Foundation for Research in the Afro-American Creative Arts

The Big Beat!

Author(s): David H. Rosenthal and Art Blakey
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 267-289
Published by: Foundation for Research in the Afro-American Creative Arts
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1215067 .
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CONVERSATION WITH:
Art Blakey
The Big Beat!
BY DAVID H. ROSENTHAL
Arthur Blakey (b. 1919 in
has
been
recognized as a giant of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
modern jazz percussion, as a sensitive teacher of young musicians, and as an inspired bandleader at the head of his Jazz Messengers. In Zita Carno's words:
Art Blakey'sname has become synonymouswith hard drive and pulsating
excitement. His playing makes listenersjump with amazement.There are
no dull moments even in his longest solos, and in his rhythmsection work
he forces the group to play with his infectious excitement, but, for all his
drive, he is the subtlestof drummers,one who knowshow to push a group
without overpowering them.1
F

OR

NEARLY

FOUR

DECADES

Though Blakey accompanied a variety of ensembles in his early

years, his first real spurt of development occurred during a threeyear stint with the Billy Eckstine Band, which included Charlie
Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Gene Ammons and Dexter
Gordon. By the time the band broke up, Blakey was acknowledged
by both fellow musicians and jazz aficionadoes as one of the best
young drummers around. He had already shown what he could do
on recorded small-group sessions-for example, with Fats Navarro
on Savoy SJL 2216 or with Thelonius Monk on Blues Note 1510as well as with his own group, which cut some 78's never reissued,
for Blue Note and introduced the name "Jazz Messengers" to the
world.
In 1947 Blakey went to West Africa, where he remained for two
years. Although he denies that this experience influenced his
drumming, common sense would indicate the opposite. In any
case, what is certain is that when he returned, he played with
considerably more authority and was soon among the most
sought-after musicians in New York City.A list of his employers in
the early fifties will indicate the esteem he enjoyed among his
peers: Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt,
Sonny Rollins, Thelonius Monk, and a host of others, including
Buddy De Franco, with whom he spent a year before forming his
own group in 1954.

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a
C

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ChuckSteart

IN MUSIC

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269

By that time, Blakey had developed a fiercely individual and

instantly recognizable style. Its technical elements are too numerous to go into here (Zita Carno's article provides a good analysis of
many of them, along with illustrative transcriptions), but the effect
was simultaneously volcanic and austere. Blakey is among the least
superfluously "busy" drummers in jazz, and this has casued some
critics to describe his playing as a "simplification" of Max Roach's
and Kenny Clarke's styles. His rhythmic sense is so razor-sharp,
and his foot and wrist control so precise, that he need do little more
than "keep time" to create an atmosphere of tremendous controlled power. His accompanying figures, sparingly used, come at
the right moments to support the soloist with sudden bursts of
energy. Likewise, Blakey's solos are usually structured around a
few melodic motifs played against each other contrapuntally as he
builds to a climax. Musical coherence is never sacrificed to technical
flash.
In February 1955 Blakey, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley,
Horace Silver, and Doug Watkins cut a record (HoraceSilver and the
Jazz Messengers, Blue Note 1518) that was destined to become a
classic of hard bop. This school, which flourished between 1955
and 1965 (though it's still going strong in Blakey's current crop of
youngsters) emphasized "swing," emotional openness, and receptivity to the older black traditions-particularly blues and gospel.
Though at first the Jazz Messengers was a cooperative group,
Blakey retained the name when his associates struck out on their
own in 1956, and since then it's been Art Blakey and the Jazz
Messengers.
In the past thirty years, the group has gone through many
more artistically successful than others. In
permutations-some
general, the group has sounded best when dominated by good
composers like Horace Silver, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, or
the current crew: Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, and Mulgrew Miller. At other times the band has seemed to flounder (for
example, the Messengers that succeeded the Dorham-MobleySilver outfit and featured Jackie McLean and Bill Hardman, or
some ensembles in the early seventies). But it's always been worth
the price of admission just to hear Blakey play, and his present
sextet, which recently won a Grammy for New YorkScene (Concord
256), is among his best ever.
Another facet of Blakey's work is his role as an educator. As
Bobby Timmons put it:
He's a leader who builds other leaders. Not many men are reallyleaders;it
has to do with a lot more than music. Milesis one, and Art'sanother. You
learn decorum from him, and how to be a man. That little speech he gives
at the end of his sets, about how jazz is our native culturalcontributionto
the world. Who else could get awaywith that speech? ... He believes that

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jazz is feeling, the same as I do. But he knows about music. He's the one
who taught me to build a solo to a climax.2
Today, Blakey continues to instruct and encourage the young.
He enjoys telling audiences that some of the tunes his current
ensemble plays (like Benny Golson's "Blues March" and "Along
Came Betty," both first recorded in 1958) were written before most
of the musicians on the stand were born.
The following interview took place in Blakey's Greenwich Village apartment in April 1986.* Though I felt nervous about meeting one of my heroes, whose work I have admired since my adolescence, Blakey quickly put me at ease, sharing his feelings about life
and art with the same earthy eloquence that has inspired generations of young jazzmen.
*This interview has been lightly edited.

NOTES
1. TheJazz Review 3/1 (anuary 1959): 6.
2. Cited in Joe Goldberg,Jazz Mastersof the Fifties (New York: Macmillan,
1965), 53.
*

David H. Rosenthal: What was it like growing up in

Pittsburgh?
Art Blakey: I didn't grow up there. I left with Fletcher Henderson [about 1939]. Then I came back, stayed a little while, then I
went back out with Mary Lou Williams. Then I had my own little
group, went down to Cincinnati, Ohio, played for a while, came back
and joined Smack again [i.e., Fletcher Henderson], and went
up
north to Boston, and I stayed there. I left the band and I stayed
put
there.
When you were growing up in Pittsburgh though, were you
already
playing the drums?
Sure, I was playing. I used to play piano in Pittsburgh. I played
by ear, you know, but I kept a gig 'cause I didn't like working. So I
played piano for a while. I played in a speakeasy, you know. I
played in a few keys. I had a band, but mostly what I did was what
they called "ups," you know-between shows and you take a little
spinet and go around the tables singing dirty songs, and that was it.
That was it in those times. But I switched over to the drums,
because after I heard Erroll Garner it was time for me to switch.

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Did you knowfrom the beginning that you wanted to be a jazz musician?
Sure, that's the only kind of music I liked at that time, and that's
where I was sort of nutured. And then [I was nutured] by the
church and everybody in church-I went to the sanctified chruch,
with those rhythms and swinging-they'd be swinging in there.
Did you sing in the choir?
Everybody sang in the church I went to. They didn't have no
choir per se or organ or piano, and no musical instruments in the
church. [It was] all a cappella.
And the whole congregationwould sing?
Pat your feet and clap your hands. That's the way it was.
Mysterious!
Were you from what you'd call a musicalfamily?
Yes, but I didn't know nothing about them. I wasn't raised with
my family, with my putative father. My mother died when I was
about a year old.
Who raised you?
My mother's best friend, Mrs. Parran. And that's the name I
used in school, Parran, because I didn't know; I thought Mrs.
Parran was my mother. She didn't have a chance to tell me but I
found out. My father lived near where I lived, you know, and he
never spoke to me or anything. It was a difference between, you
know, the races, the prejudice within the black race. Mulattos didn't
speak to the blacks; the blacks didn't speak to mulattos.
Which was the lighter-complexioned
side of thefamily?
My father. And all his brothers except him were musicians.
Whenyoujoined FletcherHendersonwereyou alreadyplaying drums?
Yeah. I think that was the natural instrument for me anyway.
It's something that I liked and that I watched very closely. I
watched the other drummers, how they did things, and I liked the
drums, and so the switch was very easy. I just switched from piano
to drums on the same day, because I had to play the show that
night.
Whathappened?Theywerelookingfor a drummerinsteadof a pianist?
They wasn't looking for a drummer. Erroll Garner came in and
played, and that was the end of that. So I had to play drums.
He's from Pittsburgh too, right?
Yeah.
Did you know him when you were growing up?
Oh, of course I did. I knew Erroll Garner when he was a kid-a
real young kid-and he was playing on the radio. He was a professional by seven or eight years old; he was on the air, KEKA, every
week in a group of specially talented kids called The Candy Kids.
Were you in the group, too?
No, no, no! I wasn't in the kids' group. I [had been] a man a

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long time at fourteen; at fourteen I was a father, so I wasn't

considered too much of a kid.
Whofirst influencedyou as a drummer?
Nobody. I just liked the drums. I liked to play drums. There
was a drummer in Pittsburgh, and [he was] my first influencelike, I liked to go see him. I would go see him in the club pretty
often; [he] was a guy called "Honeyboy," "Honeyboy" Minor. Fantastic drummer! And you know, he did everything; he played
shows. I liked the way he did things, so I'd watch him pretty much,
and I learned a lot from him.
How about someonelike Chick Webb?
Yeah, Chick Webb was a big influence too.
And "Big Sid" Catlett, did you listen to him much?
Yeah, those are my guys [laughs]; yeah, I liked them. Whenever
I could see them, [I would], but see they didn't come to Pittsburgh
too much. I listened [to them] on records or by the crystal set. I
made a crystal set and I'd listen to them coming out of Chicago, and
try to find out what they were doing. Those were the guys that, you
know, influenced me most.
What year was it when you joined the Billy EckstineBand?
I joined Eckstine, let me see, oh, about '44. It lasted about three
years .... That was my greatest musical experience.
What was it like being in that band? So many brilliant young musicians!
Beautiful! Wonderful things! Yeah, I was very happy to be
there. We didn't make no money, but that didn't make any difference. You know, playing music in your art form was it, and trying
to learn. Then it was great exposure for me, not public-wise; I
mean exposure to the music and what was going on and changing
of the music. And I was right in the middle of it. I found myself
and I loved it. So I stayed with "B" [Eckstine] until that broke up.
Wouldyou say that was when your style developedinto somethingthat
was more mature and recognizable?
I think so. I think it had a lot to do with it.
Was that partly becauseyou played with thoseparticular musicians?
No. I always wanted to be a drummer, but I always wanted to
play different, I wanted to be different. It didn't-. Like the other
drummers were playing, and I saw what they were doing, so I
always wanted to be . . . sort of an innovator-to try and find
different things to do, . . . different ways to play. I watched Chick
Webb, watched him develop from being a time-keeper to being a
band-leader, from the back to the front. And he was fantastic, so
then I took a lot from him.
Yousayyou werealwayssure that it wasjazz you wantedtoplay and not
any other kind of music.
No, I wasn't interested in any other kind of music.
What was it aboutjazz that particularly attractedyou?

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273

Swingin' [laughs]. The way that they would swing, the happiness in it, the happiness in the music. I knew it was the music for
me. Jazz interested me because the musicians would go up on the
stage (they didn't have no music), they'd just go up there and play.
They called it "jam." Just go up there and play.
And I thought it was miraculous how they would get together,
and play, and play together with split-second timing-you know,
like something moving from the Creator to the artist to the audience. To me, there was no music like that. So that's what made me
go right over there to jazz-seeing the happiness, and the feeling
with the people, and how the people liked it and how quick it
spread throughout the world. It was coming so fast behind "dixieland," so fast it just grew up into the swing era and the so-called
bebop era, which I call modern music. Itjust moved, and I liked it.
I wanted to be there with it; I mean, when the music changed I liked
to change with it.
You mean that youfelt jazz was developingin an exciting way at that
time? New things were going on, innovations?
Right. It's still going on. What we're doing now is probably just
scratching the surface of what's going to happen in the future. But
I know, I have sense enough to know Charlie Parkers, Dizzy Gillespies, Thelonius Monks-they don't come along every twenty years.
They come along maybe every fifty, every hundred years-those
type of musicians. It's like the music of Pops, Louis Armstrong:
different as it goes along but it doesn't come every day.
Though in jazz it's comepretty thick and fast.
Yes, it did.
And I guess particularly at the time that we're talking about, in the
forties. But you said somethingabout getting up there and jamming like
Basie's band; weren'ttherechartswhenyou were with FletcherHenderson
and Eckstine?
Oh, well, "Smack" had charts. You know, he was, like, conventional. In the swing era, they had music. You know he was writing
for Benny Goodman and all that kind of stuff. That's conventional
stuff, but I'm talking about what Basie and them was doing: he just
based his band around soloists. And, you know, the band would
play something, the tenor saxophone would take a solo-. That's
why you have Herschel Evans and Lester Young, all these guys-.
Buddy Tate and so forth. Did youfeel thatjazz was also deeper,more
complexthan other kinds of music, that it had more of a balance between
feelings and intellect than otherkinds of pop music that were available in
the late thirtiesor earlyforties?
Oh, sure. Of course! What was happening back then, in the type
of music I went with-they weren't the type of musicians to
get set
up there and play behind a singer or play behind a dancer. They
didn't like to do that, and I don't blame them. They'd
play behind
some singers-like we played behind Billy Eckstine because
Billy

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Eckstine himself was a musician, Sarah Vaughan was a musician,

Lady Day [Billie Holliday] was a musician. All these people were
musicians-Ella Fitzgerald was a musician, Dinah Washington, you
know. These type of singers respected musicians.
But what musicians didn't like was when somebody gets up
there and just sings a song, and they go over big, and all of a
sudden they're a big shot, and they want to dog the musicians
around. If they didn't go over, they'd blame the musicians. I didn't
go for that. I didn't think that was right, you know, but that's the
way it went. It wasn't that they were great singers, most of the ones
that made the big hits and everything. They didn't have no voice,
they didn't need no voice to sing. It was delivery that got them over.
Well, that'spart of your voice.
No, I'm talking about a voice as a voice-.
I mean, think of somebodylike Billie Holliday. By the end, she had
practically lost her voice.
She didn't have no voice!
All she had was her delivery.
She had delivery.
But her delivery would get her over sometimes.
That's what got them over. Nat Cole, he didn't have no voice,
man. Most of the time the cats didn't make nothing in tune,
couldn't sing in tune. But they got over! They made hits, you
understand? What's his name, Mario Lanza? All these "great singers"! Well, they're just singers to me. And I knew the difference
because my uncles on my father's side, they taught voice, and I
know exactly what it was about. Most of the singers that got out
there and made them big hits and everything, they couldn't read no
music. They didn't have no training.
So you felt thatjazz would give you a lot morefreedom as a musician
than other kinds of music?
Yeah, well, it'd give you more time to hone your art. You'd get a
chance to play instead of backing up somebody or playing for a
bunch of chorus girls. I played for the Jewelbox Revue. I thought
that was a fine show; it was a beautiful show. Playing behind singers
and things, that was good, but I didn't think it was for me. I didn't
want to do that.
Do you think thejazz scene was differentin theforties than it is now?
Of course it is, it always changes. Much better.
Better now?
Sure. Much better than it was then. We had a lot of different
scenes that was holding up the jazz at that time because the guys
didn't know which way to go, and that was ignorance. We had the
dope scene. We had to go through that. Alcohol. And we don't
have that no more. That disappeared with most of the musicians,
especially the young ones that are coming out of the university.
Do you think there'sthe same amount of closenessbetweenmusicians

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275

and support that there was then? Or is there more now?

More than there ever was.
Why do you think there'smore?
It isn't as widespread, but they're closer than they ever were,
and it's better because you don't need the majority to conquer. You
get just twenty of them that's strong enough to hold together, and
you can go through anything. But all of them have to believe in it,
and I think it's better.
Well, when you think about thepeople that you played with, say in the
Eckstine Band, wasn't there a lot of comradeship,of learningfrom each
other and teaching each other, and stuff like that at the time?
Same thing that's happening now. Guys are close, they learn.
They make time. It used to be with musicians, you didn't know if
they were going to show up or not.
'Cause of dope, you mean?
Yeah. Well, you know, run after that bag. It was a big thing at
that time.
Whydo you think there'sless of that now in jazz than therewas? Do you
think it was seeing all those guys die?
Education. Guys are better educated. Kids come along and
they're better educated, and they see what happened to the men
before them. They can see, so they just choose not to go that way.
Do you think a lot of thoseguys in theforties didn't really realize what
they were getting themselvesinto?
No, because they were confused.
They thought it was just another drug like weed or something?
Oh, they knew all about that because before heroin come along
they used to use-what's that other stuff they used to give to
soldiers on the battlefield?
Morphine?
It was morphine. But they found that the heroin was an easier
habit to break than the morphine so that's why they-. And it was
cheaper. So they started using heroin. There wasn't so much
cocaine then, but they did get cocaine and it was good cocaine.
They used to have it in the drugstore windows. You could go see it
in the drugstore. It wasn't no big thing to go and get some. It wasn't
no big thing about that. But what happened was it got down to the
children. That's where everything deteriorated.
You went to Africa in 1947, is that right?
Well, that had nothing to do with music. I was into religion,
studying religions. I wanted to find out about it because religion
isn't a figment of man's imagination, so you have to understand a
person's religion. It's a way of life for the majority of people in the
world, so you have to understand it to understand the people.
But what madeyou decideto checkout thatparticularreligionso much?
Not any particular one. I checked out eleven living religions of
the world. He that knoweth only one religion knows nothing at all

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about religion.
How long did you live in Africa, two years?
Well, no, not that long-maybe eighteen months, maybe two
years. I don't know.
This was in Nigeria?
Yeah, I went to Nigeria. I went to Ghana before it was a state, to
the Gold Coast and around there, to study, to learn. I wanted to
learn what it was about. I learned a lot ... to get an understanding
of people. You know, not to learn the religion thoroughly but just
to learn enough to know the difference, just to have the wisdom to
know the difference.
Did youfeel like you developeda special relationshipwith any African
god?
No. I had some drummers who were friends, and uh, I met
Guy-, what's Guy's name?
Guy Warren?
Yeah, Guy Warren. He's a friend of mine. I met-, what's his
name, he came here with-. Ladji Camara from Nigeria. He came
over. He played with me for a while.
Did you play the drums when you were there?
No, I didn't do any playing in that time. And there wasn't too
much about jazz over there anyway, because they have their own
thing. A lot of people try to connect jazz with Africa and all that
kind of thing. You can't connect that. You have to have the wisdom
to know the difference. They have their thing; we have our thing.
The Latins have their thing; we have our thing. It's just like that.
No America; no jazz. So that's the way it is.
So you don'tfeel that living in Africa had any effect on your style as a
drummer?
No.
Now, the thing I was talking aboutbefore-do you know what theycall
santeria here? Do you know Patato Valdes?
Sure.
You know, all that stuff that he's into, with African gods; theywear the
beadsand, you know, take care of thosegods. Was that somethingthatyou
were involved in?
No, I don't go around for none of that. I've never connected
myself up with anything-political groups or anything.
Or any kind of religious cult at all?
No, I don't need that. I know what to do. I don't need nothing
to connect up with to get to the Creator. Every man's got that in his
heart if he wants to get to it. I don't need to put on no beads or no
funny hats or any kind of thing because I know who I am. I have no
identity problem, and I love what I am. I thank God that I was born
in America. I know just who I am. But yeah, I see a lot of guys go
through that crap, and they went through an era when the guys

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were calling themselves Arabs, you know. I'm not an Arab. I'm an
American. I'm a black American.
You took an Arab name, didn't you?
Yeah, I took an Islamic name, simply because that's my heritage. I come from their people, who come from there. That's because if you say "Hing Ling" you're looking for a Chinaman, and
here I come, Blakey, with an Irish name, and I show up right away.
I'm an individual. I don't have to carry my father's name. So I just
picked that name. If my children want to carry it, it's okay. It's
legal, Blakey's legal, Buhaina's legal through the courts. So it wasn't
no jiving about identity, you know. I've always declared myself as
an American.
Well, whenyou tookthatname,Buhaina, is that becauseyou thoughtof
yourself as a Muslim?
No, that's not a Muslim name; it's an Arab name.
Right, but you have to admit most Arabs are Muslims.
Yeah, but my children-. My son is named Akira. He certainly
isn't Japanese, so it doesn't make any difference about the name.
It'sjust a sort of identity to know who this person is and that person
is, and I never made no big deal of it. I still played under "Art
Blakey." There were some musicians who found out from my
passport [ about my other name], and they started calling me "Bu"
or "Buhaina" or something. You know, when my back is turned
they call me worse things [laughs].
Why do you think that cooljazz becameso popular in the 1950s? The
earlyfifties?
I don't know; I guess that was the West Coast thing. And the
guys left New York and went out to the West Coast, and I guess
they wanted to call it "cool," you know, but leaving New York to go
to the West Coast forjazz-. I think it was very weird for them to do
that, 'cause out there, it seems to me-. When I go out there it's
very beautiful, but to me it's for older people-God's waiting room.
They go and sit down there, and wait for Him to come and collect
them.
Well, it's not as bad as if they had a Florida school of jazz!
They don't have no fire in their music. The place, Los Angeles,
is too far spread. I just left them out there. Now, if you live in
Hollywood and you're going to a concert by the sea out there, it's
forty-nine and nine-tenths miles. And if you drive out there and
have a couple of drinks, and you want to go somewhere else, you
can't make it. You've got to go home. You've driven almost a
hundred miles, or over.
You said they don't have anyfire out there.
They don't! Everybody knows that! You go out there, you get
lackadaisical. It's too far apart. The musicians do not come together, and that is important. They're busy with the swimming

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pools and all that kind of stuff. I'm not interested in swimming
pools.
Well, how did youfeel aboutthat kind of music when it was so popular,
like GerryMulligan and Chet Baker?
Well, it was music. It was music. I never put down any kind of
music, because if I put down that kind I'm just putting myself
down. It's just guys trying different directions. But I don't think
they had any fire, that's what I'm saying. Fire! That's what people
want. You know, music is supposed to wash away the dust of
everyday life, not come in cool. You're supposed to make them
turn around, pat their feet. That's what jazz is about.
Now if you're playing something else, like they're still doing
today-. They'll have all the rock groups-let me see, Kool and the
Gang-and we'll be the only jazz group there. I'm talking about
fire, what it's supposed to be, and if they did that, it'd be much
better today. Play with fire; play from your heart, not from your
brain. You got to know how to utilize, make the two meet. You just
don't play out of the top of your head, or play down to the people. I
think you should play to the people. That's my opinion, you know,
about cool jazz and everything; but it's good, it's music.
No, some of it's prettygood. It's not that. It'sjust that it was so popular
at the time-.
Yeah. Well, shoot, rock is popular.
The stuff that was betterseems to have beenfrozen out of the scene.
There ain't nothing more popular than rock, and you make
money if you go out there. But Ijust don't want to be bothered with
that kind of stuff, you know what I mean, because I'm not a
jack-of-all-trades, and I don't like to turn around and run and
jump on this thing 'cause I think I'm going to make some money
and then jump over there and think-. I'm playing this because I
believe it in my heart, I believe in it. I don't even think about that
other stuff.
Money . . . I never did. If you read anything that I ever said in
any write-up-. Music [is] life. What I found out is the only thing
that'll follow you to the cemetery is respect. An armored car will not
follow a hearse, you know, so you have to make the choice of what
you want to do. I believe in what I do. If I don't believe in it, I can't
expect anybody else to believe in it. If I'm playing for money, then
it's another trip. I'm the same as everybody else, right? It doesn't
make any difference.
All the great artists and all the great painters and all the great
musicians that I know about way before me never played for
money. They did it because they believed in it. That's what they
wanted to do, and believe me when I tell you: it takes more nerve to
be a jazz musician than any other kind of musician in the world. It
takes a lot of guts. You talk about having heart! You got to have a

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whole lots of heart! And that's something most people ain't got.
They ain't got the nerve to get up and do what they want to do when
they want to do it. I think that is something, to me, to brag about,
'cause I do what I want to do, the way I want to do it, how I want to
do it.
I am a free spirit. Thank God for that! And the only way I got
there is through jazz. If people don't like it, I don't care. I ain't felt
no pain. I'm feeding my family; I take care of my family. I have lots
of children. I'm not what you call a young man; I'm knocking on
the door of seventy-years old. You know what I mean? My
youngest one there's about nineteen months; I got another one
coming. You know, I have nine children; I adopted five. I think
that's a hell of an achievement for me, and all of them love my last
year's dirty socks [laughs].
I really think that's an achievement. I really do, and I'm really
interested in my family. Maybe because I was an orphan-maybe. I
don't know what it is, but anyway, I enjoy the hell out of it, and I
don't see many people having so much fun. I don't see old men my
age doing what I do. I see old men my age [who are] envious of me,
but they ain't as happy as I am, surrounded by young people. What
in the world else could you want? This is heaven. All young people
you see around me, young kids calling me on the phone-nineteen,
twenty years old. There's a reason for that. Any of them out there
that ever played with me, all I have to do is to pick up the phone
and say, "Look, I want you to work such a place." "Okay, I'll be
there, Art." That means a lot to me.
Well, theyknowyou're a great teacher,for one thing. I mean, so many
musicians have learned so much and developedso much and made such
good use of your guidance when they'vebeen in your groups.
Yeah, but I think it's them, the musicians, who do it themselves.
I think all you have to do is give them the opportunity and some
kind of direction, just let them play.
That's it, giving them some kind of direction.
Don't be afraid to let them play. Mostly the bands they go
in-the bandleader may not be too sure of himself, he don't want
the musicians to play, and if a musician gets up and plays and gets a
lot of applause and a lot of attention, then they fire him. I don't
think that's fair. In my group, if you don't get up and play, if you
don't write, if you don't give all, if you don't give a hundred-and-ten
percent, you're fired! That's the difference.
Now, when theJazz Messengersfirst started back in the mid-fifties-.
You know, we were talking aboutcooljazz a little bit, aboutfire, and about
how therewasn't that muchfire in someof that music-were you doing that
as a consciousattemptto kind of straightenthings out, turn it around, give
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Yeah, of course we did. Horace Silver, myself, Kenny Dorham,

and Doug Watkins, and Hank Mobley-that's what we did. We
thought the musicians should look better on the stage. We thought
the jamming should be cut out. Just get guys together and take
them on a gig somewhere. I don't think that [the jamming] was fair
to the audience.
Whatdo you mean? Youwantedto have moreuse of a bookand a better
organized band?
Well, if you want to call it organized. I think musicians should
look like professionals, and I don't think they should get on the
stand and look like a bunch of bums. People see you before they
hear you, and they ain't paying for that now. You know, if you've
got a bunch of musicians up there, and they stand up all raggedy,
greasy, and funky; you want to go up and ask, "Can you give me a
grease job on my car?" To hell with those folks who look like that!
You know, musicians before our time didn't do that; they set a
great example: Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, all the cats, Benny
Goodman, Earl Hines-they didn't look like that.
Well, it wasn'tjust the look of the band, though. It was the music, too,
that was different.It was a new directionfrom what was going on then.
Oh, yeah. Well, that helps too. Sure the music helps: the organization of the music and how it's done-not playing one tune for
twenty-five or thirty or forty minutes.
Well, that would be more like a responseagainst some kinds of bebop,
wouldn't it, whereyou got all thoseguys that went up on stage, you know,
and just played a head, and thenjammedfor an hour or two?
That's no good! Once in a great while you go to a jam session,
and that's what you expect, but you ain't going to pay for that every
night.
Do you think that was driving the audience awayfrom jazz?
Damn right it was; sure it was. It all sounded the same. It was
like Thelonius Monk-he came along and said, "You've
got to be
different and you've got to identify yourself, whatever it is"different. So that's the whole thing. I never put down
nobody
else-like the cool jazz or whatever, the fusion, or whatever
they've
got. They're just looking for something different.
Well, a lot of people would say that theJazz Messengerswere a kind of
reactionagainst cooljazz, weretryingto getjazz backto its roots,to back
go
to things like bluesand gospel,you know, like on "ThePreacher."Was that
somethingyouguys weretalking aboutat the time,too? That maybejazz had
gotten to be a little too intellectual?
Yeah, you know, play, play from the heart. That's what I was
saying. Play from the heart. The people know the difference. You
can't fool them. They know.
Now latelyI've been doing someresearchin what the criticswere
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in the fifties and sixties about people like you, and some of it's pretty
negative. Whydo you.think that theyhad such a negative responsein some
cases?
Well, I never paid too much attention or read what they said.
All I care about is that they spell my name right. If they don't say
nothing, I'm in trouble. Let them say what they want to say, just so
they say something. The people will see for themselves. The first
write-up I ever got was [when I was] with Billy Eckstine, and the
woman comes to review the band. She says, Gene Ammons, he
looked like a big black bull out there in front of the mike snorting
fire from his nostrils, and the little drummer back there behind all
those white drums looked like a little black pygmy saying, "We
gonna eat the white man tonight." But she spelled my name right!
People would come out to see who the pygmy was.
Do you think therewas somethingabout the music the Messengerswere
playing thatparticularlywas hardfor criticsto deal with? I mean, not all
critics, but I'm thinking about somebodylikeJohn S. Wilson,for example,
who keptsaying thatyour recordswere no good, that theywere boring,and
he'd heard it all before.Now I'm not askingyou to name names and stuff
like that, but in general-.
Oh, he's a very sweet man, you know, but he was getting old. I
never paid no attention to that, because opinions are like derrieres.
Everybody got one. So he's entitled to his, too.
Anotherthing I wanted to ask you about:I've been listening to a lot of
your records with pianists from the fifties-people like Monk, Herbie
Nichols, DukeJordan-and it seemsto me thatyour style-, you adjust it in
a lot of different ways when you're playing just in a piano trio.
Yeah. Well, what I try to do, not that I do it all the time, is to let
the punishment fit the crime. Whoever I'm playing with, I try to
play their style. So on my record dates I'll play Art Blakey, but
when I'm playing with somebody else-, if I work with Duke, I try
to play in Duke's style.
You mean Duke Jordan?
No, Duke Ellington. I worked with him a couple of weeks, and I
tried to play his style, 'cause that's what they're used to. Working
with Andy Kirk, Lucky Millinder, anybody, Mary Lou Williams, I
tried to play like they wanted me to play, not like I wanted to play.
But whenyou play in a trio, it seemsto me thatyou cool downyour style
a little bit so that it won'toverwhelmthepianists-like you'll do a lot of stuff
with mallets instead of sticks. Do you know what I'm talking about?
I still do. All you have to do is sit there and listen. That's my
whole thing, that's my whole gimmick of playing music or playing
drums-it is dynamics, using a lot of dynamics. You play loud here,
play not so loud there, you play soft, pick up your brushes, the
mallets, use all of it, 'cause it's a wonderful instrument, and you've

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got a lot of ways to go, and I try to do that, I don't just try to-.
Bash away?
No, I try to play in the rhythm section. I always demand that: to
try to play in the rhythm section, 'cause that's where you're supposed to be. To make the musician, the soloist play, make him feel
like playing. The rhythm section can make the soloist play over his
top, play things he never dreamed he could play, if you get behind
him. You can't have a battle with him up there and see how much
you can play, because if you're playing and you make too much
noise behind him, he can't concentrate on what he wants to play, he
can't connect the things up together. You got to get out there and
push him.
Presumably, that would be differentfor different musicians. What
would stimulate one guy-.
Sure, and you change. When I'm playing for Dizzy I play one
way, if I'm playing with Miles I play one way, if I'm playing with
Wynton Marsalis or my trumpet player Terence Blanchard today,
and if I play with Wallace Roney, I play different behind each
soloist because they have different ways of doing things. They don't
all play the same. It'sjust the idea like I said, letting the punishment
fit the crime, and that's what happens, and they like that.
Do you see much differencetoday in life in blackneighborhoodsin big
cities in the Statesfrom, say, twenty-fiveyears ago-you know, like in
Harlem, for example, or the South Side of Chicago?
Harlem? There is no more Harlem, really. That's gone. They
destroyed that. The South Side; it's gone; they destroyed that.
Who's "they"?
The people who live in it themselves, you know. Economic
conditions. They got frustrated, they didn't know what to do and
how to get out of it and where to go. They thought they'd attract
attention by tearing down their own neighborhoods. That was a
mistake, you know, but those things happen. We don't know why it
happened. They didn't do it all themselves; you had wicked landlords who set the houses on fire and burned the people out.
Now, it seemslike mosttalentedyoung blackmusiciansare not gravitating as much towardjazz as they were.
Who?
What kind of musicians?WhatI mean to say is-say in theforties and
fifties, the bestyoung musicianswouldjust automaticallygo intojazz 'cause
theythoughtthat was the hippestmusic.Now in my opinion it still is, but it
doesn'tseem that todayas manyyoung musiciansare getting into it, maybe
because they think they can't make any money.
The ones who are educated are. Besides, I never thought that
the time has come, and I hope it never comes, that jazz has to go
into big stadiums and big places like that. I think jazz is better as
intimate music, and I think what made musicians move away from

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it is money. Some of them needed the money, man. They had to

make some money and they got tired of the struggle and the
waiting.
We were right on top of everything, we were working in Birdland, but all the musicians couldn't work in Birdland, all the musicians couldn't be in the Messengers and, I don't know, it was a thing
that rock-and-roll came along. It was much easier, much simpler.
It's just like salsa music, the repetition of the music, the repetition.
Same thing in rock, they repeat it over and over and over. Meantime, in the sixties all the Latin groups were going to Japan, rock
groups going to Japan, Sly and the Family Stone was big. If you go
to Japan today you hear the same music, but the Japanese are
playing it. Because of the repetition they could copy it, but they
couldn't copy jazz.
The beautiful thing about jazz is that you never hear the same
arrangement twice. You can come every night, but you can't hear
the same arrangement twice. We may play "Blues March" again; we
play it different. The arrangements that we play, everything is
changed by the cue on the drums. I may change something by
changing the cue on the drums, and then they know I'm going to
change it. They don't know to what, but anyway they just watch and
listen, and bam! There it is, and it's all different. And that's why
we've been to Japan forty-nine times. This is my fiftieth trip. 'Cause
if they could have copied us, they would have had it. We wouldn't
be back there.
But it seems like it's reached the point now where in black neighborhoods,or ghettoesor whateveryou want to call them,young peoplejust
are hardly aware that jazz exists.
That's right!.
Thepeople who likejazz and knowaboutit arepeople thatare thirty-five
years old or older.
That's right, because the kids, they don't hear it on the radio.
We have no jazz station in New York City. The only jazz station we
have is coming out of New Jersey. It's a public station. I remember
when WNEW used to play jazz all the time and, what's his name,
William something [William B. Williams], used to be the jazzjockey.
Symphony Sid was here. You could hear jazz. That made the
difference. You got to hear it. You don't hear it on TV.
A lot of timestheydon't even know it exists,or theythink it'sjustfor old
people.
They don't know it exists because they haven't seen it; if they
see the band they'll know. We have young musicians, and certainly
young people do communicate with each other. This has proven
itself in the U.K. That's why we're in the U.K., that's why the band
is so popular there. They're playing our records there in the
punk-rock discos. We just did a movie over there. And it's sad to see

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that the things we recorded thirty, thirty-five years ago, written by

Wayne Shorter, are so popular in England.
Did you go to any of thosejazz discothequeswheretheyhavejazz dance
in England?
We just did a movie on that. Kids are dancing-.
What's it like?
They call it IDJ: "I dance jazz."
All right!
That's right! It's a new thing. It's a funny thing that it had to be
recognized first over there. The best thing that comes out is from
the U.K.
That's not true ofjazz, though. All the bestmusicianshave comefrom
here.
Not of jazz. But the kids over there now are playing jazz. I tell
you the truth: I just made a TV film with a twenty-piece jazz band. I
wish you could hear the kids-eighteen, nineteen years old.
That was in England?
Yes, indeed. In London. They can play, and they're planning.
And they got good jazz musicians over there.
Well, what do you thinkcan be done to sort of help thesituationout here
at a time when so many young people don't even know whatjazz is?
Well, it's difficult. We just have to live through it. You can't
shove it down their throat.
No, but we have to at least give themsome exposureto it. You'vegot a
wonderfulyoung band, and there'reotheryoung musicians around, too.
That's right!
But I think that even theyfeel a little likefreaks becausetheyplay jazz
when everybodyelse is in rap groups or, you know,scratchingor something
with afingernail on the record.If you go intojazz, it's sort of like everybody
says, "Huh! What's wrong with that guy?"
No, but see those are fads. [The guys who do that are] going to
be left out.
Explain that more.
When they get to be my age, they ain't going to be scratching on
no records, and neither are they going to be playing guitars with
frets. That's all going to pass. It'sjust a fad thing that they're
going
through. They'll go into computers. I don't care how many computers [they use], or how much they try to make them sound like
acoustic instruments, they can't put the feeling there.
So you think that sooneror later the real thing is going to comebacklike
it always has?
Well, you know, it's like a pendulum: it swings one way and then
the other. There's nothing wrong with electronics, but you certainly can't get the feeling [with electronic instruments]. You get
the notes. You know, like in England, the guys was there from the
symphony orchestras, and the great drum teachers was there, and I

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was playing. They said, "Well, you play so unorthodox." I said,

"Well, what is orthodox? Whether I play orthodox or not, I get
results."
What did they mean by that?
Oh, the way I'll pick up my sticks, or the way I'll do something.
There's no certain way to do it; you don't hold the sticks a certain
way. The Africans don't hold the sticks a certain way; they've been
beating drums a long time. The main idea of it is to get results. So
[the English musicians] said they were going to sit there and write
down my solos, so I started playing a thing with a tissue-paper roll.
I brought the roll up real high and-BAM! I looked around and
said, "Now write that down!" See? Damn the notes. The feeling is
the thing, and they cannot do that! That's what it's all about in jazz.
That's what they used to say about Monk, you know-that he couldn't
play the piano right.
How about that? How about that?
You know, he didn't hold hisfingers right; they werestretchedout like
this.
He used to play just like Art Tatum. He got disgusted and
changed just to be different. Why don't they say Art Tatum played
wrong?
There is no right and wrong.
Like I say, once again it's opinions.
If it's great music-. Everything has to bejudged by the result.
That's the way I feel. If it's great, it's great. If it's not, just put it
down, just let it go.
Do you thinkyour style as a drummerhas changedin the last twentyor
thirtyyears?
Better. I wouldn't be here [laughs]. Corny as I was then and still
am, boy, I'd better keep moving. It's like running a big race, you
know; you can't look this way or that way or look behind. If you do,
somebody'll pass you. You have to keep getting up, so you'd better
change.
How do you feel it's changed?
Oh-, now I know my instrument much better. I'm better
acquainted with my instrument and with what I want to do. My
imagination is much better by my being around young people, and
by knowing the instrument and having a lot of experience. There
ain't no substitute, boy! I do anything that comes in my mind.
Anything! If I make a mistake, I laugh and do it again. That's why I
have a ball up there. Somebody says, "What you laughing at?" I say,
"You'd be surprised!" The funny things I do, and get into, and
then make mistakes and laugh. All the guys in the band know.
When they make mistakes, I laugh at them and say, "Uh oh! You
did it! Go back and do it again." Because that's the way jazz was
born; somebody goofed and that's how we have jazz.

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What do you mean by that?

Somebody made a mistake. They jazzed it up a little bit. And
they said, "Whoo! That sounds kind of good. Let's do it again."
And that's the way it happened. We just kept on doing it. I feel that
a guy in my band-, if he just plays clinical and doesn't make no
mistakes, I can't use him. I know he's not trying. I don't want him to
show off how much he knows, how many changes he can play.
Trying to get perfection-that's stupid! There ain't but One
perfect, and that's God. The only thing we can ever hope to reach
and ever will reach is a degree of excellence. That's all you can do.
You cannot be perfect. That's impossible! Reach that degree of
excellence, and then you reach up a little higher.
What do you mean by excellence?
Knowing your instrument and playing from your heart. Don't
be afraid to enjoy what you're doing. If you enjoy it, the audience
will enjoy it. The audience don't come in there to be given a music
lesson; they come in to enjoy themselves. If the soul is sad-, no
matter how sad you are, if you start smiling or laughing, the soul
begins to rejoice. But if you're sad and depressed yourself, the soul
begins to mourn and get depressed. It's the same thing in music; it's
a spiritual thing. If you're enjoying yourself, people will enjoy
watching you enjoy yourself. They begin to enjoy themselves!
But not all music is happy, right? Music can expressmanyfeelings,
including sadness. Takejazz-sometimes it's happy, sometimesit'sfull of
nostalgia, sometimesit's angry.
There's no jazz sad; there is no jazz angry. Some of it's romantic. I'm a romanticist. If they're playing a ballad, I can enjoy a
ballad. It makes my imagination work. I like to hear the soloist
playing his ballad and playing to the people. I think he can sing
from that instrument the same as a human being can sing. There's
no words, but he can almost put it over. If he knows the song and
know the words, he can put it over the way he plays it. And if he
doesn't know the lyrics of a ballad, he should never play a ballad.
Do all your musicians always know all the lyrics?
They'd better. I tell them to learn them, or they can't play.
So you don't thinkjazz ever has a tragicfeeling?
Why?
Why not? It's a human feeling. I'll give you an example. Do you
rememberwhenJackie McLean played this song called "PoorEric," which
was written in memoryof Eric Dolphy after Dolphy died?
"Eric"?I didn't hear of that. I know "I'll Remember Clifford."
Well, that'd be another example.
That's not sad; it's beautiful. "I'll Remember Clifford," just like
he was. He was beautiful. People get the wrong conception about
everything; they get a whole thing about death when somebody
passes, which is natural. When you're born, your destination is

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death. It's what you do in between[birth and death]. They have great
big funerals. For what? Are the funerals for the dead? No. They're
for the living. You never seen anybody who died and came back
and said, "What a wonderful funeral I had." Right?
Now, I never attend funerals. In the first place, I don't like to go
into the churches. I don't need to go in there; I understand about
it. I can recite the Bible from Genesis to Exodus verbatim, so I
know that. Now I think when a person passes he should be cremated. That's past, that's life, and you're going to die, sure as you
live-. There's two sure things in life, and that's taxes and death.
You going to do that! I don't think poor families should go around
paying five-thousand dollars for a coffin or ten-thousand dollars
for a coffin, something to go in the ground. What's the point in
spending all that money?
Well, that'show I've alwaysfelt. I told my wife that when I die, I want
her to have my bodyburned, and then I want her to take the Staten Island
Ferry and scatter the ashes in New Yorkharbor.
That's right! That's right! When my father died, we got together. I went by when he got sick. I said, "Look, Pop, what
happened?" He said, "Well, I goofed. I let these young men operate on my brain 'cause they thought they saw a tumor, and my body
couldn't stand the shock." There wasn't no tumor. He said, "All
down here fell apart." I said, "Well, what do you want me to do with
the body?" He said, "Cremate me cheap." I said, "What should I do
with the ashes?" He said, "Flush them down the toilet. What do I
care? I'm gone."
Now, back to our discussion about thefeelings in jazz-what would
you say that they were if you say sadness is not a jazz feeling?
Aw, you can play some ballads that make you feel sad. It's
according to what you're thinking about. Say, it's some ballad that
you [associate] with a girl eighteen years old in school, and you had
this thing for her. When you play this ballad again, it makes you
feel sad. Sure. Of course. What you were talking about is right, but
what I was talking about is, you know, moanin' and groanin' and
cryin' and everything.
Now onefeeling that I don't everfind in jazz is self-pity.Jazz is about
courage to go on even if everything'sterrible.
You got to do it! I feel that's the way it started, and I think that's
the way it was in New Orleans. First, they put the body away, and
that was it. They'd start dancing and everything, and people in
other parts of the world would think it was ridiculous, sacrilegious
and all that. I don't think so. 'Cause the Bible says, "Weep at the
coming in; rejoice at the going out." That's what I feel. Sure they
play things that make me feel very sad, you know, because of things
that have happened in my family. But I still get out of that the
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Let me askyou one morequestion:Whichgroups doyou thinkwereyour

best ones?
Oh, wow! I've had a lot of good groups. I've been very lucky in
that. The particular group that I liked before this one was the
group with Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton, Curtis Fuller, Jymie Merritt, and Reggie Workman. I thought that was
a hell of a group. They went along about six years and got no
attention at all.
You mean the sextet?
Aw, sure. That group, and [the previous one] with Lee Morgan
and Wayne Shorter, myself, Jymie Merritt, and Bobby Timmons.
That was one of the first jazz groups to go into Japan. Never got no
attention. And the group with Freddie Hubbard was one of the
finest jazz groups I know. We came into Birdland, and we were so
well dressed. We had six changes complete: socks, underwear,
everything. We'd change every show.
It was a good band, and it went along and [after it broke up]
years passed and passed. We did all kinds of things, trying out
everything, and then Wynton Marsalis came in the band. Then the
band began to move, move up, and after Wynton left, they said,
"Oh my God, that's the end of it." I don't know what people are
thinking about. All these years before poor little Wynton was born,
before these cats was born, the Messengers was out there! Then
Blanchard come in-, but this particular group I got Blanchard in,
it's one of the best groups I ever had.
I think that, too.
I think so. Spiritually, morally, musically, they're all right! And
they're gentlemen. I'm very proud of them, very proud.
Well, it's really a wonderfulthing to see such young musiciansplaying
so well, and with such fire and discipline, too, and with such a beautiful
book.I love that bandyou have now. The otherband of yoursI alwaysliked
a lot was of coursethatclassicband withKennyDorhamand Horace Silver.
It's hard to say, it's just hard for me to sit down and say [which
band was the best one] 'cause I've had so much fun with all of them.
Well, when I was fifteen and first got into jazz, one of myfavorite
records was one of those recordedat Cafe Bohemia that included "Like
I used to play that recordover and
Someone in Love" and "Yesterdays."
over.
Kenny Dorham! Oh boy! Wasn't he a fantastic trumpet player?
The world's most underrated, the most underrated trumpet player
on the face of the earth. An arranger-.
Beautiful composer-.
Beautiful!
You say your bandsdidn't have any successes,but comparedto himyou
guys had a lot of success. Kenny could never get to first base.
I'm talking about success as far as people say success is money,

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getting into big money and all that kind of stuff.

You'relucky, becausebasicallyyou're doing what you want to do, and
that's what counts. And you're making enough moneyto live comfortably,
even if you're not getting rich, and that's what an artist can hopefor.
What I want to do is make enough money to make it more
comfortable for the musicians. That's why I'm incorporated. My
wife runs all that business, but I'm president of it.
What'syour wife's name?
Ann. They call her Ann Arnold. She's Ann Blakey, but as Ann
Arnold she is the manager of the band. Akira, that's my little boy-,
the corporation is under his name. Akira, Incorporated. You know,
it runs nice, and we have a foundation started. All we need to do is
move along slowly and build it brick by brick. And it's coming.
What kind offoundation?
Well, we want to get a school going, teach kids, especially handicapped kids, blind kids-.
Here in New York City?
Sure. No where else. I wouldn't leave New York for heaven.
Definitely.
New York City