yrs is a style of meaningful simplicity, profound, rhythmically infectious, that defined a genre. u coaxed the blues -- skulking like a vagrant among all those intimidating scales, arpeggios & chromatic ornaments -- to come out in front & out of hiding, to colonize yr compositions like an occult infection. u called the gospel down to possess yr melodies, make them shout, speak in cloven tongues, elicit thunderous blakeyian press rolls, cross beats & fills; quiet tremblings that grew into frenzied explosions. u broke free of bebop, keeping the bop, firing it up to make it hard & ductile; distanced yrself from the so-called cool & chamber jazz forms. u showed the way for others to follow, especially the sons who would write songs for the father – that would be u, the intrepid pop & now, perhaps, the venerable hard bop grandpop!
a unique & most unusual jazz pianist, yr tone & conceptions were delicate without being fragile. u could not collaborate nine gestative months with miles with thin skin. u might have been vulnerable but u didn’t bruise or frighten easily. he liked what he saw in u, what u brought to the table, those hints of lennie tristano, lee konitz & even horace silver – yr quiet rage. he liked the way the piano sounded when u played. yr highly nuanced touch; those single note tone phrases that rang like freedom (u let them ring as if u wanted all & sundry to savor the decay); those block chords & rhythm independent melodies, never aggressively percussive, more often like a junkie shrinking back from bright lit corners. & yet yr themes & figures were exquisitely crafted disturbances
in space & time, studies in the kind of
pain only the soul can know, kinda blue,
abstracted from bent time. u’d take a
stone of a phrase in yr solo, toss it in
yr modal soup & let the ripples spread,
extend their rhythms, melodic passages
& harmonies. then, within the same solo,
u’d drop that stone again & again,repeating that transformative dance each time. an unfolding beautiful to behold. so unlike the day-to-day ugly of cold sweats, malaise, anxiety/depression that boy heroin brings; the cramps,chills, muscle & bone aches & nausea,the menacing, often terrifying phantasmagora lurking just outside of eye & earshot, the temporary fix that propped the music up,that propped u up.the good news is that u kicked, kicked the boy to the curb.but u failed to strain yr impulses, yr social alienation & sensation-seeking thru & into the safe refuge of the vaunted impressionism & introverted classical sensibility folks so admired about u, that influenced so many young, brilliant players. & thus u fell under the fatal spell of the girl. alas, yr mistress wasn’t music, but cocaine.
what possessing spirit took u, rufus? was it patrick mor maccrimmons’shade? reeking of oolitic loam, the hedgerows & boggy ground of the winged isle of skye? did he invade yr dreams, a speeding bonny boat like birds on the wing, across time, haunting u with strains of the big music, the pibroch & the ceòl mòr? or maybe it was some anonymous egyptian prodigy, from the courts of isis or ra, who played the shawm, the folk oboe or bamboo clarinet. it matters not that trane, rollins & stitt drove u out of the tenor clan for u found yr niche & fulfillment, donning yr macleod tartan kilt, yr nigerian fila (or any assorted knit hat u chose), tossing the
u, who cherished irony & paradox as a way to break out of conventional music making ventured even into stark atonality in yr endless quest to disrupt the basic unity of europe’s collective psychism; its imperial drive for conquest, expansion, austere christian salvation. u were there eshu-ing, trickerating & dancing at the crossroads; carrying messages, re-coding movements from tone to sacromagical tone –zoning!
yr ark -- a life raft for breathing black history & its marginalized players, composers, writers & poets -- was abrasive, had a hard political edge like yr abrupt, percussive, bop-like keyboard style stirring big chords like fatha hines, tatum & erroll garner. u, hunched like a long, tall wraith, rocking over the keyboard, attacking from one end to the other; a tidal wave crashing on the rock-like mainstream, wearing its roughness smooth. on its winds yr distinctive, syncretic compositional & solo voice. yr musicians, poets & artists taking off in as many odd directions as their numbers, yet meshing cohesively in a funky subliminal groove.
"If you see me up there on the stand smiling, I'm lost!"
fatha hines
u made the music long before they named it one of its many “fathas” (tho’jellyroll claimed it); when america in heat backed up to jim crow’s fence & let the players get to her & de dip do bop, do it.
took a gig @ seventeen for fifteen bucks a week played piano in der liederhaus to eat & earn yr keep. that pittsburg club, yr music matrix, molded & begat yr insouciant, exhuberant avante garde; yr cheek.
met satchmo in chicago, joined his band & played on some of the most important records ever made. 1928 @ the grand terrace café, u were al capone’s piano man, led yr own big band, had it made.
for eleven years u led that band, three shows a night four shows each saturday, broadcast on open mikes across the nation’s airways. mr. b made his debut & a parade of greats followed ‘cause u did it right.
no less than j mcshann & young art tatum tuned u in, did not nod or sleep ‘til u went off the air; took in yr lightning octaves, steady left hand tenths, yr chords, trills, two-fingered runs & glisses; yr soul pulse/vision.
& then u faded until ’64. perhaps u peaked too soon but never did u play a melancholy note, a despairing tune. perfervid pianist all the while, u broke out solo, to amaze again those who forgot or never heard yr boon.
u showed us how to swing, create real jazz playing alone, a whole orchestra by yrself. no one ever got yr style, none! for nineteen years until u died, u were the daddy, first on every poll, the real fatha of jazz piano, the only one.
"i only play the piano, but tonight god is in the house."
fats waller, announcing art tatum
bird aspired to play yr right hand, but not even he could run with u, catch up to u because u were so ahead of yrself; more fly than he. oh how he thanked his stars that u -- with yr perfect pitch & nimble fingers effortlessly playing the impossible; cataract blind in one eye, not seeing at all out the other -- had chosen to play piano & not the saxophone. that night in ’33 at new york’s morgan’s bar when u cut up j.p. johnson, willie “the lion” smith & fats waller with yr two-fingered runs & self taught technique, reharmonized melodies & strong, swinging pulse, u sent a message, a shot heard round the fickle jazz world: there can only be just one!
