Art Blakey

Foundation for Research in the Afro-American Creative Arts

The Big Beat!Author(s): David H. Rosenthal and Art BlakeyReviewed work(s):Source: The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 267-289Published by: Foundation for Research in the Afro-American Creative ArtsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1215067 .Accessed: 28/06/2012 14:38

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CONVERSATION WITH: Art Blakey

The Big Beat! BY DAVID H. ROSENTHAL

F OR NEARLY FOUR DECADES Arthur Blakey (b. 1919 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) has been recognized as a giant of modern jazz percussion, as a sensitive teacher of young musi-

cians, and as an inspired bandleader at the head of his Jazz Mes- sengers. In Zita Carno's words:

Art Blakey's name has become synonymous with hard drive and pulsating excitement. His playing makes listeners jump with amazement. There are no dull moments even in his longest solos, and in his rhythm section work he forces the group to play with his infectious excitement, but, for all his drive, he is the subtlest of drummers, one who knows how to push a group without overpowering them.1

Though Blakey accompanied a variety of ensembles in his early years, his first real spurt of development occurred during a three- year stint with the Billy Eckstine Band, which included Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon. By the time the band broke up, Blakey was acknowledged by both fellow musicians and jazz aficionadoes as one of the best young drummers around. He had already shown what he could do on recorded small-group sessions-for example, with Fats Navarro on Savoy SJL 2216 or with Thelonius Monk on Blues Note 1510- as well as with his own group, which cut some 78's never reissued, for Blue Note and introduced the name "Jazz Messengers" to the world.

In 1947 Blakey went to West Africa, where he remained for two years. Although he denies that this experience influenced his drumming, common sense would indicate the opposite. In any case, what is certain is that when he returned, he played with considerably more authority and was soon among the most sought-after musicians in New York City.A list of his employers in the early fifties will indicate the esteem he enjoyed among his peers: Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt, Sonny Rollins, Thelonius Monk, and a host of others, including Buddy De Franco, with whom he spent a year before forming his own group in 1954.

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By that time, Blakey had developed a fiercely individual and instantly recognizable style. Its technical elements are too numer- ous to go into here (Zita Carno's article provides a good analysis of many of them, along with illustrative transcriptions), but the effect was simultaneously volcanic and austere. Blakey is among the least superfluously "busy" drummers in jazz, and this has casued some critics to describe his playing as a "simplification" of Max Roach's and Kenny Clarke's styles. His rhythmic sense is so razor-sharp, and his foot and wrist control so precise, that he need do little more than "keep time" to create an atmosphere of tremendous con- trolled power. His accompanying figures, sparingly used, come at the right moments to support the soloist with sudden bursts of energy. Likewise, Blakey's solos are usually structured around a few melodic motifs played against each other contrapuntally as he builds to a climax. Musical coherence is never sacrificed to technical flash.

In February 1955 Blakey, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Horace Silver, and Doug Watkins cut a record (Horace Silver and the

Jazz Messengers, Blue Note 1518) that was destined to become a classic of hard bop. This school, which flourished between 1955 and 1965 (though it's still going strong in Blakey's current crop of youngsters) emphasized "swing," emotional openness, and recep- tivity to the older black traditions-particularly blues and gospel. Though at first the Jazz Messengers was a cooperative group, Blakey retained the name when his associates struck out on their own in 1956, and since then it's been Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

In the past thirty years, the group has gone through many permutations-some more artistically successful than others. In general, the group has sounded best when dominated by good composers like Horace Silver, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, or the current crew: Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, and Mul- grew Miller. At other times the band has seemed to flounder (for example, the Messengers that succeeded the Dorham-Mobley- Silver outfit and featured Jackie McLean and Bill Hardman, or some ensembles in the early seventies). But it's always been worth the price of admission just to hear Blakey play, and his present sextet, which recently won a Grammy for New York Scene (Concord 256), is among his best ever.

Another facet of Blakey's work is his role as an educator. As Bobby Timmons put it:

He's a leader who builds other leaders. Not many men are really leaders; it has to do with a lot more than music. Miles is one, and Art's another. You learn decorum from him, and how to be a man. That little speech he gives at the end of his sets, about how jazz is our native cultural contribution to the world. Who else could get away with that speech? ... He believes that

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jazz is feeling, the same as I do. But he knows about music. He's the one who taught me to build a solo to a climax.2

Today, Blakey continues to instruct and encourage the young. He enjoys telling audiences that some of the tunes his current ensemble plays (like Benny Golson's "Blues March" and "Along Came Betty," both first recorded in 1958) were written before most of the musicians on the stand were born.

The following interview took place in Blakey's Greenwich Vil- lage apartment in April 1986.* Though I felt nervous about meet- ing one of my heroes, whose work I have admired since my adoles- cence, Blakey quickly put me at ease, sharing his feelings about life and art with the same earthy eloquence that has inspired genera- tions of young jazzmen.

*This interview has been lightly edited.

NOTES

1. TheJazz Review 3/1 (anuary 1959): 6. 2. Cited in Joe Goldberg,Jazz Masters of the Fifties (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 53.

* * * * *

David H. Rosenthal: What was it like growing up in Pittsburgh? Art Blakey: I didn't grow up there. I left with Fletcher Hender-

son [about 1939]. Then I came back, stayed a little while, then I went back out with Mary Lou Williams. Then I had my own little group, went down to Cincinnati, Ohio, played for a while, came back and joined Smack again [i.e., Fletcher Henderson], and went up north to Boston, and I stayed there. I left the band and I stayed put there.

When you were growing up in Pittsburgh though, were you already playing the drums?

Sure, I was playing. I used to play piano in Pittsburgh. I played by ear, you know, but I kept a gig 'cause I didn't like working. So I played piano for a while. I played in a speakeasy, you know. I played in a few keys. I had a band, but mostly what I did was what they called "ups," you know-between shows and you take a little spinet and go around the tables singing dirty songs, and that was it. That was it in those times. But I switched over to the drums, because after I heard Erroll Garner it was time for me to switch.

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Did you know from the beginning that you wanted to be a jazz musician?

Sure, that's the only kind of music I liked at that time, and that's where I was sort of nutured. And then [I was nutured] by the church and everybody in church-I went to the sanctified chruch, with those rhythms and swinging-they'd be swinging in there.

Did you sing in the choir? Everybody sang in the church I went to. They didn't have no

choir per se or organ or piano, and no musical instruments in the church. [It was] all a cappella.

And the whole congregation would sing? Pat your feet and clap your hands. That's the way it was.

Mysterious! Were you from what you'd call a musicalfamily? Yes, but I didn't know nothing about them. I wasn't raised with

my family, with my putative father. My mother died when I was about a year old.

Who raised you? My mother's best friend, Mrs. Parran. And that's the name I

used in school, Parran, because I didn't know; I thought Mrs. Parran was my mother. She didn't have a chance to tell me but I found out. My father lived near where I lived, you know, and he never spoke to me or anything. It was a difference between, you know, the races, the prejudice within the black race. Mulattos didn't speak to the blacks; the blacks didn't speak to mulattos.

Which was the lighter-complexioned side of thefamily? My father. And all his brothers except him were musicians. When you joined Fletcher Henderson were you already playing drums? Yeah. I think that was the natural instrument for me anyway.

It's something that I liked and that I watched very closely. I watched the other drummers, how they did things, and I liked the drums, and so the switch was very easy. I just switched from piano to drums on the same day, because I had to play the show that night.

What happened? They were lookingfor a drummer instead of a pianist? They wasn't looking for a drummer. Erroll Garner came in and

played, and that was the end of that. So I had to play drums. He's from Pittsburgh too, right? Yeah. Did you know him when you were growing up? Oh, of course I did. I knew Erroll Garner when he was a kid-a

real young kid-and he was playing on the radio. He was a profes- sional by seven or eight years old; he was on the air, KEKA, every week in a group of specially talented kids called The Candy Kids.

Were you in the group, too? No, no, no! I wasn't in the kids' group. I [had been] a man a

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long time at fourteen; at fourteen I was a father, so I wasn't considered too much of a kid.

Who first influenced you as a drummer? Nobody. I just liked the drums. I liked to play drums. There

was a drummer in Pittsburgh, and [he was] my first influence- like, I liked to go see him. I would go see him in the club pretty often; [he] was a guy called "Honeyboy," "Honeyboy" Minor. Fan- tastic drummer! And you know, he did everything; he played shows. I liked the way he did things, so I'd watch him pretty much, and I learned a lot from him.

How about someone like Chick Webb? Yeah, Chick Webb was a big influence too. And "Big Sid" Catlett, did you listen to him much? Yeah, those are my guys [laughs]; yeah, I liked them. Whenever

I could see them, [I would], but see they didn't come to Pittsburgh too much. I listened [to them] on records or by the crystal set. I made a crystal set and I'd listen to them coming out of Chicago, and try to find out what they were doing. Those were the guys that, you know, influenced me most.

What year was it when you joined the Billy Eckstine Band? I joined Eckstine, let me see, oh, about '44. It lasted about three

years .... That was my greatest musical experience. What was it like being in that band? So many brilliant young musi-

cians! Beautiful! Wonderful things! Yeah, I was very happy to be

there. We didn't make no money, but that didn't make any difference. You know, playing music in your art form was it, and trying to learn. Then it was great exposure for me, not public-wise; I mean exposure to the music and what was going on and changing of the music. And I was right in the middle of it. I found myself and I loved it. So I stayed with "B" [Eckstine] until that broke up.

Would you say that was when your style developed into something that was more mature and recognizable?

I think so. I think it had a lot to do with it. Was that partly because you played with those particular musicians? No. I always wanted to be a drummer, but I always wanted to

play different, I wanted to be different. It didn't-. Like the other drummers were playing, and I saw what they were doing, so I always wanted to be . . . sort of an innovator-to try and find different things to do, . . . different ways to play. I watched Chick Webb, watched him develop from being a time-keeper to being a band-leader, from the back to the front. And he was fantastic, so then I took a lot from him.

You say you were always sure that it was jazz you wanted to play and not any other kind of music.

No, I wasn't interested in any other kind of music. What was it about jazz that particularly attracted you?

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Swingin' [laughs]. The way that they would swing, the happiness in it, the happiness in the music. I knew it was the music for me. Jazz interested me because the musicians would go up on the stage (they didn't have no music), they'd just go up there and play. They called it "jam." Just go up there and play.

And I thought it was miraculous how they would get together, and play, and play together with split-second timing-you know, like something moving from the Creator to the artist to the audience. To me, there was no music like that. So that's what made me go right over there to jazz-seeing the happiness, and the feeling with the people, and how the people liked it and how quick it spread throughout the world. It was coming so fast behind "dixie- land," so fast it just grew up into the swing era and the so-called bebop era, which I call modern music. Itjust moved, and I liked it. I wanted to be there with it; I mean, when the music changed I liked to change with it.

You mean that you felt jazz was developing in an exciting way at that time? New things were going on, innovations?

Right. It's still going on. What we're doing now is probably just scratching the surface of what's going to happen in the future. But I know, I have sense enough to know Charlie Parkers, Dizzy Gilles- pies, Thelonius Monks-they don't come along every twenty years. They come along maybe every fifty, every hundred years-those type of musicians. It's like the music of Pops, Louis Armstrong: different as it goes along but it doesn't come every day.

Though in jazz it's come pretty thick and fast. Yes, it did. And I guess particularly at the time that we're talking about, in the

forties. But you said something about getting up there and jamming like Basie's band; weren't there charts when you were with Fletcher Henderson and Eckstine?

Oh, well, "Smack" had charts. You know, he was, like, conventional. In the swing era, they had music. You know he was writing for Benny Goodman and all that kind of stuff. That's conventional stuff, but I'm talking about what Basie and them was doing: he just based his band around soloists. And, you know, the band would play something, the tenor saxophone would take a solo-. That's why you have Herschel Evans and Lester Young, all these guys-.

Buddy Tate and so forth. Did you feel that jazz was also deeper, more complex than other kinds of music, that it had more of a balance between

feelings and intellect than other kinds of pop music that were available in the late thirties or early forties?

Oh, sure. Of course! What was happening back then, in the type of music I went with-they weren't the type of musicians to get set up there and play behind a singer or play behind a dancer. They didn't like to do that, and I don't blame them. They'd play behind some singers-like we played behind Billy Eckstine because Billy

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Eckstine himself was a musician, Sarah Vaughan was a musician, Lady Day [Billie Holliday] was a musician. All these people were musicians-Ella Fitzgerald was a musician, Dinah Washington, you know. These type of singers respected musicians.

But what musicians didn't like was when somebody gets up there and just sings a song, and they go over big, and all of a sudden they're a big shot, and they want to dog the musicians around. If they didn't go over, they'd blame the musicians. I didn't go for that. I didn't think that was right, you know, but that's the way it went. It wasn't that they were great singers, most of the ones that made the big hits and everything. They didn't have no voice, they didn't need no voice to sing. It was delivery that got them over.

Well, that's part of your voice. No, I'm talking about a voice as a voice-. I mean, think of somebody like Billie Holliday. By the end, she had

practically lost her voice. She didn't have no voice! All she had was her delivery. She had delivery. But her delivery would get her over sometimes. That's what got them over. Nat Cole, he didn't have no voice,

man. Most of the time the cats didn't make nothing in tune, couldn't sing in tune. But they got over! They made hits, you understand? What's his name, Mario Lanza? All these "great singers"! Well, they're just singers to me. And I knew the difference because my uncles on my father's side, they taught voice, and I know exactly what it was about. Most of the singers that got out there and made them big hits and everything, they couldn't read no music. They didn't have no training.

So you felt that jazz would give you a lot more freedom as a musician than other kinds of music?

Yeah, well, it'd give you more time to hone your art. You'd get a chance to play instead of backing up somebody or playing for a bunch of chorus girls. I played for the Jewelbox Revue. I thought that was a fine show; it was a beautiful show. Playing behind singers and things, that was good, but I didn't think it was for me. I didn't want to do that.

Do you think the jazz scene was different in theforties than it is now? Of course it is, it always changes. Much better. Better now? Sure. Much better than it was then. We had a lot of different

scenes that was holding up the jazz at that time because the guys didn't know which way to go, and that was ignorance. We had the dope scene. We had to go through that. Alcohol. And we don't have that no more. That disappeared with most of the musicians, especially the young ones that are coming out of the university. Do you think there's the same amount of closeness between musicians

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and support that there was then? Or is there more now? More than there ever was. Why do you think there's more? It isn't as widespread, but they're closer than they ever were,

and it's better because you don't need the majority to conquer. You get just twenty of them that's strong enough to hold together, and you can go through anything. But all of them have to believe in it, and I think it's better.

Well, when you think about the people that you played with, say in the Eckstine Band, wasn't there a lot of comradeship, of learning from each other and teaching each other, and stuff like that at the time?

Same thing that's happening now. Guys are close, they learn. They make time. It used to be with musicians, you didn't know if they were going to show up or not.

'Cause of dope, you mean? Yeah. Well, you know, run after that bag. It was a big thing at

that time. Why do you think there's less of that now in jazz than there was? Do you

think it was seeing all those guys die? Education. Guys are better educated. Kids come along and

they're better educated, and they see what happened to the men before them. They can see, so they just choose not to go that way.

Do you think a lot of those guys in the forties didn't really realize what they were getting themselves into?

No, because they were confused. They thought it was just another drug like weed or something? Oh, they knew all about that because before heroin come along

they used to use-what's that other stuff they used to give to soldiers on the battlefield?

Morphine? It was morphine. But they found that the heroin was an easier

habit to break than the morphine so that's why they-. And it was cheaper. So they started using heroin. There wasn't so much cocaine then, but they did get cocaine and it was good cocaine. They used to have it in the drugstore windows. You could go see it in the drugstore. It wasn't no big thing to go and get some. It wasn't no big thing about that. But what happened was it got down to the children. That's where everything deteriorated.

You went to Africa in 1947, is that right? Well, that had nothing to do with music. I was into religion,

studying religions. I wanted to find out about it because religion isn't a figment of man's imagination, so you have to understand a person's religion. It's a way of life for the majority of people in the world, so you have to understand it to understand the people.

But what made you decide to check out that particular religion so much? Not any particular one. I checked out eleven living religions of

the world. He that knoweth only one religion knows nothing at all

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about religion. How long did you live in Africa, two years? Well, no, not that long-maybe eighteen months, maybe two

years. I don't know. This was in Nigeria? Yeah, I went to Nigeria. I went to Ghana before it was a state, to

the Gold Coast and around there, to study, to learn. I wanted to learn what it was about. I learned a lot ... to get an understanding of people. You know, not to learn the religion thoroughly but just to learn enough to know the difference, just to have the wisdom to know the difference.

Did you feel like you developed a special relationship with any African god?

No. I had some drummers who were friends, and uh, I met Guy-, what's Guy's name?

Guy Warren? Yeah, Guy Warren. He's a friend of mine. I met-, what's his

name, he came here with-. Ladji Camara from Nigeria. He came over. He played with me for a while.

Did you play the drums when you were there? No, I didn't do any playing in that time. And there wasn't too

much about jazz over there anyway, because they have their own thing. A lot of people try to connect jazz with Africa and all that kind of thing. You can't connect that. You have to have the wisdom to know the difference. They have their thing; we have our thing. The Latins have their thing; we have our thing. It's just like that. No America; no jazz. So that's the way it is.

So you don't feel that living in Africa had any effect on your style as a drummer?

No. Now, the thing I was talking about before-do you know what they call

santeria here? Do you know Patato Valdes? Sure. You know, all that stuff that he's into, with African gods; they wear the

beads and, you know, take care of those gods. Was that something that you were involved in?

No, I don't go around for none of that. I've never connected myself up with anything-political groups or anything.

Or any kind of religious cult at all? No, I don't need that. I know what to do. I don't need nothing

to connect up with to get to the Creator. Every man's got that in his heart if he wants to get to it. I don't need to put on no beads or no funny hats or any kind of thing because I know who I am. I have no identity problem, and I love what I am. I thank God that I was born in America. I know just who I am. But yeah, I see a lot of guys go through that crap, and they went through an era when the guys

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were calling themselves Arabs, you know. I'm not an Arab. I'm an American. I'm a black American.

You took an Arab name, didn't you? Yeah, I took an Islamic name, simply because that's my heri-

tage. I come from their people, who come from there. That's because if you say "Hing Ling" you're looking for a Chinaman, and here I come, Blakey, with an Irish name, and I show up right away. I'm an individual. I don't have to carry my father's name. So I just picked that name. If my children want to carry it, it's okay. It's legal, Blakey's legal, Buhaina's legal through the courts. So it wasn't no jiving about identity, you know. I've always declared myself as an American.

Well, when you took that name, Buhaina, is that because you thought of yourself as a Muslim?

No, that's not a Muslim name; it's an Arab name. Right, but you have to admit most Arabs are Muslims. Yeah, but my children-. My son is named Akira. He certainly

isn't Japanese, so it doesn't make any difference about the name. It's just a sort of identity to know who this person is and that person is, and I never made no big deal of it. I still played under "Art Blakey." There were some musicians who found out from my passport [ about my other name], and they started calling me "Bu" or "Buhaina" or something. You know, when my back is turned they call me worse things [laughs].

Why do you think that cool jazz became so popular in the 1950s? The early fifties?

I don't know; I guess that was the West Coast thing. And the guys left New York and went out to the West Coast, and I guess they wanted to call it "cool," you know, but leaving New York to go to the West Coast forjazz-. I think it was very weird for them to do that, 'cause out there, it seems to me-. When I go out there it's very beautiful, but to me it's for older people-God's waiting room. They go and sit down there, and wait for Him to come and collect them.

Well, it's not as bad as if they had a Florida school of jazz! They don't have no fire in their music. The place, Los Angeles,

is too far spread. I just left them out there. Now, if you live in Hollywood and you're going to a concert by the sea out there, it's forty-nine and nine-tenths miles. And if you drive out there and have a couple of drinks, and you want to go somewhere else, you can't make it. You've got to go home. You've driven almost a hundred miles, or over.

You said they don't have any fire out there. They don't! Everybody knows that! You go out there, you get

lackadaisical. It's too far apart. The musicians do not come together, and that is important. They're busy with the swimming

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pools and all that kind of stuff. I'm not interested in swimming pools.

Well, how did youfeel about that kind of music when it was so popular, like Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker?

Well, it was music. It was music. I never put down any kind of music, because if I put down that kind I'm just putting myself down. It's just guys trying different directions. But I don't think they had any fire, that's what I'm saying. Fire! That's what people want. You know, music is supposed to wash away the dust of everyday life, not come in cool. You're supposed to make them turn around, pat their feet. That's what jazz is about.

Now if you're playing something else, like they're still doing today-. They'll have all the rock groups-let me see, Kool and the Gang-and we'll be the only jazz group there. I'm talking about fire, what it's supposed to be, and if they did that, it'd be much better today. Play with fire; play from your heart, not from your brain. You got to know how to utilize, make the two meet. You just don't play out of the top of your head, or play down to the people. I think you should play to the people. That's my opinion, you know, about cool jazz and everything; but it's good, it's music.

No, some of it's pretty good. It's not that. It's just that it was so popular at the time-.

Yeah. Well, shoot, rock is popular. The stuff that was better seems to have been frozen out of the scene. There ain't nothing more popular than rock, and you make

money if you go out there. But Ijust don't want to be bothered with that kind of stuff, you know what I mean, because I'm not a jack-of-all-trades, and I don't like to turn around and run and jump on this thing 'cause I think I'm going to make some money and then jump over there and think-. I'm playing this because I believe it in my heart, I believe in it. I don't even think about that other stuff.

Money . . . I never did. If you read anything that I ever said in any write-up-. Music [is] life. What I found out is the only thing that'll follow you to the cemetery is respect. An armored car will not follow a hearse, you know, so you have to make the choice of what you want to do. I believe in what I do. If I don't believe in it, I can't expect anybody else to believe in it. If I'm playing for money, then it's another trip. I'm the same as everybody else, right? It doesn't make any difference.

All the great artists and all the great painters and all the great musicians that I know about way before me never played for money. They did it because they believed in it. That's what they wanted to do, and believe me when I tell you: it takes more nerve to be a jazz musician than any other kind of musician in the world. It takes a lot of guts. You talk about having heart! You got to have a

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whole lots of heart! And that's something most people ain't got. They ain't got the nerve to get up and do what they want to do when they want to do it. I think that is something, to me, to brag about, 'cause I do what I want to do, the way I want to do it, how I want to do it.

I am a free spirit. Thank God for that! And the only way I got there is through jazz. If people don't like it, I don't care. I ain't felt no pain. I'm feeding my family; I take care of my family. I have lots of children. I'm not what you call a young man; I'm knocking on the door of seventy-years old. You know what I mean? My youngest one there's about nineteen months; I got another one coming. You know, I have nine children; I adopted five. I think that's a hell of an achievement for me, and all of them love my last year's dirty socks [laughs].

I really think that's an achievement. I really do, and I'm really interested in my family. Maybe because I was an orphan-maybe. I don't know what it is, but anyway, I enjoy the hell out of it, and I don't see many people having so much fun. I don't see old men my age doing what I do. I see old men my age [who are] envious of me, but they ain't as happy as I am, surrounded by young people. What in the world else could you want? This is heaven. All young people you see around me, young kids calling me on the phone-nineteen, twenty years old. There's a reason for that. Any of them out there that ever played with me, all I have to do is to pick up the phone and say, "Look, I want you to work such a place." "Okay, I'll be there, Art." That means a lot to me.

Well, they know you're a great teacher, for one thing. I mean, so many musicians have learned so much and developed so much and made such good use of your guidance when they've been in your groups.

Yeah, but I think it's them, the musicians, who do it themselves. I think all you have to do is give them the opportunity and some kind of direction, just let them play.

That's it, giving them some kind of direction. Don't be afraid to let them play. Mostly the bands they go

in-the bandleader may not be too sure of himself, he don't want the musicians to play, and if a musician gets up and plays and gets a lot of applause and a lot of attention, then they fire him. I don't think that's fair. In my group, if you don't get up and play, if you don't write, if you don't give all, if you don't give a hundred-and-ten percent, you're fired! That's the difference.

Now, when the Jazz Messengers first started back in the mid-fifties-. You know, we were talking about cool jazz a little bit, about fire, and about how there wasn't that much fire in some of that music-were you doing that as a conscious attempt to kind of straighten things out, turn it around, give people a different perspective?

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Yeah, of course we did. Horace Silver, myself, Kenny Dorham, and Doug Watkins, and Hank Mobley-that's what we did. We thought the musicians should look better on the stage. We thought the jamming should be cut out. Just get guys together and take them on a gig somewhere. I don't think that [the jamming] was fair to the audience.

What do you mean? You wanted to have more use of a book and a better organized band?

Well, if you want to call it organized. I think musicians should look like professionals, and I don't think they should get on the stand and look like a bunch of bums. People see you before they hear you, and they ain't paying for that now. You know, if you've got a bunch of musicians up there, and they stand up all raggedy, greasy, and funky; you want to go up and ask, "Can you give me a grease job on my car?" To hell with those folks who look like that! You know, musicians before our time didn't do that; they set a great example: Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, all the cats, Benny Goodman, Earl Hines-they didn't look like that.

Well, it wasn't just the look of the band, though. It was the music, too, that was different. It was a new direction from what was going on then.

Oh, yeah. Well, that helps too. Sure the music helps: the organi- zation of the music and how it's done-not playing one tune for twenty-five or thirty or forty minutes.

Well, that would be more like a response against some kinds of bebop, wouldn't it, where you got all those guys that went up on stage, you know, and just played a head, and then jammed for an hour or two?

That's no good! Once in a great while you go to a jam session, and that's what you expect, but you ain't going to pay for that every night.

Do you think that was driving the audience away from jazz? Damn right it was; sure it was. It all sounded the same. It was

like Thelonius Monk-he came along and said, "You've got to be different and you've got to identify yourself, whatever it is"- different. So that's the whole thing. I never put down nobody else-like the cool jazz or whatever, the fusion, or whatever they've got. They're just looking for something different.

Well, a lot of people would say that the Jazz Messengers were a kind of reaction against cool jazz, were trying to get jazz back to its roots, to go back to things like blues and gospel, you know, like on "The Preacher." Was that somethingyou guys were talking about at the time, too? That maybe jazz had gotten to be a little too intellectual?

Yeah, you know, play, play from the heart. That's what I was saying. Play from the heart. The people know the difference. You can't fool them. They know.

Now lately I've been doing some research in what the critics were saying

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in the fifties and sixties about people like you, and some of it's pretty negative. Why do you. think that they had such a negative response in some cases?

Well, I never paid too much attention or read what they said. All I care about is that they spell my name right. If they don't say nothing, I'm in trouble. Let them say what they want to say, just so they say something. The people will see for themselves. The first write-up I ever got was [when I was] with Billy Eckstine, and the woman comes to review the band. She says, Gene Ammons, he looked like a big black bull out there in front of the mike snorting fire from his nostrils, and the little drummer back there behind all those white drums looked like a little black pygmy saying, "We gonna eat the white man tonight." But she spelled my name right! People would come out to see who the pygmy was.

Do you think there was something about the music the Messengers were playing that particularly was hardfor critics to deal with? I mean, not all critics, but I'm thinking about somebody like John S. Wilson, for example, who kept saying that your records were no good, that they were boring, and he'd heard it all before. Now I'm not asking you to name names and stuff like that, but in general-.

Oh, he's a very sweet man, you know, but he was getting old. I never paid no attention to that, because opinions are like derrieres. Everybody got one. So he's entitled to his, too.

Another thing I wanted to ask you about: I've been listening to a lot of your records with pianists from the fifties-people like Monk, Herbie Nichols, Duke Jordan-and it seems to me that your style-, you adjust it in a lot of different ways when you're playing just in a piano trio.

Yeah. Well, what I try to do, not that I do it all the time, is to let the punishment fit the crime. Whoever I'm playing with, I try to play their style. So on my record dates I'll play Art Blakey, but when I'm playing with somebody else-, if I work with Duke, I try to play in Duke's style.

You mean Duke Jordan? No, Duke Ellington. I worked with him a couple of weeks, and I

tried to play his style, 'cause that's what they're used to. Working with Andy Kirk, Lucky Millinder, anybody, Mary Lou Williams, I tried to play like they wanted me to play, not like I wanted to play.

But when you play in a trio, it seems to me that you cool down your style a little bit so that it won't overwhelm the pianists-like you'll do a lot of stuff with mallets instead of sticks. Do you know what I'm talking about?

I still do. All you have to do is sit there and listen. That's my whole thing, that's my whole gimmick of playing music or playing drums-it is dynamics, using a lot of dynamics. You play loud here, play not so loud there, you play soft, pick up your brushes, the mallets, use all of it, 'cause it's a wonderful instrument, and you've

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got a lot of ways to go, and I try to do that, I don't just try to-. Bash away? No, I try to play in the rhythm section. I always demand that: to

try to play in the rhythm section, 'cause that's where you're supposed to be. To make the musician, the soloist play, make him feel like playing. The rhythm section can make the soloist play over his top, play things he never dreamed he could play, if you get behind him. You can't have a battle with him up there and see how much you can play, because if you're playing and you make too much noise behind him, he can't concentrate on what he wants to play, he can't connect the things up together. You got to get out there and push him.

Presumably, that would be different for different musicians. What would stimulate one guy-.

Sure, and you change. When I'm playing for Dizzy I play one way, if I'm playing with Miles I play one way, if I'm playing with Wynton Marsalis or my trumpet player Terence Blanchard today, and if I play with Wallace Roney, I play different behind each soloist because they have different ways of doing things. They don't all play the same. It's just the idea like I said, letting the punishment fit the crime, and that's what happens, and they like that.

Do you see much difference today in life in black neighborhoods in big cities in the States from, say, twenty-five years ago-you know, like in Harlem, for example, or the South Side of Chicago?

Harlem? There is no more Harlem, really. That's gone. They destroyed that. The South Side; it's gone; they destroyed that.

Who's "they"? The people who live in it themselves, you know. Economic

conditions. They got frustrated, they didn't know what to do and how to get out of it and where to go. They thought they'd attract attention by tearing down their own neighborhoods. That was a mistake, you know, but those things happen. We don't know why it happened. They didn't do it all themselves; you had wicked land- lords who set the houses on fire and burned the people out.

Now, it seems like most talented young black musicians are not gravitat- ing as much toward jazz as they were.

Who? What kind of musicians? What I mean to say is-say in the forties and

fifties, the best young musicians would just automatically go into jazz 'cause they thought that was the hippest music. Now in my opinion it still is, but it doesn't seem that today as many young musicians are getting into it, maybe because they think they can't make any money.

The ones who are educated are. Besides, I never thought that the time has come, and I hope it never comes, that jazz has to go into big stadiums and big places like that. I think jazz is better as intimate music, and I think what made musicians move away from

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it is money. Some of them needed the money, man. They had to make some money and they got tired of the struggle and the waiting.

We were right on top of everything, we were working in Bird- land, but all the musicians couldn't work in Birdland, all the musicians couldn't be in the Messengers and, I don't know, it was a thing that rock-and-roll came along. It was much easier, much simpler. It's just like salsa music, the repetition of the music, the repetition. Same thing in rock, they repeat it over and over and over. Mean- time, in the sixties all the Latin groups were going to Japan, rock groups going to Japan, Sly and the Family Stone was big. If you go to Japan today you hear the same music, but the Japanese are playing it. Because of the repetition they could copy it, but they couldn't copy jazz.

The beautiful thing about jazz is that you never hear the same arrangement twice. You can come every night, but you can't hear the same arrangement twice. We may play "Blues March" again; we play it different. The arrangements that we play, everything is changed by the cue on the drums. I may change something by changing the cue on the drums, and then they know I'm going to change it. They don't know to what, but anyway they just watch and listen, and bam! There it is, and it's all different. And that's why we've been to Japan forty-nine times. This is my fiftieth trip. 'Cause if they could have copied us, they would have had it. We wouldn't be back there.

But it seems like it's reached the point now where in black neighborhoods, or ghettoes or whatever you want to call them, young people just are hardly aware that jazz exists.

That's right!. The people who like jazz and know about it are people that are thirty-five

years old or older. That's right, because the kids, they don't hear it on the radio.

We have no jazz station in New York City. The only jazz station we have is coming out of New Jersey. It's a public station. I remember when WNEW used to play jazz all the time and, what's his name, William something [William B. Williams], used to be the jazzjockey. Symphony Sid was here. You could hear jazz. That made the difference. You got to hear it. You don't hear it on TV.

A lot of times they don't even know it exists, or they think it's justfor old people.

They don't know it exists because they haven't seen it; if they see the band they'll know. We have young musicians, and certainly young people do communicate with each other. This has proven itself in the U.K. That's why we're in the U.K., that's why the band is so popular there. They're playing our records there in the punk-rock discos. We just did a movie over there. And it's sad to see

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that the things we recorded thirty, thirty-five years ago, written by Wayne Shorter, are so popular in England.

Did you go to any of those jazz discotheques where they have jazz dance in England?

We just did a movie on that. Kids are dancing-. What's it like? They call it IDJ: "I dance jazz." All right! That's right! It's a new thing. It's a funny thing that it had to be

recognized first over there. The best thing that comes out is from the U.K.

That's not true ofjazz, though. All the best musicians have come from here.

Not of jazz. But the kids over there now are playing jazz. I tell you the truth: I just made a TV film with a twenty-piece jazz band. I wish you could hear the kids-eighteen, nineteen years old.

That was in England? Yes, indeed. In London. They can play, and they're planning.

And they got good jazz musicians over there. Well, what do you think can be done to sort of help the situation out here

at a time when so many young people don't even know what jazz is? Well, it's difficult. We just have to live through it. You can't

shove it down their throat. No, but we have to at least give them some exposure to it. You've got a

wonderful young band, and there're other young musicians around, too. That's right! But I think that even they feel a little like freaks because they play jazz

when everybody else is in rap groups or, you know, scratching or something with afingernail on the record. If you go into jazz, it's sort of like everybody says, "Huh! What's wrong with that guy?"

No, but see those are fads. [The guys who do that are] going to be left out.

Explain that more. When they get to be my age, they ain't going to be scratching on

no records, and neither are they going to be playing guitars with frets. That's all going to pass. It's just a fad thing that they're going through. They'll go into computers. I don't care how many computers [they use], or how much they try to make them sound like acoustic instruments, they can't put the feeling there.

So you think that sooner or later the real thing is going to come back like it always has?

Well, you know, it's like a pendulum: it swings one way and then the other. There's nothing wrong with electronics, but you certainly can't get the feeling [with electronic instruments]. You get the notes. You know, like in England, the guys was there from the symphony orchestras, and the great drum teachers was there, and I

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was playing. They said, "Well, you play so unorthodox." I said, "Well, what is orthodox? Whether I play orthodox or not, I get results."

What did they mean by that? Oh, the way I'll pick up my sticks, or the way I'll do something.

There's no certain way to do it; you don't hold the sticks a certain way. The Africans don't hold the sticks a certain way; they've been beating drums a long time. The main idea of it is to get results. So [the English musicians] said they were going to sit there and write down my solos, so I started playing a thing with a tissue-paper roll. I brought the roll up real high and-BAM! I looked around and said, "Now write that down!" See? Damn the notes. The feeling is the thing, and they cannot do that! That's what it's all about in jazz.

That's what they used to say about Monk, you know-that he couldn't play the piano right.

How about that? How about that? You know, he didn't hold his fingers right; they were stretched out like

this. He used to play just like Art Tatum. He got disgusted and

changed just to be different. Why don't they say Art Tatum played wrong?

There is no right and wrong. Like I say, once again it's opinions. If it's great music-. Everything has to be judged by the result. That's the way I feel. If it's great, it's great. If it's not, just put it

down, just let it go. Do you think your style as a drummer has changed in the last twenty or

thirty years? Better. I wouldn't be here [laughs]. Corny as I was then and still

am, boy, I'd better keep moving. It's like running a big race, you know; you can't look this way or that way or look behind. If you do, somebody'll pass you. You have to keep getting up, so you'd better change.

How do you feel it's changed? Oh-, now I know my instrument much better. I'm better

acquainted with my instrument and with what I want to do. My imagination is much better by my being around young people, and by knowing the instrument and having a lot of experience. There ain't no substitute, boy! I do anything that comes in my mind. Anything! If I make a mistake, I laugh and do it again. That's why I have a ball up there. Somebody says, "What you laughing at?" I say, "You'd be surprised!" The funny things I do, and get into, and then make mistakes and laugh. All the guys in the band know. When they make mistakes, I laugh at them and say, "Uh oh! You did it! Go back and do it again." Because that's the way jazz was born; somebody goofed and that's how we have jazz.

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What do you mean by that? Somebody made a mistake. They jazzed it up a little bit. And

they said, "Whoo! That sounds kind of good. Let's do it again." And that's the way it happened. We just kept on doing it. I feel that a guy in my band-, if he just plays clinical and doesn't make no mistakes, I can't use him. I know he's not trying. I don't want him to show off how much he knows, how many changes he can play.

Trying to get perfection-that's stupid! There ain't but One perfect, and that's God. The only thing we can ever hope to reach and ever will reach is a degree of excellence. That's all you can do. You cannot be perfect. That's impossible! Reach that degree of excellence, and then you reach up a little higher.

What do you mean by excellence? Knowing your instrument and playing from your heart. Don't

be afraid to enjoy what you're doing. If you enjoy it, the audience will enjoy it. The audience don't come in there to be given a music lesson; they come in to enjoy themselves. If the soul is sad-, no matter how sad you are, if you start smiling or laughing, the soul begins to rejoice. But if you're sad and depressed yourself, the soul begins to mourn and get depressed. It's the same thing in music; it's a spiritual thing. If you're enjoying yourself, people will enjoy watching you enjoy yourself. They begin to enjoy themselves!

But not all music is happy, right? Music can express many feelings, including sadness. Take jazz-sometimes it's happy, sometimes it's full of nostalgia, sometimes it's angry.

There's no jazz sad; there is no jazz angry. Some of it's roman- tic. I'm a romanticist. If they're playing a ballad, I can enjoy a ballad. It makes my imagination work. I like to hear the soloist playing his ballad and playing to the people. I think he can sing from that instrument the same as a human being can sing. There's no words, but he can almost put it over. If he knows the song and know the words, he can put it over the way he plays it. And if he doesn't know the lyrics of a ballad, he should never play a ballad.

Do all your musicians always know all the lyrics? They'd better. I tell them to learn them, or they can't play. So you don't think jazz ever has a tragic feeling? Why? Why not? It's a human feeling. I'll give you an example. Do you

remember when Jackie McLean played this song called "Poor Eric," which was written in memory of Eric Dolphy after Dolphy died?

"Eric"? I didn't hear of that. I know "I'll Remember Clifford." Well, that'd be another example. That's not sad; it's beautiful. "I'll Remember Clifford," just like

he was. He was beautiful. People get the wrong conception about everything; they get a whole thing about death when somebody passes, which is natural. When you're born, your destination is

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death. It's what you do in between [birth and death]. They have great big funerals. For what? Are the funerals for the dead? No. They're for the living. You never seen anybody who died and came back and said, "What a wonderful funeral I had." Right?

Now, I never attend funerals. In the first place, I don't like to go into the churches. I don't need to go in there; I understand about it. I can recite the Bible from Genesis to Exodus verbatim, so I know that. Now I think when a person passes he should be cre- mated. That's past, that's life, and you're going to die, sure as you live-. There's two sure things in life, and that's taxes and death. You going to do that! I don't think poor families should go around paying five-thousand dollars for a coffin or ten-thousand dollars for a coffin, something to go in the ground. What's the point in spending all that money?

Well, that's how I've always felt. I told my wife that when I die, I want her to have my body burned, and then I want her to take the Staten Island Ferry and scatter the ashes in New York harbor.

That's right! That's right! When my father died, we got together. I went by when he got sick. I said, "Look, Pop, what happened?" He said, "Well, I goofed. I let these young men oper- ate on my brain 'cause they thought they saw a tumor, and my body couldn't stand the shock." There wasn't no tumor. He said, "All down here fell apart." I said, "Well, what do you want me to do with the body?" He said, "Cremate me cheap." I said, "What should I do with the ashes?" He said, "Flush them down the toilet. What do I care? I'm gone."

Now, back to our discussion about the feelings in jazz-what would you say that they were if you say sadness is not a jazz feeling?

Aw, you can play some ballads that make you feel sad. It's according to what you're thinking about. Say, it's some ballad that you [associate] with a girl eighteen years old in school, and you had this thing for her. When you play this ballad again, it makes you feel sad. Sure. Of course. What you were talking about is right, but what I was talking about is, you know, moanin' and groanin' and cryin' and everything.

Now one feeling that I don't ever find in jazz is self-pity. Jazz is about courage to go on even if everything's terrible.

You got to do it! I feel that's the way it started, and I think that's the way it was in New Orleans. First, they put the body away, and that was it. They'd start dancing and everything, and people in other parts of the world would think it was ridiculous, sacrilegious and all that. I don't think so. 'Cause the Bible says, "Weep at the coming in; rejoice at the going out." That's what I feel. Sure they play things that make me feel very sad, you know, because of things that have happened in my family. But I still get out of that the encouragement to move on.

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Let me ask you one more question: Which groups do you think were your best ones?

Oh, wow! I've had a lot of good groups. I've been very lucky in that. The particular group that I liked before this one was the group with Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton, Cur- tis Fuller, Jymie Merritt, and Reggie Workman. I thought that was a hell of a group. They went along about six years and got no attention at all.

You mean the sextet? Aw, sure. That group, and [the previous one] with Lee Morgan

and Wayne Shorter, myself, Jymie Merritt, and Bobby Timmons. That was one of the first jazz groups to go into Japan. Never got no attention. And the group with Freddie Hubbard was one of the finest jazz groups I know. We came into Birdland, and we were so well dressed. We had six changes complete: socks, underwear, everything. We'd change every show.

It was a good band, and it went along and [after it broke up] years passed and passed. We did all kinds of things, trying out everything, and then Wynton Marsalis came in the band. Then the band began to move, move up, and after Wynton left, they said, "Oh my God, that's the end of it." I don't know what people are thinking about. All these years before poor little Wynton was born, before these cats was born, the Messengers was out there! Then Blanchard come in-, but this particular group I got Blanchard in, it's one of the best groups I ever had.

I think that, too. I think so. Spiritually, morally, musically, they're all right! And

they're gentlemen. I'm very proud of them, very proud. Well, it's really a wonderful thing to see such young musicians playing

so well, and with such fire and discipline, too, and with such a beautiful book. I love that band you have now. The other band of yours I always liked a lot was of course that classic band with Kenny Dorham and Horace Silver.

It's hard to say, it's just hard for me to sit down and say [which band was the best one] 'cause I've had so much fun with all of them.

Well, when I was fifteen and first got into jazz, one of my favorite records was one of those recorded at Cafe Bohemia that included "Like Someone in Love" and "Yesterdays." I used to play that record over and over.

Kenny Dorham! Oh boy! Wasn't he a fantastic trumpet player? The world's most underrated, the most underrated trumpet player on the face of the earth. An arranger-.

Beautiful composer-. Beautiful! You say your bands didn't have any successes, but compared to him you

guys had a lot of success. Kenny could never get to first base. I'm talking about success as far as people say success is money,

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getting into big money and all that kind of stuff. You're lucky, because basically you're doing what you want to do, and

that's what counts. And you're making enough money to live comfortably, even if you're not getting rich, and that's what an artist can hope for.

What I want to do is make enough money to make it more comfortable for the musicians. That's why I'm incorporated. My wife runs all that business, but I'm president of it.

What's your wife's name? Ann. They call her Ann Arnold. She's Ann Blakey, but as Ann

Arnold she is the manager of the band. Akira, that's my little boy-, the corporation is under his name. Akira, Incorporated. You know, it runs nice, and we have a foundation started. All we need to do is move along slowly and build it brick by brick. And it's coming.

What kind offoundation? Well, we want to get a school going, teach kids, especially handi-

capped kids, blind kids-. Here in New York City? Sure. No where else. I wouldn't leave New York for heaven.

Definitely.

New York City

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Art Blakey