Jeff Watts on Billy Higgins

This is from Ted Panken's memorial drummers' roundtable on Billy Higgins, broadcast on WKCR after Billy Higgins's death in 2001. Here Jeff Watts talks about what Higgins meant to him:

I first began to collect jazz records around 1978 and 1979, just obvious things like Art Blakey and Philly Joe Jones and Max Roach.  By a certain point I was able to identify people like that and Roy Haynes, but every once in a while I would get fooled, because I would hear a drummer who would have a certain sound in his cymbal beat that had like a street thing in it, and it was kind of reminiscent of Art Blakey but something was different about it. 

I kind of became able to identify his style just through a process of elimination, just through seeing the range of things he was able to do.  I think a lot of the things that are going to be said about him are going to be a bit redundant, as far as unique touch and his spiritual quality and the way he could conjure up things that are African and play beats that… Like many of the great jazz drummers, they would tend to put a personal stamp on things from the Caribbean and Latin America, find their own ways of playing Latin music that would in turn influence the Latin drummers.  Things like that, and the boogaloo beat he played that’s unsurpassed that I think people will be sampling twenty years from now— if they’re still doing that stuff. 

But I didn’t see him much until I came to New York, and seeing him is a whole nother trip, because you see how he goes about doing his thing.  The ease and the economy of motion he had… Probably the closest thing for me to seeing someone like Papa Jo Jones, someone that I  never got to see in person— that ease with the instrument. 

Whenever you’re trying to learn about this music, at least the way my mind works, I’ll try to put things together and get a combination of this and that.  But after seeing the breadth of his wisdom and his career, I’ve started to recognize someone who had a very organic relationship with life and with music.  Even though he had a lot of specific information under his hands and in his mind, at the moment when he interacted with the music it was like an environmental thing.  Whatever he was in the middle of, he would just find something really special for that music, something that you couldn’t just figure out.  A lot of is experience, but a lot of it is just having a very natural relationship with life and with people.  You’d see how he interacts and talks with people that I’m sure he never met before, but he would just be like a regular brother and very-very cool.

Much more at Panken's site— go read the whole thing.

Ed Blackwell on playing with Monk

Another choice bit from Ted Panken's interview with Blackwell— Blackwell played with Monk in 1972:

I’ll tell you what happened with Monk. During the course of the gig, after about a week… He used to give me a lot of solos. Then one night we were playing, and he gave me a solo, and I played, you know, and after he came off the stand he come over to me and he said, “You know, you ain’t no Max Roach.” [LAUGHS] And I don’t know why he told me that! He just danced away. Wilbur Ware was in that group also.

I remember a story Art Taylor told me about Monk. He was playing with Monk in Chicago, and Monk had stopped letting him solo. So during the course of intermission, he came over, and A.T. said, “You know, you cut off my solos, man. You used to give me little solos. Why don’t you let me play?” So he said when they went back up to the set, Monk went to the mike and said, “We will now hear a solo by our drummer.” And that was it!

Ed Blackwell on playing the Five Spot with Ornette

From Ted Panken's 1986 interview with Ed Blackwell on WKCR NY:

So when you got to New York, you found yourself in the midst of the scene that was shaking New York’s art community to the core.
EB: Right. Well, I’ll tell you. The day I got a taxi to the front of the Five Spot. We went into the Five Spot, and Ornette pulled out his horn, and Don Cherry, we ran over our tunes, and he said, “Fine.” We went home and changed clothes and came back to work that night. And we worked there steadily for seven months, six nights a week straight.

Six nights a week will sure make a band tight.
EB: That’s right! We were doing quite a lot of recordings, you know. And he was writing quite frequently; he was writing a lot of the tunes.

Describe the way sets went down at the Five Spot. Were the pieces similar length to the records? Did you stretch out more?
EB: During this time most of the clubs were featuring two bands a night. There would be four sets. Ornette would play two sets and the visiting band would play two sets. This was going on for like six nights a week. We had a chance really to stretch out during our sets. Sometimes Ornette would stretch out our set, and sometimes he would just cut them a little shorter, depending on what mood he was in. But it was always intense. A lot of times we would rehearse all day and then come to work that night, and everybody was always geared up to play. The energy that flowed through that band was phenomenal.

Did people ever sit in?
EB: No. No, not too many people were sitting in with the band. [LAUGHS]

Andrew Cyrille interview by Ted Panken

Here's another in my series of choice, drummer-relevant bits of other people's interviews, this time with Andrew Cyrille, by Ted Panken:

Ted Panken: Are there different challenges for you in dealing with, let's say, the less pulse oriented forms of drum music? Did you have to develop new techniques or a different vocabulary?

Andrew Cyrille: That's an interesting question. Most of the time, I think about myself as using pieces of the language that I have learned from seeing and hearing the traditional greats, like Jo Jones, Max Roach, Philly Joe Jones and Baby Dodds or Frankie Dunlop and Rufus Jones in the big bands. Buddy Rich, to some degree, who was a speed merchant.

Ted Panken: That came in handy with Cecil!

Andrew Cyrille: Well, that's right! When I was working with Illinois Jacquet, he had Jo Jones in his head, and I had to give him some of it. On "Robbins Nest" and "Flying Home," certain things would happen that brought forth certain climaxes things that you might say were scientifically proven! They reached certain peaks, made certain descents, and returned to those peaks. You had to know what to do. Of course, I was young and didn't know a lot about Jo Jones, and sometimes I got frustrated because I couldn't give Jacquet everything he wanted all the time. Then, again, I don't necessarily think that I had to, because I was trying to find my own place and do my own stuff, which maybe he didn't like. He was stronger than I was. He was the bandleader, and I was finding my way. But still, he hired me.