Interview with Ron Horton about Genius Envy
by Frank Tafuri
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| Photo by Lourdes Delgado |
Horton: Right, so everyone has this period of their life when they reexamine something that they poo-pooed a few years earlier. But I did that for a few years and I examined a lot of music -- and I could probably examine more Duke Ellington or more Louie Armstrong -- but I think I know the periods that were great or the compositions or, in Louie's case, the period that was really great for him and, I'm sorry, "Hello, Dolly!" wasn't one of his great periods.
Tafuri: Yeah, but the "Hot Sevens" and the "Hot Fives."
Horton: It's an interesting session. I don't think it's the most clear example of Andrew's music. So, this went on for a few years and I was totally into it. I saw Andrew in 1984 -- I guess that was the first time I saw him -- and then I missed a few years. There still is something to me -- even after playing with him and helping him with his music a little bit -- there's still something that Andrew has that nobody else has. Completely indefinable. He has that melodic thing that I'm really attracted to.
Tafuri: So, you were really -- I don't know if "enamored" is the right word -- but you were really into Andrew's music. Is that maybe the basis for your tune "Genius Envy."
Horton: Not the title, so much, but the bridge of that tune with its counterpoint and the harmony is definitely based on -- I wasn't conscious of it, but after I wrote it I said there's definitely -- a strong Andrew influence there. ["Genius Envy"] also has two other influences, Interestingly enough, two people that you're very interested in. The opening riff was based on something I'd heard Tom Varner do ("dh-dh-DUH-duh, dh-dh-DUH-duh, duddl-duddl-duddl-duddl- duddl-duddl-duddl-duddl") either on an album or a live thing and I'm not even sure I consciously took it. It found it [out] later when he and I were playing "Genius Envy" together and I realized, after hearing Tom play that, that I had derived that [phrase] from something he had played. It was a real roundabout thing. And the other person who influenced it was Tony Malaby because Tony and I used to play with Rez Abbasi, the guitar player, and I used to hear Tony warming up. Nobody warms up in a more melodious, beautiful fashion than Tony Malaby. I know that's a weird compliment, but a lot of guys when they pull the horn out of the case they start running scales or trumpet players just try to get loud notes, high notes, whatever --
Tafuri: He plays those lonnnng tones --
Horton: Yeah, it's like he's literally warming up the horn. And that also inspired "Genius Envy."
Tafuri: Okay, but what I was asking is that the title ["Genius Envy"] had nothing to do with being envious of Andrew?
Horton: The title derived from the fact that I felt that when I look around -- and I don't want to get too negative in our conversation here -- if there's one thing that has disturbed me over the last fifteen years is the emphasis on envying geniuses of past years, particularly geniuses who have passed on and can't respond to all this "praise" on them. It's not just praise. It's like the more you praise Louie Armstrong, the more you praise Cootie Williams, the more you praise Rex Stewart, the more you praise Duke Ellington (to the hilt), Monk, the more you hammer it home that these were geniuses ('They're geniuses, you gotta play their music'), the more they don't do anything a lot of times, but just play their music verbatim. And then they say, "Wow, these guys are geniuses, they're geniuses!"
Tafuri: Those players today are recreationists when the geniuses they're emulating, by their very nature, were geniuses at least partly because they were innovators who were trying to move the music to another level.
Horton: And in my mind, in my little fantasy world, Duke Ellington would come back and say "Man, what are you doing playing my music? You oughta be playing your music."
Tafuri: It's like a joke that Joe Maneri tells. It would be like if Mozart came back today, heard his own music being played and would exclaim "This is as far as you've gotten?"
Horton: Exactly. It's like if all these players would come back -- Cootie Williams and Louie -- would be (I don't know what the word would be) aghast. They'd be like "You gotta be kiddin' me!" Where on the one hand they'd be thrilled beyond belief that they were being praised like this (because they probably never got that kind of praise in their lifetimes -- well, Duke did and Louie), part of that is this kind of "guilt trip" by the younger generation. I'll say that when I grew up, Duke Ellington was [thought of by people like myself as] an old fart. As far as big bands go, I wasn't interested in Duke. That didn't sound interesting to me at all. "Take the A Train," "Satin Doll" -- that sounded like old fuddy-duddy stuff to me. And I'm sure it did to others as well and the younger generation; I'm sure that when they heard "Doo dah-dah-dah DU-dah" of 'A Train,' I'm sure they thought that was corny shit. But then you get farther into it and you realize, "Oh, my God, this guy wrote the Far East Suite and all this great music going back to the '30s and '40s." He wrote great stuff and so you're like "Oh, I didn't know who Duke Ellington was."
Tafuri: Some of the then popular stuff just didn't engage you.
Tafuri: I want to talk a little about where your music comes from. Your music is very melodic in a lot of ways and it's filled with distinct melodies and tones. It's rarely strictly modal or riff-based, so I'm wondering where that [melodic basis] came from.
Horton: This is hard to formulate into words. It's not that I listen to any particular composer to get this melodic thing happening. It's kind of an extension of my playing which developed in a melodic way. When I was in Berklee, there was an emphasis on everybody learning their chords and their scales and their patterns. And when I got out of Berklee, I realized that melodically there was a lot to be desired there. So I had spent a lot of time listening to real melodic players like Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Miles and people like that to get a stronger melodic thing going. It's kind of hard to define. It's not like I could pull out a melody and say "Oh, that's pretty melody." I knew there were certain kinds of players who were energy oriented and certain players -- like you were saying -- who were riff-oriented or certain players that could just run changes. What I wanted to do was find melodies within all those changes, rather than running up and down chords; there're melodies within that. Like those two players, Chet Baker and Stan Getz, were pretty good examples of people who could play difficult changes, but not run chords. They would somehow play melodically over it ... and naturally, too. I don't think they were real analytical about finding melodies within those chords. I think they were kind of "naturals" that way. So when I met Frank [Kimbrough], he was already in that vein, thinking very melodically, but he also had a good handle on chords.
Tafuri: I think it's significant that, as a graduate right out of Berklee, you felt the need to "balance" your playing -- what you'd learned there and what you'd gotten out of the experience there.
Horton: When I was in school there was nobody who was teaching anything as far as melodies or playing more melodically. If you think of it, it would be a hard thing to teach. You can't teach "Melodic Improvising 101." It's almost easy to teach 'Here's a C7 chord, these are the notes in the chord, that's the scale that goes along with it, practice, have fun, now you're a jazz improviser.' I was never really good at that pattern-chord-scale kind of thing. So I had to find another way that felt better to me and more natural.
Tafuri: And I guess that was the root of my question. Playing melodically seems something that comes very natural to you, that it's your "comfort zone," something you naturally gravitate toward.
Horton: And it takes a little longer, too, as an improviser. I can find the notes of a chord and try to run those chords or notes, but it doesn't feel good to me. I find melodies and it takes a while to do that sometimes. Sometimes I'll play over a piece for a very long time before I feel like I'm (what Jane [Ira Bloom] used to call) "internalizing" it. It takes a while to absorb it and then make it your own. And composing is similar for me, so I draw on that melodic sense, but composing usually doesn't come quickly to me. Some people can ride on a subway or a bus [and get a composition], but I can't. I really have to take something and play it over and over and over and over and think about it and add a little bit and take away a little bit and shape it. It's a long process for me.
Tafuri: Your compositions sound really well constructed, which is to say I don't mean they sound unnatural. One of the things I like about your music and your compositions is that you're not just writing "standard" heads. You don't write a lead sheet and chord changes. You add harmonies and flourishes and other elements to the music which allows your pieces to be heard in a larger, compositional framework.
Horton: One thing I wanted to tie in between the improvising and the composition, when I realized I was a melodic improviser, was that I was not only drawn to players who played melodically, I was immediately attracted to composers who were melodic. Frank Kimbrough falls into that category and, when I met Ben [Allison], he was that way. All the years I listened to Andrew Hill, a lot of people think Andrew's music is really "out" but, you and I both know that there are tons of beautiful melodies; it's almost Romantic music, really.
Tafuri: It's just on a different level...
Horton: It is. A lot of people get thrown off because it's so dense that they just think it's really far out because rhythmically there's a lot of other shit going on in there. But, underlying it all, I think Andrew's a really strong melodic composer. When I started transcribing all of his tunes, I realized that every tune has really strong melodies. It was pretty enlightening.
Tafuri: I'm a little curious about how you were drawn to the music of Andrew [Hill], because now you play in his ensemble, you have a project in the Jazz Composers Collective -- like the Herbie Nichols Project -- called the Andrew Hill project.
Horton: It goes back a long, long way. I was a fan of Blue Note Records, but I was coming out of Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, Kenny Dorham -- all the major players who were playing on Blue Note -- and my only introduction to Andrew Hill's music was the most un-Andrew-like tune called "The Rumproller" --
Tafuri: He wrote that?! You're kidding! That's on a Lee Morgan album, isn't it?
Horton: Yeah, it's called The Rumproller and it's an Andrew Hill attempt to writing like another "Speedball." So that was my only introduction to Andrew Hill. I didn't know him as a player because I don't think he plays on that album and I didn't know any of Andrew's albums on Blue Note. I just kind of filed [his name away] like, for example, every once in a while you'd see a name like Cal Massey and you wouldn't really know who that person was, but you'd see a tune of theirs every once in a while. So, I held that thought for a few years. And then a friend of mine in college had [Andrew Hill's] Point of Departure and that's almost everyone's introduction into Andrew's music, even though he's made 25 or 30 or more albums. Almost everybody knows that album. When I first put it on, it was so different. All the same players -- Kenny Dorham, Joe Henderson, Tony Williams, Eric Dolphy -- and yet it was so different that the "Blue Note sound." It'd had that sound because all the Blue Note albums had that Rudy Van Gelder sound and they're playing on that famous piano, but the voicings, the counterpoint -- it's still mysterious to me.
Tafuri: Like in a parallel universe...
Horton: Exactly. And it was so different than The Rumproller, obviously, I was " Like, wow!" And that was around the time I moved to New York, I guess, '82 or something like that. At the same time, I'd known Frank Kimbrough from a couple of years in Washington. Frank, at the same time, had Black Fire and a few other [Andrew Hill] albums and was saying "Man, you gotta check this out, this is incredible!" As a little background to that, when I first met Frank in Washington, he had just seen a concert of Andrew Hill down at DC Space and was totally taken by that. Frank had also seen, about that time, Paul Bley and others at a concert at the Smithsonian. Maybe it was Don Pullen and some other people. But one of the reasons I was attracted to Frank was that everyone I went to Berklee with listened to Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner, but Frank listened to Paul Bley, Don Pullen, Ornette [Coleman], Andrew Hill, Horace Tapscott, Randy Weston, Abdullah Ibrahim. He listened to all these piano players who I'd only known peripherally. So, when he was telling me about Andrew, I was totally wide open to it. I was like "Man, you go ahead, lay it on me!" I was totally ready for it. And then, for the first couple of years we were in New York, you couldn't find those Blue Note albums, you couldn't find Andrew, you couldn't find Smokestack, you couldn't find Judgement -- this is before the CD reissue craze. So, we would find them in used record stores, one or two in libraries --
Tafuri: So you were really on "the quest"?
Horton: Absolutely. Almost every month, one of us would find one and say "Like, man, you gotta check this out." Another one -- Bobby Hutcherson's album Dialogue -- any time Andrew played on another person's album, we were totally finding all that stuff. And actually years ago now that I think about it, I had the one that was on Arista -- it might have been called Invitation, Spiral or something like that -- that had Lee Konitz, Ted Curson, and a few other people.
Tafuri: I don't think I've never heard that one.