A
FIRESIDE CHAT WITH D. D. JACKSON
I am not the biggest
fan of vocals and piano trios. I need a horn every now and then. It is
the lack of attention span that comes with being a member of the MTV generation.
But D. D. Jackson has always been of great interest to me. That probably
has a good deal to do with the fact that Jackson developed in the bands
of heavy horn players like David Murray and Hamiet Bluiett. Whatever the
case may be, if you take a listen to Jackson's new release on RCA Victor
(with one killer solo after another from James Carter), Jackson will hold
your interest as well. I give you D. D. Jackson, unedited and in his own
words.
FRED
JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.
D.
D. JACKSON: Well, I started out listening to my kindergarten teacher play
the piano. I used to sit beside her and watch with great awe. So I subsequently
went home and begged my parents for a piano. They got me one when I was
six years old. I have essentially been playing ever since. I went through
the classical route and ultimately did a bachelors degree in classical
piano at Indiana University. But I also spent my life improvising and
enjoying that as a means of escape. So finally, there was a critical moment
in my life when I had to make a decision between whether to continue as
a classical musician as everyone around me had sort of expected or to
make the switch to jazz and I opted to go in the jazz direction.
FJ:
What prompted to you to choose jazz over classical?
D.
D. JACKSON: Well, there were a couple of key developments in my life.
I think until I was about twenty-one, I think I was in many ways living
my life along the lines about what other people expected of me. I was
always a goodie two-shoes sort of a student, not only in music but academically
in all courses. There was just a heavy expectation to follow a particular
track. Plus, at the same time, there was very little knowledge among the
people that were supporting me in my musical endeavors in terms of an
awareness of the jazz tradition at all. There was no real direct encouragement
in that area. What basically happened was my brother passed away when
I was about nineteen years old from a very rare disease known as Wilson's
Disease and I think that was a real catalyst. It took a long time to deal
with what happened and I think one of the results of that for me was to
realize that it was sort of a waste to live my life along the lines of
what other people expected of me and that I should really follow my own
heart on the matter. Basically, that was the point where I finally decided
to leave my former teacher's studio at Indiana University, which was considered
a really big step politically. It was something that nobody ever did.
I left the studio and I found myself sort of graduating toward jazz and
ultimately a masters of music degree at the Manhattan School of Music,
where I studied with Jaki Byard. So I guess my brother's death was in
some ways a catalyst.
FJ:
Influences?
D.
D. JACKSON: When I first started listening to jazz, my influences started
pretty much with Oscar Peterson, with really early Chick Corea. In fact,
another interviewer noticed the connection between my new album and some
of his Return to Forever stuff, which I hadn't sort of made any direct
connection, but that was actually, I remember his album, Romantic Warrior
and that was one of the first albums that I had really heard in any sort
of jazz related idiom. I remember listening to early Herbie Hancock and
Chick Corea. These were the jazz related artists that got me started.
At the same time, I grew up listening to the Beatles and Stevie Wonder,
which is where I heard a lot of my harmonic knowledge, and of course a
tremendous amount of classical music. When I was at Indiana University
and was in the process of making that transition to jazz, that was when
I started to check out some of the really great members of the jazz tradition
for the first time. I started to absorb entire outputs of different particular
artists, like great pianists. I would go to the library, which was a very
extensive musical library and listen to everything I could of Keith Jarrett,
of Chick Corea's other output, and Abdullah Ibrahim, and Thelonious Monk,
and Duke Ellington, and Bud Powell, and so on and so on. I just felt like
I needed to be as complete as possible and to really understand what came
before. In a way, I felt that in part because I felt as though I had really
a lot of catching up to do, having really come to it pretty late, like
I said, doing mostly classical and jazz as sort of as a means of enjoyment.
I sort of dived in at the Manhattan School of Music. I started listening
to Jaki Byard and studying with Jaki Byard and subsequently with Don Pullen
and of course getting into his conception for a long time. Since then,
I have been trying to readdress classical music and so I have been listening
to a lot of that and world music of various sorts, popular music, just
whatever I could get my hands on. I have about thirty CDs on my shelf
that I haven't even opened yet because I am just trying to twiddle my
way as many different things as I can.
FJ:
Might we see a classical album from you in the future?
D.
D. JACKSON: That's a possibility. In a way, I don't feel like I ever stopped
being a classical pianist. Even though I am obviously a jazz musician,
it has always been a part of me. I progressed to a very advanced level
and there was a certain presumption that that was what I was going to
do. On the other hand, it was so distressing, really, the experience that
I had studying at Indiana because there was such an anti-jazz bias from
most of my teachers and a lot of students there even. It was so distressing
that I really got away from the whole classical world for really about
ten years. I have only been re-addressing it. It has been a really wonderful
rediscovery for me. I played at a chamber music concert last summer for
the first time. A duo piano concert with actually my first piano teacher
from Ottawa. This was in Ottawa, which is my hometown. We played various
classical works for duo piano like Stravinsky and plus I wrote a piece
for two pianos. Currently, I am working on a new work that is going to
be debuting this July 1, which is actually Canada Day. We will combine
certain elements of classical with jazz and hopefully, what will come
across is a organic hybrid as opposed to a quoting of different sources.
That is something that I am actually working on.
FJ:
What were the lessons you learned, both life and in music, from both Don
Pullen and the late Jackie Byard?
D.
D. JACKSON: I would say the overall lesson I learned from both of them
is just to have an open mind. They were the pianists in some of the great
bands of Charles Mingus. Jaki in the Sixties and Don, essentially, in
the early Seventies. Mingus himself had that ability to transcend genres
and boundaries and his own playing had a classical, experimental side
and was really stretching jazz form and doing things in many different
directions. Jaki and Don inherited that open-minded ability. More specifically,
Jaki was more of a real, walking history of the piano because he had learned
stride with Earl Hines and played with all sorts of different masters
and he really had just a tremendous awareness of the whole tradition.
He basically tried to impart that to me as much as he could. He also had
a real respect for the fact that I came from a classical background and
he would often encourage me to incorporate that into what I did and in
fact play classical pieces, even when I was sitting in with him. Don Pullen
helped me in two ways. One in a conceptual way, getting me to be more
myself and to just experiment, particularly in the area of composition
and to find my own voice, which sort of freed me up. Just to have a mentor,
whose music you respect and whose opinion you trust tell you that he thinks
you can be someone important and he thinks you can have something important
to say, that was the kind of thing that could fuel my creative endeavors
for months at a time. So that was the sort of relationship that I had.
It was very, very encouraging and I trusted him a great deal about his
advice. Without him having to do or say very much, he was able to motivate
me to really push myself and to find my own voice. Then on a business
level, he gave me a lot of great advice about career and really was ultimately
responsible for my first gigs by recommending me to people like Kip Hanrahan
and on whose tour I met David Murray and he recommended me to Hamiet Bluiett.
It led to a lot of my work as a sideman for the first few years of my
career.
FJ:
Let's touch on your first of a two parter for RCA Victor, beginning with
...So Far.
D.
D. JACKSON: It was a solo piano album. It was something that I had been
waiting to do for a long time. So I felt mature enough to be able to handle
the medium. On of the models of a solo piano album to me was Don Pullen's
Evidence of Things Unseen (Black Saint). In my own mind, until I was able
to express myself with the same sense of completion has he did on that
album, I didn't even want to dare attempt the category. I also had worked
my way down I suppose because my first album was a quartet and then trio
and duos. It seems inevitable that this was coming and as you pointed
out, this was part of a set, which I want people to be very aware of.
This is certainly why the two albums, Anthem and ...So Far, were released
only six months apart because I wanted people to get a sense of some of
the broad areas in which I like to express myself. The solo piano album
was really more of an expression of my playing and my improvising and
hopefully, my ability to channel into what hopefully ended up sounding
like my own form of expression. I remember telling the label when I was
proposing this concept initially that as much as they wanted me to play
standards and other people's tunes, that since I had so many different
tunes and I was influenced by so many different people, that it would
make a lot of sense to make it in a sense a tribute album, but sort of
turn it on its head by having me write pieces inspired by various influences
as opposed to playing their own pieces. It actually won the Juno Award,
which is the Canadian Grammy.
FJ:
And Anthem.
D.
D. JACKSON: Anthem in contrast was designed to show the group conception
in my mind. So the focus was more on my arranging and writing than me
as a pure pianist or improviser. I wanted to choose players that were
uniquely in my mind capable of expressing the sort of tension between
a certain melody and groove and accessibility and still retain a sense
of improvisational adventure. I am actually very proud of this album and
I think it worked quite well.
FJ:
Let's talk about some of the players on the album.
D.
D. JACKSON: Jack DeJohnette, I had always admired his Special Edition
groups in particular. It was a very natural choice to have him there.
Plus, he is an incredibly musical drummer. Many people are aware that
he also plays piano, in fact, did a piano album. When we were recording
in the studio, I walked in one day and he sounded great. I almost wanted
to record him. So that melodic element comes through in his drumming.
He is an incredibly sensitive drummer, even as he has tremendous power
and groove. Richard Bona was somebody that I had been hearing about around
town a lot. And around the same time that we did the recording, his own
album came out where he didn't even play the bass, or he did, but the
feature was on him as a vocalist. And yet, as a bass player, having researched
this album heavily as I tend to do and just really examining a lot of
world music and fusion oriented things, I really had settled upon wanting
Richard to combine those elements. He has a tremendous lyrical sound on
his instrument and yet, an ability to groove and do some very unique things.
I loved his voice. He has a really angelic quality to his singing. It
was just a natural choice to have him do that on this track that I wrote
called "Simple Song." James Carter is somebody that I have been working
with on and off for the last several years. We actually also have the
same management and agency, which wasn't the case when I did the recording.
So I am just anticipating working with him further. He is somebody that
I always felt was on the cutting edge of his instrument or should I say
instruments. He has a breathtaking, arguably unprecedented technical facility.
He is also somebody I wanted to put into a different context. His own
context tends to be more straight-ahead. I feel like it is fun to put
him in a context where he can sort of let loose and go crazy. I tried
to give him opportunities like this on the album. I am very pleased with
his contribution. Mino Cinelu, the percussionist, is somebody that I have
been following through his work with Miles Davis. He played with Weather
Report as well. I happened to hear him a month before I did the recording.
There was a tribute to Joni Mitchell that was put on led by Vernon Reid
and I did not know who he was. I was like, "Wow, who is that percussionist?"
I called Vernon Reid up and when I found out that it was Mino, I immediately
hired him for the session. He has a tremendous open-mindedness. Just hearing
the extent that he was able to interact with Jack DeJohnette, which isn't
an easy thing to do. Christian Howes is a new discovery for me and many,
many people. He is going to redefine jazz violin for the new millennium
in a way. He has serious classical chops and classical background. He
also has an effortless ability to conjure up all different sorts of styles.
He has a very unique sound in terms of his electric instrument. He can
also play lyrically in an acoustic vain. He is a very, very complete musician.
Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and lost his shirt on Priceline's dog
shit stock. Comments? Email Him