Lou Marini Interview by Monk Rowe - 6/15/2023 - Zoom

my name is monk Grove for the Phillies Jazz archive and it's a privilege to talk with Lou Marini today and um who's in Alabama with the James Taylor band is that correct yeah Gulf Shores Alabama it's really beautiful can't go swimming though the red flag is up and the red flag means rip currents so they won't lay in the water yeah I have to say that you and some of your bandmates present challenges to interviewers and here's why I'm going to read this from I maybe a publicist wrote this Lou Mari

ni is the seasoned soul and Adept multi-instrumentalist arranger composer educator and producer credited with inspiring the origins of a fan following cult across multiple genres of music so which thing am I going to ask you about you know when I was in school at North Texas State I was a jazz snob and uh and then I was playing with les elgar's band and we had a gig up in uh and less used to pick up as did many bands would pick up horn sections from North Texas so we were playing with all kinds

of uh I mean I played the lipizzaner stallions I played the Fort Worth Rodeo I played the little uh military based gigs in the Officers Club I mean every possible gig you can imagine Ice shows uh Stevie Wonder Gladys Knight and the Pips uh you know we ran the gamut we played for so many people but I remember uh flattened Scruggs well the first thing that happened we had to back up Homer and Jethro and uh and after we rehearsed with them and they were great you know they were funny as hell and af

ter we rehearsed with them we started a little jam session and and uh I don't remember which of them was the mandolin color whether it was Homer or Jethro But whichever one he was he sat in with us and he played better than any of us and then uh then that night flattened Scruggs uh the Bluegrass guys were the opening act and I think we were playing for dancing or something and and when flattened scrugged their first tune was a blistering Up Tempo Bluegrass you know and they were so relaxed and j

ust played their asses off you know and I think that as was the point that my jazz snobbery went out the window and so one reason that my my uh sort of history is so broad is that uh I I like all kinds of music and the challenge of of fitting in and trying to be yourself and and play something pure and still honor the genre and not go outside of it I always thought was a great challenge that was one of the things about the years in the jingles in New York you know 10 o'clock in the morning you'r

e playing uh flutes with uh like a Mozart style classical Ensemble and and an hour later you're you're playing a New Orleans style Funk tenor solo on a jingle you know and that I I always loved that and and the challenge of that and the pride in the the Cadre of musicians that I was playing with in New York at that time I mean you know we would be on sessions and the horn the saxophones would be Mike Brecker and Ronnie Cooper and Dave Sanborn and myself so you know you're you're on your toes are

you really supposed to be here with these monsters and and you know if so that that is a reason why uh and I still feel that way with uh you know the challenge yourself to try to to honor the whatever genre you're playing and you know if you were in front of um you've probably done this being in front of like career day at at a college level do students do you run into jazz snobs and do they even know what questions to ask about a potential career in this business well yeah you do uh but um kid

s today seem very Savvy Because the Internet uh allows them to not only listen to you know in my day Randy Brecker and I have talked about this we were taking solos off records by playing them over and over again and learning the Solo in real time you know now kids can do the The Slowdown they can take a cannonball laterally solo and they have choice of dozens and then slow it down learn the solo learn what Cannonball does and then speed it up I hear kids today that are so much more advanced tha

n I was when I was their age kids 18 17 who are already players you know they can play it's happened to me and they come in as freshmen and I go hmm I'm going to have to up my game here well I feel that all the time I during the pandemic I had a burst of creativity and I I recorded I mean I wrote 13 new big band compositions and um and in February I recorded them with a big band that I've been rehearsing and they're in the saxophone section the baritone player is Dave rickenberg plays his ass of

f he's in his 50s I suppose there's two young saxophone players an alto player named Andrew gold and a tenor player named Sam Dillon and they are monsters and Lawrence weldman uh is the lead Alto player he and I played on Saturday Night Live together and we've been playing together for years and years he's a few years younger than me and then the other tenor players uh there's a guy named Matt Hong who played it who went to North Texas and he's in his 40s and he's a monster so and during the cou

rse of rehearsing with this band I had you know you can never get the same band twice in a row so you're always having to hire subs and just in the Saxon section we've heard like a dozen young Saxon players all of whom just make you want to jump in the practice room and try to yeah they were thrilled to be there too yeah they well that that's uh that's sort of a nice thing uh I you know we're playing for our peers basically and and their approval and a glance of approval from one of them after a

solo means more than uh anything else you can get you know so I mean you know playing with James Taylor's man night tonight Larry goldings Michael Landau Steve gadd Jimmy Johnson uh Walt Fowler you know uh you pinch yourself you know it's like it's an honor to be playing with them you know who writes the horn parts for these uh well I do and uh you know that's been another thing because it's so naturally organic uh I'll play something and Walt will go because James will at first you know there

were no horn parts so now we're up to in the 90s and uh and James will at this point he'll say you know I think this stone is horn worthy and uh the Rhythm Section will start rehearsing it and Walton and I will I'll play something walk will play something we'll like let's remember that and then we go into a hotel room or a room in the venue and sit down and uh listen to the track and start playing and sketching out stuff and the next thing you know we have a horn part you know and and uh without

totally without friction it's been uh that's been one Delight with James it's it's so organic and natural and it just it it feels great you know you must be um cognizant of course of when he's singing and oh yeah regarding the horn Parts yeah and but you know like at this point between US just between Walt and I Jesus we've played for everybody you know and so we've had the opportunity to to hear what and play what good horn parts are about so it it's uh we already have a clear idea of where we

should play and where we shouldn't and and you know James and it's not always that you shouldn't play When the singer is singing because sometimes you do play When the singer is singing it's not just filling in the holes it's it's complimenting and and adding something and so and James is very cool you know he'll he'll say uh I don't think that maybe we should do something else there and he'll have suggestions and they're always great so yeah it's been and you know I play I have juicy Parts on

bass mood Alto food flute clarinet and then the four saxophones so it's not often that you know you have a base flute and a pop band that's meaningful and uh fun to play you know so yeah the last tour uh we did this tune uh from the from the standards album I've fallen off a a log just like falling off a log you know it's a tune that James knew from a 30s cartoon and I played a clarinet solo on the uh on the record and and so I was playing that clarinet solo and then I suggested that maybe Walt

should play like a a straight mute solo play it with me and it's this charming thing and we got Applause for it every night and 52 concerts I never screwed it up so that made me feel good you know because clarinet is perilous yes as uh someone called it an Agony stick well Frank West used to have a Christmas card that had him in a Santa Claus suit warming himself over a big fire with a giant smile on his face and then the fire were clarinets and bass clarinets do you have an issue with first of

all with all those horns you must do a count when you're getting on the bus or wherever like okay I got the 12. we have uh our crew uh we have a crew guy that takes care of us and he makes sure I make sure they're all packed up at the end of the gig and he makes sure they're all in the road case and safe and sound so so if you're playing an outdoor gig like you mentioned um I think the day before this this session here that and you pick up a flute you have you have four beats to pick up the flut

e and play it uh what about the intonation because of the temperatures and all that well like the beginning of the tour we were in the Northwest we started off in Washington and then Oregon and then Northern California and the first five gigs were cold and the rehearsal was cold so you know uh I'm I'm constantly picking up my horns and blowing through them in preparation for what the next tune is going to be and then uh with the flute sometimes when it's really cold I just push it all the way in

and hope that I can get up to pitch because like we play uh up on the roof and I got six bars after I put I can warm up the alto flute at the beginning of the tune but the regular flute when I switched to it you know I got six bars where I'm blowing hot air through it as quick as I can to try to get up to pitch and then sometimes you're sharp and there's you're playing and there's nowhere to go you know to try to live down yeah things you don't learn in college true um so I'm gonna pose this th

is question to you and I I should tell you I asked uh Tom alone basically the same one and you probably like most successful musicians um you're fairly modest but can you tell me why your phone has always been ringing since basically when you started in the business it's a given that you're a good player but is there something else that young students should know about this path where you've arrived and how you got there well it helps not to be a prick you know the the the uh the more prickly yo

ur personality is the better you better be as a player to maintain uh a successful career because um you know I'm Gad and I talk about this a lot uh uh one thing about all this these guys that I've spent my life playing with and still play with is uh they've never lost the the magic of Music the feeling of delight and the exploration and trying to get better everybody that I know that is in my cohort is still striving and so if you're on time if you have a pleasant personality and if you can pla

y well and and if you actually listen to the other musicians Walt and I were talking about this yesterday I I've had experiences where you realize you know for me when I walk into a room and there's other musicians playing I'm gravitating toward a center of pitch an agreed upon place where we're going to play uh matching Timbers playing together but there are some guys that you realize that they are by themselves they are not listening to anybody else and they don't bend so if you're going to pl

ay with them you do The Mending but for instance like uh Alan Rubin my colleague in The Blues Brothers Band and for so many sessions and and stuff in New York he he played with you Ronnie Ronnie Cooper our dearly departed and another example of a prickly personality but he played so great that you put up with it but Ronnie could be a pain in the ass you know and uh but as far as like Ensemble playing uh when I was on Woody Herman's man playing with Ronnie and Sal nistiko and Franklin Kerry man t

hat was a delight because the written information on the page was like two-thirds of the information the other third was all the subtle Nuance that they had arrived at from playing together and that when you joined you had to pay attention and learn those things but you could feel them coming to you and that indefinable thing about Ensemble playing is one of the I don't think Walt Fowler and I have we we rarely discuss when to take a note off or how to attack a node it's just we arrived there an

d we do it in an unspoken way and that's the epitome of Ensemble playing to me and you know like playing lead Alto or playing second Alto or fourth center with good players in a in a well-written saxophone part that is so much fun that's something that never gets old you know it I have about a bunch of Arrangements of my dad's uh for five saxophones and they're written so that they can be played just by themselves or with a Rhythm Section and then you can solo and play you know and they're not t

hey're just statements of the tune but when Saxon was playing when saxophone writing is really correct and my dad's was killer uh man it's it's just a delight to play that way you know and then the more guys you the bigger the Ensemble the more together it is Frank West told me that there were Knights on the Bassy band when he could everybody breathed together he told me that they went to uh London one time and basically said I don't know why I'm paying all this money to ship the parts to London

you guys never look at the book anyway and there's this myth I think that the fourth tenor and the second Alto parts are easier and oftentimes they're not because you get those you fill in the harmonies and sometimes they're a challenge to play and also you're trying to fit in in The Ensemble so well that's that's one thing about uh good arrangers who actually take the time to you know like uh like sometimes the second Center and the fourth Center cross Parts just for voice leading just so that

you don't have to play two repeated notes so all of a sudden the four tenor is above the second tenor instead of being below it but good writers are conscious of that one of the best at that to me is uh the guy Phil Kelly who was uh I started playing with him in Dallas he was a drummer great drummer too but his charts you no matter what sexual part you're playing you feel like you're playing the melody and that's I try to do that in my parts I don't always succeed but um I think about it you kn

ow those 13 I think you said 13 new charts you wrote can you describe where the initial idea how it arrives in in your head um is there a do you say it's time to write a funk chart or gee I haven't written a jazz Waltz in a while or how does it percolate well those things happen but you know uh but like for instance one of the tunes on the album is called fat man and uh it was written probably in the mid 70s and my friend Joe Randazzo who was my best friend of great bass trombone player in New Y

ork had had a was a heavy cat for the first half of his life and then he went into uh like Weight Watcher or we got into a program and and he was slim the rest of his life but that tune fat man is a slow sort of a bluesy kind of tune and it's been sitting around and then I he passed away a couple years ago and uh I've discovered that he had written lyrics to it very insightful lyrics about being inside and looking out and his condition as a fat guy you know and that inspired me to get off my ass

and write a uh an arrangement on on that and then David Taylor the bass drum bone player in the band who was a virtuoso a player uh he does a lot of avant-garde classical stuff and he said I showed him the lyrics and he said I got an idea for this and I was going to sing it but uh he played an abstract based from bone solo and recited the lyrics over it and that's the way the chart starts and then you know uh I wanted to feature each section and I wanted to feature every guy in the band because

Joe recommended like four or five guys who play in the band younger guys that are in the band including the two of the alto players Andrew Gould and the tenor player uh uh Sam Dillon were among the people he recommended and some trombone players of female remote player named Sarah giacovino who played lead and uh so I wrote a a solo that went through the whole tune and then the piano plays the whole solo but the solo passes between phrase to phrase between the whole band so every guy in the ban

d gets to tip their hat to joke you know and so that that sort of came about as I was thinking about it and then start one process that I do is I will write out musical ideas I will write out uh in longhand uh ideas about ensembles or for instance this idea about a solo and uh and then basically once I start writing I sort of eliminate about two-thirds of the things and sometimes as you're writing other things occur to you and you find your way through the chart but my my method is is that each

I I want a very strong thematic thing uh so that that I can take that theme and use it as the basis for variations and like in there's a tune called amigillion which is Buddy Williams Because on the set when I wrote the tune it was a tune that just came to me I was playing warming up I was in the corner Saturday Night Live and Buddy was on the other side of the room that the drum set and it's a simple tune it's sort of a bluesy minor blues tune but the Melodies so I'm playing in the corner and s

uddenly I realized in the other side of the room I'm here she could change continue but he's already got it so I named it amigion and so I wrote I used that as a Canon and and then it's fast you know and and after a shout chorus uh it goes into this Canon where different sections of the band and it it worked out great you know so every every uh song for me has its own harmonic Ambiance that I don't want to go outside of and it has a uh themes in it that I can use as Harmony Parts take segments o

f the melody and use those segments as as part of the as backup Harmony so that instead of having a stock voicing the voicing is derived from the melody itself and so it's a combination of notes that you ordinarily wouldn't do I these are kind of things that I think about when I'm when I'm writing you know so um each chart has its own Ambiance and its own path through finding it you know sometimes I think like I have a song that I wrote when my son was born called little Louis and I want it to b

e a standard big band chart you know so that's one that's one of the tunes that I'm going to write next and then I have a tune called maper que which means why not in Italian and I recorded it as a as a quintet with a guitar and just piano bass drums and guitar and it's real funky tune and I finally figured out a way to uh lying in bed a couple weeks ago and thinking about the tune I I figured out a way that I can do it's a slow tune and it has a funk way of playing the uh the solo section but I

wanted to get away from that and um and suddenly it came to me that it goes into double double time in the half Step Above which I had been going to and I was like ah yeah if I do this little lick which is in the chart before that double trouble time it sets up the double double time and then it feels natural to go there you know so that that's the way I think you know it's like um a little bit of problem solving to into these answers these Solutions ever come to you when you're not really work

ing on it one thing I've discovered is uh when I'm stuck if I go and listen to music that is the total opposite of what I'm working on that sometimes the answer will be will just it'll seem like so obvious to me that I didn't think of it and it's prompted by hearing something that has nothing to do with what I'm what I'm working on you know but you're right problem solving press you know sometimes if you just think there should be a dissonant Ensemble right here based on this melodic pattern wel

l to work that out the idea that comes to you and you write the melody out and then you have to supply those harmonies what took five seconds to think of takes three hours to realize and that's one thing about composing too that uh I remember reading a instead of getting frustrated I remember years ago reading one of Robert Kraft's book about Stravinsky and Stravinsky's uh work habits were severe he got up he had breakfast then he worked for like two hours had a nice lunch he worked for three ho

urs his day was done if at the end of the day he only uh composed four bars he composed four bars and that was that was cool and that idea to me uh was sort of revelatory and and so one of the things that uh has happened to me in my ascendancy is both in practicing and and composing uh I've gotten so much more relaxed about and forbearing and it's not that I'm less demanding on myself it's that I don't get frustrated if I can't do something right away you know basically most of what I practice i

s stuff that I want to in integrate into my plane well the process of getting something under your fingers is a long process and the process and then to have it emerge naturally into your vocabulary as an improviser you know a lot of times by the time you get something under your fingers you're bored with it you know you've practiced it so much but then it starts to come out and you're playing or fragments of it I don't want to be a guy who learns a lick and then you get to the D minor seven g s

even flat five and that Lit you play every time you get there you know that's not that's not improvising that's something else so uh my dad used to say you have to always be a baby and it took me a long time to realize that when you're practicing if you can't play something you just have to slow it down so you can a few years ago I was with Barbra Streisand uh on tour and uh Rick Hickman uh the oboe player told me that he had a colleague in the college he was teaching in in New Jersey who was th

e student of Julius Bakers and she once said you never make mistake how was that you know and he said that when he practices anything new he practiced it so slowly that he wouldn't make an error and he increased the tempo so slowly that and in the process of bringing it up to speed he never played it wrong that's a very very severe discipline but it's worth emulating and thinking about because you know I tell students that you're you're sort of burning a neural pathway through your brain when yo

u when you practice slowly and you repeat and you repeat and a lot of times I'll I'll say here's a lick that I'm working on you count you look at your watch and you tell me when 30 seconds is up and you count the number of repetitions that I do in 30 seconds and so they hear that I've played it 20 times in 30 seconds so I say all right now if you practice this lick for 20 minutes do you think you're going to have it under your fingers at least better than when you started and you know a light bu

lb goes off so you know it's like a mechanical process that discipline process to try to get to a point where it occurs spontaneously in an emotional energetic to me it's like an energy stream that in the times when you're really playing well it's happening in some kind of automatic place not automatic but and if the thought occurs to you in that process that you sound good you immediately crash out of that place and you're back into the normal life you know it's the improvising is a mysterious

thing man is have you ever had an instance where you were leading a big band and they were playing your music and um a soloist sounded like they were practicing what they were working on during their solo and it seemed to be a disconnect to the piece itself yeah uh but you know most of the time uh it's it's rare to get instrumental players that uh especially you know like usually the the true improviser is a guitar player who has been playing along with records and he's a rock and roller but he

at least has the idea of a connection between singing in your head and playing what you hear you know and uh uh yeah sometimes kids learn they you realize that they're practicing a solo and trying to to play by road but at least they've made the effort to to try to to get somewhere with it you know and then you hear kids I heard a 16 year old Alto player uh I wonder what he's doing now it's been like eight or nine years ago from Seattle area who uh was in a really fine High School big band and t

his cat was already he was a badass and uh his mother came to me afterwards and she said you know his grades are slipping he's was a straight A student he's starting to get bees and and I said you know you're standing in front of a freight train at this point because your son is obviously totally in love with music and with jazz and with playing and as far as I can see he's going to be a player so if he gets a b I don't think it matters much because it seems to me like his path is clear you know

unless he decides to and you know there's a lot of guys uh great players who are doctors and lawyers who the economic uncertainty of being a player uh is threatening to them and and they don't they they bail you know you know I remember when my I met my Spanish wife and she asked me who was a lifelong civil servant in Spain uh asked me what you're doing next week and I say I don't know that was that was daunting for her you know yeah I love that um what's your calendar like well I gotta I have

to look and I was wondering when you go on these this tour you're on is fairly long isn't it yeah when he when you get a call when you got the call to do it did you have to look ahead into your calendar and see do I have to bear like James takes priority and and we know that usually we're going to be playing in the beginning of the summer okay and so I I just sort of make sure that I have open space you know but also the business has changed so much now you know for instance doing clinics I did

a bunch of them this year but uh they they usually want you to commit so far in advance that it's difficult you know to commit to to doing a clinic in March when you know that there's a likelihood that The Blues Brothers Band is liable to go to Japan or and so you know I try to either have a codasil that if I have to bail uh I'll get them somebody great uh you know or or else I have there's been times with James where I've had to take time off and send in a sub to cover for me uh in order to do

something that that I was committed to and and I signed a contract to do so uh but you know our I used to be a recording musician who went on the road and now I'm a road musician who occasionally records you know and that's a natural progression you know they used to say like who's Lou Marini get me Lou Marini give me a Lou Marini type who's Lou Marini that was our path through the through the uh recording industry and it makes sense because the business changed new young guys come in new young

guys know their new young guys and that's who they hired so I've we talk about this and when I first got to New York I was already an experienced recording musician from my years in Dallas because there was a very busy Studio scene there with a lot of great world-class players and uh so I was prepared for the New York Studio scene but guys like Romeo pinque and Phil Bodner who were on those classic Gail Evans uh albums with Miles uh were my colleagues I overlapped them in the studios and they we

re very welcoming and and and mentors really in with advice and and so through the 70s in the first half of the 80s we had a busy Studio scene going then the computers and drum machines and synthesizers began to peek uh cut into our our business and and things and you went from having 10 big companies that did most of the music to a thousand in-house one-man guys who hired the guy that he knew from the University of Alabama to play in his jingle you know that's the way it it fragmented and dimin

ished at the same time but that those guys told us that in the 50s and 60s they were working nine ten hours a day they went from 50 piece Orchestra and gig to a live radio show played a live TV show at night they were working like crazy so we caught the tail end of a really fantastic era of recording that was I feel privileged to have been a part of it you know I'm just reading a book um I got to know Joe Wilder and oh man I loved him oh what a I mean who couldn't love Joe Wilder musically and p

ersonality wise and he described exactly what you were just saying that there was so much work he was on staff and he played the the television orchestras and and then even even back then he talked about and then the synthesizer came in and so I guess some things never change yeah well you know it's not the first time that musicians got out of work uh when when talking movies took over overnight basically within a year or so or a couple years thousands and thousands of gigs from guys playing in

movie theaters just disappearing so you know I you know I listened like I was listening to uh uh the soundtrack last night of a series of contemporary Swedish series that I'm watching on Netflix and I realized that these computer sounds uh uh they're they're just a part of our Lives now you know they're certain the atmospheric sounds uncertain uh kinds of scenes in these series and movies that we that we go to have been subsumed by these sounds that can only be made by synthesizers so I'm sure t

hat there is going to be great music that's going to come out of these sounds uh but I don't think it's happened yet you know and there's also something about you know when I listen to these the VOC order uh vocals and and the drum and especially the Rhythm tracks you know you could just as easily be listening to a washing machine when you consider like Luis Conte uh is always playing he's because he's such a master percussionist he's always playing stuff for us uh from like African tribal music

or Caribbean or Brazilian or and you listen to this stuff and it's it's so much more complex and it's the grooves are so intense that it makes the electronic stuff seem stupid it seems infantile you know compared to what humans do on the natch and and uh and I think about like what young people are listening to is like this mechanical stuff that has no soul to it even and if even the vocal is manipulated then even the vocal sound is not like hearing the richness of a singer like Ella Fitzgerald

or Jack Jones or or red price soccer I mean you know uh I wonder where it's going you know let me go back a bit you said um improvising is a mysterious art mysterious thing to do when you when you play a solo improvise solo over a one or two chord Vamp or a 12 Bar Blues is what's going on in your head different than what you would play on Giant Steps or or even body and soul in other words more chord changes how do you negotiate the challenging chord changes of a song as opposed to a one chord

no each of them presents their own challenges that that the thing about playing over one chord is to is is to not resort to Hot Licks you know modal patterns and and stuff that you practiced and I think so much of it it just just depends on the players you're playing with if you're playing with creative players then somehow there you're being presented with alternate Pathways or suggestions or prompts or uh opportunities to go different places you know and and and or you can you can play somethi

ng that they respond to and that leads you to another place playing a tune like uh like body and soul to me uh which is a tune I like to play you know uh the challenge there is to is to find you know like uh like Eddie Daniels talked about playing a sequence A melodic sequence that goes to a set of corn changes so that the sequence isn't just root minor third fourth sixth now when you get to the major chord it's got to be root major third you know that that the finding those Pathways but you kno

w I don't think that the guys that we loved uh I don't think they thought about chord changes in the same way I think they're they're I mean I learned to play by ear and by playing along with the records so I didn't know what the hell I was doing as far as what chord changes and what the chord scale was the theory my dad used to always say the Theory comes after the the guys who who push us and not just guys of course women too who push us to another realization of Harmony or whatever you know l

ike Ravel had his together and then we're all we're still playing the core changes that we like like uh Evon Linds you know that's what that's another thing that like I think about man when you like like Bossa Nova harmonies which everybody plots is over is you listen to contemporary radio you never hear a set of chord changes like that you're only hearing Triads now you know you know I I liked what you said about the theory coming after the the creativity I every once in a while I put on the ca

nnonballs one of his very first record with Miles was on and they played Autumn Leaves in this solo that Cannonball plays is utterly fascinating and he's he's got all these sort of not in the chord tones but the way he Fashions them I'm just in awe you know uh you don't hear Cannonball so much but I was very lucky that we went to hear cannonball in uh Dallas when I was in north Texas and it was someone I was first writing and uh I wrote a chart called codify which is an abstract sort of 13 Bar B

lues and uh we had a great band and Cannonball I remember that he of course I don't remember anything melodically about what he played but I remember he played Carnival and he played like 13 choruses and I had tears in my eyes at the end of it you know and we went up and talked to him and Nat afterwards and we told them about North Texas and they came up they came up to the school the following day and uh so everybody's thrilled and Leon Breeden says this is a new chart by Lou Marini and uh we p

layed the chart and when we finished it I looked up and everybody in the band was looking at me and at first I was you know I was like what's going on and then I realized that Cannonball and that are standing right behind me over my shoulders and Cannonball leans over to me and he says Lou you a crazy and you know we became friends and uh and I ran into him like with Woody Herman's band one time we were on a festival together and he comes into the dressing room in a panic he says Lou there's som

ething wrong with my soprano and I said can and I don't I repair man I don't know what the hell to do with your soprano I said but you can play mine so he played my soprano on the gig you know and various times over the years I got to hang with them and you know he's like Joe Wilder there's nobody that didn't love him he was just the greatest man and to hear him play his his Rhythm his pop on the time and his command of the horn and his sound it was and that too man that was a killer player Joe

Wilder I had gotten to know Joe in New York and and I just revered him and when I was a kid there were these music minus one records before the Jamie ebersold records and one of them had Joe Weiler on it and and I just loved his playing and so when I met him I told him about that and you know so we became friends and uh Don Jacoby the great trumpet player that I I met on the Stan Kenton Jazz clinics my roommate was Sanborn Keith Jarrett was there Peter Erskine was there uh Randy so many guys tha

t ended up playing together over the years but uh so Jake came up to go to the Charles Cole and Brass conference in New York and I took him to the conference he was staying in my pen and uh one of the first people we ran into was Joe Wilder and you know Don Jacoby was a famous trumpet player he was a virtuoso player and uh so Joe knew who he was and I said Joe this is Don Jacoby Jake this is Joe Wilder and and Jake says and Jake is this little guy with the diamond and a mustache you know and Bur

ley and Jake says wait a minute Joe Wilder the the jazz trumpet player beautiful solos and Joseph yeah and Jake grabbed him like this and kissed him on the lips and and then you know they they were laughing and they took off their their hang with all these other trumpet players but yeah Joe Waller was killer yeah I got to play with him a few times in educational settings and um I felt so good about putting him in front of school kids uh like like he was a role model in many in many ways um I'm g

onna test your memory a little bit if you go to um Wikipedia your your Wikipedia page it has a very lengthy list of recordings you've played on and I think it ends like 10 years ago but do you remember I'm going to ask you a couple things do you remember um 1981 Peter Tosh wanted dread or alive yeah you know what's funny about that is uh my wife and I were on vacation in St John's and we were going into Cruise Bay and we discovered this Surf Bar that played nothing but reggae and it was really a

cool bar and we were in there one night we had been in a couple times before and uh this tune came on and the saxophone player the solo started and I was singing along with the saxophone solo you know and I thought why does this solo sound so familiar I said who is this you know and and uh so we got the name of the two we and we got back and uh got on the internet in at the at the hotel and here comes Saturday Night Live and Peter Tosh and Mick Jagger and me playing the solo it was me I didn't

real it was no wonder I knew the solo I played it oh that's a good one uh okay I was totally blank you know I was it was like sounds so familiar what is this you know was it done in a New York City Studio yeah okay and I'm curious like you get a call who who calls you normally for a a one-off like that well it used to be that we had a musician's answering service that the the companies would call but in the case of something like that I was probably called Direct by either the writer or the prod

ucer who knew my playing and and uh and felt that I was appropriate for it but there was a lot of times when you would be you know there were certain companies where you were the second call Guy the first call guy was George Jung so if George couldn't do it then they called me next and if I couldn't do it then they called Dave Tiffany other companies Dave Tiffany would be the first guy or and I would be the third and so if the first two guys couldn't do it then I would get the call so we were ro

tating around like that you know were they specific about uh bring your tenor and your Alto flute yeah very specific yeah nice what about uh same year meatloaf yeah you know that I remember that too it's funny that you picked that one because meatloaf that music uh it's like Bruce Springsteen to me Clarence Clemons could play a great solo at the drop of a hat that stuff for me I I have so much difficulty trying to play a solo over that kind of stuff and uh I remember that session because at the

end of the session the producer said Lua uh don't pack up yet I want you to play a solo on this one too and my heart sank you know I'm thinking oh you know because those those driving kind and and and then he said I hope you don't mind but I had an idea for this solo so I wrote one out I was like no no I don't mind at all so that was a written solo not by me I may have modified it in the playing of it but uh yeah I remember that have you ever done a session that you know the producer or the engi

neer has you play like 10 to like 10 solos and then they chop them up and make one out of it oh they do that a lot and uh sometimes with my guidance and sometimes not sometimes but you know it used to be like especially when the Japanese were coming in over a lot in the late 70s and we were doing these sessions I remember one time there was a tune and it was a good uh uh Japanese keyboard player named Jun fukumachi complex stuff and uh and I played this Outsource solo and I must have done 30 tak

es and they would be Lou nice solo but can you play high notes when you play this place and you know like and and I'm thinking oh if this is ridiculous you know and uh and then the 31st solo came and it had nothing to do with any of the previous solos and suddenly we had it but George Young used to say fight for your first solo because that's your most a lot of times producers would have a preconceived idea about what they wanted solo to be so your your initial response to what's what you're bei

ng fed and what you're listening to is usually a pure response and that's why George used to say fight for your first solo and you know because that's your that's you uh and then the more you do it like you can get a far away from being you you know and but at the same time sometimes like I just mentioned sometimes after failing and not and feeling frustrated suddenly something totally different comes in and and the solo works but you know like David Spinosa has a solo on right place the right t

ime a guitar solo which guitar players all over the world have learned to play and he was coming out of the of us of a session and he saw Dr John in the hallway and Max said David come in and play a solo on this tune you know so that was David's First Take and Max says yeah great but David hates it because there's a place where he bends up and you know usually you you bend down and and so it's always Driven Crazy that guitar players all the all over the world have learned this solo okay I got on

e more name this session you know I forgot that I was on that you can't forget that you were on that well uh you know uh I remember I had heard that tune so much and uh of course I knew it but uh you know in those days we were going from session to session and uh uh a guy came up for me to sign you know and I was like I'm sorry man I'm not you know I played on on a pulse Island but he said no Lou there's your name there you know and I was like holy it's it's funny how some things you clearly rem

ember and other things which you think should be a signal memory uh a few years ago a guy called me up and asked me to do an interview about Jocko Pastorius so I said well I was not a close friend of Jocko's I was a friend of his and I played in a big band and and he used to sit in with Dr John so you know and I had some some singular events happened with Jocko uh not all of them Pleasant you know not for me just seeing him in distress I won't go into those but uh the guys I said well what's it

about he says well it said that famous concert at uh at uh Lincoln Center and I said yeah but what's that got to do with me he says well you were on the concert and I I don't remember anything about it and and he and he sent me uh some examples you know I didn't I didn't I didn't know that it was recorded and uh it was with uh mincer and Randy were the soloists and that guy Othello molinu was playing steel drums and and Jocko and I don't remember who else was in the in the band but when he sent

it to me I could clearly hear myself in the horn section so but man I I don't have a shred of memory about this you know and you would think that like bargeron and soloth were on it Alex Alex Foster was the other Saxon player on nothing it's pretty interesting because it's I suppose it's I'm not sure this is a good analogy but a fellow who sells insurance that might ask him oh you remember that day you came in and this thing happened in the office and you go no I I can't remember that I mean you

r your daily work it is you know that was one thing about like the Ken Burns documentary uh it was absolutely devoid of humor and when I think of my life as a musician and you know I'm I am a jazz musician but I've played so many different things that I don't know if everybody considers me a jazz musician but I've certainly you know like you can't remember the music with that and mill that night when Elvin came in to the dressing room and said he wanted to sit in and Mel said no and that is stan

ding between him and the two of them start arguing and Elven can't believe that Mel won't let him sit in and they get hotter and hotter and Thad is looking at him would look like a tennis match and finally Elvin says why won't you let me send in and Mel says because the last time he said in you broke my favorite you cracked my favorite symbol you're not sitting in you know you remember that you remember the funny stuff that happened and you know one thing I think about with musicians is we're we

are laughing all the time we are correct if when I think about my life as a musician you know I I I think of the Delight that I've had in knowing all these Maniacs these and I think that one thing that happens is that when you spend so much time by yourself practicing there's you sharpen your personality I think that something happens that you become more singular and and that in your own whatever your particular manner is you know so uh you you get these personalities that are so unique you kn

ow I don't know I'm maybe maybe I'm I'm Dreaming they're delusional but I really think that you know it sounds great to me you got me smiling and uh I know what you're talking about the interaction between musicians is is something special I'll wrap up here um because it's just been marvelous with it with a couple things I I may be the only person who saw you when I saw you walk the counter with Aretha Franklin that I was reminded that apparently John Coltrane also walked the bar really yeah wow

well you know it's it's I think Coltrane is like a but like that you know I I understand why there's a church of Coltrane out in San Francisco you know because uh who's the record producer uh just a lot of jazz a big guy uh had a beard uh I worked for him a bunch of times his name is escaping me now but he told me he saw terrain one night with the band with Pharaoh Saunders and towards the end of Train's life and he said at one point train stop playing and was beating on his chest in the music

you know uh are those glimpses that we have of uh I mentioned earlier something about when you're sometimes when you're really playing and you're in a different place if your ego comes in you crash to Earth I remember talking to dizzy about that and dizzy said it's only happened to him a few times in his life so you think somebody as great as Dizzy Gillespie uh saying that and I think that one thing about Coltrane was uh somehow he was he was in that place all the all the time you know and that

quartet was in that place that I was listening to uh that record that came out uh this year of alternate takes or of unreleased it was unreleased and they're just titled original number one original number two and you hear how free that band was and how they you can only play that way when there's ultimate trust between the players when nobody is bullshitting in any way when it's just letting go you know is there something about the times and the state of society that you think might make what y

ou're describing very hard to ever reproduce and the reason I ask that is um I spoke to Rasheed Ali once and was trying to get at the attitude of the musicians when he played in late late coltrane's life and he just he kept saying listen the times were different the Bebop people had their time this was our time so I'm not asking this question very well but do you think that the time and space that John Coltrane was doing that in contributed to what he produced well I'm sure it did and especially

you know I think about this because I I was very lucky to you know to get to play a lot with Bob Crenshaw for instance and and with Frank West and and with Joe and musicians those musicians Clark Cherry those guys they treated everybody with such dignity and respect and you know that they weren't treated with dignity and respect but they were so elegant and so they were big people big humans a couple days ago we were in uh Jackson Mississippi and uh Dorian Holly the singer who was a black cat J

ames had been and I were in the museum together and there was a video presentation it was a white artist I don't remember his name but it was a screen with four uh panels and there was a violinist a white violinist a white cellist a white bassist female bassist and a black cat bearded two gold teeth uh the kind of had that the reggae guys where uh and he was singing uh what was a traditional song called the slaves Lament and the the arrangement was beautiful then beautiful arrangement for String

s so the contrast of these white musicians playing and him singing and you know I at the same time that it was beautiful I I had this feeling like we are so up and you know it's it's like uh is it ever gonna change you know like I sometimes I think uh the original sin is so great that you know what I mean uh I'm I'm an optimistic person but there are times when it's like wow can't outlive we can't outlive that or how is it solvable that Legacy yeah well like Claude Gordon used to say straight ah

ead and strive for tone okay all right do you get people are you tired of people asking you about uh Steve Martin and King Tut no no because you know that that was a that was such a crazy day the guys were all treating me so weird every time I walked into the dressing room they were tittering and I felt like I was interrupting or something they had bought a stink bomb which they were going to put in that sarcophagus and then they thought they'd all get fired and then the makeup they had to apply

at like 6 30 they called me into makeup and it was horrible it was all my arms and shoulders and my chest and all my face it felt so constricting and so weird and then they told me that I'd have to wear it the whole night because there was so much stuff to do that they weren't going to be able to take it off and reapply it between the dress rehearsal and the show so then I had to get touched up before the show itself and then I'm in the sarcophagus I'm crammed in like you know wedged in there a

nd I can see out the little sides and I'm thinking of my and I'm wearing this super heavy outfit gold outfit you know and then you know and I'm thinking to myself I came to New York to play jazz what the am I doing you know and and uh and but then I'm looking out and I see that my you know Reuben and Howard Johnson and then the crunch on the guys the Malone at least and I'm thinking well I look ridiculous but they really look ridiculous you know and and then the door opens and I play the solo an

d it was a live solo everything was pre-recorded and then the chick jams me back in which is not the way we rehearsed it you know and suddenly I'm wedging myself back into the sarcon that was a bizarre day man but that's a classic thing boy I guess so with the with a Capital C okay last question did your son uh when did your son learn what a gig was uh well he was around musicians right from the get-go so yeah he knew what a gig was I remember though when he was about he must have been 11 or so

the first Blues Brothers tour the first gig was at Pine knob and uh there were like 20 000 people there and when Belushi introduced me he was on stage by the speakers and they all started going blue blue blue and it he thought they were booing me and I remember looking over ahead of him and he had this stricken look on his face you know like and then realized that no and that was actually and that's that's continues to this day I get introduced with James and the blue loose they're booming them

awesome this has been a most marvelous conversation well thank you brother thank you very much I wish you the best of luck on your on your continued tour and whatever multiple um projects that you have in your future thank you man thanks Mark all right all right straight ahead