Oliver Nelson Interview, 1962-05-13

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beth no hello again this as much coal as moore says all the air again to wring a good music and on this trip to add an interview with an articulate an important jazz figure oliver nelson and therefore we speak with oliver i liked kind of the set of background here our guest is covered and regulatory authorities are these of time he's worked with quincy jones count basie duke ellington benny goodman and the lead off the orchestras the hills was a lawyers and he's noticed about the thirty year old more attention in one of the fourth floor that amount includes alaska last but as well he has an ma degree after studies at washington university and live in university in the nineteen fifties then

that said who lives between self help you know he had one of the reaction on your afro american sketches composition and on iran to play some of that later the first off the limelight as some of the reviews i take it you've referred to be a composer before auriemma seems to be working out that way i really like to play the really love to play but to tell you and i were just talking a promotion man one big reason was a very talented musician he can find enough work to sustain himself as a player but if i can write and be in the same predicament and also when you're on an instrument right as that's still mostly truant and i think in terms of lines and only play one line at a time on a single line instrument like a

saxophone and a pianist and you can play as many as you can play you know actually with your fingers kelly what does come close in a sense of the long playing record made to public is a great deal more freedom than they had in the old days when you're sure you have to say anything but it's a lot better now you can express yourself a lot more oh yes i learned can also provide enough time for such things as your afro american sweden some of the things that i really early days at duke ellington you put out something in and in the days of the seventy eight would be in or maybe to twelve inch records knew that ronald reagan about every four minutes and i and then together with a great sound that we get on a high five fm i guess it's very satisfying to you right kelly is we spoke of the glasgow field who'd you like and what you take ideas from an undeveloped or what you feel about classics in relation to jazz or i

suppose were getting the third stream you know it's a complicated point but actually my i should say most my training as i would call it class collide to use that word but it only word i could think i hate to use the word serious but most of the time i feel that that classical music is sort of the air pitchfork for me and that i never could've written forty pieces forty minutes of music you know without some knowledge of how to sustain myself musically and technically at all and bart top represents to me i guess more than any body the man most able to do that stravinsky conduct that stravinsky also writes something that i kind of pieces where is everything comes from a single idea use it over and over again and if you guys every time so you know i can actually tell if it's from the same piece or it's just relate it but i don't know i've found that their serious music

dancers composers they have made a profound influence i think and now in this way i i just feel that it's been very important and yet it doesn't seem to me although that you could be accused of criminal lying on a black spaces between mccain and now there's talk on a thing it seems to me that you had not deserted knowledge in your opposition why actually the music that i write us a jazz is different in music that i write for myself and i have the saxophones another woodwind quintet a divertimento for string orchestra one sure chamber seventy and these pieces evolve and perform and they're all different are mike lee and aesthetically appealing i stand that you're the musical director prestige records now as nelson you find this gratifying you were have ideas about how we want the repertoire and the

general purpose of christie's records damon right now more or less concerned about the sound and getting the musical aspect of it i leave up to be an imam and i usually conduct an arranged the sessions pretty much made daughter the car itself is made of that is suppose i were some artist like say abbot jones who was the senate wanted to do to record some solace who actually decides what is to be recorded in such cases the animal well a net as casey an army a bonanza enter is while she's happy go lucky she doesn't worry about achievements piano man pick them into our lives begin this case of prestige as such but is there a conflict between what an artist lost almost always the whole lobster and what the record companies use for the record got me usually tries to determine what's going to sell and they are issues we want to do something that's gonna be good

musically and gratifying and so you know the odds are there any artist they can say this i will go and i will not allow that was write a contract to the fact that we have quite a few of them to be pretty important amtrak tell me how many instruments do you play anton so many of the problems that you have liked to know and i know i know you're very famous for your alto but i know you pick up others' on the time to chat while the saxophone jamming it takes into account all of the islands the soprano saxophone which it was four years ago when i gave it up then coltrane comes very subtle ways that i can say i'm steve lacy called fail it doesn't quite a lot of the loaf while he sought a playing a soprano more than a tenant he's getting off a lot was brought it out of the tenor and baritone bass clarinet an irregular b flat clarinet and seafood and talent here as well foes the actually that's important

if you're going to compose out there you have all the notes from their chance to get a predominantly white well i think us are horizontally anyhow that is from an artist you sound you know a whole range of all instruments and i see the artist you when i'm at the keyboard but again is usually just for my own benefit to make sure that what you like to record live their adult male an old eric so why well i should say one of my most of what could you call a bizarre radical prison but the area is is one of these people that i really enjoy that one why is very honest very sincere lot of times people aren't quite sure if he's being honest musically because he doesn't think that may seem to sound strange or seen as sound as if he's just doing anything you know anything it comes to his mind that's actually a certain kind of freedom which i wish i hadn't because the mine follow training is almost too strong no rule these things

they complete freedom or yvonne elliman or lets different again because how i do own it right but erick is well into the varied saxophone all although they sound similar and game play the saxophone or as they will not only do you ever have in a sense a battle when you record with another saxophonist well at first i thought about that but i realized for instance illustrate a hit album going to a contrast in kind of saxophone would be better than trying to eliminate it in the mind i guess you're a diplomat as well as a mission for was a vote would sell on mistake the first on side a it's been it says so should we say in laws you're that was oliver nelson's images and

like a few words from you on the nature because it's you know what do you like to have at the way the musicians david kendall who were the musicians in well and golf played bass clarinet on their rigid winds just the va and roy haynes i still follow his piece actually is it isnt true two of our talk i am very fond of forgot and minor seconds mean a great deal to me from an expressive quality and this piece is merely that to use a minor seconds likely at is close together and then to use the animals not so close which it becomes a night so it's actually the same note that and when you transpose it to become something else is no then well it's sad to the facts about top nine in search for dolphin and considering how great he was pretty pretty poor circumstances so is tragic i could never understand how that

can happen says he was important people know bought it i think as character came to his rescue and gave him enough money to pay for his medical expenses but to die and not have any body nobody knows where all these famous musician if he were alive today he certainly would be successful well say so for instance schoenborn two instruments can never met each other in california although they live not too far from each other but they never said anything the vision that anger sometimes they can become you know i don't think they're quite human beings and you know i was a place in one day rex latest works on exercises and changing rhythms and it is very fascinating to listen to but oh my what you might call a squirrel maybe to be more reliant on long if i don't quite understand it does is it necessary

for a person you think if they like music too and the sort of stunning along with you don't want to write it you that misses them distortions in time as i know is that there is an enormous number of complicated explanations sometimes on liner notes mind and so no in that now that i have i have noticed this and i wonder if it's important in other words do you believe that the jazz music is becoming a serious subject of study as well as just listen to what is becoming a serious study but mainly composers are beginning to feel the need to express themselves and some of the time it's hurtful for him this autumn or years you know it's so rigid that sometimes you can break out and if you have say an old time rhythm section and this has happened to me recently why should sail time either but when overcome at plan for about three three weeks i found it very hard to plan the band simply because they always played on top of the beat all the time and never

wavered and nine am as a result after three weeks i started sounding pretty much like wes dr liz was all unconscious i realized that was the only way that i could play us ana blows swaying kind of saxophone and still be compatible with the bet music and when people think that when you sidestepped that here you're not really leaving with them are you you're leaving for foreigners what trudeau and so if you have a if you could see it this way to say that all time is either basically in two or three that is if the rhythm section could play constantly and four four i could play anytime i want and at the end this is where it matters if it comes out and this is why a lot of people used to tell me that sometimes they wondered why i played as they call it behind the big but actually if there were twelve measures of flow for four bills i would sort of play between five four

and four for and have to make up the ego number of beats and arrived at the same conclusion that didn't come out right at the camera but everybody in the process of what ellie isn't this almost on another level what they do more likely in the improvisations and that in the end the melody as well as of them and i'd write my dad and then tow it happens after another words a well together simple example perhaps two simple but when sarah long for instance it takes a chorus and it he starts working and loyal persuade him that when you want to know if he ever get back back sure she says the important thing i'm terri air on this is it is this is watch the boys he was done as the airlines began and i had occasion to give them to be on the set when she was making a moving picture one time

and she had come and mother hurriedly and pianist i think it was jimmy jones' at the time i've forgotten but term it was almost in a kind of inadequate they were no songs to her sword he hadn't been found and she would start out in on and should stop women to go in this technical are not a third so she founded only sushi guessed it right the first time so you think this too as an asset i suppose in all homes both so i imagine diana washington to it and it's kind of a natural isn't that is that not to study a melody i think so this is a kind of free know again as long as you know the melody is for us and you can do this but a lot of musicians had no idea what the melody is a play do that on london this is what makes it sound better everybody use home i would like to if you will although nelson

other witnesses more jazz with max cola were in the process of interviewing me ms director prestige records oliver nelson they're well known for his saxophone playing his composing and is arranging i would like to take one from the mood still all the mirror and i said they look at the number thirteen and then i think of phlegm winchester here while this would be a good all right let's try that gee i haven't heard this one a long time this is girl as uday what that means you know i don't have a policy sometimes if you spell on backwards you've drained i think a natural with gray and green green beans as you had with that well we're not exonerate go and as ej there we have as

uday with oliver on alto or ten of this trip which one has a lemon zest are on vibes richard blind piano jurors to be a bass and roy haynes on drums a very nice cops however the nocturne i think is the title of your all of us and another tribute to buy what you've done here had taken of rose of our talks and develop the village as animals just a little sign of it as european tie for cannibal animals and scales it never seemed to pop up an eyesore call western music there's a collection of agnes folk songs important compiled in core diet did this back in thirty eight it was a huge blow maybe about four inches thick and it's not a pram pram enable final in paris close review copies in existence no but i had i guess a pleasure to look through it and play it through play through

this and i found that the animal somehow seemed typical of our talks music in fact most of our docks music comes from full music that has as arjun position lived and they're made an impression upon strange animals i guess on speaking out that one of this plant here is oliver nelson's dr oliver nelson with lemon chester there you have not to a woman played by oliver nelson with a group that true we mentioned before and gesture wants to be the egg and roy haynes before going around food your sketches out one oliver it earned i'd like to ask you what do you think happened to dance bands do think they still have any a place that you think they will come back is so in one way somehow i think have a dance band that have a future

it's a strange feeling that i lazily all this way because i don't know i've seen a lot of rehearsal band i've had on numerous occasions to hear her school bands and now they are having people write music and they're rehearsing at regular intervals is spending a lot of money and they have no idea what they're going to delay feel something's going to happen it is rehearsing getting ready for something that nobody said anything about well i think perhaps if that way there's another year or so the modeling did something well you probably the biggest problem is expense trying to get a sideman papers unlike phil worked to leave to go out of town late one night and this is a big problem i understand the few bands of unruly gap together i suppose we might think of a commercial that's been searches west

brom is that they based on the west coast would the gentlemen can work in films and energy wasted your back on our vistas and can be with their families and then when they do go off and then travel the country it's from america's image is layla to finally do it florida vacation to the sky but here in these debts is a problem i remember last year i went to i guess was pittsburgh with quincy jones we played a concert and we started back when the argument took almost three days as because it's not and the highway and maybe an inch of snow in the pretty young man joshua to them for three days so i was shot it was so a lot of well i had two record dates and an estimated that a contractor and now you know they have a tendency not to call you anymore when they know you go on a time if youre always available a new article will tell you oh what's the demise of bands now there are some people who say that bopp killed a big

band you think that's too another word explore new avenues such as full of disease big band was given about that time big bands were still reeling than others and with good man like red fabulous billy eckstein memory great moment i just take into account my two sisters who came up with the big bands when i was young as well they said that there was a place in st louis called castle ballroom band used to come through a really bad every wing and jamie chan this week your lines in the earth everybody and he said that they could detect a change in the music and that it was hard to dance to an attendance crowds fell off and pretty soon the big bands are gone now this probably happened all over the country that you know not only to st louis but it does unable to dance because i guess nineteen forty bob

but the fifties was more or less concerned about freedom of the musician the audience and no consideration at all for the people that were going to come here and play in the expenditures of having a big band that helped phillip and i think it's a combination of a lot of things all the bad publicity would build a listener in how i was speaking with nat hentoff on this wonderful about the subject is answered the question with a bag he said yes he said one reason he made that they had to add sort of faded away as they did one and it was because that they had gotten so stuck on everything ozone really any new interesting ideas of a thing and he said even even if it comes back it will have to come back in a little different way in other words it won't be exactly the way it was before you feel it too i was going to be changed it's got to bring an estonian it did what does happen and now it has to happen people continue to grow musically and artistically and somehow when

you get a bunch of young people together that is innovative and he's a wonderful major jazz figures actually came out of the big bands today is the biggest example now we get to the ap's delhi's he's thought this is the afro american sketches and all and also i will tell you that we have had a following when i first played this or jazz it did and they were both excited about what you were doing because as i played it i would play one movement of it and then give your liner notes on it in order to sort of wires them up along on what you were trying to to an apparently both the ideas that were expressed in yuan the way the music was played and giving quake hit or we're doing here oliver and exactly and how did you go about it and system wide it was in the nature of an assignment that usually these things and deadlines me is an

indiana man has said we want you to doing well a folk album i can imagine when he asked me to do this he had something else in mind women daylight comes a while you know it's i go well you paint a picture but they expect you to paint a picture that they have no idea when it's going to be like with me that's a way it's always been but i had an idea that i didn't want to write an album like herbie mann like to call it the only labor and us and many of these people i had to write them something that meant something to me and had to be a part of whatever i had to say at what wyden was so hard to do it for the longer they pay about twelve days when it took about three months to think about this and you know you do it for us anything about bombs hitting forty years

twelve days is a bottle and i had to get the idea of how one and a treat as it is to treat his darkly arm chronologically oh one so i had to dubow chronologically ahead historically and try and make one who own one piece go from one to the other and still be related to the overall culture and the second side of the album and since one melody is predominant true for tracks parts of hidden places exist on the first set but does in a subtle way and i'm alive that was a matter of fact all way through all it takes is one message to jonah lehrer emancipation gluten as a year an unknown up north disillusioned and freedom dance for certain social and racial overtones in the us would like to comment on that why haddad know very much above

african artists or for poorer then presented the biggest problem so as a result i didn't fall with africa to mention that message and jungle where were the only two tracks that will you know any kind of referenced african all and the other five are based primarily own experience as a person on the american negro would feel in this country so emancipation blows and as a picture a musical picture of what it must've been like to say experience freedom from any kind of enslavement and that's like cursing being thankful for civil and then celebrating but then sought of apprehensive about the whole thing of what is it means going out and bring on new responsibilities most of them i guess a plantation and rose finally had to think of themselves as much of a big problem say too say well lebanon to live you know like i have a day off and they can't make

any decisions about so one thing is to be pensive and apprehensive about it as a yearning was mainly an account to try and picture it a musical icon of what it must've been like to want to return to a former kind of exist say without the responsibilities you know now i have to pay taxes but i would like to not pay taxes always have to go back is a low growing up and going up as an attribute in a way to the few american negroes had tried to make a change or an adjustment after hearing about what it was like in the novel and to make this trip as a major effort on their part they make the trip they get there and nothing has changed so appeared of disillusionment probably for as much as fifty sixty eight and that's where the time that particular title came from this illusion

and then finally the period in history from say maybe in nineteen forty which i guess the first the second world war which saw the firm changed everything i would say i remember my brother not only that he was in the alabama or some place in a tank and that's when they had everything separate in the armed services where cohen a tank owned everything they had the neighbor officers and enlisted men and there was some sort of unpleasant incident there were the shocking kornfeld they needed anything so this battalion take the tiny became very upset about it and took these tanks out of this you know the stock you know where they were in charge at this time they've chosen people and it never reached the paper's you know like you would pick up business today he said there weren't in some like forty eight hours they're all being sent overseas la made a big name for

themselves in germany at the end of the line but when he came back he was not going to stand for anything because he'd been shot at shot a couple of times in the sand you know if he had to fight for the country he was at least entitled to live like a human being so from nineteen forty five until maybe nineteen fifty four said when the supreme court i think and that's when we used to sing to change and people filing had a point of view a direction aspirations and no wit education the korean built for instance paying for my college education so the country can be all that you know and i found this out and freedom dance and musical appraisal of the whole cristo at the beginning of that tone is related to that as the anger solution is just use for about thirty two measures and then there's a

free section six for time and it's supposed to be a day in service of a frenzied dance and you and the piece about being physically exhausted so that sense of what it said so nice happy not unknown candidates who will good well and that i mean an alibi as much of oliver nelson's afro american sketches as is possible in the time we have left over the closing portions of fallen off since afro american sketches with a quite a large man how many pieces twenty years twenty numbering in some places as many as fourteen fifteen listen very good side people online say to people with names of their own has a very loyal and joe newman who else we have ferry carrying a list and then reacting but childers and money another fine

musicians and it is one that we are saying goodbye to now because the time is up with an income station with oliver nelson saxophonist conductor arranger and composer and a musical director christie's records who has been giving us his years on the jazz scene and talking about his work and it has been a great pleasure thank you know it's this again tonight well i thought oh well one of these numbers i just had to cut out of it it'll be the numbers were other many of them in the interview in all probability or you could start out with jungle where that's about my mentors but this too which i live alone jungle land the sketches i even start with that as it we will they won't have that time how long roughly rbc i most want to free for

alaska gas for tsa announced not tone and also agitate you can just like something that you would want your advice well i would judge and how long would you say these are roughly three youth forman announcer and that should be about four five recently now isn't sixty four top finance word me has done a world with two women and a visitor reagan entered the us how long as they don't dance to get that in the last about seven minutes well i was careful to say that closing portions so well i think or maybe i can only cut out one of these or space than i guess all it i think i can the

unintelligible the tape over to find a spot and it may not be the joy ma na ma find a graceful spot we're going to be the choice of flow of the speaking or all of them published in its economy an ornament mcdonald's fare but it's possible it made him at or on those be at that last thing i think because i said i'm already played it anyway and the mongols when you think of the process as well the idea and it's pro week from this one is they would would that be eliot gave over this you know in la this is a very on the time was a man i'm blue suits and it's a twenty second twenty one or twenty thirty at nine thirty am and thirty and then it will be repeated i don't know a week or so later in in cleveland and then about a week later all

was as far west yeah these are westinghouse own stations and we have a contract with them too we provide a certain amount of music most of it is because as our daytime problem is mostly classical and that we also provide them with on a lot of jazz and ambitions as you noted the kits days a week in my shows on it as well so we just go and the general service and they pay us about it as the non commercial fm station is that something that only anecdotal we provide the math see that is addressing the us who as i think in the us for the motion were on amazon and it was used for i know i have all at the lyric

is a gm has news i'm howie only about a new year for congo and groom cantor is that at that villager congo isn't that the this is the end and that again is that this is the average nest egg again in your viewfinder misspelled words when this peaceful on says music is tall levees and then in a convoy of the fitness movements although aren't you scientists saw the sun all about every distance is there's been on were milan wilson knew the years

ok i don't think i'll be bugging you know for much with an immediate usual well i will say is the thirteenth you really do that audie i'm buy them flying that this one's and trying to the cuts to an ally long for love life fell into i like a really get the you know there were bodies down tenderly and internal momentum good show tunes or get used to those girls visiting here you can use a dog and by the way give the operation the station has room for such things

is the burgess meredith reading they rented or poor poetic and all of things and not affect any of those very wide berth if i didn't do that on thursday serling sterling was sailing sailing the twilight zone or your internet that same story and roddey we can use the money badly that's english football has a will they can do too much of that but i mean anything that that has a little motor america's woes true for me and i don't know if you haven't spanish i think you had one international if we got to the last years i was quite well recorded i thought through which you see we have to tonight a weekly we have what i have a spanish on spanish language and then

sometimes i'm begging for records because many of them are have advanced in on whose title those things as long long to do you think they'd get more i have a lot fellow irish week's news well sometimes we don't have much for only an hour we catch one on we belong is educational radio network or tied up to in almost a march and we do get one from last and only put them in doing much on that though we we had one whole day of live for music here from nine in the morning until eight o'clock a narrative such an artist at all as that was an obama but he had gone with his job and with beards and senate but what was really the bomb who was the

american media and they didn't even have the sense to bring their own claxton of them and the thing beyond and they had you know a half a dozen people in the audience and then somebody would come that they knew him and bring their friends but it never built up too much of an audience they couldn't seem to get anybody interested nothing worse than a bad comedian a whole a lot of a set of an investor the manatees that they didn't and and it wasn't today i wasn't i didn't hear all of them because as some people at the un envoy anyone stand up and i talked back i guess that they were trying to get some names to you know come here and so this was an animated and civil war two and interested and i think i know why not say what it was is

very well today friday from those things out and mainly which is named lavinia reveal of this to a certain extent of course ali very well over the city all of the laws that the some beautiful stuff you know i like that he's full of melody is served as you all the spanish rule is anonymous because the midst of a beautiful monument yes and it's it's quite interesting to me yes the lobos is resilient and that's where you know music is calm fallow of the south and now those routes and he said that he could play i was great at that you

know it's like three hours to do is where a lot of the films that will be an evangelical moral authority is all of us and this goes way back even been donors there was that people began to really listen to sample it's first audience for moscow there are only three of those years since the us remember falling that's grantland loses then he had this mall all the little asian a couple of things i think and the message was a call that the lead was don't want the voting yes but it really was working in ireland has

blue in the polls for further is the westminster thought is he has that going on in effect well women haven't a big problem with this business about sound this is what i'm interested in rudy does mean nowadays isn't mollified his equipment he's been