A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH PAT MARTINO
Considering
the only two things I have had to overcome are a sore hamstring and the
common cold, I have no idea or words to compare the trials that Pat Martino
has already triumphed from. Having lost his memory as a complication of
his brain surgery over two decades ago, Martino has struggled back to
prime form (some would even say better form). His latest brings him back
to familiar territory, the organ trio. I spoke with Martino via telephone,
unedited and in his own words.
FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.
PAT MARTINO: Curiosity and the nature of wanting to be closer to my father,
who had a guitar in the house and just being curious as to what it was
like. It was a big instrument. I was three years old or four years old
and I was told that I went under his bed, where his instrument was kept
out of my reach. And through curiosity, I began to play with it, watching
the strings vibrate colorfully, cut my fingers and saw the bleeding take
place for the first time and suddenly, I was curious about what to do
with that also. So I painted some pictures on his bedroom wall. Curiosity
was the art.
FJ: Are you still curious?
PAT MARTINO: Absolutely.
FJ: With an already established presence in jazz, the guitar is a difficult
instrument to define as your own, was that reality pause for concern?
PAT MARTINO: Well, I think that it's built in to be somewhat reserved
in the sense of being an amateur and confronted with experience on behalf
of seasoned artists in any field of endeavor. And yeah, I did. But at
the time or the age that this all took place for me, which was at the
age of fifteen, I culturally moved from one vicinity of the United States
to another. And going into New York City's Harlem at the age of fifteen
with no employment and just a guitar and enough courage, maybe, to take
a chance and curiosity as to how it was to participate and to be a jazz
musician. I think that helped me to overcome the initial fear of going
out on my own.
FJ: Harlem on your own at the age of fifteen without the security blanket
of parental comfort, both mentally and financially, the moxie.
PAT MARTINO: That's true. It was not difficult to find work, primarily
because I took a job with the late Charles Earland's organ group. It was
an organ trio and we went to Buffalo, New York and I played there with
Charlie and Lloyd Price came in to where we were playing and was very
impressed with my playing and invited me to New York City to join the
big band. And it was an eighteen-piece band with some of the biggest names
in jazz that were performing with the band, including Stanley Turrentine
and Tommy Turrentine, his brother, Slide Hampton, Charles Persip, Charlie
Persip was the drummer. Red Holloway was in the band. Julian Priester
was in the band. There were some incredible players in that band. They
took me up in the band. They used to refer to me as "the kid."
These elders really took care of me and refined my experience at a very
early age.
FJ: Apart from the indispensable musical education gathered from being
the presence of such veterans, what kind of life lessons did you discover?
PAT MARTINO: Precision, in a sense to be concerned with the art of presentation,
with the necessity of responsibility, with the courage to be spontaneous
enough that new experiences musically would arise, and if not so, to replace
that with lack of interest on their behalf. Quite a number of things that
I think more experienced individuals in any field of endeavor have a tendency
to naturally present this to younger people who have just come into it
for the first time and lack experience.
FJ: In my youth, I never appreciated the lessons that were taught to me.
Were you able to savor the moment?
PAT MARTINO: That's a tough question to answer, Fred, because I don't
know whether I personally had that or it was a result of how I was accepted
in the community. If I was accepted with more credibility, I would proceed
along the lines that brought that about. If I failed to be accepted from
something that I believed in, I found it necessary to continue to believe
in that, to have faith and to have credibility with regard to my own ethics.
I think that goes back to childhood in terms of my upbringing. But I do
think that it was necessary to participate in a different community and
to see the reaction to what I had to offer, as well as wanting to be part
of that community and offering that interest to everyone that I had met
at time.
FJ: How did you initially approach the instrument?
PAT MARTINO: I approached the instrument in a real time improvisational
context. In other words, what I couldn't understand about the instrument,
I fulfilled through improvising around those obstacles. A good example
is when I was a youngster at the age of twelve and my father brought me
to guitar teachers for the first time, I had a lot of trouble, personally,
finding interest in what they presented to me as a responsibility within
a student-teacher relationship. None the less, when my father would come
home from work and the time came for me to practice and play in front
of him, I stood there with my teacher's music book on a music stand and
my father sat on the sofa reading the newspaper, relaxing and listening
to his son. I stood there looking at the book as if I was reading it,
but I was improvising and that's how I learned how to improvise with precision.
At the last time prior to the lesson coming up at the end of the week,
I did put a little bit of time in it and immediately memorized it and
played it well for the teacher as well.
FJ: Does the kind of precision that is attainable in improvisation exist
in life?
PAT MARTINO: It is in life. In fact, its application in regards to music,
painting, or any other form of art, I think, is secondary to the source
that it comes from. I think it comes from ingenuity and I think it comes
from logic, not as much as it comes from theory, although theory is a
result of it. I think that, yeah, it's quite an interesting thing that
does occur in life. It takes place if I have to go out a mail a letter
and I know where the mailbox is and I have a few moments to use how I
would like to use them, I may walk in the opposite direction to the next
mailbox that I don't know where it is and I will find it and if not, I
have enough time to come back to the one originally that I had chosen.
I will improvise my way back to it. In the meantime, I will experience
a lot of new things. It's like killing two birds with one stone.
FJ: In 1980, at what should have been the height of your career, you suffered
a devastating brain aneurysm that caused the loss of memory. Through meticulous
diligence, you were able to return to playing form.
PAT MARTINO: The most difficult part of recovering a destination was,
not only the definition of that destination, but also, the decision on
my behalf and that came about primarily due to the amplification of boredom,
which came through procrastination in depth, putting off making a decision
for such a long time, in the process of recovering and being surrounded
with forms of therapy that came from loved ones as well as professionals,
distractive in the sense of my original destinations and not necessarily
demanding the responsibility as decisive as it should have been caused
me to become more and more bored until finally, I was so bored that the
only thing I could think of was I took advantage of the one thing that
I knew how to do. It was quite a bit similar to riding a bicycle from
childhood. I think that if I were to pick up a bike at this particular
point and I haven't ridden on a bike for many years, but since I did absorb
the use of that machine at a very young age, it became subliminal and
I may get back on the bike and fall down a couple of times, but I know
how it runs and I know what to do with it. The same thing was with the
guitar and it was the same reason. The simplicity of it was no real difficulty
involved in terms of re-mastering it and using it as a vehicle to the
destination that I had chosen.
FJ: Upon listening to your earlier recordings, do you find that your style
had changed when you embarked on learning the instrument once more?
PAT MARTINO: The nature of what I had learned through listening what was
done on record was not from my choice. Since I did recover when I had
the operations, here in Philadelphia, I recovered in mom and dad's home,
in their presence. It was they who chose to play that music and each and
every time I heard that music, it was one of the most uncomfortable confrontations
of what seemingly was a responsibility on my behalf to reconstruct for
their needs other than mine. It was very difficult. The difference after
all of that took place and was surrounded by boredom in the meaningless
of all of it, brought about a neutrality in regards to the nature of the
instrument's importance, as well as the lack of importance in music itself
until a decision is made as to what one would like use that as a vehicle
for it to achieve amongst other surroundings. So it became more important,
the more that the ability to mechanize these gifts once again became more
of a responsibility to allow that to happen naturally and with that begin
to see the people that brought me to these situations that I found myself
amongst social interactions because of that ability. Because of that,
it became neutralized in regards to any significance of it.
FJ: Live at Yoshi's, your latest project for Blue Note, harks back to
your earlier apprenticeship with Charles Earland.
PAT MARTINO: Well, I think that it is well understood, in terms of response
by any artist in any field that it's never comfortable before a performance
(laughing). To go on stage is always a nervous event until you're on stage.
It is like coming from set time to real time and that still existed and
it will always exist. But, yeah, Fred, there is a great deal of enjoyment
in terms of its authenticity, more so than I could remember about a lot
of other things, also, the fact that it helps to retain the feeling of
seasonal emergence of a lot of different things that I never want to go
away. When Hammond B-3 comes back, it brings me back to the Sixties and
when I used to do so in that particular instrumentation with other major
players and I haven't for a long time. It brings that back, that authenticity
with that particular era as well as the idiom and of course, under different
circumstances, where the culture itself had evolved and changed. It enhances
it with new ingredients. It's a very exciting experience and I hope, to
be honest with you, Fred, that all of these things continue their circular
seasonal appearance.
FJ: What is it with guitarists and the B-3 organ?
PAT MARTINO: There is no other sound than the Hammond B-3. Due to the
fact that just the manipulation of its pedals creates vibration in the
floor that you're standing next to it, which you can't get sampled. You
can resample the sound of it and reproduce it on one of the finest synthesizers
made or any of them, but the one thing that is missing is the pedals being
tapped by the foot of the performer, the player. Another thing that's
missing is the swerving rotation of the Leslie, in the Leslie speaker,
the Leslie cabinet. When it goes fast and then it slows down and the second
time, you're hearing vibrato being altered in terms of the tone itself.
All these things produce an experience that can't be achieved with any
other instrument.
FJ: Having a renewed awareness, what do you appreciate most about your
life these days?
PAT MARTINO: That's an awesome question. I appreciate more than anything,
the repetitive ingenuity that invention itself contains, that authenticity
comes to the surface when repetition signifies its presence. It is a very
interesting experience to see the twelve tone scale and see the repetition
of that logic in twelve tones of music and in twelve eggs in a dozen and
in twelve months in a year is a significant reminder that you're on the
right track. And I think that inventive ingenuity is one of the most exciting
forms of interface from a confusing carnival of different faces, all joined
as one in a very unified whole and that's the human race and I see that
in all other things too, the ingenuity of creative structure. That's the
most exciting thing to me.
FJ: Sounds like the fire still burns within.
PAT MARTINO: I sure do, Fred. It's really a pleasure, Fred.
Fred
Jung is Jazz Weekly's Editor-In-Chief and thinks What's the Worst That
Could Happen? is the worst that could happen. Email
Him.