A
FIRESIDE CHAT WITH JAMES NEWTON
I love Eric Dolphy. By virtue of that first statement, I love James Newton,
who plays the flute on the same superior level. Newton hasn't recorded
as much as I would like and so when a record comes out, I am all over
it. Newton has a couple of new records (Southern Brothers on Water Lily
Acoustics and As the Sound of Many Waters on New World Records) to add
to his superb discography, which includes the magnificent The African
Flower on Blue Note (since deleted) and Suite for Frida Kahlo on Audioquest
(hard as hell to find). I spoke with Newton about his life and times,
his new releases, and his still pending legal matter with the Beastie
Boys, unedited and in his own words.
FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.
JAMES NEWTON: I started off playing electric bass and singing in rhythm
and blues groups when I was twelve and thirteen years old. I grew up in
San Pedro because my father was in the service previously and we traveled
all over the world. At that age, I listened to a lot of the Motown artists
of the day and just pop music in general. We loved the Beatles also. In
1967, when Jimi Hendrix hit the scene, everything changed.
FJ: Why did Hendrix impact the climate so heavily?
JAMES NEWTON: When Hendrix came on the scene, Are You Experienced? (MCA)
came out and I remember hearing "The Wind Cries Mary." It sounded like
nothing else that I had ever heard in my life and I just fell in love
with the sound experimentation that Hendrix was doing on Are You Experienced?
My father was a big blues fan and so I could hear his strong reverential
connection to the blues. But still, at the same time, the music was very
modernistic. The lyrics were very surrealistic and it is almost like this
was the Robert Johnson of the second half of the 20th century and laying
the groundwork for the world coming into the next century. And then after
that, in '68, I began to play the flute. Namely, I listened to, at that
time, Rahsaan Roland Kirk. At the end of '68, someone played me an Eric
Dolphy record and I just could not believe it. The only jazz that I really
knew a whole lot was Duke Ellington because my father was a fan of Ellington's
music and I would go to the barbershop, and during those days, well, now
if you go to an African-American barbershop, you hear hip-hop and R&B,
but during those days, the barbers only played jazz. I remembered hearing
Blakey, Miles, Coltrane, and Monk in my barbershop.
FJ: That is a hip barbershop.
JAMES NEWTON: Isn't that a hip barbershop (laughing)? And the other thing
was that Charles Lloyd's Forest Flower was really popular. So those pieces
were in the air and just beginning to start to speak to me. Next, came
a number I bought, Filles de Kilimanjaro by Miles Davis. I couldn't really
understand it at that time. I loved that record so much. A couple of years
later, it really hit me. In a Silent Way was my entry and then, from that,
I went to Mingus and then Mingus was my entryway to the whole tradition
and after that, it was sort of over.
FJ: What was it about Eric Dolphy that peaked your interest?
JAMES NEWTON: The sense of exploration, there were so many sounds that
I hadn't heard before like his imitation of the birds. There is something
that the West Coast has that is very different from the East Coast players,
maybe because it is much more expansive here. You really hear nature's
impact on the music and Dolphy is a really excellent example of that.
I think, also the emotional range of the music, I wasn't really prepared
for that and the cut was "You Don't Know What Love Is" from Dolphy's Last
Date. Then I heard the things with the Mingus Quartet from 1960 with Eric
and Dannie Richmond and I was hooked. From there, I went to Miles' earlier
stuff and then I went to Louis Armstrong and I read that Dolphy loved
Art Tatum so much, so I started buying Art Tatum records. Then I decided,
when I heard Tatum that I really had to really work a lot on technique.
I would spend a lot of eight-hour days. I would go to school part time
and I would work part time and I just had a very regular practice routine
for many years because I started late and I had to catch up. I didn't
pick up the flute until November 22, 1968. By that time, I was fifteen,
almost sixteen.
FJ: Do you find that even now, it is still a learning process?
JAMES NEWTON: It kicks my behind. I'm just amazed how hard, it seems to
get more and more difficult. I have to take the metronome out and play
a lot of long tones and scales and it is just very arduous work. It doesn't
get any easier. I think it is going the other way.
FJ: That goes against conventional wisdom.
JAMES NEWTON: Maybe it is because you hear more. You understand the instrument
better and the threshold keeps writing hopefully of what is possible and
then you want to push yourself further and further and to get into another
level. There is a new CD that came out that is a classical CD (As the
Sound of Many Waters), but on this CD is mainly my chamber music that
I've been writing in the last years, but there are two solo flute cuts
and in these cuts, I think I played better in those cuts than I have ever
played in my recording career as far as command of the instrument. So
I want to keep the level raising and it gets very difficult when you are
composing a lot at the same time and also teaching full time and touring.
As a matter of fact, Fred, the demands of keeping all those things up
in the air led me this summer to take if off. For the first time in twenty-two
years, I am not touring.
FJ: Seems like a lot of angst.
JAMES
NEWTON: It is, Fred. It really is. I know that when I was trying to get
close to the finish line, to where I am getting to the point where I really
have some time off, the gigs were not as enjoyable as they normally are.
There was one exception. I have been working with an African group and
we did a very big, important concert in Paris. That concert was just utter
joy. I know it is just the fact that you can't stay on the pressure cooker
all the time, in all of these different arenas. It is different if a person
just is going to play and that is it, or even teaching and playing is
doable. But when you are composing and you have a lot of commissions and
those commissions have deadlines, I think juggling those three together
is very demanding.
FJ: Do you foresee a time when you may let one fall by the wayside?
JAMES NEWTON: You know, Fred, it is really funny that you mentioned that
because I have thought about that and each time I think I might want to
drop one of the balls, I just can't do without it. I think the key is
that when I get older, I am just going to have to stop teaching, maybe
in my mid-to-late fifties, I am going to slow down or stop all together.
I am really trying to lay a strong ground for the future for my children
and acquisition of proper property and I have just started to collect
art. I am thinking a lot about the Newton clan generation now. It is something
that I accept and it is an honor to be a father. It is a great honor.
FJ: Let's touch on your collaboration with David Murray. How is Murray's
approach different from that of the average player coming out of the Berklee
School of Music or Cal Arts?
JAMES NEWTON: Oh, boy, Fred, they are on opposite ends of the universe
because there is a big limit in what is known as jazz right now and I
think the dilemma is the fact that science has always been a big part
of the music. Let's just take the way that people approach chord changes.
Dolphy said that when he would hear a chord, he could hear all twelve
notes in the chord in every chord, but still there was a logic in the
way that he played through changes and people always criticized him for
not being able to play changes. But he played changes the way that he
heard them. I think the same thing is very true with David Murray. He
plays notes on changes that other people consider to be wrong. My view
of this is that people should have the choice to approach playing changes
in a way that they want to. I think it is part of their personal expression
and I think there is no wrong way. I think they are just personal choices
and many people disagree with me on this. I have stood on the stand with
a lot of musicians in my life, a lot of great musicians, and I have never
seen him give less than one hundred percent every night. I have never
seen him coast and we have probably done over a thousand concerts together
through the years because we've been playing together since 1974. His
sound is one of the most beautiful sounds on the tenor that there is.
A lot of the people that criticize what he does that are players, and
believe me, Fred, they wish they had the sound on the instrument that
he does because his sound is very much connected to people like Ben Webster,
Paul Gonsalves. There is a roundness, particularly, at being able to interpret
a ballad. He plays with so much feeling and there is an aestheticism to
his playing. It is electrifying. It is charismatic. He is able to grip
an audience in a way that very few players have. The last two years, in
'98 and '99, we toured an Ellington project that the two of us did the
arrangements and it was for big band and sometimes we would do it for
symphony orchestra. It was just really a revelation. He is the one person
that if he calls, I'm going to make it and I don't feel that way about
a whole lot of musicians, not because I think I am better than them, I
am certainly not, but it is just at this point in time, composition is
important. The quality of my life is important. Whereas, for twenty years,
I took all the gigs that made sense to me for whatever reason rather than
it being something artistic that I had to do. Now, I only do gigs that
are artistically appealing. I don't do many gigs, gigs just solely for
the sake of the money. I think the world of him. I think he is one of
the great artists in the music. He is a prolific as I don't know what.
I can't imagine, his pace is frightening because he tours the whole year.
Takes a small vacation and just hits it the whole year. Living like that
is very demanding on your body, just traveling. I think as time passes
on, he will be viewed in a very high level, I feel. Sonically, a lot happened
in the Sixties that younger musicians are choosing to ignore.
FJ: What are they overlooking?
JAMES NEWTON: How can you stop looking at Coltrane up through Cresent
and not consider the other things? The early things are very important,
but you have to look at what drove this quintessential artist into this
direction in the last years of his life. You can't just toss it away and
say it is not valid. The same can be said about fusion. I thought a lot
about certain trumpet players criticizing Miles Davis after E.S.P. and
just tossing away the rest of that. I haven't heard any of the younger
trumpet players play the instrument like Miles did in Live at the Fillmore,
which is one of my favorite CDs of all. I got a lot of my flute stuff
from that CD. To me, I still listen to it all the time. It is just so
gripping and his command on the instrument is stupefying. But his technique
is not just command of the instrument, but to me, it is command of nuance,
command of expression. All of those things have to be taken into affect.
So getting back to David Murray, there are sonically things that players
like John Gilmore and Albert Ayler did that shouldn't be discounted in
the history of the tenor saxophone. For me, I love Ben Webster to death,
but that does not stop me from loving what John Gilmore did.
FJ: Let's talk about a recording you did for Blue Note, The African Flower.
JAMES NEWTON: Yeah, I think that there are certain dates that have a feeling
to them, to where when they are occurring, it is almost as if you are
taking a series of photographs of the session in your mind. They are not
just images, but they are also the profound emotions that are occurring
at the moment. The air was really electric when we did that. I remember
when we had our first rehearsal and Olu Dara, who is now a really big
blues star, but Olu, when I started passing out the music and he saw "Black
and Tan Fantasy," he said, "Boy, I love you. I've been wanting to do this
all of my life." He just killed it. This was before this whole retro thing
happened in the way of looking at the music. That album was the way I
felt about how Duke affected me and what it inspired me to do in the music
that I did. I was trying to show people, not only how much I loved Duke
Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, but some of the conclusions that they helped
me to get to because of their greatness. The thing that I realized, two
points, Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington, that album really led the
way for me to do The African Flower because you hear Monk, but you hear
how Duke affected Monk. That is what I really wanted to do. Strayhorn
was influenced a lot by Ravel and he was influenced by a lot of different
classical music, so certain aspects of that you can bring out in a ballad.
You can look at all of the different angles and it gave me a chance to
show that a lot of the singing that I do on the instrument was really
inspired by not only Rahsaan Roland Kirk and James Moody and Yusef Lateef,
but it was also inspired by Cootie Williams. The players were good because
they all had something unique, which is what Duke did and I have always
tried to hire players that were really themselves as artists.
FJ: Let's touch on your latest CD for New World Records, As the Sound
of Many Waters.
JAMES NEWTON: It is a classical CD.
FJ: Why did you choose to turn your focus on classical music at this point
in your career?
JAMES NEWTON: I have had a classical career for over twenty years. It
is something that a lot of people in jazz don't know. It has occurred
in Europe. I have played with the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles
Phil, which are really world-class orchestra. I have also been commissioned,
continually since about 1990. My work is getting played and I have had
a long reputation with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, who
recorded this disc. So we received a couple of grants and it was recorded
in '99.
FJ: There is a double standard in the recording industry when it comes
to sampling. Vanilla Ice sampled a David Bowie riff and Queen and was
lambasted by the media and the industry, yet, it seems to be common and
accepted practice to sample from jazz musicians. Because of pending litigation,
I don't want to get too much into the technical legalities of the matter,
but your thoughts on your legal action against the Beastie Boys.
JAMES NEWTON: Couple of points are very important, Fred. I think the first
point is for artists is the importance of a copyright, the ownership of
intellectual property. That is an important part. We have to hold onto
that. When someone chooses to use your work and not have the sensitivity
and the respect to contact you. They just take it and they use it, that
to me is something that not only shows negligence, but it shows a real
disrespect for the other person. That is one point that is very important.
I think that people should not be given the liberty to do this without
them having to stand up for their actions. I believe in the code of the
law. I respect the law. I was determined that something needed to be done
about this and so something was done about this. They have said that they
contacted ECM Records and received permission to do it, which they did
do, but they did not contact me. I am the owner. My publishing company
owns the said composition. They have a history of doing what has been
done to me. There are other cases that if you do it once, it would seem
to me that you would learn from the lesson and choose not to do it again
and go through all the proper channels after that. I say for anyone that
is curious about this, look at the other cases that have occurred.
FJ: I am a resident of Orange County and there is a reason why I never
read the paper here, clarify the article in the Register about your pending
litigation.
JAMES NEWTON: The thing that bothered me about the article is that "Orange
County Jazz Man Wants Rapper's Royalties." Let me put it this way. There
were important facts that were not in the article that I thought needed
to be put into the article. That is the most respectful way that I can
comment on it.
FJ: You spoke earlier about the limitations of today's music.
JAMES NEWTON: I think that there is not enough of an understanding of
the importance of individuality. I think the other point is that we have
to be very careful of how the music is taught in an academic environment.
The more you standardize the music, the less individuality seems to be
cropping up. I think we have to sort of redo the mark that we are shooting
for and really re-examine how we are teaching the music. Something is
being left out at this point, I feel. We are no longer in the presence
of as many individualistic, forward-looking composers and players that
has existed in the past. I think that organization has sort of really
hurt that. I think that it will always progress and that you can't leave
technology out of the equation. The music is going to have to really embrace
electronics again as it did in the fusion era. I think music will always
be valid, but combinations of both have to occur to where computers are
dealing with real time improvisation in relationship to a jazz environment.
I think that involvement is really something that has to occur. It is
like programmers are going to have to be developed that really know the
music because one of the largest standards of jazz has been its embracing
of all of humanity.
Fred Jung is Jazz Weekly's Editor-In-Chief and invites everyone over to
his house for dinner. Please R.S.V.P. Comments? Email
Fred.