00:00:00.000 - 00:00:13.860

Unknown: Um, let's see. First of all, I want to get the tape recorder set up there. I think you did you work with Coltrane at all when you were with Suzy Gillespie for a brief period in the 40s? Isn't that, right?

00:00:18.960 - 00:00:33.860

How many months 16 and was colframe in the band at that time. I was wondering if you had ever worked together or how, but evidently he had heard of you at the time he came to make that record, I

00:00:41.420 - 00:00:52.480

interviewed should mention I interviewed. Besides interviewing John, I also interviewed beyond he told me a little about that session, but I'd be interested in your recollection of it too. Well.

00:00:52.780 - 00:01:19.380

I was over in Japan with odd Blake, and when I came back, Bob called me. I Weldon, I didn't know if John could play that type of stuff. Reluctant at first. And then John was working at Birdland, and they asked me to come down there, and after

00:01:19.380 - 00:01:37.460

hearing him play ballad the way he did, man, beautiful. That's how we got together. The whole thing was done about three hours. Well, it certainly is. It certainly represents the kind of

00:01:37.460 - 00:01:57.940

perfection, considering that you weren't working for music, and I gather you didn't have very many rehearsals. Are most of the selections on that album, first takes. Which one was that? Remember, what's that one? Beg your

00:01:57.940 - 00:02:12.300

pardon? Did you have to redo that one. Yeah, it not only trained, but everybody in that band was an extremely sensitive ballot accompanist, it seems to me. Well, McCoy, of course. I mean, you would sort of expect that. I mean, he always

00:02:12.300 - 00:02:29.780

demonstrated that facility for ballot playing. Elvin was also a surprise. In that sense, the great sensitivity he displayed, you, you made another record for impulse to did you not two more? What would I got? One of them, and I don't remember the title

00:02:29.780 - 00:02:49.660

of the other one. That's right. Oh yeah, right. That's the one I've got. And then, then the last, the next, the next time you turned up, as far as I could trace, was earlier, I go, guess, in the middle of last year, and I got a copy of the record that

00:02:49.960 - 00:03:11.940

you cut from music or which was quite a bit different than any of the stuff you're impulse. And I was sort of wondering if we could fill in some of the I figured as much trying to make some kind of something out of those songs,

00:03:11.940 - 00:03:26.180

they were pretty bad. They were not. It didn't seem to me that they were the kind of vehicles that you performed best thing came about. How that thing

00:03:27.980 - 00:03:52.420

came about. Has anything happened with that record, or quite a lot? Oh, that's good. Yeah, I haven't seen a whole lot of promotion of it, so I'm glad that it's all what in between the period when you were with impulse, and now I look, I

00:03:52.420 - 00:04:06.360

looked in the New Encyclopedia of jazz to see what there was to say, and wasn't very informative about what, what, what turns your career has been taking. So maybe if you could tell me a little bit about that, I could work that into the article too.

00:04:06.360 - 00:04:16.260

I've been doing quite a bit abroad in Japan. In fact, I just came back to Japan in December. You did, I'm sorry, I didn't understand. You said

00:04:16.260 - 00:04:31.580

you did something in Japan in December. Oh, you just came back, right, and I've been doing a lot of work there in Australia, and other than nothing, playing a regular supper club, that's been

00:04:33.560 - 00:04:43.120

about it. But you have been working steadily, huh? Yeah. What about recording? It seems to me that I haven't seen much in the way of recording in between the impulse

00:04:46.600 - 00:04:58.480

label called Impulse, and that did very well for Well, no, I mean, I know the impulse company called perception, and that was about three years ago. And.

00:05:00.000 - 00:05:12.840

It did very well. And something happened, the company went out of business. Who owns the masters to that? Well, they went bankrupt. So the creditors, I think, they went

00:05:12.840 - 00:05:25.880

into receivership with the bank. I tried to buy the master, you know, I was going to say, because many musicians, I talked to max Welch when he was out here, and he indicated, out here, and he indicated that he bought back all of the masters

00:05:25.880 - 00:05:38.240

that Kenneth owned. And that's another case of a company that had gone bankrupt. That seems to happen often when companies go bankrupt. It seems like when

00:05:38.240 - 00:05:55.660

roulette went under, those masters got tangled up in a big legal mess as well. Let me see what else I want to ask you. There's a pianist out here, and his name is Mark Levine. He said he had the pleasure of accompanying you well sometime

00:05:55.660 - 00:06:12.060

in the Catskills, he said. He said, You really knock him out because both your intonation and your articulation were so perfect. And I, of course, I readily agreed about those things, because I've always been very impressed with your

00:06:12.060 - 00:06:29.120

singing. So maybe you could tell me what it took to get to the point where your articulation was so clean and crisp, and that seems especially notable today, because there are so few singers who put that is why I pay

00:06:29.660 - 00:06:46.180

close attention to the articulation, because I visited so many singers I couldn't understand what they were saying. And naturally, data, Santa, I don't want that to happen to me. I pay very close

00:06:50.200 - 00:07:03.120

attention to lyric. Another thing I've always been impressed with about you is that you actually the lyric. Even if the lyric was not outstanding in its own right, you managed to breathe a great deal of life into

00:07:09.600 - 00:07:25.640

it, I think, for example, I think about lush life, and you are too beautiful. And a song that I certainly hope I'll get the pleasure of hearing you sing in person, which is my one and only love. I definitely think that those lyrics come across

00:07:25.640 - 00:07:51.460

with great credibility, great force. It's very much like you are the person. Like those are your words and your sentiments, and you're bringing them, bringing them. Like, but still, many people like to do especially I noticed that

00:07:51.580 - 00:08:06.430

many so called ass singers get more involved with the technical end of singing, and the technique is extremely impressive, but they violate the sense of the lyric all the time. It doesn't make sense to me either. If

00:08:06.790 - 00:08:18.850

you don't understand what I'm saying, I think I've lost the whole thing. I think I lost the problem. Or the words are clear, but what people are doing with the melody bears no relationship to the words. I think Carmen

00:08:18.850 - 00:08:29.120

McRae. I mean, I don't expect I know people don't talk about each other and so forth, but it's okay for me to it's okay for me to say it, because I'm not a singer. Tara McRae is, to me, somebody who who shows a lot of creativity as far as

00:08:29.120 - 00:08:43.480

embroidering a melody goes, but tends not to pay very much attention to what the words say. In fact, she did lush life, and now that I think about it, at the Mocambo, and as I recall she interchanged the line from the first verse with the second

00:08:43.480 - 00:08:55.840

verse, which really annoyed me no end, because she had given a great build up to how what a genius Billy Strayhorn was when he'd written a tune he was 18, and so forth, and then she didn't read the lyric correctly. So I thought that was kind of

00:08:55.840 - 00:09:09.420

not myself. I suppose you paid a corresponding amount of attention to intonation, too, when you were coming up, because you think some extremely difficult intervals, it seems to me, I

00:09:12.660 - 00:09:26.960

don't know whether it comes from reading a lot or what, it Just seems to fall that way. You didn't, you weren't conscious when you were apprenticing. I guess I'd say about having to pay particular

00:09:26.960 - 00:09:54.820

attention. I mean, just sort of something that came easily to you. Great voices, you name automatically. I just paid special attention to where I

00:09:54.820 - 00:10:11.100

was, and also that, I guess, goes for the intonation then too, because it's. Seems to me you have an extraordinary sense of pitch. I mean, you seem to be more correct than the piano. Well, as

00:10:11.100 - 00:10:24.740

I say, I've long been an admirer of yours, and I was extremely delighted when I finally, I'd just about given up on the mccambo people, and Stuart called me and said, well, so forth, Johnny Hartman is coming out and, etc, etc, etc. Let me

00:10:24.740 - 00:10:42.980

see who are your favorite songwriters. I should ask you that because, yeah, I would imagine he's this isn't a sophisticated writer. Show. Mm, hmm.

00:10:42.980 - 00:11:09.240

He did, no, I guess I haven't seen that American song. He a lot of singers together, Mabel Mort, I think Sarah Santa, Tony Bennett, did it, and each singer picked a composer and did his work. And I was fortunate enough to do it. I did one show

00:11:09.240 - 00:11:25.220

of cold water and one of Billy strangle and Bill wrote some real nice things that people put lyrics to. He didn't put the lyrics to him. Did he write the lyric to luxury? That's his, right. Another great admirer of his,

00:11:25.220 - 00:11:39.500

who I had the pleasure of talking with earlier is Don Shirley. Shirley, in fact, has many things that are credited to Duke and Billy are, in fact, mostly Billy, yeah, that he was just because he worked in Ellington shadow so much he

00:11:39.500 - 00:12:08.040

wasn't really recognized. Mm, and say, finish it out. Yeah, I guess when I heard that from Don Charles, my response that was It sort of reminded me about the

00:12:08.040 - 00:12:21.320

relationship that Ellington had with Irving Mills, where Mills ended up with his name on a lot of things that I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does, because if one person's in a position of power and the other person has the creativity, you can pretty much

00:12:21.320 - 00:12:35.540

predict how they're going to turn out. Let's see. What about in the 50s? I didn't, I guess I didn't stay up with your career as much as I should have in the 50s. What were you doing in the 50s? Work was

00:12:35.540 - 00:12:49.660

so scared I went to London. Oh, so you spent a period of time abroad. Then, did you? You were working over there? I take it there. What kind of situation was that? I mean, we're actually,

00:12:50.020 - 00:13:09.240

I went over for two weeks to a club called the after supper club, and one of the television producers came, and in fact, he was first cousin. Latinos. First cup married Latino, and I did one show for him, and one right after the other, and I did three

00:13:09.240 - 00:13:29.600

series between that and the supper club circuit over here, I did very well, and I ended up staying instead of two weeks, almost three years. How many years? Three years that was in the late 50s or middle 50s, then you came

00:13:29.600 - 00:13:45.880

back to the States. I take it right. When was that record with training at 62 or 63 that late? I didn't realize that. What do you have any plans for anything else like that? Alec Weldon show coming up.

00:13:47.020 - 00:14:05.880

Tell me about that. Philadelphia International Group. It'll be more today. What's happening? Are you entirely comfortable with that? Or, Yeah, as long as

00:14:05.880 - 00:14:17.160

the song and the Lyric is there, I hate thumb lyrics. Well, it seems to me, listening to what I do of contemporary popular music, that one has to search.

00:14:17.160 - 00:14:34.340

It's like looking for a needle in a haystack to find a song. You it. What have you come up with so far? Is that a legitimate question? Okay? Anyway, I wasn't sure whether that would be a question you'd

00:14:34.340 - 00:14:51.040

want to answer. Let's see who you've got that going anything else I should know about? No, that's about it. We been very fortunate this year. We've played some very nice places into the commercial field, a few

00:14:52.300 - 00:15:04.860

commercials. Oh, that's good to get more. Are involved. Is that for the New York market or for the foreign

00:15:04.860 - 00:15:24.140

nation? One national thing now, and that's the harvest Bristol cream. Who's Who's cream? Oh, Harvey's Bristol cream, right? Sure. That's a Scott. It's a wine, okay, right? Shows how out of it I am. I can't remember when the

00:15:24.140 - 00:15:39.500

last time you were on the car store in San Francisco was, is that? Have you been out here? That's what I thought. Where did you play when you came, when you were here? Do you remember? I tell you what it was in the I don't know if the International

00:15:39.500 - 00:15:50.440

Settlement is still there, sort of, yeah, but it was in the international south it's been longer than 15 years. I was with Dizzy Gilles. Maybe that was around purple onion, or the hungry eye,

00:15:50.440 - 00:16:05.820

or the jazz workshop, or possibly the jazz Well, if you were with Dizzy, let's see that would be. That would be, was that in the 60s or before the 60s? You mean still

00:16:05.820 - 00:16:18.480

that same period in the late 40s? Yeah, oh my goodness, that's, I hate to say this, but that was almost 30 years ago. So when you go to Japan, you just fly out of New York and don't even, don't even stop over in San Francisco.

00:16:19.860 - 00:16:35.600

Ah, that's right, you go to polar route, of course. Are you pretty well known in Japan? Oh, that's very interesting for trip in the relatively short period of time, like maybe every other year.

00:16:38.120 - 00:16:53.500

Well, that's still pretty that's still relatively short. What kind of material do you do there? What kind of material are the Japanese people most which is the, have you, is your repertoire now sort of a mixture of the more traditional ballads,

00:16:53.500 - 00:17:07.740

like the cold Porter things and and then the up and then the contemporary things. Well, that's good. I'm glad to hear. I mean, I have to confess that. I'm really hoping that, since I've enjoyed those, those classic ballad performances, so

00:17:07.740 - 00:17:21.440

much I have to confess. I beg your pardon, I have to stay with that. That's good. That's good. I'm glad to hear that. How have you found, do you find any differences between audiences in Europe, audiences the United States and audiences in Japan,

00:17:25.760 - 00:17:34.760

Europe and Japan more receptive. That's always been my feeling, too. And I wonder, if you've speculated on why that, why that is, I imagine they don't have, they don't

00:17:42.320 - 00:17:56.380

have an attempting attempt, like we do. That's true here. We take it for granted. Pick up the paper, possibly go big three or four guys. That's right. In fact, sometimes when I do a review, I mean, like, well, this

00:17:56.380 - 00:18:09.720

week's typical example, I'm sort of torn between going to see the Mills Brothers one night and Carol Sloan another night and somebody else at 39 I just run out of night, and they don't have that maybe once a month, or maybe once

00:18:09.780 - 00:18:23.360

every three months, nobody has come over. So of course, you're a great celebrity there. Absorb everything you do when you go abroad. Do you take your own rhythm section, or do you work with the local people? Are you going to bring him or

00:18:23.360 - 00:18:44.380

her with me? Who's that? Could you spell her the last name? Okay, I just wanted to check in on his first name is Tony, right? And are you going to do anything else out here besides the macombo? Okay, well, I, you know, my hope is that after

00:18:44.380 - 00:19:02.160

you're here the first time, that you'll be back, I'd like to see you at least once a year, and maybe once every six months. Yeah, I think, I hope it works out well, if you can think of anything else you'd like to say, still got the tape recorder

00:19:02.160 - 00:19:26.540

running. So, you know, that's a well, let's see now the last person Max stayed, Max ended up staying at the Miyako Hotel, which is in Japan town, and he found that pretty comfortable. I know many

00:19:26.540 - 00:19:50.380

entertainers stay there. I know Cecil Taylor, the pianist, was staying at Stanford court when he was here. And might, I'm not sure, but I haven't been asked that question before. Really, I have to think about that. But I can

00:19:50.380 - 00:20:03.060

undoubtedly be talking to Stuart, and I can tell him, you'd like to get something. Are you coming out of your family? Well, you'd like some. You'd like something that would be an apartment. Yes. Series. Okay, well, I'll mention that to store

00:20:03.060 - 00:20:23.660

and see what kind of accommodation do I have it? Oh, of course. Oh, sure, by all means. Let's see their main number is 776133, which is probably somebody's home or something or an

00:20:23.720 - 00:20:46.480

answering service is 9284117, and those are both area code, 415, to remember that I don't think I have anything that approaches the current picture, and I'd greatly appreciate it if you could send one, either to

00:20:46.480 - 00:21:02.220

me or they were already sent to Stuart. Okay, did you have five press kits? Oh, good. Okay, because when did you put those in the mail? I'm concerned that I get it in time to make last week, sometime last week. Okay, so he

00:21:02.220 - 00:21:19.320

should have, he should have, and I should be able to. I'll probably see him this week so I can, if he doesn't mail anyone, I can pick one up in person. Yeah, I definitely will. For Batista. I beg your pardon

00:21:20.640 - 00:21:33.140

for the two of you, right, okay, and anything else I can do for you, well, I'll be looking forward to seeing you opening night. Okay, I'll be looking for you. Okay, thank you. Bye. Bye. You.