Perspectives: Curtis Fuller

A youthful David talks to legendary trombonist Curtis Fuller, a sideman of Art Blakey, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and a strong leader in his own right.

David: Can you tell me about some of the drummers you enjoyed playing with in the fifties and sixties, and what you looked for when hiring as a leader?

Curtis: Well, we were spoiled around Detroit. We had, of course you know we had, Elvin Jones, but mostly I played with Louis Hayes and younger guys my age – he's younger than I am by about four years.  Frank Gant was working around Detroit. There's a guy who didn't go New York from Detroit, Hindal Butts, he was good. He played with Kenny Burrell. There was a lot of very good drummers but some of them never got to New York. What I look for in a drummer like that – as a matter of fact, most of my early recordings I had Louis Hayes on them, guys I knew, you know. Jimmy Cobb, I knew him, he's on a lot, and of course my favourite drummer, Art Blakey. Art Blakey would spoil you; he was swinging. Swinging, swinging

David: How did you meet Art Blakey?

Curtis: Well he came through and when he heard me play he always mentioned than he had in mind of augmenting the front line, and it was his dream to have what he called a 'little big band'. He didn't want a septet or octet or anything; he just wanted one instrument from every section: trumpet, trombone, tenor, which was a consummate band. You can do things with a sextet that you can do with a orchestra, practically. Even when you play with a orchestra, what you're doing is you're doubling notes, you know. Your doing five notes or something, six notes, of the chord. And when you get the three prime notes it would be three horns, piano has this voicing, and the bass too. You practically have a big band.

David: So you were the first musician to make the Jazz Messengers a sextet?

Curtis: Well he had tried two saxophones [with trumpet] for a week or something like that but he wasn't into that. I think he had at one time Jackie McLean and Johnny Griffin or something. But mostly his [band] was quintet. He didn't like a quartet; he wanted to have a supporting horn [section] and that was the sound he liked, and what he wanted us to do was write arrangements, 'cause with a sextet we could play, one guy could solo, or two guys could play harmonic structures or backgrounds.

David: What was it like recording with Blakey?

Curtis: That was really my work-shop time because Art encouraged us to write and arrange. The most stuff I wrote . . . included him. When I did 'The Egyptian' it was to feature the drums, and when I did 'Time Off' we did it because it would be a good, hard, strong melody but would finish with a very conclusive [sings closing phrase of melody]. We needed some songs like that. And then when I did 'Buhaina's Delight' he liked all of the fusion and stuff. Mostly everything I did was for him, to have him highlight as some point. The guys got a chance write in different keys – he liked what I did in 'Three Blind Mice', my arrangement. I had gone to South America with the State Department and I heard the bossa nova first and I told him about it, you know, the beat. I was trying to show him the beat and then Freddie [Hubbard] heard a song by Clare Fischer ['Pensativa'] and he liked that.

David: When you were rehearsing for a date, did you rehearse with Blakey?

Curtis: No, Art never rehearsed. You tell him how it goes. Like Stan Getz: you tell him how it goes and he plays it. Same with Buddy Rich. All those giants, they don't read anyways. In fact, how well would you write for them?  . . . They're not looking at any music.

David: How do you come to hire Art Taylor for the 'The Opener'?

Curtis: Well I was friends with him and he would always be on the set. There was certain musicians who would always be on the music scene. Like there was sort of the 'in' crowd, the 'in' guys, the guys that were with Miles. You would hang with him [Miles], whether you were in his band or not. We were the young turks coming up and Miles would be the godfather, and we'd all be his little sheeps running around, Trane and a bunch of us. And Miles brought me to New York, and when I first saw Art Taylor I liked him, you know, just his drive and his concentration on what was going on. And I liked that, 'cause he had insight and it wasn't always about keeping time. He had a creative edge, so when he played drums it wasn't all about just keeping the time. Otherwise I can just turn on the metronome and make a record date, with a great electric metronome: 'Tick, tock. Tick, tock.', use the thing the guys use in the hotels. Art Taylor was good. He didn't often use the solo thing. He wasn't a soloist; not to me. I was never crazy about his soloing, even though he did solo. I got him 'cause he could follow. You always get a drummer that can follow, even if they have limited musical knowledge, like not read and stuff. But they can follow the song; the know the form; the learn the form; they listen to the melody; they listen to what you've done; they listen to the voicings that are accenting me; they go with that. He had that innate ability to deal with that and I liked that about him.

David: What about your work with 'Philly' Joe Jones?

Curtis: Oh, 'Philly' Joe; he's another. Philly was more a dictatorial guy. When he wanted to double the beat he'd go into it. Art [Taylor] would wait 'til your momentum carried you there, and then he'd go there. If you played a passage more than four bars, then he'd know that you were into double the time sequence mode, and he would go there and make it stronger and stronger [sings a melody in double time]. But 'Philly' Joe would start it and dictate it even when you're playing [sings a melody in single time]. So that's dictating to the soloist. I don't particularly care for that kind of thing. I like to be the one – it's my solo let me decide when I wanna do that.

David: Is it true that it was you who came up with the title for [John Coltrane's] 'Moments Notice'?

Curtis: Yea it was; I was teasing John. I don't know, maybe he had the name in the back of his mind. How will we ever know? But I was teasing him, because I was with him all the time, during that period. Then as he got more popular and beginning to travel abroad I, like everybody else, like his wife, didn't see him 'til he came home. I was teasing him about, I called it, 'harder music', because, what it was, it was nothing for a soloist, you know. By being with him every day and he never mentioned, 'I got this new music, man. I wanted you to take a look at it.' He said never a word to the record date, and you go in there: 'What! What is this?' And it's two beat changes, you know. You got all these arpeggios; I had no other way to play it than just to spell it, you know. 'Cause it's unusual to see something like that. If somebody has something based on '[I Got] Rhythm' or a melody against something, you have something to hold onto rather than just reading the linear lines in the arpeggio, you know. You see a E9 with a flat 5 and sharp 11, you know. The next two beats you gotta change and play something else. What are you gonna play? You gotta pick the note and if there's no common note between the next chord, you just have to spell it. That's the only way I can do it. I don't know the scale that goes to both of them. He knew the right scale; he wrote it. He practiced it and practiced it until he developed it, you know. 

David: Do you still play your old compositions, like the ones on your Savoy recordings?

Curtis: I do more know now. I have a sextet that I'm beginning to travel with. Just a few months ago I was in Europe with the sextet, with Javon Jackon and the guys. When I work in the states Wallace Rooney plays with me, when he's not working. So I take a job when he can be there.  But everybody else, Benny Golson played his music, Miles played his music, you know. He never bothered to play Duke Ellington's music and nobody else's. You wanna play your own stuff. So I've waited 'til I'm seventy years old before I've started playing my own music, you know. I wrote a lot of songs.

David: Do you still compose?

Curtis: Yea, once in a while. Not as much; I'm not a prolific as I once was. I know Wayne [Shorter] used to write a song every other day but I don't think he does that now. It does slow down, even Duke Ellington. It slows down. A meaningful song – I write little sketched out things and it's not really what I want. But I keep putting my thoughts down, like a book writer. You put your little thoughts down and when they accumulate I got a song or something. But I'm selfish now; I don't want to just write something to rush and put something to go to print so I can make a record date. I don't just do it for that anymore. Now I sit down and just construct a song and work on that song until I put in the fine points that I really want. So I've changed; I'm matured.

For more information on Curtis visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Fuller.