Benny Golson, one of jazz's most prolific composers of sophisticated jazz standards and one of the most graceful powerhouse hard-bop tenor saxophonists, died on September 22. He was 95. [Photo above of Benny Golson courtesy of Arkadia Records]
Benny's long list of majestic compositions includes Along Came Betty, Park Avenue Petite, Blues March, I Remember Clifford, Killer Joe, Stablemates and Whisper Not. He not only was a dynamic sideman in the 1950s but also a towering player on more than 40 leadership albums. He also co-led the Jazztet, a sextet he co-founded with trumpeter Art Farmer.
In the 1960s, Benny moved to Hollywood and composed for TV and the movies. Separately, his most high-profile acting appearance was in Steven Spielberg's film The Terminal (2004), starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Stanley Tucci. The film centered on an Eastern European man who holes up in Terminal Six at New York's JFK airport.
Denied entry into the U.S., he waits out authorities. Only at the end are his mission and determination revealed. Without spoiling the ending, asking Benny for something was always his goal.
On a personal note, Benny was a friend and a great guy, always upbeat, engaging and funny. My first phone interview took place in 2008, shortly after JazzWax was founded in 2007, for the liner notes I was writing for a Benny Golson compilation album. When he answered, he spent a good minute making me believe he was angry about the call before erupting in laughter. [Catching up with Benny backstage at New York's 92NY in 2017]
I next interviewed him soon after for JazzWax and again in 2012 for The Wall Street Journal (go here). Matt Schudel wrote a beautiful obituary on Benny in the Washington Post yesterday (go here).
In tribute to jazz's most beautiful cat, here's my complete 2008 JazzWax interview with him:
JazzWax: As one of jazz's greatest composers, do you always hear melodies forming in your head?
Benny Golson: Absolutely. Early in my career I'd write two or three songs in a day and record them as soon as possible. Now I have songs that I haven't completed yet in 10 years. They're in a pile in a box. I just pulled one out a few months ago that I forgot about. Over the years, I've shaped it up a little bit and added some new thinking. I think it's OK. But I won't send a song out to Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Al Jarreau or other singers until I'm sure about it. I'll put the song on the piano and walk past it every day, looking at it, testing it and changing it. When I really think I have a song in a place that's as good as I can get it, then I say it's ready.
JW: What about song titles?
BG: Sometimes it takes me as long to come up with a title as it does to write the song itself. I'm a big believer that a title should convey something about the song before you hear it.
JW: What did your father do for a living?
BG: My father did several things. When I was growing up in Philadelphia in the 1930s, my father was a foreman for the gas company, until he punched out another foreman [laughs]. He also worked at the railroad station, he was in charge of a night clean-up crew in office buildings, and he worked for Nabisco. I don't remember everything he did because I didn't grow up with my father. He left home before I was born so it was always just me and my mother. She remarried later, in the late 1940s. But I saw my natural father on occasion, and I loved him.
JW: What did your mom do to make ends meet?
BG: My mother was a hard-working lady. She was a seamstress and made a minimal amount of money. She also worked as a waitress for $6 a week plus tips. My mother used to sing, but not professionally. When pianist Ray Bryant and his brother and I had a gig at an after-hours spot in the late 1940s, my mother was the singer [laughs]. My stepfather got jealous because everyone was coming on to her, so she had to quit. But my mom was a pretty good singer. I learned a lot of the old songs from her.
JW: What drew you to the tenor sax?
BG: It wasn't records. I went to see Lionel Hampton in 1945 at the Earle Theater at 11th and Market St. in Philadelphia. It was the first time I had seen a live band. I had started playing piano at age 9 and fancied I'd become a concert pianist one day. But during the Hampton concert, the band played an intro and Arnett Cobb stepped out from the reed section to the front of the stage with his tenor sax. A microphone came up out of the floor, and Arnett started playing Flying Home. At that moment, the piano for me started to lose its appeal [laughs]. I told Arnett years later in Nice, France, that he was the reason I was playing the tenor sax. Tears welled up in his eyes.
JW: Did you have brothers and sisters?
BG: No. I was an only child.
JW: So you got all the attention?
BG: I suppose, but it wasn't much. We were on welfare. And everyone in school knew it. Everyone knew we got cans of corned beef hash that really consisted of horse meat. The cans had big bold letters that said, “Not to Be Sold.” But we had no other food. We weren't doing well. I remember coming home from school one day to find my mother with the washboard in a tub. She was crying. When I asked why, she wouldn't tell me. It turned out she didn't have 5 cents to buy a bar of soap to wash the clothes.
JW: How did your mother treat you?
BG: My mother would have gone to the wall for me, and she often did. She carried me above her head when things got bad. She did such a good job that I never knew how bad things really were.
JW: How did you wind up with a saxophone?
BG: After I heard Arnett, I started listening to the radio at night waiting to hear saxophone solos. My mother noticed my interest and asked why I was doing it. I said I had heard the saxophone, loved it and that I wished I had one. She asked me what kind. I said the kind with the curve in the neck, because the alto went straight up. What did I know? [laughs]
JW: When did you get it?
BG: One day when she came home from work, I was sitting outside on our front steps and saw she had something in her hand. I could see this long case but I couldn't tell what it was. When she crossed the street and came up to me, I could see it was a sax case. She said, “I've got something for you, baby.” I went crazy. We went in the house and she put the case on the couch and opened it up. It wasn't a used sax from the pawnshop. It was a brand new one, a Martin that she bought at Wurlitzer's music store on 11th and Chestnut St. [Photo above of Benny Golson at 15 in Philadelphia]
JW: How could she afford it?
BG: She paid a dollar down and would have to pay a dollar a month virtually for life. Raymond Ziegler was my teacher. He had played with Charlie Barnet's band and had wanted to come off the road. So he gave student lessons to earn a living. I was one of his students, and he gave me a lot of his time. I guess he thought I had talent. He really went at it hard with me. Years later, while he was still with Wurlitzer's, I came back as a performer at the Earle Theater. It was a block away from the music store. That man was so proud of me.
JW: When did you start playing jazz?
BG: As soon as I could play a few songs. Local friends would get together to have so-called jam sessions in my living room. They were more like “am” sessions. We earned the “j” later. [laughs] I guess we drove the neighbors
nuts because we didn't know what were doing at first. We knew we were getting better when, one summer, with the windows open, neighbors started shouting song requests [laughs]. I look back on those days fondly. By that time, we were off welfare and living in a three-story house. My mother had to pay $30 a month in rent. To help pay the bills, she rented out three rooms, and I had to make all the beds when I came home from school and scrub the floors on Fridays. My mom was good to me. But there were times when I felt the anger of her strap.
JW: What brought it on?
BG: I was terrible in school. Teachers would send notes home, and I'd sign my mother's name and take them back to the teachers. Then one day they had an open house, and all the parents came. I wasn't worried because my mother had to work every day. But lo and behold, my heart almost stopped when my mother turned up at the classroom door.
JW: What happened?
BG: I realized then that my mom was going to find out the truth. The teacher said to her, “I'm so sorry Mrs. Golson that I had to write all those letters to you.” My mother said, “What letters?” Mrs. Shapiro asked me to come up to her desk. Now all my boys were looking. I walked up there like I was big and brave, but I was almost peeing on myself. She said, “Benny, who signed those letters?” I said, “I did.” I was almost dying with fear. My mother said, “Oh, you did? I'll see you when you come home.” And I strolled back to my seat brazenly.
JW: What happened when you got home?
BG: I got it that night. One time my mother was trying to beat me with the strap but the ironing cord was in the way. When she finished, I looked like a zebra [laughs]. But my mother kept me in line, and she taught me to appreciate values.
JW: Was it tough attending Howard University rather than play jazz right away as a professional musician?
BG: No, no, no. My mother worked her fingers to the bone, and my father sent me money each week to help me get by. College wasn't as expensive as it is now. Back then I wanted to study music at Howard to learn the basics. But I was disappointed at school because there were so many music rules. So many of the lessons I was taught contradicted the ideas I had in my head.
JW: What do you mean?
BG: Teachers kept telling me about the rules, and I said, “Can't I break them?” They said the rules were made for a reason. I said, “Well someone made the rules. Why can't they be broken if the ear accepts the result?” They said no, the rules were the rules. I questioned everything in college. Oh I was a pill [laughs].
JW: What did you do when you graduated from Howard in 1950?
BG: I began playing professionally right away. One of my early jobs was with guitarist Tiny Grimes. Ray Bryant, who also grew up in Philadelphia, brought me in. Tiny had played with Art Tatum in the mid-1940s, so he was something of a legend. Art Tatum played in any key that struck his fancy. Tiny was the same way. When I played with Tiny, I thought I was going crazy.
JW: Why?
BG: We played the same tunes every night but we never knew what key they would be in. The key was wherever Tiny's hands fell on that darn guitar. So I had to learn to play in all keys. Tiny would play a short intro to let everyone know the key. You had just a few notes to pick out the key. I was a nervous wreck. We had to wear kilts, because the group was called Tiny Grimes and His Rockin' Highlanders. I had to walk on the bar to get off the bandstand. So in the beginning I'm stepping over drinks, and the women sitting at the bar are picking up my darn kilt. And I've got my boxer underwear on. After the first night, a friend said, “No boxers, man, you have to wear a tight bathing suit” [laughs].
JW: In 1951, you joined Reginald Benjamin “Bull Moose” Jackson, an R&B band. Big change?
BG: Oh yes. Tadd Dameron played piano in that band and provided me with so much inspiration. Tadd was an anachronism in that band. He and Bull Moose had grown up in Cleveland together. Tadd wasn't working at the time, and Bull Moose needed a piano player. He said to Tadd, “Look, if you're not working, come on and make a few gigs with me, and you'll get to earn some money. You can always leave when you choose.” So Tadd joined.
JW: Working with Tadd must have been great.
BG: When I joined, Tadd liked the way I played. I was able to get drummer Philly Joe Jones in the band. Philly was a great R&B player. Not many people know that. I also brought in Johnny Coles and Jymie Merritt. We played Bull Moose's stuff to make the hits and the money. And the band played Tadd's jazz arrangements, too. Eventually we had two audiences—a jazz audience and the R&B audience. And then I started to write.
JW: What did Tadd think of your arrangements?
BG: He was so proud of me. He came over one night, really tongue in cheek, with that voice of his, and said, “What a drag. We played one of your arrangements and people came over and told me they loved my arrangement. What a drag.” Tadd was so proud of me because I was picking up. But I didn't just stick to him as an influence. I added to what he taught me and tried to develop my own thing.
JW: But Tadd was a major influence, yes?
BG: Whatever progress I made is owed to Tadd. He was so melodic and a great mentor. Tadd said to me, “The next time I go to Europe I'm taking you with me.” But he never went. Mind you, how I played the tenor sax back then wasn't the way I played later or now. When I look back on those days, my playing style wasn't that great. It was too smooth and silky. Art Blakey taught me to put bite in the stuff.
JW: In June 1953, you recorded with Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce, Tadd and an all-star group. What did that experience teach you?
BG: You know what happens when you take two knives and scrape them together so they both get sharp? That's how it was with me and Brownie. What I didn't know Clifford knew. And what Clifford didn't know I knew. Playing together for the whole summer was something else. When we played gigs, Philly Joe Jones was on drums, Jymie Merritt was on bass, Cecil Payne was on baritone sax for a minute, Gigi Gryce was on alto, and Clifford and Johnny Coles were on trumpets.
JW: What was the recording session like?
BG: When we did the Prestige recording, the studio was so small that Brownie's microphone was by my left shoulder. When he stood up to play his solo, the bell of his trumpet was near my left ear. At the end of that session, I said “Clifford, I know you better now than anyone else” [laughs]. Every time he played that day, it went right into my left ear.
JW: In 1954-56, you were recording with alto saxophonist Earl Bostic's band.
BG: Yes, until he fired me. It was the only time I was fired from a band. I deserved that firing. Bostic was the best technician on the alto sax I had ever heard. Charlie Parker couldn't touch him, not on technique. Style was a different matter, of course. John Coltrane and Stan Turrentine worked with Bostic before I did. John told me about his technique. Bostic was like a demon, that guy. He would play the things that made him money, like Flamingo, ad nauseam. The rest of the group would play a chord or a triad at the end and just stand there most of the time. There was nothing for us to play.
JW: Why did you get fired?
BG: For a series of things. The first happened down South. In addition to being a saxophonist, Bostic played guitar. Whenever he'd pull out that guitar, I said to myself, “Man this is driving me crazy.” That's because the rest of the band would have virtually nothing to do. So one time when we took a half-hour intermission at a dance, I sneaked back up onto the bandstand and tightened some of the strings and loosened others. When we went back on stage, Bostic didn't bother tuning up because his guitar was already in tune. He'd kick off the song, start playing and the guitar was crazy and all out of tune. He couldn't figure out what was wrong with the instrument. He kept looking at it. Then the guys started laughing and looking at me. So he knew.
JW: What happened next?
BG: We were playing a dance one night and the reeds were just standing there, as usual. I said to myself, “I think I'm going to do what I saw Illinois Jacquet do." So I went all the way to the back of the stage by the drummer, I took my saxophone off the strap and started running toward the audience drawing my instrument back like I was going to throw it. When I got to the edge of the platform, I made believe I was going to hurl it. But, of course, the sax never left my hands. Everyone standing around at the foot of the stage ducked. Just when this happened, Bostic started his solo. Bostic didn't like that [laughs]. He said, “Do what you want on your solo but don't you dare do that on mine.”
JW: What was the final straw?
BG: Nobody had ever sat in with the Earl Bostic band. He wouldn't let them. When we were on the road in Seattle, Walter Benton, a tenor saxophonist and good friend of mine, came by and had his horn with
him. He asked if he could sit in. I said, “Sure” [laughs]. When Bostic finished his solo and opened his eyes, this stranger stepped up to the mike and started playing. Bostic said, "Who the heck is that?" When Walter finished his solo, Bostic asked Walter what he thought he was doing. Walter said, “Benny told me I could play.” That's when I got fired. Bostic gave me my two weeks.
JW: While you were with Earl Bostic in 1955, saxophonist James Moody recorded your composition Blue Walk. How did that song get its name?
BG: I just gave it a name, that's all. It sounded like a blues walk. Years later, I was at the Pershing Club in Chicago listening to pianist Ahmad Jamal. At the end of the night, Ahmad and I used to go out to get breakfast and talk. During an intermission at the club, a recording of Blue Walk came on and he said, “Oh, I love that song.” I said, “Thank you.” He said, “Did you write that?” I said, “Uh, yes” [laughs]. Blue Walk is a typical blues, but the melody doesn't lead one to think it's a straight blues. Moody loved it. So did Ahmad.
JW: You wrote Stablemates around this time, too. How did that jazz standard get its name?
BG: When I was with Earl Bostic, we used to play up in Massachusetts at towns like Holyoke, Peabody and Revere Beach. We'd spend our days off in Boston. There was a nice elegant restaurant off Copley Square. If you went to the back of this restaurant and down the steps, you'd be in a jazz club called The Stable. Herb Pomeroy, the trumpet player, was there along with Varty Haroutunian on tenor, John Neves on bass and others. Herb and I became friends, and I would sit in and jam with them.
JW: Playing jazz at The Stable must have been a relief from the repetition of Bostic's band.
BG: It was. Herb knew I was writing and asked me to write him some songs. One of the first compositions I wrote for the group was a crazy tune because of the number of bars it had—14 bars followed by an 8-bar bridge, then 14 more bars. This was most unusual. I didn't have a name for the tune and wondered what I would call it. As I thought about it, I said to myself, “I'm sending it to Herb. Well, he works at The Stable. Hey, stablemates means good friends. We're stablemates. I'll name it Stablemates.” And that's what happened.
JW: The song moves major and minor, it sounds pretty complicated.
BG: It moves around quite a bit. I'm still trying to learn how to play it [laughs].
JW: When Miles Davis recorded Stablemates in 1955 for Prestige, you were still with Bostic.
BG: Let me roll back the story a bit. In Philadelphia in 1955, Philly Joe had to give up a spot in our local jam session group to take a job with Miles. Miles loved the way Philly played. Around that time, Hank Mobley was leaving Miles' group, and Miles asked Philly if he knew a tenor player from Philadelphia who could take Mobley's place. Miles figured, given the way Philly played, if he's going to ask for a recommendation, he wanted someone of the same ilk. So Philly answers, “Yeah, I know someone.” Miles says, “What's his name?” Philly says, “John Coltrane.”
JW: What did Miles say?
BG: Miles says, “Never heard of him. Can he play?” Philly probably made the understatement of his life. He simply said, “Uh, huh” [laughs]. That's when John also left our little coterie of musicians in Philadelphia and went to New York to start rehearsing with Miles.
JW: How did Stablemates wind up in Miles's hands?
BG: About a week after John left, I saw him on Philadelphia's Columbia Ave. I asked him how it was going. “It's going great, he said, “but Miles needs some music. Do you have any?” Did I have any? All I had was music. When I look back now, it was embarrassing. I gave everyone I met back then a lead sheet from one of my compositions. You had to do that if you wanted your songs played. But nothing had ever happened. So when John took the tune I gave him, I didn't think any more of it.
JW: What happened?
BG: About a month later, I ran into John Coltrane again. John said, “You know that tune you gave me? We recorded it.” I said, “What? Miles recorded my tune?” John said, “Yeah, he dug it.” Man, I couldn't believe it. Sure enough, when the album, Miles, came out, there was the Prestige label with the yellow field, black printing and Stablemates printed on there with my name underneath as composer.
JW: This record changed everything for you, didn't it?
BG: All the people I had passed out lead sheets to, they heard Miles play this song and saw my name under it and said, “Wait a minute, is this the same guy?” John Coltrane had taken Stablemates to Miles, and Miles's recording of it validated me and put me on the map as a jazz composer. After that, everybody started recording my stuff.
JW: You and Miles would have been perfect. Did you ever play together?
BG: No, but we almost did. I was playing in Chicago back in the early 1950s, when not many club owners knew who Miles Davis was. I was working with Gigi Gryce at a club on Cottage Grove. During the intermission, Miles came in and asked me if he could sit in. I said I didn't know, that the owner was kind of funny about that. When I asked the owner if Miles Davis could sit in, he said, “Look, I'm paying you guys to play. I don't need no strangers coming in here.” “But this is Miles Davis,” I said, a little astonished. The guy said, “I don't give a so and so who he is.” So I had to go back and tell Miles, “Sorry, man, he won't let you sit in” [laughs]. Can you believe it? We never recorded or played together.
JW: When Philly Joe recommended John Coltrane to Miles, did you ever wish he had recommended you?
BG: No, no, no. I'm a realist. John had something special, Marc. Everybody knew that. He used to be over at my house every day when we were kids, in the living room, just the two of us, listening to 78-rpm records and
absorbing everything. He used to sit in an overstuffed chair by the window with his alto and the cushion. We had an old beat-up upright piano. I would play some sad chords while John tried to solo. Then he'd come to the piano, and I'd play the tenor. His chords were sadder than mine. We only had each other then. We'd do that all day that way and then go to jam sessions together, trying to get our stuff together.
JW: What made John Coltrane so special early on? His intensity?
BG: His ability made him different. Ever go to school with a student who got A's in everything effortlessly? John was that kind of person. When we got to where he was musically, he was somewhere else. And when we got to that spot, he was somewhere else again. He had something special. So when Miles used him, I said "fantastic."
JW: Getting back to the day Earl Bostic fired you in 1956, where did you go?
BG: The next morning, before I caught a plane out of Seattle, I got a call from Quincy Jones, who was playing with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. Quincy was the band's straw boss, taking care of all the business. Quincy said that Ernie Wilkins was leaving the band, and he wanted to know if I could join. I said, “Yeah.” He said, “When?” I said, “Right now!” So I joined Dizzy's band right away the next day in Washington, D.C.
JW: Was playing in Dizzy's band in 1956 a turning point for you as a saxophonist?
BG: With Dizzy, I learned the importance of being exceptional. When I joined Dizzy's band, I was five or six feet from him, because he stood in front of the reeds. With a musician like Dizzy, you're either encouraged or discouraged beyond belief. He played so much stuff during that first show in Washington, D.C. I actually became discouraged. I told myself I'd never be able to play like that.
JW: Did you talk to him after the show?
BG: When the first show was over, the curtains closed, the lights went out and everybody was leaving the stage. He and I happened to be the last two there. I said to myself that I had to say something to him, I've got to tell him know how I feel about what he's doing. That's when I probably said the corniest thing I ever said in my life, Marc. I said, “Gee, Diz, you sure did blow.” Man, I wanted to grab those words back immediately. They sounded so silly after I said them. But he was so humbled, he blushed and sputtered, “Uh, uh, uh, it was nothing.” But it was everything, man, it was everything.
JW: Dizzy saw huge potential in you, didn't he?
BG: Yes, he did. I went over to his house in Corona, Queens, in New York. We went down to his studio, and I spent an afternoon with him. He changed my thinking. The things he showed me musically that day were a revelation.
JW: While you were with Dizzy, the band recorded Whisper Not, with your arrangement.
BG: I wrote that song in 20 minutes while at Storyville in Boston. Most of my songs have a story attached to them. That one didn't. I just liked the two words together. When it came out, all the jazz journalists were intellectualizing about what I meant. It meant absolutely nothing. I wrote it at the club during the day, with the club's chairs on the tables and the bartender preparing for that night's business. The ideas were coming so fast back then I could barely write them all down. I thought composing was nothing because it took me so fast to write songs.
JW: In 1956 you wrote I Remember Clifford. How did you hear about Brownie's death?
BG: That June day in 1956 was a heart- wrenching one. It was horrible. I was playing at the Apollo Theater on 125th St. in Harlem with Dizzy's big
band. During one of the breaks on the 27th, pianist Walter Davis Jr. came from a bar around the corner on Eighth Ave. to the rear of the theater. He was crying and waving his arms and saying something we couldn't hear or understand right away. When he got close enough, we could hear the chilling words: “Clifford Brown was killed in an automobile accident last night.”
JW: What was the reaction?
BG: We froze with disbelief. It broke our hearts. Brownie had so much promise. The next week Dizzy's band was in Los Angeles. I decided to write a song to help people remember Clifford. The song wasn't published until 1957. Little did I know that Brownie didn't need any help from me. He was a harbinger of great things to come that would never be fulfilled. I set about to write it, and the song took me the whole two weeks we were there.
JW: What were you thinking as you wrote it? Today, the song is the jazz equivalent of taps.
BG: I wanted every note to represent the way Clifford played, because I knew him that well. I wanted every note to reflect Clifford Brown. And I've always said I wished I had never written it, that he was still with us today.
JW: It sounds like you miss him.
BG: Oh, I do, I do. I still miss Clifford and John. John and I were like brothers. We were together every day as kids. Yeah, I miss those two guys.
JW: In October 1957 you recorded The New York Scene. What was the inspiration for the song Step Lightly?
BG: I just had a feeling, and those notes came out that way. Incidentally, I turned on the radio the other day and heard Step Lightly. I told my wife, “They're playing my version of Step Lightly.” But as the saxophone started to play, I said, “Wait a minute, that's not me.” It turned out it was a Shelly Manne album from 1959 on Contemporary. [Editor's note: the album was "Shelly Manne and His Men," recorded live at the Black Hawk in San Francisco. The tenor saxophonist was Richie Kamuca.]
JW: One of my favorite albums of yours is The Modern Touch from 1957. Two of your songs on there are incredible—Out of the Past and Venetian Breeze.
BG: On Out of the Past, I wanted the song to sound like something from the past, reminiscent of a black-and-white film. I wanted it to have a nostalgic feel that would tug at the heart a little bit. It's meant to feel a little like Tadd Dameron's Nostalgia.
JW: What about Venetian Breeze?
BG: Venetian Breeze was written when I was working down in Miami for the summer. We used to go from Miami to Miami Beach over the Venetian Causeway, a bridge that connects the two areas of Miami. The ride was so nice, and the breeze was beautiful. The car windows were down, the weather was perfect and there was water on each side. It was a beautiful ride.
JW: On your November 1958 album, The Other Side of Benny Golson, your tenor sax on Are You Real has a Coltrane feel. Were you thinking of him when you were playing?
BG: Absolutely not. It just came out that way. I also wrote that song in Miami.
JW: You recorded with Dinah Washington in 1957. Was she as tough as they say?
BG: Oh, my girl Ruth Jones. She almost seduced me. She invited me over for dinner up on 145th St. I knew she had two boys and a maid. Even though I knew she had a reputation with men, I figured I was safe with all those people in the house. But when I got there Dinah answered the door, not her maid. When I walked in, I asked Dinah, “Where's Theresa?” Dinah said, “Oh I gave her the night off.” “Well, where are the boys?,” I asked. “Oh, they're at their grandmother's,” she said. That's when I said to myself, “Uh, oh.”
JW: What happened?
BG: I noticed the lights were dimmed and the music was playing softly. We had dinner and after sat on the couch. That's when things started to change. I knew I had to get out of there. I looked at my watch and said, “Oh, dog-gone it. What a drag. I forgot I have to be at so and so. Dinah I'm late, please forgive me.”
JW: Did you escape in one piece?
BG: I did. But after that night, Dinah never called me Benny again. She called me Reverend. Every time. Wherever I was [laughs].
JW: Who taught you the most about jazz?
BG: Art Blakey, without a doubt. He taught me how to play forcefully. When I joined him, I was playing the tenor soft and smooth and mellifluous. So he'd play those press rolls behind me, and I would disappear. Nobody could hear me. It seemed as if I were pantomiming. He kept playing those press rolls, and I didn't get what he was doing.
JW: How did he get his message across to you?
BG: One night, instead of playing a press roll for two bars before we came into the new chorus, he started that press roll eight bars early. He was so loud I thought he had lost his senses. When he came down for the new chorus, every two or three beats he'd hit a loud crash. I said to myself, “What is wrong with this guy?” I still didn't get it. Finally, he hollered over at me, “Get up out of that hole!” I said to myself, “Man, I guess I am in a hole. Nobody can hear me.” So I started playing harder and with more bite.
JW: What else did Blakey teach you?
BG: He taught me how to play meaningfully. He'd say to the guys in the group, “You play so long on your solo that when the audience applauds, you don't know whether they're applauding because they liked what you played or they're glad you stopped” [laughs]. Art said to play with dynamics and that everything doesn't have to be loud. Art was a natural teacher.
JW: You recorded your compositions Along Came Betty and Blues March with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in October 1958. What did Art Blakey think of Blues March?
BG: Oh, man, Blakey didn't want to record it. He thought I was crazy. He said nobody plays a march except in New Orleans when they're going to the cemetery. “No, no,” I said, “I'm not talking about a military march. Have you ever heard that black college in the South, Grambling? Have you ever heard them play marches? It's soulful, it's greasy, it's funky.”
JW: What did Blakey say?
BG: Art said, “Aw, Golson, it will never work.” I said, “Let me try.” I put the thing together. We were playing at Small's Paradise in New York. I gave the song a big buildup before we played it: “Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to play something you've never heard before in jazz.” We started to play the cadence and then the tune.
JW: How did they take it?
BG: People suddenly got up and started dancing and bumping the tables and knocking drinks over. Small's was just a place for drinks. While we were playing and people were dancing, Art looked over at me and said, “I'll be damned.”
JW: Bobby Timmons's Moanin' was on the same album. What role did you play in that song's creation?
BG: I just pushed Bobby to take it seriously. Bobby used to have a lick he liked to play every time we finished a tune. He'd play what would become Moanin's theme. Then he'd stop and laugh, and say, “Ah, that sure is funky.” That went on for a few weeks. By the time we got to Marty's, a club in Columbus, Ohio, he had the first eight bars, the second eight and the last eight after the bridge. All he needed was a bridge.
JW: How did the bridge come about?
BG: I called a rehearsal. Everyone wanted to know why we were rehearsing, since we had the band's book down. I said we were going to do something new. At the club, I told Bobby we were going to put a bridge on the song he always played in between tunes. He said, “That thing? Oh that's nothing. That's just an old lick.” I said, “No Bobby, I hear a tune there. We're all going to sit down here, and you're going to go up on the bandstand and write a bridge to the tune. He didn't want to do it. I said, “Trust me, this is the making of a great tune. Write a bridge.”
JW: What did he do?
BG: We went and sat down. After about a half hour, Bobby said, “Come see what you think of this.” I came up and he played it. I said, “No, no Bobby, it misses the point. You don't have the same groove as the other melody.” He says, “Well you write it then.” I said, “No, this has to be you, Bobby. Come on, try again.” I sat back down, and about 15 minutes later, Bobby said, “Here it is.” I listened and said, “That's it!” We learned the tune, played it that night and got everyone in the audience up dancing.
JW: Once Bobby Timmons completed Moanin' with your help, did Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers record it right away?
BG: No. Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records didn't want to record Art anymore. Alfred said Art had been on so many different recordings with virtually every musician that he was overexposed.
JW: In retrospect, that sounds shortsighted.
BG: I know. In Art Blakey's defense, I said, “Alfred, you're missing the point. Art's on all those recordings because he's that great.” I continued, “We've got a new group, a new young trumpet player [Lee Morgan] and a new piano player [Bobby Timmons]. Come down to the Five Spot and hear us. You owe it to yourself. It's different.”
JW: What did he say?
BG: Alfred said, “I've been recording Hank Mobley a lot lately and I like him.” I said, “Alfred, it's different.” So Alfred came to where we were playing in New York and heard a set. After we played, he came up to me and said, “When do you want to record?”
JW: Why did Alfred Lion ask you and not Art Blakey?
BG: At this point I had taken charge of everything. Art had given me that license. Before I joined the band, everyone was late. When I came on, I used to pick up Art for work and then took him home afterward. I also made sure everyone returned from intermission at clubs when they were supposed to. And I got everyone to wear a suit and tie.
JW: So you brought order to the group?
BG: Just before I joined the Jazz Messengers, the owner of Small's Paradise said he didn't want Art back because he had taken two-hour intermissions, and the customers would leave. When I joined, I told the group that our first goal was to have Small's Paradise ask us to come back. Art said, “You're crazy. That will never happen.”
JW: What did you do?
BG: Well, first we recorded Moanin' for Blue Note. I told Alfred I wanted to use a picture of Art on the cover that a fan had taken. Alfred said fine. I also told Alfred I wanted to call the album Moanin', and he did. Everyone was going along with my calls. I told Art we needed to tour Europe to raise our visibility, and we did. I said we needed to play a concert at New York's Town Hall. We got a concert date at Town Hall. I said we're going to play the concert in full dress-suits and ties. Art said, “Benny, are you crazy?” I said, “Art, people see you before they hear you. They've got to know what we think of ourselves before we play a note.”
JW: What else did Blue Note do for the group?
BG: They had 45-rpms then, and Alfred recorded Bobby's song Moanin' as a single. It was on all the jukeboxes, including the one at Small's Paradise. One day, the phone rings. The person on the other end says, “Is Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers available? It's Small's Paradise calling.” When I told Art, he said, “I'll be damned.” Our paydays were going up too, everything was good. When I left the group in late 1958 after returning from Europe, I told Art to keep doing the same thing we had done. People didn't realize that going forward, whenever there was a problem, Art would call me for advice.
JW: You were a part of Quincy Jones' game-changing big band of 1959 and 1960. Why was Quincy so important?
BG: Quincy had a unique writing style. It was the way he voiced the instruments and harmonies. He was clever at that. It had a way of catching the ear, and that's what it's all about. If it doesn't catch the ear, the audience isn't going to pay attention to it. Quincy always had that in mind.
JW: How do Quincy Jones and Ernie Wilkins differ?
BG: Both are great writers and arrangers. But Quincy has that harmonic thing together, with clusters and sonorities and things like that. Ernie Wilkins's stuff hits you like a razor. The impact is like breaking open a fresh head of lettuce, that crisp sound. Ernie's charts could hit hard, with impact. I learned how to hit hard musically from him. He was shocked when I told him years later what I had learned from him.
JW: How did you come up with the idea for the Jazztet in late 1959?
BG: It was a group I always had in mind. I first met trumpeter Art Farmer when I joined Lionel Hampton's band in 1953. Art and I formed a friendship. When the band split up, Art and I would wind up on record dates together and on radio and TV commercials. I also used him as my contractor hiring musicians.
JW: Why six musicians?
BG: At this time I knew there were a lot of quintets and quartets playing. I thought, "Hey, there might be room for a sextet." I thought Art Farmer would be perfect as my trumpet player. So I called Art and told him my idea. He broke out laughing. “You're never going to believe this,” he said, “But I was thinking about putting a sextet together, too, and using you as my tenor player." I said, “Why don't you come by the pad and we'll talk about it.”
JW: When he got there, what did you discuss?
BG: We chose the rest of the group. We both agreed on trombonist Curtis Fuller. I told Art about this 19-year-old piano player in Philadelphia I had heard. Art asked me his name. I said, McCoy Tyner. Art asked if he could play. I said yes [laughs]. We hired him. Art hired his twin brother Addison Farmer on bass and Dave Bailey on drums. This was the first Jazztet.
JW: What was the first new song you wrote for the group?
BG: I wanted to try writing a tune inspired by what I used to see at Birdland—the pimps coming in with their ladies on each arm, their Cadillac Eldorados parked by the doorman at the curb, their fingernails done with clear polish, their shiny suits with the black shirt and white tie and hat, and hair processed. Coming up as a kid, everybody who was involved in illegal things in Philadelphia—bootlegging, numbers running and so on was named “Killer”—like Killer Johnson. The name epitomized everything that was illegal. I saw these guys in Chicago, Los Angeles and in New York at Birdland every night. So I named the song Killer Joe.
JW: Why did you move to Los Angeles in the late 1960s?
BG: I was studying in New York with Henry Brandt, an avant-garde composer and orchestrator who later won a Pulitzer Prize for music in 1992 and died this past April [2008]. He orchestrated for movie composer Alex North, and orchestrated Cleopatra, Spartacus and other films. He taught at Juilliard and at Bennington College. He taught me so much. I was learning new composing techniques that went way beyond writing jazz for Count Basie or the Jazz Messengers. I wanted to use what I had learned, such as symmetrical chords and mirror writing. My only outlet would be to go to Hollywood and write dramatic stuff. Quincy Jones and Oliver Nelson were already there, and both urged me to come out.
JW: What did you do when you arrived in Los Angeles?
BG: The first studio that hired me was Universal, which was bigger at the time than all the other studios put together. For my first TV composing assignment in 1968, my buddy Quincy Jones was sitting there on the sound stage when we recorded. The session was for It Takes a Thief.
JW: Looking back, how would you describe the distinct sound of your compositions?
BG: I've always loved melody. My heroes are Puccini, Brahms, Chopin and Duke Ellington. Intuitively, whenever I write, I want my music to last past my time. It's not about ego. If a song lasts past my time, it will show that the song was truly worthy. I don't keep track of how many versions of my songs have been recorded. Like a sculptor, when a song is done, it's done. I go on to the next thing.
JW: What's your favorite Benny Golson composition?
BG: I haven't written it yet [laughs]. Tomorrow's always another day. As the future crouches beneath my window waiting unashamedly to reveal itself, I hope it consequentially sees me doing something that's moving ahead, that I'm in tandem with time. Time never backs up, so a guilty conscience or mistakes are irrelevant. If I can be in sync with time, then I'm always moving ahead and on the cutting edge of things.
JW: Of all the artists you've known, who do you miss most?
BG: I'd have to say Art Farmer. He and I were joined at the hip. We could finish each other's sentences musically. He was as beautiful a person as he was an artist.
