Funding for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. CURTIS FULLER NEA JAZZ MASTER (2007) Interviewee: Curtis Fuller (December 15, 1934 - ) Interviewer: Bill Brower with recording engineer Kennith Kimery Date: September 25-26, 2010 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History Description: Transcript, 89 pp. Curtis Fuller: We might miss a date or two. Brower: From what we’ve already shared off the cuff, I should have just pushed the button and sit back. Curtis Fuller: Let me run my mouth. I like to kick things into perspective. Brower: Okay, it is Saturday, the 25th of September 2010. My name is William A Brower. I’m sitting with Curtis DuBois Fuller conducting an oral history for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program. I’d just like to go back, just for the sake of chronology, let’s start at the beginning. Actually, we were talking about Billie Holliday and what impact she had on you. I’d like you to start with that and maybe go back and give us the contact of why she was so important to you. That will lead us to something about your early life. Curtis Fuller: Okay, I’ll try to shape it this way: Yusef Lateef, I was in New York with him doing early sessions with the Detroit group that he had. I was a part of that. I remember we were recording in “The Center” and “Up Jumped Spring.” I forget the other two, but we did three in one week. Dizzy Gillespie had arranged that. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] Page | 1 Brower: This was Savoy? Fuller: Yeah, Mercury or whatever. I shared the suite with Yusef. He had to go back to Detroit. I had asked for permission, since Miles Davis had asked me. I was going out to the clubs at night playing, and wanting to see in New York, ‘Trane and Miles and this and that and everything. I went in and ‘Trane told Miles, “This is the sub, the kid that I was telling you about.” So, that was in the works from there. I went back to the hotel and I told—this all leads to Billie Holliday—I said, “Yusef, I’d like to take leave from the band.” We had been together a long time. I remember recalling this, “I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to drop out of University.” I said, “I’d like to stay and see this through because this is what I ultimately want to do and the chance to do it is open. This is what I want to do.” It so happens that Miles had to wait until the engagements, it was just a couple of weeks off, I didn’t really have the finances to stay in the hotel. I was already staying with Yusef. But, why I was in the hotel, little did I know, two floors below me was Lester Young. He had sent word, since he heard that there was a new flash in the pants, there was a young girl from New York— from Detroit trying to play a thousand notes a solo. He said, “Tell him to come by, I think I’m going to use him. I got another night. I think I’m going to use him at Birdland in two weeks. Have him come by to rehearse. I’ll get the door open over there and we will see how it feels.” So, I went there and Lester wasn’t there. I got the word. Billie wasn’t over there so I went over Lamplight, the bar next door. Billie Holliday was sitting there. I didn’t know, but I knew it was her. You know what I mean? I heard the records. Them guys were sitting there at the bar talking back and forth, “It’s Holliday!” So, I said, “I don’t know if I’m in the right place. Maybe I got the wrong information. Lester Young wanted me to come over here and rehearse with the band. We got an engagement here, you know? I could sure use it. It’s either that…that would help me stay here since Miles is not able to help me come in.” I said, “I’m so surprised. Lester Young wanted me out here.” She said, “Just cause its this way, kid, if he sent for you and asked you to come over he must have wanted you. Put that frustration aside.” She said, “I talked to him earlier. He’ll be here in a minute.” Sure enough, I sat there talking to her, she said, “How long have you been here.” You know, regular stuff. The more I talk to her, you know, I was a little fearful because you know; you don’t know what’s on the other side of the door. You know what you’ve heard.” People said this and that, slam her, say she’s trouble, couldn’t work in Birdland, and couldn’t do this. I’m trying to be careful. You know, I’m a youngster now. I know the history of her that I heard, a lot of negative stuff. Some of it was guarded, even though it’s the great Billie Holliday. I know I’m out of place and I have to watch myself. I had no other angels hanging around me or anything. But she, she was what I would want a mother to be. She had begun nurturing me from the first vide, and I didn’t get it. She knew that. When she compromised the whole For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] Page | 2 situation by letting me know that he was there for me, just in bursts. “If that doesn’t work, play this one. No you come down,” and so and so. This little Billie Holliday came down to the club and rehearsed with Lester. She gave you charts, [I] got a title the first day. He called me Ivy Divy, because we were wearing the Bostonian suits at the time. They had ten buttons, which was the style at that time. He said, “Oh, Ivy Divy!” That was my introduction to Lester Young. Then he said something that I had no idea what he was talking about, “Deuce Yusef the ding dong.” You know? I know that “deuce” meant two, but I didn’t catch the phrase. It was jive talk. I’m from white water Detroit; I didn’t know about that. So I knew “Yusef” was a saint. He was a Muslim brother. [There was] a carpet in the rehearsal room, in the dressing room, you know? The band would go to Bell Owl in Detroit at night after the gig. He’d practice outdoors at two or three in the morning. He liked the earth’s sound. Flute, oud, obo, everything. Yusef was very spiritual in many ways, and that rubs off on you. I got all these conflicting things going. I want to do the things he’s told me to do, and guided me. Now, I’m being exposed to another side of everything, another dimension for instance. I had probably only dealt with one or two. I didn’t know that the third was already day. I was there to find out which door to go in. All these things happened simultaneously. Put me on the old road to mystery, you know? I learned later from reading Khalil Gibran, you know? When you take of life, you take what comes what with the light. You don’t know darkness until you’ve seen the day. You don’t know darkness until you’ve seen the day. You don’t know hate until you’ve loved. You don’t know what love is until you’ve hated. One comes with the other. That was my introduction to all of that. Billie sort of guided me to that in verse. “This is what’s going on now, this is what’s going to be happening later. You should be conducting yourself like this so you can get over here.” Number one, I went up there and to prove myself, one thousand notes. No, that’s not the way you want to present yourself. You can do that good, but you don’t want to expose everything you can do. “Can you play a ballad?” “Yes ma’am.” “Do you know the words to the ballad that you’re playing?” “No, ma’am.” “How can you play the ballad if you don’t know the words?” You see, that’s an exposure. Just like now, I got to start looking at this stuff another way, the correct way. Brower: More full. Curtis Fuller: More full, full picture. It’s like a chessboard. You look at the game and see all the rooks and all of the other people. “Explain that to me.” “Now, those pawns are people. They are people who live outside the castle, the y guard the castle. The rooks are over here, and the bishops are over here. Each one of these persons has a function. Each one moves a different way. I learned this. This is not checkers; this is my game. You’re not here to collect pieces, they’re not ornaments. You must have a strategy when you play and everything.” I had never approached nothing like that For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] Page | 3 before.