00:00:00.540 - 00:00:14.520

Unknown: To these questions are, may strike you as simple minded, and to a degree they are, but they are because I think Weldon tree with considerations and maybe elementary for musicians, but aren't for the public. And so bear with me. Question one,

00:00:15.000 - 00:00:32.600

do you think the phrase new black music is an accurate description of some of the new styles in jazz? Because I knew black music. Does that mean that it's music being played by black people? It means black music exclusively. Well,

00:00:32.600 - 00:00:43.840

I'm asking you, it needed. It needed. Well, I think that it didn't mean that black people are the only ones who couldn't

00:00:49.180 - 00:01:11.460

take this musical, the new music. It might mean more to me, because I think it would take in more because to say, by black people sort of i Little, it seems to me, should be a little more all inclusive than that, because even though we know that

00:01:11.460 - 00:01:29.240

the basic color of the world population is black by majority, or is dark is dark skinned by majority, nevertheless I believe that this, the music that we are playing now, is real music, and should be all inclusive. I think it would be better to call it

00:01:29.900 - 00:01:43.660

the new world music, as far as its origins go. Do you think that these origins stand particularly from the black at all, or do you think that the origins are equally well. Does he feel that all parts of the

00:01:43.660 - 00:01:55.360

world contribute to this music as much as one part contributes as much as any other part? Or do you feel as a black ghetto makes a particularly strong contribution? Well, in general. Now I don't mean this case.

00:01:55.420 - 00:02:10.500

I really can't answer that. It's just not. It hasn't been part of my background. I'm not familiar with the black general experience. I'm familiar with my own poverty and my own destitution and my own background, which is white,

00:02:10.500 - 00:02:25.760

Yankee, New England background down the line, poverty and destitution. Make any contribution. Make a greater contribution. Say that affluent and complacency. I brought those up because they're characteristics of the

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black ghetto, and perhaps that coming common experience, except it may be, may be something that's similar to the experience of the Negro and the black ghetto. I mean, his experience has compared to mine, but he still you can, you can always

00:02:44.980 - 00:03:06.840

say that probably the black poverty is is worse than the white poverty, as far as I'm concerned. And since I'm not, and I've never been in Appalachia, that probably is the only place in America where poverty is extreme as it is in

00:03:06.840 - 00:03:18.360

most of America. For the black person, do you think the poverty investigation you experienced comes out in your music in some way? Well, I think that all my experience shapes my music, and

00:03:18.360 - 00:03:30.140

so that will be included in it. That's a materialistic approach. Well, I mean, I'm just, I'm saying, and that's part of what I've been through.

00:03:30.140 - 00:03:49.120

So have you ever noticed that there's any difference in reaction to your music of rationally different audiences, predominantly black audience. I say that by and large, my experience has been both playing

00:03:49.120 - 00:04:08.580

with my own groups and playing recently with Archie Shep, as I have since January of this year. Audiences have been by and large audiences, and I'm just unable to comment, because there hasn't been that much of a difference in the audience. If you're

00:04:08.580 - 00:04:25.280

talking about skin pigmentation, it has. It has never at one time in all black audiences, as far as I know. And I'd say the whites are in the majority, about the same way as they are. Population Proportion throughout the stage. I mean, otherwise,

00:04:25.340 - 00:04:46.120

the audiences have been maybe on the average about, let's see, the 10th of the population is black in this country, I'd say a little more than the audience at most with black and most of our performances, which I think is about right, if you consider

00:04:47.380 - 00:04:59.560

the racial distribution, especially where you were playing. For example, I know the men who are in Los Angeles is not in the ghetto, and that's sufficiently powerful the willingness of black people to go to Weldon games.

00:05:00.000 - 00:05:21.440

Certainly, certainly, I'm trying to think of some of the other clubs in Chicago, it could have gone a different way. But as I say, I think, let's say that the way the color breaks down the audience, I think, is proportionate to the population

00:05:21.440 - 00:05:34.820

of black and white in the particular area Weldon to and I don't think it has to do with more black people being attracted to this music than more white people. I don't think that's the way it is. I think that there is a hardcore black

00:05:34.820 - 00:05:46.420

audience and a hardcore white audience that will always turn out to do this music, and it's constantly growing and in proportionate, in proportion to the racial distribution of the whole United

00:05:46.420 - 00:06:04.440

States. Are these things that you ever talk about with not only Archie's group, but did you ever talk about with musicians, in general sense, and social issues in a larger sense. You

00:06:04.440 - 00:06:21.320

ever talk about the relations between blacks and whites in general, not just in a jazz world? Well, yeah, I think that by and large, the people I worked with, especially Archie, are very conscientious,

00:06:27.440 - 00:06:57.760

social change, political economical scene. We read the newspaper every day. We can't help being involved in what's going on around us, and this is naturally topic of conversation, and it's amazing how the views coincide. I'm trying to I'm

00:06:57.760 - 00:07:16.080

looking for the reality always of the situation the same as I feel that the by and large, the people I'm working with are and we may disagree on a few small points, but basically, we're looking for a hard reality, and through discussion we can easily

00:07:16.080 - 00:07:28.820

find this. Let's take a concrete instance, Malcolm X in the group, discussion taken. Do you reach any consensus?

00:07:28.820 - 00:07:50.860

Well, I think that it would involve more than just a sort of peripheral knowledge of who the man was. I haven't read his biography. I've read parts of it, I understand a little bit about his background and how he came up through the ranks, and

00:07:53.560 - 00:08:15.180

what he began as how he more or less evolved into the man that he did. And I find him a very real person. And I certainly, I certainly sympathize with all the various stages of his

00:08:15.300 - 00:08:27.380

evolution. I mean, they're very, it seems to me, they're very clear, and it would be difficult for me to see it any other way than the way that it actually happened. You know, there's a book of his speeches that have

00:08:27.380 - 00:08:38.180

been published. The last speeches he was making, just before his assassination, he was saying things, well, yes, there is going to be a moral conflict, but it's going to be a conflict between the oppressed and the oppressor, not between black and

00:08:38.180 - 00:08:56.200

white or between any races. When you talk about his evolution. Most striking facet of his evolution, well, he swung around quite a bit in his in his last few years, because he began to see that there were people of

00:08:56.200 - 00:09:22.160

many different colors in the world who were seeking the reality and that has all the times that I witnessed Malcolm and was these. I mean by that, his appearances on television, his appearances in Harlem, where I was in the audience. I find it

00:09:22.160 - 00:09:45.400

very difficult to take issue with him, especially in some of these discussions on television which involve other civil rights people such as James Farmer, I found nothing to be just about to take the most realistic stand in all of the

00:09:45.400 - 00:10:06.480

situations, in all the questions. I mean these questions involve situations all over the world, not just not just in America. And Malcolm's comments with very vivid. A very direct, very

00:10:06.480 - 00:10:29.300

decisive. I found it very hard to take issue very much. I think he's a very strong Weldon call a believing man. Is there any other public figure? Being mad. There certainly aren't

00:10:31.460 - 00:10:49.240

any politicians. No, I think he was there, but I think he was there when I was there, but I was in another department. Let me think. No, I

00:10:52.300 - 00:11:11.280

think he's going to definitely as a figure that would incorporate just about all phases of life, all categories of organization in the country, and certainly he has done more for humanity in this country and all over the world than

00:11:12.600 - 00:11:40.780

certainly anybody from this country that I could take perhaps dag Hans, store or somebody that's the criteria doing something for humanity, as well as doing Something for zoom people conscious and is

00:11:40.780 - 00:12:02.160

still boring. It's been said that Charles is a music that is born out of circumstances of oppression and suffering, and that jazz is opposed to oppression and suffering, and therefore is

00:12:02.160 - 00:12:25.820

opposed to the war of the United States and Vietnam. Would you get a comment on that? Lisa, I think that jazz has been born out of a wish for a better life, and certainly the war in blood now being the waste of human

00:12:25.820 - 00:12:39.740

energy, creative energy, money, manpower machines, a complete waste, as so many things in this country, and so much of what this country does, a waste of money too. I guess I didn't mention that.

00:12:42.140 - 00:13:06.300

I think jazz has been jazz has always strived for spiritual values which would make decisions about money and war and soldiers and foreign

00:13:06.300 - 00:13:29.720

policy and politics. See, jazz develops a spiritual basis, tries to find a good moral footing for everything that's decided as we a definitely jazz is, I mean, the music is talking about,

00:13:32.000 - 00:13:54.760

we're certainly not doing that over there. And I think jazz is not talking about self annihilation. Jazz is talking about dignity of the individual voice and dignity of the group through collective

00:13:58.720 - 00:14:12.120

action. Is that the significance of collective improvisation, then in the new music that humanity is a collective, and it has to work together as a collective. Well, it should be able to do that too. I mean, as long as

00:14:12.120 - 00:14:30.500

everybody is operating right on their own ground, in other words, as long as all the self, as long as the self is right, then no matter how many selves you get together, it's going to be Stroud. That's the point. I don't think that unity is born

00:14:30.500 - 00:14:46.060

out of anonymity or synonymity of people. I think it's born out of out of differences, and as long as everybody is being themselves, which means as long as they are being their individual selves, then we're going to have strong unity,

00:14:46.360 - 00:15:02.160

strong collective unity, because everybody is going to be presenting their own point of view very strongly, and they're all going to be interacting with each other. The main thing is to be present. Ending your own point of view so that you can

00:15:04.440 - 00:15:15.720

interact strongly with the other forces, the other human forces. That means that you have to overcome the conditions that prevent those interactions. For example, if you present your point of

00:15:15.720 - 00:15:26.420

view with napalm, you make it pretty hard for anybody to interact with you, except by dying. Yeah, I think that you're going to find that there are perhaps a few people on your side. If you disagree with I'd

00:15:26.420 - 00:15:41.600

say that you were that you were that you were dealing with a pretty harsh reality there of humanity versus inhumanity, let's say life versus a violation, which is a pretty hard reality. I mean, it's really kind of hard to beat, if

00:15:41.600 - 00:15:55.360

you start from that premise of from that premise of physical life and death. I think you're at the beginning really. That is fundamental. I mean, if you don't breathe, you don't create,

00:15:55.720 - 00:16:09.840

yeah, I think so. I think it's awful hard to have life when there is many and even harder still there, well, that comes after. Life has got to be there first the best

00:16:09.840 - 00:16:21.620

of life. So the material is phenomenal in that sense. Speaking of the material, let's get down to a really sorted level, and I'll ask you what your general opinion is of working conditions

00:16:21.620 - 00:16:33.200

for jazz musicians. If you are on the whole jazz musicians are treated as artists deserve to be treated, if you think that they are treated the way they deserve, I wonder if you speculate on why this is the case.

00:16:34.340 - 00:16:55.660

Well, I must say that I've met a lot of jazz musicians who I didn't think I well, really belonged in the in the in the status that they had. I think that when you say jazz music, this is going to take me into myself a little bit. I think

00:16:55.660 - 00:17:15.960

that a jazz musician is basically a folk musician, as have been all the great musicians of all time. For me, these are my thoughts. Now don't think that I'm trying to say this for everybody, a third musician occupies, certainly not

00:17:15.960 - 00:17:50.140

the same status in history as kings and popes, generals, czars and so forth. So talking about social status money, I I'm not saying he doesn't deserve this, but I'm saying that many general positions who are folk are really not

00:17:55.300 - 00:18:15.840

voices of the people or speaking about a film experience, or, let's say, speaking for the majority of the country. And so I felt that they weren't deserving of the status that they had. I think if a musician is let's talk about some hot

00:18:15.840 - 00:18:38.000

musicians, say so singers, really, as you can see by the by the agreement majority of people in this country, I mean certain singers speak for them. I think a jazz musician. Let's take a good, fair example, like Duke Ellington, should speak for the

00:18:38.000 - 00:18:55.540

people, and therefore he will get the status that he deserves. There are a lot of people who certainly are, I feel, in my own time, are going to make contributions as significant as Arlington's, and they certainly don't have the status that he

00:18:55.540 - 00:19:12.720

even had at the time when he was coming up. And I feel this is wrong, but I really don't know what the problems are behind it. Jazz has always been sort of an evil word, I guess, but certain, I mean certain people have been able to overcome this in their

00:19:12.720 - 00:19:30.920

lifetime and and so that's why I can't figure out why. Now it shouldn't. These people should be able to overcome that. Should be able to overcome it. Let me think about this. We can talk about we can talk about Duke Ellington in his time. Let's

00:19:30.920 - 00:19:53.440

talk about somebody now and find out why they haven't reached well, actually now Ellington status is he still suffers from the same, same kind of bigotry. And you'd be surprised what many people well,

00:19:54.580 - 00:20:10.980

many people would be surprised that a man's prestige still goes. Was, even though he's, I guess, what you could call a success in the music business, he's he's making some money. Understand, he's still his band, still comes out of his own

00:20:10.980 - 00:20:35.840

pocket and everything, but he's certainly one of the people that's up there and out there, quieter. Why? Other people aren't to the extent that he is, or to the extent that another person not to the same extent that Ellington is? Do you

00:20:37.580 - 00:21:02.340

think I'm so busy just sort of working on it myself. It's my music, money for me, and so that's basically what I'm working on. The way that I'm coming from, I really can't get that much

00:21:02.340 - 00:21:14.820

perspective on the picture. I'd have to talk about older people, and I could tell you about them as I told you about Ellington, but I'd have to leave a question mark for myself and my own generation. I don't really know what's what's happening. In a

00:21:14.820 - 00:21:30.080

few years, we'll be able to see that's all well as of the present, in the immediate past, I can say this, if you use colleges and universities as an image to the acceptance of jazz, then there's everything to be desired. I did

00:21:30.080 - 00:21:38.960

a survey at college and university catalogs. To Dustin's point, what I found was the photography courses were about three times as numerous as courses and jazz, and yet the two arts are about the same age.

00:21:39.860 - 00:22:00.400

Well, you see now where the problem is in the music schools of this country. I went to a college where the music school is primarily a very academic and very, let's say, literary sort of music school that's

00:22:00.400 - 00:22:13.500

dealing with the reality of music, which is the performance and the making. This was Mort. This was at Yale University, where there's a very fine library and a number of very, very well trained

00:22:13.740 - 00:22:28.880

academicians. And Yale is famous for the teachers it produces. In other words, it produces people who have a great knowledge of the history of music. However, Yale has never produced great performers, and the few composers that have come out of

00:22:28.880 - 00:22:50.740

Yale alive with any creative talent left have been very few and have not gone very far. So I say that basically, if the concept of music in the academy, and the concept of music by and large in this country will redefined and reworked and

00:22:50.800 - 00:23:12.420

revamped. Really, you might have a little more all inclusive attitude, and you probably find jazz playing a much more important part. I mean, in the Yale record library, George Bush was the jazz composer represented there was, there

00:23:12.420 - 00:23:32.300

were no Duke Ellington records. Even Charles probably be another 10 years before they have a Charles Parker record there or something, I mean, and we should consider this just in terms of American folk music, but they don't have any folk music. Folk

00:23:32.420 - 00:23:52.000

music is, folk music is, yeah, maybe they have some bagpipe music there or something, but they don't. They don't have any they don't have recording. Look at all the recordings there are folk music now from all over the world, or didn't have one record

00:23:52.000 - 00:24:08.880

of African folk music. Say, well, they have some watered down, very watered down European folk music. I just felt that the whole sort of, the whole well spring of music, the real, the real well, the part of music that all art music springs from,

00:24:09.900 - 00:24:30.380

was not represented in the least at Yale University. And I think that if the concept of, let's say, if the history of music, the concept of the history of music in this country were to include the wellsprings of music that you would see folk and jazz

00:24:30.380 - 00:24:56.320

music very highly represented at all levels of education. I mean, not just for children, but even relatively people who are who are studying to be composers. You can tell from listening to a lot of the composers these days that they're very unaware of

00:24:56.320 - 00:25:09.300

their history and end of the history and of the. Real History of Music. Let me sort of cut off from it all. Let me bring in what I consider might be an analogy to my own field history. You look in the history textbooks on the high

00:25:09.300 - 00:25:23.660

school and college level, you never see pictures amazing George Washington. You're not told that there were three men, three Negro men. You're not tired of Negroes in the Civil War, 200,000 troops

00:25:27.140 - 00:25:43.420

Negro has systematically been excluded from American history. How can you disagree with that? Would you say that something analogous to this exclusion is operating to keep jazz out of the academy,

00:25:44.440 - 00:25:54.280

the music of black people, and you're going to exclude black people on every other phase. It only makes sense that you're going to exclude their art too. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

00:25:56.320 - 00:26:11.940

I think that you should also say that it's certainly a lot of the white folk music in this country has contributed a great deal of the jazz music. And I'm not saying this because I'm white. I just feel that I know that in the south, there was once a

00:26:11.940 - 00:26:30.380

situation where white folk musicians and black folk musicians were more or less intermingled, and I think that the hillbilly sound overlaps to a large extent with gospel music and the music in the white churches in the south, even

00:26:30.380 - 00:26:44.920

though it's talking about hate, and there may be a lot of misinterpretation. I say that musically, it overlaps, even though the spirit behind it is different. There is another consideration that keeps all of music out of the

00:26:44.920 - 00:27:02.760

academy. There's no doubt on my mind that this works against people who are not racial barriers or not. There are barriers of class and education that makes the academic musicologist very loath to consider music of the people as

00:27:02.760 - 00:27:21.620

equivalent to what he's doing right? Well, now I feel in my territory a little more now I can, I can, I can? I feel that I can make a statement about that Linley, echo your sentiments that I know there is such a

00:27:21.620 - 00:27:36.800

thing as black intellectual slavery. I mean, there is beginning to be that, but certainly white intellectual slavery is the is the main thing, and that's what's keeping so much of what is real out of the academy. The Academy is, I

00:27:36.800 - 00:27:55.480

mean, the whole concept of the academy in this country has been inherited from Europe, and that's the way it was there. That's the way they're trying to make it here in Europe. The Academy, the music academy, excludes folk music too, I mean,

00:27:55.480 - 00:28:12.660

and they're having the same problem over there, that the people who are interested in folk music are really a part of the anthropology departments of colleges they work in, and the same goes for the ones here. So that we can say that America and

00:28:12.660 - 00:28:25.160

Europe, as far as the music academy goes, are suffering similar diseases because they both inherited the same class biased education. That is that education should be for the elite, and even though

00:28:25.160 - 00:28:34.220

now we're trying to train technicians and so on, on a mass level, still the attitudes that shape what it is that these technicians are going to study. These attitudes are the same as they were in the

00:28:36.680 - 00:28:51.940

18th century. I would feel that the so called the course educated man, the man the graduate of the academy is the man is the superior being. Many cases all Henze is just better

00:28:51.940 - 00:29:08.400

indoctrinated than this, I can tell you, as a result of seeing college students, from the freshman to the senior level freshmen, but they know how to verbalize it but they know how to verbalize it more secure.

00:29:12.480 - 00:29:31.940

I started off asking about working conditions, and we never really thought about that. Just talk about my own. I'll say this thing about one thing about working conditions with the jazz music. I mean, they're as good or as bad as he's willing to put

00:29:31.940 - 00:29:49.900

up with him if he wants to enforce his demands. And really he should realize that he can hold out, he can boycott, he can demand just the same as everybody else, for something better. And I think that in this new generation of jazz

00:29:49.900 - 00:30:10.500

musicians, we are beginning to see a group of people who are making these demands. Finally, we know that in the past, some of our greatest. The players and composers in the jazz tradition have been victims of a system which they being, being at that

00:30:10.500 - 00:30:28.340

time, and badly oppressed as they were, were not able to rise above certain problems. But now I see especially and we can, I think we can talk about Negro musicians now. I think that there are people, I think there are geniuses

00:30:30.200 - 00:30:49.540

as great as Charlie Parker in this day and age, who have refused to become victims and are rising above the are dealing hand in hand to hand combat with the establishment and with the power structure,

00:30:49.540 - 00:31:09.780

and just refuse to be done in by it, or to drug themselves to a point where they don't feel it as violently as they could it helps to be Mort and organized for this, doesn't it? I mean, if you're going to say, as you said, boycott a given employer,

00:31:10.380 - 00:31:30.680

quite a company owner or Microsoft or a promoter, and he is able to hire and somebody else to take your place, then the effectiveness of your boycott has been sabotage, because somebody else goes, as in the jazz composers Gulch, we

00:31:30.680 - 00:31:53.440

could present a united states, on the other hand, since, since we know that that is sort of impossible, utopian in a field where individualism is relevant is really is rampant and is the key to survival, I'd say it's pretty much up to each

00:31:53.440 - 00:32:09.600

individual how he does it has been the case with jazz. I know that the things that the things that the jobs and the concerts and recordings and whatever I've done have been a result of my own individual initiative, and it's a matter of just going out

00:32:09.600 - 00:32:22.040

and getting them. I mean, phone. It's not a matter of you sitting there and being famous and having the phone ringing and you saying no or yes, these things. You have to go out and get yourself and you have to create them for yourself and set them

00:32:22.040 - 00:32:34.760

up in your own terms. So if your terms are certain price and certain conditions and a certain environment, then it has to be that way for you, and you won't do you won't make your music until it is

00:32:38.240 - 00:32:54.640

like you said about individuals being rampant in jazz. It's striking that collective improvisation is coming to be a strong facet of the new music. I wonder if there's some reason for whether this represents a damping down or modifying of

00:32:54.700 - 00:33:09.900

this previously strong individualism, the idea, perhaps, that there is no one figure like bird, and that you don't interpret the music as being bird music of the you interpret the music as being the musicians music, or people's

00:33:09.960 - 00:33:20.120

music, everybody's music. There's any merit to this line of reasoning. But I think that you have to, I think that you have to approach this esthetically and saying that you

00:33:20.120 - 00:33:38.900

only get a good collective. To me, the best collective music I have heard has been when individuality was the keynote, or individuality was in in the main

00:33:40.520 - 00:33:58.300

individuality outweighed synonymity, I'm thinking, I'm thinking basically of Duke Ellington's orchestra. And I think that here we have a group of individuals making probably more and more music and more splendid music. And certainly

00:33:58.840 - 00:34:16.140

this is not to discredit Ellington's leadership in the matter, because I think that you do need to have a leader. I'm saying, the more individuals you get, the broader, more colorful, more imaginative, and more beautiful the music is going to

00:34:16.140 - 00:34:27.440

be well, I think that in a way, you are listener in what I'm saying. I'm not saying that individuality is bad, certainly collective improvisation perhaps, well, it seems to me that if you had this

00:34:28.280 - 00:34:42.940

anonymity or musical conformity, then no collective improvisation really would be possible. Collective improvisation is only possible when there are individual voices who can be recognized as individual voices. Would you agree? I think that we

00:34:42.940 - 00:34:57.940

had a great deal of conformity right after Charles we heard and we heard so many tenor saxophone players that sounded like Leslie, so many other saxophone players that sounded like Charles Parker, and very many corporate players that sounded

00:34:57.940 - 00:35:17.340

like Louis Armstrong. Certainly these giants. Have reduced a number of just sort of out emulator was this that it isn't necessarily a do munition of your individuality. If you agree to

00:35:20.280 - 00:35:32.480

improvise collective Linley, that's all I'm really saying. And I want to know you're not compromising individuality, except to the extent in collective improvisation. Of course, the lead could be to go

00:35:32.480 - 00:35:44.560

anywhere. That's the point. And it's it's not always going to go where you want to go. That's right, or say where it would go if you were just playing by yourself. The point is that the more of an individual you are,

00:35:49.600 - 00:36:09.840

the more decision is going to go into your compromises, the harder it is, in many ways, is going to be for you to compromise. But when you do have to make these compromises, I say that they are going to be very decisive compromises. They're

00:36:09.840 - 00:36:29.660

going to be very significant, substantial compromises than if you were just echoing what was going on. Of course, individuals individualism becomes pernicious. None of us can develop our individualism completely, because what I'm

00:36:29.720 - 00:36:40.880

talking about when I say individualism is just each person being so somebody else, not sometimes that isn't possible, though, Johnson's being himself means

00:36:40.880 - 00:36:56.560

that a certain number of the enemy people, number of the enemy, okay, that's your reality. There are a lot of people

00:36:59.920 - 00:37:19.200

that are improvising right along with LBJ, I can tell you that a ride right in his bed. Have you noticed, by the way, I've noticed that, yeah, it gets in there a lot that way,

00:37:21.960 - 00:37:36.800

noticed, we noticed really. I haven't noticed any of the really big jazz and stands on the field involved too much, maybe because they just don't like what's going down there. Or maybe they're the wrong color.

00:37:37.040 - 00:37:53.980

I haven't interviewed a musician yet who has anything good to say about the war in Vietnam. Are, how can we say anything good about something that is first of all a complete waste? Everything complete waste, just a waste

00:37:55.360 - 00:38:11.940

talking about interpretation, interpreting. Interpreting things that happen in the music. Why do you think the third string music failed to make more of an impression with the younger musicians than it did? It seems now that in terms of

00:38:12.000 - 00:38:29.540

people playing it or recording it, it's almost dead. Third stream music is this putting names on massive adherence among the younger musicians who are the ones would note, like yourself,

00:38:29.540 - 00:38:49.120

who was capable of playing it, and yet also the ones who turn their back on third scheme was supposed to, well, let's not tell me. Let's talk about what it was somehow from all the performances, I never really felt that he had evolved it into

00:38:49.120 - 00:39:06.060

a complete style, an integrated style of expression. I felt that it was one minute, one thing, one minute, another thing, and it just sort of swung back and forth between two idioms, and there was never a real synthesis of all the musics and the

00:39:06.060 - 00:39:23.840

influences that he claimed to have. And so I think that that since it, since it was sort of weak in this respect, maybe that's the reason that too many people haven't been influenced by it. I must say that what I heard sounded sort of innocuous

00:39:23.840 - 00:39:50.440

to me. And I think that fundamentally it was, it was sort of destroying itself, because it never really synthesized the jazz and the Western Dodie, kefonic Tara. That's, I guess, was, thing plus jazz, I just, I just don't think

00:39:50.920 - 00:40:13.810

it can really be done, because, first of all, jazz is a very vocal i. And this other music a very instrumental idiom. Terrible thing about 12 Tone Music is that

00:40:14.470 - 00:40:42.340

actually it's much less than any of the jazz see, because jazz, see, the 12 tone system strives for semi total perfection in the jazz tradition you're involved with any way you want to break down infinity of pitch. And I know that Weldon was horrified

00:40:42.340 - 00:40:59.500

when, when performances of his works were out during the piano. I mean, he insisted on that kind of intonation Schoenberg. We know he wrote things for voice which, which involved glissando and corner tone, singing and talking as you would talk when

00:41:00.700 - 00:41:22.580

you're talking conversational music and so forth. But by and large, it strived for the same goals, totally intonation wise, as music since 1700 have been striving for when the Welch Hans club here came into the picture, and all instruments and all

00:41:22.580 - 00:41:39.800

voices were made to conform to that system. Before that, we know that things are quite different. Concept of intonation, that the natural expression kind of intonation was the kind of intonation.

00:41:39.860 - 00:41:54.880

Do you think that there is something social involved here as well as something esthetic that is besides the weakness of third string music as it existed in the hands of Gunther Henze? Do you suppose that if racial integration had become a reality

00:41:55.120 - 00:42:08.100

and become meaningful, that Negro music jazz musicians in particular, might have been more willing to take their music in direction of blending it, or trying to blend it with the European tradition. Well,

00:42:08.100 - 00:42:31.760

I think the Ellington did a beautiful job of merging his music and the music of his people into the European state that Ellington's European parallel made, maybe, say, Davies Avenue is like in Ellington, right? I mean, yeah,

00:42:31.820 - 00:42:48.880

realizing what the reality real music is, and then developing out of that same Stroud. I think that Arrington did that, and I'm surprised that in the light of, I guess,

00:42:48.940 - 00:43:02.940

in light of the way that he did, we can only conclude that maybe shell or John Lewis just were not strong enough individuals, and so they either had to be, you know, they could show what they had learned from both innings, but they couldn't quite

00:43:02.940 - 00:43:13.620

put it together in their own way. And everyone seems to want to put it together well, I think the thing is just to be, you know, and being true to yourself,

00:43:14.760 - 00:43:26.480

that you, that you, that you want to make your own statement. I think that they were doing that, but I think that they were sort of weakening themselves to do with that statement may not have been very interesting when you come down their own

00:43:26.600 - 00:43:39.560

statement may have been a contradiction in itself, contradictory when you can't pull it together, you know, and make it say one thing, overall contradictions in anybody's work. But the question

00:43:39.560 - 00:43:56.620

is, the weight of the contradiction shouldn't outweigh the weight of the unity. The contradiction shouldn't destroy the unity of the museum. But look at some of Schiller's earlier composition and some pieces that he wrote in

00:43:56.620 - 00:44:15.720

a 12 tone style with a well crafted and very logically put together. I mean, that's good music. It was just when he was trying to involve Martin jazz quartet with an orchestra that he did, he that he really, it really didn't go as far as it

00:44:15.720 - 00:44:33.320

should have. I mean, there was a beginning of something there, and yet, maybe if the idiom had just been a little fresher and just a little more of a synthesis than it was been a third stream music, I think that would just be the third stream

00:44:33.320 - 00:44:59.920

music up to Cesar Tara is an example, and synthesized them into his own idiom. It always comes out. And you know that he's been exposed and exposed to it, and he's aware of many of all the great music of these times and in history, and so.

00:45:00.000 - 00:45:19.800

Was, I mean, a very well started, knowledgeable musician, but it all comes out him, Dodie Ellington and now Marcus, another film. People. It wasn't that monk had heard pieces by Weldon. It was just that monk sort of naturally evolved out of

00:45:19.800 - 00:45:38.540

himself, and coincidentally, just because it was 1940 or 1950 these times is sort of dissonance, parallel in the air. I mean, certainly in New York, monk is the sound of New York

00:45:40.220 - 00:45:57.220

the same way that paper and maybe the sound of war sometimes discussing getting away from my experience of like the founder conception. Do you think that this is one reason why pianos seem to be used less than many of the newer groups?

00:45:59.020 - 00:46:23.120

I don't think so. I think that the piano, pianist. There really aren't that many piano players. A pianist is very rare individual, somebody who can really play the piano, because somehow he's got to organize semitones into

00:46:24.860 - 00:46:48.040

combinations of sound that will express his voice, his singing. And we know that the voice and singing involve a lot more than just putting together of semitone. Let's say I successive melodic line made up of combinations of semitones. The

00:46:48.040 - 00:47:07.380

voice is just not that way. It's not natural for the voice to be that way, and it's not and the voice doesn't express itself fully that way either. A piano player has a rare talent of being able to confuse his own vocal sound into an instrument

00:47:08.820 - 00:47:31.820

that resists just that up breathing like a little corpse exactly rhythmically, we know that What piano stands it's like any other percussion instrument, but only as far as its pitch goes. That is where the pianist has to have that rare time.

00:47:32.300 - 00:47:45.640

And because this is especially imperative in the new music, that's why you find a few piano players, yeah. See, it's much more demanding to be vocal in the new music to be able to express yourself less and less of the

00:47:45.640 - 00:48:07.440

Brahms of piano players that lean heavily upon sock in the fifth chord changes and so forth, the giants of the piano happened. We know that Tara was able to express himself sort of conversationally and Gulch on the piano, and that certainly

00:48:07.440 - 00:48:26.660

Cecil Tara definitely Ellington. Ellington's approach is basically percussive, but his sound is an extension of his emotion and his voice and in his sound, you can hear the kind of dissonance that I'm talking about

00:48:26.660 - 00:48:38.420

that expresses vocalization. Sidney Finkel signed an article many years ago in the jazz review in which he discussed the difference between what he called rhythm dominated music and speech inflected music. Love of Kees, we've been talking

00:48:38.420 - 00:48:48.280

about speech inflected piano players and music sounds like speech sounds like absolutely the bottom of jazz and folk music is a reflection of

00:48:49.720 - 00:49:09.300

speech, of conversational form, of talking form that is in predetermined form. We know we saw this one, when Charlie Parker played well for our blues the way he broke it down to fit his way of talking. Jazz

00:49:09.300 - 00:49:22.820

musicians, in fact, do talk like they play, and even to leaving out parts of sentences, because that would be where they would pause making a melodic statement. Perhaps I don't, I don't really know about all this

00:49:24.980 - 00:49:36.920

talking to them. It's like they don't. You will be able to, I know I know them by the sound of their voice, but in many cases, everything is done by inference. Like it could be obvious to come back to the tonic at the end of every 12

00:49:36.920 - 00:49:56.380

bars and blues. In some way, you can have a sentence, and then, you know, to finish a sentence, and then you know it's been alleged by certain writers of new music lacks form, structure and so on.

00:49:56.920 - 00:50:17.460

How about you believe such charges to be where? Well, if you do it as I do, that form can be two things, first of all, the way things happen. And secondly, the way, the way that you would like things to happen. I think that

00:50:18.360 - 00:50:39.560

form is sort of a compromise between the two we can talk about, I think what you mean by form is actually any structure, say, let's say time. Form has to be just 12 hours, and then you always want to come down on one and at the end of 12 hours. And

00:50:39.560 - 00:51:03.060

you always make this clear, my musical tradition is sort of Duke elemental. Charles Armstrong. I mean, I've always felt that it was the bar lines that these people were breaking down. And certainly it has always been a form of basis, in

00:51:03.060 - 00:51:14.940

just the way that they phrase, I mean, in the way that they put down statements, there's enough form there to make it very intelligent and very comprehensible. This then, seems to be a confusion on the part of these

00:51:14.940 - 00:51:23.780

writers between one specific kind of form and form in general. They're claiming that since you don't have the kind of form that they are accustomed to. You don't have any form at all, yeah,

00:51:24.920 - 00:51:43.120

well, we're talking about, I think, basically a time form. A lot of people say, well, we don't hear the melody. It's a melodic form that they're used to. And as I say, if they if they could realize that form is really kind of a marriage

00:51:43.120 - 00:51:58.540

between what you would like to happen and what is happening then and what does happen. And I think that they would probably be more in tune with what's going on with the music. Do you think social attitudes influence the way they

00:51:58.540 - 00:52:10.920

view the music? That is Do you think that they may be opposed to what some of the musicians stand for, and they're letting this color they're out of the employment music. What do the music? What does the music stand for? What

00:52:12.900 - 00:52:28.460

the musicians employ the music stand for? Perhaps they recall from some of the statements of musicians that they consider to be social radicals and their social conservatism helps in shaping their musical views as well as their political

00:52:29.960 - 00:52:46.360

whatever these people, whatever kind of music these people make, they're going to take personal offense at what they hear. Well, that seems like they've been preconditioned sort of verbally. But that all has to do with their attitude and listening

00:52:46.360 - 00:53:02.880

too, I guess, as well as their intellectual bias. So I guess they're being consistent with themselves. They're conservative on a musical level. Yeah. I guess if your thinking is that way, your listening is going to be like that,

00:53:03.780 - 00:53:20.040

especially if you're listening to be reassured. Do artists have a responsibility to educate their audience, in your opinion, that is educated in ways other than just a musical Well, an audience, I think that the artist's main responsibility

00:53:20.040 - 00:53:37.940

to himself and to his audience, is to play his music always to the best that he can. I mean, I find this national thing to do, so I just mentioned it in passing, that that's what is being done. And certainly this is the best education that an

00:53:37.940 - 00:53:51.040

audience could ever have. Someone standing up there and really giving their all. Yeah, so I definitely think that audience is being educated. They're finding out every everything about this person,

00:53:52.900 - 00:54:09.780

Charles Moore in Detroit. Remember when you said this? We're out there and we're doing everything on the stand we're talking about what changes society, other things we musicians. We're doing everything we can because we're

00:54:09.780 - 00:54:30.440

on the stand as honestly as we can. Now it's up to you to do your thing. Is growing as we're doing our thing, which seems main task is to do his thing. The people,

00:54:32.300 - 00:54:46.480

people who are on the receiving end, will respond similarly, yeah, I think that they'll want to be just as strong of themselves as a matter of fact, I like it when I'm playing with an audience where some people say I love it and some people

00:54:46.480 - 00:55:06.660

are saying I hate it, because, you know, you're not at all. Everybody's out there, you know, 100% for good or bad, and it's really the controversy over. Of somebody who's playing is all part of the music and makes just that much more electricity. And

00:55:06.660 - 00:55:28.880

much to be preferred to indifference. Oh, well, indifference is that's the thing. People can't make up their mind. I get impatient. I have no time for that because I like to see people with the direction emotions

00:55:31.940 - 00:55:45.280

when I decide that teaching and playing are really more similar than mine, because in both cases, you put yourself out there and you want the people that you're doing it for to react, and they don't react. I accuse myself, and I suppose

00:55:45.280 - 00:55:55.960

many musicians accuse themselves too, and say, Well, we were just doing it strongly. We got the people. But you see, the thing is, if somebody has doesn't have a point of Hume, then you really can't understand what the I

00:55:55.960 - 00:56:25.400

would rather have somebody say. I'd rather have it there or there, or at least where I can see it, you know, so that I'll know what I'm saying. Yeah, no. Reaction is the most, most frustrating. The pieces. The last question to you, who are

00:56:25.400 - 00:56:40.580

the most influential artists playing the new music, and how do you go about making up your mind or determining those influential artists? Duke Ellington, new music. Duke Ellington, okay. Joe Morton, do

00:56:40.580 - 00:57:09.240

Mort, a good bluegrass man. James Brown music is the oldest music, right? That's the way I think of it.

00:57:13.440 - 00:57:38.780

Where were you born and who were you raised? Upstate Connecticut, yeah, and you took about a nice charm. You took a Bachelor of Arts in music. Did you have any post

00:57:38.780 - 00:57:55.720

graduates? No, my post graduate work has all been sort of private study, and really it's I think that I'm sort of disappointed in myself that I didn't listen to

00:57:55.720 - 00:58:15.000

my conscience, and I probably would have been here a lot sooner, because it was my instincts during the time that I was in college were telling me that the college was really here, where I am now. And of

00:58:15.180 - 00:58:38.660

course, I found that out when I got here. I should have spent my school years right here in New York, paying an environment which is really conducive to your doing it.

00:58:42.620 - 00:59:02.200

Weldon, it was a legitimate education thing to go to school. Ours was a silent generation get a good job when they found out. Is there anything you want to put down? What I haven't gotten to

00:59:02.920 - 00:59:31.580

I haven't gotten to one. Is perhaps the greatest musician of all time, because not only did

00:59:31.580 - 00:59:54.100

he compose and write music, but he orchestrated performers into this music. And I don't think that that has really ever been done in the sense that he did it. I mean, it's been done since then, but I don't think it's been done to the extent that

00:59:54.100 - 01:00:05.460

he's done it, almost like he's made it impossible for anyone to do it, because they all know that competing will be building them driving by. Mother No. But the thing is, Ellington took individual

01:00:05.460 - 01:00:24.140

styles, improvising composers in their own light, on instruments, very good, very good performers, very good improvisers, very personal styles, and integrated them all into a performance music. He made music this way by putting these people together.

01:00:24.140 - 01:00:50.800

Now we have now improvisers all over the place. I mean, marvelous improvisers, imaginative improvisers, only talking in the idiom of now, and I've seen people like Cesar Tara has been one who have felt drew on his performance, Mingus. But

01:00:50.800 - 01:01:09.420

then somehow Mingus, you know, there's a chant, Mingus comes off as well as he as much as he doesn't come off. I think Cecil are very high, uneven, yeah. But I think somebody like Tara, you see, he has the overall structure together, which, which

01:01:09.420 - 01:01:24.440

is what Ellington had, that overall structure, not just a matter of putting one guy in after another, or putting this guy here and this other guy behind him, you really have to have concept of a whole. Battle Zone, an overall framework, and

01:01:24.440 - 01:01:44.860

then, like a succession of people going on within them, that is something that I think we're going to be seeing more. I know that this has always been my feeling about music, that my performances aren't up to standard unless I really drawn

01:01:44.860 - 01:02:00.220

on the potential of people that I'm playing, the better the people I'm playing, the worse I feel if they if they really didn't get themselves out of there, or even if my music didn't entice them into playing something that they never played

01:02:00.220 - 01:02:13.680

before. So there is a restriction on individualism. One while turned out to be not desirable. After all, not to have individualism, that's never what I said, not to have totally unrestrained

01:02:13.680 - 01:02:31.040

individualism. No, no, I would never see this. You're always about to be thinking of an overall structure. That is the only thing that is really when I've been through the experience of a

01:02:31.040 - 01:02:44.560

performance, that is the first thing that I think about, that I reflect on, is like a whole process of performance, all the events of the diplomacy, and whether they add up or not. So then there is an interaction

01:02:44.560 - 01:03:00.660

between individual and the group that's definitely, definitely, and we've seen that certain people have been able to set this up much more successfully than other people. They seem to have, they seem to have a concept of form that kind

01:03:00.660 - 01:03:17.580

of goes beyond the people of the greatest composers, you know, except that they didn't have real improvisers. They didn't draw on that potential expert dialectician, that is, they could work out the dialectic

01:03:17.580 - 01:03:35.600

between the group and the individual. They could conceive of the music that has been two sides, one side of the organic spectrum, I don't think and allergen has been an event in history that,

01:03:35.600 - 01:03:54.880

to me, is just overwhelming. I just, I world, just just have acclimated what he's done is marvel at what he's done. I think this has been such a contribution to music, such a fantastic contribution. I

01:03:54.880 - 01:04:11.040

would just, I think that we could just sort of destroy all the synthesizers of these machines that they're working on electronic music, and I think we could just sort of throw all that out, and with all the color and all the imagination the

01:04:12.060 - 01:04:30.200

performers nowadays and all the sounds that they can get out of their instruments, just talking about the individuals, somebody to bring them together and to integrate them, and Linley has the ability to do this is going to make fantastic music.

01:04:31.460 - 01:04:43.120

Unfortunately, I think I'll have some ingrained prejudices and musicians themselves to overcome, because not so much with this new generation, but with their immediate predecessors. They have been fairly indoctrinated with

01:04:43.120 - 01:04:54.940

religion and individualism, and that's what they believe, where their own salvation lies to be. But I mean now everybody's sitting down in a section of the band, and each one is playing a note, and together they all play

01:04:54.940 - 01:05:07.650

a chord at the same time, it seems to me, being rather hip. Critical, if they say they are being very individualistic, because certainly they're paying lip service, or they're gentle to something which is,

01:05:08.730 - 01:05:30.200

to me, very unreal. Sometimes I think the whole music is about to speak for the environment. It does have to be worked out between the individual.

01:05:30.200 - 01:05:39.860

But that was the thing that Dave That was a European thing that was Charles inherited, and not only European, but, I mean, it's almost an inherent in a machine culture. You want any standardized musician the way

01:05:39.860 - 01:06:04.320

you standardize parts so you know that, just like if you take one Carly, place it with another one, exactly, you can go into any city and get a panel There by changes. I think the Cecil Tara was one of the people that really heard

01:06:04.320 - 01:06:15.660

bud Powell. I've heard a lot of Bud Powell limited. Barry Harrison. Barry Harrison everything he heard belonging he did not.

01:06:16.800 - 01:06:27.920

Barry Harrison didn't hear the cracks. He liked bun Powell. Barry Harrison didn't hear the corners. Harrison here the corners. Well, they heard what they wanted to hear.

01:06:28.640 - 01:06:41.980

Sonny Stroud has really made a contribution, I think, in his own way. I think that Cecil Tara is one of the few people that really heard what bud Powell is doing, because

01:06:47.140 - 01:07:05.220

dead, some of the positions that he put himself in when he was improvising someone. I mean, just what, where it was going music, when Bud was playing, where he took it. You know, I don't think anybody else has ever taken it, except Cecil. I

01:07:05.220 - 01:07:22.760

think Cecil really heard that aspect of Bud's playing, that dark side of what's playing that very few people have ever gotten involved in. You know, they hear, sort of along the surface to really heard everything that God did.

01:07:22.760 - 01:07:44.260

They didn't hear the part of Bob that heard Thelonious one, I think, into the piano a little more. Yeah. But if you try to reconstruct Bob Harrison, for example,

01:07:44.260 - 01:08:12.720

you've never known his thinking was influenced by that aspect. Charles Lloyd, in the sense now, Weldon, but Charles still doesn't have this,

01:08:14.400 - 01:08:36.080

because the feeling is there when you can't is, is the fundamental expression of man's feelings. That's at least, that's where your first sense, yeah, that's where you sense his maturation. To listen to

01:08:36.080 - 01:08:50.200

Archie's records, Russell and Archie's records now, I mean, it's one case, a youth who was trying to orient and thought or what it is that he wants to say

01:08:53.020 - 01:09:11.520

that's such as My impression somebody showed me in the data, and I doing the blindfold test, and they played one of Archie's Weldon said that sounds like John Davies With a sore throat.

01:09:14.580 - 01:09:20.360

To me at all. That's the Yeah.