Jackie McLean Interview, Down Beat 9/12/63

[Mark Stryker]

Essential ...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-P1sXw3uymXUkJoNTVBM0VSS0E/view

[Michael Weiss]

"Everyone should man their stations."

Edited September 2, 2015 by Michael Weiss

[Chuck Nessa]

I loved that!

[AllenLowe]

I did get to know Jackie a little bit in the early 1990s when I worked with Walter Bishop up in Hartford. Jackie told me his biggest regret was turning Cecil Taylor away, sometime in the '50s, when Cecil came to his door and wanted to record with him. He was a personal mess at the time but he told me he should have heeded Bird's advice to listen to everybody. I kept thinking about this since by the time of this interview he was clearly following his instincts.

[clifford_thornton]

Thanks for this.

Interviewed him not too long before he passed and had a great time speaking with him. Fascinating and kind person, yet I don't think he felt like he was respected - especially by venues in NYC, where he was playing with Moncur, Hutcherson and Rene when the interview took place.

[Joe]

Thanks for this.

Interviewed him not too long before he passed and had a great time speaking with him. Fascinating and kind person, yet I don't think he felt like he was respected - especially by venues in NYC, where he was playing with Moncur, Hutcherson and Rene when the interview took place.

Does it ever sadden me to read that. Jackie was as survivor, and deserved respect based on that fact alone.

[clifford_thornton]

Yeah, when I was talking to him after a gig, he felt pretty pissed about what I'll paraphrase as a "continued sharecropper tradition" in certain better-known NYC venues. Not naming names, nor am I handling business, so I can only give the gist of what he was saying.

He remained very humble at the same time, because when I interviewed him, what came through was how lucky and proud he felt to be able to make the music he made with the people he learned from, and that he was able to transmit this experience to younger people (not that that wasn't without its challenges, too).

[JSngry]

You know, that guy saw and survived all the usual pitfalls of "the life", not just the drugs, but the emotional and financial traps. I suspect he knew how tough he was to have done so, tougher in a way that those who didn't amke it were not (no value judgement meant by that either, because, I do not know what drives people to not give in/up after others do...nature, nurture, both, who the hell can say? Not me.). Point just being that if you get through the minefield, you have have a combination of extreme relief AND a bit of "survivor's guilt" - and you also got a pretty good idea where the mines are planted, who put them there, and why.

Those are some tough shoes to be in...I know we think fo people as "survivors", but I don't know that we always give full weight to the implications of all that surviving really entails...seems to me that it's a life long condition to endure, not just a "badge of honor" one gets pinned on them. Blessed for Life, Damned For Life, all at once.

Or maybe that's just some Romantic Notion Of An Outsider, could be. But...scars they never fully heal, probably best to not expect them to, that's all.

[Homefromtheforest]

Did anyone on this board see Jackie's band with Hutcherson and Moncur in 1963?  I would have loved to have witnessed that!  Had I lived in New York I would have seen him as many times as possible..a true giant of the music.

[sidewinder]

Thanks for this.

Interviewed him not too long before he passed and had a great time speaking with him. Fascinating and kind person, yet I don't think he felt like he was respected - especially by venues in NYC, where he was playing with Moncur, Hutcherson and Rene when the interview took place.

Had a brief chat with him too (a big thing for me as he is one of my all time favourite artists) and he came across as polite and kindly too. First time I saw him was in a fairly small Western Canadian concert hall (very nice venue). He got a good round of appreciation as he came in and it was clear also by the reaction that he appreciated it, glad to say. 

His wife Dolly must have been a rock of strength.

Edited September 3, 2015 by sidewinder

[Joe]

You know, that guy saw and survived all the usual pitfalls of "the life", not just the drugs, but the emotional and financial traps. I suspect he knew how tough he was to have done so, tougher in a way that those who didn't amke it were not (no value judgement meant by that either, because, I do not know what drives people to not give in/up after others do...nature, nurture, both, who the hell can say? Not me.). Point just being that if you get through the minefield, you have have a combination of extreme relief AND a bit of "survivor's guilt" - and you also got a pretty good idea where the mines are planted, who put them there, and why.

Those are some tough shoes to be in...I know we think fo people as "survivors", but I don't know that we always give full weight to the implications of all that surviving really entails...seems to me that it's a life long condition to endure, not just a "badge of honor" one gets pinned on them. Blessed for Life, Damned For Life, all at once.

Or maybe that's just some Romantic Notion Of An Outsider, could be. But...scars they never fully heal, probably best to not expect them to, that's all.

Yea, I've little doubt that Jackie had to live with his own form of PTSD (for lack of a better descriptor) because of certain choices he made... but also the choices imposed on him by American culture. That ON MARS film reveals as much.

[JSngry]

I've got to think that those impositions were part of what drove him to not crack when so many others did...and maybe that if he were ever able to truly reconcile all of it in a way that was fully objective (neither ignoring nor denying the scars, just, accepting them for what they are and moving on), he might not have had anything left to drive him. Maybe that's where the Hartt gig was taking him, maybe that's why the loss of "fire" that some hear in his later work...but for me, I still hear it, just not as up-front. It's so integral a part of his being, he HAD to have it.

Dolly, yes, that story would probably be epic, but I keep looking at what i have to look at, and I see Jackie, always with a record deal, always with a gig, doing his damndest to be a junkie AND a family man, and...there's some strain of character there, some uber-tensility that is nothing short of death-defying, really. The few excepts we have of studio chatter show him to be an almost obsessively driven careerist, the Prestige thing where there's laughter, but with no small amount of threatening in the air, the BN bit where he's flat out cajoling PC to play it his way...this is a guy with more determination, not just ambition but determination, than most of his peers, friendly or otherwise. The way he held that Coronet gig, defended it against all "invaders", Freddie Redd might be his own worst enemy, but apparently Jackie didn't let that be a problem for anybody but Freddie, that's some hardcore business game right there. Jackie McLean was not going to have everything he wanted, but you can best be sure that what he had, he was going to keep by any means necessary. Man your stations, indeed. As serious as your life, definitely. Game on, always. Options? None, really.

To do what he did in the various conditions that he was in, all of it imposed in some form or fashion, either from without or from within...that's one tough, seriously driven motherfucker. Hell, if this was not America, he could've ended up as Donald Trump, maybe. So be glad this IS America, at least as far as that goes...but seriously, that kind of drive needs fueling, and nothing fuels better or longer than a refusal to be trumped (no pun intended) by The Man With The Upper Hand, because that shit NEVER goes away.

Jackie McLean - American Hero. One of the real ones.

[AllenLowe]

hmmmm....I think Dolly really harmed his career; Jackie could have, at that point, written his own ticket, but she was booking him and decided it was their revenge on the jazz world, and asked for absurd amounts of money, even for a guy of his stature; at one point she placed him with Max Roach's agent, who told me he dropped Jackie because of her impossible demands (Max, btw, was one of the highest-paid jazz players at this point, which was the late 1980s). At the same time she ran an arts center in Hartford that was something of a scam, just a platform for her ego and control.

I wasn't planning on talking about all this, but I hate to see the same old jazz-life cliches;  at one point Jackie offered me a job at the jazz program he was running; but the whole setup was strange and absentee and, once again, Dolly just manipulated and manipulated. I didn't want any part of it.

He was a great guy and a great saxophonist, but I think the legitimate criticisms/observations that Larry Kart made about McClean's late playing are related to his (and her) whole post-'80s sense that he had had enough of the business, and was gonna withhold as much of himself from it as he could and that, at this point, it all came down to money (quick example; at one point I had a little grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council; I wanted to interview Jackie, one hour, in his house, to a cassette tape; I had $300 to pay him; Dolly told me it wasn't enough; there's more, as well).

Edited September 3, 2015 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Well, sure. If you're a warrior by heart, what comes after survival if not revenge?

[AllenLowe]

very true; problem was that no one saw it as such, and eventually he just became something of 'was'; people, as you know, forget. And the money he (and she) was turning down was 'let's grab it while we can' cash; there was a real revival of interest in that generation - Max, Moody, etc - and Jackie missed out. I was booking a festival at the time, and i knew the fees; probably higher then than it would be today.

I couldn't even get him to play in New Haven  - 45 minutes from his house - for what would have been a high-paying, easy, home-by-11 PM gig. And he would have made about 5 grand, just himself. At least that much if not more because his side men were all his students.

Edited September 3, 2015 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Part of me sees tragedy in that, another part sees that as him winning at his own game, no matter the cost...you know how some folks are...tragedy factor inversely proportional to "true/inner intent" factor.

I've heard that Max could be pretty demanding as well, but also pragmatic after running the changes...if a guy could work with Max but not Dolly/Jackie, I'm thinking that must have been some non-stop drama. Wow.

Me, I love cats like this (and cats not like that as well)...survival on one's own terms is no easy feat, no matter how unpleasant it gets. Those people are/were tougher than I am, so...fullest props, if less than complete understanding.

[clifford_thornton]

Did anyone on this board see Jackie's band with Hutcherson and Moncur in 1963?  I would have loved to have witnessed that!  Had I lived in New York I would have seen him as many times as possible..a true giant of the music.

He didn't have his cabaret card then, if I'm not mistaken, so it may have been tough to catch him playing here at that time. He got it back a few years later.

[Homefromtheforest]

I'm sure I read that band did gig a bit around that time?

[sidewinder]

I'm sure I read that band did gig a bit around that time?

Blue Coronet in Brooklyn?

hmmmm....I think Dolly really harmed his career; Jackie could have, at that point, written his own ticket, but she was booking him and decided it was their revenge on the jazz world, and asked for absurd amounts of money, even for a guy of his stature; at one point she placed him with Max Roach's agent, who told me he dropped Jackie because of her impossible demands (Max, btw, was one of the highest-paid jazz players at this point, which was the late 1980s). At the same time she ran an arts center in Hartford that was something of a scam, just a platform for her ego and control.

I wasn't planning on talking about all this, but I hate to see the same old jazz-life cliches;  at one point Jackie offered me a job at the jazz program he was running; but the whole setup was strange and absentee and, once again, Dolly just manipulated and manipulated. I didn't want any part of it.

He was a great guy and a great saxophonist, but I think the legitimate criticisms/observations that Larry Kart made about McClean's late playing are related to his (and her) whole post-'80s sense that he had had enough of the business, and was gonna withhold as much of himself from it as he could and that, at this point, it all came down to money (quick example; at one point I had a little grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council; I wanted to interview Jackie, one hour, in his house, to a cassette tape; I had $300 to pay him; Dolly told me it wasn't enough; there's more, as well).

Very interesting indeed !

[CJ Shearn]

Very interesting reading here in the original article and what Allen said regarding the Hartt jazz program.  Seems like Jackie was protecting himself at the end, based on what happened to him previously? Just a natural human response to trauma.  In the On Mars documentary he seemed troubled by the attitude younger jazz musicians had being into the jazz rock or jazz funk end of things without knowing the history.  That hasn't changed that much over time, those kind of attitudes.

[AllenLowe]

beyond that he had the classic jazz musician's loyalty to the women who had stood by him during his messed up (read: junkie/alcoholic) days. She was the one making the decisions, and it was really, as I have seen over and over again, a guilt-induced loyalty. This doesn't mean that she didn't deserve his loyalty; only that professional considerations are different, and from what I have seen, no spouse should be booking another spouse.

Edited September 4, 2015 by AllenLowe

[Joe]

Additional discussion of the Blue Coronet, Bed-Stuy "back in the day," audiences, Jackie's experiences there, etc. in A. B. Spellman's 4 JAZZ LIVES / 4 LIVES IN THE BEBOP BUSINESS. Specifically, in the Cecil Taylor -- another, and rather different survivor -- chapter of said book. https://goo.gl/dV55rn

 

[Homefromtheforest]

I'll have to blow the dust off my copy; have not read that in almost 20 years

Edited September 4, 2015 by Homefromtheforest
Spelling

[sidewinder]

I'll have to blow the dust off my copy; have not read that in almost 20 years

Same here. My old UK hardback has cover art by Ian Dury !

[AllenLowe]

that's a good book.