If you keep looking back while you're going forward , you might bump into something while you're not paying attention.My bad dream is walking into a parking meter but that is a minor mishap compared to the real catastrophes that can happen.Isaac Newton said,"For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction." Somebody else coined the phrase ,"If you don't pay attention to history , history repeats itself." Thisidea of controlling your life intelligently from an objective point of view looks good on paper yet , as things happen in life , emergencies bounce you about , one reacts as much as one plans . Certainly the argument of environment sometimes supersedes the fact of heredity. So we are looking back , bumping into things , not paying attention to history , and are constantly being challenged by developments beyond our control while time relentlessly passes . All we can do is look back at where we were and hope we can cope with where we are going.
Yesyerday I wrote two messages that were really reminiscences of things past . I was responding to just the mention of "Woodstock" , the event of the summer 1969 as well as a note to another musician that brought up the "Funkadelics" and I wondered if he knew a woman I know close by who went with a guy I knew from before "Woodstock" Joe Chambers . In "Facebook", Marshall Keys , a local musician and friend on "Facebook" wrote: "A friend of mine wants to interview someone in the Washington, DC area who was at Woodstock for its 40th Anniversary. If you were there or know someone who was, please let me know. Of course this person would have to actually remember the events of August 1969!" I responded :"I deliberately didn't go because of the weather but Jimi did even though he had a bad place on the bill . Monday Nt he came back still awake , still stoned , and we went to "Steve Paul's Scene" ( a night club)and sat in ,sessioning between sets on a "Sly"guitar riff we all liked("Sing A Simple Song") . We were asked to stop when they brought on "Sha Na Na" who did their show and moved rock and roll more in the show biz act that Jimi was hoping to get away from as early as Woodstock, the day before . So "Sha Na Na" blew Jimi Hendrix , me , Buddy Miles ,and the bassman off the stand that Monday Nt ."
I wrote to Greg Boyer, an alumni of Funkadelic connections (playing his trombone):"Hey Greg,I wonder if you knew Lynne Flanery who went with Furry ( I think that was his name) , anyway she was hanging around the George Clinton thing from way back when . I met her because she also went with Joe Chambers of the Chambers Brothers , a band of guys I had to hear every night they played the "Electric Circus" . We were the house band at the time as guys like them or Sly Stone came through and tore up the place. We were all "heads" in an era of "heads" . The "Circus" had a band room with black foam rubber that emulated stalactites and a flashing black light inside where we used to go to share a taste between shows , taking our choice of groupies. Those were the days . Man , I am on a jag as Marshall wrote something about Woodstock and I tripped off on another adventure from the same time ....."
Reviewing both of these memories for some reason another man popped into my memory , Buck Clark . Buck was a drummer here in DC when I met him in the summer of 1964. I stopped in his place for a taste and dug is scene as we listened to music . He was a painter of extraordinary works . The enormous African themes and striking colors drew you in closer to examine and enjoy his conceptions . Coincidently ,the year before ,I had met Les McCanne in LA at "Ciros" where he had another DC guy , Roy Airs with him. Buck traveled with Les in his later years playing percussion instruments when they became pretty popular and Les was singing some of the songs. Buck was a great guy , easy to speak with and get along with , at least for me . There were other men in the DC jazz click back then like Charlie Hampton , Buck Hill , Harold Chavis,Steve Novasel , and Butch Warren. Buck Clark and Charlie are long gone but not forgotten by many of us who knew them and worked with them.
In 1964 there was a white musicians union and a black musicians union . Steve and myself were invited to join the black union and I think Steve might have gone with it at that time . I left town before the end of the summer and went West to LA ,joining that union. The musicians union in LA at that time wasn't too bad a place to hang out because they had beer and pool tables and you actually could possibly get a gig right on the site sometimes as they did refer musicians when people called . Washington seemed like another system of graft as did New York when I got there . New York had a place where people hung on the wall and got club dates if they were connected. There were hundreds of men there listening to the cattle call at "Roseland" the ballroom on a lower floor of the musicians union building. The names were recognizable and the same names seemed to be called all the time . It was kind of neat to hear some of the names of the men in the room but if your name wasn't called it just made the city colder no matter what time of year it was .
I did get a call there and went out playing lead guitar with a band for a large dance . It was exciting with so many people dancing and such a good response . One of the tunes was sung by the organist which really was a soul ,boogaloo blues . He would stress the first beat with the lyric ,".. O K , we're gonna rock it one time ,now rock it !" He put it phrases there like ,"O K we're gonna suck it one time ..." It was kind of sensational and thrilling with all the people singing along with the dirty lyrics. Between sets a guy came up and asked to see my union card and I proudly showed it to him but I didn't know that the others didn't show him their cards or weren't in the union at all and he brought me up on charges . I had to appear at the musicians union at a hearing as if I were some kind of musical criminal. I thought it was rotten but paid the fine of fifty dollars and stopped paying dues not long after that but still I had to pay off the local representatives to work around town and New Jersey and Connecticut .
We all had to pay the union to get paid for recordings because all the money went through the union and they took their share first . Many of us would go around the corner to a drug store where we could cash our checks . One day as we were walking that way ,my band bumped into Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers coming from the same place . I was thrilled to meet him and Lee Morgan , who was still alive . Art said ," Electric Circus, right ?" I was really happy that he knew me . The Messengers had played "The Velvet Underground" which was downstairs from the "Electric Circus" and ,evidently , he had come upstairs just as I had gone downstairs to check them out . Art Blakey was a great man and never pretentious any time that we met over the years. It's funny how I remember those men I respected and who were real people ,not supermen or aloof characters ,too important to speak with me. Dizzy,James Moody,Coleman Hawkins,and Louis Armstrong were all like that with me and I will never forget them as good men. I wish I would have been as good in my life. Buck Clark was one of those guys , too.
No comments:
Post a Comment