Jamming with Trumpeter Biodun Batik

Blowing tenor up on the roof at Bogobiri in Ikoyi, Lagos late last month, I was approached by a gentleman who handed me his business card – it said Biodun Adebiyi B., Department of Theatre Arts and Music, Lagos State University – and gave the “call me” hand signal. So I did; I called him the next afternoon. He introduced himself as Biodun Batik, trumpeter and lecturer in music. He had been playing downstairs at a jazz event with his band while I played upstairs. He heard the sound of a saxophone and came up to introduce himself. On the phone he identified himself a fan of Clifford Brown and we discussed music we liked in common – hard bop, Jazz Messengers... He invited me to his house to jam.

After work one evening last week I went to his place in Egbeda, another district of Lagos. On the map it was not far from where I work in Ikeja, but in the nightmarish Lagos traffic it took almost two hours of sheer punishment to get there. It was worth it, though. When I arrived at his house there was a full studio in semi-open air, with drum set, keyboards, and amplifiers. His guitarist Kazzy and bassist Mike were there too, set up and jamming. We had never played together before and didn't have a chance to discuss tunes. I pulled out Blues March based on our earlier phone conversation and we jumped straight into it in unison, Biodun showcasing his fluegelhorn. Really nice sound. He then went into Equinox on keyboards (without asking, how did he know it is one of my faves?) and switched to drums when I started my solo – his drumming is as impressive as his horn playing. We continued through a set mostly of my choosing since I had my book with me – stuff I am comfortable with like Watermelon Man, Night In Tunisia, Moanin’. We ended with Blue Train. I recorded the night on my Zoom and you can hear some of the tracks by clicking on the track names that are highlighted. I even had a go on the drums which is a blast and got me thinking I should buy a kit, which I’m sure the neighbors would appreciate (…not).

The next day I googled Biodun Batik and came to find out that he is one of Nigeria’s most famous and well traveled brass players. He spent two years in Fela’s Egypt 80 (alongside Showboy on bari), from 1989 to 1991, and has played and recorded with a virtual Who’s Who of Nigerian old-school stars including Sunny Okosuns and Tony Allen. Here is a long article in Nigerian Compass profiling him. Probably the best trumpeter I've had the pleasure of playing alongside. Hopefully more jams and some gigs to come. Again, unfortunately, he bemoaned the current state of the Nigerian live music scene and doesn't gig with his own band, Batik, as often as he would like. But he made his name in the heyday of Nigerian music and earned his stripes from the demanding master, Fela, who only selected the best sidemen.

Hidden Gems – Billie Harris and Joe Alexander

I've been listening to jazz and improvised music steadily since the 1970's and am constantly exploring new music with a heavy emphasis on saxophone players, especially tenor sax players. Many, if not most, of the players I like have absolutely no commercial following. Just when I thought I’d heard them all, last week I stumbled upon two hidden gems of saxophone playing – from different times and places, but great nonetheless and definitely worth seeking out and listening to. If players this great can go through life without having a visible impact on the music or attaining any sort of wide recognition, is there any hope for the rest of us minor league players?

The first hidden gem is Billie Harris of Los Angeles. I recently heard his album I Want Some Water for the first time, recorded in 1980 and released much later on Nimbus.

Billie’s album is dominated by legendary L.A. pianist Horace Tapscott, and in some ways it is as much Tapscott’s session as Billie’s even though Billie wrote all the tunes; Tapscott is just such a commanding presence. I'm not a great jazz piano aficionado but I find anything that Horace Tapscott comes close to worth a listen. Billie plays tenor, soprano, and flute. His tenor, from photos of the session, is a Martin Committee, which proves that you don’t need to play a Selmer to get that spiritual ‘Coltrane sound’. Photographer Mark Weber was at the studio that day, apparently Billie’s only time on record, and has memorialized the day on his web site. Billie Harris is still around, at age 76, and lives in Lancaster, California. Time for another studio date, better late than never? 

The second hidden gem is Joe Alexander, who spent his career in Cleveland and left behind only one recording of his own, the quartet session Blue Jubilee on Jazzland from 1960 (he also appears in a larger group setting on Tadd Dameron's Fontainebleau).

Apparently Joe had quite a local following but never broke out to the national scene. There is an entire web page dedicated to his story on the city of Cleveland’s web site. He is a tough hard bopper who doesn't make a single wrong move on his record, and was good enough a player that Cannonball Adderley produced Blue Jubilee with the rhythm section of Bobby Timmons, Sam Jones, and Tootie Heath! I wonder how many other players this great and unheralded graced America’s lounges and bar rooms in my father’s generation? Joe died at the young age of 41 in 1970. I'm sure being a saxophonist during the 1950's and 60's didn't come with health care. Check out his disc which has been re-released on Fresh Sound.

I find it refreshing that the music itself is so deep that after almost 40 years of listening, there is still plenty of great stuff out there waiting to be discovered.

Sitting In at Bogobiri, Ikoyi – Audio Tracks

After a year, I finally found a decent place to play in Lagos – Bogobiri House in Ikoyi*, one of the most interesting and friendly spots in this too-harsh environment. Bogobiri is a small boutique hotel tucked in a residential neighborhood that features an in-house art gallery and at least three live music venues on premise, decorated throughout with one-off Africanisms. Bogobiri celebrates Nigeria in a way that many of today’s consumption-driven wannabe hipsters wish to ignore. I found the place refreshing. Check out the web site at http://www.bogobiri.com (admittedly, more hotel- than music-oriented).

Last Sunday night, I was invited to sit in at Bogobiri’s outdoor rooftop stage with Jagger and his rock band. There was a local jazz event going on simultaneously downstairs. I came with my tenor at 4 to rehearse but a private party had booked the space and that didn't happen. I sat around for a couple of hours and simply took my chances when the gig started at 7. I haven’t gigged much at all this year but have taken Monk’s advice to Steve Lacy to heart, “Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig, + when it comes, he’s out of shape + can’t make it.”

I had neither met nor played with Jagger before; there was no rehearsal, no sheet music, no set list, no notes at all. His music was rock, pop, highlife, reggae, and blues. I didn't know what the tunes were until I heard them. No pre-determined solos, no patterns to fit, no memorized parts; I had to find the key, listen to the tempo, the rhythm, the form, the cadence, the drummer’s signals, watch the eye contact. Spontaneous creation, I had to listen with my ears. The music only existed in that moment and can’t be repeated. After the gig, I thought about an interview I had read with the late saxophonist Bob Berg, where he expressed that no matter how good a musician he was, he constantly lived in fear of being discovered as a fraud since he was essentially “faking it” every time he improvised. But Sunday night, the feedback was good. 

This was the first time in ages that I actually liked some of the recordings. I've posted two tunes from Sunday that you can download and listen to – Kuchi Kuchi, a highlife tune, and Bob Marley’s Turn Your Lights Down Low. Although the equipment wasn't great and there were typical problems with mikes and cables, Jagger’s set up was clear and well balanced, and I also solved some technical problems with my Zoom recorder. In retrospect, it is like the music was playing itself for a change. 

* Shades of Fela’s Ikoyi Blindness from 1976 – Ikoyi is an expensive up-scale neighborhood in this nation of 90% poverty – Ikoyi Blindness refers to those social climbers whose behavior is oblivious to the situation all around them.

Easter Sunday Blues Jam in Penang

I travelled back to Penang for the Easter break, arriving just in time for an Easter Sunday afternoon jam at the Little Penang Street Market with an assemblage of the Penang Blues Brothers (plus one sister) – Kim Gooi and James Lochhead notorious among the bros. Jackie and I brought our tenors – I played my King Super 20 and Jackie her Kohlert 55.

We stuck to the common language of blues; struggles with Windows Movie Maker aside, here is a video of “Trouble, Trouble” on YouTube, featuring James performing his signature tune on keys and vocals. Interesting to compare this to the same tune done at the same venue about a year ago.

There were some nice photos as well. The players are James Lochhead, keyboard and vocals; Kim Gooi, harp; Russell Steadman, bass and vocals; Tapa, drums; Sid, guitar; Jackie Ashkin, tenor sax; and, Ron Ashkin, tenor sax.

Interview with Tenor Saxophonist Ellery Eskelin

Ellery Eskelin creates with a vintage Conn

New York tenor saxophonist and composer Ellery Eskelin was gracious enough to consent to an interview on Crazy Bent Brass Tube this week. Ellery is a consistently interesting improviser and he recently celebrated 30 years in New York doing what he loves. He is a prolific and creative recording artist as well as the author of the intelligent blog Musings from a Saxophonist. My questions are in bold (RA) and Ellery's answers follow (EE); I did not edit any of his responses.

Interview with Ellery Eskelin, April 7, 2013

RA: When did you make the conscious decision to follow music as a career regardless of the economic consequences? And creative improvised music to boot? Didn’t your parents want you to be a dentist or an accountant? 

EE: I've wanted to be a jazz musician since I was ten years old. That desire overrode everything else. My parents were very supportive of me being a musician although they did have concerns about the type of music I played. 

RA: How have you managed to stay fresh and creative for 30+ years? Most of the so-called “young lions” have never progressed and are stuck in a rut in middle age – downright boring to listen to. 

EE: The process is exactly the same as it was the first day I got the horn. Still trying to figure out what I can do on it. I'm not too concerned with style or idiom. There's too much music that pulls on me. Plus, the old masters set the bar so high that I'm constantly inspired to push myself every day.

RA: What is your creative “well” – where do you pull inspiration from day after day?

EE: I love what I do. And it’s the way I express myself in the world. Plus, there's so much to do and such a limited time to accomplish it in. 

RA: Do you have a specific approach or “strategy” in mind when you begin a solo? If so, can you give some insight? 

EE: Whenever I'm improvising I think about what the music needs and try and do that. It requires an immediate, in the moment, non verbal state of mind, so that usually necessitates a feeling of movement, a gesture or a sense of phrasing just as I'm about to play. Once I have an idea of a musical shape the notes come to me at the very last moment, as I'm playing. 

RA: How have you avoided recording “Ellery Eskelin with Strings”? (or have you and I am unaware?) 

EE: See "Vanishing Point" (hatOLOGY 577) recorded in 2000 with Mat Maneri: viola, Erik Friedlander: cello, Mark Dresser: bass, Matt Moran: vibraphone. Completely improvised music. I'm rather proud if it. 

RA: Have you ever been forced to play weddings and bar mitzvahs or teach 8-year-olds to stay in music? 

EE: I played weddings when I was coming up. At a certain point, the singers could no longer follow my solos without getting lost so I sold my tuxedo and got a day job (shipping clerk at a record label) until my touring picked up enough that I could let that go as well. 

I've not yet taught a young person but I think I would enjoy the opportunity to approach things a bit differently, more direct ear learning and an introduction to basic I IV V harmony and improvising as soon as they could get around the horn a little. 

RA: Your most ridiculous day gig? 

EE: Well, I was a weekend janitor in a shopping mall for a little while during my school years. I like to think of that as good honest work. Worked on a commercial roofing crew for a summer. All the guys would keep telling me, "stay in school if you don't want to wind up doing this for a living"! 

RA: How do you deal with the egos in the music business without it getting under your skin? Seems like a large proportion of talented musicians are not nice people. 

EE: Actually I don't find that to be the case. The large proportion of the musicians I've met in my life have been pretty down to earth. 

RA: Do you feel you are missing out on anything in life because you pursued creative music as your profession? What about your family – have they missed out on something? 

EE: No, but when I realized that the president was younger than me it did get me thinking. But ironically there is something about going deeply into a subject that teaches us about the world and deepens our appreciation of other people and their work. As for family, I am blessed that they understand and support what I do. I hope that my values and actions can point to some other ways of looking at things in general. 

RA: It appears that you have to be a virtuoso to play any of today’s jazz styles. This kills the music as a people’s music because it limits participation in the creative process. How can the music survive and progress without becoming another form of classical music dependent on the conservatory? 

EE: I don't agree that being a virtuoso limits the audience's participation. If anything a certain kind of demonstrable virtuosity is something that audiences often grab onto even if it's not always deeply artistic. But jazz has never been a popular music with the public at large. In my experience the best thing for any musician to do is commit 100% to their vision and play with the commensurate conviction required to evoke some kind of emotional feeling in the listener. And besides, virtuosity comes in many forms. I consider Ben Webster to be a virtuoso in his sublime delivery of ballads. 

RA: I have a talented 16-year-old who plays tenor. But music is not her only talent/interest. Any suggestions on how she can stay engaged as a performer? Most young people quit playing after school. 

EE: Not sure how to answer that question. But in as much as music is a social event (playing with other people and playing for other people) I would imagine that maintaining that social connection would be beneficial. 

RA: Do you have some recommended learning resources for those not interested in pattern playing or paid-by-the-note tenor styles? 

EE: The idea of "learning resources" in itself seems to imply some kind of organizational methodology that often runs counter to want you're speaking about (which to me has more to do with the nuances of one's delivery). I recommend modeling one's playing after vocalists as a way of avoiding calisthenics and the playing of too many notes. Concentrate on phrasing and the active use of silence. Personally I don't like to think so much in terms of "lines" as much as I want to think in terms of melody. Having a strong sense of what you're doing with (or against) the rhythm also helps. 

RA: Thank you, Ellery.

Here are links to Ellery's web site, blog, and Facebook and YouTube pages:

web site
blog
facebook
youtube

Ellery Eskelin - New CD Release Announcement Trio New York II

Just received this in my email from Ellery Eskelin and thought I would take the opportunity to promote a really fine saxophonist.

TRIO NEW YORK II is NOW Available... Listen to samples on the website... See the promotional video on YouTube… Order on-line using Pay Pal for Immediate Delivery Worldwide...

Please visit the website and click the TRIO NEW YORK link for complete information and track samples. 

Have a look at the TRIO NEW YORK II video on Youtube. 

To ORDER NOW simply visit the Mail Order page. You’ll have the CD in no time!

ELLERY ESKELIN - TRIO NEW YORK II

prime source CD 7010

Ellery Eskelin - tenor saxophone

Gary Versace - Hammond B3 organ

Gerald Cleaver - drums

The New Yorker magazine recently referred to me as a saxophonist “with a romantic streak that runs parallel to his experimental leanings”. I like that. Romance is a descriptor that is rarely associated with the improv scene in New York City. And for the past couple of decades that is what I’ve been doing mostly. I’ve always thought of “Trio New York” as a free improvisation unit, in some ways a continuation of the type of work I’ve been doing all along, in other ways a distinct break from many of the concepts I’d been working with previously. For those of you familiar with our first recording, you'll know that we use the Great American Songbook as our source material.

“Trio New York II” is the second recording by this group and represents an evolution, the band having fine tuned it’s musical processes from gig to gig though our touring in Europe as well as performances in Canada and the US, most recently being the Detroit Jazz Festival. I’m very proud to be working with two of the great musicians of our time, organist Gary Versace (who knows his way around a Hammond organ and knows how to be creative with it) and Gerald Cleaver (who is both swinging and free, always with impressive dynamic sensitivity). This new release also coincides with the fact that as of this month I’ve been living in New York City for thirty years. A lot has happened during that time and I feel as though I’m finally in a place where I can truly integrate all my experiences into the music, from the early days up until today.

As for this recording, please know that it’s very important to me to take the extra time and expense to document this work and present it to you as a physical entity with the highest standards of artistic and technical quality possible. This documentation is not only central to my progress as an artist but I feel it is doubly important that as we are asking for your time and attention you should understand that you are getting a state of the art recording for your collection that you can value for many years to come. Trio New York II is released on my own “prime source” label.

Thank You,

Ellery Eskelin

Two Original Tracks from Saxophonist Dotun Bankole

Tenor Saxophonist Dotun “Dotsax” Bankole dropped by my house the other night for a jam. He plays a 156k silver plate Mark VI which is about a year younger than the horn I've been playing lately, a 148k Mark VI that is basically bare brass, having been stripped of its silver plate a long time ago. The horns are brothers from the late 60's, although his has a high F# key and mine doesn't  Dotun really liked the resonance of my horn and we traded instruments for the evening. He is playing on a Jody Jazz metal mouthpiece which was given to him by the manufacturer while on tour in the States a couple of months ago with Femi Kuti.

Dotun was bemoaning the scarcity of jazz in present-day Lagos. There is not a single venue in this city of 17 million that features live jazz every day. I thought maybe it was just me because I have played out less this past year than in any year in recent memory, although I have been working in a city which is lauded in some media circles as one of the really happening places in the third world. Not really happening for jazz since there is practically no place to jam, even for excellent local players, and not much happening even for home-grown styles like afrobeat although the music press refers to afrobeat as being really popular worldwide – I've previously written about that paradox.

In any event, Dotun continues to improvise and create on his saxophone. Recently he has been working on two original tracks in the studio: Irawo Owuro and Aja Nti Ele, where he plays soprano sax rather than his more usual tenor. You can listen to these two works-in-progress here and look for and buy the CD when it is released. Click on the track names to download and listen. Meanwhile, you can catch Dotsax playing tenor behind Femi Kuti at the New Africa Shrine in Ikeja, Lagos, on Thursday and Sunday evenings.