David used to come to our concerts, and Henry Brant—someone else, a classical composer—they came a lot because Teo was there, but they were enjoying more than just Teo, because they came more than once. David was prematurely gray, and I went and talked with him. He said, “You’re a composer. I can teach you how—instead of putting twenty notes down, you take seven and do the same thing with it.”
I said, “That’s what I’m looking for, I’ll be over.” And he would take a run of notes [demonstrates] and pick out the ones that were important. Find the melody that was really in your mind. The excitement could come from the percussion [demonstrates]. How to orchestrate for full orchestra, get more out of what you’re doing. He didn’t say “never do that,” but the whole composition was [demonstrates]—no breaths, like right off the piano. I seen my piano player now [John Foster]—since the concert he told Sue he’s gonna write four compositions every day! Yeah, but he hasn’t got one rest in his tunes! Man, he needs sixteen rests. Something else he hasn’t got is syncopation, and that’s what jazz is.
People think jazz is just playing the melody. Charlie Parker cut everybody; Charlie Parker invented new rhythms, just like a tap dancer. All the time he was playing not only melody but rhythm patterns. That’s what those [young] guys are not doin’, man. They just copy his riffs, and when [Bird died], that was it—they just end up playing a few riffs. But the guys that know, a few of ’em could go on, and, uhh . . . well, see, I want McPherson to do more than play bebop. He learned a lot but still has to invent more than that.
If Bird were here today, he wouldn’t be still playing bebop. You think he’d let Albert Ayler or somebody like that cut him? He’d do the squeek-squawk too but only a few bars of it. He wouldn’t do every tune like that. He would be avant-garde at the end of the composition or in the middle as a laugh and then go back to playing the music.
You don’t just eliminate the beat. Music is everything—the beat and the no-beat; jazz wants to beat, emphasize the beat, so you don’t cancel it entirely. Especially if you call yourself black, because African people ain’t gonna never stop dancing. Puerto Ricans, the gypsies, Hungarians, they all have a dance music. You know? But they also have mood music that don’t have a beat to it sometimes; Indian [music] don’t have a beat to it, but when they dance to it, they got a beat to it. I don’t see why these cats are ashamed to have a beat to their music.
GOODMAN: Tell me about Lloyd Reese, Charles. You said Eric [Dolphy] studied with him?
MINGUS: Yeah, I studied with him, Buddy Collette studied with him, Harry Carney used to go to him for clarinet and bass clarinet. He’s a well-learned man. If you say genius, well, everybody says genius, but he’s a man who did 90 percent work and got the results. Or he might have done 100 percent because he was above the average genius, more than a genius. He played and taught piano, played all the woodwinds, all the reeds, and trumpet.
Lloyd was in a guy named Les Hite’s band, and somebody in either the saxophone section or the trumpet section died. [Lloyd] was the first alto player, right? And they kept finding trumpet players to take the man’s place who died, and they never liked them. So Lloyd told Les Hite, “Hire Marshall Royal to take my place, and I’ll take off and learn the trumpet, because your trumpet’s not right.”
That’s how he became a genius—went and studied the brass, came back, took his job back and was considered the greatest first-chair man going in that period—in the late ’20s. Les Hite’s band came after Fes Williams’s famous band, but Les’s band lasted even up to Duke Ellington and was one of the greatest jazz bands ever heard, man. Snooky Young played in that band, but later; plus some guys you know.
Lloyd was just an unbelievable player, man. He played so much trumpet at jam sessions that nobody thought he was playing anything. Crazy [demonstrates with lots of notes, runs]—like a flute or something. I don’t know how to explain it to you, man. And the man knew what he was doing. I’ll tell you how bad he was: at the musician’s union they had some helluva musicians who everybody respected, and I forget what the question was, but somebody put a bet, a lot of money on it: “The book says so-and-so.”
“But that’s that book. This book says so-and-so.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what, man. Call Lloyd. Do you respect Lloyd Reese?”
All the students said, “Yeah, we respect him, man, let’s call him on the phone.”
So Lloyd came over and said, “I have no favorites here, guys, but this is the answer.” And he said neither was right, and they all took their money back.
He did have a rehearsal band though, because we all read [music]. He gave us the inner thing, and he’d make us change instruments. Gave me trumpet or something. I don’t know why he always gave me trumpet, but then he’d show you how to set harmony, how to make up tunes with a big band—without [written] music—by someone starting the melody in one of the sections and by the time the reeds set their five-part harmony to it—mainly the blues, you start with—then the brass would take the same melody and harmonize to it, then the ’bones would take the same melody. By the time each section’s played the melody, then somebody else figured out a reed riff or an organ point to play behind ’em.
In fact, Lloyd said there was a day when he used to go to work with no [written] music at all. Just hear a tune, play it, the brass got it, and [they’d] open the chorus. I know a guy who played in a band like that, but he used to talk like it was a lot of fun. People had music stands sitting there, and nobody had any music—played the latest tune, everybody making the harmony up. Or [Lloyd would] bring blank paper, and he used to write down: “You’re in B-flat”; “you got G”; “you got A,” you know. [He’d assign parts] and we’d play it and it’d be unbelievable. But he wouldn’t use no score.
Great trumpet player, great teacher. And some of his students, man. A guy like Harry Carney with Duke and playing as good as he plays now, as good as he was then, tells you something’s going on.
GOODMAN: It reminds me of what I heard about the Duke—teaching without a fixed score.
MINGUS: Then writing stuff down on paper.
GOODMAN: But there are no more teachers like that—or do you know of any?
MINGUS: Well, there was gonna be some. Buddy Collette was gonna come down here and I was gonna build my school. Berklee and those places, they’re teaching jazz, eh?
GOODMAN: Yeah, what do you think about that?
MINGUS: Ah, the white guys got enough things. Why don’t they let me build my school, let some guys who have been into it do it, you know? I’m not saying guys like Boots Monselli [Mussulli?] shouldn’t do it, ’cause he’s a jazz player, or John LaPorta. But some of the teachers they’ve got can’t even play, man.
GOODMAN: Is that so? I thought they had all jazz people on that faculty.
MINGUS: Oh yeah? Well, maybe it’s the way they approached me. I never heard him blow, but a guy comes in and says to me, “Me, I never really dug your music, you know. Why don’t you come up to school and show us what you’re doing?”
I said, “Motherfucker, if you don’t know what I’m doing by now, why don’t you come to work in the Jazz Workshop, show me what you doin’? If you’re so great, why don’t you get yourself a job as a jazz musician?” Like, I got here the hard way. “Show him what I’m doin’!”
GOODMAN: That’s marvelous. You should audition for them, right? . . .
NOTES
1. No, it wasn’t in the Ross Russell book, which is all the same a fascinating, flawed biography of Parker: Bird Lives! The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker (New York: Charterhouse, 1973). Russell was a postwar jazz producer and founder of Dial Records. My source