A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH RICK MARGITZA


A I used to scour the used records stores for Rick Margitza's old Blue Note sessions. And when I found Color in a used bin in Boston, it was like, "It's your birthday. It's your birthday." Why does a grown man get so excited about a simple CD? Well, if you don't the answer to that, than you don't know Margitza. No, better yet, you should buy his brand spanking new album on Palmetto, Heart of Hearts. But in the meantime, here he is, unedited and in his own words.


FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.

RICK MARGITZA: I'm from a really musical family. My heritage is Romanian gypsy. So I grew up hearing my grandfather play a lot of Hungarian gypsy violin music. My father is a classical violinist. He played in the Detroit Symphony for almost thirty years and then my mother's father was a jazz bassist, who also played some cello on some Charlie Parker with strings albums. So I started playing the violin. I picked it up from my grandfather and I started studying classical piano as a result of my father's classical influence and then I heard one Charlie Parker record. It happened to be the one that my grandfather played on and then I heard the music and immediately, I said that is what I wanted to do. So I went to the school the next day and got a saxophone and started playing along with records.


FJ: I empathize with you having to play the violin. I had my share of childhood traumas playing the violin.

RICK MARGITZA: Well, at the time, I was just four or five years old and it was a good way to start because I just learned by ear. I learned by playing songs that my grandfather taught me. It seems like I studied classical piano to the point where I was getting good at it and enjoyed it, but it didn't speak to me as much as the jazz did.


FJ: I don't want to pigeonhole you, but as a point of reference, your influences?

RICK MARGITZA: Right, in a way, I don't feel that it pigeonholes me at all because we are all a result of our influences and unless you grew up on a desert island, where you never hear anything, you are going to obviously be drawn to certain people and certain styles. To me, that is part of the apprenticeship of learning to play, is you have to learn how to imitate before you develop your own voice. It was obviously, Charlie Parker from an early age, Coltrane, of course, a couple of weird little influences also, Warne Marsh, which is somebody who is not as well known, but a really complete improviser. I was really into the saxophone player who played with Chuck Mangione for a long time, Gerry Niewood. He had a big influence on my playing and of course, I heard Michael Brecker and Dave Liebman, Bob Berg. I call them the white, Jewish tenor school. Pretty much, I was just into saxophone and it took me a while to start listening to other instruments and other players. I went through that period where I was pretty intense just about the saxophone and then it branched out into Herbie, Chick Corea, and Miles and then I really got into Joe Henderson and Wayne Shorter, pretty much all the important voices, anybody who had found their own unique voice has on some level influenced me.


FJ: You were thrown in the deep end fairly early on in your career, recording three albums as a leader for Blue Note.

RICK MARGITZA: I had a reputation before I moved into New York because I had a lot of people from school, from different schools because I went to the Berklee School of Music in Boston, the University of Miami, and Loyola in New Orleans, which is where I graduated from. So a lot of people were kind of waiting for me to come to New York. I had, like I said, a little reputation proceeding me, so I was kind of prepared to do some of that in terms of being a leader anyway. The Blue Note thing kind of fell into my lap as a friend working at the record label. So I was a little unprepared for it in terms of it happening that quickly, but I had already in my mind imagined what I wanted to record, so I was kind of ready for it musically. I just thought it would take a little longer than it did. I feel really fortunate the way kind of things happened. If anything, I was a little unprepared just business wise because I didn't know that much about the way things work in the industry. I wish I would have had a little bit more street savvy in terms of intervention with record companies.


FJ: You recorded three albums for Blue Note: This is New, Hope, and Color.

RICK MARGITZA: Thank you, Fred.


FJ: I have had to scour the used record stores because sadly they are deleted from the Blue Note catalog.

RICK MARGITZA: I know.


FJ: There must have been lessons learned through that experience.

RICK MARGITZA: Right, well, I learned a couple of things. First of all, just because of the nature of music today, and the way it's kind of portrayed in the media and what's getting promoted as the new jazz or whatever you want to call it, basically, just promoted by the record companies. I realize that it would have probably been smarter for me to have a done a standards record first, to establish myself just as a jazz saxophone player, to let critics and people know that I could do that. I immediately had a vision of my own compositions and kind of my own sound world, which didn't necessarily fit into the Blue Note mold. So I took some slack from certain critics for not being traditional enough. It may have hurt my career in a certain sense of not being considered a mainstream player enough. So I probably would have done the third record, which was a standards record, first and kind of laid a foundation and then gone on to do my own thing afterwards. I also realized that it would have been wise to have kept the cost down of the first couple of records. I was really lucky because we were just kind of given carte blanche and say this is the budget and do what you want to do. The first two records did reasonably well sales wise, but they cost a lot of money to record, and so it ended up still losing money for the record company. If I would have known what I knew now, back then, I would have made each record for as cheap as possible to have kept my tenure there going a little longer. I wouldn't have been in the red or whatever.


FJ: Now that bothers me. It bothers me that you have to second guess yourself about your own artistry. I have been saying this until I am blue in the face. But it took almost another ten years before you got another stateside label in Palmetto. That is still a bitter pill for me to swallow.

RICK MARGITZA: Luckily, I obviously didn't stop doing gigs for that long. I was still playing and in a way, it kind of, if you want to say knocked down off that pedestal and put me back into the trenches so to speak, was good because it just made me a lot stronger. The bottom line is I play because I have no other choice. I feel so blessed to be able to do something that I love that even if I wouldn't get paid at all or had never recorded, I would still be playing. Just because I lost the record deal, of course, it made it difficult because I would have liked to have been out there more, but it made me just get back into my development, maybe a little more because there was less pressure to perform. Luckily, I recorded as a sideman throughout that time and so I still getting documented and did a couple records for Challenge and one for SteepleChase and so there was still a lapse, but it wasn't completely barren for ten years. It was frustrating, but I just try to make everything that happens kind of the path that I'm on and try not to get bitter about it. This is what happened and I am not going to let it effect my development. And wait for the next one to come along.


FJ: It made you a better player.

RICK MARGITZA: Hopefully it did, Fred. If you are into really developing your own voice, it is going to happen regardless of what happens. Sometimes when you go through angst like that, it speeds up the process.


FJ: I spoke with Matt earlier in the year and he said that he was going to record you on a ballad record and that no one knew how great a balladeer you were. It makes sense, considering you cited Warne Marsh and he was a tremendous ballad player.

RICK MARGITZA: Right, right.


FJ: Let's touch on that record, Heart of Hearts.

RICK MARGITZA: OK, the pianist is Joey Calderazzo, who I recorded and played with on my first Blue Note records. It was nice to be making music with him again. Scott Colley plays bass, a great New York bassist who is playing with everybody. A drummer from Canada named Ian Froman, who is not as well known, but is a fantastic musician. I knew that one tune that I wanted to record for sure was something called "Heart of Hearts," which is the title cut. "Heart of Hearts," which I would say is the center of the record. I had this idea of doing a romantic record without letting it be a strict ballad album. I think the general tone of the record is definitely one of elegance and romance, but without having it get syrupy, which is something I was worried about and so I came up with a group of tunes that really speak to me on a deep, more emotional level. It is definitely more of a romantic side and it is a lot of ballads, but it also has a couple of things that have some energy to it. The collage that is on the inside of the record is pictures of all of my family from my great grandparents down to my nephews, as well as the teachers and people who have been important to my life. In a way, it is all these hearts that have influenced my life and development up until this point. The record kind of represents different areas and different types of music that have been part of my development. Hopefully, there is a tread that goes through the record so it doesn't sound like ten separate tunes, but something that tells a story. That is kind of in a nutshell what I was going for.


FJ: That is the ideal of an artist, to tell a story.

RICK MARGITZA: The records that have always spoken to me and have been important to me seem to tell some type of story. You go in there with a group of tunes that are all related on some level. I think people's first albums for some reason, because it's the first time they record, seem to be disjointed because they want to get a little bit of this in and a little bit of that. The records that have always spoken to me have had that line running through them. The more you know about your own playing and your own writing, it will be easier to put things together to tell that story.


FJ: Tour plans?

RICK MARGITZA: I have a couple of things on the West Coast. I am playing a couple of things at Birdland in June, like an album release. I don't have an extended tour happening. Unfortunately, a lot of the summer festivals were already booked by the time the record came out. If anything, we are going to try and work on something for the fall and whatever scattered things come in. It is a lot of couple of nights here and a couple of nights there. I am playing at the Bel Age Hotel for a couple of nights. I may head up to San Francisco and maybe Boston.


FJ: Any plans for a follow up?

RICK MARGITZA: I'm ready. One good thing about this record is that we recorded it and it is out a couple of months later, as opposed to sometimes you record a record and it takes nine months to come out. This is a recent one, which is nice and also I can think about already going into the studio in September and have another record out by next April again. To have something come out at least once a year, if not sooner. That is one thing that I have noticed is really missed by a lot of us because when Coltrane and Miles were recording, they were putting two, three records a year and because the way things now are set up where everything has to be marketed and planned and blah-blah-blah, if you get a record out a year, you're lucky. I definitely have several sets of music that I would love to record.


Fred Jung is Editor-In-Chief and did not kill Nicole Simpson. Comments? Email him.