Cadence: The Review of Jazz & Blues: Creative Improvised Music
Ellery Eskelin Interview
Vol. 24 No. 4. April 1998

Taken by Ludwig Van Trikt. Transcribed by Joanne Winborne


Please note that whoever edited this interview did a terrible job, I can't even understand many of the things attributed to me. And the interview was much longer and extensive. At the time we did it I thought it was one of the best interviews done yet when published this was the result. I decided to post it anyway with this caveat in as much as there is some useful information contained. (Ellery Eskelin)

CADENCE: Your mother was the organist Bobbie Lee. Was she a Jazz player?
ELLERY ESKELIN: She didn't consider herself a Jazz o organist in so much as she didn't improvise extensively like Jimmy Smith or Jack McDuff. She played standards in the very swinging sense of the word. In spirit it was Jazz, but she didn't consider it, strictly speaking, to be that way. She more or less inspired me to start playing; the great records in her collection by Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie. My mother sensed by my reaction to her music that I was interested. Even before I knew that ! was interested enough to play an instrument, she said, "If you could play an instrument, what would it be?" Without even thinking I said tenor saxophone because I had heard the instrument on so many records and I loved the sound. I was kinda surprised by my own reaction too! The timing was perfect.

CAD: Are you then musically a product of the Baltimore School system?
E.E.: Yeah, sure. I started playing at 10 years of age in 1969. I took lessons in the elementary school. I was fortunate, I had a nice band director named Ken Reinhart. He was a young guy at that time who had a serious but casual way about the music. It just made me feel very comfortable and he was supportive about what I was trying to do. It was unusual for a kid at that time to be interested in Jazz because most kids were listening to the Beatles. At that time I really wasn't responding to Rock & Roll because we weren't exposed to it in my house, we heard Jazz and standards. When the band director felt my interest in Jazz - they helped to bring it out. Ultimately, I went through high school and into Towson State University, which is in Baltimore. I went there specifically because of Hank Levy. Levy is a writer principally known for his work for Stan Kenton and odd time signatures, he had a really fine reputation. And from the time when I was 13 years old, I used to go to summer camps. They were like week long workshops that the Kenton band used to do. They would pull into Towson for a week. All of these students from all over the country might come together, hundreds of musicians of all ages would study with the band, hang out and do concerts. Han k Levy and the Towson State Jazz Band were an integral part of that. That is why, since the time I was 13, I aspired to be in that band, go to the school and study with Hank.

CAD: In your own listening, you were hearing a lot of Stan Kenton?
E.E.: Actually, I had not heard Stan Kenton's music before those clinics. I was listening to Gene Ammons who was one of my first big influences. When I was s kid l just took to him immediately, there was something so gripping about his and music. Ammons' music made me cry and still does. I've got some records that I have had since I was 14 years old. They still affect me the same as they did the first time I heard them - which I think is an amazing thing! Stitt was also a big influence. Of course, Stitt and Ammons played together often. A few years later, I listened to Stan Getz, but my next big influence was Coltrane. When I was 14 or 15, I was aware of Coltrane's music but I wasn't prepared for the enormity or the scope of it. I first heard Giant Steps (Atlantic) which I loved, but when I pulled Sun Ship (Impulse) from the library, I was totally unprepared for that music, at least the first time I heard it. Sun Ship wasn't like anything I heard anyone do on a saxophone before. Even when I bought Interstellar Space (Impulse) from his later period I had to put the record away for about a year or so. I came back to the recording out of curiosity when I was 16 or 17. For some reason it hit me like a religious experience, all of a sudden it made perfect sense to me. It was powerful, it just went straight in. The nature of his music had that element in it. I don't like to ascribe things to music necessarily, but I responded that way. I felt a passion coming from his music that other people have also talked about in spiritual terms.

CAD: After you graduated, did you return to Baltimore? Did you do any chitlin circuit-type gigs?
E.E.: I did chitlin circuit gigs all along my career in Baltimore. The nice thing about growing up there was that even though Baltimore had a big Black culture, I was really glad to be a part of that. I always felt included - that was the special thing about it. Despite the racial climate of that time I never had a problem. When it came to music and playing in Black clubs, I was always encouraged and supported. But after l graduated from school, I went on the road, I didn't go back to Baltimore to live. I left Baltimore in 1981. I went on the road with trombonist Buddy Morrow. He was a swing-era player. I wasn't really sure I wanted to do the gig because of where I was at musically. But the call came to do the gig right when I was looking through the "Help Wanted" wondering where my next gig would be. I wanted to get t, New York rather than being stuck in Baltimore. I auditioned and got the gig, thinking,there is no reason for me not to give it a shot. I was very pleasantly surprised that it was not what I had expected. It was really quite good musically. The music by Morrow wasn't hokey it was seriously swinging. You didn't stand up and blow for an extended thing, so in that sense it wasn't Jazz in that mode. I did learn how to make the most out of one or two choruses. We played 48 weeks out of the year. One-nighters for almost a year and a half. Being a part of a road band, a big band, is the kind of experience that is almost gone for a young musician coming up. Morrow Is still on the road; he is in his 70's now.

CAD: When did you start to develop your own music?
E.E.: I didn't start thinking of my own music until 1987. My thinking back then was I wanted to stay with Buddy Morrow's band so that I could save some money up to move to New York City. At that time(1983), I realized that I was held back by my lack of theoretical knowledge of chord changes and things like that. I had been playing by ear for the most part and getting away with it for a long time, all the way through school. While that served me well and there are a lot of advantages to that, I realized that if I wanted to deal with bebop, I had other things musically to deal with. Bebop was my impetus for getting into music, but I never had anyone show me how to play bebop changes. My teachers always said you can't teach improvisation, you either have it o, you don't. I found out that is not exactly true. There are certain things you do need to know. Being on the road gave me a chance to figure certain things out. Every time we would come into New York, I took lessons with George Coleman. Coleman showed me exactly ,hat I needed to know I would walk in and he would say, "Take out your horn." We would then play a tune. Four our or five bars i, he would have me totally clocked. Coleman knew what my story was but he knew how to get down to the heart of what I needed. I only studied with him a few times, but he gave me the raw materials to investigate what I was lacking. So when I left the Buddy Morrow band and came to New York City i, 1983, I knew what I needed to do and New York City was a great place to do it! Nineteen eighty-three was the beginning of the Neo-Conservative movement in Jazz.The element was, let's be serious about this hard bop music.

CAD: Wasn't there an "In the Tradition" movement among certain avant gardists just a few years prior to 1983? Anthony Braxton, Arthur Blythe...
E.E.: Yeah, but I wasn't quite aware of their work yet. I was more aware of being in an environment in New York like the now defunct "Star Cafe" on 23rd and 7th Avenue. It was a neighborhood bar with a jam session led by the drummer, Harold White. White came from Baltimore where I knew him. He invited me to come play. It was like walking into a time warp, these guys were playing arrangements like it was 1957; it was that specific, too. Now, I knew conceptually that wasn't what I wanted to do. I gave my first New York years, 1983 to 1985, over to that, just doing homework. My ears were set on other things but that was what I needed to do so I took advantage. But ultimately I realized that this is not the expression that I want to make. I think I should bring something of myself to the music and I didn't feel comfortable playing bebop. This is a big issue for me, I'm not taking sides. This sides thing between the various traditions in Jazz presents a false dichotomy.

CAD: Most critics say your tonal quality owes much to Ben Webster and Archie Shepp.
E.E.: It struck me when the reviews started coming back because I arrived at some similar places, some similar focal points in what Archie Shepp was doing and what Ben Webster had done. But it was never my i intention... in fact, I didn't know Archie Shepp's music that well...when I started incorporating bebop into the freer realm that my music has (leaned to all along. Comparisons were made, "I hear a lot more Sonny Rollins in your playing than I did before. I would be flattered because he is a hero, but I never really studied his music either. The fact that I have arrived at a similar zone by a different route, I found to be intriguing. Coltrane, Ammons, and Stitt are more predominant influences but most people don't hear them as readily as Ben Webster and Archie Shepp. When I went over my press reviews, the list of my saxophone Influences goes over twenty - and you know that they can't all be in the same bag! It's not a cognizant effort to sound like them. You can't listen to my records and think Archie Shepp.

CAD: How did you 90 from a background of traditional jazz to freer playing?
E.E.: I think it was more of a function of the climate that we are in that makes a dichotomy of these things, like traditional, free or bebop. When I was coming up I never recognized those things as being opposites to each other. They are portrayed that way, but I don't think that is the way things ought to be. I always took the music as a whole. Obviously i would tell the differences in someone's sound or style and figured out something different is goin' on here. But, I never took that to be at odds with. A lot of it probably came from the fact that during the 60's's a lot of players were trying to jettison the past. But in 1969 I was 10 years old, so for me it was natural to swing back and forth. To say I wanted to go in a freer direction meant I wanted to tie all the music together. I had been doin' bebop for so long just as a matter of learning the ropes. I then wanted to reintegrate everything that I had learned. Coltrane was the only exponent of free olavincl that I responded to.

CAD: Who did you first hit with when you moved to New York City?
E.E.: I did every type of freelance gig I could, Jazz or otherwise, commercial music, whatever, just to make a living. I was making a living right away. When I lived in Chelsea, I had a funky little apartment with cheap rent - 17th between 8th and 9th, $350.00 split with two other people and money saved from being on the road - so that was cool. One of my first gigs was with Jack McDuff. He had a great band with drummer Joe Dukes. It was a hand and glove equation with those two guys. Sometimes that band would swing so hard I would just stand there and desperately want to take the horn out of my mouth and just scream! I did a group of hit and miss one-shot gigs with Donald Byrd, Terumasa Hino, etc., until 1986 when I wanted to concentrate on making music of my own. I just did not want to have to figure out how to get one of the three gigs in New York City that 8,000 other saxophonists were trying to get. It became pretty clear we all weren't going to get the call to work with Art Blakey. This isn't what I wanted to hear - it would have been nice to work with some of my heroes but overtime I wanted to get past that. So it might as well start now. Around 1986 I started to try to compose. My attitude went from just trying to play with anybody I could to being very selective. I cut out commercial work entirely because that kind of gig was not conducive to the way I was playing. I took a day gig: offices in Carnegie Hall or New World records just to make money. But my music was with a few select people: Phil Haynes, Drew Gress (who I went to school with). Paul Smoker, I met from them. We had a core thing for a couple of years where we hung out, played, talked about the music and began to write. Solidify a concept and work with it all in this do-it-yourself operation because no one was paying any attention to us. We couldn't get a gig to save our lives, nothing was happening at all! We were well respected in the community. Once we had recorded, little by little we started getting some work. It's been a long, slow process since then. But that's when the concept came that I still build on. Joint Venture was my first recording situation, then Setting the Standard, a release on Cadence Jazz. That 1987 release by Joint Venture (Enja) set things in motion. Now three or four recordings later, I haven't participated in Joint Venture of late. We all had individual I projects as leaders, which was a great I thing to bring to a cooperative band. No I one in Joint Venture has the energy to get I work for it, do the promotions. I've been doing my projects and the other guys have been doing theirs. After the third recording, I wasn't sure what else I could bring to the band. The instrumentation being what it was, I felt the need to try some different things. Much of the instrumentation of my subsequent project has allowed me to think different about the saxophone. I took it like I'm going to give Joint Venture a break for a minute. If those guys want to continue playing, they could. In fact, the last couple of gigs Don Byron subbed. Even though we tried to skew the traditional two horns and rhythm section Jazz format, I felt I took it as far as it could go.

CAD: By now you have become closely associated with the Downtown scene of like-minded improvisers: Joey Baron, Mark Helias. This group of avant gardists seems strikingly different from the older established group of avant gardists - the David Murrays, Oliver Lakes... Particularly along racial and aesthetic lines.
E.E.: Yeah, there is an awareness of the difference. But there is no conscious attempt to take a stance within or without. I often think about the genesis of the certain branches of the music and what it all means. I know with Joey Baron, I've talked about not wanting to play free. It's the same sensation when I came to New York City and I was playing bebop. I felt I had to learn it as a device of improvising. But to stand in front of an audience playing bebop would be disingenuous, playing a style of music that was not mine. Enough time has passed, since the 60s and 70s, since the advent of "free Jazz" to be able to look at it as a similar style, almost in an "historic" sense. I don't think I would bring anything to free Jazz that hasn't already been done before. We utilize what we love in the history of music but fashion it in a way that speaks of ourselves. How that breaks down to a relationship to the older avant garde or to the Lower East Side as a musical geographical location... I don't know how enlightening I can be on all that, because I'm not sure how it plays out anyway. It's not all that cut and dried. The Knitting Factory for one is a very eclectic place. It's the center of the Downtown thing but there is a hell of a lot of music goin' on that can't be locked into a particular 'ism. And when I look at the people that play the Knitting Factory, it's a mostly mixed group of musicians: White, Black, women, Asians - if you wanted to get into the social strata. Beyond that, it's easy in the press to put a handle on the music for easy reference.

CAD: You have expressed a certain dissatisfaction with certain inherent Jazz forms. ABA - theme solo theme...
E.E.: I don't want to say dissatisfaction. That would infer that I don't like that music anymore. That's certainly not the case. I haven't abandoned my roots or inspiration at all, I'm just seeking alternatives. Again, because so much has been done within this context. I'm not sure the game is to outdo Coltrane at what he was trying to do. The emphasis to me is to try to change the rules to your own satisfaction so that you can have a platform to address your view of the world. Formats in terms of instrumentation or structural forms in any of my compositions are all my tools to get there.

CAD: What types of contexts are you looking to put the saxophone in?
E.E.: Instrumentation is really fascinating to me right now, so any I can find! I've used saxophone and hand percussion; solo saxophone; saxophone, guitar and drums - all these combinations on my recordings. On my CD, Jazz Trash, I use saxophone, accordion and drums. Every different combination of instruments demands to my ears that I respond in a unique fashion. I can't play the same way I improvise against a standard rhythm section versus an odd instrumentation grouping. Beyond that, there is always the issue of the personalities involved in the music, which is just as important. If I were to use a different drummer or accordion player on Jazz Trash it's all going to sound different. The music was written for Andrea Parkins and Jim Black with these personalities in mind. I often don't know what kind of instrumentation I'm going to use until something strikes me. I listen to tons and tons of music of all sorts. I leave the radio on and listen to WFMU, which is a free form radio station out of East Orange, New Jersey. Sometimes my own writing just starts with a sound. One time, it was the sound of a tuba and I thought "Joe Daley." I can't be too methodical and say, "This is going to lead me from A to Z." It's a little bit of both. I don't want to say that the language has been exhausted or that Jazz is dead. But there is an issue there of just how much has been done on a saxophone after you listen to John Coltrane. I think the name of the game is not to paint yourself into an extreme corner, to find that nugget that no one else has found. The idea is maybe I can put together all the music I grew up with and take it apart and reassemble it again. The result will be something different but you will also be able to see some of the traditional elements in it. That's attractive to me and it's where I'm at right now.

CAD: Are there then certain limitations as a soloist, as an improviser in Jazz?
E.E.: No, only if I were to restrict myself to traditional formats. But since I feel the freedom to change the format, change the context of that language, I can play some Ben Webster stock licks and recontextualize the whole thing and have it mean something different. That is the key to extending the music.

CAD: Is there any new music happening, particularly in New York City?
E.E.: The whole turntable thing with DJ's I think is really amazing. That came right out of hip-hop; that is really new and an inspiration to me. It's ironic because the criticism from the Jazz world was that "these cats aren't playing instruments. always thought that was the great thing about hip-hop. These guys were taking a turntable and coming up with ideas that a saxophone player might not come up with. So, by extension, hip-hop influenced the DJ culture going on in the clubs right now. There seems to be cross-fertilization with improvisers - which I think is really cool! When improvisers get a handle on that, I'm curious what effect it will have on the music. I can already see what it's doing to the way I play. When I started working with Andrea Parkins, I noticed how I was trying to imitate a sampler. The sampler is doing things that might seem I, mechanical or artificial in terms of the regular flow; but if you can get past that I said, "Damn, it's creating shapes!" Ones that I never heard before. So then I compensate and break up my own phrasing. When you listen to a Coltrane solo, that is an organic entity to me. But if I can take Coltrane, Ben Webster, and Sonny Stitt and wrap them all up, put them back together again and then cut them up and put them together again in my own phrasing, I can cut and paste through sampling ; to get something completely different. In r fact, I don't even listen to that much Jazz in the house anymore because it's had too strong an influence on me, because I grew up with it. I will now listen to something I don't like just to replace it with the music I like in order to create a space in my mind. All because I'm hearing something completely different in my head. I can't let the psychology of what I grew up with pull me in because I get to a point to where I only hear Jazz. I still keep up with the scene, but I don't listen to it as much as I used to - which used to be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I listen to it now just to keep up with what's happening.

CAD: Have you gotten away from considering yourself a Jazz artist?
E.E.: I've always considered myself a Jazz artist, I think I still do. With all the controversy in Jazz, I get the feeling that there is a growing number of people who don't consider me that way when I think of the components of my music. It would be a slap in the face of my influences to deny the music.

CAD: When I look in the New York newspapers, I don't see you listed that much. What is the bottom line on your career?
E.E.: In 1991 or 1992 I left my day gig and I've been a full-time musician since. I've steadily been doing better since then. But I I don't know anyone, including people whose name you see regularly. l don't know anyone who is making a large sum of money playing this music. We are all making money in Europe or with record dates. If I play the Knitting Factory 30 times a year that is not that much money. Everyone I know depends on Europe; I don't know what we would do without it. My material needs are not that great but I'm increasingly frustrated that I don't have health insurance. I just turned 37 and it's more and more an issue the older I get.

CAD: When you look at the first wave of j the avant garde it was tied into Black, Nationalism and cultural identity. What is today's avant garde about? It seems to lack an overall thematic conception or unified aesthetic outlook.
E.E.: I think the nature of it is exactly that. That the music is fragmented since the '60s. I don't think the idea of one person trying things together is realistic or desirable- The music is now not a part of the culture that it once was. It is no longer s capable of being a popular music anymore. When Coltrane was around there was still enough of a scene to be vital. Now, there is no platform for that. It's too artificial to allow another messiah to appear. There is a lot of great music around that does not come under the moniker of Jazz. That is special, the shit is making me feel hope again.

September, 1996 New York, NY


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