Funding for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. JACKIE MCLEAN NEA Jazz Master (2001) Interviewee: Jackie McLean (May 17, 1931 – March 31, 2006) Interviewer: William Brower with recording engineer Sven Abow Date: July 20-21, 2001 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History. Smithsonian Institution Description: Transcript, 131 pp. Brower: My name is William Brower. I’m sitting with Jackie McLean at the Artists Collective in Hartford, Connecticut, on Friday, July the 20th, 2001. We’re conducting an oral history interview for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Project. The first thing I’d like to do is thank Mr. McLean for agreeing to participate in this oral history. McLean: Oh, it’s my pleasure. It’s very important. Brower: I want to start with what we were talking about before we actually started the formal interview and ask you to tell us about your recent trip to Europe, where you played, with whom you were playing, and then talk about how you’re handling your performance – the performance dimension of your life – right now. McLean: This most recent trip that I made – I made two trips to play with Mal Waldron. The first one was in Verona, Italy, a couple of weeks ago. That was a duo where Mal and I played for about 70 minutes solo, between he and I, duo. Then I went just last week over to the North Sea Festival in the Hague to play with Mal again, this time with his trio, with Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, Mal, and I was special guest. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] Page | 1 But generally I’ve been playing with a select – I play with my son, René, and my rhythm section that I usually keep, which has Eric McPherson, Alan Palmer, and Phil Bowler, René and myself. That’s one group that I’m playing with. I play with Cedar [Walton] – of course we lost Billy [Higgins] – with Cedar and David Williams. I also have been going out with the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni Band, which gives me a chance to visit that old original music that came out in the ’40s. Brower: Who’s in that group? Who’s in the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni Band? McLean: Slide Hampton, Jon Faddis, James Moody, myself on the front line. The rhythm section swings between Cyrus Chestnut or Mulgrew Miller, and John Lee on bass. Drummers have been interchangeable. Brower: Interesting. Each of those – each of the groups you’re mentioning provokes different questions starting with the Alumni group. I can imagine that a Mulgrew Miller would probably be right in the pocket with the players that would have been more contemporaries in the front line. But how about a Cyrus Chestnut? Does he have that vocabulary the same way a Mulgrew or a Kenny Drew might have? McLean: Yeah, he’s got it covered. He plays very well. I was really impressed with his performances when he worked with the Alumni Band. Yeah, he had that in his pocket. And Mulgrew naturally does as well. But most piano players that are really great piano players have had to really study that music and really know it. We’re talking about pieces like Ko-Ko and A Night in Tunisia and Con Alma, all of Dizzy’s stuff and Bird’s [Charlie Parker’s] stuff, [Thelonious] Monk’s stuff. Most of the musicians that are really great pianists, they have covered that. They know it. So they come, and they add a lot of their own things, plus the traditional stuff, to the music. It makes it wonderful. Brower: It’s a Dizzy Gillespie tribute ensemble. Most of the literature, and most of what I’ve heard to be associated with you, it’s the relationship between you and Bird. Can you talk about your relationship with Dizzy, how you met him, what influences he may have had, any stories you might recount about interactions with Dizzy? McLean: I first used to see Dizzy when I used to go down to see on 52nd Street and just run along the street and see who I can look in the window and see on the stage. Then I first saw Dizzy at the McKinley Theater in the Bronx with his big band. Bird was in that band as well. Then I eventually met Dizzy when I was about 16 or about 17 years old and sat in some place in the Bronx. But I just never had a chance to – I went with Miles’s band, and so I was with Miles [Davis] off and on for a number of years, and then after that had my own groups. I never got back to really having – Dizzy never called on me. Put it like that. He was never calling on me to play these gigs with him. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] Page | 2 After a while, when I got really – 20 years went by. 25 years went by. I eventually went to Dizzy and said, “Hey, man, I’m out here. How come you’re not calling me, man? Every time you call the same cats. You either call Phil Woods or James Moody. Both of them are great, and you should, and I have nothing to say about that, other than, what about giving me a little bit? Let me wet my beak.” So the first time he called me, he called me and Sonny Stitt, ironically, to come down to Wolf Trap and play with him. That was the first time he had called on me to come and be on the front line with him. Then after that, different times he would call me. I went to do a thing with him in Paris, and thank God I recorded with him, just before he passed, at the Blue Note one night. That was very important to me, to be able to play with Dizzy in that context. It was two altos and trumpet on the front line, Paquito D’Rivera and myself and Dizzy. A great rhythm section. So that was a very important recording, as well as when I got Dexter [Gordon] to record with me in Copenhagen. That was a very important recording for me. Brower: I’d like to – because I think there are a few, like the one you did with Ornette [Coleman], and probably the one you did, a couple of those, as we move through the chronology. But that’s interesting. I think more than many musicians have been able to, you’ve been able to realize some of those, maybe goals you have. But I’m interested to know. In the ’40s, I understand you went with Miles and so forth. But were you ever in an informal relationship with Dizzy, where he shared things with you or you got a chance to be around him? Or was it just not that available to you? McLean: No. We gave him an honorary doctorate at the Hartt School, the University of Hartford. I was with him that whole day. That was a great afternoon that I spent with him. And one time in Austria, I went up to his room. We were both on this same show. I was with a different – with my band. I went up to his room with him. He was very upset over something that had happened. I don’t want to mention it in the Smithsonian interview. But it was about another musician that wanted Dizzy to be in his video. Dizzy was saying, “Ain’t this something, man? This guy wants me – they want me to be in this man’s video. What about mine? What about doing some things with me?” He sat there, and then he was talking about – he said, “You know, we as musicians, man, we have our wives back at home. It’s really a drag to be out and away from somebody you care so much for.” He said, “We really are not” – he says, “It’s rotten. We live a rotten life,” and he started crying. It choked me up, got me choked up in the room with him. That was a close moment I had with him, a sensitive moment. I asked Dizzy, can I have a copy of that letter that he didn’t like? He said yeah. I went down and made a copy of it and put it in my stuff, because I’m a big fan of all those guys. I’ve always admired and ran around behind certain musicians that I loved and wanted to be around. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] Page | 3 But I think perhaps, when you talk about the ’40s, my mind goes to Bud before anybody, Bud Powell, because it was Bud that I met when I was about 15½. It was that next two-, three-year period that I was around Bud a lot that I really absorbed a lot of understanding about the music, just being in his presence. Brower: I’m going to come back to Bud Powell too. But just to stay on this . McLean: With Dizzy. Brower: . the groups that you’re playing with, for the moment: what are the differences that you experience between playing with a Cedar Walton-driven trio and a Mal Waldron-driven trio, a Billy Higgins and an Andrew Cyrille, David Williams .