WGBH Journal; Bill Eckstine

[music] Today there'll be sunshine. 'Cuz the rain was on my side of town. [music] Maybe for a change, the gods will rearrange, perhaps...] [Cavness] Good afternoon Bill Cavness speaking. It's a glorious day in Boston today, it's also the Friday before the glorious Fourth and what should be a long holiday weekend for many. So on today's GBH Journal we thought it would be nice and relaxing to hear some mellow sounds from singer Billy Eckstine. We'll also have a feature on Freedom's Journal, the country's first black-owned newspaper and to wind up the week we'll have commentary on the news from Louis Lyons. [music] And if the both of us are lonely, maybe she'll say "your heart's found its way." And maybe

it may be today [music ends] [Cavness] Black musicians like Billy Eckstine have made a major contribution to the development of that particularly American form of music: jazz. For over 40 years Eckstine has shared his love for all kinds of music, especially progressive jazz with fellow musicians, proteges, and audiences alike. In a recent interview reporter Angela Green of National Public Radio asked the noted jazz musician if there's anything similar about today's music and bop music of the 1940s. [Eckstine] First off, I'd like to say that, when, uh, in my band when we were starting progressive jazz, which I'd rather call it that than bop, because bop was a coinage of words that was done by a critic. And because of a little jazz singing that Dizzy did, and he called it, uh, this guy called it bop.

Which is a very comical name for a very very intricate type of music. And I think that progressive, the usages of new chords, the usages of different improvisations and things off of those chords, were what the progressive music at that time, what we were trying to pioneer, and it was-- [Green] What was the social climate at that time? [Eckstine] Well it wasn't, and naturally like anything else, that is, that you're starting sort of like a little revolution. It's not picked up. It's not accepted that much. Excepting with musicians, younger musicians enjoyed it. They enjoyed what Charlie Parker and Dizzy and the different ones were doing. They enjoyed that, but as far as a whole, the people were still on a, uh, on more or less a swing era thing.

[Green] Minton's was a Number One classic jazz spot back then and that's where you used to get together with your band members like Budd Johnson, Scoops Carey, and Little Benny Harris. Do you feel that there's a difference in the caliber of musicians then from those today, and if so, how? [Eckstine] Well I think there was more, there were more musicians at that time who were into the deeper parts of music. There's quite a few young musicians now who are great. I mean don't get me wrong, some good players like Freddie Hubbard, he's a good player, and well there's any number of the youngsters are playing good-- [Green] Which ones which ones excite you, Mr. B? [Eckstine] Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, Herbie Hancock and, well there's any number of youngsters that I enjoy, I go hear them all the time, I think they're great, some of the youngsters today, but during those times it was just a whole lot more. You know I don't know what it is, maybe the cause of it, whether

whether there's a whether there is a lot yet today, but I don't see as many due to the fact that things such as jam sessions and things like that, where you saw a lot of kids, young youngsters playing, it was a meeting place, we used to come into a town and like if we'd come in here to Washington we knew we could go up to The Down Beat, the 7th and T upstairs and jam, and it was a place everywhere where you could go where the guys are going to meet and jam, you know? [Green] Like Clark Monroe's Uptown? [Eckstine] Yeah, Uptown House in New York, and in Chicago all over, the 65 Club, or places like that, it was always someplace to go blow, you know? [Green] Was commercialism consistently going strong? Do you feel that jazz is a valid term for the so-called jazz today? [Eckstine] Well yeah I think so. I think everything is going to progress, you know Angela, it's got to, and that's one of the main things why we who have been in jazz for so long, had a dislike for the early

stages of rock and roll. Because with progressive jazz the things that came out of my band and the different guys, Bird, Diz, and Sonny Stitt, Dex, and G-man is all a different one. Music was moving into a very intricate and an in depth type, you had to learn, you knew what you had to learn what you were doing. Then all of a sudden here came rock-n-roll, bang, and it dropped right on back to usage of four chords, you know, which it turned it all back, it went, there was no progression on that. So we kind of got a little teed off at that but now it's gotten back again and it's beginning, you're getting great things happening now. Some of the things Quincy is doing now, you know? Using the electronic sounds and things, which I am for 100 percent when it's used correctly. You know it's just like the Fender bass when it was first started and they didn't play anything on it, all they did was play noise, you know. Now they're using it as an instrument.

And it's and it's worthy of itself in a band. [Green] What music today interests you? [Eckstine] All of it. I love any kind of music, as long as it's good. [Green] Mr. B., who was some of the talent you discovered? [Eckstine] Well I'd like to say that instead of discovering, I'd like to say that we saw each other first you know, and that must be like Sarah Vaughan. Gene Ammons. Well, not Dexter, but a lot of the guys that started in my band that came out and left, Leo Parker right outta here, out of Washington. And any number of, Fats Navarro, and then there's a lot of people that I helped. That we helped each other I should say, such as The Four Tops. And Kim Weston because this is a great little singer, Kim Weston can sing, and I think it's going to be only a

matter of time till everybody is going to discover her. [Green] Who are some of your role models? [Eckstine] I liked a lot of people playing instruments, but for singing my, I guess my biggest inspiration was Paul Robeson, as far as singing. But then into popular music, I enjoyed Bing Cosby. I enjoyed Pha Terrell, that used to sing with Andy Kirk. Another fella named Harlan Lattimore who was with Don Redman's band. I enjoyed a lot of them, but for just actually singing though, I think Paul Robeson would be the one. [Green] You talked a lot about Dizzy and you have a lot of respect for him, talk-- [Eckstine] One of my dearest friends. He's one of my dearest friends, and he's probably one of the most brilliant musicians that I've ever met in my 44 years in this business. And probably one of the

most schooled musicians as far as being self-schooled. Dizzy is a genius. And that's a reason why a lot of these young trumpet players and things like that, they'll make their little splurges and go on. But when you hear Dizzy you see that they don't fool with Dizzy. Leave him alone. [Green] What about Bird? I was also reading about the time when Bird was supposed to be performing with your band at the Paradise in Detroit. [Eckstine] Well Bird was, this when we were with Earl Hines and Bird used to go to sleep. You know I mean he would miss that first show all the time. So we got on him, we said "Hey, look man you make the band sound bad, you know, I sit here and you're not there." He said "B., I'm going to be there tomorrow I promise, I'ma stay in the theater tonight. So I'll make the first show." Sure enough we came in to work the next morning, no Bird. We played the first number.

I mean we played the first show and after the show was over they drew the curtain, we heard some noise and we looked and here came Bird coming out from underneath the bandstand, he'd been under there asleep all the time. [Green] I would really call that togetherness with the musicians, then do you think that cohesiveness exists with the musicians today? [Eckstine] No darlin' that don't happen, that don't happen anymore. I mean and it's it's a shame, it's really a shame because we were more like brothers you know? I mean but then of course times were different, we were playing a lot of one nighters, we were in a bus constantly. And you know, if you were on the road for a year, or two years, with the same guys every day you get to know everything about them, you get to know whose mother is ill, whose baby is sick, and everything about him. And it becomes a part of everybody. You mean, if I have a cold, the guys in the band feel sorry because I have a cold. If a guy's got a tooth ache I feel sorry, it's one of those

things that was a very very close thing and you never never saw, uh, I can think of all the bands, the times the different bunches of guys that I was with, I never saw any any fighting, nobody ever got in a fight. There was never anything like that. Everybody just loved each other like brothers. [Green] Why don't you think that exists today? [Eckstine] I don't know maybe it is because of there being a different type of thing, now you're not on the road that much anymore. As a, as a whole. And then now today a lot of stress, a lot of things are being put on individualism you know, everything is now being an individual, you you become an individual so as you become a star. But in those days, uh, we tried to play together and everybody was a part of something. You know people ask me today, "How did you get all of those guys together that were in your band?". I say well

we were all together when we hung out. We were just all together, period, you know, it wasn't a case of going seeking somebody to find them you know. They sought each other. [Green] They gravitated toward each other? [Eckstine] That's right. [Green] Miles Davis was with you when the band broke up in '47, along with Fats Navarro, I believe. Do you think that bands like that could ever exist again? [Eckstine] No, that's all over darlin'. That was an era. That was an era, and that's all over, that will never, a big band may come back, but not in that same way, and maybe in a different way, but that was an end of an era. Then we had, you had ballrooms where you played. There's no ballrooms anymore, there is, now its concerts. See now you come in, you do a concert, nobody dances to it. So it's it's a case of, uh, then it was people coming to dances,

you know, they don't do that anymore. [music] [Cavness] In March of 1827 this country's first black-owned newspaper, Freedom's Journal began publishing in New York City. Coincidentally, New York

State abolished slavery in that same year. As a result Freedom's Journal has generally been described as an abolitionist newspaper. However research by a University of Wisconsin journalism professor suggests otherwise. Professor Kenneth Nordin told reporter Monica Petkus of member station WHA Madison that the publishers of Freedom's Journal had more than abolition on their minds. [Nordin] Abolition, it was a theme, but it was not a major theme because the audience that the paper was aiming itself at were already free. Readership, potential readership of the publication were free blacks living in the north who had some education. Although there are a number of historians who have suggested that the primary audience of Freedom's Journal was really a white audience and that the purpose of the paper was to help to promote abolition. But any careful reading of the

publication seems to indicate that they were really consciously trying to appeal to a black audience, hoping that a white reader-- readership would be looking over their shoulder as it were. And that they were trying to define what the future of the black community up north should be, promoting education, trying to establish a sense of culture among blacks, and above all trying to us establish a sense of community among the various black ghettos in the north. [Petkus] That paper only had a lifetime of two years. So how well was it actually able to accomplish its purpose, its goal? [Nordin] I don't think the paper accomplished its goal very much. In fact, the major editor, John Russwurm, who was incidentally one of the first blacks to graduate from college, actually gave up at the end of two years. He felt that the black community had little future, prejudice among whites against blacks was too strong. The efforts of the manumission

societies to free and educate blacks was too little to effect much change, and so he thought that efforts of a newspaper would be minimal and took off for Liberia. [Petkus] Has the black press come very far since then? Is there still that kind of dismal outlook? [Nordin] Well I think that the primary goals of the paper, which was to establish a sense of a black community, to articulate what the concerns of black people were, and help to define the ways in which the black community has to solve its problems. That was a primary concern of the paper and one can see that concern being stated over and over again in black newspapers and magazines ever since that time. And I think it remains a primary concern of black publications today. [Petkus] Will there be a market or a need for black newspapers if black news and features were actually incorporated or better represented in the general media? [Nordin] That has always been a concern among black leaders, is that the white

community hasn't shown either sensitivity or enough interest in what was going on within the black community. But even if the white press was to show more interest I think there would still be a market, a need for black publications, just as there are needs for publications for other ethnic groups and for other specialized audiences. Because they in effect can do the job better than a single publication which is serving a large heterogeneous audience. [Petkus] What's the future for the black press in America? [Nordin] I think it's a strong one, the development of small community black publications tends to be a growing force. A number of the developments that have taken place in the white press, in particular the growth of newspaper chains is also taking place among black publications. So in a sense they have the same problems and the same potential that

the general white press does. [music] [Cavness] Louis Lyons sums up the week now, with his commentary on the news. [Lyons] If a reliable, long distance weather forecast were available, that would be the headline news. With a weekend coming up that will stretch to four days for many, when most holidays were clustered to Mondays for three day weekends, an exception was made of a few: Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July. Now the fourth comes on Tuesday, inviting a tempting stretch-out. Some government institutions like federal courts must keep open Monday. Some banks and stores will, and many services, but for many others Monday will be an extra day off to give a holiday from tonight to Wednesday. With

school to close for the summer, the practices to school keeping it doesn't help define the status of Monday, but the holiday will be broken for those families where wives are employed in places that work Monday and husbands in places that don't. This last day of June is also the closing day of the first half of the year. It will surprise those who haven't kept score on the weather that after a wet spring, June has been so dry the total rainfall for the half year in Boston is now no more than normal. June has had only half the normal rainfall for the month, just one and a half inches. We've been fooled sometimes by an expectation of rain that turned out to be only a spattering, like yesterday's barely measurable one-fifth of an inch. June's dryness set in the later part of the month. That's what accounts for the drying up of the new shoots on your shrubs. That was just starting after blossoming. But on the farm it's been fine haying weather, the dryness just at the right time. And of course great vacation weather for those who took June vacations. Too early for most.

June in the country is notoriously beset by black flies and midges. But the dryness has shortened their season. For the past two weeks reports from the country tell of abatement of these June pests. And of course it's the most effective mosquito control. One group who may not enjoy a long weekend holiday is the Massachusetts legislature. House and Senate have failed to agree on how to hang an anti-abortion amendment onto the state budget so as to block our governor's veto of a denial of Medicaid funds for elective abortions. The abortion issue has had more impact on the Massachusetts legislature than either of the national issues arising from California. Of these two, the Bakke case and Proposition 13, only the tax proposition appears to have provided any legislative controversy here, and anti-tax fever is taking shape on what has been nicknamed Proposition 2 and a half, which takes its name from a bill promoted by the Republican candidate for governor, Edward F. King. It would cut local

property taxes to two and a half percent of total market value of all property. The average of property taxes statewide is figured as 4.7 percent of the total market value of property. So a two and a half percent limit would about half the average property tax. This issue involved the Taxation Committee of the legislature in a five hour hearing yesterday that illustrated the bitter division that's arisen over tax cutting. Chairman Vincent Piro kept asking the advocates of the two and a half percent limit what appropriations they'd cut in their towns to reduce the tax by half. None was prepared with facts and figures to answer his statistics on current appropriations. "They're trying to intimidate this committee," Piro declared. "To ask the legislature now to pass a bill that may cut local property taxes by one and a half billion dollars is irresponsible, absolutely ludicrous." The taxation

committee circumnavigated the issue by voting 15 to 2 to ask the legislature for 10 days extension of time on the bill. Well that'll carry beyond the expected adjournment and so provide an escape hatch for members seeking re-election. A poll by CBS and The New York Times found that the anti-tax agitation generated by the California proposition has spread nationwide. Most people said they want local taxes cut, even if this cuts services. Most would not cut police or fire or school departments. Parks and public library hours were high on the list of services people are willing to cut. But highest was welfare and related social services. 41 percent would cut welfare a lot. Sixty-eight percent believed welfare was a big part of local expenses. But the poll report states that only a small part of welfare costs come out of local property taxes. Most of it is

provided by federal and state funds. An exception most people made to tax cutting: 60 percent would not make such cuts as would cost a lot of public employees their jobs. As the dust settles over the Bakke decision, it's effect is seen to narrow to Bakke and the California Medical School that now must admit him. "The fatal flaw in the medical school's rigid double track program" said Justice Powell in his deciding opinion "was it's disregard of individual rights under the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal treatment under the law." It set aside 16 places out of its hundred admissions for blacks or other minorities so whites could compete for only 84 places, but blacks could compete for those and also the 16 from which whites were excluded. "But", Powell said, "the state has a substantial interest that may legitimately be said by a properly devised admissions program involving the

competitive consideration of race." So he reversed the lower court ruling that race could not be considered. Powell thus was in the unique position of resolving both Bakke's claim and the question of affirmative action for minorities. He sided with the four who held Bakke had been denied his rights to provide a five to four decision on that. Then he joined the four who had voted to preserve affirmative action for another five to four decision. The Bakke case fractured the court to produce six different opinions, including one by White that Bakke had no standing to bring a private action under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Marshall's lament that the court had now come full cycle to end the affirmative action movement. But Marshall's despair was not accepted interpretation of the court action. The headlines the next morning agreed on a very different emphasis. "High Court supports Bakke but also affirmative action" was The Globe head. "High Court backs some affirmative

action by colleges but orders Bakke admitted" said the Times. "Bakke's victory leaves room for aiding minorities" said the Christian Science Monitor. Concern to some that the decision might upset anti-discrimination programs in employment and housing has also abated. Government heads of these agencies and the attorney general declared emphatically that such programs will be pressed and that they're based on explicit acts of Congress which are not disturbed by the court ruling against the Davis quota system. Nor would it interfere with college admissions that include race among their considerations. Powell cited as a model in that Harvard's policy of diversity that includes more than 8 percent blacks and 5 percent Hispanic and Indians in its incoming first class. Powell didn't mention that Harvard is supporting this program with 9 million dollars of student aid, which not every college has. The Labor Department reports today what we'd found out for ourselves, that

consumer prices kept on rising in May for the fifth straight month. Up nine-tenths of a percent in May. The week has seen new frictions arise between Moscow and Washington after the United States arrested two Russians on spying charges. The Soviets seized an American tractor agent on a charge of dealing in black market currency. After a diplomatic exchange both governments are agreed to release those arrested pending disposition of their cases. But then the Soviets arrested two American correspondents charging that they libeled the Soviets. Their cases come to court Wednesday. Washington has pressed Moscow on this as a violation of communications treaties. Brezhnev introduced a new phrase in a verbal attack on the United States, warning against Washington playing "the China card" against Russia. The Russian sensitivity to American-China relations was evidently piqued by Brzezinski's visit to China and consequent indications that the United States would-- [end]