Jazz Appreciation Month

I used to go to the Manchester Craftsman’s Guild in Pittsburgh with my grandmother who had season tickets. As a child, I got to see masters such as James Moody, Clark Terry and Ahmad Jamal before they passed and that exposure to those greats as a young, aspiring jazz musician really set me down the path I’m on today.

Call me a homer, but I remember my inaugural sailing on The Jazz Cruise in 2024 and how remarkable it was to see so many jazz luminaries in one place, on one stage, night after night. I’ve been to many jazz festivals around the world both as a performer and patron and, even on their most star-studded day, you can’t recreate the magic on the ships. I remember the “Bump It with a Trumpet” summit led by Randy Brecker, including Sean Jones, Terell Stafford, James Morrison, Bria Skonberg…the list goes on and on. It was like a young version of myself as a trumpeter’s dream to stare up at that group of my biggest heroes. Little did I know the next year I’d be up on stage with them.

I love how jazz has always “played well with others” in that its soul meshes so easily with other styles and genres of music. Jazz inherently suggests collaboration with artists of all backgrounds. It’s wonderfully inclusionary.

The global jazz community has never been closer, thanks to the advent of livestreaming and connectivity to scenes around the world. It’s an amazing feeling to waltz into a country you’ve never been before, don’t speak the language, yet show up at a jazz club with a jam session, and feel like you’re meeting extended family the moment a tune starts. To me jazz is a universal language people from all backgrounds and cultures of the world can speak to one another with. It’s music designed to bring people together, to create joy but also communicate great struggle and strife. Jazz is “Good & Bad, Happy & Sad” as I tell young students during outreach concerts. Being able to express oneself through music to have your voice heard is a very powerful thing. It’s music for all generations!

What I really loved about that festival at that time was the variety you could see in one day of the festival from small group straight-ahead swinging jazz to more pop jazz.

One thing I noticed was that it was all accessible to the audience and every band was swinging and grooving so much and I felt that everyone in the audience was into the music very intensely which made me very happy at the time.

Jazz is about freedom of expression and improvisation and swing and groove and at its best, you will never hear a song played exactly the same way each time. It is an art form produced totally in the moment. 

The jazz community is very supportive. I have leaned on my musician friends many times to help navigate some of the harder parts about being a musician. Also, I find that great musicians are sometimes also great humanitarians and live life to the full with generous servings of good humor.

Jazz is a way of life for me. It’s something that brings me a lot of joy and I’m grateful and fortunate to have met and spent time with some incredible people through this music. 

I love being on stage when an audience gets excited about what they’re hearing and I also love being in the audience when there’s something incredible happening on stage. It’s hard to describe in words how great jazz makes me feel, but a) I cannot live without it, and b) I wouldn’t want to!

One of my favorite jazz concerts I attended was the Pat Metheny Group at the Beacon Theatre in October 1988. I took my father and mother and a friend of mine and his wife. I had a great time watching my father listen to this group and be so interested in everything Pat was doing. Jazz is really all I know. Benny Goodman, Zoot Sims, Slam Stewart and Bucky Pizzarelli, amongst many others, were my teachers. It has taken me all over the world when I thought I would never be able to drive in and out of New York myself. It has introduced me to amazing people who have changed my life both personally and professionally. Jazz never stops teaching me. It means worldwide inclusion from listener to listener, player to player, and listener to player. It is its own language that everyone can learn. Quite amazing actually.

My first jazz concert was Weather Report in 1978, I think.  I didn’t know much about music but I loved these guys creativity and solos. It wasn’t like dance music or anything. It was just about the music and the vibe. I was 16. Guess I was a weird kid.

There are so many memorable jazz concerts that it would be difficult to narrow it down to one. I loved the late night shows on the jazz cruises. Hearing Marcus Miller, Dave Sanborn and George Duke or Gerald Albright, I could tell they were friends just jammin’. The first time I heard Samara Joy sing was special. SMV with Stanley Clarke, Marcus and Victor Wooten together blew me away. Robert Glasper at Hollywood Bowl with Lupe Fiasco was a crazy combination of jazz and hip hop.

I’m honored to be a part of the jazz community especially since I don’t play an instrument. One of the highest compliments I received was being told as I improvised some comedy that I was doing jazz. 

For me it’s the creativity of the music and the musicians. I can listen to five versions of the same song sometimes by the same artist. Jazz to me is peace, fascination and creativity.

What happened next literally changed my life. When I first experienced what it was like to be “inside” that small ensemble, where the sound was coming out and I was part of it. It felt magical. The idea of “swinging” was completely new to me, but not really. I was made to understand eventually the connection between that feeling and the “groove” of Earth, Wind & Fire, Rufus, the James Gang and all the other music I loved at that time. It’s the same thing. It’s a sonic representation of the feeling of being Black in America. 

The beautiful thing about that, though, is that that music always welcomed other people in. And people like Dave Brubeck and so many others became part of that jazz family. It’s the most wonderful portrait of true democracy and equality, I believe, that exists in the world to date.

My first jazz record was a gift from my uncle. This uncle played piano for James Moody, who consequently became one of my saxophone mentors. Once he found out I was interested in jazz he handed me a record of a guy named Coltrane. As you can imagine, I didn’t get it! It was only years later when I went to Texas Southern University, that I began to understand this complex language that John Coltrane was speaking.

Nonetheless, that first record stays with me. And it ended up lighting my path to produce a series called The Gospel According to Jazz, for which I won a GRAMMY alongside the great Lalah Hathaway who has graced the stages of The Smooth Jazz Cruise. The name of that first album was John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.

But, speaking of family, I’ve had plenty of inspiration and mentoring from people named Whalum. The main one was my incredible uncle from St. Louis (he spent the last 80 of his 99 years there in St. Louis). Though he made his living primarily as a piano bar musician, he began his career playing saxophone with such greats as Nat King Cole. To say that Uncle Peanuts’ influence on me was disproportionately grand is absolutely true. He was a force of nature. As it happens, he and the jazz musician father of our friend Michael Lazaroff were best friends and band buddies.

The first live jazz I heard as a young musician and student of an HBCU was the great Pharaoh Sanders. I saw something that day that I considered to be the one and only miracle I’ve ever seen in person!  There was a point at which Pharaoh had been circular-breathing and playing a certain sequence of notes — in a trance like repetition — when he took his mouth off the mouthpiece and the sound kept going. 

Now I know what you’re saying right now, but that’s absolutely what I experienced. It’s still the way I have remembered it ever since I saw and heard it. To this day, I’ve never done drugs and barely drink up, so I was absolutely sober when this happened.

I quizzed him on it backstage that night, inquisitive 19-year-old I was. But he just sat there in silence and stared into the abyss as if I didn’t exist. I’ve never since seen anything like it. And I used to belong to one of those churches that believed in miracle, on-the-spot healing! Given all that, I’ve only seen one actual miracle in my life. And that was that night at a small jazz club in Houston.

It had a profound effect on me as to the spiritual and mystical powers of this music called jazz.

The best I can do to describe the indescribable, jazz, is to relate and experience I had when I was 19 (yes, the same year that I saw Pharaoh Sanders). I was privileged to receive what the French call “une bourse” (a scholarship) to study in Paris for the summer. Many years later, Ruby and I took our four kids and moved there for about two years.

But that summer I spent in Paris studying at L’Alliance Française — a very famous language school — I also cut my entertainer teeth by busking on the streets of the Latin Quarter, directly across from Notre Dame. Someone invited me to share a Eurail pass and to go down to Nice for the Nice Jazz festival. I made an executive decision to take two weeks off from my French class.

Again, the word life-changing. But besides seeing about 20 of the world’s, most famous jazz luminaries are close and personal that you’re in 1978, I got a crazy idea. As I said close to the stage watching James Moody, Shelly Mann, Roland, Hannah, Sonny Stitt, Milt Jackson and others, my heart started beating extremely fast. The thought had come in my mind to seize the moment! I was going to walk my 19-year-old self up on stage and sit in.

At this point when my friend saw me unpacking my horn I saw the look of utter panic across his face. He was there in Paris studying medicine at the Sorbonne, so you can rightly assume that he wasn’t familiar with the jazz life! But he got a crash course that day.

I indeed walked up and played. Too much shock in amazement. No one threw a symbol at me or kick me off the stage. Listening back now though — and here’s the link of that performance. I didn’t sound all that good in retrospect! Imagine a newborn baby horse trying to walk… but it was formative for me. I’m so glad that I reached deep for all the courage I had.  I had much more of it than I had virtuosity — and just did it.

The next day, I was able to get a one-on-one lesson with one of my three sax mentors, James Moody (the other two were my uncle and the great Texas Tenor, Arnett Cobb). The lesson only lasted two hours, but it truly charted my path. In fact, what I teach young musicians today in terms of technique, I learned in those two hours with the man. Jazz is the only art form that is both communal and highly individualistic, both dependent on highly refined virtuosity, and the spirit of the moment, both the continuum of the great jazz musicians of the past, as well as the street swing and groove of today.

My mother [bassist/guitarist Carline Ray] took me to hear him. His incredibly beautiful tunes, style and technique spoke to me deeply. Like nothing else I’ve ever heard to this day.

Jazz gives me purpose in life. It means community and mentorship. Striving to be the best at living and growing in the moment, through musical expression. Being inspired by great musicians. What a wonderful way to live!

The energy and expression of the music can be set by any member of the band at any time. It’s about being open to whatever is going on and thinking of creative ways to contribute and elevate the music. 

The first real professional jazz concert I saw was with Milt Jackson, Teddy Edwards, Ray Brown and The first real professional jazz concert I saw was with Milt Jackson, Teddy Edwards, Ray Brown and Monty Alexander. That year, Monty introduced Ray and Milt to a young drummer, Duffy Jackson. They played at Shelly’s Manne-Hole and I was stunned from the excitement overload. 

Ever notice that there’s no widely accepted definition of jazz?? But I would say that however you define it, it has to include that it is improvisation with your soul attached to it. Those are two key components for me. 

Every successful community, ‘hood, village, etc., represents comfort. Jazz folks are my comfort zone.  Jazz means I GET to funnel my feelings through something that I share with others; with musicians and listeners. It’s a Big Sharing Bazaar of soulful sounds and improvisation that comes from my heart.

Even if that recording might be seen as accessible and easy listening, it really open my curiosity to a different world.

The first jazz concert I attended was a local Italian big band and I was intrigued by the “freedom” of the soloist and the colloquial interaction.

The most memorable jazz concert I saw as probably at the Kennedy Center, where I was able to see Herbie Hancock, Wayne s\Shorter, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Heath, Geri Allen, Patti Austin and George Duke all together. 

The jazz community is like an extended family. When you play and perform with someone it creates a bond and understanding that is hard to explain and it lasts a lifetime. 

Jazz means freedom of expression and interpretation. It’s my balance and my grounding secret.