Kevin Whitehead
Appearances
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
Pianist Sun Ra called his sprawling orchestras orchestras, and like Noah's Ark, they crammed in an improbable amount of vibrant variety. He had his earworm melodies like that one, Watusi, with its percolating Afro-Cuban percussion.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
The orchestra played squalling free jazz barrages and sang genial vocal chants connected with Sun Ra's personal cosmology involving space travel and an interplanetary exodus.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
June Tyson, longtime singer and costumer for the orchestra, who decked them out in striking, spangled outfits that looked good when the chanting musicians did a ring dance in front of the stage counterclockwise like the ancestors. At the other end of time, Sunrise Keyboard Synthesizer could become a rocket taking off for, and maybe arriving at, a more hospitable planet than this one.
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Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
This music comes from newly released recordings of Sun Ra in 1978 playing one of the Left Bank Jazz Society's weekly Sunday concerts in Baltimore. Some Left Bank regulars dislike the jazz avant-garde to the point of scolding musicians who went too far. And yet this show was Sun Ra's fifth for the Left Bank in under two years, making him very much a house favorite.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
He did draw his own audience, but the Left Bank's African-American standbys dug him too, knowing a comic persona and a black carnival act when they saw one. Sun Ra was serious, but it's not like he didn't know he was funny. His wisdom was couched in puns and wordplay. But Sun Ra's warm welcome was really because his rocket to the future flew straight through the jazz of the 1930s and 40s.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
I attended a few of Sun Ra's Left Bank concerts, and this one got even odder than usual when documentary filmmaker Bob Muggy's overhead movie lights came up after the first set, as if the gods were checking in from above. Some of Muggy's footage turns up in his fine film Sun Ra, A Joyful Noise.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
In the 70s, Ra started reviving then-obscure 1930s swing tunes by his early idol and one-time employer, bandleader Fletcher Henderson. Those vehicles for trumpet sensation Michael Ray let the orchestra traverse time as well as space. This is Yeah Man.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
Sun Ra and his orchestra played three sets that evening in 1978, and the double album, Lights on a Satellite, gives a fair sampling of their range and includes a few tunes they didn't record so much. There are good features for tenor saxophone hero John Gilmore and altoist Marshall Allen. At age 100, Marshall leads a posthumous Sun Ra orchestra that also has a new CD called Lights on a Satellite.
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Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
That modern band has its moments, But there's only one Sun Ra as a leader or keyboard player. Here he is on organ for round midnight, just playing the melody his way.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
The producer of this and dozens of historical jazz records, many of which we've praised here on the show, is Zev Feldman, who likes to fill out album booklets with extracts from interviews he conducts with witnesses whose memories are not always accurate or pertinent.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
The Sun Ra booklet contains a few contradictory or just plain wrong statements, some made by Feldman himself, about such easy-to-verify stuff as what day or days the orchestra played that weekend or at what time. Those famous ballroom shows were all Sundays from 5 to 9 p.m.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
In the booklet, someone guesses Sun Ra played three or four times for the Left Bank Jazz Society when it was 13 concerts in 11 years. Producer Feldman calls himself the jazz detective, but it's a detective's job to sift through conflicting accounts to tell us what really happened, not just throw it all out there before racing off to another case.
Fresh Air
Miranda July Wants Women To Read Their Inner Lives In 'All Fours'
Valuable music like this deserves more scrupulous documentation. ¶¶
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Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
Drummer Roy Haynes, what saxophonist Stan Getz in 1961. Haynes was on one of his several hot streaks in the early 60s, enlivening a few classic records with drum intros that grabbed your attention and sparked the action. Here's Roy Haynes kicking off a tune by Oliver Nelson. ¶¶ And one by pianist Andrew Hill. And one more, Eric Dolphy's G.W.
Fresh Air
Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
Behind the drums, Roy Haynes displayed power and intelligence. He was a quick and highly interactive listener who knew when to support a soloist and when to provoke them. He grew up in Boston, picking up the sticks around age seven, and started playing professionally before he even had a full drum set.
Fresh Air
Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
His parents were from Barbados, and a variety of Anglo and Latino Caribbean rhythms would inform his phrasing. On a 1951 Charlie Parker record date with a Latin flavor, Haynes on drum set seamlessly blends with Afro-Cuban conga and bongo players, then swings in straight jazz time on his own, moving easily from one groove to the other.
Fresh Air
Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
Roy Haynes had moved to New York as World War II ended, soaking up the music uptown and down. He landed a choice two-year gig with saxophonist Lester Young in 1947, and by the early 50s, leaders were vying for his services. Haynes left Miles Davis to join Charlie Parker. He did a season backing Ella Fitzgerald, then five years with the even more acrobatic singer Sarah Vaughan.
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Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
IDing the members of her trio on stage, Vaughn took to giving them an introduction fans would echo ever after.
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Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
He liked smart clothes, fast cars, and staying in shape. Roy Haynes prided himself on his fluid beat. He wasn't one for practicing the rudimental exercises drum students learn early. Like other heavy swingers at the drums, he'd give two-beat patterns a triplet-y, three-beat feel for tumbling headlong momentum.
Fresh Air
Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
Haynes could be crafty, playing behind Thelonious Monk live in 1958, sometimes matching the pianist's intransigence with a bit of his own. In the early 60s, Roy Haynes subbed in John Coltrane's quartet when Elvin Jones was unavailable. A few years later, he connected with a young pianist whose father he'd known in Boston, Chick Corea.
Fresh Air
Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
His trio album, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, with Miroslav Vitos on bass, was an instant classic that had spawned a few sequels. Check out Roy Haynes' creative work on cymbals, hi-hat, and snare drum on Matrix. He's a sleek modern designer in sound. Roy Haynes at age 43, 1968. By the 1990s, Roy Haynes was a widely respected jazz elder known for his unfailing good taste.
Fresh Air
Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
He was choosy about who he recorded with, not just anyone who had the money. Besides leading his own bands, he'd reunite with former comrades like Chick Corea, Sonny Rollins, and Pat Metheny, and connect with young bloods like Christian McBride, Joshua Redman, and Roy Hargrove.
Fresh Air
Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid
In the new century, Haynes assembled his so-called Fountain of Youth Band, which featured a series of up-and-coming players. That band's last release session comes from 2011, when Roy Haynes was 86, capping a 65-year recording career studded with more jazz classics than we have time to even hint at. He was a heavy hitter whose limber beat could lift a bandstand.