The Andrew Hill Appreciation Society

[Cliff Englewood]

1 Not Sa No Sa Hill 9:41

2 Flying in the Sky Hill 6:08

3 Ghetto Echoes Hill 11:49

4 Yesterday Tomorrow Hill 15:50

5 Hermano Frere Hill 4:52

6 Do To Hill 2:15

7 When Peace Comes Hill 9:25

8 11/8 Hill 9:06

9 When the World Stays Still, Pt. 2 Hill 4:48

The interview below is copied verbatim from the liner notes of “The Day The World Stood Still”, which I believe is Hill’s most recent work to date. While I think it’s a good album, even very good in places, I think it has the same problems that some of his large group work seems suffers from, not enough rehearsal time or players not up to/familiar with, the material. I don’t want to sound too harsh about it, because if you’re a Hill fan, it’s definitely worth checking out. Anyway, I think the interview is very interesting, whether you like Hill’s music or not.

Excerpts from an interview in the Danish magazine, JAZZ SPECIAL, April 2003 by Soren Friis. Translation by Paul Banks

“If I could write it in words perhaps I couldn’t hear, compose and play the music contained in this recording. Andrew Hill.”

Andrew Hill, pianist, composer and bandleader, born 1937 in Chicago. He played side by side with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons and many others while still a teenager. Toured with Dinah Washington in 1961, and accompanied vocalists Al Hibbler and Johnny Hartman in New York. 1962-63 in L.A. with Roland Kirk and others, returning to New York in 1963, playing with Joe Henderson and recording in his own name. This was also the year of his Blue Note debut, and the beginning of a six-year period in which he recorded a series of noted LPs in collaboration with name acts of the day. From the late 60s he was once again active in California, now primarily as an instructor in schools and colleges, leading a life away from the spotlight and only occasionally performing and recording. Recent years have found him in New York, once again recording and performing in clubs and concert venues with small and large units.

Three Hard-Boiled Eggs.

We are in Berlin, November 2002. Andrew Hill is scheduled to perform at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele with his group. His hotel is but a moment away from the concert hall. The small room is filed with two radio reporters, three newspaper and magazine reporters, one photographer – and the pianist, composer, bandleader and JAZZPAR award-winner Andrew Hill. The bassist is here too – to borrow some matches.

Smoke, a chair for the main character, a bed for the Danish delegation, the photographer is on the wall some where. Tape recorders, wire and microphones, an out-of-order telephone, a red uniformed bell-boy attempting to repair it, an open suitcase, calls from Italy, laughter and the simultaneous associations to the Marx Brothers and the three hard-boiled eggs in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.

A communicative Andrew Hill talking, smiling, stammering, laughing, focusing on detail. Occasionally, he is hard to follow with his interposed and connected sentences, and jumping digressions. But his speech is permeated with a burning desire to communicate and explain, to help us understand an overall picture.

“I’m getting old. I can’t relax. I haven’t slept. All this fuss, the flight and the jetlag. Every time I fall asleep, somebody calls for an interview or any number of other things.

When I got the news that I had received the JAZZPAR prize, I reacted like – that ain’t nothing. But then I started thinking. This is big. This is what I’ve always wanted. I’m honoured.

I’d be a liar, if I said I had written something for the JAZZPAR concerts already. I never get down to writing anything important before I’m pressured.

I don’t think about recognition as coming late in my career. I don’t see events as coming early or late. If you start looking over your shoulder to see what other people have, or what they’ve been given, well, then you can’t appreciate what you have yourself. Recognition to me is a continuation, an opportunity to play with some of the most talented young musicians. Don’t forget that Duke Ellington didn’t have the opportunity to perform in concert halls in America until he was 60! Well, I’m honoured that people appreciate my work.

When I was a young musician, just arrived in New York, there were a lot of unknown but great musicians: Elmo Hope, Walter Davis, Walter Bishop… I could go on naming musicians, who have followed their mantra through the years, who became old hats and part of the scene. In my case, it was easier just to disappear. I wasn’t in it for the money. I didn’t have to make my name in Europe, because my foundation was the people of America. I’m visible in America, maybe playing in a concert hall or a club somewhere. For me, America has always been what Europe has been for many American jazz musicians. Audiences come and go. At one time you’re hot, and the next moment, close to forgotten. Last time, I was away because my deceased wife was sick, and my responsibilities toward her were greater than my obligations toward the music. I left the business and with the support of the people survived and prospered.

I come from Chicago’s south side. Socialization was important and necessary. I was talented but crazy, semi-autistic and eccentric. The University of the Street was important. I t gave me the opportunity to play with the greats: Charlie Parker, Illinois Jacquet when I was only 16. That’s the way things were where I grew up. That was back when Jazz was a popular music, before it became an art form. There were jam sessions and I was standing outside the club owned by the Chess brothers the pianist was late and King Kolax, Oscar Pettiford saw me standing outside listening, they needed a pianist so they invited me inside to play the piano. We played Idaho, when we got to the bridge they kept yelling A flat, the key the bridge modulated to. They were nice.

Experiences like the one with Idaho belong to the University of the Street, and that’s what makes it legitimate and valuable. That’s where you pick up a different kind of knowledge. You pick up knowledge from other musicians – from mouth to mouth.

I played in Chicago this year, and it was different from then. Everything changed. Chicago was segregated back then, but New York wasn’t as segregated.

Drummers like Kenny Clarke, Max Roach and a lot of others got their style from a phenomenon named Ike Day. The first time I met him, he was dying of pneumonia, but he was still playing. He faded slowly, but he was brilliant. I have never forgotten what he had that no one else had. He influenced me very much when I was young.

Before Monk became popular in Europe, he was respected in black society. Sure, he was modern, but he had a church background. That’s not where I was. Parker was important, and it was with him that I first discovered that it is not enough to play melody, but that rhythm is also important and that melody is rhythm.

And I like Barry Harris and Tommy Flanagan. When I was playing with Parker at the Greystone Ballroom in Detroit, I looked at them as old pianists for they were a few years older than me even though all of us were young. They were very generous… but Parker wanted me because I didn’t play excerpts from transcribed solos.

Before the piano I played accordion and tap-danced on the street, so I was an organic part of the music scene from the very beginning. I’ve always been surrounded by music – all through my life, music is the world around me and that has kept me going.

I was standing on 47th Street – in the cultural area, in what was called Bronxville. The Regal Theatre was across the street, and there was the Savoy Ballroom and right next door the Hurricane Lounge, and there was all the traffic, and I would hang out on the corner, and I performed. And by doing this, and being in an integrated area before integration was really permitted in the USA, where people came to listen to these great Black artists, well, that’s where I met the composer, Carl Hindemith. We talked, and I had always intended to compose. A friendship grew. I had no idea who Hindemith was, I didn’t know who anybody was; least of all my self. Albert Ammons the famed boogie-woogie pianist played at the Hurricane lounge located near the corner of south east 47th and Southpark (now Martin King Parkway), boogie-woogie caught my attention because it’s based on rhythm not harmony. I could use that on my accordion.

When I was ten I met Earl Hines. There was a place he played called the New Grand Terrace; it was on my paper route, and he lived nearby in a hotel. It was six in the morning, before school. I banged the paper on his door a little hard, hoping he’d notice me. He said, “Do you have any idea what time it is?” He was nice. And he had a piano I asked him if I could play. He liked me because I could play whatever I heard, including what he played. This kind of thing was more important to me than playing baseball with other kids.

Jazz is part of a tradition from before the word ‘jazz’ was invented; there was ragtime and other music building on harmony, and Afro-centric in that melody and harmony were an appendix to the rhythm. To keep the structure. It’s important to check out the rhythm first. Do you understand it, or does it need more of an explanation? The rhythm was dominant, but to be what we call jazz, music must consist of certain elements of structure and form. In the Western world, melody is most important with rhythm and harmony as accompaniment. Always check out the rhythm, if it’s static it means the music is dead.

If you use and academic approach, you can learn the melodies, but hey will lack rhythmic interaction.

I don’t know if that encounter was pure luck, but I let myself drift with the current of music; that’s how it was from the very beginning, the necessary thing were given to me at the right time. I didn’t realize just how generous these people had been until I grew up and became a man.

But you can’t make comparisons between me and classical music – no! When I hear some of the promoted young musicians, I hear one that sounds like Robert Schumann, one sounds like Chopin – and that’s what I call cross-over, because they don’t come from Monk and James P. Johnson.

That’s where I come from. I get ideas from everywhere – but I’m part of a story, a current, and that’s why I could work with string quartets and large orchestra when I taught at the university in New York. I was a kind of artist-in-residence and composer. When I recorded, I knew what I was doing. I was expanding on what I had learned from Hindemith as far as form is concerned. I was able to analyze myself and the musicians around me.

My music used choir at a very early stage. I played with many singers in Chicago – Dinah Washington, Johnny Hartman – so I knew what the voice could do. At that time in New York, we celebrated our black origins in many black shows, using trained voices that could do just about anything.

Yeah, we must remember that music developed from the voice. So I was interested in that, but not from a classical choir point of view. For me voices are like hearing rhythms.

When the music scene shifted from the 1950s to the 60s, the industry was not yet centralized. Later when it began concentrating on a few artists who could be marketed, things began changing: The corporation culture. Think of someone like John Coltrane. He was a great artist, but there are many other great artists from that period that people didn’t notice. They just didn’t hear them. In Chicago, we had the opportunity to play with many of the great musicians playing in many different styles. You could take your pick. It wasn’t like you were avant-garde, mainstream or whatever. In Chicago, musicians had the freedom to be flexible and not sound like anybody else. It’s been that way ever since jazz moved from New Orleans to Chicago. The only law in Chicago was that you built on tradition. It was different from New York where there was one great innovator and a whole line of imitators. In Chicago they expected you to be good at everything. That was the challenge and an encyclopaedia of knowledge. Somehow this knowledge was lost when the corporations took over the music business, when music became more business-minded. By corporations, I mean the record industry.

When I arrived in New York, it was like arriving right after a party. There were still remnants from when jazz was really popular, when everybody listened to music in their own neighbourhood, and the big orchestras played the Black theatres. The party was over, but you could still pick up some of the pieces.

I made eight records for Blue Note. They were really nice at Blue Note. They sold a particular style, and what I played fit into the ramifications. Basically, I could do what I wanted. Point Of Departure is still close to my heart. Eric (Dolphy) was playing at the Five Spot. I wanted to talk music with him, and we played a little – and then I suggested him to the people at Blue Note. They bought it. At first, Charles Lloyd was supposed to play tenor, but due to reasons the no one could control, except Charles himself, he couldn’t make it. So Joe Henderson wound up on tenor, and Kenny Dorham - who could fit in anywhere - on trumpet. Tony Williams had come to town and everybody was talking about him. And to be perfectly honest – I got more than I dared hope for, and suddenly it all fell in place - we rehearsed twice and recorded. I’m pleased that record has become so famous - but many of us were at that level at the time. Point Of Departure was not an isolated case.

I signal with cards when I work with a big band. The hardest time of my life was when I played in a big band myself. You play the same thing evening after evening after evening. Repetition annoys the hell out of me, so the consequence was a band where the sections can improvise, where the music can be moved around and whole sections can solo, and signal are made with numbers and cue cards. Following my instincts, I can communicate with the musicians, showing them where to go. That way we can work together. When the music is written in numbers, you can refer to specific passages and I can improvise with the orchestra. It’s one way of doing it. Do you understand?

I’m not a dominant bandleader. I am looking for freshness in the orchestra, which means there must be space for the musicians. The focus is not on me, it’s on the orchestra.

Often we don’t know what we’re going to play when we go on stage. Like all other artists, I want an audience. You know, the audience is the people – and musicians, if they’re honest and earnest, play for themselves …uhh… and jazz musicians in general are supported by the people, and you play the music for the people, which means that although they may not be musically educated and don’t know what one thing or the other is, they can still hear the music. The more you listen the more you understand. That’s how the music was created, you know. It was a terrible time, but the music had a spiritual power. A musician, who just stays at home and practices and then records an album, is dead, because jazz has always been spontaneous music. Playing for people, cultivating spontaneity is what it’s all about. Not documenting what you did, and repeating it. In so-called classical music, they no longer follow a form. Music has always been imagination from the heart; it’s just that you classify different styles.

People who are untrained at listening to music often catch modern music better than trained and educated listeners. When I received this Smithsonian Award in the 1970s, one of my assets was that I could manoeuvre in a landscape where they had never heard jazz. Suddenly I was playing for people who weren’t into jazz. They just enjoyed it as music.

I observe life and respect the fact that I live by the grace of other people. They have kept me alive. Without them, I would never have had the opportunity to participate, I wouldn’t have been here. It’s not a question of getting by here and now, but of continuing to live with a responsibility for the invisible spirit. That’s what has kept my creativity alive. I am still alive and significant. The musicians I play with are also important. When I choose musicians for my groups, I look for people with a love for and a creative approach to the music. Technique is not enough. In the old days you developed skills to play the concept. When I choose someone for my group I look for openness, knowledge of the music and a love for music. Maybe he has the technique, but doesn’t have the concept.

I work with a quartet now. That’s where my heart is right now – my success-quartet. I guess it’s the group I’ve been looking for ever since I returned to the scene, and had the opportunity to play with all the reflective, open young and older musicians. But this quartet has what I want, and everyone plays extremely well and can play in more than one way. But I have worked with the big band too.

I don’t know what the future will bring, but I’m happy to be here right now. I feel good with the music. I play or compose most of the time – I’ve tried other things, but through the decades, I’ve learned that this is what I enjoy – practicing and writing.”