T.C. Mitchell

For the past eight or so years, alongside fellow saxophone player Amy Lee and trumpet man John Lovell, T.C. Mitchell has been touring and recording with Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band. Together they comprise the Coral Reefer Horn Section, an integral part of Jimmy Buffett's big, bad Caribbean sound and stage show.

An ardent fan of such greats as Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Count Basie, T.C. became interested in the sax as a child, after a couple of frustrating years struggling with the clarinet. On a whim, he picked up a baritone his school band director offered him, and the rest is history.
Right now Buffett and the Coral Reefers are on hiatus from the road, and T.C. graciously devoted part of his vacation to granting me this interview. His words reveal an exceptional knowledge of World Music and a keen perception of his place in it.

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Q. Amy Lee has praised your musical abilities for a long time, and on her YahooGroups list she recently stated her wish to see you featured more. Aside from "Hokey Pokey," on which other Buffett tunes have you been featured?

A. Bless her heart! That is typical of Amy, always looking out for a friend, BUT this idea of being featured more or less is not what it’s really about here. The Coral Reefer Band has evolved over the years into a kind of repertory company for Jimmy’s songs (we must’ve learned 100 of them by now) where everybody can pull his own weight and cover somebody else’s part when the need arises, but that it's the sum of the parts, and picking the right part to emphasize at the right moment, that counts. So it’s less a collection of insecure hotshots and more of a band. We’ve been together long enough now to know that if somebody else gets such-and-such solo and we don’t, it’s nothing personal; it just has to do more with what that song song needs to be the right thing at that point in the show; Jimmy does not neglect any of his Reefers, and something else will certainly come along down the line. We give each other a lot of suggestions behind the scenes to make the parts fit together better, and that is the kind of thing that makes a band a band.

I think Michael Utley sets the example for us all. He focuses on giving Jimmy the best and most appropriate support, but he doesn't solo much; of any of us, HE's the one who should be featured more.

OK, now that I’ve admonished you, it’s time to get to what it is that you asked me in the first place. It has been decreed, or in any case it has worked out over the years, that my voice on tenor or flute would be the right one to hear on "Apocalypso," "Flesh & Bone," "Meet Me in Memphis," "First Look," "Hokey Pokey," "Saxophones," the obligatory “Tequila” from time to time, and various blues and such that we might play once in a while for a special occasion. There was a year when Jimmy did "Why Don't We Get Drunk" as a '50's college prom kind of thing, so they gave me a 50’s honking solo on it that year and it was a ball, because Utley and those guys changed some of the chords under it and I could slip an old romantic chestnut like "Only You," or "Tonight We Love," into Jimmy's 'romantic' classic. I have no idea if anybody ever got the joke, but it was still fun for those of us who knew what was going on... what can I say? There is such a thing as typecasting, of course. I can do more than play rocking tenor and Latin-jazz flute, but it’s a big band and we all have roles to play. It’s hard to say who in the band would do those things if I didn’t, so those are the things that I do most often.

One last thing to add to an answer that is already much longer than it needs to be: Soloing might be the part of what I do that all of you can see and identify as me, but a just-as-important part of what I do is the part that you don't see. John, Amy, and I spend a lot of time behind the scenes working out what we're going to play and how it's going to fit with what everybody else in the band is doing. A lot of what we play starts off as some little melody or rhythm thing in my head that won't go away, then I'll communicate it to them - write it down, or just play it in those guys' ears on stage. Anyway, we pass it around the section and say whatever he have to say about it, and eventually, possibly, often, it becomes part of what we do every night. I'm very proud of our little section and what we three (not ignoring the rest of the band’s input) have been able to make it into.

Q. You and Amy Lee are old college buddies. Which college was that?

A. University of Miami, Florida, and John is part of that business, too. Here’s the story:

John is a few years older than me, and when music was just starting to pull on me, he was already well established in the Indy scene of what was being called “fusion” music, blending jazz concepts with funk grooves. I grew a scraggly beard at 16 or so so that I could get out and hear some of this, and although they’d wink at me as I went in, I at least got in and they wouldn’t kick me out as long as I didn’t push my luck. John and I did not meet then, but I knew very well who he was.

I got out of high school in Indianapolis, heard about U of M from an alumnus, and figured it was where I should go to see what I could make of my musical self, so, with a scholarship and my folks’ encouragement, I went. A year or two later, who showed up but John Lovell? The U of M people somehow found out about him and gave him a special scholarship to lure him down there. Then, a couple of years after that, Amy Lee, all of about 17 years old, showed up, and we met in some strange kind of class. I was pretty amazed to see so much spunk in that little package! We became friends pretty much right off the bat.

So, although Amy and I became friends, and I already knew who John was from Indy, the three of us were probably never in the same room at the same time, and I don’t know for sure if John and Amy ever even met, until we were all Coral Reefers. Believe it or not, this is not an uncommon thing to happen around that school! It’s a big place that offers a very broad spectrum of things to study very intensely and people tend to get very absorbed in their specialty, so you may not find out until years later that you actually were in school with this or that person who went on to become famous. Even though the three of us were separated by time and our experience of it, I think that having come through the same place has given us some common ground and made it easier for us to come together as we have, even 10 to 12 years after we left school. Not that there’s a secret handshake or anything, but at least our tastes in music, while certainly not identical, do share some common values, and I think that a lot of that comes from what they pushed at U of M. It's not a school for everybody; it's pretty intense. It takes a long time to absorb what they've taught you, but after a few years in the real world, you start to feel as if the whole thing might have been worth it.

Q. There is a popular internet term among Buffett fans, "SYPTD" (Songs You've Played To Death). Here are the requisite "QYATD" (Questions You're Asked To Death): Were you a Buffett fan before joining the band, and what are your favorite songs to play onstage with Buffett and the Reefers and why?

A. Well, as a matter of fact, before I was able to grow that beard, my big sister B. introduced me to Jimmy’s musical point of view when "A
White Sportcoat and a Pink Crustacean" came out, and I did love it right away. I think that what I liked was that, besides just being irreverent, tongue-in-cheek, and just lots of fun to listen to, Jimmy was casually bringing in influences from, and thereby acknowledging the existence of, and his right to play around in, a much wider world than the northeast quadrant of Indianapolis that was about it for me at the time. I had read Robert Louis Stevenson, was getting into Joseph Conrad, Star Trek, and Hemingway (and lately I’ve found Patrick O’Brian and like his stuff very much), had devoured all there was to read about the Flying Tigers, the lives of soldiers in the Civil War and of musicians on the road during the Swing Era, and loved the idea of not just imagining, but actually maybe LIVING a less-constricted life. I picked up right away on the way Jimmy tapped into the romance of all that.

Well, I think he planted a seed or two in my young mind. It's hard to explain. I'm not saying that I've gone to Paris and Fort-de-France and these other places just to see what Jimmy was talking about, but let me put it this way: when I got the chance to go, knowing that he'd been there and thought they were cool somehow predisposed me to think that I, too, might think they were cool... and they certainly have been. I have begun to find out just how much that all these places, people, and things do have to do with each other. It's just a matter of knowing what to look for. I have no idea how Jimmy stumbled onto all of this, but I’m glad he did. So yes, I was a fan. Certainly never imagined that it would get this far, though!

Anyway, I drifted off into other things, and I was a kind of lapsed fan by the time I eventually found myself on the same stage with these guys, but still it’s hard to describe the feeling of having walked through a time portal that I got when I saw the same Jimmy, Utley, and Fingers that I'd gotten used to seeing on the album covers (especially the double ones) that my college roommate preferred for cleaning his pot on, right there in front of me, and that we were playing together. I hadn't seen pictures of them in nearly 15 years, so, yes, for me there was a little awkwardness coming through the portal. I'm ashamed to say that I think all 3 of them walked right past me without me recognizing them, but we got that straightened out quickly enough.

Favorite songs? To play, has always been "One Particular Harbor," which I think just has everything that Jimmy is about: spirituality, love of the planet, a humble sense of humor, and a good beat that you can dance to, all rolled into one. But my real Buffett faves are the ballads that I don’t play on! "A Pirate Looks at 40" and "Son of a Son of a Sailor" are such classics. "Coast of Marseille" kills me. From the new album, I like "Savannah Fare Thee Well" and "Far Side of the World" very much. It doesn’t matter that much to me, by the way, whether he’s writing or “adopting” these songs; no matter who may have done them before, once Jimmy plays them, they become Buffett songs. I'm glad Jimmy keeps looking for new colors and new sounds! As his world gets bigger, he's bringing everybody along for the ride, and is still letting us know that there's a great big, wide, and cool world out there, and that, in fact, know it or not, we're all part of it.

Q. In discussing noteworthy jazz musicians, you have mentioned the likes of King Curtis, Arnett Cobb, Jr. Walker, Herschel Evans, among others. As a budding sax player, who were your biggest influences?

A. I think we were discussing the roots of Clarence Clemons, so I mentioned those folks, who lived on the cusp of jazz and r&b. Me, I've gotten kind of a split personality when it comes to that. I love Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson so much! They have tremendous passion, a childlike sense of fun, and yet at the same time a very grown up, cerebral kind of detachment. They are unmistakable. You could recognize either of them in about two notes. You could never ignore Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. But I caught onto, at an early age, the guys with the huge operatic approach: Sidney Bechet, his student Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Coleman Hawkins and his disciples Ben Webster, Herschel Evans, Don Byas, Flip Phillips, and Georgie Auld, and I always seem to wander back to them. These guys are all passion, with no detachment whatsoever; they are Tyson, not Ali. They just come straight at you and knock you flat on your can! I'm not like that as a human being. I like to sneak up, circle around, and have fun before I come to the point. But I still love these guys’ playing, and it’s funny how sometimes they take possession of me when I’m playing and things take off in that direction.

The guys you listed above, plus Earl Bostic, Red Prysock, Al Sears, and Illinois Jacquet, Louis Jordan, and some others, had a big influence on the way that rock-and-roll saxophone would go; we were talking about Clarence Clemons and who he listened to, after all. I admire their big sounds and their sense of rhythmic abandon. Herschel Evans was a special case, as one of two contrasting powerhouses (Lester Young was the other) in Count Basie’s original band that bridged jazz and “jump” blues - he had the sound, the rhythmic power, plus a thinking brain. You could go back to Lester Young and Herschel Evans today and not feel like you were missing much of anything; between the two of them, they really covered the spectrum of what you can do with a tenor saxophone.

One outgrowth of this big-toned bunch that I should mention is Gato Barbieri, both as a saxophonist with an enormous tone and great passion, but also as a pioneer of what has become known as World Music. He began his career blending his jazz roots with his Argentinian roots, then spread out through all kinds of Latin music. I’ve liked just about everything he’s done. Even when he watered his stuff down to sell more records, I thought he did it with quite a bit of class.

Sonny Rollins combines the big sound (some critics say that he sounds like a goat, but I guess that just means that I must really like goats) with calypso rhythms, a twisted sense of humor, intimate knowledge of the most lush ballads, and all kinds of other stuff going on. Something that I just learned is that he, as a child, was a fan of Ralph MacDonald’s father’s band. He has always played his song -- you guessed it -- “Don’t Stop the Carnival” -- and I’ve always loved Sonny’s way of tackling it and turning it inside out. If I had to pick just one of the players I’ve mentioned as my one ideal, I think it would be Sonny. As a player, I’m by no means on his level. But I love his approach to music and life dearly. And I do sometimes sound like a goat. What can I tell you?

Other impressions - from the sublime, not quite to the ridiculous - Once upon a time, when I was about 13, on spring vacation in New Orleans, my dad and I stood in the doorway of some vomit-scented place on Bourbon Street and heard a guy named Rene Netto doing his thing. I’ve never forgotten that first moment of revelation. As we watched, stunned, he whipped off some insane cadenza, double-tonguing, with this huge sound on tenor saxophone, then he added another horn or two into his mouth at the same time. THEN he switched to trombone and sounded great on that, too. The crowd went nuts, but this still did not seem to be strictly a circus act. Beyond that, I have trouble describing the impression it made on me to see him and his band, which all looked like straightlaced middle-aged Southern, Jerry Falwell types of people, people you might see eating at Morrison’s Cafeteria, getting down like that! Never judge a book by its cover -- I needed to be taught that lesson. I hadn’t really been introduced to Elvis, Carl Perkins, or Jerry Lee Lewis at that time. I think that RN is still down there and playing, by the way. Preservation Hall made a big impression on me, too; the unamplified sound of Kid Thomas' band in that barely-lit little room somehow connected the present with the past.

When I was 17, my pop took me to New York for a few days. We saw Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, and their band (which was and still is comprised of some of the best jazz and studio musicians in NYC basically playing for fun) at the Village Vanguard, and something told me then that somehow or another, music was going to have to be it for me.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk was a big inspiration to me, but for much more than what everybody brings up first when they mention him, which is playing two and three
saxophones, or his ability to do circular breathing so that he could play for 5 or 10 minutes without stopping for a breath. It's his spirit that always got me. The man simply refused to let No be the final answer to any question. Doing all those physically-”impossible” things was just a manifestation of that. His music was all about love of life and of all people, respect for those who came before, and respect for
those still to come.

I should throw out same random names of another kind of guys, whose names on the back of a record have always meant “this is worth checking out” to me -- guys like, in the 30’s, Bud Freeman, Bunny Berigan, Buster Bailey, Teddy Wilson and Dave Tough, or, since the 70’s, Ernie Watts, Joe Farrell, Tom Scott, Jerry Dodgion, David Sanborn, Idris Muhammad, Lenny White, Jack DeJohnnette, who are fantastic artists , but also consummate craftsmen, whose names you may not see on the FRONT of a CD so often, but make a great contribution all the same, checking their egos at the door and bringing their very best to other people's visions. They are often unsung heroes, but they are my heroes all the same.

I have to admit that sometimes, if it's just for me, I'd rather listen to a great singer, like Roy Orbison, Cassandra Wilson, Edith Piaf, Shoubou of Tabou Combo, Cesaria Evora, Al Green, Emeline Michel, Frank Sinatra, even Celine Dion, ....or something like the New York Philharmonic playing Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe in Central Park or an anonymous gospel choir, blasting on AM radio on a Sunday afternoon in North Carolina, or a bird singing, a baby crying, or rain falling.... Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong.... a speed-metal band rehearsing two floors above my head in a building in New York.

In the 80's, I always loved Prince, Talking Heads, the Brothers Johnson, Michael Jackson, Sting, and Peter Gabriel. It was exciting when Paul Simon gave some recognition to the music and musicians of South Africa, and came out with Graceland. I love science fiction, baseball, yoga, and French movies amd comic books. If all you listen to is saxophone, that's all you'll ever bring to the saxophone when it's time to play.

Q. You have spent a lot of time in Haiti. How did a middle-class kid from Indianapolis wind up in Haiti?

A. Right from the beginning I knew that there had to be more to life than just, you know, being a consumer, spending the day in a cubicle then deciding which mall to go to, or which TV sitcom to watch. So even back in Indianapolis, I was happy to slip past the bounds of what was considered the thing for kids like me to do, whenever I could, and I’d get encouragement from unexpected sources in my family. My folks would always take in college students from other countries, and after a while it wasn’t so strange to have Nigerians or Pakistanis or Japanese folks in the house.

Before I could drive, my mom started me off, taking me downtown every Sunday to play with the Boy Scout band. We made a joyful noise out of John Philip Sousa and the like. Not everybody could read music, but everybody hung in there, the young learned from the old, and it got better. As you got better, you could move from the back of the band toward the front. In the summertime, we’d go on the road -- sleep in big tents, and cook on charcoal.

As people began to hear of me, I might get a call to rehearse with this or that band, would go, and I'd end up in somebody's fur-lined garage or rancid-smelling shag-carpeted basement and I'd be something like the Kyle MacLachlan character in Blue Velvet, just taking it all in... In Indianapolis there'd be sort of Northeastern bohemian types to play jazz with, lots of funk bands trying to be like the Ohio Players, country guys up from Kentucky and Tennessee, theater pit orchestras, you name it, all of whom were to some degree interested in having a saxophone player like me who had plenty o' book learnin' but just wanted to play, get better, and see the world, and would play with basically anybody to accomplish that goal. Along the way, the only real differences I ever noticed between all these groups of people, black, white, old, young, were in the dialects they spoke. Their goals and approach to life seemed remarkably similar - music, women, freedom, and a few dollars - just let it all hang out and be what you are - and I realized that I could get used to that.

Jumping ahead a few years, Haiti was practically nothing after that - just learn how to say the same things in French and Creole, and you’re all set! I'd already
gotten myself through Miami; going there might have been a bigger upheaval than Haiti. When it all happened, to put it simply, I was getting out of school and I was looking ahead at the enormous blank page of the rest of my life. As I saw it, I could A) go back to Indy - I’d gone to the trouble of getting out, and I wasn't ready to go back inside the barn yet; B) stay in Miami - didn't really feel at home there all that much; C) try New York - I was broke, and uncomfortable with trying a place where I barely knew anybody and had heard that everybody was mean (I later got to find out how untrue that was ) - that was a little intimidating just then; D) join the Peace Corps; E) accept the invitation to go back to Haiti with the band I'd been playing with in Miami, Magnum Band. E) was clearly the way to go. It looked almost like C) and D) combined. I already at least loved the music, and the more Haitians I met, the more I learned about the language, the culture, and the history, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to know, and the more Haitian food I tried, the more I wanted. I was offered the chance to go and stay as long as I wanted, with a gig with a truly killer band that had a powerful message of liberty, equality, and fraternity to deliver to the people. I was curious and I had no responsibilites to hold me back from going.
People need to grow. I mean, there are many ways to grow. I love Garrison Keillor (well, I know he’s traveled a lot, but still...) and Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, John Cougar Mellencamp, Jimmy Buffett, because they stayed home and grew. The roots grew down through the soles of their shoes and deeper and deeper into the ground. I already had good roots, and what I was being offered was a chance to add some branches. I went for it; wouldn't you?

It all just fit with the echoes of Africa I'd learned to recognize in American music -70’s Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock come to mind - and the French that I had inexplicably gotten very interested in studying back in school, and the more I learned down there, the more it all came together for me as an American trying to understand why things are the way things are (I mean that in the cultural sense, but also in the political/historical sense, too), and it all does fit together somehow. I could go on and on. Maybe somebody's already figured out all the connections, but it all sure came as news to me. I just got really curious about all of that, and I'm glad I got the chance to explore it the way that I did, and that it worked out so well.

I did not live in any particular luxury. I was walking and taking buses around Port-au-Prince and dealing with the daily life of a musician. God bless the Haitian people; there wasn’t much to keep them from devouring me, but they didn’t - they just took me in like a stray. Before I figured out how to get from college French to everyday Creole, I just had to let my horns do most of the talking, and thank God, it wasn't like Steve Goodman's song, "Banana Republic," that Jimmy sings (you know, "you know you can't trust them because they know they can't trust you"), at all. I showed “them” that “they” could trust me, and I learned that I could trust some people and not others (duh!) and that was that. The only "them" and "you" thing was between those who would keep their word and those who would not.

With Magnum, I played all over the country, for everybody, from Jean-Claude Duvalier right down to the people who would save up to have the five grimy gourdes it cost to hear us on Sunday afternoons. Talk about being on the road! We had some of the best, toughest, most fun, most grueling times I’ve ever had, playing in the towns out in the countryside... I know, everybody’s got their tales from the road; the bus got stuck, or whatever; but not too many people will tell you one that has the driver mention, dead seriously and very calmly, when the bus has just gotten wedged between the banks of a dry riverbed, there is not a soul around, and the sun is dropping fast, that “By the way, this part of the country is full of werewolves!” and then sit and wait patiently for whatever was going to come down the road (it was an enormous Mack truck that yanked us out without a sweat - that time)... What a magical country Haiti is! It’s definitely not always pretty, but it is always beautiful.

Being known as part of Magnum Band brought me a lot of respect in the musical scene down there. I got to know and work with some really brilliant people: Gerald Merceron, Frantz Courtois, Robert Denis, Joel and Mushi Widmaier, and even though I haven't seen any of them in years, they remain fresh in my mind. The wisdom of these guys, and their courage to create such great beauty (trust me for now - I hope to have some of their work available to hear on my website someday) against the most staggering odds, continues to make me, with all of my American taken-for-granted advantages, want to do half as well.

Another thing about that experience was that, most of the time, I was the one guy in the place with whatever book-learning was required to get whatever needed doing, done. So I had at least a limited emergency green light to fiddle around with, and thus teach myself, the inner workings of the sound equipment, arranging horns, writing out copyright forms for publishing in France, putting off-the-grid power into people's homes, helping out with US immigration law, hiring other Americans to come down and play for a while, translating between Creole and English for them, or figuring out how to bribe the customs agents to get my radio out of hock, and figuring out how to handle what I do as a business and somehow get paid most of the time without getting anybody huffy about it, and all those things that I probably would never have gotten the “opportunity” (at least, that’s how I saw it) to try if I’d stayed in the States.

Anyway, I stayed for the better part of two years before unhealthy situations in the music scene and in the country as a whole got me to leave. But the music and the people had me hooked, and it wasn’t long before Magnum relocated to New York, and I rejoined them there... ended up living there for something like 12 years, playing first with Magnum, then Ska-Shah and System Band, and finally Tabou Combo - definitely the cream of the world of Haitian pop music - and exploring Haitian folklore with La Troupe Makandal, and doing a lot of freelancing, as a player, an arranger, and a recording engineer. I loved it in New York and still threaten all the time to move back there.

The opportunity the Haitian people gave me was like grad school and the Peace Corps combined. So to this day, I try to give back whatever I can to them, whether it’s in Haiti (I still go there often) or here in the States. I believe that not only do they need us Americans, but that we Americans have a lot to learn from them, as well, so I’m happy to sit here in the middle, knowing both very well, explaining and helping the flow back and forth. Doesn't always work out, but it's good to try... and of course, I never fail to learn a lot, too.

A. You were snagged by Jimmy (with some input from Amy) from one of Jimmy's favorite bands, Tabou Combo, some eight years ago and you still play with this band part-time. What projects do they have in the works and will you play a part?

Q. When I joined Tabou, I told them that they were probably going to be my last Compas (that’s what the style of music is called) band, because they are simply the best at it. It’s simply amazing, what they can build on top of two chords! Hearing some good Compas reminds me of biting into a fat, juicy pork chop, or something. It is robust music for robust people. I never saw a vegetarian in Haiti. Anyway, I miss the days when I was able to juggle both Tabou and Jimmy both. But Jimmy was busier in those days, and only being able to get me when I wasn't otherwise tied up started to not be fair to Tabou, and it was getting to be too much for me, too; it was time to make a choice, and of course that choice was Jimmy. Although we remain on the friendliest of terms, and we stay in touch, at this time all I can do is fill in when they need me and I can make it.

A good band is so much like a tribe... when the Tabou guys and I run into each other, we still feel the bond, even if it's been a while. That's more important to us than seeing each other every day. They have just recharged their batteries with some really fine young players and I know that with a little wisdom handed down by the veterans in the band they are going to be going in some cool new directions. I hope I'll be around as it unfolds, but I DO have this Coral Reefer tribe that I'm part of, too...
However that all plays out, I think I can always be useful to them in other ways, wherever I go and whatever I do. I mean, for one thing, I wouldn't be sitting here telling you about them and you probably would never have heard of them, if I had stayed with them and not gotten on Jimmy's bus. I think I can be a pretty good roving ambassador for the music that I've encountered on my way here. That may be just as good a thing to my less-widely-known-in-the-US friends as playing on every album of theirs that comes out. The Lord does work in mysterious ways....

Q. We have talked at length about African musicians like Morris Goldberg, who is a phenomenal sax and pennywhistle player, Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand), and Tony Cedras, who appears on "Far Side of the World." I know Tony has recorded in your studio in New York; I'm wondering if there is anyone else in this genre you'd like us to know about.

A. Oh, entirely too many! But let me name a few, and leave Haiti off the list for now; that would be five pages right there (Cuba and Brazil would turn it into the Manhattan Yellow Pages). I've had the pleasure of at least rubbing elbows with a lot of these people. First, from Congo (or Zaïre, if you’re stubborn), Sam Mangwana, Tabu Ley Rochereau and Yaa-Lengi Ngemi. From Senegal, Youssou Ndour and Baaba Maal. From the French Antilles via Paris, Kassav' and Ronald Rubinel. From Mali, Selif Keita (I'm 99% sure that it's something of his that plays as we hit the stage on Jimmy's FSOTW tour). From Benin, Angelique Kidjo. From Gabon, Pierre Akendengue. It goes on and on and on. Again, this French-speaking, African-derived scene is dwarfed by the Spanish-speaking world, not to mention Brazil or North America, but it’s a nice kind of community, the public for this music lives and breathes it and will not accept compromises of its quality, there’s still enough of it going on to make a living from it, and it does hold the key to the roots of so many musics that, what can I say? I just enjoy it very much.

Not one of these artists would consider him/herself a jazz artist, by the way, but I don't miss jazz much at all when I'm working with them, or listening to them, or, best of all, dancing to them. They seem to hold, for their audiences, the place that jazz had in America through World War II or so. Some of it was great art for the ages, but that’s something that just happened that way. It was created almost on the spot for YOU, it talked about YOUR life, and you could dance your behind off to it, or sit and listen if you saw fit. That would also describe a lot of Jimmy's music. Hmmm.... Maybe that's what I like most about it!

To take another direction with your question, if you want to talk about clients and projects I've done at my studio that need exposure, well, let's see... it's a subject dear to my heart, as the studio has been a great resource for me to share over the years and try to give some folks who should be heard a shot. I've had one going with Yaa-Lengi Ngemi for a long time now, he comes up with great soukous. Mala Waldron deserves to be heard much more widely; she is a fine pianist, songwriter, and singer, in a Roberta Flack kind of way. There is a nice zouk project by Viviane Rangon, from Martinique. I really like the little subgenre of Haitian Gospel music!! We did a band called Les Dévoués Missionaires that really was fun. Branley Midouin is almost a Luther Vandross kind of singer, but his Haitian parents were missionaries who raised him in Zaire, so he mixes musical styles freely and he sings his heart out, in 4 languages that I know of. I'm so proud of him as an engineer, too! He has been my best student. Makarios Cesaire is a very studied Haitian guitarist and producer who, since doing some session work for Wyclef Jean, has been trying to crack the R&B market. Frank London and Matt Darriau, longtime fixtures at the Knitting Factory in lower Manhattan (and widely known as honchos of the Klezmatics) have been in to do all sorts of klezmer, jazz, and movie score projects. I love working with those guys because they often make outrageous demands of an engineer and that brings out the problem-solver in me. Frank once brought in 12 guys that we packed into every nook and cranny of that little place, everybody played together -- no overdubbing or any of that stuff. We all just went for it. The walls dripped with condensation, and that was the Shekhina Big Band recording, done in a few hours. That one has just been remixed and “alchemically transformed by John Zorn, and released on the Tzadik label as “Scientist at Work”. I’m very happy with it. Matt Darriau's "Paradox Trio" CD is another one that I'm really happy about. It's some terrific jazz, based on Balkan folk music. The band is so very great. It was fun and easy to make that project sound good, the only trick being to know when to get out of the way and let them just do their thing as naturally as possible.

My pride and joy right now is a CD that Edy Borgela Philippe (from Haiti) and I have done together. We're fussing around with the finishing touches, and it's time for it to come out.

Which leads me to my next hurdle: I'm working on the business side of things now. This puts parts of my brain to work that I’d forgotten that I had, and it seems to go against my idealistic nature (Jeez! Isn’t it enough just to make these things? I guess not, if you want anybody to hear them!) to do it, but I can see that I need to make the stretch, for the sake of the projects. They are like defenseless children! The innocents who create them must grow into adults, look after them, and help them find their place in the world.

Q. I realize this is impossible to cover in such limited space, but what is the most important advice would you give a aspiring sax student?

A. 1) It's more like yoga than weightlifting. Don't try too hard! Unlike the brass family, or even the flute, the physical demands of the saxophone aren't all that much, and trying to force it to do anything usually backfires. The instrument will almost play itself if you let it. If I'm practicing scales or something, I do best if I read a newspaper at the same time! The fingers and the chops don't always need all that bossing around from the brain.

2) Work hard, but it's supposed to be fun. As you get better, try to keep in mind whatever it was that got you started in the first place.

3) Keep an open mind to other people's ideas, but play it the way you hear it. Your voice is your very own.

4) If art reflects life, and you want to be an artist, then you need to have a life so you can have something upon which to reflect.

5) A practical matter - try not to get overexcited and lift your fingers too far off the keys; I know it feels good, but it'll slow you
down.

A. What can you tell us about your upcoming Radio Margaritaville show, and do you have an approximate air date yet?

Q. Steve Huntington approached me an embarrasingly long while back about doing a Haitian hour for the station, and I happily agreed to do it. Then all the picky aspects of my nature kicked in. I’ve never done anything like DJ-ing before, Haitian or otherwise, and have no idea when or if I’ll get another chance to do it, so of course I want it to be something really special, so I've been taking my time and trying to do it right. I have stacks and stacks of CDs, vinyl and tapes that I'm going through to try to find the very best I can. Some of what I've wanted to get is out of print or just hard to track down. It’s been a grind, but also a lot of fun. I'm close to the point now where I'll be able to just sit down one day and knock it out. There is no air date per se, it's just for whenever I give it to Steve, and whenever he finds a spot to put it in. Should be by the end of the summer, though.

Hope everybody out there will like what they hear. You aren’t going to hear a lot of this stuff anywhere else! Putting it together has been a labor of love. Don’t be afraid. I have faith that once that groove has got you, you won’t even notice that the words are not in English - but I will do my best to keep everyone clued in on what’s being said, all the same.

Q. What other upcoming projects should we be on the lookout for?

A. There is a chair out in the garage that I've been trying to fix since Christmas... and must get the overdue books back to the library.... OK, OK, I've been giving a lot of thought to doing a T.C. album lately, and what that could, should, and should not be. Quite honestly, life has been chaotic for the last 20 years, but lately I've been remembering all sorts of stuff that I just didn't have the time to process at the time that it was happening. I think I’m at a great point to take stock, look back at the different experiences I've had, try to put it all into some kind of order, decide what to do, make the phone calls, and this time be the guy with the vision he’s putting out there. Haven’t been in that position for a long time.

The specifics will come. Right now, I'm imagining all kinds of strange mixtures of people, cultures, and time periods, and also looking into places down here in Florida where I can expose them, live, to people. In other words, I’m also toying with the idea of putting a band together. And then there is the long-threatened web site project... a lot of work, but probably worth it. I imagine a virtual clubhouse where people can stop in, hear some music, order some food, have a drink, make a friend. With apologies to Field of Dreams, I will build it! Will they come?

Q. Can you turn us on to some artists/CDs we might enjoy?

A. Here's a CD that I've enjoyed for 27 years now, that never gets old: "Native Dancer," by Wayne Shorter, featuring Milton Nascimento. This is pretty much everything that I've ever wanted to do -- the melodies, harmonies, rhythms, playing, and sound, and general vibe are so highly evolved, yet accessible to the point of grabbing a 14-year-old in Indianapolis at first hearing. It's all in Portugese, and you know exactly what they're talking about without knowing a word of it! It gets even better if you pick up a little along the way.

Joe Henderson played on a bunch of albums with Horace Silver before he began his solo career, and I love them. Especially "The Cape Verdean Blues." His last few albums (on Verve) before he died, are masterpieces.

A couple more classics that have become part of me over the years, that anyone with a heartbeat should like: "In A Mellowtone," Duke Ellington, and "African Marketplace," Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim.

There are a lot of Coleman Hawkins collections with "Body and Soul," "The Man I Love," and "Picasso" on them; that’s where you begin with him. A couple of Sonny Rollinses: “Next Album,” “Saxophone Colossus.” Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Charles Mingus’s “Mingus Live at Carnegie Hall,” where he just DOMINATES; although these are not perfect albums, I also like “Kirkatron,” “Rip, Rig, and Panic,” and “The Inflated Tear” very much.

Q. Did you grow up in a musical family? You once mentioned your daughters showing an interest in music. What do they play?

A. General stuff about my family: We Mitchells tend to be kind of alchemists; artists, scientists, and engineers, but with a spiritual or metaphysical bent, and just a little bit restless in our quest for the Philosopher’s Stone. Many of my ancestors led interesting and storied lives. In the past there have been a number of preachers, an Underground Railroad conductor, the riding mechanic on one of the very first coast-to-coast automobile trips, a doctor with a black Union Army regiment in the Civil War, and a civil engineer turned traveling salesman. We have an astronomer/photographer/surf guitarist, and a nuclear physicist, another photographer, a painter/sculptor/golf wiz, and a mathematician/carillon player. Of course, we have a couple of lawyers, too (no family is perfect), but they are creative people, and they married creative people, so they get a pass.

Somebody back there did play the cornet and have a traveling brass band. My mom was the trumpet pride of her high school, but didn't turn pro; women just didn’t grow up and become trumpet players back then, and, anyway, she liked chemistry better. Now she keeps bees. Beyond the buzzing, that’s not too musical, but the bees dance to communicate with each other, so I think we’re still in the performing arts. My dad, the star athlete and all-round Big Man On Campus, who considers the greatest of his many claims to fame to be having played college and semi-pro baseball against guys like Ted Williams and Gil Hodges, has always said that he'd gladly have given up all of that just to be able to play "Begin the Beguine" on clarinet like Artie Shaw.

And then there is me. For myself, never having seen anybody in the family make a living from music, I've had to take it on faith all these years that it could be done. After 20 years of doing it, I still can't always believe that I actually MAKE A LIVING DOING WHAT I LOVE TO DO! It sounds like something from the middle of a matchbook or a Bazooka Joe comic. But there it is. I just went for it, it worked out, and here I am. Maybe the next generation, having watched me, will skip all the doubt and just go for it.

So if no other pro musicians, how about, at least, some lovers of music? Absolutely! We would have the most amazing listening sessions back in '68 and '69, before my siblings started growing up and leaving home -- it might be Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas, Count Basie, Bob Dylan, or Benny Goodman, at any given moment. It was all the same to us. We loved them all without categorizing them in any way.

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Some T.C.-recommended links:

NPR : Jazz Critic Kevin Whitehead’s nice little piece on Illinois Jacquet -http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/segment_display.cfm?segID=148256

Tabou Combo -
taboucombo.com

Radio Métropole (reliable news source for Haiti - in French)
http://metropolehaiti.com/metropole/frameset.html

Radio Haiti-Amérique Internationale (Haitian radio in Boca Raton and Boston - live streaming - talk about being a jack of all trades, this is like CNN, C-Span, NPR, Oprah, The Learning Channel, and VH1, all at once - in French and Creole)
http://gohaiti.com/

Viviane Rangon site (under construction)
http://www.vivianerangon.20fr.com./
KD - good Compas site - with a promo for Viviane’s CD -
http://Konpadirek.com/

A Virtual Dominica (Haitian music reference pages) - http://www.avirtualdominica.com/music/define.htm

Carib Planet (Guide to Haitian music radio and music sites) - http://caribplanet.homestead.com/Haiti.html

Afro Mix Viviane Rangon discography -
http://www.afromix.org/disco/artistes/viviane_rangon/index.fr.html

Website devoted to Jazz/Funk Vocalist/Pianist/Songwriter, Mala Waldron -
http://malawaldron.freeyellow.com/

Klezmatics page (under construction) - http://www.klezmatics.com/

http://www.tzadik.com/
http://www.franklondon.com/dsk.html
www.tzadik.com/CDSections/FilmMusic/london.html
www.tzadik.com/CDSections/RadicalJewishCulture/ london_scientist.html
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