IF YOU’RE A SPORTS FAN, YOU’LL GET THE POINT.
WE ALL HAVE FAVORITE PLAYERS ON OUR FAVORITE TEAMS. OH, SURE, EVERYONE LIKES THE STARS, BUT YOU KNOW THAT WITHOUT ‘YOUR GUY’, THE TEAM WOULDN’T BE THE SAME. THEY DO THEIR JOB, DO IT WELL, AND SOMETIMES MAKE THE ALL STAR TEAMS, BUT USUALLY ARE JUST PART OF THE WINNING PROCESS.
IT CAN BE THE SAME IN MUSIC.
I FIRST CAUGHT RON BLAKE PLAYING TENOR AND SOPRANO SAX FOR ROY HAYNES BACK IN THE 1990S. HE HAD A BIG DON BYAS OF A TONE, AND HE KNOCKED ME AND MY FRIENDS OUT WITH HIS SOLOING, AND EVEN HUNG OUT WITH US AFTERWARDS FOR A BIT.
NEXT TIME, HE WAS TOURING WITH CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE, PLAYING MAINSTREAM THE FIRST SET AND GOING INTO THE STRATOSPHERE ON THE FUNKY SECOND SET. HE EVEN PLAYED MY CURVED SOPRANO!
YEARS PASSED AND I WONDERED WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM. OH, HE PUT A SOLO ALBUM OUT ONCE IN AWHILE BUT THAT WAS ABOUT IT.
THEN, RECENTLY CHRISITIAN MCBRIDE CAME BACK IN TOWN WITH HIS BIG BAND, AND THERE WAS BLAKE IN THE SAX SECTION WITH STEVE WILSON. WHEW! THAT WAS A HOT SET!
WE GOT BACK IN TOUCH, AND HE RECENTLY RELEASED A FANTASTIC ALBUM MISTAKEN IDENTITY, AND ALBUM THAT DESERVES A SECOND AND THIRD HEARING.
DURING OUR CHAT, HIS IDEAS AND WORLD VIEW REMINDED ME WHY HE WAS LIKE THAT UTILITY PLAYER ON MY DODGERS THAT I ALWAYS LIKED. HARD WORK, TEAM P LAYER AND NEVER LET ANYONE DOWN. SEE WHAT YOU THINK AFTER THIS INTERVIEW…
I’VE SEEN YOU ON TOUR WITH ROY HAYNES AND CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE IN SMALL GROUP AND BIG BAND CONTEXT. BUT MOST OF THE TIME YOU TEACH NOW, CORRECT?
I’m very part time at Julliard.
I was full time there until about 8-9 years ago. I used to teach classes there and coach ensembles, but now I mostly play the saxophone, although I still have 7-8 students. It varies from year to year
WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO TEACH, AND WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO NOW DO LESS OF IT?
I like teaching because it’s in my family.
My grandmother was a teacher, my dad’s brother was an educator, so was his wife. My mom’s side also had folks in education
My early teachers instilled in me early on that it was important for me to share whatever I had learned
I went to what was then called the National Music Camp at Interlocken after my freshman year in high school. I went there for three summers in a row, from 79-81
I graduated high school at 16, and after graduating, I hadn’t been at home for a few years, having been to boarding school and summer camp and staying with relatives on the main land.
I stayed at home in St. Thomas, and got recruited by my old band directors to work in summer music programs. I had my own ‘saxophone boot camp’ and get all of the younger players together and showed them the stuff that I had learned about practicing and doing scales. It started with that.
I did that for a few summers, while still being with my old band directors from the Virgin Islands.
I never aspired to be a teacher; it was just something that came to me. It was part of the continuum of the artistic process.
You can’t just hoard the information that you get; you have to keep passing stuff on and complete the cycle.
It sort of evolved into a career since I was that age.
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“My early teachers instilled in me early on that it was important for me to share whatever I had learned”
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WHAT DID YOU STUDY AT THE CAMPS?
I was studying classical saxophone at Interlocken with Lynn Klock, but was transitioning in trying to figure out how to play different music.
I actually picked up the saxophone after playing the guitar for a few years .
My dad listened to a lot of jazz and was a charter member of the first jazz society in the Virgin Islands 748, even before I was born. Cannonball Adderley was one of his main cats.
I was in the first band to have jazz in one of the charter schools in the Virgin Island, and wanted to play trumpet because my dad loved Miles Davis.
You had your choice of two instruments to learn, and you had to put your selections in a hat to be selected. I was one of two kids that put down the saxophone, so by default they assigned me the saxophone; that’s how I started with it! (laughs)
The whole thing of playing it and falling in love with it came from listening my dad’s stuff, or what my older siblings would play coming back from college with their record collections. This was in the 70s, so lots of horn sections like WAR, Brass Construction and Parliament/Funkadelic.
I listened to Cannonball all the time, and realized if I’m going to play the saxophone, this is what I want to do.
My parents used to take me to hear the local calypso bands, and music of the Virgin Islands called “Quelbe”. I felt that this is what I wanted to do.
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“You can’t just hoard the information that you get; you have to keep passing stuff on and complete the cycle”
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I met this teacher Chubby Lockhart, who went to Berklee. He played in one of the local bands. I’d sit with him in his garage, where in St. Thomas its 90 degrees.
He’d put these books in front of me and say, “You’re going to learn to play your scales in all 12 keys, 2 ½ octaves.” I’m in 8th grade, so I had this notion that there was more to learn than just being in school bands and etude books.
Then at Interlocken I realized that I had a lot to learn about playing the instrument, developing technique, sound and air.
This all put me on a path that led me away from learning jazz out of transcription books and just studying the saxophone from a classical/conservatory kind of thing for about 6 years.
That was a formal training, but all along, while I was studying under Hemke at Interlocken, he told me “I know what you want to do musically, and it’s different than this. But, there are things that you can learn from melodic interpretation and playing the instrument well so that you can play anything that you want to. Things like articulation, and how to emulate characteristics of different instruments, like a voice or string instrument, and how to use them to interpret a melody.
HOW DID YOU STUDY JAZZ?
I was trying to learn jazz on my own, taking the “Omni” book and trying to figure what this “Confirmation” solo was all about. I was learning the jazz thing for many years.
Once I got done with school, I was teaching, and a friend turned me on to Dolphy and Mingus. So, I started to hear more possibilities outside of Cannonball.
My dad loved King Curtis, that kind of tenor. When I was ten and told my dad I wanted to play saxophone, he went to New York and brought back some albums and said, “This is what good saxophone sounds like”, and it was Cannonball’s second to last recording. I wore it out.
I went through my dad’s record collection and he had 20 Cannonball lps, so by then it was all over.
I would be at Northwestern University practicing, and people would just walk into my room and start showing me things about how to improvise, how to develop my ear and stuff like that.
I was in love with the tenor…Coltrane, Dexter, and then I heard Sonny Rollins play “St. Thomas” and I thought, “Hey, I know that song”
But I initially came to it from a very conservatory approach because that’s where I first learned music. So, it wasn’t until much later that I was able to dive into this music and understand it in a much deeper level.
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“I heard Sonny Rollins play “St. Thomas” and I thought, ‘Hey, I know that song’”
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YOU ARE ONE OF THE FEW TENOR PLAYERS OF YOUR GENERATION THAT HAVE THAT BIG FAT “TEXAS TENOR” SOUND. WAS THAT SOMETHING CONSCIOUSLY DEVELOPED THROUGH PRACTICING LONG TONES OR SOMETHING?
My teacher Fred Hemke, God rest his soul, used to tell me that sound is the most important thing. ***Because if you have a sound that people want to listen to, then you can take them on a ride and take them almost anywhere. If they like how you sound, they’ll stop and listen even if they are not familiar with what you’re doing
I did a lot of sound study, from a very classical sort of way.
I had a teaching gig at the University of South Florida, teaching improv and theory, and coaching ensembles. I had a lot of spare time+, so I started reaching out to mentors like Branford (Marsalis). There were cats that came through Chicago when I was just out of school and started to play. I’d go to Joe Segal’s Showcase. I’d hear James Moody a couple times a year, Johnny Griffin, Joe Henderson. Art Blakey would come through with Jean Toussaint and Donald Harrison.
As a kid, I used to hear Jean Toussaint because he’d play in St. Thomas with one of the most popular calypso bands there. He also played in high school with my older brother. I’d go see them play on the beach or wherever kids go to hear them.
He was coming from where I was and doing something that I wanted to do, play with Art Blakey. That was an inspiration for me.
I’d see Von Freeman in Chicago; I loved his big sound. He was like jazz school for me.
There were a lot of younger guys on the scene, but I was hanging around the older musicians like Von and Bunky Green
Dr. Hemke connected me with Bunky when I was still in school. We talked about practicing.
Von had a regular session on the South Side. He took in all the young cats; Steve Coleman and all the ****others when to his jam sessions. What I loved about Chicago was there wasn’t this sort of divisions by the kind of music that they played.
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“i’d see Von Freeman in Chicago; I loved his big sound. He was like jazz school for me”
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As I started going to jam sessions, Brad Goode (who’s in Boulder now),Len Halliday
In Chicago, if people saw that you could play a little bit and wanted to learn, they would hire you and pull you into their band.
I would in the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, and sit next to Ronnie Kolber. There was a funk R&B instrumental scene, a fusion scene, a Euro- ECMish kind of thing. I’d be in a big band and a guy next to me would set up his horn, introduce himself, and it would be Pat Patrick! (laughs) The whole AACM thing was going on, and they’d invite you to play with them.
There I was with the same guys who were in horn sections in reggae bands, blues bands, free jazz, bebop, standards with Von, cool new stuff from Art Blakey’s band with Wynton. All of that stuff was happening. You could play five nights a week, but every night was a different gig with different styles of music.
That changed a lot when I came to New York! (laughs)
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“I was with the same guys who were in horn sections in reggae bands, blues bands, free jazz, bebop, standards with Von, cool new stuff from Art Blakey’s band with Wynton. All of that stuff was happening. You could play five nights a week, but every night was a different gig with different styles of music”
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WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR TIME WITH ROY HAYNES?
Learn the music; learn how to listen and be honest about how you play.
Bird was his thing.
When we were on the road and traveling in a van on the East Coast, we’d listen to Phil Schaaf’s show all the time. Bird, Bird, Bird, and he knew all that stuff.
What I learned: be professional, be on time.
There were ways that you came at the music that happen in almost a mystical way. You learn things ****from playing with people like that that creeps into your playing. Not from listening to them on records, but the fact that he played with every major saxophone player in jazz history affected my approach to playing
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“What I loved about Chicago was there wasn’t this sort of divisions by the kind of music that they played”
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DIDN’T THE FACT THAT HE PLAYED WITH LESTER YOUNG INTIMIDATED YOU?
Coleman Hawkins. Lester Young and all the way through to Coltrane. I never got that sense from him; I ***just knew that when he called certain tunes out of his book, and the way that he set the tempos for them, he was trying to evoke a feel of a certain time period. I would try to play to that.
I would just listen to him
Roy was always playing the melody, if you listen to the music carefully
Anytime that he was comping, he’d be comping to what was going on the band stand, which was great. You could always hear the melody on his drums, especially on a medium swing kind of thing. He’d be referring to the melody of the tune.
He made me more aware of playing a tune as opposed to a collection of chord progressions and just play your thing.
There are a million songs that have a B flat 7. Well, how does a B flat 7 work in “It Could Happen to You” as opposed to another song? How is it musically relevant to that song specifically?
*****
“Learn the music; learn how to listen and be honest about how you play”
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WHAT DID YOU PICK UP FROM YOUR TIME WITH ART FARMER?
To trust to use more bass in my playing.
How melodic devices like delay or anticipation are resolution points. How to create musical tension.
As a young player I thought more in terms of harmonic substitutions to create a tension . But Art would ***just play this one note, and it would be nowhere in the chord. But he would hold it, and two minutes later it would finally be resolved because he was just sitting on that one note. I was like “OH, OK!”
That made me start thinking more about lines and the Lester Young thing. Less up and down harmonic things and more using delayed suspensions and hesitations for resolution
I speak to my students about these melodic devices so that they’re thinking more in terms of voice leading, which is what people use in composition.
***When you’re on a bandstand, if you’re improvising, you’re really composing. You have a language that is your own and have a style and way of presenting yourself
***If you’re really listening, there’s a way to recreate and re-invent the material that you’re using so that you’re actually in the moment, and not just playing your B flat 7 lick.
There’s music to be made, because the drummer or bass player is doing something, or the way the ****piano player is voicing it, and it makes you go “Oh, yeah!” and you adjust and make a variation on it to match the moment to what is going on with the music.
Art gave me the confidence to trust myself and slow down.
He taught me to play melodies, as before that I was into harmonic lines.
***I listened to his stuff with Clifford Jordan. And even at fast tempos, they could get into the rhythm of it with bebop lines and still play a melody like they were singing it. That caused a shift in my playing
******
“Roy (Haynes) was always playing the melody, if you listen to the music carefully”
*****
HOW IS THAT COMPARED TO HAYNES?
Roy Haynes was my first gig as a horn player on the front line. It wasn’t like I was just playing with my contemporaries.
SO HOW WAS IT GOING OUT WITH YOUR CONTEMPORARIES LIKE ROY HARGROVE?
It was a learning experience in a different kind of way
I was older than some of those guys by 4-5 years, but they had also been on the road a lot with older cats. They were doing new music; Roy was trying to go into a new direction from the stuff that he had done ***NAMES? With Antonio Hart. There was also recordings that he did with tenor saxist Ralph Moore.
There was a lot of room to explore and experiment together. We were checking out new music on the road and hanging out together.
I learned a lot from Roy about trusting my ears more. That was a great time of putting together all of the things that I had learned from a conservatory standpoint
Roy would come into my room right before sound check at a gig, and he’d say, “I’m checking out this tune. We’re going to play it tonight; let me show you the melody”
I’d ask if he had a chart, and he’d say “Naw, just sit with me”(laughs)
We’d go out and do the gig, and he’d say “If you don’t hear the whole melody, don’t worry about it. Just pick up a harmony note here and there, and if you’re comfortable, blow on it.” That was a huge step for me, as we were doing this while touring internationally.
We’d do tunes we heard on records, or ones from his old catalogue. He would teach them to me from his horn
He would sit down in the dressing room right before going on the stand, and he would take a pen, sketch out a chart enough with a direction and road map and hand it to me. “This is what I want you to do tonight”. Just based on something that he heard in his head, he’d want to hear it from me.
With pianist like Mark Terry, who introduced me to Roy, it was like a family.
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“When you’re on a bandstand, if you’re improvising, you’re really composing. You have a language that is your own and have a style and way of presenting yourself”
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Greg Hutchinson was in there when I just joined the band for that live album Kindred Souls. I got the call to join in December and we recorded it in January. We were trying to get into this whole new thing that he was hearing with that rhythm section.
We were all influenced by Miles’ second quintet with Herbie and Wayne. We were trying to emulate it, responding to each other like they did on the bandstand.
But after that recording was done with us reacting and interacting with each other, Greg just switched gears on me and started playing time on the ride cymbal (laughs) and not responding to every little harmonic splash that I did.
So, I felt that it was time for me to take a new direction in my blowing over tunes, as I didn’t have that kind of interaction any more.
I started going back to the stuff I learned in Chicago by being around Von and those casts, so I incorporated that into my playing. I needed to pull out my Hank Mobley and Dexter Gordon records; not to imitate them, but to use them to realize I didn’t need to use harmony to be musical and create all of the musical tension.
For instance, playing with the time; can I play only using eight notes all night on top of somebody playing just quarter notes? Just laying down strong time to feel good and making it swing?
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“can I play only using eight notes all night on top of somebody playing just quarter notes? Just laying down strong time to feel good and making it swing?”
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WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SMALL BAND CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE AND BIG BAND CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE?
For me, it’s all kind of the same thing, because it’s all Christian. He’s such an energetic force.
I’ve collaborated on his more exploratory things. That was a place where he trusted me, and it was exciting.
It was a sound evolution and a stylistic evolution. And then eventually having Geoff Keezer helped create so much music on the bandstand.
It was all about finding your lane; what is your role and how you can be effective in creating music with your saxophone.
The key is finding your voice and still being true to your sound and style, but still knowing that certain things don’t work in certain contexts.
His band was a more modern thing, and eventually Christian had a pedal board, Keezer had two pedals and three keyboards, I had two pedal boards with multi effect pedals running delays and , a wah wah thing and a volume pedal, so we were exploring sounds with a different kind of playing.
If you go back to the Sci-Fi, album, almost half of that record had me on soprano. There was a year and a half where I was traveling with a trunk, and only playing the tenor once or twice during the two sets in a club! (laughs)
Eventually, when the texture got so dense on the bandstand with Christian playing electric pretty straight, but using sonic effects on the upright and Keezer has pedals hooked up to the Rhodes, with a laptop and piano. I realized that my playing a straight saxophone was a nice contrast, so I removed all of my pedals and got back to just playing the saxophone in that context
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“We’d go out and do the gig, and he’d say “If you don’t hear the whole melody, don’t worry about it. Just pick up a harmony note here and there, and if you’re comfortable, blow on it.”
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HOW ABOUT THE BIG BAND?
The Big Band was a more straightahead kind of thing. It was more “feel good” kind of music.
When he’s doing Quincy Jones or Chick Corea things, it was always “groove real hard”!
That’s what I had with that band. Christian and I have known each other for years. We went on a Verve Tour that Roy had, with other cats. There was another band with (organ legend) Jimmy Smith.
We all toured together one summer; all the cats that were connected to Verve were on the scene. That’s when I got to know Christian; I started substituting in his band.
I was with Benny Golson at the time. I can’t say enough good about Benny. Super influential and a mentor.
So he eventually hired me, and we’ve known each other for over 25 years.
YOU HAVEN’T HAD AN ALBUM OF YOUR OWN IN A LONG TIME. WHAT WAS THE IMPETUS FOR THIS? AND, YOU’RE PLAYING A BARITONE SAX!!
I actually first played baritone sax in a classical sense on a quartet in college. I also played it in the jazz band at Interlocken. The bari has been around me since high school.
I’m also playing it on a new album by Yerba Buena. We’ve put out two singles since last year.
I finally connected with Michel N decello, and we did this “Red Hot and Riot” project which was a tribute to Fela. I was a guest soloist on the track that she was doing.
I met Engles who was the producer of that project, who was also doing Yerba Buena, who were doing an Afro Cuban thing but with some West Africa/Fela sounds, so the bari was a big part of that. So I got back into it.
That helped me in my audition for SNL (Saturday Night Live), but it was never in this jazz context.
I loved Cannonball’s sound; I loved Wayne’s sound on “Nefertiti”, and I then realized that on my brother’s Weather Report albums that this was the same guy that played with Miles.
I was originally trying to play tenor things on alto, but I eventually switched to tenor; yet the bari was always around me. I was on this award winning saxophone quartet, so it’s always sort of been there.
I also played every sax chair in the Mingus Big Band, and by far the bari charts are the hippest ones. That is a great bari book! (laughs)
ON THIS ALBUM YOU’RE PLAYING WITH TURRENTINE AND ROLLINS’ GUITARIST
That’s a Chicago connection again
My old roommate, Miles Hahn, played in Bobby Broom’s trio. He told me I should meet Bobby Broom. I had an opportunity to organize a concert at Northwestern, and I hired Bobby’s band, and I opened with my group. I played a couple tunes with Bobby, and we hung out a bit.
This was the same time I was transitioning to tenor and hanging out with Von, also doing fusion, funk, free jazz gigs. Hotel gigs, tuxedo gigs.
He was on the road with Sonny, so when I was playing tenor at the time, he was saying “stick with the alto” (laughs) So I played alto in his band! After him I went to the tenor.
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“The key is finding your voice and still being true to your sound and style, but still knowing that certain things don’t work in certain contexts”
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WAS IT A FUNNY FEELING BEING BACK AS A LEADER IN THE STUDIO WITH YOUR OWN BAND?
No, it was a great feeling
I had done three records for Mack Avenue, and at the time I was trying to do a series of different types of things, like an organ thing with Joey DeFrancesco. There are some great videos of a European tour that we did. I then wanted to do a straight-ahead thing, and then make the last one a chamber music record
I did the Sonic Tonic that N’shell produced, more like a festival band in concept.
The pause between studio recordings wasn’t intentional; “life” was happening, which made me reflect more on my personal life with things that I needed to address.
Also, after those first records, I got the gig with SNL and then got the call to teach at Julliard.
WHAT BROUGHT YOU BACK?
Life started to change; we had our second daughter. So, for the first time in my 15 years in New York, I became “local” for the first time in my life. I had steady work in town, but it took me out of my groove.
Most jazz gigs were on Saturdays, and I was tied up that day. I started to go out less and less when I was available. I had a great run playing the bari with Nshell, but then things kind of shifted for me.
I went back to NYU and got my Masters, worked on scoring and trying to branch out on different things, now that I was a “local”.
Getting back into the studio was so exciting. I felt like it was “it’s time to get back to me doing me and playing hard core”. So I started practicing and getting together with friends, talking saxophone and trying to develop things. Just being in the shed.
It was harder now, because when I was younger I learned all that by being on the road all of the time. With a family, you don’t have that kind of environment.
Bobby came to town; we played at Bob Cranshaw’s memorial at St. Peter’s. I felt ready to get back.
I felt that my life had shifted to where I could focus more on playing. So, outside of paying tribute to Cranshaw, I had no definite plan except getting back into the studio and documenting the fact that I was at a point of laying down certain things as to where I was.
I started doing the record six years ago. I did some first sessions and then had to wait until after COVID happened. I then finished it and mixed it , which is why there has been this “bump” getting to this point.
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“Getting back into the studio was so exciting. I felt like it was “it’s time to get back to me doing me and playing hard core”. So I started practicing and getting together with friends, talking saxophone and trying to develop things. Just being in the shed”
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ARE THERE ANY PLANS FOR A TOUR?
We’re working on all of that right now. Bobby is in Chicago; Kobe is down in the Carolinas; Nat is in Connecticut, and Reuben lives in Santa Cruz, CA. Doing a tour would be amazing; it would be lovely to play the music with those guys as we had such a vibe
ARE THERE ANY MUSICIANS, LIVING OR DEAD, YOU’D PAY $1000 TO SEE PERFORM?
I would have loved to have seen Dexter live, Gene Ammons, Errol Garner. Bird, obviously, and Trane. That would be amazing. And a lot of money! (laughs)
WHO IN WORLD HISTORY WOULD YOU LIKE TO SIT DOWN FOR AN EVENING AND PICK HIS OR HER BRAIN?
Herbie Hancock. Billy Strayhorn. Composers
As I said, Benny Golson has been a huge mentor; he helped me start my career. I would love to spend more time talking with him about music, for sure.
ARE THERE ANY BOOKS THAT HAVE REALLY INFLUENCED YOU?
There was a book that really helped me in terms of developing my sound by a tuba player in the Chicago Symphony. His name was Arnold Jacobs, and there are a couple books about his method, Wynton was really influenced by it, and I got to attend a master class of his when I was in Chicago. The book is called Song and Wind. It’s a little bit about his life, and a little bit about his method. That book really influenced me in a big way.
Wayne Shorter’s biography Footprints. And his recent documentary; do yourself a favor and watch it; it’s fascinating.
I used to read a lot of books on spirituality, metaphysics and stuff like that. Johnny Griffin and I used to talk about books a lot, and share books. At one point I was really trying to figure out stuff for myself and develop my own ideas on what I was seeing while living in the world and traveling
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“It was all about finding your lane; what is your role and how you can be effective in creating music with your saxophone”
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WAS THERE ANY PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION OR TEACHING THAT YOU ENDED UP ADHERING TO?
I hope that I’m still on the humankind of direction of things; I don’t think that there’s a specific religion or spirituality that I subscribe to on a daily basis. I get frustrated as to how divisive religion has become to humankind.
Authors that I haven’t read enough of, but want to read more of, would be James Baldwin.
WHAT GIVES YOU THE MOST JOY?
Good saxophone reeds! (laughs)
Seriously, my family. I have three beautiful kids, and that’s like main thing in life. That and good reeds!
Getting up every day and trying to be a better person, as well as a better father. That’s also pretty ‘straight-ahead’
SO, YOU MAY NOT HAVE HEARD OF RON BLAKE, BUT IF YOU’RE A JAZZ FAN, YOU’VE DEFINITELY HEARD HIM, AND LIKED WHAT YOU HEARD.
THESE DAYS, IT SEEMS MOST SAX PLAYERS SEEM TO HAVE STRAYED FROM WHAT MADE JAZZ SO INITIALLY ENJOYABLE, MAINLY A SENSE OF RHYTHM AND MELODY. BECAUSE OF HIS UPBRINGING AND CAREER TRAJECTORY, RON BLAKE HAS NEVER VEERED FROM THE TRUE CORE PRINCIPLES OF CREATIVE MUSIC, WHICH MAKES HIS OWN ALBUMS A TREASURE AS WELL AS WHEN HE JOINS IN WITH HIS FRIEND CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE. CHECK OUT BLAKE’S CATALOGUE AND SEE WHAT A TRUE IDENTITY OF SOUND FEELS LIKE