Jazz Hot “en V.O.”

Billy HART (Jazz Hot 624)
Blue Hart

By Josef Woodard

Billy Hart is now quite recognized. Lots of great musicians are looking for him, as well for his rythmical qualities as for his ability to adapt himself to others. He is both an energetic and subtle drummer, who knows how to push the soloist. He generates a clear and flowing pulsation, and would be able to have a party of elefants swinging. As a few others of his peers he has gone all over the history of jazz. He likes to back singers, when they are good. His career goes from Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, to the most advanced today's musicians, going through Betty Carter, Shirley Horn, Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, Marian McPartland, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, just to name a few among the greatest ones.
The man is really nice and of a confounding humility, surprised by us being interested in him, and wanting to interview him ; being at the same time conscious of his place in the jazz scene.
The interview was made during the dinner after his wonderful performance in Padova in october 2003 with The Saxophone Summit : Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano, Phil Markowitz et Cecil McBee.

Billy Hart : I like your shirt, that the kind I like to wear.

Jazz Hot : Yours is not bad, it's my taste. OK ! this is a shirt interview. (Laughs.)
Let's begin.
You were born in Washington DC, on the 29th of november 1940.
Well you know me (laughs) ! I am surprised that people know me and it's only in the last two or three months that I am beginning with the feeling that people are familiar with me. I really seriously did not realise that.

Well, you're very famous in France, at least among the jazz people.
I guess I am so busy trying to grow, and my business is to stay in a creative area, what I believe to be a creative level. The competition is so high, that you think, at a certain age, that if you have not become a leader, then you're forgotten. And I thought I was forgotten, because people don't refer to the things I do now, they only refer to the things I did in the past. It is as if I din't exist any more, because they only think about young players, the younger guys are getting a lot of attention. I have no problems about that , it's just that it surprises me that so many people, just in the last few months, like you, they come to me and say : Oh man, you're famous in Poland, you're famous in France, or in Japan. I didn't realise that.

But it's good for you, isn't it?

Well, we'll see ! I don't know if it's good or not, because I am too busy trying to improve. I am still trying to realise a certain musical standard, still trying to respect the level that I know from Chick Webb, Art Blakey, Billy Higgings, Elvin Jones, Al Foster, you know the level is so high that I am inspired just to keep trying. That's my focus.

How did you come to play the set of drums ?
Let me see...I don't know, I wanted to sing, and somebody gave me a drum, and I gegan trying to sing to the drum I guess. I started in a drum choir, marching drummers.

How old were you ?
I guess around 11 or 12. But I wasn't really interested until I got a drum set, I was 15. I still didn't know any music, just luck. I was so lucky that the guy who lived next door to my grandmother was the best bebop jazz saxophone player in Washington, and he still lives, his name is Buck Hill. And then he saw me one day and he gave me a Charlie Parker record, and in some kind of way it meant something to me ; it just changed my life. I liked it immediately and I never stopped.

Didn't you have an uncle who was a musician ?
No, some people said Buck Hill was my uncle, but no. My grandfather was a musician but I never saw him. He died a week before I was born. And my grandmother was a concert pianist in the European classical music style. She was Marian Anderson first accompanist. Marian Anderson was the first Afro-American opera singer. So I was familiar from the early age with the European classical music.

Did you learn to play the set of drums by yourself ?
I did. Bill gave me this Charlie Parker record, and I used to listen to it over and over again. And then I got more and more curious in many things, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, then Max Roach and Clifford Brown, and finally Miles Davis with Philly Jo Jones. Then, you know, in some kind of way, you start going back and realise there was an extraordinary Jo Jones, and a Zutty Singleton, etc, and Chick Webb.

Zutty Singleton, that's the beginning of the drumming ?
Oh yes ! but you just begin to understand that art, any art, has a tradition that you build on. I was lucky enough to be taught that.

Did you try to imitate them ?
No. And yes in certain ways, because tradition implies a meaning, a meaning implies a purpose, a reason to do it, a spiritual reason , a truth. In other words you're doing something that people need, that's why you know that you're doing it correctly, or accurately, you're not doing it for yourself, you do it for everybody. For yourself and everybody else too I mean. When you realise that, then you go back and see how the people did it, because now you know why they did it. And that's when it's becoming interesting to me.

When did you become a professional drummer ?
Almost immediately. Somebody came by my house, Quit Wayne, who was a guitar player, who was Butch Wayne's relative, and the father Eddy Warne organised jam sessions with Jackie McLean, Horave Silver's band, Art Blakey, so at a very young age I was meeting these guys. So I started swinging, and playing with some of the guys in Washington DC, and I met Shirley Horn, I ended up coming to New York, to play with her. There I met the Miles Davis Quintet with Jimmy Cobb who was also from Washington DC, he accepted me, and Charlie Rouse who was also from Washington DC who played with Thelonious Monk, at that time Butch Warne was also there, and Quit Wayne was playing with Jimmy Smith when Donald Bailey left. And the next thing I was in Paris.

When did you play with Wes Montgomery ?
Just after leaving Jimmy Smith.

Was it important for you to be with Shirley Horn ?
Yes, Shirley Horn is my teacher, she was one of my mentors. She taught me some of the early rythms, she's so well founded, not only as a vocalist but as a pianist, she plays similar to Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal. So I had the workings of two very classic piano trios of the time. I mean later I had to learn about Bud Powell, Art Tatum, but learning about Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal was not bad to begin with. Yes, Shirley taught me.

You played with Michel Petrucciani ?
I first met him before he went to the United States. Aldo Romano introduced me to Michel Petrucciani au Petit Opportun, before he met Charles Lloyd. I knew him very well, we were good friends.

How do you manage to thicken the rythm, you sound sometimes like maybe two sets of drums ?
For some reason, of all the people I heard, the person who affected me most was John Coltrane, which seems the reason of this particular band just together, I mean it was more than he just was a great saxophone player, it was something about the man that affected me, that inspired me musically. So of course if John inspired me it's certainly his choice of Elvin Jones as his drummer that emulated me of course, one can understand that, and then I began to understand some of those reasons. Then you began to understand Elvin and then it takes you to Monk, stuff like that, and you just look to the drummers. I mean Max (Roach), Elvin Jones is the one who turned me on to Max, he told me how important Max was, then there is Roy Haynes, and then of course the next step was when John Coltrane got Rashied Ali, then I was interested in that concept, you know, Sunny Murray, Rashied Ali, Milford Graves, Beaver Harris, Stu Martin, Famoudou Don Moye, Ed Blackwell, and another hero, Billy Higgins, who could go everywhere.

Is Billy Higgins your favorite hero ?
Of course, more now than ever. He influenced me not only as a musician but as a person. There are certain people like Higgins that I feel that they were put here like an angel. I think of Higgins as an angel. I don't mean the word, I mean a real one, I think he was put on earth to inspire positive thinking in positive life on the planet. I think he was, like I said, a saint ! A real one !

What's your conception of the role of the set of drums in the rythm section ?
Rythm implies drums ! In a rythm section the set of drums is part of the bass and part of the piano. And the piano is part of the drums, as the bass is part of the drums. So the rythm section is the drums. If you think of big bands, then they orchestrate the rythm section. So I think of the drummer something like the conductor in a symphony orchestra. He's not a percussionnist, he's a conductor. He has to listen and hear everything that goes on, to complement what's going on. That the way I think of it.

What is jazz for you ?
That's an interesting question. You can look at the point from different ways. It's a musical expression based on rythm, and the fact it's based on rythm, the history of rythm is from the beginning of times, and the purpose of rythm, seem to cause joy. It seems to cause euphoria, ecstasy. I mean I am not so sure, but that is what it means to me, rythm is put to cause joy, to cause positive thinking, optimism, happiness. That's the part of American music that seems to be special, this music that has this rythm that causes this happiness. I think it's a music with a dance feeling too. It's a sort of a freedom of expression where everybody can compose perfect music together. That's what it seems like to me.

What is very specific for you in this music, is there something that makes the difference with the other musics ?
There is not much difference except that it's contemporary American, but there are other music that have rythm.

Yes, but it's not the same kind of rythm ?
Well...yes,and no. We have a modern concept of the drums, but we still play a rythm that causes happiness and joy. In this particular cycle, this kind of music has become classical music. It's composition, improvisation, freedom of expression, shared by more than one person.

What about swing ?
That's another word for rythm, an English musical term for this emotion that I called happiness and optimism. We do have words like swing. Swing means to play the rythm in such a way that it causes euphoria and happiness. There's groove, or funky, or whatever, different words that mean the same thing!

What were the greatest moments in your musical life, I mean those which have been able to change your way of seeing, or playing the music ?
The first time I heard Charlie Parker. When someone gave me a Clifford Brown record, he was already dead. When I heard the record that changed my way of looking, and then that was Max Roach, the next time that was Coltrane, then Ornette, and I got a chance of actually be direct with Miles Davis when he talked to me about music, and doing so taught me, in a very warm way, and gave me a different kind of understanding, and that changed my way of thinking, quite obviously. He showed me certain things about the tradition and the purpose. Then I got a chance to play with people, I played with Jimmy Smith, with Shirley Horn, with Wes Montgomery, Pharoah Sanders, Eddie Harris, then with Herbie Hancock which was the first time I played with a band of all my peers, that was like feeding in a membership club. Then I was with McCoy Tyner which of course like with Pharoah Sanders, that inspired me again. Then I played with Stan Getz, and for the first time in my career, Stan Getz taught me an academic way of looking at bebop, a serious way of isolating bebop from the other musics and to study the new answer to the specialty of the concept of bebop. Through Stan getz I was really studying Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and particularly Dizzy Gillespie.

And What about playing with Gil Evans ?
I didn't really play with him, maybe a record, or something. I played with the Gil Evans' band but Gil was already dead. I met him, yes I knew him, I made some records.

What about The Visiones ?
That's my band, that was my way of trying to do everything that I've learnt. It is a good band, a great band, we still play together : John Stubblefield (s), Mark Feldman (vln), Santi Debriano (b), David Fjiuczynski (g), David Kikovski (p). A great band of composers

Do you specially like to accompany singers, because you did that a lot, the last time I saw you, you played with Dena De Rose?
Of course I do, Shirley Horn taught me to love singers. I met Buster Williams when I played with Betty Carter. I played with Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine. I like singers, I just help producing a young student of mine, a singer named Hilda Van Hove, out of Belgium, we've just made a record, with Michel Heer, Hein Van De Geyn, a nice record. There's a new guy, Phil Blackman. I'm gonna do a gig with Cristian McBride and Alister Walker. I'm lucky, I get something now and then.

Do you think there is a European jazz , different from the US jazz?
I think so. Well you can say it's different, but human beings are human beings. I had a conversation once with a great English musician named Tony Oaxley, and I said : Tony, why don't you move to New York. And he said : I am not American and I don't want to be, I want to improvise from my own roots. And I think it makes sense too, I want to improvise from my own roots too. And Oaxley, to this day, is still one of my favorite drummers. He is in the tradition, I saw him playing with Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, all the way to Cecil Taylor. He is a great example of somebody of my age doing what I like to do.

Do you think that today a young musician has to know the tradition ?
Any age has to know the tradition. Somebody said : " Every generation tranforms art to its own image, but he also says that people who don't learn the history are doomed to repeat it ". So I feel both ways like that.

Is there anything else you would like to say ?
Well, I think I've talked enough. (Laughs). I am totally optimistic about the future, I love some of the new people I hear. I enjoy the fact that jazz continues in a healthy way.

Do you think it's still possible to find new trends, new ways ?
Oh yes, without a doubt. It's possible to do it, as we can speak in different ways.

Do you yhink we could have a new Charlie Parker, a new Coltrane ?
I think we already do, of course we do. That's like after the Louis Armstrong's days, they said are we going to find a new Louis Armstrong. Yes and no, not the same one, but as important for the music. Every generation has. You know, maybe John Coltrane would not have done what he has done if he had had George W. Bush as a President (laughs).
Serge Baudot


Billy HART (Jazz Hot 624) Blue Hart By Josef Woodard Billy Hart is now quite recognized. Lots of great musicians are looking for him, as well for his rythmical qualities as for his ability to adapt himself to others. He is both an energetic and subtle drummer, who knows how to push the soloist. He generates a clear and flowing pulsation, and would be able to have a party of elefants swinging. As a few others of his peers he has gone all over the history of jazz. He likes to back singers, when they are good. His career goes from Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, to the most advanced today's musicians, going through Betty Carter, Shirley Horn, Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, Marian McPartland, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, just to name a few among the greatest ones. The man is really nice and of a confounding humility, surprised by us being interested in him, and wanting to interview him ; being at the same time conscious of his place in the jazz scene. The interview was made during the dinner after his wonderful performance in Padova in october 2003 with The Saxophone Summit : Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano, Phil Markowitz et Cecil McBee. Billy Hart : I like your shirt, that the kind I like to wear. Jazz Hot : Yours is not bad, it's my taste. OK ! this is a shirt interview. (Laughs.) Let's begin. You were born in Washington DC, on the 29th of november 1940. Well you know me (laughs) ! I am surprised that people know me and it's only in the last two or three months that I am beginning with the feeling that people are familiar with me. I really seriously did not realise that. Well, you're very famous in France, at least among the jazz people. I guess I am so busy trying to grow, and my business is to stay in a creative area, what I believe to be a creative level. The competition is so high, that you think, at a certain age, that if you have not become a leader, then you're forgotten. And I thought I was forgotten, because people don't refer to the things I do now, they only refer to the things I did in the past. It is as if I din't exist any more, because they only think about young players, the younger guys are getting a lot of attention. I have no problems about that , it's just that it surprises me that so many people, just in the last few months, like you, they come to me and say : Oh man, you're famous in Poland, you're famous in France, or in Japan. I didn't realise that. But it's good for you, isn't it? Well, we'll see ! I don't know if it's good or not, because I am too busy trying to improve. I am still trying to realise a certain musical standard, still trying to respect the level that I know from Chick Webb, Art Blakey, Billy Higgings, Elvin Jones, Al Foster, you know the level is so high that I am inspired just to keep trying. That's my focus. How did you come to play the set of drums ? Let me see...I don't know, I wanted to sing, and somebody gave me a drum, and I gegan trying to sing to the drum I guess. I started in a drum choir, marching drummers. How old were you ? I guess around 11 or 12. But I wasn't really interested until I got a drum set, I was 15. I still didn't know any music, just luck. I was so lucky that the guy who lived next door to my grandmother was the best bebop jazz saxophone player in Washington, and he still lives, his name is Buck Hill. And then he saw me one day and he gave me a Charlie Parker record, and in some kind of way it meant something to me ; it just changed my life. I liked it immediately and I never stopped. Didn't you have an uncle who was a musician ? No, some people said Buck Hill was my uncle, but no. My grandfather was a musician but I never saw him. He died a week before I was born. And my grandmother was a concert pianist in the European classical music style. She was Marian Anderson first accompanist. Marian Anderson was the first Afro-American opera singer. So I was familiar from the early age with the European classical music. Did you learn to play the set of drums by yourself ? I did. Bill gave me this Charlie Parker record, and I used to listen to it over and over again. And then I got more and more curious in many things, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, then Max Roach and Clifford Brown, and finally Miles Davis with Philly Jo Jones. Then, you know, in some kind of way, you start going back and realise there was an extraordinary Jo Jones, and a Zutty Singleton, etc, and Chick Webb. Zutty Singleton, that's the beginning of the drumming ? Oh yes ! but you just begin to understand that art, any art, has a tradition that you build on. I was lucky enough to be taught that. Did you try to imitate them ? No. And yes in certain ways, because tradition implies a meaning, a meaning implies a purpose, a reason to do it, a spiritual reason , a truth. In other words you're doing something that people need, that's why you know that you're doing it correctly, or accurately, you're not doing it for yourself, you do it for everybody. For yourself and everybody else too I mean. When you realise that, then you go back and see how the people did it, because now you know why they did it. And that's when it's becoming interesting to me. When did you become a professional drummer ? Almost immediately. Somebody came by my house, Quit Wayne, who was a guitar player, who was Butch Wayne's relative, and the father Eddy Warne organised jam sessions with Jackie McLean, Horave Silver's band, Art Blakey, so at a very young age I was meeting these guys. So I started swinging, and playing with some of the guys in Washington DC, and I met Shirley Horn, I ended up coming to New York, to play with her. There I met the Miles Davis Quintet with Jimmy Cobb who was also from Washington DC, he accepted me, and Charlie Rouse who was also from Washington DC who played with Thelonious Monk, at that time Butch Warne was also there, and Quit Wayne was playing with Jimmy Smith when Donald Bailey left. And the next thing I was in Paris. When did you play with Wes Montgomery ? Just after leaving Jimmy Smith. Was it important for you to be with Shirley Horn ? Yes, Shirley Horn is my teacher, she was one of my mentors. She taught me some of the early rythms, she's so well founded, not only as a vocalist but as a pianist, she plays similar to Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal. So I had the workings of two very classic piano trios of the time. I mean later I had to learn about Bud Powell, Art Tatum, but learning about Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal was not bad to begin with. Yes, Shirley taught me. You played with Michel Petrucciani ? I first met him before he went to the United States. Aldo Romano introduced me to Michel Petrucciani au Petit Opportun, before he met Charles Lloyd. I knew him very well, we were good friends. How do you manage to thicken the rythm, you sound sometimes like maybe two sets of drums ? For some reason, of all the people I heard, the person who affected me most was John Coltrane, which seems the reason of this particular band just together, I mean it was more than he just was a great saxophone player, it was something about the man that affected me, that inspired me musically. So of course if John inspired me it's certainly his choice of Elvin Jones as his drummer that emulated me of course, one can understand that, and then I began to understand some of those reasons. Then you began to understand Elvin and then it takes you to Monk, stuff like that, and you just look to the drummers. I mean Max (Roach), Elvin Jones is the one who turned me on to Max, he told me how important Max was, then there is Roy Haynes, and then of course the next step was when John Coltrane got Rashied Ali, then I was interested in that concept, you know, Sunny Murray, Rashied Ali, Milford Graves, Beaver Harris, Stu Martin, Famoudou Don Moye, Ed Blackwell, and another hero, Billy Higgins, who could go everywhere. Is Billy Higgins your favorite hero ? Of course, more now than ever. He influenced me not only as a musician but as a person. There are certain people like Higgins that I feel that they were put here like an angel. I think of Higgins as an angel. I don't mean the word, I mean a real one, I think he was put on earth to inspire positive thinking in positive life on the planet. I think he was, like I said, a saint ! A real one ! What's your conception of the role of the set of drums in the rythm section ? Rythm implies drums ! In a rythm section the set of drums is part of the bass and part of the piano. And the piano is part of the drums, as the bass is part of the drums. So the rythm section is the drums. If you think of big bands, then they orchestrate the rythm section. So I think of the drummer something like the conductor in a symphony orchestra. He's not a percussionnist, he's a conductor. He has to listen and hear everything that goes on, to complement what's going on. That the way I think of it. What is jazz for you ? That's an interesting question. You can look at the point from different ways. It's a musical expression based on rythm, and the fact it's based on rythm, the history of rythm is from the beginning of times, and the purpose of rythm, seem to cause joy. It seems to cause euphoria, ecstasy. I mean I am not so sure, but that is what it means to me, rythm is put to cause joy, to cause positive thinking, optimism, happiness. That's the part of American music that seems to be special, this music that has this rythm that causes this happiness. I think it's a music with a dance feeling too. It's a sort of a freedom of expression where everybody can compose perfect music together. That's what it seems like to me. What is very specific for you in this music, is there something that makes the difference with the other musics ? There is not much difference except that it's contemporary American, but there are other music that have rythm. Yes, but it's not the same kind of rythm ? Well...yes,and no. We have a modern concept of the drums, but we still play a rythm that causes happiness and joy. In this particular cycle, this kind of music has become classical music. It's composition, improvisation, freedom of expression, shared by more than one person. What about swing ? That's another word for rythm, an English musical term for this emotion that I called happiness and optimism. We do have words like swing. Swing means to play the rythm in such a way that it causes euphoria and happiness. There's groove, or funky, or whatever, different words that mean the same thing! What were the greatest moments in your musical life, I mean those which have been able to change your way of seeing, or playing the music ? The first time I heard Charlie Parker. When someone gave me a Clifford Brown record, he was already dead. When I heard the record that changed my way of looking, and then that was Max Roach, the next time that was Coltrane, then Ornette, and I got a chance of actually be direct with Miles Davis when he talked to me about music, and doing so taught me, in a very warm way, and gave me a different kind of understanding, and that changed my way of thinking, quite obviously. He showed me certain things about the tradition and the purpose. Then I got a chance to play with people, I played with Jimmy Smith, with Shirley Horn, with Wes Montgomery, Pharoah Sanders, Eddie Harris, then with Herbie Hancock which was the first time I played with a band of all my peers, that was like feeding in a membership club. Then I was with McCoy Tyner which of course like with Pharoah Sanders, that inspired me again. Then I played with Stan Getz, and for the first time in my career, Stan Getz taught me an academic way of looking at bebop, a serious way of isolating bebop from the other musics and to study the new answer to the specialty of the concept of bebop. Through Stan getz I was really studying Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and particularly Dizzy Gillespie. And What about playing with Gil Evans ? I didn't really play with him, maybe a record, or something. I played with the Gil Evans' band but Gil was already dead. I met him, yes I knew him, I made some records. What about The Visiones ? That's my band, that was my way of trying to do everything that I've learnt. It is a good band, a great band, we still play together : John Stubblefield (s), Mark Feldman (vln), Santi Debriano (b), David Fjiuczynski (g), David Kikovski (p). A great band of composers Do you specially like to accompany singers, because you did that a lot, the last time I saw you, you played with Dena De Rose? Of course I do, Shirley Horn taught me to love singers. I met Buster Williams when I played with Betty Carter. I played with Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine. I like singers, I just help producing a young student of mine, a singer named Hilda Van Hove, out of Belgium, we've just made a record, with Michel Heer, Hein Van De Geyn, a nice record. There's a new guy, Phil Blackman. I'm gonna do a gig with Cristian McBride and Alister Walker. I'm lucky, I get something now and then. Do you think there is a European jazz , different from the US jazz? I think so. Well you can say it's different, but human beings are human beings. I had a conversation once with a great English musician named Tony Oaxley, and I said : Tony, why don't you move to New York. And he said : I am not American and I don't want to be, I want to improvise from my own roots. And I think it makes sense too, I want to improvise from my own roots too. And Oaxley, to this day, is still one of my favorite drummers. He is in the tradition, I saw him playing with Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, all the way to Cecil Taylor. He is a great example of somebody of my age doing what I like to do. Do you think that today a young musician has to know the tradition ? Any age has to know the tradition. Somebody said : " Every generation tranforms art to its own image, but he also says that people who don't learn the history are doomed to repeat it ". So I feel both ways like that. Is there anything else you would like to say ? Well, I think I've talked enough. (Laughs). I am totally optimistic about the future, I love some of the new people I hear. I enjoy the fact that jazz continues in a healthy way. Do you think it's still possible to find new trends, new ways ? Oh yes, without a doubt. It's possible to do it, as we can speak in different ways. Do you yhink we could have a new Charlie Parker, a new Coltrane ? I think we already do, of course we do. That's like after the Louis Armstrong's days, they said are we going to find a new Louis Armstrong. Yes and no, not the same one, but as important for the music. Every generation has. You know, maybe John Coltrane would not have done what he has done if he had had George W. Bush as a President (laughs). Serge Baudot