IT SEEMS SO SIMPLE AND BASIC, BUT FEW ARTISTS EVER GRASP THE TRUTH OF IT. EVEN LOUIS ARMSTRONG ONCE SAID THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT ADVICE HE WAS EVER GIVEN WAS ‘DEVELOP A GOOD TONE SO PEOPLE WILL WANT TO LISTEN TO YA.’
IT SEEMS LIKE ALMOST EVERY ARTIST THESE DAYS JUST WANTS TO PLAY A LOT OF NOTES, BUT AS LESTER YOUNG USED TO REMARK, ‘NOT SAY ANYTHING.’
LEW TABACKIN IS ONE OF THE REMAINING JAZZ ARTISTS THAT GREW UP IN THE ERA OF BIG TONED TENORS LIKE DEXTER GORDON, SONNY ROLLINS AND GENE AMMONS. YES, NOTES ARE IMPORTANT, BUT THE SOUND BY WHICH THEY ARE DELIVERED IS PARAMOUNT.
NOT ONLY BEING ONE OF THE GREAT TENOR SAXISTS, TABACKIN PIONEERED THE JAZZ FLUTE, USING IT FOR MORE THAN JUST WINDOW DRESSING WHEN HE AND HIS WIFE TOSHIKO AKIYOSHI CREATED ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BIG BANDS OF THE 1970S. THE MIXTURE OF BEBOP AND JAPANESE HARMONIES WAS A REVELATION AT THE TIME, AND THE ALBUMS HAVE STOOD THE TEST OF TIME.
WE CAUGHT UP WITH TABACKIN ON THE THROES OF HIS LATEST ALBUM, SOUNDSCAPES, THAT FINDS HIM IN VINTAGE FORM ON BOTH INSTRUMENTS. HE TAKES TIME SO SHARE HIS THOUGHTS ON HIS CAREER AND THE ART OF BEING A MUSICIAN.
YOU GREW UP IN PHILADELPHIA, WHICH IS A VERY UNDERRATED JAZZ TOWN. WHAT WAS THE SCENE LIKE WHEN YOU GREW UP?
It was very good in a sense. I remember when I was just starting out at 15 trying to play the saxophone and there were a lot of jam sessions there. There was not a lot of negativity in the sense of “Hey, man, you can’t play here.” There was room for beginners to take part in these sessions, even though all of the good guys would play first.
It was pretty cool. There were a lot of coffee shows. I remember the smell of sawdust on the floor was like pizza. I was fairly active as a beginner and I remember during those days that there were some black clubs that I would play in which were really cool until the black revolution hit, and then they didn’t want to see any white guys there anymore.
The best part of it was that we had two major jazz clubs; we had Pep’s and The Showboat. They were about a block away, and every major jazz musician played at one of them. During the course of a week there would be major artists there. Pep’s even had occasional big bands that most people didn’t hear besides Count Basie, like the Quincy Jones Band. It was quite good because even though I was underage I was able to sneak in and hear every major group of my generation. I heard all of Coltrane’s groups, Monk’s groups, Mingus’ groups, Miles’ groups. It was a great place to grow up from a musical point of view.
I didn’t like the undercurrent of racism. There was a lot of prejudice; Philadelphia is basically a blue blood city. The Daughters of the American Revolution, and the white Mayflower people mentality which was really a drag. You could feel that as a non-Protestant; the undercurrent was quite negative.
There was even segregation within the jazz world. 512 We had separate musician’s unions, a black one and a white union. When we tried to integrate it the black union didn’t want to do it because they’d lose their power base; they had a much hipper scene than we did.
Even Grace Kelly had difficulties as she was Catholic and had to marry a prince some place to get credibility. (laughs)
We had a really heavy Vice Squad around town. They’d sneak into a club and hear some group and see guys that were not normal clients. I was afraid they were going to bust me, but the least of their worries was a 16 year old white kid sipping on a beer. They were narcotics guys; they really gave the black musicians a hard time.
YOU PLAYED IN A NUMBER OF BIG BANDS AT A YOUNG AGE.
I didn’t start off in big bands. I didn’t play in them until I moved to New York. The first thing I did when I got to New York was to try to go to as many places to sit in as possible because that’s the only way to meet people so they can hear you play.
I’m not that aggressive so it took me a lot to force myself to go.
I’ll give it to you in a nutshell: if you go around and play, people like your playing. If you’re white they assume you’re a good reader; if you’re black, they consider you a good jazz player and not necessarily a good reader. That was the kind of stereotypical thinking back in the mid 60s.
So, I wound up playing in big bands. I got some gigs in New York even though I had very little experience. It was on the job training. I played in about 5-6 bands at the same time, and I asked “Why am I doing this? Aren’t there any other guys around?”
One of the most important big band gigs I got was when I got a call to join the Cab Calloway Reunion Band. Check that out! I show up in New Jersey and there were all of these “old” guys; they seemed ancient back then, but now they’d seem young to me. All these old black guys, so why am I here? One guy, Eddie Barefield was on the floor doing pushups. He was good to me in my New York days.
Then I played with Larry Elgart’s band; he was really finicky. You had to really hold back as he wanted the sound to be soft and straight. He played alto; no vibrato-he didn’t even use a strap. I had to play under him!
So when I get to Calloway’s band, the lead alto guy is George Dorsey, a beautiful player along with Barefield and Sam “The Man” Taylor. I realized there that there were different ways to play and sound in a saxophone section. You don’t hold back; you try to match the playing, phrasing and concept of the first alto player. So that was a great education.
I also sat in with Elvin Jones when Joe Farrell was the tenor player Elvin told Joe when he couldn’t play to send me in, so Joe and I got pretty friendly. He sent me as a sub in Mel (Lewis’) band, so I’d sub for him and Eddie Daniels. I went between both chairs for quite awhile.
Clark Terry then started a band; it was an all star band. They’d be rehearsing; 1122I’d be at the musician’s bar, and Zoot Sims would be there. He said, “Hey man, Clark’s rehearsing a band and I don’t really want to do it; why don’t you do it?” It was with Phil Woods, Eddie Bank and Frank Wess 1245. Next week I made sure I was at the same place at the same time, and the same thing happened. I started playing in all these bands; Joe Henderson started a band and wanted me to play.
Chuck Israels used to write this real hard and cerebral music. Sort of like Stefan Wolpe meeting Bill Evans. I was starting to work real hard playing the flute at the time, so he wrote a lot of flute stuff for me in his band. That was a good experience; no one else really cared about my flute playing. That was my big band reality.
I never really started out to be a big band player. I wasn’t a great fan of the big bands. The Count Basie band that I liked was the one from the 30s with Lester Young. He was the king, along with Herschel Evans. Great head arrangements.
YOUR CAREER HAS THESE TWO OPPOSING LIVES; ONE WITH A TRIO AND THE OTHER WITH THE FAMOUS BIG BAND YOU STARTED WITH YOUR WIFE, TOSHIKO AKIYOSHI.
My own big band thing is interesting how it happened. I’m not good with years, but around the late 60s the quasi “black revolution” hit, and there was a lot of resistance to white musicians. My opportunities became a lot less. (Pianist) Duke Pearson, who was the A&R guy for Blue Note Records was trying to get me a record date, Randy Brecker a record date, but they weren’t recording any white guys.
One time at the Apollo Theater, Randy and I went there and they wouldn’t let us play any solos; we just had to sit in our chair. That’s how it was.
I got involved in this Doc Severinson project. Musically, it was pretty sad, but my income went from $4,000 a year to $19,000 a year, so I could afford to buy a stereo system and actually get a credit card. That led to some gigs on the Tonight Show.
The Tonight Show moved to Los Angeles, and Doc said “Why don’t you come on out to LA? I can guarantee you a certain amount of nights on the show.” So, we moved out to Los Angeles.
I soon learned that the way I played didn’t fit in. The old comedian Irwin Corey had a great line; he would introduce the band. His definition of “a few” was when the band comes on and the people go out.
That was my experience. My first night at (the famous jazz club) Donte’s I go in there, and we were preparing our writers to enter the commercial world, the utility world. Toshiko had written a few charts for Town Hall. I told her I’ll call some guys up and we’ll play some of her stuff.
In those days the Union Hall had a rehearsal facility for 50 cents an hour! Half a dollar! We’d reserve it every Wednesday and play her charts. They couldn’t figure it out; it was something that they’d never played before, not like Count Basie charts. It was a combination of bebop with some other stuff thrown in.
We finally wound up with compatible personnel, rehearsing every week. One thing lead to another and we did a concert, and got an opportunity to do an album for a Japanese company for a budget of $3200.
We managed to do it; John Lewis heard it and was very impressed. He got us a gig at the Monterrey Jazz Festival. In those days of the 60s-70s, the international press was really involved with the jazz festivals. The publicity got pretty intense “There’s a new band!” We started getting some gigs, and one thing lead to another to where it snowballed to something that we hadn’t intended it to be.
KOGUN FROM 1974 WAS THE FIRST RECORD, CORRECT?
Immediately in Japan it sold something like 30,000 copies. It was a big hit. Howard Rumsey was nice to us; we played a lot at Concerts By The Sea. He gave us a lot of opportunities.
One time we played there. We were trying to play together. Sometimes we’d get close and other times we didn’t. It was an evolution.
One night we had the epiphany; everything just clicked. From then on everything was cool. Even when the personnel changed the concept was established. The next guy to come in wouldn’t have a problem with it.
We had some nice gigs and we’d go up north a little bit. We’d always lose money on the road because I didn’t know how to handle it. We didn’t have a road manager, but the stuff I did with Doc Severinson subsidized it. (laughs)
IN RETROSPECT WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE IMPACT OF THAT BAND?
Mosaic Records reissued all of the old 70s stuff. I asked them why they didn’t do everything, as there’s tons of stuff that never came out in America. It was really well recorded and we had bigger budgets. They were only interested in the 70s.
I think that we made we made a really big impact because there were a lot of things that we did that had never been done before. The way Toshiko used woodwinds; no band ever had a woodwind section like that before. She started infusing Japanese cultural aspects to the music, as also much of her music were political pieces and powerful statements. She wasn’t just arranging tunes; these were full compositions and some of them were suites.
Her approach was very personal, along with a basic bebop influence and Charles Mingus
WHEN YOU PLAYED THE FLUTE OR PICOLLO WITH THE BAND, IT DIDN’T FEEL LIKE THE FLUTE WAS AN ARBITRARY CHOICE, LIKE FRANK WESS’ WORK WITH BASIE. IT SEEMED LIKE AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE COMPOSITION
She knew what I could do, what my sound was like. Her concept was to utilize the people in the band kind of like how Duke Ellington did. For example, (trombonist) Britt Woodman was in the band. She knew exactly how he would play something, so she would write something and she knew he would play it a certain way. It’s like when (Billy) Strayhorn would write stuff for Johnny Hodges.
Even in the ensembles she knew how people would play, so that was basically her style. That’s the sign of a musician who understands her music.
I GUARANTEE NO ONE HAS EVER ASKED YOU ABOUT YOUR SESSIONS WITH TOM WAITS!
That was kind of interesting. At that point I was playing with Shelly Manne; we had a group together. When I first came to LA, I wasn’t real happy with the rhythm sections here. But, I was kind of lucky and met Billy Higgins, so we started to play together. That was really great. Magnificent. Also Shelly Manne, another great player.
So, Shelly had this recording with Tom Waits. He recommended me to do it. Shelly, myself and Jim Hughart, a really good bass player.
We get to the studio, and (Waits’) producer was a recording engineer. He said, “We’re going to do everything direct; no multi-tracking. Everything is like the old days.”
Tom comes in; he’s wearing a three piece funky suit with a T shirt. He’s got a greasy paper bag with all of the lyrics written on it. He starts playing the piano a little bit and says “OK, we’re gonna play this tune blah, blah, blah. Can you play something like this?”
That was it. We had no charts or anything. That’s how the session went; it was like early rap music or something. The three of us just played whatever it was, and it came out all right, I guess.
The funny thing about it was about ten years ago I went to a restaurant where we’d made a reservation. The guy at the counter sees my name, “Oh, you’re the guy on the tenor on that Tom Waits record!” All of a sudden I’m famous! It was a positive experience with him.
ONE OF YOUR DISTINCTIVES, WHETHER ON TENOR OR FLUTE, IS YOUR STRONG TONE. WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF TODAY’S SOUND? WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOUNG TENOR SAX PLAYERS?
I’m old enough now that I’m sometimes invited to hear someone, and I think they play well, but their tone sucks.
I can show them a couple of things right off the bat; usually they’re closing off their throat. They’ve seen to many pictures of Coltrane, so their head is down. If they’d just raise their head about an inch the sound will already get about 20% better.
After that, I’ll tell them “if you’re really interested, come on over and I’ll show you some stuff.” I’ve developed a couple of exercises that are boring, but they really work.
But, no one’s really interested. They don’t hear it. You have to want to produce a certain kind of sound. And if you really hear it, no matter what you do, no matter how wrong you do it, it will still come out. But it’s just not interesting to them. 2920 Everything now has gotten to be more of a technical thing. These guys can play really fast and play all kinds of patterns, but it starts getting like a European style as opposed to the jazz tradition.
I’m waiting for the next person to come up with traditional values, but willing to extend the tradition. Not destroy it. I hear a lot of players, but they sound like classical players.
I remember I was with Lee Konitz, and we heard a certain tenor sax playing. Lee really liked him. I said, “Well, he’s really fine but I don’t hear the jazz sensibility or language.” That’s the grumpy old man, I guess!
I DON’T THINK IT’S A MATTER OF HOW OLD YOU ARE, IT’S JUST A QUESTION OF WHAT THE PURPOSE OF PLAYING THE SOLO WAS.
Lester Young used to say, “Where’s the story?”
That’s another thing; the narrative approach to playing. When I play the flute it’s like 100% narrative. Everything I play is trying to paint a picture, something visual.
Even the saxophone, while playing a tune you can create a narrative. Sometimes I’m successful, sometimes I’m not. But the attempt is there, and that’s the important thing.
If you pick up your horn, you should try to say something. I have a grandson trying to play the saxophone and I’m trying to teach him. I say “Here’s your chance. You can do all the things you can’t do as a person. You can’t hit somebody, or scream at somebody, but you’re playing the saxophone, so you can!”
You can curse out people. We used to do that on the bandstand. One guy would get up and play some thing and it’s obviously some kind of a put down, and you answer him back. It’s kind of fun. Just getting to the point where you can express yourself. Warm feelings…anything you want to say through your instrument. Do that instead of just worrying about laying notes.
YOU HAD GONE A FEW YEARS BETWEEN ALBUMS. WHAT’S THE IMPETUS FOR THIS LATEST ONE?
3315 There’s this guy that’s been bugging me for years; he’s a photographer, Jimmy Katz. He said, “Man, you’ve got a special sound; you’ve got to make a recording.”
Now, I don’t feel it so great to make a recording. One of the reasons is that I don’t like it is that when you make a recording, the engineer wants you to stand a certain way in a certain place. You can’t move; you can’t do this or that. I find it unnatural.
All of my last recordings were “live.” I did one in Japan, then one in Paris. 3355 I get a better result when I do it that way. It’s more natural.
But Jimmy was bugging me to do it, in kind of like a “live” style. We did it in a drum shop that used to be a recording studio. He had a system where we were set up real close; no separation, and we pretty much just played.
The only problem that I had was that it was difficult to play the flute in that environment because it was a “dead” environment. When I play the flute I want to hear a certain sound, as the sound and the room go together. If you play in a beautiful sounding room the flute sounds great so it’s easier to play.
I tried it, but it didn’t work. I came back and did the flute stuff later. I figured out in my head how to approach it and then the engineer was able to impose a room sound, which is quite good. I’m quite impressed with it.
A lot of stuff I do on the flute no one does.
ONE OF THE BENEFITS OF SEEING YOU PERFORM IN CONCERT IS THAT YOU ARE VERY VISUAL. YOU MOVE AROUND! 353
When I play the flute, I usually just walk around in front of the band and play. We did a gig yesterday at Rutgers University that had no microphone, so I just played my solos and it was cool.
I’m very serious about the flute; as I get older I get more serious and work hard at it. A lot of classical flute players really like my playing. They even write me letters that I’m a great addition to the flute world, and some classical players are jealous of my sound! It’s very encouraging and I like to learn from them. I’m still working on my duality.
YOU’VE PLAYED WITH SOME OF JAZZ’S GREATEST DRUMMERS: SHELLY MANNE, BILLY HIGGINS AND ELVIN JONES. WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE A TENOR SAX PLAYER CAN TELL A DRUMMER TO MAKE A HORN PLAYER HAPPY?
You can’t say it in one word. Just listen to Billy Higgins, because Billy Higgins understands the dynamics; he understands the intensity. Most drummers feel like they have to kick your ass. Billy Higgins always played off of the intensity of the horn player. So, if you’re playing intense, he’s intense; if you’re not intense then he’s not.
Don’t expect the drummer to provide the time for you or provide the intensity for you. It’s the traditional approach of the drummer to kick your ass, and you’re just surviving. It’s supposed to be more of a collaborative thing.
In a trio situation, there are spaces. If he’s intuitive, he’ll know what to do with that space. It’s a lot more interactive than you would think. It’s not like hammering out the time.
If you tell a drummer to play soft, he immediately plays the brushes. It’s not like that; it’s not the point. You have to be able to control the stick so you can play soft or intense. Create a whole dynamic range.
When you play, you don’t want to start too intense; there’s no place for it to go. All these things are part of the narrative; what are we trying to say?
IS THERE ANYTHING AS FAR AS PHILOSOPHY OR RELIGION THAT KEEPS YOU MOTIVATED WITH LIFE?
I should, but I don’t (laughs). There used to be some books in my life that were influential. When I was a teenager I was into existential thought by Jean Paul Sartre. I also got interested in Miyamoto Musashi’s approach to discipline and practice. The last few years I’ve read all of the (Haruki) Murakami books. They were kind of interesting in the world of which a dream and which is reality.
My weakness is that I get so involved in little minutiae. Trying to get my sound right; how come it sounds too bright? I’m self-critical. That’s another reason why recording is always a chore for me; I’m never happy with what I do, so I stay away from it.
BUT THAT’S THE SIGN OF A TRUE PILGRIM. ALWAYS PRESSING FORWARD.
I’m in the “becoming” world; I’m still in the process. One philosopher said, “You know what the human condition is? You can’t win, but you can try.”
FEW ARTISTS THESE DAYS CAN BE IDENTIFIED WITHIN 1-2 BARS BY THEIR TONE. LEW TABACKIN HAS HIS FINGERPRINTS AVAILABLE ON BOTH TENOR SAX AND FLUTE, NO SMALE FETE. HIS AKIYOSHI-TABACKIN BIG BAND RECORDINGS ARE FOR THE AGES, AND HIS SMALL GROUP ALBUMS ARE SIMPLY INSPIRING. IF YOU AREN’T FAMILIAR WITH THIS LEGEND, YOU’RE MISSING OUT ON SOME OF THE GREATEST SOUNDS FROM AMERICA’S GREATEST MUSIC.