On this day in 1941 greatest American jazz trumpeter was born in Frederick, Maryland (d. 1999). In honor of the legendary musician’s birthday, we publish excerpts and quotes from one of his last interviews, recorded in 1995 (Lester Bowie & Don Moye, WKCR).
Well, I’ve done quite a bit in the last year. We’ve done an Art Ensemble tour. We’ve done a Brass Fantasy tour. I have a group called Brassy Voices, which I used at the ’94 Winter Olympics. We toured that this summer as part of my organ group, along with a Norwegian brass section and a large Norwegian choir. We did that this summer, and also immediately following that we toured with Brass Fantasy, and immediately following that I toured with my organ group…
Trying to keep busy. I get involved in a lot of projects. There are a lot of musicians like myself who don’t have record company backing or managerial sort of things. We have to hustle really hard to get things happening. But fortunately, because of the people that are really supporting this music, I’ve been able to do quite a few projects.
I was a policeman. I never made Sergeant. I was an Airman Third Class for a while, until I got busted. Then I was nothing! [LAUGHS] But I’ve been able to do quite a few things. And we’ve always had to be self-reliant, because you can’t wait for someone to do something for you. You have to go out and do it yourself. We felt so strongly about the music, and the only way to get that happening was to actually try to produce it ourselves.
Well, we had to go to Europe because we weren’t getting enough support to sustain ourselves in the States. We moved to Europe in the beginning of 1969. Now, prior to that, we had been working about four times a year. We’d work four gigs a year, we’d have about three hundred rehearsals — but we were only working about four days out of a year. But when we got to Europe, after we were in Europe about three days, we were working six nights a week.
I’m also a musician who has a lot of children. I have six children and six grandchildren. So I had to stay busy. It wasn’t just about wanting to stay busy; I had to stay busy. I mean, that is the crux of everything we’ve been doing. The music is so vital to us, and our families are also vital to us, that we have to rely upon only ourselves to get it out there.
Well, up until then I had been doing a lot of R&B gigs. I did carnival gigs, circus gigs - I did any kind of gig I could get. I auditioned for James Brown three times. I just saw him on a plane last month. I told him, "Man, I tried to audition for your band three times." I never got the gig. But I really enjoyed his music anyway. But I would do that. When we first started with the Art Ensemble one night, and Jackie Wilson the next night, then back to the Art Ensemble and an AACM concert, and then off on the road with Jerry Butler or Joe Tex or Rufus Thomas. I worked with just about all of the R&B people during that period.
To show you the caliber of people, when I first came to New York to work at the Apollo (Reuben Phillips was the bandleader then), I was in a trumpet section where John Hunt was the lead player (who has died), but the other players were Kenny Dorham, Blue Mitchell, Johnny Coles, Marcus Belgrave and me - and I'm sitting on the end, scared to death.
Well, when I first met Earth, Wind and Fire, all those guys were studio musicians at Chess. But all of the musicians, like I said at that time, worked in various contexts, in an R&B context. And it wasn't just so much the gig; it was hanging out. Like, I was hanging out with Marcus Belgrave and Johnny Coles; they took me under their wing. That experience also; not just the musical experience. We have to think of the music not just as an academic experience, but as a very spiritual thing. Just hanging out with these guys, seeing how these guys looked or how they had fun. All these sorts of things were very important to me.
Well, everything in jazz is connected to your life experience, and you try to relate what you’re doing to your life experience. I worked in that sort of situation, I enjoyed working in that situation, and I still learn from that situation and still enjoy playing in all sorts of situations. So all this is very, very important.
