I didn't have time to deal with practicing in a way that I would have liked to. I wish I could have just said, "I've got four to five hours every day that I'm going to go deal with music." I just didn't' have that. I missed a lot of lessons, but I think that maybe was frustrating to me in a big picture sense of, I need the time and energy to put into my instrument.
I think we had a Ben Webster/Gerry Mulligan record... that might have been it. We only had a few records in the house.
We had been thrown out of a couple of places that we had lived in when I was a kid and all the family photos and records and toys were long since gone. But I think somebody had given us a couple of records.
I got to talk to Mel Lewis a lot as a teenager. I think that's what really impacted me the most around that time.
I wasn't expecting [the Monk competition] would necessarily do that. So I just did what I did and some good things continued to happen and some doors continued to open and that kind of led me into the different associations that I developed in my 30s and some records that I've made on ArtistShare over the last 10 years or so.
[Charlie Parker] was kind of a sponge and intrigued by it all.That's similar to what Phil [Woods] told me about Bird, too. Like he was into cooking. He was just into a lot of things. Yeah, it's about dealing with bebop and jazz and Trane [John Coltrain] and post-Trane and knowing the history. But you've got to live. You have to experience things. Know something in this world. So it was a very deep education about what it means to try and be an artist.
[Phil Wood] knew about wine. He knew about food. He knew about art. He knew about classical music. He was interested in things.
All we can do is go about our work. But we can have a goal. We can have a dream.
I did, I was in Europe a lot. I would say, mid 20s to late 30s. Less so in the last ten or twelve years. Based on some political stuff and other things, I think I'm not the only musician, the only American jazz musician that's not going to Europe quite as much. I think we're seen a little differently in the world, unfortunately, than we were pre-Iraq invasion and things like that.
We listened [with my mother] to [Frank] Sinatra and Glen Campbell and we had some Beatles records that I liked. This was in the '70s.
One time, I think it was my third lesson third or fourth lesson. Kim Parker and he picked me up at the bus station. And she just said, "Phil [Wood] has been up all night. He's heartbroken. Bud Johnson died last night." And Bud Johnson, like Zoot [Sims] and Al [Cohn] had been mentors to him.
I saw that [music] reflected in my mother when we listened to these records [of Bob Gordon]. And I felt it too.
We were poor [with my mother], and we didn't have too much. So we sat on the floor and we had a record player, and that's all we had in that room in the apartment. But we had whatever we had. Six records and a record player and it seemed like magic. Seven or eight years old, you know.
I think [Phil Wood] didn't suffer fools gladly, but he loved supporting young people that loved the music.
Phil [Wood] was known for having a little bit of a gruff manner, but he was all heart.
I had pestered [Phil Wood] for a long time. He finally agreed to do it. And I was excited and nervous and he couldn't have been nicer or more supportive from the minute I got to his house.
Connection to the music and the history was very powerful to me. I think that's what I feel the most blessed about.
When I heard Charlie Parker the first time on a record, it had seemed like an old, scratchy kind of record and I didn't get it.
Ernie Hayes, Jimmy Lewis, and either Belton Evans or Khalil Mahdi on drums [were in Sweet Basil]. All those guys really took care of me.
I would sit in at a jazz brunch [at sweet Basil] with Eddie Chamblee, who was a great tenor player. Really a kind man. The whole band was great.
I went in [Sweet Basil band] and played with them, maybe half the gig for almost eight years or more.
I was studying with Joe Allard, which was great, as a saxophone student. Being able to study with Joe Allard was an incredible experience.
There were a lot of great things you could go and hear for very little money at the time [ '80s]. Mike Stern is still playing at the 55 Bar on Mondays or Wednesdays.
Hearing Sonny Rollins live... that was really amazing. There were so many things that really blew me away at that time [of schooling].
Hearing Phil [wood] a lot, those few years especially when I was going to hear music and Tom Harrell was in the band. Man that was incredible. Hearing Tom at that period, and hearing Phil in that period, and also [Charles] McPherson. Those three guys were very impactful. Very inspiring to me at the time.
