: Murray's Stanley. I mean, they've created a wonderful situation. And
Speaker 4: I wouldn't I wouldn't do that for anything in my life.
Speaker 4: That never would have been me. I didn't want that job,
Speaker 4: and I'm glad that he's brave enough to do it.
Speaker 3: I have an interest in miss only because I see
Speaker 3: the parallels between because we do this a lot in
Speaker 3: hip hop culture. You know, the really first generation that
Speaker 3: was raised on hip hop. We're just around the corner
Speaker 3: from being senior citizens, and you know a lot of
Speaker 3: us are looking at those that were born after the
Speaker 3: two thousands trying to make sense of like is this
Speaker 3: hip hop?
Speaker 5: If it's not. My general agreement is.
Speaker 3: If I don't like it and it makes me uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: then they might They must be doing something right.
Speaker 5: They're doing something right.
Speaker 4: That's so good in situations like this, because you know,
Speaker 4: like we say, I'm on the communists, they say, well,
Speaker 4: it keeps you sharp. Arguments keep you sharp for hip hoppers.
Speaker 3: Nineteen ninety seven is kind of that year in which
Speaker 3: really the shift of hip hop changed to where we
Speaker 3: kind of are right now, which you know, it's neither
Speaker 3: good nor bad because I've heard music that I personally thought,
Speaker 3: a man, that's classic hip hop, and I'll return to
Speaker 3: it and it'll just be like the songs, all right,
Speaker 3: But and you know, and there's there's production now that's
Speaker 3: way better than anything that came out, you know, in
Speaker 3: the last decades. But in jazz music, I was led
Speaker 3: to believe that, you know, the path at Miles Davis
Speaker 3: was sort of laying down with and you know, even
Speaker 3: though people make the most out of it, just brune
Speaker 3: on the corner. Like the idea of like free jazz
Speaker 3: and coloring outside the lines is Miles wasn't just the
Speaker 3: only one. However, you know, something happened in the mid
Speaker 3: seventies in which a lot of his musicians had to
Speaker 3: find other ways of making income because of his dependency,
Speaker 3: and a lot of them started saying, hey, let's just
Speaker 3: write pop tunes or whatever, and so a lot of
Speaker 3: his people sort of had to go into other areas
Speaker 3: of music, which left the gap open. And I guess
Speaker 3: the perception was that, you know, when you what did
Speaker 3: you make it like your first record, like in seventy eight,
Speaker 3: seventy seventy six, right, so when you arrived then I
Speaker 3: guess the perception was that you are going to pick
Speaker 3: the baton up and lead the charge. And then out
Speaker 3: of nowhere, jazz goes back to the forties. That made
Speaker 3: people feel safe, like the bop movement suddenly returns, like
Speaker 3: in your mind, where did you feel that you were
Speaker 3: creatively in seventy six when you're making your debut.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, prior to that, you know, I grew
Speaker 4: up in the Church of God in Christ and the
Speaker 4: piano player and yeah, she used to be at Ephesians
Speaker 4: Church and then Missionary Church of God in Christ. You know,
Speaker 4: all that happy day she was part of all that,
Speaker 4: you know, So I grew up. I mean I remember
Speaker 4: the first thing I remember about music. I'm three or
Speaker 4: four years old, and she's trying to learn how to
Speaker 4: how to play the foot pedals on the organ, and
Speaker 4: I'm making the game out of it because I wasn't
Speaker 4: know enough to go to school, you know. So the
Speaker 4: next thing I know, I got a saxophone and I'm nine,
Speaker 4: and uh, you know, I took to church that night
Speaker 4: and started playing. Reverend Daniel said, oh, I see, young
Speaker 4: Davis got a new instrument. U he sounds quite spirited,
Speaker 4: you know. And I was playing shit like hour out
Speaker 4: of then. But I didn't know what the hell I
Speaker 4: was doing, you know, but now I do so anyway,
Speaker 4: So when I came to New York, I had played
Speaker 4: a lot of blues gigs I played with, you know,
Speaker 4: I played back up the bad singers R and B
Speaker 4: played in Richmond, you know, behind different singers, Tyron Davids.
Speaker 4: Different people come through, Davis, Yeah, come through your town.
Speaker 5: What other commercial artists have you played.
Speaker 4: With the new monics? I me mean a lot of people.
Speaker 4: I mean everybody in the Bay Area, you know. I
Speaker 4: mean I was in horn sections, you know, mixed company, holmes,
Speaker 4: uptights and different people, you know, people like that, you know,
Speaker 4: working players, different people, you know. I mean, I grew
Speaker 4: up in church, you know, so when I came to
Speaker 4: New York, I kind of put all that stuff away
Speaker 4: to kind of get into this new music movement. So
Speaker 4: when I got to New York, I could tell you
Speaker 4: we used to play down the Studio Wei and different studios,
Speaker 4: and I knew a lot more than a lot of
Speaker 4: the cats around me. I mean, there was a lot
Speaker 4: of cats that were playing the horn real hard and long.
Speaker 4: But I grew up playing the saxophone. I didn't just
Speaker 4: pick it up. You know. I had history in my sound.
Speaker 4: You know, the horn has always been my best friend.
Speaker 4: And I was an athlete, you know. So I could
Speaker 4: play the horn and I could play it with power,
Speaker 4: and I used circle of briefing for power, not for
Speaker 4: long notes. You know, I get louder as I play.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I'm just saying I scrapped all of what
Speaker 4: I learned in my teenage years and early years to
Speaker 4: come into the avant garde because I knew Bobby Bradford,
Speaker 4: and I knew Arthur blythe I knew Wilber Morris and
Speaker 4: Butch Morris, and I met all these people that showed
Speaker 4: me how to go into this area of music. But
Speaker 4: I had already learned a lot of stuff before I
Speaker 4: met them. So when I came to New York, it
Speaker 4: was easy for me to navigate somehow because I had
Speaker 4: this history in my young self. I had this aut
Speaker 4: this history already inside of me.
Speaker 6: Hey everybody, it's Sugar Steve from Questlup Supreme. I hope
Speaker 6: you're enjoying the David Murray episode. Just wanted to tell
Speaker 6: you that we have some live shows coming up with
Speaker 6: the Blue Note to promote this album to David Murray
Speaker 6: and Quest Love and Ray Angry are on called Plumb
Speaker 6: from Jami Recordings. The live shows are happening August twelfth, thirteenth,
Speaker 6: and fourteenth. That's a Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, or two
Speaker 6: sets each night. We hope to see you there and
Speaker 6: we hope that you're enjoying Plumb and QLs have a
Speaker 6: very merry Christmas.
Speaker 3: Were you aware of the perception like I always thought
Speaker 3: that or I was under the impression that New Yorkers
Speaker 3: kind of looked down on California musicians jazz musicians.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because they know because a lot of a lot
Speaker 4: of the jazz musicians from California they end up playing
Speaker 4: that smooth jazz in LA and I couldn't stand that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. So it's valid. I couldn't stand it.
Speaker 4: So when I came to New York, I wanted to play.
Speaker 4: I wanted to play hard. I mean, I heard. I mean,
Speaker 4: I was like coming out of Interstellar Space with Train
Speaker 4: and Rashid Ali. That was like, that's what I wanted
Speaker 4: to do kind of stuff like that, you know. I
Speaker 4: mean I met son Ron, hung out with him and
Speaker 4: Rashan out there. Yeah, you know, I met Sonny Rollins,
Speaker 4: you know, and I wanted to be like those guys
Speaker 4: who was.
Speaker 3: The first stop you in your track moment when you
Speaker 3: realize that the saxophone could go way past stan Getz
Speaker 3: or just someone that you know, was more melodic and
Speaker 3: really didn't come out of lines like the whole spiritual
Speaker 3: jazz movement, because even then there's still this talk of like,
Speaker 3: well is this jazz is this?
Speaker 4: Well? When I heard Coleman Hawkins play The Possibility of
Speaker 4: the tenor, it really the way he played it was endless.
Speaker 4: I mean, to me, he was playing avant garde, just
Speaker 4: pressing his notes, you know, doing those standards, playing body
Speaker 4: and soul and all that. The way he is rhythmic
Speaker 4: approach was. I mean, everybody that plays the tenor saxophone
Speaker 4: copies Coleman Hawkins was.
Speaker 5: Ornette Coleman was. He's someone that you listen to.
Speaker 4: Of course, yeah, of course, of course yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: Bobby Bradford used to play with on that so we talked.
Speaker 4: We talked in LA when I when I passed through LA,
Speaker 4: I was in Pomona College and I never really spent
Speaker 4: that much time in LA. I was mostly on campus,
Speaker 4: and then I came to New York on the independent study,
Speaker 4: and then I was still continuing with my sophomore year.
Speaker 4: I just kind of just started making records and the
Speaker 4: next thing I know, I hear I am sitting here
Speaker 4: with you guys, just like that.
Speaker 3: Oakland, California has a rich, deep history of black musicianship.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like Sliling family Stone and everything.
Speaker 4: I'm a Slyer church.
Speaker 5: Really when when I was a kid, can you tell
Speaker 5: me about it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we went to Valletjo to some you know, they
Speaker 4: always have these uh pastors appreciation times. You know, one
Speaker 4: church goes to another and they raised money for the
Speaker 4: pastor and then they reciprocate, you know. It was one
Speaker 4: of those kind of deals. That's what That's that's why
Speaker 4: I met him in the poolpit, you know, up there
Speaker 4: with the band. I didn't know who he was at
Speaker 4: the time, but yeah, I mean I look back on it, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I met him.
Speaker 3: What was your acronym KOCHI koch Yeah, yeah, like what
Speaker 3: denomination is that?
Speaker 5: Is it?
Speaker 4: My mother was Tremaine's godmother. We used to take baths together,
Speaker 4: me and train Tremaine Davis, which who became Tremaine So. Yes.
Speaker 4: So we lived not far down the street from Ephesians,
Speaker 4: so a couple of blocks from the park there in Berkeley.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean I grew up with these people.
Speaker 3: Was there any point in your life in which you
Speaker 3: did desire uh more of like a commercial route? I
Speaker 3: mean the music of Junior Walker, the music of you know.
Speaker 4: My mother passed when I was thirteen, and three years
Speaker 4: after that my father remarried to Vernon. And she said,
Speaker 4: I just loved that Bernard Johnson. He's just he's just
Speaker 4: really loved, you know, the saxophone player of Bernard Johnson.
Speaker 4: That's her name, right, And he's got a story, you know,
Speaker 4: he's got that thing trimple in this. It's beautiful. And
Speaker 4: he said, David, you can't never do better than him.
Speaker 4: It's okay, I said, sor right. I love Bannard too.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna I'm gonna leave that to him. I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna I'm not gonna be the gospel guy. No, No,
Speaker 4: that ain't gonna be my thing. I couldn't wait to
Speaker 4: get out of the church. But it was a beautiful
Speaker 4: experience on the other hand. But I'm still with God.
Speaker 4: But I'm not I'm not absolutely well. I believe that.
Speaker 3: Assuming anytime that you played in church, were you allowed
Speaker 3: to even go to that level of.
Speaker 4: Not then it was different then than it is now.
Speaker 4: I mean when when they started rocking it, I mean
Speaker 4: the church that I went to, I remember that women.
Speaker 4: I remember the big thing was culos, when they could
Speaker 4: have start wearing when they could start wearing culos, uh
Speaker 4: to uh, Sunday school, picnic and whatnot. See, that was
Speaker 4: a whole nother time. See, now they have dances that
Speaker 4: are gospel. You know, my people in Texas, you know,
Speaker 4: they they have gospel kind of dances where they they
Speaker 4: danced the beautiful hip hop, you know, gospel hip hop.
Speaker 4: And you know, it wasn't like that before. Women couldn't
Speaker 4: wear a jewelry, you know, I mean, it was a
Speaker 4: lot of things that you couldn't do during that time.
Speaker 4: Then the music just blew up and then people started
Speaker 4: realizing that, oh these kojak musicians are very very good.
Speaker 7: So Koching is the same like Baptist Church KOJK Church.
Speaker 7: They both rock out like that you're saying. As far
Speaker 7: as musically, they both just get the same, get down
Speaker 7: the same when it comes to.
Speaker 4: Well, my brother right now, my brother, he's a kojin musician.
Speaker 4: He plays piano like my mom and directs choir. For instance,
Speaker 4: he plays the three Baptist Church every Sunday. Okay, that's
Speaker 4: when he makes his money up and he runs choirs.
Speaker 4: Some churches, I'm not gonna knock on any religions. Some
Speaker 4: churches just don't. They don't have the musicians that the
Speaker 4: Church of God in Christ seems to generate. That's that's
Speaker 4: all I'm saying. Uh check you check Andre crowd see Andre. Andre.
Speaker 4: First of all, Andre and Stanley's first cousins.
Speaker 5: Did not know why we want to know about.
Speaker 4: All right, all right, look wait, both of them walk
Speaker 4: You're ready, both did now, So I'm not talking about nobody.
Speaker 4: So but I'm but I'm saying you see that in
Speaker 4: California at that time, two bishops h Bishop Cleveland and
Speaker 4: Bishop Crouch. One is in l. A. Crouds in L. A.
Speaker 4: Cleveland's in the Bay on Alcatraz and Berkeley. So yeah,
Speaker 4: there we go and that day so strong strong families,
Speaker 4: very strong.
Speaker 3: Was only continuing your studies your main reason for the
Speaker 3: move to New York City.
Speaker 4: Yes, I got a state scholarship to play music, to
Speaker 4: study music at Pomona College. I met James Newton, and
Speaker 4: he I had to play flute because I you know,
Speaker 4: during that time, you couldn't major in John colch ain't
Speaker 4: like you can now, you know. I mean I had
Speaker 4: to play far aid to get in college on the flute,
Speaker 4: you know. So yeah, I met to put my tennis
Speaker 4: saxophone over there, you know, And so I started playing
Speaker 4: with the Arthur Blythe and Stanley and Mark Dresser and
Speaker 4: James Newton. And James Newton hooked me up with the flute,
Speaker 4: and so I could get in and do all my
Speaker 4: interest exams and all that because I had won a
Speaker 4: state scholarship. Because so I could have went to school
Speaker 4: anywhere I wanted to. In California, I went by Stanford
Speaker 4: and it was bland. It was nothing happening over there.
Speaker 4: I went to University Specific, it wasn't nothing happening there.
Speaker 4: I went to a lot of colleges, but Pomona. The
Speaker 4: only reason I went there was because I met Stanley,
Speaker 4: and I met Bobby, and I met Arthur, and I
Speaker 4: met all these guys who end up coming to New York.
Speaker 4: And Arthur came to New York. I wanted to go too,
Speaker 4: So I figured out a way to get this independent
Speaker 4: study things, so I'll get to New York.
Speaker 5: What was it about Stanley that dread to him?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 5: Was it a constant thing of one upsmanship or you know? Well?
Speaker 4: I also wanted to be a writer, and I was
Speaker 4: impressed by his writing. He had written this book of poetry,
Speaker 4: Ain't no Ambulances for no niggas tonight right, Bob Thiel
Speaker 4: put it out anyway, you know, And I was interested
Speaker 4: in all kinds. I was writing poetry. I thought I
Speaker 4: could be a writer and a musician and real In fact,
Speaker 4: I did my senior thesis on Stanley's poetry book. You know,
Speaker 4: after a while, after I known Stanley for a couple
Speaker 4: of years, I had to get away from his aura,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, I mean he was a good friend,
Speaker 4: very good friend. But when he hooked up with Winton,
Speaker 4: then I had to put some distance on that, that
Speaker 4: whole thing and it's just the nature of things. I mean,
Speaker 4: I used to hang out with Albert Murray a lot.
Speaker 4: Then all of a sudden I wasn't welcome anymore. I
Speaker 4: don't know. It was kind of getting the cold shoulder
Speaker 4: over there. Now.
Speaker 5: So what was your practice at your height?
Speaker 4: The times when I wasn't doing everything else, I was
Speaker 4: just practicing. I mean, I just kept a horn in
Speaker 4: my mouth. I don't I don't even know the hours.
Speaker 4: It is probably way more than that. I mean, I
Speaker 4: just would have the horn everywhere. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: when you're when you're in your in your teens and twenties,
Speaker 4: until you have kids, you know that horn is everything
Speaker 4: you know. And then it's sometime when the kids come
Speaker 4: there go to some of your practice hours. I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's just life. I guess. Now my son and I
Speaker 4: we spend a couple of hours a day every day
Speaker 4: and be Bop just going over because I'm trying to
Speaker 4: impart a lot of things to him. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 4: to to my son mingus, you know, and uh, he
Speaker 4: could play the guitar, but he wants to know everything now.
Speaker 4: He's like a sponge and I'm just glad that he's
Speaker 4: ready for it because he's played with me uh in
Speaker 4: different settings and uh with my octet and with different bands.
Speaker 4: But now he wants to go inside because I always thought,
Speaker 4: you know, jazz is the black man's music, and jazz
Speaker 4: history is so short, you got to know all of it.
Speaker 4: You know, it's a short history. And you you know,
Speaker 4: with James P. You know, go back to James being
Speaker 4: get all that, you know, get everything, James P. Johnson.
Speaker 4: Just go back and get all this. You know, you'll
Speaker 4: be blake. Just get everything. Jazz is such a short
Speaker 4: and rich history. We can't just learn one era of
Speaker 4: it and think we got it all. We can't just
Speaker 4: copy people's solo and think we got it all. You
Speaker 4: got to go back to jazz. I mean, I know
Speaker 4: bass players people talk about jazz before court changes. I mean,
Speaker 4: guys have been playing jazz for a while. They didn't
Speaker 4: even know what to call it, you know. So I'm
Speaker 4: lucky enough to have known some of these musicians that
Speaker 4: are gone, didn't gone now, But to go back and
Speaker 4: talk to people like I was just talking about Duxter Gordon,
Speaker 4: Johnny Griffin, you know, going back to people who really
Speaker 4: James Raymi from Texas the bass player. He's talked about
Speaker 4: jazz before it changes. I'm like, wow, friend of Steve McCall, you.
Speaker 3: Know, do you feel as though were in danger of
Speaker 3: what they say, losing the recipes?
Speaker 4: Perhaps because you know, but jazz is blues, you know.
Speaker 4: Hanging around with Taj Mahall, he's a student of the blues,
Speaker 4: you know, and he's probably one of the older significant
Speaker 4: blues artists out here still. So we got to go back.
Speaker 4: When we're talking about going back to our roots, we
Speaker 4: got to deal with the blues too, you know. And
Speaker 4: most great jazz artists there's a lot of blues in
Speaker 4: what they do. You know, Duke Ellington, you know, com
Speaker 4: base it, there's a lot of blues up in there.
Speaker 4: You know. You go back to Jimmy Lunsford, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of blues up in there, you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's what makes us different than other bands. Like if
Speaker 4: you think of some of the some of the more
Speaker 4: successful white bands in the history, the thing that's different
Speaker 4: about the black bands that there's a lot of blues
Speaker 4: in there. I think that reminds me of Leroy Jones.
Speaker 4: That's what we learned from him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, Like my opinion on musicianship today is
Speaker 3: that we're doing too much. I would like musicians of
Speaker 3: my age, and you know, musicians I see now there's
Speaker 3: a lot of overplaying because no one knows how to
Speaker 3: gel with each other as a unit. But you know,
Speaker 3: I also know that there's not often opportunities for bands
Speaker 3: to even play together unless you know, if you're in
Speaker 3: church one day out the you're gonna do everything about
Speaker 3: the kitchen sink. But what specifically do you look for
Speaker 3: in a musician that you know.
Speaker 4: That they have it? Well, it depends on the instrument.
Speaker 4: It's like the band I have now, Luke Stewart, he's
Speaker 4: starting to become one of the well known bass players out.
Speaker 4: He reminds me a lot of Fred Hopkins, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean people who really play with soul, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean not just okay, the education and music these days,
Speaker 4: I hear a lot of notes, but I'm not sure
Speaker 4: that they're all true.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I hear people say that, and I wonder, like,
Speaker 3: what set of areas are you listening to that?
Speaker 5: Because I want to know that as well.
Speaker 4: With a bass player, I want somebody who really is
Speaker 4: there to support me. I mean, there's bass players that
Speaker 4: want to get up in your range and play what
Speaker 4: you're playing, and that's not what the function of the bass.
Speaker 4: For me, the bass is the is really what swings
Speaker 4: the band. The drummer swings the band too, but with
Speaker 4: a good bass player, it really can happen, you know,
Speaker 4: and from the drummer. You know, just today as far
Speaker 4: as drums have gotten to this point today with the
Speaker 4: between you go for Max Roach, you go to Sonny Murray,
Speaker 4: you go to rash Lee, you go to Steve McCall,
Speaker 4: you go to you go to Boohinout, you go to
Speaker 4: different drummers, great great drummers. You know, Philly, Joe Jones,
Speaker 4: you know uh who I play with. You look for
Speaker 4: different things in a drummer than you look for in
Speaker 4: the bass player. But if you put the two of
Speaker 4: them together, they don't always have to be playing exactly
Speaker 4: the same thing. It's not like in funk where the bass,
Speaker 4: drum and the bass are playing the same thing and
Speaker 4: then people say that's a group. No, that's not necessarily it.
Speaker 4: In jazz, they have to compliment one of one another.
Speaker 4: And to me, the bass and the drums are the rhythms.
Speaker 4: The pianos else. The piano is more of a uh
Speaker 4: independent in the band. I mean he he or she
Speaker 4: colors as long as they don't get in my space,
Speaker 4: you know, because see I've told people say, well, you know,
Speaker 4: I've had some great piano players that I've recorded with.
Speaker 4: You know, can you imagine having to fire the great
Speaker 4: John Hicks are having to having to not fire but
Speaker 4: not called back. I never fire anyone. I just don't
Speaker 4: call him back. I mean, how do you how do
Speaker 4: you say, okay, I've had a Don pulling. I've done
Speaker 4: some wonderful things with Don. But after you make a
Speaker 4: certain amount of records, I don't care how good your
Speaker 4: band is and how many tunes you write, it's gonna
Speaker 4: end up being the same record after a while. So
Speaker 4: you gotta change otherwise you won't have the longevity that
Speaker 4: I've had. I mean I've I've played with Randy Western,
Speaker 4: played with Jackie Bayart, i played with John, I played
Speaker 4: with Don, I played with David Rell and they all
Speaker 4: are wonderful. But you got to keep moving. You can't
Speaker 4: be stagnant in what rhythm section you hire. Now I'm
Speaker 4: playing with with with mart De Sanchez on piano. She's
Speaker 4: from Madrid, and she brings a whole other thing into
Speaker 4: the music, maybe a little more a studied approach than
Speaker 4: John Hicks. Maybe not as as a syncopated rhythmically as
Speaker 4: John Hicks or Don Pulling, but she's heard them both. Uh,
Speaker 4: So you know, it's a different kind of pianel. I
Speaker 4: like playing with Lafayette Gilchrist as well, and I like
Speaker 4: playing with D. D. Jackson. That's a whole other thing.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of great piano players as a
Speaker 4: piano town. So you put the you put the rhythm
Speaker 4: section together, and I look for people now that are
Speaker 4: half my age.
Speaker 3: Well, you mentioned D. D. Jackson. Were you playing with D. D.
Speaker 3: Jackson way before.
Speaker 4: I hooked up with D. D. Jackson? When I was
Speaker 4: with uh just in time in Canada, that record company,
Speaker 4: he was with them too.
Speaker 5: Did you bring D. D. Jackson to us or did we?
Speaker 8: I knew maybe rich did, because maybe.
Speaker 4: Yes I did.
Speaker 5: It was me, Okay, I was about to say, how
Speaker 5: did D. D. Jackson in my life? It was me.
Speaker 4: Totally? I called I called rich and said, hey, man,
Speaker 4: I got something for you here. You guys don't like
Speaker 4: is that was my gift to Richie and you guys.
Speaker 5: You work with everybody. I mean, if they work with you,
Speaker 5: then I know they're great.
Speaker 3: This is what I always wanted to know, because I
Speaker 3: never it's hard to find any the albums with them,
Speaker 3: and it's weird to ask you what your opinion on
Speaker 3: a musician or not.
Speaker 5: I didn't know that you worked with Alu Dara.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know of him, but I don't know.
Speaker 4: Went on my first European tour. We went to Holland
Speaker 4: and we did the thirty concerts. Uh in my and
Speaker 4: was Olu Dara and Philip Wilson. So that's another long story.
Speaker 4: But uh, anyway, old is fantastic. And then when the
Speaker 4: Wildflowers thing came, when they did the whole Wildflowers thing,
Speaker 4: O lou was was was picked out to continue on
Speaker 4: and uh to do a big record for Allen Douglas. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and so Alan Douglas was he produced after after the
Speaker 4: Wildflower session, he produced the Last Poets and also Olu
Speaker 4: Dara and so we were all in a lot of
Speaker 4: people that was in the Wildflowers. They put a band
Speaker 4: together and we we man we were in the studio
Speaker 4: for it seemed like months, and we got we got
Speaker 4: paid some good money during that time. I mean it was.
Speaker 4: It wouldn't be good money now. But we were in
Speaker 4: the studio for a long time, and O Lou was
Speaker 4: so brillan he kept us in the studio and the
Speaker 4: record never did come out. Man, I mean we must
Speaker 4: have been in there for months. I mean, and so
Speaker 4: in my head I said, oh, louis a cat because
Speaker 4: he knows how to run these cats, and he did.
Speaker 4: I mean, we were in the studio for months after
Speaker 4: the Wildflowers and the record never did come out. They
Speaker 4: even had Stanley trying to produce. It didn't even come out.
Speaker 5: So somewhere on this there's something.
Speaker 4: They exist some great things. I had a couple of songs.
Speaker 4: I had one tune in the last of the hit
Speaker 4: Man that they wanted to use, and then they played
Speaker 4: the hell out it. We even had Bernard Party come
Speaker 4: in there for a while, a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of people. They tried different drummers, because I
Speaker 4: don't know, they tried a lot of different musicians. Probably
Speaker 4: forty musicians played on that. On that it must have
Speaker 4: went off for six months.
Speaker 5: If only there was a jazz label to I'm on it.
Speaker 5: You're literally on it. What year was that.
Speaker 4: Well, just just track where Wildflowers came out. That must
Speaker 4: have been in our seventy oh, seventy seven, seventy, I
Speaker 4: don't know. You look it up for listeners out there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Oli dars uh his father.
Speaker 9: Yes's him playing on Life's Bitch. That's him playing the
Speaker 9: trumpet solo.
Speaker 4: O Lou was great man, he was. He played my
Speaker 4: octet and I mean I played in a couple of
Speaker 4: his bands, his Okra Orchestra. You remember when he used
Speaker 4: to throw out Okra. We had a bag for the
Speaker 4: Okra and he would throw it out in the audience.
Speaker 5: Okra Okra. Wow, that's an angle. I never once thought
Speaker 5: of what's the reason that.
Speaker 4: Well, his name of the band was Okra Orchestra.
Speaker 3: There you go for the cats that you've played with,
Speaker 3: and I've seen him, you know, Butch Marris, Reggie Workman,
Speaker 3: like all these cats that you've played with. What is
Speaker 3: a good living for a working jazz musician in the eighties,
Speaker 3: Like is the is the purpose to find a unit
Speaker 3: that will be hopefully picked up to tour the European circuit?
Speaker 3: Because I would imagine that between May and say August,
Speaker 3: if you're a jazz musician.
Speaker 5: You're going to spend your summer in Europe.
Speaker 4: Well, I have to go back to the eighties to
Speaker 4: ance or that, because because during the eighties everything was cash.
Speaker 4: It was different. See it was cash, you know. I
Speaker 4: mean what I did in the eighties was to have
Speaker 4: my octet and my quartet and sometimes big band and
Speaker 4: the world saxophone quartet. To joggle all those together. I
Speaker 4: would go to Europe. For instance, I could have a
Speaker 4: promoter in Scandinavia over to handle Scandinavia. I had a
Speaker 4: guy in France that did all of France I had.
Speaker 4: I had Archie is called Archie in Italy, and I
Speaker 4: give them all two weeks, two weeks here, two weeks here,
Speaker 4: a week here, bab and I just say, look, man,
Speaker 4: you know I need blah blah blah such and such
Speaker 4: for for my band. I got to pay my band
Speaker 4: X amount thousands a week, and I just, man, it
Speaker 4: was a different Now it's not like this now. This
Speaker 4: one I was doing between myself and Coulan Mango, we
Speaker 4: covered a lot of territory and h we paid a
Speaker 4: lot of people. That's what I can say. It was extraordinary.
Speaker 4: Sometimes we go to a country we do six weeks
Speaker 4: in Europe, we come back and go into a major
Speaker 4: club for a week, and then at the end of
Speaker 4: the week we're in the studio. So, uh, people like
Speaker 4: Reggie Work when you mentioned Reggie Work, when this is
Speaker 4: a this is a great bass player who he's always there,
Speaker 4: he's he's he's hardware. His name suits him because he's
Speaker 4: a real work man, you know. Uh, you could depend
Speaker 4: on him. Then there was doctor art Davis, you know,
Speaker 4: great bass player, doctor Artie. He was one of the
Speaker 4: cats that didn't didn't want to use an AMP. He's
Speaker 4: from the old school because he could play. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: you could still hear him right and then and then
Speaker 4: the word was out that cats have to start using
Speaker 4: playing with the amp, you know. And so he was
Speaker 4: one of the ones that resisted a long time. And
Speaker 4: I remember going to his house up in Crowton, New York,
Speaker 4: and his wife was working at a hospital, psychiatric hospital,
Speaker 4: and he started working there too, and she wanted me
Speaker 4: to give him a salary. It was like she thought,
Speaker 4: I don't know what she thought. I was John Coacha
Speaker 4: and so I don't know what she thought. I was, well,
Speaker 4: you got to pay my husband extra month thousand dollars
Speaker 4: a year, and I want to see it. His kids
Speaker 4: got to see him go to work every day like that,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, oh, and it was a higher amount,
Speaker 4: And I don't know. I didn't know if I could
Speaker 4: do that. That's why he'd enjoyed my band. I mean,
Speaker 4: he played in my band, But I mean maybe I
Speaker 4: could have paid him that, but I didn't add it
Speaker 4: all up. I didn't know if I could do it,
Speaker 4: if I could make that or not. You know, people
Speaker 4: have demands that they put on me once they see
Speaker 4: my name in the paper, and this and that, And
Speaker 4: I wasn't ready for all that, to tell you the truth,
Speaker 4: I was just like, you know, trying to trying to
Speaker 4: make the ends meet and myself.
Speaker 3: How taxing is it because of your level of creativity,
Speaker 3: which I assume you know, if you're not familiar to people,
Speaker 3: if you ever see David Murray's name in your town
Speaker 3: or in your country, whatever, please like go see this
Speaker 3: legend perform. But you know, I also know that for
Speaker 3: the decades I've known you, you've always led projects. You know,
Speaker 3: You've led your owned trio, quintet, whatever, your orchestra, world tech.
Speaker 3: How taxing is it to be the business guy, to
Speaker 3: be the responsible guy for your band, to organize things
Speaker 3: like make sure your guys can sleep somewhere, eat somewhere,
Speaker 3: that sort of thing they're for diem and on top
Speaker 3: of that, be in a mind space that you're still creating.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't do that anymore. I mean that was
Speaker 4: used to do it. I used I used to do it.
Speaker 4: It was difficult, but you know, I spent a lot
Speaker 4: of time in bars. I don't know how I did it.
Speaker 4: I guess having that youthful energy helped. Being able to
Speaker 4: talk a whole bunch of crap was, you know. And
Speaker 4: the whole other thing was I always in terms of
Speaker 4: records and recordings, I always had to make whoever was
Speaker 4: the small company that was going to make a record
Speaker 4: for me. I always used to have to make him
Speaker 4: think it was their idea and then they would do it.
Speaker 5: You remember that time we were gonna do the Plumb
Speaker 5: sequel record.
Speaker 3: That was my idea, right, Well, yeah, it's because I
Speaker 3: asked that simply because, like if you've seen Quincy Jones
Speaker 3: Is Listen Up documentary, the thing that actually led him
Speaker 3: to pop music was the fact that.
Speaker 5: You know, one bad tour.
Speaker 3: One mismanaged tour could almost put you in a position where,
Speaker 3: you know, he was getting aneurysms because he realized that
Speaker 3: he was responsible for, you know, the orchestra thirty people
Speaker 3: and show me about it didn't figure in hotels and
Speaker 3: flights and all those things, and he had to get
Speaker 3: a day job as an an r.
Speaker 4: Believe me, I understand, and I did see it. I
Speaker 4: understand that one time we went on a tour. We
Speaker 4: went out west, we went to Chicago, we played Chicago Fest. Cooney,
Speaker 4: my manager at the time, he got ripped off at
Speaker 4: the hotel the chain Mays ripped him off some of
Speaker 4: the band's money and we were on our way out
Speaker 4: to Denver to play at the Blue Note, and then
Speaker 4: then they canceled on the way out there. We ended
Speaker 4: up playing at that Tabuddhist place out there in Denver,
Speaker 4: the guy at Peace Church in New York on Ninth
Speaker 4: Street and second Hofurn. No, no, no, it was a
Speaker 4: it was a Buddhist place.
Speaker 5: It's a it's a real father.
Speaker 4: No, no, it was. It was a Buddhist It wasn't.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, it's actually a famous place. It's in Colorado,
Speaker 4: in Colorado. Yeah, Anyway, we swung around and we went
Speaker 4: to California. We came back around Texas and we played
Speaker 4: at the place on that was associated in Dallas Fort Worth,
Speaker 4: and then we came to New York. When I got
Speaker 4: back to New York, oh, the band fifteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: And during that time, I was like, you know, some money,
Speaker 4: and so I had the Monday nights at the Sweet Basil.
Speaker 4: So I was paying the cast on the back door
Speaker 4: from the tour and the cast on the stage I
Speaker 4: was juggling. It was yeah, it was pay par and
Speaker 4: I finally got it off me, you know, because I
Speaker 4: couldn't have that reputation. I mean, I mean we could
Speaker 4: blame some of that on those chamber made at the
Speaker 4: Blackstone Hotel in Chicago.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's rough, man, I mean, it wasn't easy to doing
Speaker 4: all that. But now I have help. You know, my wife, Francesca,
Speaker 4: she's been very helpful over the of these last few years.
Speaker 4: Tomorrow's our anniversary for the project, right, yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 4: now she does a lot of my business, and she
Speaker 4: doesn't want to because she has her own tie business
Speaker 4: going on. And it's starting to pick up, and I'm
Speaker 4: gonna have to find some some new agencies, bigger agencies
Speaker 4: to deal with, so we could kind of manage it
Speaker 4: a lot better, you know. But as time goes on,
Speaker 4: hopefully it to get easier and easier, so I could
Speaker 4: just relax and deal with music.
Speaker 3: So what's the climate now for the jazz musician again?
Speaker 3: Living in Europe in the early nineties, jazz music everywhere,
Speaker 3: Like the roots, ourselves were essentially just jazz musicians. We
Speaker 3: were doing all those festivals. Would we've done a lot
Speaker 3: with you?
Speaker 5: However?
Speaker 3: You know, I know time moves on, and when time
Speaker 3: moves on, something might get lost in the rear view mirror.
Speaker 4: So what I would like to do now is more
Speaker 4: or less, do less but more substantial gigs and have
Speaker 4: time in between. I don't really want to do the
Speaker 4: twenty six nights out of thirty. If I could help it,
Speaker 4: of course I will if I must, But I'd like
Speaker 4: to have the luxury of being able to play somewhere
Speaker 4: at the Nice festival, wait a couple of days and
Speaker 4: three days and then play at another one and move
Speaker 4: around a little easier. But you know, sometimes the demands
Speaker 4: changed that idea. I don't need all the gigs. There's
Speaker 4: gigs that I come to me that I kind of
Speaker 4: pass off to other people and said, yeah, Well, one
Speaker 4: time I did a I had an article came out
Speaker 4: in one of the papers, Times or something. They said
Speaker 4: big fish in small pond. You know when those you
Speaker 4: get those kind of articles, it just makes you say, well,
Speaker 4: what am I doing? I mean, one time I seen
Speaker 4: a picture of myself and I had I had this
Speaker 4: triple breasted suit, you know, and finally finally the lapels
Speaker 4: is pointing at the camera and I said, is you're
Speaker 4: working too hard? Man? I had to see that picture
Speaker 4: to understand that I was just straining myself. I'm blowing
Speaker 4: hard every night and see James. But Oltma told me, says,
Speaker 4: you know, David, you know there's a lot of cats
Speaker 4: playing saxophone out here, but you might be the one
Speaker 4: of the only ones that is free. And that's what
Speaker 4: I want. I just want to be free. I want
Speaker 4: to be free in my music. I don't want to
Speaker 4: be a B bop player. I don't want to be
Speaker 4: an avant garde. I want to be free on any music.
Speaker 4: Did I play at least for you?
Speaker 5: Uh? Where you are now? What's the easiest lane for you?
Speaker 3: And I'm asking in terms of I would assume that
Speaker 3: if you're doing bop that it's more about your your
Speaker 3: scale knowledge.
Speaker 5: But when you're doing your free jazz.
Speaker 3: Like you, your physical stamina has to be I assuming tip
Speaker 3: top shape because you're blowing the ship out that horn.
Speaker 4: So for me, the most challenging thing is to have
Speaker 4: is to play freedom on top of everything, with everything
Speaker 4: and be part. If I'm playing bebop, I want to
Speaker 4: play bebop and I want to be in it and
Speaker 4: I want to be above it at the same time.
Speaker 4: What if if I play with Bob wid the other
Speaker 4: night at the Apollow John Mala Dean and that was
Speaker 4: a wonderful yeah, yeah yeah, and that benefit they had
Speaker 4: the other day, it was a wonderful show. But I
Speaker 4: pride myself in bringing freedom into any kind of music.
Speaker 4: When I played in church, I was free. I got
Speaker 4: it to the point where nobody cared after a while
Speaker 4: because they liked what I was playing. I think every
Speaker 4: music has its difficulties. I love be about music. My
Speaker 4: special gift is to be able to play any kind
Speaker 4: of music, because the more music that you learn how
Speaker 4: to play, the more people can play with. When I
Speaker 4: did the nat King Cole and Espanol and we played
Speaker 4: at the Salle play L in Paris with Omarra Patundo
Speaker 4: and I wrote string arrangements, had ten strings, twelve strings
Speaker 4: and a five piece horn section and Omara Patuna man.
Speaker 4: When we finished that show was ready to go to Vegas.
Speaker 4: That was probably as commercial as I could probably ever be.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, I'm playing freedom and see
Speaker 4: that's what's special about me, and I've been criticized for it,
Speaker 4: but that is my cradle. I want freedom in everything
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 8: I think our listeners might be curious about the Philadelphia halfway.
Speaker 5: Oldelphi appearance of Dave Murray Inn.
Speaker 3: We were trying to figure out if we were going
Speaker 3: to make a say what Man a running joke on
Speaker 3: every roots album, But for the first four years, like
Speaker 3: the idea of Tariq freestyling and scatting to each instrument
Speaker 3: on stage was like one of our ways to pass
Speaker 3: the time on you know, all right, we got three
Speaker 3: hours to do a showy man.
Speaker 5: Well no, no, no, I'm just saying that.
Speaker 3: We you know, we did it on Organics and then
Speaker 3: we did it on Do You Want More? And Richard
Speaker 3: was like, well, let's do it on Ihiladelph Half Life.
Speaker 3: So we were doing it, but you know, Dreek was
Speaker 3: kind of in his rebellious stance of hey, all that
Speaker 3: jazzy stuff is now in the rearview mirror, like I
Speaker 3: gotta I gotta earn five mics in the source and
Speaker 3: this ain't it. So we tried and then it just
Speaker 3: fell kind of fell apart.
Speaker 5: But so weird.
Speaker 3: Like you, you've done so many gigs, something that might
Speaker 3: mean something to me, you might forget about. But one
Speaker 3: of our first years at the Tonight Show, I remember
Speaker 3: we did a gig you me furnon Reid Ornette Coleman.
Speaker 3: Uh no, no, no, we we flew to uh London.
Speaker 4: Oh right, yeah that when they did that festival they yok,
Speaker 4: was like the jazz madness.
Speaker 3: All I remember was that this was like maybe the
Speaker 3: fourth month of Fallon and it was a Friday show.
Speaker 3: We did the last of the note and we didn't
Speaker 3: have time to like even run and change our clothes.
Speaker 3: Like we run straight to the airport in our show clothes.
Speaker 3: That's right, I remember, got off the plane in our
Speaker 3: show clothes, went through customs, waited an hour for them
Speaker 3: to damn near antal probus and then go straight to
Speaker 3: the venue and rehearse like three hours or so. For you, though,
Speaker 3: can you talk about playing with or Nott Coleman, Because
Speaker 3: I kept asking at the time, like are we going
Speaker 3: to rehearse with him or we just play?
Speaker 5: He's like, no, man, we just play what we feel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember because when on This showed up and
Speaker 4: we were doing we were doing like a sound check,
Speaker 4: I guess, and on it he didn't want to do
Speaker 4: the sound check, so he had me check his mic,
Speaker 4: and so he gave me a listener right there while
Speaker 4: checking his mic because he had a very particular way
Speaker 4: he wanted to shrill us up his horn to come out.
Speaker 4: He says, yeah, do your saxophone like that. I said, no,
Speaker 4: that's okay on that. But I got it though, I
Speaker 4: got it. I got it because I was always friends
Speaker 4: with on that and he cared for me, you know,
Speaker 4: because I knew Bobby Bradford of course, and Charles Moffatt,
Speaker 4: you know, they all go back to Fort Worth. But yeah,
Speaker 4: Arnett didn't need to be hers because that's going to
Speaker 4: play on that, dependent on whatever anybody else is doing,
Speaker 4: He's gonna he's gonna be pure on that if he's
Speaker 4: playing with thirteen Whales, it's gonna be pure on that.
Speaker 3: When I was sort of shedding heavy with Chris McBride
Speaker 3: and some George Butler esque uh George projects, they told
Speaker 3: me to getting to Andrew Cyril Rich actually gave me
Speaker 3: the record the Shaquille's Warrior album.
Speaker 5: Could you talk about the.
Speaker 3: Migenn of that record, because that was one of the
Speaker 3: first records that Rich was like, study this record and.
Speaker 4: Or Shaquille was one or two? That's two, the one
Speaker 4: that came out in ninety one. Okay, that must have
Speaker 4: been one. Yeah, okay, well that's when when Don we
Speaker 4: had yeah and Sam Frank's guitar. These were my childhood friends.
Speaker 4: We used to be with the notations of Soul when
Speaker 4: I was growing up in the Bay Area. Yeah. We
Speaker 4: used to back up a lot of different groups, you know,
Speaker 4: Barbara Treegler and the Numnics, different people, R and B. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So playing with Don because I had done on piano,
Speaker 4: but when I I didn't understand that he really it
Speaker 4: wasn't revealed to me at that time that he played
Speaker 4: organ like that. And you know, his experience in the
Speaker 4: church is very similar to mine so much soul in
Speaker 4: his organ playing. And I remember when we did the
Speaker 4: we did the first album and it was quite successful
Speaker 4: during that time because we were on the run. We
Speaker 4: went to Japan. I remember they brought an organ. They
Speaker 4: brought a hamm and B three, but it was it
Speaker 4: was one of those very new kind and it came
Speaker 4: with a big manual. We were sitting there at this
Speaker 4: club in Tokyo and Don didn't even get up. Don
Speaker 4: wouldn't even open the manual. He said, that organ, you
Speaker 4: could take that back. He said, go get me one
Speaker 4: with some cigarette burns on it and give me a
Speaker 4: give yeah, give me a real hamm of organ. I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna do that. That's all gadgets and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: And so they finally bought one and we played six
Speaker 4: nights at this club and it was wonderful and that
Speaker 4: was a great experience. And when we did Shock Kills two,
Speaker 4: that's when Don told me he was sick, and so
Speaker 4: that was a different kind of date. But he waited.
Speaker 4: Don was a kind of cat who would It was
Speaker 4: always a wild card with Don. He would wait until
Speaker 4: he got in the studio and start writing a tune.
Speaker 4: And by the time the session was over That was
Speaker 4: a hit tune. It was always the number one tune
Speaker 4: uh he had, and it was a way the way
Speaker 4: he dealt with things. Uh. Very private man, very very
Speaker 4: deep reader. He's a real reader. I'm a reader too.
Speaker 4: You know, you could in jazz musicians, we don't have
Speaker 4: a lot of people to maybe readers, but but you could,
Speaker 4: since when you were around these people, the conversations that
Speaker 4: we had on the road, and very deep thinking person.
Speaker 3: Reader in terms of philosophy or you're talking about notes, notating.
Speaker 4: I'm talking about philosophilosophy in life, you know, just books
Speaker 4: in general. I mean, I mean I tried to make
Speaker 4: sure all of my children are readers, you know. I
Speaker 4: mean you could tell a person who reads and the
Speaker 4: person who doesn't read. I mean, you know, I mean
Speaker 4: that's part of my growing up. I mean, I was
Speaker 4: heavily influenced by a lot of writers. I wanted to
Speaker 4: be a writer, like I said.
Speaker 7: Before, highly educated too, you know, so it's important it's
Speaker 7: important that.
Speaker 4: But he was that kind of a person, and you
Speaker 4: know John Hicks too. You know, when you're around people
Speaker 4: like that, it just kind of inspires you to, uh
Speaker 4: to know that you're on the right path. Perhaps. You know,
Speaker 4: you have a complimense that you want to make that
Speaker 4: are personal to you, and you have to keep your
Speaker 4: mind filled with many things, you know. I mean like
Speaker 4: I'm doing a blues project with Ishmael Reid, and that
Speaker 4: keeps me a lot of times when I you know,
Speaker 4: I always always go to him when I need some
Speaker 4: inspiration in terms of words, and uh, you know, I
Speaker 4: have my favorite writers and I constantly read.
Speaker 9: You mentioned earlier you talked about sun Raw. He had
Speaker 9: a singer that in his orchestra, June Tyson. Yeah, I knew, Yeah,
Speaker 9: we talk about her.
Speaker 4: She was.
Speaker 5: I loved her voice, and she's like.
Speaker 4: Oh, I used to love her. I loved her and
Speaker 4: I loved her Space dancers too, because her to make
Speaker 4: grossner you know, Mickey Davidson, Uh, Sheryl so wonderful people
Speaker 4: around Sunnraw. I mean when I met Sunray, I was
Speaker 4: out in California and they played at the Transitdental Meditation,
Speaker 4: some kind of place on Telegraph Avenue, and he started
Speaker 4: talking to Butcher and I and we closed the joint.
Speaker 4: I mean it's three o'clock and everybody's left, and he's
Speaker 4: sitting there. He's sitting there just talking to me and
Speaker 4: Butch and just this philosophy. Do you just say much
Speaker 4: back to Sunrow you say yeah, yeah, oh yeah, right
Speaker 4: on words. You know they weren't even saying that then.
Speaker 4: But you know, I was like, wow, man, and he
Speaker 4: take you too many places. So he always hit on
Speaker 4: me to play in this band. I was like, what
Speaker 4: time he always hit on me. I was like, no, man,
Speaker 4: I got a family. Man, I can't.
Speaker 5: I can't trying to get paid.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I mean, you know.
Speaker 3: If you can mention like what would have been a
Speaker 3: bad gig back in the day on that level, like
Speaker 3: now it's shaky. He doesn't pay as musicians, Oh.
Speaker 4: Oh bad gig. One of those gigs when nobody shows
Speaker 4: up doing loft jazz sometimes, you know, sometimes you would
Speaker 4: be very successful. Loft jazz was basically on the door.
Speaker 4: But when you were successful, yeah, because I used to.
Speaker 4: I used to have some skates, and I had a backpack,
Speaker 4: and I had a tape, and I had things that
Speaker 4: put posters up everywhere, and I got pretty good at it.
Speaker 4: If you got a voice, choice, you got a little thing,
Speaker 4: a little blurb in the times, you might have a
Speaker 4: packed house. So people started giving me their flyers, and
Speaker 4: I became an emissary for like you know, Loft Jazz
Speaker 4: and so. But a bad gig would have been when
Speaker 4: you didn't get a voice choice or something happened technical
Speaker 4: like that and you didn't get the publicity out. But
Speaker 4: most of the times when you did, you would get
Speaker 4: the returns. But every once in a while it would
Speaker 4: come up flat.
Speaker 5: Were you friends with Robert Christigo at the Voice?
Speaker 4: Not really? I knew him, he was, I knew him.
Speaker 5: A major fan of yours, Yes he was.
Speaker 4: No, Yes he was. I knew him, but I knew
Speaker 4: him mostly through Stanley and uh that was the guy
Speaker 4: at SO who News. There was nothing. There was other
Speaker 4: people that I knew very Chris Kyle was not in
Speaker 4: my generation, but but I knew him. Of course I
Speaker 4: knew him. I knew everything.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm obsessed with his writing as a critic, and
Speaker 3: you know pretty much all his choices on jazz or whatever,
Speaker 3: like you're always at the top of.
Speaker 5: His Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4: Probably, and Gary Gettings too, I would, I would imagine,
Speaker 4: But Chris Kyle, no, he knew what he was doing.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Were there critics that irks you and.
Speaker 4: That was Peter Ochio girls from.
Speaker 5: The had receipts ready, and.
Speaker 4: Then then there was uh, you know the guy at
Speaker 4: the time, and so anyway, people come and people go.
Speaker 4: But I knew most of the critics. I may not
Speaker 4: can remember all their names. But you know, every once
Speaker 4: in a while you get blasted. I mean I did
Speaker 4: a couple of stream concerts. I got blasted a few times. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but it maybe go back and do a better job.
Speaker 3: David, we were talking about tunes before, like how much
Speaker 3: your day is spent actually playing and practicing versus sitting
Speaker 3: and writing composing.
Speaker 5: Like what's the how does that? How did you'd rather
Speaker 5: be practicing right now than talking to this man? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: But like because we were talking about like actual physical
Speaker 1: art of writing a tune versus just playing.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm kind of like, I guess I'm taking a
Speaker 4: break because I just made this album. And when I'm
Speaker 4: making an album, I usually come up with maybe twelve
Speaker 4: or thirteen songs, and I got to wheeled down to
Speaker 4: seven or eight maybe. So during COVID Man, I wrote
Speaker 4: so many tunes I throw them away like airplanes. But
Speaker 4: you know, it made no sense to write for big
Speaker 4: band during that time because we couldn't even get a
Speaker 4: trio on the stage. You know, I have a lot
Speaker 4: of big band music and orchestra music that I've written
Speaker 4: that there's no chance of playing it during this time.
Speaker 4: It would be great to have a resurgence of big bands.
Speaker 4: That would be fantastic. Those times are not I'm looking
Speaker 4: to get a court in on stage.
Speaker 3: You know you mentioned your desire to write. Do you
Speaker 3: have any of your things on manuscript or like? Have
Speaker 3: you written pieces writing in terms of fiction? I've assumed
Speaker 3: that you're saying when you wanted to be a writer.
Speaker 4: You're oh, well, that was when I was. I was
Speaker 4: in high school, in my first year in college. I
Speaker 4: don't I don't even know where that stuff is. But
Speaker 4: as far as I didn't get that far, you want
Speaker 4: to know, because when I had written a my senior
Speaker 4: thesis in high school about Stanley's book that I was
Speaker 4: telling you before, and so when I went when I
Speaker 4: met him, I gave it to him and he read
Speaker 4: it finally, and he gave me a B plus and
Speaker 4: threw it on the ground said, man, pick up your saxophone.
Speaker 4: That was almost the end of my writing view. So
Speaker 4: I kind of got discouraged at that point, you know, so,
Speaker 4: but yeah, anyway, anyway, I'm close to the writers is
Speaker 4: what I can say. Michael Nash and Carrie Williams and
Speaker 4: TODs Mahall and Bob Were and myself we've been we've
Speaker 4: been working on this, uh, this musical for Satul Page
Speaker 4: for many years now. We're finally ready. The last time
Speaker 4: we tried to bring it out, this other play called
Speaker 4: Damn Yankees came up. That was about thirty years ago,
Speaker 4: nearly thirty years ago. So I think we've revised it
Speaker 4: and we're about to make another running at it.
Speaker 3: Speaking of Bob, where can you talk about your foraise
Speaker 3: into other genres?
Speaker 5: Like knowing that you played with the Grateful Dead?
Speaker 3: I mean, of course there's the Bay Area connection that
Speaker 3: you two have.
Speaker 5: How long have you been playing with you?
Speaker 4: It kind of start it kind of started with the
Speaker 4: satul Page thing project, it kind of and Michael Nash
Speaker 4: is the one that brought me into it. They gave
Speaker 4: me a grant and I did a record of Grateful
Speaker 4: Dead music with my octet. I don't know if you
Speaker 4: remember that, but it came out and it was kind
Speaker 4: of popularized their songs and they had a big laugh
Speaker 4: about it, and Uh I did a gig out at
Speaker 4: the at the film More Feel More West, and UH
Speaker 4: and Bob were and Feel Less sat in with me,
Speaker 4: and at the last minute it was completely sold out.
Speaker 4: So anytime they played with me, and then I played
Speaker 4: with him and Yoshi's one time they showed up and
Speaker 4: was completely so oh okay. So yeah, I mean, anytime
Speaker 4: anything with the Grateful Dead come up. There's there's so
Speaker 4: many dead heads in this world. I mean, I've played
Speaker 4: a wedding one time. Some Grateful Dead fans that just
Speaker 4: come to me and they put their rings on their
Speaker 4: toes and it was fantastic, and they paid some money.
Speaker 4: It was fantastic. It was fantastic. It was a lot
Speaker 4: of money. It was great. It was out of Martha's vineyard. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was very nice. You know, so these little I've
Speaker 4: never really got paid to play with the Grateful Dead.
Speaker 4: But things come in different packages, you know, the things
Speaker 4: from the Dead, they come in other farms.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: You know, I'll get called with this and called. But
Speaker 4: I just did a gig in Washington. Some people that
Speaker 4: knew the Dead played one for Jerry Man. You know.
Speaker 4: It's always like that. Keeps on giving.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so you've done what's the name of the project,
Speaker 3: sun Moon is him and it was two musicians right now,
Speaker 3: it's just well, it's just it's two instruments, but it's
Speaker 3: just David.
Speaker 8: It's he's playing tenor sacks pieces and bass clarinet pieces.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, So when Steve first told me that you were
Speaker 3: doing a solo record, how does one plan for that, like,
Speaker 3: because you've done solo shows by yourself before, correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've made five solo albums.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: Well, one time in seventy eight, I went to Paris
Speaker 4: at the time into Zaki Shange my first color Girls.
Speaker 5: You said that was your first wife.
Speaker 4: What wait?
Speaker 5: You were there pre colored Girls?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 5: What how come I didn't know this?
Speaker 7: I didn't, Sorry, David, I didn't meant surprise.
Speaker 4: No, No, that's not pre colored Girls. That's seventy seven okay, right,
Speaker 4: a little bit anyway, anyway, mingus, his mom was my
Speaker 4: second wife, okay, and Francesca's is my fourth wife. Roman
Speaker 4: and Valerie in Paris was my third wife.
Speaker 5: Got it?
Speaker 4: Okay? So we were doing When the Mississippi Meets the Amazon.
Speaker 4: I had done music for it in Tasaki, Jessica Haggard
Speaker 4: Dorn and to Lannie Davis. They dressed up like Billy
Speaker 4: Holliday with gardenias and they read the poetry where the
Speaker 4: Mississippi meets the Amazon. And it was at the Public Theater.
Speaker 4: It was just after we had done Photo a Photograph,
Speaker 4: which I also wrote the music for, and I had
Speaker 4: I left that show. A lot of people in the
Speaker 4: show on the band uh J. Hogard was in the band,
Speaker 4: Michael Gregor Jackson was in the band. Uh from Owing
Speaker 4: a Cloth was in the band. A lot of good people.
Speaker 4: And anyway, I left the show because me and in
Speaker 4: Tazaki we were married three months. Oh wow, but we
Speaker 4: had we had the marriage of the century artist marriage
Speaker 4: of the Century in Berkeley, California, at a place called Mapenzi.
Speaker 4: And the marriage didn't last long. We went to Milwa
Speaker 4: for the honeymoon. Yeah. So so that was during a
Speaker 4: time you know, irector Porsche and all kind of shit.
Speaker 4: Oh shit, you know, I mean it was it was
Speaker 4: another time, you know. But I went to Paris and
Speaker 4: I did a concert at the theater move Start, and
Speaker 4: I did two nights solo there. And out of those
Speaker 4: two nights solo, we made a record. We sold one
Speaker 4: to Callac Records in London, the Red Records in Italy
Speaker 4: and Marge Records in Paris. So that was my first
Speaker 4: three solo albums, Organic Xophone, Conceptual Saxophone and Surreal Saxophone.
Speaker 4: And then I did two other solo albums in Florence,
Speaker 4: This Guy check on Mino, Buyum one and Buyum two
Speaker 4: those on. That makes five solo records that I made,
Speaker 4: and then this is yours is the sixth.
Speaker 8: So doing a solo record or playing a gig solo,
Speaker 8: is that the ultimate freedom? Or is it better to
Speaker 8: have others to bounce around and bounce off?
Speaker 4: When I was younger, I used to set up three
Speaker 4: microphones on the stage, one over here, one in the
Speaker 4: middle stage and one here and I come out and
Speaker 4: I would play three different personalities at each microphone. I
Speaker 4: did this in London at the Bracknow Festival one time,
Speaker 4: and I played in front of the Revolutionary Ensemble with
Speaker 4: Leroy Jenkins and those guys, those guys and uh On
Speaker 4: that Coleman played after us and uh I have to
Speaker 4: say I got house, but but it was it was,
Speaker 4: And I don't know how the concept of using the
Speaker 4: three personalities and three ways of playing the saxophone. The
Speaker 4: center stage, I only played like ballasts. I was like that,
Speaker 4: you know. On the right, I played another kind of way.
Speaker 4: Over here, I played a different way. And then finally
Speaker 4: as a constant, and I would move and I was
Speaker 4: much younger then, and I had these crape shoes and
Speaker 4: I could move kind of like basketball kind of moves.
Speaker 4: It was more physical than it is now. I enjoyed
Speaker 4: it better then than I do now. I don't really
Speaker 4: like to play solo now. But I'm not that athlete
Speaker 4: because I used to do the catalon, you know, so,
Speaker 4: and I won the strength strength competition in the whole area.
Speaker 4: I was you mean, for real, you did the cathalon. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean it was you know, I was good at
Speaker 4: sports up until a certain point. Then guys got big,
Speaker 4: all right, But I was really big when I was young,
Speaker 4: So i'd say up until fifteen. I probably was pretty good.
Speaker 4: After leads sixteen, but then you know, music took over,
Speaker 4: and so yeah, solo concert is a physical act for me.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've seen other people play I'm not going
Speaker 4: to say any names. I've seen other people play solo,
Speaker 4: and it's just like boring, you know, I mean it
Speaker 4: just like especially if it's one of those head trips.
Speaker 4: You know, for me, if you're going to play solo,
Speaker 4: you got to blow the hell out of it. You
Speaker 4: can't just be like dude, I didn't wait like Chicago musicians.
Speaker 4: Woo yeah. I gotta tell a joke somewhere in there.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: You're the most intense soulo is I've ever seen.
Speaker 4: So I just can't. I can't watch it. If I
Speaker 4: can't watch it, how am I going to do it?
Speaker 4: You know, I can't sit and watch like I'm in Europe.
Speaker 4: I see guys play solo in Europeans, Black guys, different people.
Speaker 4: They got this heady approaches, intellectual and I say, it's
Speaker 4: only one guy up there. Why am I waiting for
Speaker 4: a note to come? I don't get it.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 8: It was interesting when we made this record. He had
Speaker 8: some song ideas and some songs that already existed, but
Speaker 8: a lot of it, most of it is improvised. He
Speaker 8: asked me name something for me to play about, to
Speaker 8: write on the spot about. Just for example. One of
Speaker 8: the songs called Garcia because we mentioned Jerry Garcia, and
Speaker 8: then he played for fifteen minutes expressing himself about his
Speaker 8: experiences with Jerry and things like along those along those lines.
Speaker 8: So it's fascinating to watch somebody try to attempt that
Speaker 8: a solo experience, whether it's on stage or in a recording.
Speaker 5: So daring, you know.
Speaker 8: So can you be more exposed really or you know too,
Speaker 8: to just show your creativity on when you're all by yourself.
Speaker 4: I don't mind that, you know. I work sometimes with
Speaker 4: this with this artist named nasci Ostrowski. She lives up
Speaker 4: in the Court, New York. And we did we did
Speaker 4: a duet concert, you know, with a with an action painter.
Speaker 4: And I've done a few in Europe, you know, one
Speaker 4: with the with with this brother from Guadeloupe. Very interesting
Speaker 4: to do action, I mean the action you know, musicians.
Speaker 4: I think we're supposed to be some kind of a
Speaker 4: representatives of our time. We're supposed to be able to,
Speaker 4: not not that we're sages, are high level gurus or
Speaker 4: anything like that, but we should be able to, Like
Speaker 4: a good painter, we should be able to interpret what's
Speaker 4: happening politically, are socially around us. We should be able to.
Speaker 4: I mean there's there's many issues. I mean this is
Speaker 4: this is what ques Love does. He's doing that, but
Speaker 4: maybe they could hear it in certain kind of improvisations.
Speaker 8: So we got to see him improvise on his own,
Speaker 8: and then we got to see him improvise with two
Speaker 8: other people, You and Ray Angry. The most amazing thing
Speaker 8: was watching either you or Ray or David come up
Speaker 8: with an idea and then hear the response from the
Speaker 8: other improv improvising me.
Speaker 4: It was very difficult too, because to try to keep
Speaker 4: a melodic motif going and making it up on the
Speaker 4: spot almost was sometimes doing that recording. I felt like
Speaker 4: I had to write melodies as I was improvising something
Speaker 4: that people could hold on too, because I'm really a
Speaker 4: true believer of the song for him, even though people
Speaker 4: categorize my music as avant garde, but what I am
Speaker 4: is a person who's truly into the song for him.
Speaker 4: Melody is very important to me. And what they were
Speaker 4: throwing at me, what quest Love was throwing at me,
Speaker 4: it wasn't easy. I mean, I'm trying to translate his
Speaker 4: rhythms and then I play something, and then Ray would
Speaker 4: do something, and then it was like a triangle that
Speaker 4: was happening. I was just trying to keep up with
Speaker 4: what they were throwing me too, because it was some
Speaker 4: of a lot of fastballs and curveballs.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, I'm trying to just I.
Speaker 7: Was just thinking. I was like, a meir, how did
Speaker 7: you go in thinking approaching that?
Speaker 3: I mean, look, Steve convinced me to leave the farm.
Speaker 3: It was still like mid quarantine.
Speaker 5: Right, like, or at least yeah, towards the end, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It was like the end of it, but still like
Speaker 3: I mean that in the air, and then like to
Speaker 3: even be creative in that time period, which is I
Speaker 3: think the real reason why I agreed to do it.
Speaker 3: I think I would have invented an excuse to get
Speaker 3: out of it, because I think there's a point where
Speaker 3: maybe after two thousand and four, two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: I really just stopped trying to chase the dragon of
Speaker 3: you know, virtuoso musician and that sort of thing. And
Speaker 3: so normally I would have said no to that, but
Speaker 3: I mean, you caught me right in a position where
Speaker 3: it was like, all right, well.
Speaker 8: I think everybody was challenged.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wanted to get out the house and you know,
Speaker 5: just have fun.
Speaker 3: So I was like, all right, well, let me make
Speaker 3: a fool of myself in front of David is going
Speaker 3: to take me serious?
Speaker 5: Then I know it's good and actually you know it.
Speaker 4: Was good, clean fun, believe me. But it was a
Speaker 4: work too.
Speaker 3: I would love to do it again. We part of
Speaker 3: me also wants to take it live, so you know
Speaker 3: that would.
Speaker 4: Be that I was wondering if y'a would ever do that.
Speaker 4: I would be fantastic.
Speaker 8: Well, we're supposed to do some Blue Note shows when
Speaker 8: the physical product comes in the next few months.
Speaker 5: Well, there we have it. I guess my last question
Speaker 5: to you before we wrap is what is the future
Speaker 5: of jazz now?
Speaker 3: When people say that, but for you, like, are there
Speaker 3: any bucket list projects that you'd love to get into,
Speaker 3: you know while you're still active?
Speaker 4: Well, I really would like to do an opera, if
Speaker 4: not the Pushkin. See the thing about the Pushkin and
Speaker 4: the whole thing about the war in Ukraine and kind
Speaker 4: of put a damper on it for the moment. But
Speaker 4: when I was looking toward Pushkin, I was looking towards
Speaker 4: creating another mulatto hero for black people, somebody who who
Speaker 4: was a true poet and uh he was part black,
Speaker 4: so anyway, but that and the satul page I would
Speaker 4: like to complete, and I have many aspirations if I
Speaker 4: were to be able to get some grants. I like
Speaker 4: to write for larger ensembles, certainly, and when I say large,
Speaker 4: I mean larger than octet. I like to write for
Speaker 4: I have some orchestra music, and I'd like to.
Speaker 8: We can't afford an orchestra at my label, but we
Speaker 8: can keep you on solo records anyway.
Speaker 4: I'll be happy just to play with my quartet for
Speaker 4: the next couple of years and uh see them grow,
Speaker 4: uh get ready for this new album that's gonna come out,
Speaker 4: and be on tour with that and uh ca he
Speaker 4: else the bar and duet and play with you guys.
Speaker 4: Fantastic with you, and that would be a dream.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you man.
Speaker 3: It was a dream plan with you, and you know
Speaker 3: I am not. Even though I'm world famous for exaggerating
Speaker 3: and statements, I still maintain that you are one of
Speaker 3: the greatest living musicians. And I appreciate you for sitting
Speaker 3: talking to us.
Speaker 1: David Murray, Lads and jentlemen, thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme hosted by Quest Love Thompson. Why You
Speaker 1: Saint Clair Coleman, Sugar Steve Mandell an unpaid Bill Sherman.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Near Quest Love, Thompson, Sean.
Speaker 5: Che Brian Calhoun.
Speaker 1: Produced by Britney Benjamin Cousin, Jake Payne, Eliah Saint Clayton,
Speaker 1: edited by Alex Conroy. Produced by iHeart by Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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