Jodie Christian-Supporting Role

Jodie Christian-Supporting Role

Date Posted: January 06 2011

Written By: Chicago Jazz

Pianist Jodie Christian is our January-February 2011 feature interview. &media=news&topic=music" style="color: #154B83; text-decoration: none; background: #fff;">

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In his own words...Jodie Christian


In reviewing the music career of Chicago pianist Jodie Christian, the words “under sung” come to mind. Along with pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran, Christian is one of the co-founders of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the mid-1960s. With this effort alone Christian has made his contribution to the jazz community.

But Christian has recorded with likes of Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Gene Ammons, James Moody, Sonny Stitt, Eddie Harris, and performed with Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Benny Carter, Johnny Griffin, Don Byas, Milt Jackson, John Klemmer, Buddy Montgomery, Les McCann, Benny Carter, Red Holloway, Frank Foster, Teddy Edwards, Leo Parker, Eric Kloss, Barrett Deems, Rosco Mitchell, Art Porter, Rufus Reed, Jack DeJohnette, along with many others.

If Christian’s name does not roll off the tongue as readily as do the names of many of his contemporaries, it’s likely because Christian has chosen a different path for his music career: that of sideman. This is not to imply in the least that he is a second-rate talent. On the contrary, Christian is a musician’s musician. And just as comics recognize the inordinate talent of a great straight man, musicians understand and appreciate that Christian prefers to blend in as part of the rhythm section, using his considerable gifts in such a way as to improve the performances of those around him.

A man of devout faith, Christian is extremely comfortable in his own skin, to the point of unabashedly discussing how Parkinson’s Disease has affected his playing. But those who have heard Christian perform recently, whether at the 2010 Chicago Jazz Festival or during his frequent appearances at Katerina’s might take issue with his self-assessment.


Chicago Jazz Magazine: You had musical parents.

Jodie Christian: Yes. My father played the piano a little. He knew about three songs––blues songs. And my mother played for church and directed the choir.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: A lot of people may not know this, but you are actually a singer as well as a piano player.

Christian: Well, I was. I was never a gospel singer, but I sang with a gospel choir. But I also sang the blues and standards. Now I can’t carry a tune.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Was your first public singing in the church choir?

Christian: Yes, when I was twelve. Later, in high school, I had a choir and I had a quartet. In fact, we were on a jazz radio show in the late forties. We had a pretty good choir, because we had kids who could read music. They went to Tuskegee and different colleges in the South, so they were excellent singers. We did two shows: we did blues and light opera. My wife sang in the opera chorus. And her father was a tenor, John Kelly, during the thirties. He became a lone singer, because at that time black opera wasn’t subsidized, and he had a large family he couldn’t leave.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Was the piano your first instrument?

Christian: Yes, except for pots and pans. [laughs]

Chicago Jazz Magazine: With both of your parents being pianists there must have been a piano in the house.

Christian: Yeah, a player piano. I used to sit down and try to follow those notes. My sister played the piano, and I tried to follow the note––both the keys and the holes in the scrolls––it was amazing. That was my introduction.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: When did you start playing piano more formally with lessons?

Christian: I went to the Chicago School of Music. I guess I was about thirteen or fourteen. And I hated it, because I wanted to play baseball. Every time I had a game, it was music lesson time. So that kind of put me against lessons.


Chicago Jazz Magazine: But it paid off in the end.

Christian: I don’t know. I guess you can say it did.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You sound hesitant. Did you have aspirations of being a pro ballplayer?

Christian: Yes.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Who were your baseball idols at the time?

Christian: I had none––I just loved the game. In fact, when I would go to games, like football games in high school, I would wear a football uniform. And my thoughts were, if they needed a player I would be there. So every game I went to, I dressed for the occasion. [laughs]

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Were you in the high school band?

Christian: I was in an a cappella choir at Wendell Phillips High School.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: When did you first have thoughts that you might be a professional musician?

Christian: When I went to the Regal Theatre. I went quite often on the weekends, when all the different bands would come in. The Ink Spots came to Chicago and I saw Arthur Kennedy singing. He had a diamond ring on his hand that was flashing all around, and I said, “ I think that’s what I want to do.” I never thought of making money playing until then.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How old were you at the time?

Christian: I must have been thirteen or fourteen.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: At that time were you thinking of becoming a singer, a pianist or both?

Christian: At that time I was thinking of singing.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: When did you actually use your talent on a professional gig?

Christian: I don’t know if I can remember. I know it was always a toss up whether I was going to be a piano player or a ballplayer. I reached my decision when I got a chance to play with a well known baritone saxophone player. I can’t think of his name.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: At the time you were in choir, what type of music did you listen to?

Christian: The music of the day, rhythm and blues.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How did you become familiar with jazz?

Christian: Sessions. At that time there were a lot of sessions. We would go around town. And a fella’––he wasn’t a musician––took me to this session. And I heard this guy playing, Johnny Griffin. I couldn’t believe those guys were living in the same town I was living in. The only musicians I knew of that caliber were on records, and they lived somewhere else. But these guys were right in my own town, right across the street from me. Malachi Favors and the bass player, Wilbur Ware, who would come to my house. We would play, and my mother would say, “Why are you hanging around with that old man. Get out of here!” [laughs]

Chicago Jazz Magazine: So you had an apprenticeship with some great musicians early on. Were you still in high school?

Christian: Yeah.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Was it mostly swing music you were playing or was it bebop?

Christian: Bebop.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Wasn’t it your uncle that introduced you to bebop?

Christian: Yeah. I called him “Baby Brother.” He was the youngest of my grandfather’s children. He was a musician––an alto player in the tradition of Charlie Parker. We were at my grandmother’s house, and him and his friends would be in the living room humming Charlie Parker solos. And I went there one day, and it smelled kind of funny. And I went to my grandma and I was like, It smells kind of funny in that room. And she grabbed the broom and beat them out of there. I didn’t know what was going on. They were smoking reefer! [laughs]


Chicago Jazz Magazine: Did you ever get a chance to meet Charlie Parker?

Christian: No. I got a chance to see him though, at the Savoy in Chicago. Gene Ammons was the attraction. And of course Charlie Parker was sort of strung out, and his first set wasn’t too good, and people kind of booed him. I guess it got to him that Gene Ammons got all the praise. But the second set, Charlie Parker came back––I don’t know what he did, but he managed to get it straight––and he was amazing. I didn’t dance anymore that night––I hung around the stage. I had heard him on a record at home that my uncle had introduced me to, but I had never heard him in person until that night.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Some people have suggested that jazz had its biggest connection with the audience when it was a dance music, and that once bebop hit, a lot of the regular listeners couldn’t dance to the music or relate to it in the same way. Do you agree with that?

Christian: Well, at a couple of he dance halls there was a group of people who made up steps and danced to music that the general public didn’t dance to. Most people were dancing to rhythm and blues, but these people were dancing to Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Charlie Parker and people like that. And when they were dancing to fast music, they danced in cut time. They were “ultra-hip,” as we used to call them.

And the Peps had a big dance floor that was divided into three sections of dancers: the jitter-buggers were up front, the people in the middle people were just starting to dance, and in the back of the dance floor were the ultra-hip people. I went there quite often, because I liked the music. These dancers would make up steps. And even in New York they weren’t dancing like this.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: It was strictly a Chicago phenomenon?

Christian: And Detroit.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Have you seen anything like it since?

Christian: No, it was just in that era. Somebody came up to me and said that you can’t dance to jazz. Really? Because we knew about these ultra-hips. Nowhere else in Chicago were they doing this, except at the Peps and the Savoy. On the North Side they weren’t dancing like this. I guess that’s why the North Siders would come over to the South Side––guys like Ira Sullivan, Joe Daley and Cy Touff––all great players––because everything was happening on the South Side.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How old were you when you turned professional?

Christian: It was 1945. I was about eighteen.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What kind of gigs did you get?

Christian: Well, we started out at the Park City Bowl, where they would have skating parties. And they would have us as the band. We were all going to high school and we knew about three songs. The guy would give us five dollars apiece. They had a piano there. I don’t know where they got it from, because it was an organ player that worked at the skating rink. But they did have a piano.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: It’s hard to imagine a piano being heard at a skating rink.

Christian: During that time there weren’t any electric pianos. It was just an acoustic piano, which you could hardly ever hear. When they started miking the piano and miking the bass, for many people that was the first encounter with knowing what the bass was doing, because up until then you could never hear it. Then they got pickups on the bass and a pickup for the piano. I think John Young was sort of responsible for the pickup in the piano. He was the first one I knew of doing that… because drummers had no mercy. [laughs]

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Do you remember having a defining moment in your career, where you said, I’ve finally made it?

Christian: No. I always thought of music being too broad. I figured I would always be learning. I’m still learning, even now.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What do you think of the music today compared to what you were doing? What kinds of things do you listen for?

Christian: In jazz I don’t think the general public is caught up with it yet. They are still being introduced to it. You have some fine players––better players than when I came up. These players are well trained on the instrument. We mostly learned from the records. Take the Marsalis family. They are all trained musicians and they can play other music. It’s amazing. Wynton plays classical as well as jazz. I think the musicians today are more trained than the musicians that came up with me. When they came on the scene they were prepared. Prior to Wynton there weren’t too many people to come on to the scene like that, so they were recognized immediately. One or two musicians would come on the scene every ten years or so, and that was unusual. That’s not unusual now.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Whenever there’s a big name pop artist that comes through town, all the musicians they hire are jazz musicians. Well, for example, Dennis Carroll, he gets all kinds of gigs like that. A lot of the players in theatre are jazz players.

Christian: Walter Dyett did that at DuSable High School to further the musicianship of the musician. To be prepared for anything and any venue: If you get this kind of job, you’ll be prepared. So reading was important.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You must have worked with a lot of “Walter Dyett musicians” over the years. He ran a lot of people through his program that ended up as full time professionals.

Christian: Do you remember Dorothy Donegan? She was a great pianist; she came from Walter Dyett’s program. So did Earma Thompson, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons, Eddie Harris… there’s a slew of people.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You are among the players who are said to exemplify the “Chicago Style” of jazz piano. John Young is another. What is it that distinguishes the Chicago piano sound from, say, New York or California?

Christian: Just the way of living. Every town has a style of playing, a musical style, a character, depending on the lifestyle of living. People here in Chicago are always hard working people, so they play that way: whatever instrument you were playing, you were playing hard jazz. Whereas if you went to California, where the living is easy, so to speak, people sort of drift along and play––that’s their style.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: So you subscribe to the theory that art imitates life.

Christian: Imitation of Life.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Good movie.

Christian: Yeah it was. I saw it twice––both versions.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You’ve said that you see yourself as being in a supporting role as a piano player. Is that true?

Christian: I think so. I function better as a sideman rather than as a leader. I enjoy getting behind the soloist and pushing him––the rhythm section that is, not just the piano. When the whole rhythm section works together it’s amazing what they can do for the front man. And when they are not together it makes a big difference, too! [laughs]

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Who are some of the bassists and drummers you’ve worked with over the years that create a strong rhythm section like you are describing?

Christian: Wilbur Ware. It was a funny combination, to be in one band. Especially during that time, when everybody was kind of into drugs. You can imagine, you are playing with a band and over half of the band is into drugs. But being good musicians really saved it. Because people would take to chance.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Did you lose many friends to drugs at that time, or did you steer clear of that crowd?

Christian: I wouldn’t say that they were friends; I would have to say they were associates, because our main association was playing music on the bandstand. When I left the bandstand I went to a different environment, which kept me safe from becoming a junkie myself.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Did your religious upbringing give you spiritual strength to help you avoid peer pressure?

Christian: I think so. Also, in those days everyone had a mom and a dad. That was important, because you had a father image and a mother image. I think that is what is needed nowadays––you need both a father and a mother.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What do you think is the best documentation of Jodie Christian’s piano playing?

Christian: It wouldn’t be left up to me to say.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Is that like trying to pick your favorite child?

Christian: Right.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Some of your most recent work has gotten some airplay, and it’s still first-rate playing.

Christian: Maybe it wasn’t me. [laughs]

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Take your rhythm section work with Dennis Carroll and George Fludas on Marc Pompe’s album, Hi-Fly. There are no wasted notes––you seem to know exactly when to step up and when to lay back.

Christian: Well, again, being a supportive player is my forte. But I also have this Parkinson’s, which slows me down. So a lot of times I’m forced to lay back, because my thinking is not as quick as it used to be, and that’s what Parkinson’s does. Plus, I’ve got COPD, and these two diseases don’t work together too well. I’m taking medications for them, but that causes me to kind of lay back, not by choice a lot of times. Sometimes I think I lay back too much.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: When you are playing piano do the tremors in your hands and arms stop?


Christian: Yes, but they continue in other parts of my body.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: That sounds similar to people who stutter when speaking, but not while singing.

Christian: Right. Paul Serrano has Parkinson’s, but it comes out in his speech, not in his playing. He had an operation where he doesn’t tremble at all. It has different effects on different people. I kind of follow Michael J. Fox, but he had it at a very young age. He says sometimes he can’t do anything but just sit. But when he is having his good days, he does everything he can do, knowing that later he’s going to have to sit and won’t be able to do anything.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Are there any musical projects that you would still like to accomplish?

Christian: I’ve been focusing on electronic music, writing synthesizer arrangements for singers––strings, rhythm section… I use a keyboard, a computer and some small speakers.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Did you spend much time teaching?

Christian: Small scale, because, like I said, I’m learning myself. Somebody came to me once and said, “Would you be my teacher?” I said, “I don’t know enough about music to be a teacher.” He said, “I can play. I just need some direction, so maybe I could just watch you play.” I never thought of teaching that way, by demonstration.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: So you don’t formally read music?

Christian: No, I know music. Since I have been dealing with electronic music, it has kept my reading alive.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Let’s come back to some of your early years. It was written somewhere that you were actually playing taverns near the steel mills?

Christian: I was tap dancing. I was a dancer. And my father used to take me to all the theaters when I was a child, and the steel mills on Fridays, on payday. In fact, I was the only one in the house working. I would get home and have a hatful of money, and they would put it out on the table and give me a dime or fifteen cents, which was a lot of money. I was only about seven or eight years old.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: So was it your dancing that connected you with the Savoy and some of the other dance clubs?

Christian: Right. Had my father and mother been dancers, I would have been a dancer.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Well so far we’ve identified at least three could-have-been careers for you: singing, baseball and dancing.

Christian: I was an artist too! I could draw what I saw, but I had to draw in-person, so I didn’t consider that as a career when I got older.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Do you have any hobbies that you have enjoyed over the years?

Christian: I’ve tried to write stories, but that didn’t pan out too well. My spelling was atrocious!

Chicago Jazz Magazine: If you tried your hand at writing, then you must do some reading as well.

Christian: I do more reading now that I’ve become a Jehovah’s Witness. I’ve done more reading than ever before.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How did you come to be a Jehovah’s Witness?

Christian: When I heard something I liked: I heard some things explained that I had doubts about. I got answers to my satisfaction. That was in 1971.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Jodie, when you compare jazz to R&B or other forms of music, what do you think makes jazz unique?

Christian: Well, it’s spontaneous expression, which is different from the classics, where everything is written and notated. Things are notated in jazz too, but you have that personalized expression that makes it different. That’s why they say it’s the only American art form.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: It’s America’s gift to the world, right?

Christian: Sometimes it’s not a gift to the people who are here.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You sound pessimistic about the state of jazz today.

Christian: I’m optimistic. Some people say jazz is dead, because there’s not a lot of work. That can make you pessimistic. In the sixties, we were saying the same thing, so we developed the AACM, and promoted ourselves. Every other group does that: dancers, singers, they have organizations, but musicians didn’t have anything but the union. And the union doesn’t get you jobs. So you had to sort of think about promoting yourself. And that’s what we did in 1965––Muhal Richard Abrams, Steve McCall, Phil Cohran and myself.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: And how did the AACM come about?

Christian: Well, Muhal has always been in that direction, he had an experimental mind. He experimented with the Schillinger System of reading, and different types of methods of playing. And he was teaching all these younger musicians and he himself was still learning. As he learned more about it, he would teach the younger people. He had a big band, and he decided he was going to form an organization. And he called Steve McCall, and told him what he had in mind. Strangely enough, I was thinking it was time for Chicago to have a big concert that featured dancing, singing and instrumental playing. I talked about it wit Paul Serrano, who said that’s a good idea. Right after that, Muhal called me. When he told me his idea, it made more sense, because he was thinking towards the future, rather than one single event.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: It’s been said that the musician’s union wasn’t giving black musicians their fair share of gigs. Was that any of the motivation behind starting the AACM?

Christian: No, it was just about the music… and performing outside of the tavern. That was the focal point before, the tavern. But utilizing other venues that you could promote music in, Lincoln Center, we used that as our first performing venue. And the purpose was to have all new music––to write your own compositions and to perform them and to establish some kind of clientele for the music.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: And, as one of the founders, what was required of you?

Christian: Well I was the bebopper, and Richard Abrams brought me in, so to speak, because I like music, period. All these musicians, like Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarmon, they were sort of new on the scene, and they didn’t play conventional music like myself. So I wanted to know what was to their music. So we would have jam sessions, and they would want to play songs like “Cherokee,” but they played it different. But I noticed that they knew where they were in the song at all times, so there must be something to that. But it’s not following the guidelines that I know. So I said, I won’t try to bring them into my way of thinking; I’ll try to follow them and see if I can understand how they think.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: So the AACM was about the meeting of musical minds, to educate young musicians and to create new styles of music?

Christian: Yeah. And playing with Roscoe was an experience for me, because it was intense playing and it called for a lot of energy. And they had it. Roscoe was… I called him a “man of energy.”

Chicago Jazz Magazine: As an organization did you have frequent strategy sessions? Jam sessions?

Christian: We had meetings once a week. Richard had this experimental band––they played all week, so they were functioning band, and had been before the organization was established. There were about twenty of us, and we would make up about five groups. Some of us were doing double-duty, so we picked people that we liked to play with. And then we wrote music.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Was it more writing than playing or learning different methods of playing?

Christian: Right. Then we would form a performance schedule, and then, like most organizations, we would sell tickets.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: So you would create events to be held at theaters, hotels and any venues except taverns.

Christian: Right. No taverns.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Was it a struggle, or did it instantly meet with good success?

Christian: Well, it seemed like it had a pretty good following, because there were enough people around supporting it. Of course, eventually we still depended on the clubs, because for a lot of us, that was our life. Some of the guys had not been playing in the clubs or anywhere else, so to them it didn’t make any difference. To us, it did, because that’s where we started in, in the club.

And Muhal was trying to tell them that, to not turn down club gigs. And he would take them to the different places, where they could hear musicians playing conventional music, because he wanted them to understand where they were coming from…and where he was coming from, because he was part of that group of people. He felt they should learn to deal with conventional music as well. He was really open-minded, and he didn’t want them to become closed-minded.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Was it strictly a labor of love for the four founding members or were you able to turn it into a small business so you could get paid for your time?

Christian: Some people came into the organization with an idea of what it should be.

Phil Cohran always had his own thinking on things. He suggested that “new music” could be music that’s already written, but that is new to the public, which was taken into consideration. So we didn’t have to write everything new. But usually those whose ideas advanced further than what we were doing, left the organization.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How long were you with the organization?

Christian: I still consider myself to be a member, although I don’t keep up.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What do you think of the music that is being produced today by the AACM? Has it been true to the original charter?

Christian: Pretty much so. They have a training program for musicians, so I think they have kept to that tradition. As a community organization focused on training younger people I think they have done well.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: There have been some people critical that say that they are not learning the traditional side, that there is too much emphasis on the avant-garde. Do you think that’s the case?

Christian: I don’t think so. I’ve been to some of the concerts, and I’ve been pleased with what I heard. I noticed another segment of the organization is in New York. Knowing Muhal, he stays close to the avant-garde, though I know he knows how to play the conventional music. I noticed when he went to Europe he had a European band play some of his music. It was great. It was conventional, but it was great. He said it was the first time that he heard his music played.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Most people are probably too intimidated to play it.

Christian: Yeah. These were excellent musicians; they were a unit that had been working together, so they understood the importance of playing together.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Given the AACM’s emphasis on the avant-garde, did you have any involvement with Ornette Coleman?

Christian: No, but I remember the time I saw Ornette Coleman. I was in New York and Bill Lee, Spike Lee’s father, said, “I want you to go around and check out Ornette––he’s at the Five Spot––and tell me what you think.” So I went there, and they were playing “Embraceable You.” At least, that’s what they called it. I couldn’t get the heads or tails of it. So at the end of the night’s performance, he asked me what I thought. I said, “I don’t know. They were playing ‘Embraceable You,’ but it wasn’t the ‘Embraceable You’ I know.” [laughs] And I think Leonard Bernstein said he was a genius, so I couldn’t dismiss that. But Sonny Stitt says they weren’t playing anything.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Weren’t Sun Ra and Fred Anderson products of the AACM?

Christian: No, Sun had his own thing. Fred was involved, but he came later.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Would you consider the AACM to be one of your most important contributions to Chicago jazz and the jazz world?

Christian: Yeah, I think it was a major step. Like I said, it was something I thought musicians needed to do: they needed to form an association––to sponsor themselves––like any other singing group, classical group or group of artists.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How do you wish to be remembered?

Christian: I’d like to be remembered by my ministry, because I think that’s first. Musically, I don’t know––I like to think of it as coming from Jehovah. Wherever we are at and whatever we do should be to support our brother, our fellow man, and not about a dollar or artistic ability. It’s about support––a love of our fellow man.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Another area of your life in which you are playing a supporting role.
Christian: A supporting role.
CJM

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