Ray BROWN

Ever since his untimely demise in July 2002, Ray Brown’s absence has been sadly obvious to everyone. His young disciples as well as his former colleagues continue to refer to a musician whose enormous sound and intractable swing are the cope stone of a major stylistic trend in jazz, full of blues and with an essential rhythmic pulse. Raymond Matthews Brown (born October 13th 1926 in Pittsburgh, deceased July 2nd 2002 in Indianapolis) didn’t like to talk to journalists any more - an old man, he considered everything he had to say was in the music he created, a monumental body of work that still comprises and defines jazz. Maybe that is the reason why he did not like definitions, for such historical giants, talking about jazz is like talking about themselves. We met him in Spain, during the Vitoria festival in July 2001 for a short interview, our last.

An interview with Jean Szlamowicz

Jazz Hot : Many people think of the bass as a sideman’s instrument- you’re hardly a case in point…
Ray Brown : It’s an outdated vision that comes from a preconceived notion. What counts is not the instrument, it’s the man. Leaders are individuals, not instruments. Count Basie was a leader, Duke Ellington was a leader : they were themselves, they could not have been sidemen. And who cares who the leader is, anyway?

Do you make a radical difference between between jazz and blues?
No. People who write about jazz have to come up with names, like “this is acid-jazz” and so forth. What matters is the music, the rest is bullshit.

What are the choices that young musicians face today, given the weight of history?
When I started out, Ji wanted to play what I heard on the records at home - Armstrong, Jimmy Lunceford, Basie, Ellington… I was self-taught for a long time and then I realized that if I wanted to go anywhere I couldn’t do it on my own and I had to know the instrument better. You have to master your instrument, then you decide on anything you like because then you can play anything.

Do you think the formal education that one finds today in jazz is a good thing?
If you look back on the history of jazz, there are very few innovators. These great innovators will come out anyway, whether they’ve been through formal education or not. Those who have really brought about a major innovation on their instrument didn’t come from conservatories - the Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, Milt Jackson, Wes Montgomery - they had a natural talent.

How is jazz supposed to be passed on?
You have to understand that 50 years ago, there were no jazz schools because there were no jazz teachers. Jazz musicians were not in schools, they were on the road! Now you find musicians that teach who can really play.

In what way has it changed jazz?
What has really changed is that jazz is no longer visible. A record coming out in New York would take maybe several years before it reached a village in Oklahoma, if it ever did. You had to manage to get hold of the records… so that people played in a more personal way. Now that everything is available immediately in the whole world, people are tempted to copy what they hear whereas people used to invent what they wanted to hear… They were more original. I’m not saying it was better, it’s just a historical fact.

Was there more artistic freedom?
The music business is different now, there have been many changes. Fifty years ago, everybody listened to jazz and everybody danced to it. Jazz can’t be danced to now, for the most part, and it’s not meant to be danced, for one thing. Many people have deserted jazz for that reason. When a band came in town and played in the ballroom you could see 2000 people flowing in to dance. There were certain tunes you couldn’t play because the people couldn’t dance to them. So musicians don’t have to worry about that but on the other hand there are no places to play anymore… Maybe tomorrow’s musicians will have to deal with that question and ask themselves if they want to reach that lost audience.

So the context affects the music…
When you play a club, there are things you can do that you wouldn’t try in a festival with 25 000 people. Usually, you prefer live to studio, ‘cause you’re in the moment. But you don’t have the glasses clinking and the people talking in a studio - you don’t lose concentration. Jazz is what you make of it: there’s a difference between the end- product and what you want to do. Even if you play the same music, what is different is how you make it work for several thousand people.

How do you deal with the business side of the music?
There are some people and some bad people. Like in any other business. You try and avoid the bad people if you can.

How do you like playing with the young musicians?
They have a lot of energy. It’s nice for me to have a couple of young sidemen because they’ve got the energy, they want to learn things and, to begin with, they’re good players ! You can see them on the rise, improving all the time. I remember when I was playing with older musicians- I was learning. It’s a natural process - when you’re young you’re learning, when you’re older you’re teaching! It’s automatic…

What do you think of the current scene?
As long as they are new and different people coming along, jazz is going to survive. It is going to change - because the faces are changing. We could debate for years about the definition of jazz. But essentially we always wanted to say that what made jazz different from other music was its feeling, it swung! When I say swing, that’s just the feeling, it’s not the notes. It can be very inventive, highly technical - and still swing! Swing encompasses a whole jazz thing. It’s like blues. At home in California I hear blues eight hours a day on the radio; they’re not the kind of blues that I grew up with - Jay McShann, Charlie Parker, Count Basie… I grew up with that kind of blues. That’s not the blues they play, it’s a little simpler, they don’t have the ability of McShann and Basie but they have the feeling, which is important for what they’re doing. The blues that Parker or Dizzy played was real fast. This didn’t sound anything like the blues that you heard T-Bone Walker do, the blues as defined by a twelve bar structure.