Courtesy of Sonny Fortune







Shanachie

A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH SONNY FORTUNE


Every now and then, I get mail. Hate mail makes up the bulk of it, but aside from the occasional death threats, I get a pat on the back every once in a blue moon. One reader sent me a list of interviews he wished me to do and I am not Santa Claus or anything, but I will be damned if I don't listen to our loyal readers. Sonny Fortune was on his list (and why shouldn't he be, Sonny's played with Miles and Elvin) and for that gentleman, here you are sir, Sonny Fortune, unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

SONNY FORTUNE: Just trying to get out of trouble (laughing). I started relatively late in comparison and basically, I was just going in the wrong direction with my life. I had gotten married real young, sixteen, and things were just kind of going somewhere, but music was something that I always loved and at the time, I thought it was a direction. I didn't have the opportunities and the options that were later available in more recent years, going to school and so on and so forth, for a trade. And I was just very naïve, thinking that music was something that I could grab a hold of and make a difference.


FJ: What prompted you to choose the saxophone?

SONNY FORTUNE: (Laughing) I don't know, Fred. I think it was all the little trinkets (laughing). It just looked interesting. At the same time, so many things happened at the same time. Like I said, I had gotten married real young and had a responsibility and started taking life much more serious. I started listening to jazz. I was intrigued with the art form and I wanted to play an instrument and the saxophone, for some reason that I can't really identify with at this time, but for some reason, it did appeal to me. I didn't know anyone, at least not close up like someone in my family or a neighbor or something like that, that played saxophone, so I'm not sure why I selected the saxophone, but that is how it come about. I guess it was some like or some preference somewhere, but I can't recall.


FJ: Describe the Philly scene at the time.

SONNY FORTUNE: Those were the days, Fred. There were cats everywhere. There were half of the people that the world has come to know through jazz was living in Philly, Lee Morgan, John Coltrane, Jimmy Garrison, McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, Archie Shepp, all these guys were in Philly. I didn't know all of them. Well, yeah, I kind of, as time went on, met all of them in one way or another, Kenny Barron. They were all there. There were different clans of cats. There was the West Philly guys. There was the South Philly guys. There was the Germantown guys. There was the North Philly guys and I lived in North Philly, and Odean Pope and Hasaan, a piano player, but the guy who was in the clan of guys that I was hanging around with, trying to identify with, they were much more advanced than I was, was a guy named Kenny Rodgers, the saxophone player.


FJ: Not to be confused with the "Know when to hold them" guy.

SONNY FORTUNE: (Laughing) Well, there are actually there are about four Kenny Rodgers. There is a baseball player. There is the country singer. There is another saxophone player who died in some years ago in the New York area. So I know about four or five of them. But this guy was the first Kenny Rodgers. I knew him before I knew any of these other people and he was on Lee Morgan's second album (Lee Morgan Indeed!, Vol. 2 on Blue Note) and Lee Morgan and Archie Shepp have credited him as being a strong influence. He was a heck of a saxophone player. He had a group of guys that was part of the North Philly clan and so he was the cat that was very inspirational, from the standpoint that was doing it, that I knew close up. All these cats was from Philly. There were so many cats. There is cats that I haven't even mentioned that were all from Philadelphia. And in those days, that was the unbelievable part of this story of mine. At that time, Fred, that town was full of musicians.


FJ: It is a shame that New York has garnered most of the attention away from Philadelphia's contributions.

SONNY FORTUNE: Absolutely, and actually, a lot of cats came to Philly. Sun Ra ended up moving to Philly. Hank Mobley moved to Philly. I think Diz. I think Stan Getz. I think they all lived in Philly at one time or another.


FJ: Let's touch on your time with Miles Davis.

SONNY FORTUNE: Well, Miles was an individual and I certainly strived to be myself. There was and probably never will be another Miles Davis, a very unique human being. Miles was a very funny cat. I found him to be very, very humorous, only because he never actually, I don't think, tried to be Miles. He didn't necessarily say a whole lot, but when he spoke, it was so profound and so complete. He had an incredible insight in the understanding of this music. He saw Coltrane, to my knowledge, before Coltrane was Coltrane. I remember reading an article, where he thought Coltrane was going to somebody that no one at that time had any idea. So he was a very unique, very insightful, very profound, and a very fearless cat. I have often referred to Miles as one of the few people that I've ever met that had the least amount of trivia, meaning, I saw very little jealousy or paranoia or vengeance or any kind of thing like that where a lot of people may have that in their character. Miles was the kind of person that seemed to have very little, none of that. I never saw it. He was a guy that really worked off of, he was very comfortable in himself and very clear in his own mind about how he saw things.


FJ: You were also a member of the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine.

SONNY FORTUNE: I left the band last year, but I had been off and on with Elvin for about fifteen years. Actually, I was working with Elvin the night that Coltrane died. That was my first gig in New York, working with him.


FJ: Where were you when Coltrane died is jazz's equivalent to where were you when JFK was shot.

SONNY FORTUNE: It sure was. It really was something. Actually, I saw Coltrane about, well, I had played with Coltrane at a concert about a year before he died and we talked on the phone a number of times. I was actually supposed to do some other things with him. But it was during the time when he was getting fired from gigs and I saw him about two months before I came to New York and he wished me luck and he said that I would be OK and he told me that if I ever got the opportunity to play with Elvin, to take it. So when I started working with Elvin, it was on my mind to call him and after months, I decided to call him on a Saturday and he died that Sunday. Alice told me that he was asleep and I just told her to tell him, as if he cared. I was so naïve that I thought that there was a connection, but he was the kind of a man that he probably did. He changed my direction forever.


FJ: In what manner did he changed your direction?

SONNY FORTUNE: Well, like I told some people in Greece a few months ago, I was going north and met him and I've been going south ever since (laughing).


FJ: The news of his death must have come as quite a shock.

SONNY FORTUNE: Well, we had been working at this club and it was just a night that I remember very vividly. But, no, we didn't know anything that night. It was on a Sunday night and that was the last night for that week and then we were off on Monday and started back at Tuesday. Actually, I went home to Philadelphia to call him that Saturday, but we didn't know anything. Actually, I found out when I went back to Philadelphia on Monday and I ran into one of his cousins on the bus. I was coming back from downtown and I ran into one of his cousins and his cousin asked me, "Did you hear what happened?" And I said, "No." He said, "Coltrane died." I said, "Get out of here." I ran home and I called Alice and she told me that he did. I was completely numb because Coltrane was my hero, Fred. Coltrane was what was pure and honest with this music for me at the time. I really thought he was the righteousness of this music.


FJ: That is certainly evident on your latest Shanachie release, In the Spirit of John Coltrane.

SONNY FORTUNE: Well, it was really a very humbling attempt to acknowledge a person meant and still means so much to me. Coltrane gave me the inspiration to even want to continue to play this music. The joy and the pursuit of it, the joy in defining the individual in us all, the commitment and the beauty of music that is creative, spontaneous, because, Fred, he was that kind of a guy. Coltrane was, it is hard to believe and in all these years of talking about him because of this record that I did, I have come to realize that I only knew the man for about nine or ten years and in those nine or ten years, he traveled a distance that most people don't do in a lifetime, musically. I mean, it is documented where you can listen to Coltrane's records and you will hear a different period of his evolving musically. It is really unbelievable that it is one man that is doing all of that. And my recording, to tell you the truth, Fred, was not intended to reflect that. I was just trying to write some music and trying to make an acknowledgement, a dedication, but when I put the music together, when I put the compositions and kind of sat back and looked at the end result, the compositions kind of reflect different periods of his movement. When I wrote the last tune on that CD at that particular time, it didn't have a title. I just wrote that and we went in the studio and recorded it and it was a while after the recording that I decided to call it "For John" because that was the period that I knew him the most, from the standpoint of talking to him, I can't say that I knew him, certainly, not to the degree that other people that I've had the pleasure of being around knew him. That was the time that I spoke to him the most. That was the time that I played a concert with him. That was the time that I talked to him on the telephone a number of times. That was the time that I saw him and that was the time when, Fred, he was playing something that I didn't know what to make of. Nobody knew what to make of. We were like, "Wait a minute. What are you doing? Why are you doing this?" But I remember what I said to myself and that was, "I don't know if I like what he's doing, but I don't qualify to challenge it and so I have to accept it." I saw him as my father, where you can't defy your father because of respect and the love and all that goes with that. And so I just felt like I had to accept what he was doing because he had convinced me that he was clear in his head as to what was going on and it was up to me to figure it out without ever saying that. He never said that to anyone. He was one of the most gentle of men that I had ever met in my life. And so all of that was a part of that recording, Fred. It really was something. I reflect back on what I just did regarding that recording and I really don't know what to make of it all. Coltrane is a person that I have more or less kept in my subconscious until recently.


FJ: And the future?

SONNY FORTUNE: Well, I am getting ready to go out of town this weekend. I am just working. I am in the process of, we've been talking about doing another recording for Shanachie. I don't really have anything clear in my head right now. I'm trying to, I don't know if I am inhaling or if I am exhaling on this record here. I am in a state of pause on this Coltrane record. I kind of feel like I really don't know where to go. I normally have an opinion, but I have actually put the word out that I am ears. I am available for suggestions because I don't have a really strong idea right now. I am just kind of reflecting on this recording here. This record says a lot and means a lot to me.


Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and govenor of the great state of North Dakota. Email Him.