On the final night of Joe McPhee’s sell-out residency at Cafe Oto, prior to a rip-roaring duo set with John Edwards, his recently published autobiography was presented in a relaxed, in-conversation with eminent music writer, Richard Williams.
The in-conversation is a good place to start as Williams was able to get McPhee to cover some of the essentials of his career. Williams introduced McPhee as ‘an inspiration to us all’ and his book, Straight Up, Without Wings, as ‘One of the best autobiographies I’ve read’ – you couldn’t ask for a better endorsement than that.
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McPhee explained the book’s title saying he’d always wanted to defy the laws of gravity! The dialogue then covered his introduction to jazz as an 8 year old when his father, a pro trumpeter, thrust his silver trumpet in the youngster’s hands with the exhortation to play it – ’the best thing that ever happened to me’. This was in Poughkeepsie, NY State, where his Bahamian parents had settled. Pocket trumpet was to become his instrument of choice, in tandem with the sax, yet ‘I could make music with anything’ – even the glass he was holding, only limited by imagination.
The 60s were times of musical ferment for McPhee, with a focus on Miles Davis and Kind of Blue, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. Meanwhile, to make ends meet, he worked for 18 years in a local precision ball bearings factory, while pursuing his own musical ambitions, playing and composing out of hours, including the first session where he brought his sax instead of his usual trumpet to a local jam session and was shown the door as his playing was in the mode of Albert Ayler! Which tells you a lot.
‘The army saved me,’ he said, and it was not a non-sequitur. Drafted, his playing in the army bands earned him his musical stripes, and playing with trumpeter Clifford Thornton was another breakthrough, which led to his first recordings and on to his insights on improvisation. ‘I listen, it’s not about me. It’s about sharing. I listen, listen, listen. I try to listen and contribute.’
On to another crucial aspect – being an ardent admirer of Jimmy Giuffre’s playing was unusual for a black musician. In America, he explained, the issue of race in jazz was an issue, whereas listening to the quality of playing, a voyage of discovery, was paramount for him, and he went on, through Williams’ lead, to talk about Paul Robeson, whose political convictions were bound up with his music. Rounding up the insightful dialogue with Williams, McPhee joked that ‘Peter Brötzmann used to say, all the time, ‘What do we do now?’, a great note on which to end
A propos, as an aside, this writer noted that in the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet’s 2011 performance (reviewed here) ‘Joe McPhee‘s presence was pivotal … he was an anchor in the perpetual flux that is the essence of the Tentet, and perhaps its unsung hero.’
McPhee followed that with a power duet which saw John Edwards pulling all the strings (literally), hammering and tapping the body of the fulsome double bass, bowing the deepest notes and scuttling along and across the fretboard to extract sounds difficult to imagine had come from the bass. Edwards’ invention was perfectly partnered by McPhee’s storming sax, picking up rhythms and phrasing, driving the flow in tandem, chipping in with quirkily distorted vocals, leading to a finale where he gave Edwards the floor to join in a final, generous flourish and, with a broad smile, to take the applause.
