Sam Rivers

D = Darryl Duncan
R = Sam Rivers

D Good afternoon, here we are. This is an interview for the Afro-American music collection. My name is Darryl Duncan and I'm interviewing Mr. Sam Rivers. Today is March 26, 1988.

Mr. Sam Rivers, you have been a saxophonist of note and it's really a pleasure for me to be here talking with you.
R Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

D Especially from my musical perspective. First, could you tell us something about your musical training and how you got started as a saxophonist?
R I got started as a saxophonist rather late, but the musical training goes back to practically birth. My father and mother are both musicians. My grandfather and his two sisters were musicians. Just about all relatives play some sort of musical instrument.

D You come from a musical family-
R Yes, I would say. My mother is a music teacher and I got started studying the piano around four or five something like that in Chicago. I was born in Alvino, Oklahoma. My father and mother were traveling - we were on tour with the Silver Tone Quartet. My father was the first tenor and my mother was the accompanist; so I was born on the road and they were out of Chicago so Alvino, Oklahoma which it say on the birth certificate was a stop on a tour. So, we lived in Chicago. My mother took a job in Shorter College in north Little Rock when I was seven to maybe ten so I came up on the campus and went to Catholic school in Little Rock.

D I've always read on liner notes and things like that that Sam Rivers is from Boston. When did you end up in Boston and what would you say about Boston that could be called a brand of your musical identity? The Boston kind of sound?
R Boston was after I had completed the military service. I was in the Navy for WWII and after that I went to Boston to study at the Conservatory. At the time I think it was a fortunate choice - I had a choice between New York or Boston and I chose Boston to further my musical growth, but I was already a musician before I went into the Navy. I wasn't in the band and there were some other trades I liked. I liked navigating and I also went to a motion picture editing school and edited films for the Navy. The musical career was already in progress so I decided to go to Boston to study more. Fortunately at that time there were quite a few musicians that went on to greater things that we were all there together. Jackie Byard, Gi Gi Grice, Quincy Jones, Alan Dawson, Nat Pierce, Charlie Mariano, and many more that I'm sure I'm missing. Frank Kidd, an alto player that was very advanced for his time. I remember his sounding like Eric Dolphy in the late forties. Everyone was laughing, of course, and scratching their chins. I remember these kinds of situations. There were always these kinds of musicians around that went past the accepted bounds. When they did, they weren't accepted as all there or a bit eccentric but never really taken seriously until the late fifties like Arnette Coleman.

D So would you say that these types of influences early in your career can be accounted for as the heavy influence on your progressive style - your forward looking style?
R I think all the influences combined - we're all sponges you know if we're open enough, people that are not open get it anyway, we don't remember where we got it from but we think it's original-so I'm pretty cautious about saying this or that about my originality because things come to me - I don't know where they come from - If I came out with it, it could very well be someone else's, so I'm careful about things about originality because there are so many facts and phrases and ideas bombarding us at all times. Whether we're receptive or not, it doesn't really matter - it comes in anyway. Some of it pierces the armor, so to speak. But, my influences were of course Charlie Parker and Lester Young before that and Coleman Hawkins. Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis really influenced me at that time.

D I'm glad you mentioned Dizzy and Miles. I want to make a point about each of them. You're in Ann Arbor now playing with Dizzy. That has to be an intense feeling for you to be playing with one of your mentors.?
R It's the extreme ultimate honor. For me it's very fortunate during my career to have been associated with musicians that have gone on to super heights. From Boston working in association with Tony Williams later on, with Todd Dameron, Chet Baker, Red Rodney, Gi Gi Grice, Joe Gordon on trumpet. These are musicians that are part of the history. 3

D What's it like playing with Dizzy?
R Well, creative, artistic, and professional. I remember the first time I heard him, I was in the Navy and was listening to all these big records and one came on with Billy Eckestine's band and then came this trumpet player. I called everybody because I knew all the musicians but wasn't in the band. I called my brother because he was in New York and I was stationed in California and if something was happening on the East coast it would take a while before it would get to the West coast. My brother plays bass and he knew "Groovin' High" and these other compositions which hadn't arrived on the West coast. So when I got out of the Navy in forty-five everything was hitting the fan. It was just an offhand choice to go to Boston instead of New York and the better music schools except for Julliard were in Boston at the time. They were so close anyway. As far as jazz and the music being played, Boston is still high on the list. So it was during the latter part of the forties and early fifties that there was an intense concentration o,n substitutions, imposing chords, on chords (different). After a while it became clear that you could use any note with any chord and it used correctly would sound rig ht. But, the problem was to make it in the style that you wanted and also to be expressive creatively. So for me, it was a problem I really couldn't work out. Then I had the good fortune of hearing Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor and the so called "chains" were broken. It was out of a plastic kind of music considering some of the younger musicians would say "Wait a minute, you can't do that 'cause I heard a change 4 there." It was the idea of consciously avoiding some things. It had to do with changes. Some other musicians couldn't get the idea of it, I could understand the problem because if you've been playing a form for ten to twelve years and it's taken you at least that long to do it in a way, you would be comfortable and able to create after learning the basics. Then for someone to say forget about that and just blow what you feel. So it presented a dilemma for quite a few musicians, but I find it very interesting. So I still do concerts that are kind of a spontaneous kind of conscious free flow, without anything planned and just use my creative ability and experience and play some music - perform something - make something creative.

<SAXOPHONE>

R I'm just stopping because we don't have time for me to do this all night! The same applies to the other instruments. It was very easy for me to break the chains of harmony and actually extend my consciousness and level of musical knowledge and experience to encompass this next revolution or evolution that occurred in the music. So at this point I was playing the piano all my life. I can't remember a time when I wasn't. My mother would say "Sit here and play piano" while the other boys were out playing softball. I remember those days and they were very hard for me. I must say at this point in my life I'm very glad she did it. Otherwise I wouldn't be here - so it's all to my Mom. 5 I had a similar problem with the piano. I could play all these classical pieces, I could play changes, I could play chords, but I couldn't solo like Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, or Nat King Cole - all these great pianists. It was very demoralizing if you know what I mean. So I never was into playing bebop solos. Bebop is probably one of the most difficult styles to play on piano. I find no problem with it on saxophone. It fits - Charlie Parker. But playing it on piano was - I never got it, which is one of the reasons I am a saxophonist today. But with the next evolution in the music which occurred around 1959, '57, '58 with Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and later with Archie Shepp, and Pharoh Sanders, and Bill Strumpets, and the Bley people, and many more - it took the music to another level, So all of a sudden I started playing the piano - it happened overnight. All the experience and playing all these years and now improvising on piano comes to me like improvising on saxophone. PIANO In a very broad way, for me to have been involved with the music of the sixties and seventies has really enhanced my creativity in going back to the Bebop again with Dizzy Gillespie. I am far more open because of the experiences with other musicians that I've performed with. I don't know about my originality. I've heard so many people, performed with so many, I have so many influences. I hope it comes out. You are the sum total of your experiences (that's not original) so I belong to that specimen of humanity. 6

D Sam, what do you feel about where music is now and about people like George Butler pushing the new figures in the music? Do you feel it's healthy? Do you feel there should be some of that pushing on other people? What do you feel?
R I think it's good that the young musicians are being represented. They are the most talented and the most creative young musicians - Marsalis, Freeman, also Donald Harrison, all from New Orleans just about. New York has some also. It's a very creative time now.

D What do you feel about the direction as far as where music is headed now like Miles and his new musical developments? You can elaborate on our experiences with Miles what progression the music is headed on.
R Miles has been one of my influences on tenor. Maybe it can't be told now but I was very influenced by Miles playing, Dizzy's playing, and by the other saxophone players. On directions in music, they are still available, it's just that some are harder for public appeal than others for whatever reason. It's probably advertising - it couldn't be anything else because I've been with too many companies that have made a profit from the avant-garde. It's about the choices of producers. It's all right because the honorable thing is that they are presenting young talented musicians and not fly-by-nights. There is always a place to show creativity in the tradition. I'm fortunate that I'm able to perform in all different styles. I do performances of works have been written for symphony orchestra and then play with blues bands - T-bone Walker, B. B. King. I play avant-garde and then bebop 7 which is of course my source and roots. So many people say, "I didn't know Sam Rivers could play bebop." I guess I've been around so long and stayed in the avant-garde for twenty years - but I was always doing different things.

D So you're making a broader statement about the music in general and the whole tradition - that it's a continuum.
R Yes, it's been one straight-line. I consider it part of the creativity and the versatility in the music. There are so many different ways it can still go. And since I'm a graduate of Boston University and studied symphonic music, not jazz, my basic training is in European concert as most of the musicians my age. We learned everything by figuring it out. There weren't any transcribed solos by Charlie Parker or John Coltrane. We had some things around. We learned the solos ourselves but we didn't use it for anything other than analysis. So if it's transcribed you just look at it. You don't need to play it. You can use it for an exercise. I would recommend that. Coltrane transcriptions used as an exercise rather than an exercise book because the exercise books don't have any chords printed on top. If you practice, you want to do as many things as possible. Learn the chord, play the notes at the same time. All these things must work at the same time.

D Well Sam Rivers, I want to thank you so much for giving us this interview.
R It's been my pleasure. I'd like to come up and do some more. I have lots of music that I've composed over the years and its sitting on the shelf gathering dust - but meanwhile I'm still writing. Maybe you can get someone on the faculty to invite me down with my music 8 for the symphony orchestra. - I have music to perform. So it's been a pleasure to talk to you and we can do this again sometime.

D Well, on that note we'd like to conclude the interview and we're signing off.

END OF INTERVIEW