The finest in jazz since 1939 ! This slogan is a trademark. In celebration of the 75th anniversary of Blue Note Records, YellowKorner pays tribute to Francis Wolff, the co-founder with Alfred Lion and in-house photographer of the prestigious record label, by publishing an amazing photo book and presenting a series of exclusive images seen through the lens of this master of jazz photography. From 1941-1965 Francis Wolff took thousands of photographs during the rehearsals and recording sessions that participate Blue Note Records legend.

Numerous portraits of legendary musicians as Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Clifford Brown, Ornette Coleman, Wayne Shorter and many more, during record sessions, but also many pictures of these jazzmen in the city. All of them contributed in no small part to the success of the New York label. Mostly reproduced on the covers of the Blue Note discs, these powerful black and white shots gave a strong visual identity to the label, in connection with the unique designer Reid Miles. A myth was born.

YellowKorner further supports the importance of this anniversary by publishing 1939 copies of a hitherto unpublished work, written by Michael Cuscuna and telling the story of the creation and the dynamism of this historic label. Individually numbered and signed by Wayne Shorter, this superb collector’s item includes a collection of 150 exceptional Blue Note photographs taken during recording sessions.

http://www.yellowkorner.com/books/1652/blue-note.aspx

 
 

Since the late 60’s, the native from Connecticut has played an important role in jazz history. After hosting a radio jazz show and writing for ‘Down Beat’ and other music magazines, he started working for record companies : Atlantic, Motown, ABC, Freedom and finally… Blue Note. Since 1984, Michael Cuscuna has been a special consultant, producer and the reissue director of the mythical label… During the same period, he also managed Mosaic Records, the indie company well known for its reissue boxsets of jazz legends.

 
 

Before directing Blue Note, you worked for various labels such as ESP, Muse, or ABC … Is Blue Note the label you dreamed of working for?
There were two labels that I dreamed about working for – Atlantic and Blue Note. I was a staff producer for Atlantic in 1972-74. I was friendly with a lot of jazz musicians and many of them told me about great Blue Note sessions that they played on that had never been released. I started to keep a notebook with all of their memories and tried to contact Blue Note to get into the vaults to see what might be worth releasing. But George Butler was running Blue Note and his interest was not in jazz. The label had changed and was nothing like the old Blue Note. Finally in 1976 I met Charles Lourie who had just joined Blue Note and he was a great jazz fan. He got me into the vaults and I have been working with this material ever since.

What lays behind the identity of Blue Note? What makes the difference, gives it a different edge compared to other Jazz labels? The Pop dimension?
What gave Blue Note the creative edge and made it better and different than most labels is that Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff were interested in keeping jazz pure, BUT ALSO in helping to create a situation in which to make great jazz, they befriended artists, they had planning meetings and rehearsals and tried to encourage musicians to compose and make new music that they would be proud of. The difference was in the care and hard work they put into everything.

Do you think the history of Blue Note can be split in several periods? If so what are they and why?
The different periods of Blue Note are basically defined by the style of music they recorded at the time. The first period is 1939-46 when they recorded boogie woogie, New Orleans jazz and small group swing. The second period is 1947-54 when they discovered modern jazz and made great first sessions by Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, James Moody, Kenny Drew, Wynton Kelly, Lou Donaldson and Horace Silver. 1954-67 is the period when Blue Note discovered its identity through sound (Rudy Van Gelder), design (Reid Miles), photography (Francis Wolff), production (Alfred Lion) and the style of the music (Horace Silver, Art Blakey with the birth of the Jazz Messengers). In this third period, the music grew and changed but it was basically the same creative team and the growing group of great musicians who recorded with the label, moving from soul jazz to hard bop to modal to avant-garde. Alfred Lion left in 1967 and Francis Wolff and Duke Pearson tried to keep the identity of Blue Note going until Frank’s death in 1971. The fourth period is the 70’s when George Butler ran the label. Some older artists like Horace Silver, Bobby Hutcherson and Elvin Jones stayed for a while, but the label’s sound was mainly controlled by the Mizell Brothers and Larry Rosen & Dave Grusin who were turning out successful, commercial albums by Donald Byrd, Earl Klugh and others. The next phase would be from 1985 when Bruce Lundvall restarted Blue Note to 2010 when he retired. In that era, we recorded a variety of music so it is hard to define what we have done. This is a different time.

To try and study the history of Blue Note, its evolution and singular aesthetic may sometimes sound like trying to understand the history of jazz. Why do you think this is?
Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff were jazz fans and they followed the music as it grew and changed. It is natural that people as smart and talented as them would mirror the evolution of the music in what they did. Sometimes they were followers like when they discovered bebop two years after other labels were recording it and sometimes they were the creators of change like when they signed Jimmy Smith before the organ was a jazz instrument and before the popularity of soul jazz.

Why do you think Blue Note succeeded in bringing together so many different artists, from Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor to Lou Donaldson and Lonnie Smith, without losing its originality and unity?
That is the key behind Blue Note. You could go from Ike Quebec to Jackie McLean to Lonnie Smith to Ornette Coleman and what is common about each artist is that they were making their best records for Blue Note. The sound, the packaging, the planning – it all makes each record special in the sense of Blue Note quality. We tried to do that in the 80’s. 80’s and 00’s. But of course we had different engineers, producers, studios and designers so we did not have the consistency that Alfred and Frank had.

What was the essence behind the fascinating Blue Note artwork? What kind of directions were given to the graphics designer to achieve such a harmonious and unique series of design?
This is very interesting. The early Blue Note designers like Paul Bacon and John Hermansader were modern designers and jazz fans. But by the time of the 12” (30 cm) LP, they settled on Reid Miles as their designer. Reid only liked classical music so he never listened to any of the hundreds of Blue Note albums that he designed covers for. And yet, he captured each album perfectly. The reason is that Alfred, who was a very enthusiastic and talkative man, would describe to Reid the spirit and intent of each album and Reid created the ideal design for each one. He also had that rare gift that every album cover looked different from the rest, but together they all looked like Blue Note covers.

There are some musicians that were all about Blue Note in their style but never got a release on the label like Mal Waldron or Charles Tolliver. What criteria did you mainly use to select your artists?
Well, Mal Waldron never recorded for Blue Note in any session, but I understand your question. Charles Tolliver and Woody Shaw were promised contracts with Blue Note but when Alfred sold the label to Liberty Records and didn’t like the way they were doing business, he told Charles and Woody that he didn’t want to sign new artists because he wanted to leave the label himself. Others like James Spaulding are a mystery. I asked James once why he never made a Blue Note album as a leader. He said, « They never asked me. » Well, James is a shy guy and probably he never asked them either! There is no logic to all of this.

Blue Note is by far the most collected and famous jazz label. Are you familiar with all the pressing details (the ear, the R, the deep groove, the flat edge etc …) that make it such a fascinating record series to collect and what is your opinion about it? And how did so many pressing variances occur?
I don’t know all the ins and outs of the collector details for Blue Note. Fred Cohen who runs the Jazz Record Center in New York City published a whole book about it. I am amazed at how collectable original Blue Note pressings and all the attention paid to little details like the label address on the pressings etc. By the way, the ear in the wax that collectors talk about is actually a P for Plastylite, the pressing plant that pressed all the Blue Notes in the 50’s and 60’s.

During the 90’s, Blue Note Japan reissued a number of previously unreleased sessions on LP including material by Jackie McLean, Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter… Most of these recordings are awesome. Why weren’t they released at the time? Do you plan to release new issues of those recordings for the rest of the world?
Actually, in 1976 I started going into the Blue Note vaults for unissued material. I was amazed at the quality of a lot of it. Some artists like Lee Morgan and Grant Green recorded so frequently (probably because they wanted to earn more money) that the label could never put out everything, but much of what they did not release was every bit as good as what they did release. Both Lee and Grant were very successful so Alfred and Frank probably leaned towards their more commercial sessions to release at the time. Others are a great mystery like Wayne Shorter’s ‘Et Cetera’ or Bobby Hutcherson’s ‘Oblique’. Brilliant sessions. I asked Alfred once about all the unissued material and he didn’t really remember leaving so much good material in the vault. So I started putting these sessions out in the late ‘70s in the US. But the record business was in bad shape at the time and the label lost interest in issuing them. So I talked to King Records in Japan who were distributing Blue Note at the time. They put a lot of them out. Then when Toshiba EMI took over Blue Note we put more out and then started converting everything to CD. I have gotten just about everything out that deserves to be released at least in Japan if not everywhere. In the past few years, Japan has begun to reissue of lot of these and classic Blue Notes on hi-res CDs.

Our favorite recordings on the label belong to what we call the « Dark Jazz » genre, like Duke Pearson’s ‘The Phantom’, Andrew Hill’s ‘Lift With Every Voice’, Bobby Hutcherson’s ‘Oblique’ or Jack Wilson’s ‘Easterly Winds’! These are still largely underrated. Any idea why?
Well, most of the albums that you name are from the late 60’s and early 70’s. This was a bad time for jazz in USA. Underground FM Rock like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead were attracting the young white audience and the avant-garde was driving away the middle-aged black audience and jazz was left with very little support. These albums were created and issued during that time and were overlooked. I think that is why history has forgotten them.

Pete La Roca’s ‘Basra’ is one of our favorite LPs on the label. Why did Pete release only one LP for Blue Note?
I don’t know. A lot of guys only made one or two albums for a label during that time. And guys like Pete (in demand drummers and bassists) got a lot more work by playing with different groups than trying to lead their own group. Of course, Pete did make another album for Blue Note 30 years later !!!

75 years is quite an achievement! How do you explain the longevity of the label?
I think the longevity of the label is owed to the great music of the classic Blue Note period (1954-67) that Alfred and Frank recorded and that remains vital and alive today and the fact that Bruce Lundvall, myself and Don Was who followed since the 80’s have never tried to duplicate what they did, but we respect it and try to live up to their legacies in our own way.

The Blue Note identity (the artwork, the quality of recordings, …) is part of the label’s mythology. Do you have any type of strategy to keep the myth alive?
Well, we’ve always kept that legacy alive by issuing the classic Blue Note albums in the best possible sound with original packaging and liner notes to keep the spirit of the original Blue Note alive. That identity does not exist for new Blue Note recordings since 1985 because we have so many different producers, engineers, photographers and designers. We have always tried to keep the quality high, but it doesn’t have an identity like the original Blue Note did.

What could eventually endanger the Blue Note brand?
What would endanger Blue Note would be if the kind of person who only cared about music as a commercial commodity instead of an art were to take over the label. Then bizarre projects like Rod Stewart sings Gershwin or Barry Manilow duets with dead people would destroy the integrity of the label and lose the trust of the fan.

Do you think a label like Blue Note could see the light today? If so, which other label could potentially look like Blue Note today?
Yes, I do. But it would have to be an independent label, not part of large corporation. I think in the 70’s ECM in its own musical style created an independent label with a very strong identity. I think Criss Cross in the 80’s till today is doing very much what Blue Note of the 50’s and 60’s did. And newer labels like Palmetto and ACT are recording pure jazz and forging their own identities.

Are you interested in the current jazz scene?
Yes, I don’t have the time to follow it as much as I would like but there are an amazing amount of talent artists on every instrument. I think the fact that people like Herbie Hancock and Terence Blanchard give their time to jazz education has really helped too.

Current Blue Note artists like Gregory Porter or Robert Glasper are very promising. Do you think they will be part of the Blue Note legend one day?
Yes I do. We have been very lucky over the past 30 years to record people like Dianne Reeves, Cassandra Wilson, John Scofield, Greg Osby, Tim Hagans, Joe Lovano, Jason Moran, Ambrose Akinmusire, Robert Glasper and Gregory Porter. They are all original and they are here to stay.

Are you enthusiastic about the return of vinyl records? How do you see the future in that respect?
I don’t think the return of vinyl affects the style or quality of music, but it does make us more conscious of upholding great sound quality when producing a record.

We owe you the re-discovery of the Monk quartet with Coltrane. Do you have many more unreleased tapes? Where do you find them?
Well, they come from different places. That one came from Larry Appelbaum at the Library of Congress. Author Lewis Porter found an ad for that concert in a New York newspaper and kept asking Larry to look for it in the Voice Of America radio tapes. A couple of years later, Larry found it by accident !!!! They called me and we made a deal. This was a major find. I doubt we will ever see anything that significant again. I believe most of the next discoveries will come from INA, the BBC, RAI and other European radio and television companies that taped the great American artists in the 60’s.

What would be the Blue Note release of your dreams?
I don’t know how to answer that. Since 1976, I’ve gotten all the great unissued music released. Since 1985, I’ve gotten all of the classic catalog issued on CD in good sound with bonus tracks. I’ve also been able to produce a lot of wonderful artists like Andrew Hill, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Don Pullen-George Adams, Joe Lovano, Terence Blanchard and more. I think my dreams have come true.

YOU NEVER PLAYED LIVE IN PARIS BEFORE, WHY?
Paris is a city which I have missed all my life and my life is Paris. So I am glad to be here. I was never invited and I would never have been able to come to Paris just for a walk. With the inauguration of the Portinari painting (Guerre et Paix, at the Grand Palais museum, during spring 2014) and after being invited by Marta Suplicy, the Minister of Culture, I finally had an opportunity to come.

WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?
I come from Acre, a region located in the Amazonia, far from big cities, near Bolivia and Peru. I was born there, my father was a major from the military police. He became the first single-engine aircraft pilot in Acre – comme Saint Exupéry – and he discovered many corners of the Amazonia, places where nobody had ever been before.

DID HE TAKE YOU WITH HIM ON THOSE TRIPS?
Yes, and I wanted to become a pilot too, although I have always liked music. At the age of 5, my parents bought me a small accordion for Christmas and I began playing with it, simple things like «Tatalatatati»…

DID YOU LEARN BY YOURSELF ?
Yes, instinctively, with my sister who was three years older than me and played the piano at the house, «Doodoodoodidididoo»… Every morning, I used to wake up with the sound of her piano and, as soon as she had finished, I would play some myself. The piano was a Bechstein, made in Germany. My last birthday present was actually a Fritz Dobbert piano. He is a Brazilian of German origin who makes pianos in São Paulo. They are made with curupixa, a typical wood from the Acre.

WHAT WERE THE FIRST SONGS YOU LISTENED TO WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD? SONGS WITH AN AMAZONIAN TOUCH?
Yes! It was on the river bank, I got sentimental, melancholic but also nostalgic for the first time of my life. Those feelings were strange for a child who is either happy or sad most of the times.

WAS IT IN A CITY?
Yes, it is now the capital Rio Branco and even if it is small, it is filled with singular, strong characters. For instance, fashion doesn’t matter, we are not searching for the trendy things you can see on television. People from the Acre have their own style, their own life, their own originality. That is why I am so proud of being from there. Maybe this is what brought me to become a pilot at the age of 18, just like my father.

WHEN DID YOU ARRIVE IN RIO?
At 11, by boat, just after the Second World War, in 1945. My father had been offered a trip to any place in Brazil and he thought that Rio was the best place for me and my brothers to study.

WAS THE MUSICAL SCENE IN RIO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE ONE IN THE AMAZONIA?
Yes, it was something else! A city with artists which I knew only through 78rpm records, but who were still in my memory. I liked songs such as “O Mar Negro, The Black Sea” by Georges Boulanger or «Ti di the dida diladidi !» a sort of jewish / gypsy melody which makes you feel oriental. My father had a collection of those records and I used to play them all the time.

2014, Paris. In bed or embed with João Donato?

WAS IT IN RIO THAT YOU DISCOVERED JAZZ?
No. At that time I was more into listening to Georges Boulanger and Fritz Kreisler, an Austrian violinist who played ‘Chagrin d’Amour’. With my high school classmates, we used to have lunch listening to records. One day, I heard Stan Kenton for the first time, and I was really impressed. He wasn’t the most popular, but his music was the strangest, the most exotic, dissonant music I had ever heard.

HOW DID YOU DECIDE TO BECOME A MUSICIAN? DID YOU MAKE THIS DECISION BY YOURSELF?
It happened when I failed the test to become a pilot : I was colorblind. I was 18. When the doctor told me that I couldn’t become a pilot, I thought «Well, I am a musician, I am going to continue in music, study and dedicate myself to music.» Luckily, my father supported me.

AT THAT TIME, WHAT BRAZILIAN PIANISTS WERE YOU LISTENING TO?
All those I shared my time with… I liked going to night clubs or listen to the radio because I didn’t have a TV yet. Most radios had their own bands, their own vocal groups, singers…

Young João Donato and his band at national radio.

ONE OF YOUR MAIN INFLUENCES WAS JOHNNY ALF, DID YOU KNOW HIM?
He was my friend when we were young. I met him when I was 15 or 16. He was my neighbour. He was a bit older. At that time I also knew Tom Jobim, João Gilberto …

YOU MET TOM JOBIM WHEN HE WAS THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR FOR A RECORD COMPANY?
He gave me a list of songs, telling me that I had to play them. But the first time I actually recorded was for the flutist Altamiro Carrilho, on his first album. It was my first studio experience. I played the accordion on ‘Brejeiro’ with Ernesto Nazareth’s Choro. The choro is still very popular in Brazil. The first music I actually composed and recorded was with Luiz Bonfá on the “Bonfá” album. At that time, vinyl was still only on 10 inch.

YOU USED TO SPEND YOUR TIME WITH THE CREATORS OF BOSSA NOVA. HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO ENTER THE SINATRA-FARNEY FAN CLUB?
With Paulo Moura who I met in the street, we were neighbors and we both had vocal groups. At that time, vocal groups were trendy : the Starlights, the Pied Pipers, Les Double Six in Paris, Os Cariocas and João Gilberto’s Os Garotos da Lua in Brazil. I had one too : Os Namorados, with members from Lucio Alves’s Os Namorados da Lua. I went to many rehearsals with all those groups and I have always liked that kind of music : five people singing together, so beautiful with so many harmonies.

1957. João Donato and João Gilberto in the Rio’s streets.

IS THIS HOW YOU MET JOÃO GILBERTO?
I met him during the rehearsals of Garotas da Lua. It was in the Radio Tupis studios. One day someone announced the arrival of a young man from Bahia. The singers had to be real singers with strong voices but one of them had too low a voice. João Gilberto was brought in as a replacement. But when he came, we realized that his voice was even lower! Luckily this job wasn’t for him. So, he stayed in Rio, alone, and that’s how we became partners. Back then, I didn’t manage to adapt and wasn’t well received when I played, just like him. They found me too different, too «bizarre».

DO YOU STILL CONSIDER YOURSELF AS A MEMBER OF THE BOSSA NOVA MOVEMENT?
I have always made music my own way and therefore was not well received in most of the places I was playing at. All those bossa nova people were not well received either. Me, João Gilberto or Tom Jobim: none of us was welcome. But slowly, people started to get used to that sound and would like it more and more. At some point, João and I kept talking about how crazy and insane this world was, that People were stupid and knew more or less nothing about music… I remember we were invited to a week long show in Minas Gerais at a health resort. João said: «I will go there if Donato comes.» So we went together, him with the guitar and me with the piano. After the first set on the first night, the manager came to us and said : «Don’t worry about anything, money, traveling expenses or food, but please – “por favor”, don’t sing any more, don’t play again!» This is the type of experience we both had at the start of our careers. It was awful and we were terrible for the audiences as people were expecting something that they were more familiar with. Strong voices. Those first live experiences were a total disaster.

DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF AS A JAZZMAN?
The Donato style, that’s how people in Brazil describe my music. I like to avoid any classification: no categorizing, no way!

THAT’S THE DONATO STYLE?
I don’t have any style, I am just «Amazonic», a Acre homeboy, tropical, I don’t know…

WE ARE GOING TO SAY WHAT THE DONATO STYLE IS: IT IS THE VERY SAME POINT OF VIEW THAT THELONIOUS MONK HAS ON BEBOP!
I love bebop, I love Monk, I love bossa nova, I love jazz, I love latin music and I mix all those styles. I also like songs like ‘La Vie en Rose’. I compose my own songs. The Brazilian music critic Zuza Homem de Mello has compared me with Monk before.

SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT?
I like it, because his style is really unique, incomparable. You can’t copy that! To be compared with Monk means being also unique, because he sounds like nobody else. And I like to feel that I sound like nobody else. It is very important! To be perfectly honest, my favorite pianist is Horace Silver, the son of a Portuguese man from Cabo Verde : Horácio Tavares Ward da Silva. His mother was afro-american. Once, while I attended one of his workshops in Rio with a handful of people, he told me: «It’s funny, nobody came!» and I answered that people didn’t know how important he was.

Early 1960’s. Donato played trombone with Mongo Santamaria’s band, and two years later during a record session with Tom Jobim .

MONK HAS A VERY SPECIAL WAY OF COMPOSING, JUST LIKE YOU. ON YOUR COMPOSITIONS THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING A LITTLE BIZARRE, BIZARRE JAZZ, BOSSA NOVA BIZARRE, OR FUNK BIZARRE…
Ahaha it is «très bizarre». I try to reflect the feeling that I felt on the bank of the Amazone when I was a child: a combination of homesickness, melancholy and positive sadness, doucement. I try to keep that in my music. That doesn’t work every time but that is what I am looking for. When I listen to other people’s music, I try to obtain a painkiller effect, wholesome, beneficial, healthy and spiritual. That’s what I like in music.

YOU KEEP SAYING THAT MUSIC IS MADE TO CURE THE SPIRIT. IS IT YOUR MAIN PURPOSE?
It could be, for sure. To give more life, more longevity, more time to stay alive on the planet. Music takes you further, on longer roads… It even brings comfort to patients in hospitals if well used. But music can be anything, even fatal as Gilberto Gil said. There are a number of composers, music geniuses, who are considered dangerous when their music is heard on the wrong occasion. It can lead to extreme behavior: suicide, despair or eventually «the bad road». So being a genius doesn’t mean you belong to the good side of the things. You are a genius but you can be a madman too.

WHAT DID YOU LOOK FOR WHEN YOU LEFT BRAZIL FOR THE USA?
Freedom of expression. In Brazil I was clamped, I couldn’t play what I believed in. I found that American musicians were a lot closer from playing into this ideal of freedom and their music was really beyond what I played myself.

WHAT WERE YOUR FIRST MUSICAL FEELINGS WHEN YOU LANDED IN THE USA?
Sensational! I would go see all my idols play on stage, people like Horace Silver. We became friends and he came to Los Angeles to play the piano and help me understand ‘Django Juice’. I remember driving him back to the motel he was living in.

DID YOU GO TO SHELLY MANN’S CLUB?
Yes, I saw Sergio Mendes (Brasil 65) there, with Jorge Ben and Wanda Sá. I later asked Sergio Mendes permission to use his rhythm section and recorded an album with Bud Shank. Tião Neto was on bass, Chico Batera on drums and Rosinha de Valença on guitar. And I got another record, previously done in Brazil. It was originally called “Muito A Vontade”. I started looking for a label to put it out and showed it to Clare Fisher, Victor Feldman and all their friends from the music industry but nobody wanted it. Every time, they would tell me: «OK, OK, but», and when an American says «but»… That was until I met Richard Bock, one of the founders of Pacific Jazz who had worked with Gerry Mulligan, Shorty Rogers and Chet Baker. After listening to my record, he said : «I like it, but ahahaha… I can’t put it out just like this, you need to bring somebody else but wait, Bud Shank is coming here tomorrow, we will have him listen to it and if he likes it, you will work together. This will be a way for you to enter the label and then I will launch your record.» I said OK and returned home. The day after, Bock told me that Bud Shank had liked the album. We agreed on a recording session and eventually recorded “The piano of João Donato, the new sound of Brazil”. This is how I got a name in American studios.

SOME YEARS LATER YOU RECORDED WITH CLAUS OGERMAN, ANOTHER IMPORTANT MEETING?
Richard Bock put out “Muito A Vontade” but changed the title to “Sambou Sambou” – he thought it sounded better. Then Astrud Gilberto gave Claus Ogerman a copy and he called me from New York asking if I wanted to do a record with him. I was supposed to play basic piano parts and he would make arrangements with very beautiful strings. «Like Tom Jobim?» I said. «Yes, why not!» He asked me to write six songs, the other six would be taken from some Brazilian music album. João Gilberto was in town, so I went to see him at his place and we wrote some songs. That record is one of my most beautiful.

Seventies… with Gal Costa.

YOU SPOKE ABOUT MELANCHOLY EARLIER. DON’T YOU BELIEVE THAT THE MASTER IN TERMS OF STRING ARRANGEMENTS IS CLAUS OGERMAN?

Yes, he is wonderful, but I also like Johnny Mandel very much.

ARE YOU STILL IN TOUCH WITH HIM?
No, not too much, I saw him with Tommy Lipuma, who produced “A Bad Donato”, before I left America.

WHAT ABOUT THE “BAD DONATO” SESSIONS FOR BLUE THUMB?
It was a different story. Sergio Mendes who was a good businessman told me one day: «Let’s go to Japan. I have 2 bands, Brasil 66 and Bossa Rio, that are opening a show and we need a pianist. Ours cannot travel anymore.» So I took up the invitation and travelled with them for a week. In turned out that Bossa Rio was about to release a record in the US for Blue Thumb’s boss Bob Krasnow who was travelling with us. Bob loved my music and promised me a record release as soon as I returned to the USA, with my own tracks. So when I got back to the US I had kind of forgotten about it until percussionist Emil Richards contacted me saying that Bob Krasnow was looking for me and that I had to call him. When I did, he told me I could have all the instruments I wanted; that I could go to any music store, buy all I needed, bring it home and that when everything would be ready, we could start recording. Just like that! I decided to go to a record store and bought some LPs. I was given a lot of shit records that did not even sound like music until I discovered James Brown. I found his music quite simple, with repetitions and loops and I loved it. I decided to try and stick to James Brown’s music. They loved it and decided to call what I did “A Bad Donato”. Tommy Lipuma said the album had good reviews when it came out. Everybody said : «Waouwou! What is going on?» Even the singer Jacques Brel himself covered ‘The Frog’. His version spoke bad about the Flemish and became a political song.

WERE YOU INFLUENCED BY BANDS LIKE BANDA BLACK RIO, GERSON KING COMBO OR UNIÃO BLACK?
No, their music might sound similar but we never met.

AFTER “A BAD DONATO”, YOU WENT BACK TO BRASIL AND RECORDED ANOTHER RECORD FOR ODEON. FOR US, IT’S AN INCREDIBLE RELEASE, A BRASILIAN FUNK CLASSIC, BUT MUCH MORE ACOUSTIC AND BIZARRE: “QUEM É QUEM”.
Très bizarre because it was the first time I sang a song.

YOU NEVER FELT THE NEED TO WRITE LYRICS BEFORE?
When I came back from the USA in 1972, I was going to do a new record in Brasil when Sao Paulo singer Agostinho Dos Santos told me: «Are you going to do another piano record? If I were you, I would add lyrics. Singers like me could sing your songs. In Brasil, nobody sings your songs because they have no lyrics!» I thought he was right and decided to start doing some singing. I got input by song writers like Dorival Caymmi, my brother Lysias Ênio, the Valle brothers, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, João Carlos Pádua, the Borges brothers and a whole bunch of others.

ON THAT ALBUM, THERE IS THIS INCREDIBLE SONG ‘CALA A BOCA MENINO’, WHO IS THAT «MENINO»?
It’s actually a typical folk song from Bahia. I was in the studio doing some experiments like «Dadidoo loopdadidoo» and did not really know where that would take me when Nana Caymmi, Dorival’s daughter, started singing «Cala a boca menino gné gné gné. Que seu pai logo vê gné gné gné…» I asked her what it was and she said it was one of her father’s songs so I called Dorival to confirm and he said : «No, it’s not but I take responsibility for it.»

Donato, a great composer.

YOUR MUSIC IS BUILT ON LOOPS LIKE THOSE OF MONK. DO YOU LOVE USING THOSE LOOPS?
I love loops. I don’t know. Stan Kenton had something with «riffs »: Blues in riff, Intermission riff, Unison Riff’, everything was a «riff» for him: «Tiloodida tiloodidooda tiloodida tiloodidooda tiloodida tiloodidooda tada doo! doo doo! Again!» It was his thing, he found it beautiful. I like it too: full measures, repeated several times. He would change the orchestration every now and then, like in a ‘Bolero’. Many people think that Ravel is only repeating measures on his Bolero but they actually change many times.

IN YOUR MUSIC, AS IN MONK’S, AREN’T THEY JUST FALSE REPETITIONS?
Yes they have a good effect but they do not really repeat. My repetitions change as on Ravel’s Bolero.

YESTERDAY, DURING THE SHOW, YOU SPOKE ABOUT CLAUDE DEBUSSY AS THE GREATEST MUSICIAN. DUKE ELLINGTON USED TO SAY THE SAME THING.
Yes, for me Debussy the greatest. I have always been influenced by classical music, I had a great passion for Debussy. He gave me the strongest musical emotions. I want to visit his house, near Paris, see where he was born, where he lived. He was a huge musician. Ravel is one of my favorite, just after Debussy.

YESTERDAY YOU PLAYED A SONG INSPIRED BY DEBUSSY WITH EXCERPTS FROM ‘ESTRADA DO SOL’. DID YOU DO IT ON PURPOSE?
No, I improvise a lot in my music and «Taaaa nanana tanana tanana ninana» comes from Debussy ! He was the first modern composer to play that type of measures like «Laaaladidiladidalad», that is what we play today and he had done it for a long time.

HOW WAS THE «MODERNITY» OF DEBUSSY?
His harmonies, his colors, his expressions. I am currently working on a piece called ‘Suite Sinfônica Popular’ and I always look at his scores, trying to enter his music with mine, without changing it or interfere, I want to try and create something.

IS THAT THE MAIN PROJECT YOU ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
Yes, I have been on it for a long time. I have spent more that 20 years checking his music and playing them on the piano.

HOW DID YOU DISCOVER CLAUDE DEBUSSY?
During my teenage years. When I started listening to his music, it was like falling in love with somebody: you don’t know why.

HAS HE BEEN FOLLOWING YOU DURING YOUR LIFE?
Yes. Actually, there was this particular piano teacher who used to tell me, when I played something that was not a known score, that there was something of Debussy in my music, something of the same standard.

thanks to Stéphane de Langenghagen