A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH MONTY ALEXANDER


I have been known to light up a cigar every now and then. An Ashton VSG, 25-year-old Macallan (sinfully on the rocks), a warm fire, a comfortable leather chair, the soothing sounds of Sinatra, and I am indeed in heaven. So when I received Monty Alexander's new My America record that features "Summer Wind," a Sinatra staple, I was a bit skeptical. After all, I knew Alexander from his Bob Marley material (which an old high school teacher of mine took to play in his class and never returned). I was surprised at Alexander's rendition of Sinatra. It proved to me that he was no one trick musician and I explored his other material. Impressive. What I didn't know was Alexander had ties to Sinatra and this I learned during our conversation, amongst other things, as always unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

MONTY ALEXANDER: As a young fella in my hometown of Kingston, Jamaica, I experienced the joy from five years old, when I heard musicians play and I had records in the house. My parents had music, including popular music and Broadway songs and cowboy songs and calypso and I heard Louis Armstrong. We had Nat King Cole as a staple. And so I heard all this music and I loved it. There was a piano in the house and I gravitated towards the instrument playing my own songs on it, picking it up as a kid. It's a typical growth pattern for a lot of young people. I was just automatically inclined to be a music person. It stuck with me and I was told to go to a piano teacher, which I did just for a few years. Throughout all that time, it wasn't the piano lessons that made a difference. It was my own personal instincts that attracted me to see musicians play. I have a lot of memories of folk, calypso bands around in Kingston, Jamaica and I would go hangout with them and watch them play. I had an accordion and I would go sit in and play. So from an early age, the joys of sharing music with other musicians, but it was Louis Armstrong that I saw in Jamaica that really grabbed me. Boy, I saw this guy on his trumpet and that was it. I was about nine or ten years old when I saw Satchmo. My dad gave me a trumpet the next day and I tried to play the trumpet, but I couldn't find how to play the trumpet so well, but I loved the feeling of this music. It was the man, this jovial, positive, funny, entertaining, happy guy, who made this sound on the trumpet that was so pure and beautiful. Of course, we heard him singing those notes with his gravely voice. The whole thing and how the people got caught up in the feeling of the music. So it is just what happens when jazz takes off and it infects and gets into people and the next thing you know everyone is having this great feeling so that music can do that to people and make them feel so happy as well as, that is just it, the spirit of the event and that is what grabbed me. Of course, I thought he was just this incredible guy with such a beautiful personality and everybody smiled when they saw him. That stuck with me because musicians that I saw after that, musicians that included your character. Nat King Cole had a way of being gracious, who I also saw in Jamaica. It was all about literally making you feel good and I wanted to make people feel good as well as myself.


FJ: Audience involvement is more often associated with Latin jazz and not the jazz of Miles Davis, who was infamous for turning his back to the crowd.

MONTY ALEXANDER: That is my natural tendency as a person with music. I guess if I tried to analyze it, I'm so grateful that I have this opportunity to make music and I just love every note I play unless I'm having a terrible, terrible, bad day, every note I play is a moment to rejoice that I'm alive and that's how I feel. I dig Miles Davis very much. I knew the man and I was fascinated with his whole mysterious kind of thing and I think he was just a very, very complex guy, who when he played his music, it was fascinating and you felt the talent and the genius of the man, but it was not his nature to smile with you. It was a very brutish kind of personality and I'm just going along with my personality. My personality is one that is more, I don't have problems smiling with people and that's what I do with music. I want to smile.


FJ: How did you go from local Jamaican musician to playing with venerable jazz musicians on the mainland?

MONTY ALEXANDER: I first came to America to live. I was just turning eighteen years old. I went to Miami, Florida, family circumstances. My mother decided that we were going to go to Florida. So I said, "Yeah, let's go." I loved it. I was going to land of tall buildings and where all these great artists came from. I had already been around Kingston playing in the nightclubs and hanging out. I shouldn't have been doing that. I should have been in school studying, but I was hanging out with the musicians having a ball. I was in my early teens and I was also going to the recording studio in what was the beginning of that whole scene in Jamaica, what became the great popular music that brought Bob Marley. When I came to Miami, I immediately started finding the musicians, the local guys and hanging out with them and just going up there and be friendly and one day I was invited to sit in, in a club that was right there on Miami Beach and this guy, African American musicians who were very friendly towards me, the next thing you know, I was sitting there, swinging hard with the rest of these guys that were playing jazz, very kind of rhythm and blues-ish and I got hired. Somebody saw me playing and I started getting bookings around Miami and it was just a simple, natural transition. The next thing you know, I was getting paid. I didn't go to school. I didn't plan on having a career. I didn't think it was possible, Fred. How can I come from Jamaica, this guy who just got here as a kid, how am I even going to be lucky enough to get a job and the next thing I know I was working around Miami playing in the clubs, playing in places where a lot of gangsters hung out. I worked in those bars with the hookers. I was in Miami where mostly white folks would be. I was also in Miami where mostly Black folks would be and I was accepted by everybody because I come from a place called Jamaica. We're not into that stuff. At least not back then. I was instantly a professional musician. I was playing in front of people and I was just seventeen, eighteen years old. It was just amazing and I've been doing ever since.


FJ: Let's touch on your relationship with the late Milt Jackson.

MONTY ALEXANDER: First time I met Milt was because I had a job playing at Jilly's, a club in New York, where Frank Sinatra used to come a lot. This is in the early Sixties and it happened because when I was playing one of those bars in Miami, Sinatra and some friends came in and I got hired. It's a short story and I came to New York. When I was playing at Jilly's, I happened to have met these two musicians in Miami, who I called up when I came to New York and the bass player was Bob Cranshaw and the drummer was Mickey Roker. They were friends, good friends with each other. I had met them in Florida. I didn't know it, but they also were working with a lot of other people including Milt Jackson. One night, Milt Jackson came into see them because they said, "Hey, Milt you have to come here and see this little guy playing the piano." Milt came in and he sat at the bar because it really wasn't his environment because a lot of show business people were there, a lot of entertainers from Hollywood and that scene, not so much the hip cats from the jazz world, even though Errol Garner would drop in and Count Basie would drop in, all kinds of folk, Miles used to come in there and hang out. I met Milt and he had a skeptical look and not long after that, I also met Ray Brown, who we are now sadly missing from his recent departure. But Ray and Milt got together and I met Ray through the greatest accident and he heard me play. He hired me to come work with him and Milt and that was in '69. I worked with Milt off and on, recording a lot of records with him and Ray Brown and that was some of the greatest associations I had in the jazz world.


FJ: Pigeonholed into calypso and reggae, people forget you play some mean bebop.

MONTY ALEXANDER: I played it then and thank goodness, I still play it when I want, Fred. And I'm happy to make records that I enjoy making because that's a part of my makeup. One of the things that I did as a young musician was to provide music that made people want to dance. I love to see people dance. Of course, the big beat was a part of that whole thing in Jamaica. You crank up the electric bass, fat, low bass tones and that is something that I dig very, very much, but no more or less than I also like to hear other great men of virtuositic artistry, whether it's Art Tatum. It is a part of me. It is the same way, if I can make a comparison to the way that Ellington played. There were times when he played strictly for dance and it wasn't a matter of it's instrumental, it's great artistry. It was just we have got to play for dancing. I was invited by Telarc to make records that tap into my Jamaican experience and heritage. That is really easy and I'm happy to do it. It's my culture and I do it with Jamaicans who really do it the best. That has not at all to do with when I go play with the great jazz men. I'm still accepted happily by them and I love to play straight ahead. You can say the records are just a part of it.


FJ: Neat records, Stir It Up: The Music of Bob Marley.

MONTY ALEXANDER: Thank you. The way I approach music, I go for the feeling really. I'm not much of a music reader. I didn't go to music school. I don't think theoretically. I just kind of, on this occasion, aligned myself with friends of mine who also loved and breathed what Bob Marley was about. I also am a fan. I'm a big admirer and appreciator of the greatness of Bob Marley, not only with the music that he played and wrote and sang, but the man as a great human being and what he means to people all over the world. The combination of my appreciation and value for what he is as a man and his source of information, which is the Bible for most of it, and a lot of the guys that I invited on this record, like I said, friends of mine who also felt that way. When we got to making the music, when I would play those notes, I wasn't just playing the notes on the piano, I was playing Bob Marley and his philosophy and his songs and his hearts and his message. It came out like that, that it wasn't just music. It was almost a spiritual experience because Marley as you know, touched people all over the world. It was just a matter of making the piano sing and speak, whereas there were moments where I do what you call improvising and I take it over in a little different direction, but I was doing my best to honor the spirit of what Bob was all about and somehow it came out pretty good.


FJ: The mainland may not be familiar with Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar (Monty Meets Sly and Robbie).

MONTY ALEXANDER: Sly and Robbie have made themselves a commodity, in that they took what they did when they played live and they learned the magic of the recording studio and because they are homegrown, down home, Jamaican brothers, who revere in their heritage and love the old time Jamaican rhythm, the mental music and the combination of rhythm and blues and they are true alchemists. These men taped all that powerful rhythm that comes from Jamaica. They have been able to go into the studio and make it one voice, so much so that they've created an aura for themselves. People all over the world know who Sly and Robbie are. They have to be, the kings of rhythm because they live and breathe it. Sly almost sleeps in a recording studio. But it is because he is a master musician and he just loves rhythm. I do too, so it was just a natural thing. I met them years ago and they suggested that we should do something and when the opportunity came, I followed through and I'm proud of that because I really enjoyed the work and I would say Sly and Robbie is like listening to a jazz rhythm section because it's a whole world of what rhythm is all about, Africa and rhythm. But there is something about Jamaica that sets us apart from anywhere else. Gosh, that was a long explanation, Fred.


FJ: And My America, your latest on Telarc. Obvious references to 9-11.

MONTY ALEXANDER: Well, the tunes, the original idea, as you probably realize, every time these days you make a record, you've got to have a theme or reason and we were thinking about what is something that sets each of us apart because of my, assume, versatility, my sense of variety and I come from another country and I tapped into this music given to us by all these great men, not just jazz men, but pop music, Al Green and Marvin Gaye, who were also very much loved. It was just to make a record that was Monty Alexander, this guy from another country and this is why I love America. The original idea was my America and we're planning this thing and the terrible atrocity of 9-11 comes along and we can't make this record now because it is too sensitive and not only that, people will say that I am tapping into that bad experience. I guess you say to yourself that no, that is the very reason why I can feel some sense of appreciation for coming to this great country. I put those songs together to share, why, but to make it a light hearted thing where people can dance and I invited my Jamaican friends and we did versions of all these artists because those are my favorites. If you noticed, Fred, I started off with one of my heroes as a kid, Roy Rogers, because that is the first thing I learned coming from America that grabbed me as a six, seven year old kid sitting in the movie theater watching these men sing cowboy songs. That was the beginning of it. Because of the atrocity and because I believe certain things, I wanted to close the record with a statement that brings God into the whole mix because that's a big part of what we are and I wanted to celebrate that. There is a song in there called "The River Rolls On," which is written by a friend of mine and myself and it is sort of a statement that says that no matter what happens to us, we've got to get up and keep moving. So that is what that record is about. It comes with inspiration and gratitude.


FJ: What is your America?

MONTY ALEXANDER: Well, everybody has a version of America. My version of America is a land where all things are possible. But you have got to think for yourself and you've got to grab opportunity, but at the same time, you've got to do it where you're fair to one another. This land at its best represents the opportunity that anything can happen. Even a cook can make it. This is the land of opportunity and I really believe in the principles of freedom and adventure. This is a place where anything can happen. You just have to circumvent the cynics, which exist.


FJ: What is your Jamaica?

MONTY ALEXANDER: Jamaica has gone through some growing pains and is still growing through some growing pains. The Jamaica I remember and maybe naively so was this incredible, beautiful Shangri La. It's like paradise really. What I remember as Jamaica was the people and the warm hearts of the people and the natural beauty of the land and the music and the culture and I unfortunately, I have to make sure that I live in the present tense because now we are struggling with a lot of things, social change and my Jamaica is in transition for better days, but the struggle is on. Bob Marley sang about it very well. But I dream of a time when the fears will go away, in both Jamaica and America.


FJ: What is the biggest misconception of Jamaica and its people?

MONTY ALEXANDER: That's a good one. From what I perceive, a lot of people, they go there and Jamaica is not all reggae music. Jamaica is a multi-ethnic, religious community of people who have been getting along with each other very well over the years and things are a little stretched right now, but I think people think Jamaica is Bob Marley or they think Jamaica is Harry Belafonte or they think it's a rum and coke. Like everything else, you can have a misconception, but I believe that because reggae became so popular that they think everything is that and there is much more to it than that. The Rastafarian movement is such a great movement, but there is much more to it than that. The only was I guess is for people to go there and meet the people, go up in the country and learn about it. I for one, I love the older things, kind of like the music and culture of America. It is the same with Jamaica. We have great culture that is about people loving one another and getting along. It is something that I lament. Elections are coming up and I hope people look at the bright side of things. There is always too many elements of fear and despair that come in there and cause problems. The world is in a challenging phase right now, so we have to be positive. Musicians can help the world be a better place.


FJ: Nice you're doing your part.

MONTY ALEXANDER: Thanks, brother.

Fred Jung is the Editor-In-Chief and is one of major league baseball's most memorable moments. Comments? Email Him