Interview With Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

6/5/2015
Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math
InterviewwithNicholasPayton
WhenPaytonwasinNewYorkplayingwithLennyWhiteandBusterWilliamsattheBlueNoteIvisitedhimathis
hotel.ThankstoKevinSunfortranscribingtheinterview.
EthanIverson:We were just talking about New Orleans a little bit. Id like to hear about what it was like growing up
there.
NicholasPayton:Well, first, my parents: My father Walter Payton played bass and sousaphone. His first recordings
were playing electric bass in a lot of the early New Orleans R&B stuff. Thats him on Lee Dorseys Working in the Coal
Mineand Aaron Nevilles Tell It Like It Is. He also played on a couple of tracks on the thing Allen Toussaint
produced for Labelle. Then, at a certain point he decided he didnt really want to play electric bass or do that kind of
thing; he wanted to exclusively play straight ahead and upright bass.
My mom was a former operatic singer and a classical pianist. Being a vocalist herself, she loved a lot of vocalists like
Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae, so I heard a lot of that growing up.
We had a big space, particularly a big living room and we had a grand piano, so our place was where cats came to
rehearse for whatever band my father was playing with.
As early as two years old I remember looking at guys like Ellis Marsalis at the crib. Professor Longhair, he once came
by the crib and I remember sitting under the piano while he was playing. I was being immersed.
Long before I had decided to be a musician, as a toddler, as soon as I could crawl up on stuff, be it drums or the piano,
I was playing music. One of the first musical memories that my father used to recount all the time that he was in a
rehearsal with a band and they were trying to take a tune off the record. They couldnt figure out what this chord was,
and I had this little toy piano and, apparently, I walked right up to it, put my hand down, and they were like, Thats
the chord! Thats it! And from then on its been all music.
EI: I know you play drums and I think its impossible to talk about this music without talking about the drums. Tell
me about the drums in New Orleans.
NP: I got to see all the greats. Everyone from cats who may not be familiar to a lot of people outside of the New
Orleans scene like John Robichaux, who my father played with in The New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra.
If youve ever seen that film PrettyBaby with Brooke Shields, which was kind of a big deal, it was the 70s and she was
http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/interview-with-nicholas-payton.html
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maybe 12. There was a nude scene because her mom, I think, basically prostituted her out so it was this whole thing
surrounding that, but my fathers actually in that movie as part of this ragtime orchestra. They played a lot of music
that more or less predate jazz, with instrumentation that was of the period: trumpet, vocals, trombone, clarinet, violin,
piano, bass, and drums the kind of bands that used to go on the riverboats. I think Louis Armstrong might have had
some history in one of those types of bands, and another great trumpeter from New Orleans, Thomas Jefferson, used
to play in one of those types of bands. Jefferson was actually referenced in the Miles Davis autobiography great
player, sort of in the post-Armstrong style, and my father had a regular gig with him at this place called the Maison
Bourbon
But getting back to drummers, theres John Robichaux; theres this great cat, Ernie Elly, whos on the album I did
with Doc Cheatham; Herlin Riley, who I remember being one of the guys I idolized as a kid sitting on the floor, being
in awe of him. Shannon Powell, another great drummer who worked many years with Harry Connick Jr. and for a
little bit with Diana Krall. Then there are guys who Ive met over the years who I was too young to remember when
they were living there, but moved abroad, like Zigaboo Modeliste and Idris Muhammad.
Theres a strong connection between the trumpet and the drums, and obviously some of the most noted musicians
who come out of New Orleans play either of those instruments, and many former trumpet players switch to drums,
like Herlin. A lot of people dont know that he played trumpet before drums. Also someone else who was very
important to me who lived right around the corner from us when we lived in the Sixth Ward, also known as Trem:
James Black. He was also a trumpeter who switched to drums.
EI: I guess both those instruments are parade instruments.
NP: Definitely.
EI: When I think about these great New Orleans drummers, theres some way about how they sit behind the drum set
that still sounds to me connected to a parade.
NP: Well, its the dance element.
We can go as far back as we want up through The Meters and beyond. Even when I was coming up playing, my first
gigs were basically playing in brass bands.
I frequently criticize jazz for its moving away from that element; not being as connected and producing generation
upon generation of musicians who arent connected with that because onceyouve come up in bands where you see the
direct correlation between how music makes the body respond, makes the body move, thats something you carry with
you.
To me, it doesnt matter how much Im stretching out or how avant-garde the context is; that dance sensibility is
always implied. Its always here, in my mind.
Its one of the central differences Ive found between Black and European music. Ive always suspected this, but it
became more prevalent to me when I started working with symphony orchestras a couple of years ago. In 2012, I
wrote my first orchestral work, the Black American Symphony, and the first thing, when I wrote it, I was like, I
know Im going to be dealing with symphony orchestras and theyre not used to playing Black music.
Even though times have changed where many of the people in the orchestra have most certainly heard Black music or
probably grew up with that sensibility, but in practice actually playing it is a different story.
The first thing that I noticed, one thing was that I was always under the assumption that you could just put fly shit in
front of a classical musician and theyll just read it. [snaps fingers] Theyll just read anything, and the first thing I
noticed is, like, not really, you knowa lot of ghosting and fakery going on in fast orchestral passages. After we
rehearsed it a few times or whatever, they got it together, but it wasnt this immediate thing that I just thought you
could put anything in front of them and theyd just read it right off the page.
The other thing I noticed is the thing with time, how a lot of classical music is very languid and it flows, but the
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forward motion thats in Black music I found that they werent accustomed to that.
These are just generalizations; of course there are exceptions. Still, a lot of them just didnt have the experience of
doing something that I take for granted. Where I come from, you can just put a chart in front of somebody and count it
off.
There were a lot of time issues. It wasnt even a rhythmic thing as far as swinging, because my whole thing was I didnt
want that kind of feel. Ive heard a lot of instances where bands who swing play with orchestras and try to make the
violins or the people who are not used to swinging swing, and its wack.
So I used the orchestra more as colors and pads and said, Okay, well deal with swingin because thats part of the
idiom were used to dealing with.
EI: I havent had the experience of having a full orchestra read something that I wrote, but Ive been around a lot of
classical musicians trying to play something with an American beat and its always worse than expected.
NP: Im really shocked.
EI: Even basic even-eighth note syncopations wont lay right.
NP: And triplets! Triplets really messed them up, and I thought, Well, its a triplet.
EI: Its funny because they can probably play five in the time of four, but really playing three in the time of two will
hang them up, right?
NP: Yeah, that really kind of messed me up. This was right in the wake of the #BAM movement. I was inspired by a
quote by Dvorak, this story of him being brought over here by a conservatory to teach and his whole vibe was, Well,
what do you have me here for? In your music of the native and the Negro melodies, you have everything you need for a
school of music. You dont need my input.
That really inspired me. I know William Grant Still did the AfroAmericanSymphony, but to me, not to discredit the
work, it was coming out of the European school so it didnt really embrace the things I would imagine a Black
American symphony sounding like.
My whole thing was to use the orchestra, but to use it and to create and to sort of revel in this idea of writing Negro
melodies and so forth. Another thing that I found interesting, because all too often people try to say, Well, Black
musicians used European harmony and took all this and one of the first calls I got after I sent the music to the
orchestra was the harpist, who wanted to get together with me to go over the parts. She made a comment that
resonated with me; she said, Im not used to playing this. In her words, she said, Im not used to playing these jazz
harmonies.
Now, to me, Im using the sharp nine chord and these things that people say that Duke Ellington took from Debussy
and all this, so Im like, Wait a minute now. If shes used to playing this literature from your Stravinskys and your
Debussys and all the people they say we took the harmony from, then these chords shouldnt really be all that strange
to her. So it made me think about how you can have a series of notesyou can even have a dominant seventh chord
its the same notes, but its functionality in terms of how that functions in the music, could be totally different. Its like
using a word that looks the same in another language but it doesnt necessarily mean the same thing.
EI: Your point about Duke Ellington I think is so dead on because theres no harmony that Duke uses that doesnt
sound like Black music, especially when you hear him play the piano. Ellington playing chords on the piano, its
completely Afro-American, you know what I mean?
Thats definitely a big misconception in the literature about Ellington borrowing from a Delius score or something. Of
course everybody is inspired from different places, but the problem is a long-term glorification of the European side.
Like when they say Strayhorn was more sophisticated than Ellington, or that Strays was a more advanced composer
NP: I hate that.
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EI: Those same folks never point out that Strays needed to learn a lot about aesthetics from Ellington. Strayhorn
wrote a corny piano concerto in high school; he knew more about musicals than jazz; in the first decade of writing for
Duke he had a lot of meaningless decoration that Duke had to pare down in order to give it the right feel.
NP: Well, that doesnt fit the narrative, thats why they never say it.
EI: I regret to say, I wish I could ask you more about your symphony. I havent heard it yet, but I will hear it at some
point.
Maybe we could go back some more. Nicholas, you were very talented very young, and you were also very recognized
very young. Id like to hear about the 80s and the 90s, who your peers were and how all that happened. I mean, in a
way its recent history, but I dont think its a story thats understood very well yet.
NP: Youre absolutely right.
I started playing trumpet when I was four. I wanted a trumpet. I saw in my own living room some of the greatest
trumpet players in the world. My big four, the first and most influential cats for me, were Teddy Riley; Clyde Kerr Jr.,
who I would later study with at the New Orleans Center For The Creative Arts; Wendell Brunious; and Leroy Jones.
Out of all the instruments, the trumpet just appealed to me, something about its role and its prominence in New
Orleans music in particular: the penchant and the style and the swagger which the New Orleans trumpet players
played with, and its leadership role just the whole energy of trumpet players. Something about those dudes was
kind of cool to me, and I loved the instrument for its wide range of expressive possibilities because you could peel the
paint off the wall or it could be this beautifully melodic, warm instrument. I just liked that range of expression.
So I told my father I wanted a trumpet, he bought me one for Christmas that year, my fourth year, and it was a pocket
trumpet, like Don Cherry used to play.
I was pretty much playing by ear. I remember my maternal grandfather, who also played piano,would come over a lot
and I would always ask him to play When the Saints Go Marching In. It was weird because I liked that section where
it went to the IV chord at the end, so sometimes I would just lay out and let him play, and I would come in right there.
Hed keep looping it and Id come in right on that IV chord. And pretty much just playing by ear at that time.
I think it was around this time or maybe a little before that I became cognizant of wanting to hear specific songs. The
first thing I really remember wanting to hear and hear a lot of was Grover Washingtons Mr. Magic. It must have
been annoying to my family to play Mr. Magic over and over again. But they indulged me, and I remember just
standing in front of the record player watching it spin. That Grover piece was very mesmerizing to me. I didnt know
what I was doing at the time, but actually I was transcribing, either humming along with what I heard or playing along
with it.
And my development pretty much remained the same until about eight years old. At that point my father thought it
would be best for me to study with a formal trumpet teacher, so my first lessons were with a cat by the name of Johnny
Fernandez they called him, in New Orleans, John-KNEE and I only have a very vague memory of him. Then I
studied with another teacher at Xavier University, where both my parents went and where my grandfather went, by
the name of E. Diane Lyle I still think shes around in the Pennsylvania area and thats when I started working on
etudes, trumpet technique, literature and stuff like that.
At first my playing had been for fun and at my leisure, but now my father was paying money for me to go to lessons
every week, so I had these things I had to practice. Then it just became too much of a task, so I found myself sort of
rebelling against music because it ceased to be fun. I remember wed get into this little thing of my father being like,
Well, just practice for half an hour and Ill give you a dollar, or something like that. Id fuck around for a half an hour
and then Id just be done.
It was also at eight that I joined the school band. To play in the school band we played written music, so I had to read.
My father taught me to read and I learned to read basically in one day through him, taking those songs that I had
picked off the radio or the albums, writing them out with the fingerings underneath so I began to recognize what I was
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playing what I already heard through sight, through fingerings, and through the notation. Thats how I learned to
read music, and I started to play in the school band.
We had a great elementary school band, which my father was the teacher, so much so that we rivaled a lot of junior
high and high school bands. Such was the prowess of my father as a teacher, a great teacher. Maybe about a year or so
I was in the band and then I graduated; I think I was on third trumpet and maybe moved quickly to first, and then
around nine or tenI found that I wasnt clearly as much better than everybody else. I had kind of a jumpstart on
people, but once my other peers were playing for a little while they started getting a little better, and, in some cases,
they were probably better than me.
That was kind of a blow to the ego a little bit, and that coincided with the tuba player in our band leaving and my
father, not having a replacement, asked me if I wanted to play tuba. There was only one tuba and it was like, Cool,
now I dont have to battle with all these trumpet [players]. Now I can just hold down the bass and be the tuba player.
I stopped playing trumpet for like a year or two, and I played tuba in the school band and even made the all-city band
playing tuba for two years.
However, I did my first professional gig on trumpet. My father played with the Young Tuxedo Brass Band and at
Mardi Gras, when I was about nine years old, my father asked me to come along with him and bring my pocket
trumpet. The cats asked me to sit in and I played with them the whole parade.
At the end of the parade, all the guys chipped in a couple bucks apiece and paid me a salary. I just thought this was the
greatest thing. I came out here to have some fun and hang out, and you mean they pay you to do this? And that put a
seed in my head, like, Man, this is the best thing in the world, and then maybe like two years later I started doing
gigs and started playing trumpet again.
Cats in my neighborhood had heard that I was playing and everyone knew my father, so I started getting called for
some of these brass band gigs. There was a band in my neighborhood called the All-Star Brass Band, which was led by
James Andrews, whos the eldest brother of Troy Trombone Shorty Andrews. He came by my house one day and
asked my father if I could join the band. And my father said yes, which was kind of weird because James didnt even
ask me, so it was this strange kind of arranged marriage.
But it was cool with me, so that was when I started gigging seriously then, going out every day. This was like the
summer of maybe 85. I had just graduated elementary school.
I loved the music; as I said before, the musicians were super cool to me, especially the trumpet players. I just loved
their energy and the way cats were and how they had this lingo with each other that no one else really spoke
but I hated jazz!
Something about it that I didnt like. It had nothing necessarily to do with the music, but just some idea connected
with it that turned me off. Most of the music that I was really into at the time of 9 or 10 was hip-hop. The first albums I
bought were Jackson Five records. There was also this popular hip-hop female artist named Roxanne Shant who was
a big thing at the time. There were all these fake Roxannes who came out to kind of piggy back off the original
Roxannes coattails. The original Roxanne was was Roxanne Shant, but then another chic came along called, The
Real Roxanne; I had a girlfriend named Roxanne at that age, Sting was singing about Roxanne, so it was all these
Roxannes going on around this time.
I didnt have any so-called jazz records and I wasnt really into it. A funny thing: this was also around the time that
there was this meteoric rise of Wynton and Branford Marsalis. I had remembered them as a kid: My father used to
play at the Hyatt Regency on a Sunday brunch with Ellis Marsalis, and I remember seeing these two young guys and
they had these huge afros, playing. That just kind of struck me because the rest of the cats in the band seemed pretty
old, but there were these two young dudes wearing dashikis and afros.
EI: They were actually in dashikis? Wynton and Branford? Indashikis?!?
NP: Shit, man, back then Ellis had an afro and wore dashikis. You can find pictures of them if you research it. They
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look of-the-era!
Then they went away and I didnt know them too much after just seeing them, then I started hearing all this stuff.
They were very controversial and polarizing at that time.
EI: Even in New Orleans?
NP: Yeah, like some cats really loved them, some cats thought they were really bad for the music. Wynton and
Branford talked a lot of shit, so that put a lot of people off, and my general vibe was, Yeah, I dont like these guys, for
whatever reason.
So Im in this brass band and for the first time in my life Im now going to my fathers record collection. I was like, I
want to hear some of this stuff. Im playing trumpet now. Let me check this shit out.
So the first record I pulled outIm thumbing through the albums and my father had thousands of albums: Miles
Davis. Okay, he plays trumpet, let me check this out, so I put on FourandMore. I put on side two and I think the
title track Four is on, and from the first moment I heard Tony Williams intro on the sock cymbal it was like I was
hearing this stuff for the first time. Like I had never heard swing before and I was like, Damn.
It really fucked me up, and at that moment from Tonys high hat before I even heard Miles I was like, This is
what I want to do. I want to be a musician the rest of my life.
I wore that record out. I played it every day. Again, before I even knew what transcribing was and before anyone had
told me that this was a means of developing a vocabulary, I started playing all the solos, not only Miless solo, but I
would go into George Colemans solo, Herbies. I knew every bass line, every snare drum hit. I knew everything about
that album.
EI: Wow, man. Thats a bunch of up-tempos to try to get into! Thats a hard one to play along with by ear, Fourand
More.
NP: Yeah. Also Miles' chops were up on that one, he goes up to like a high A at one point on this thing. No one told
me I couldnt do it and nobody told me it was difficult, and because of that, there was no judgment. I just played it and
I would just pretend that I was in the band. I would stand up and I would put a suit on sometimes and pretend I was
Miles and then pretend I was George Coleman.
Then another thing that struck me when I was looking at the album: I was like, Wait a minute, theres Miles and
George Coleman and Herbie Hancock, but this guy played this kind of acoustic music? Because at this time I
associated Herbie with Chameleon and Rockit, and Rockit was huge among kids my age because we were
breakdancers. I was like, Wow, so this guy played this. That kind of opened up something for me in my mind, like
maybe these things that I think are different as far as Hiphop and Jazz and all this maybe theres more of a
connection here than Ive been able to see thus far.
Then another album I was listening to heavily was Freddie Hubbards RedClay, which again had a funky vibe to it and
electronics with the Fender Rhodes piano. I think a lot of my interest in the Fender Rhodes had to do with my
upbringing because when I was a child HeavyWeather by Weather Report was a big album and Birdland I just
heard everywhere. All the cats were playing it, it was a huge hit, so I started listening to HeavyWeather and I had an
immediate connection to not only Wayne Shorter, but also to Jaco, so much so that my father bought me an electric
bass and I started learning Jacos solos and bass lines and so forth.
Those three records were my really early listening, and then after my father saw that I had a considerable interest in
straight ahead, he bought me some records. The first albums he bought me were Lee Morgans Sidewinder; Branfords
RoyalGardenBlues; maybe ThinkofOne, Wyntons album; and FathersandSons, the album where one side is Von
and Chico Freeman and the other side Wynton and Branford. James Black on drums, Ellis on piano, and Charles
Fambroughs on bass. Also, Art Farmers LiveatBoomers, was another one of the albums.
EI: With Clifford Jordan and Cedar? That has some fast tempos on that, as well.
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NP: Yeah, pretty hardcore. I definitely didnt take any kind of primer or introductory road.
EI: You know, I had RoyalGardenBlues young, too. Its a great record, it really had an impact.
NP: Still to this day probably my favorite Branford record, my personal favorite.
EI: Yeah, it has the vibe.
NP: Im sure he would disagree, but its a masterpiece. The thing I like about it is theres no pretense. And normally
an album like that with a different band on every track and is conceptually all over the place, doesnt work, but
something about it is very cohesive. So that was a very pivotal album for me.
EI: Yeah, I think everyone just plays so good on it. Branford always sounds great, of course, but some of that early
Branford is just so fresh.
NP: Theres just so much abandon there. Ive had arguments with Wynton even at that time because those are
some of my favorite records. Not only from a nostalgia standpoint, because its sort of the first stuff I was listening to
and what was popular at the time when I became serious about listening to straight ahead but even still to this day
because its like, I dont know, before maybe they developed a conception of what jazz is supposed to be or whatever.
They just went for it.
Some of the stuff Wynton was doing on the trumpet nobody had ever played. And some cats criticized them for being
corny or, Oh, hes too technical, hes too this and that, and I know he got a lot of flack from the older cats.
Particularly Freddie and Miles and Woody were hypercritical, but Im sorry all due respect to the masters, but I
know they had to hear this young dude and be like, This motherfucker is scary!
And Im sure he intimidated them to some degree. And we also have to take into consideration that they were all at
Columbia Records until Wynton came along. At a certain point, George Butler was sort of catering to all these other
guys and when Wynton came along it was kind of like, Forget you guys, Im putting all my money on the young star.
EI: Well, you know I love Woody Shaw, and the Woody Shaw CBS records are killing, especially the trumpet playing - but if you put on BlackCodes, it just trumps the Shaw CBS records on some basic level about band vibe.
NP: See, I like BlackCodes, but my favorite has always been ThinkofOne.
EI: Interesting.
NP: A lot of people dont say this.
EI: Its like the one right beforeBlackCodes, right?
NP: I think maybe HotHouseFlowers comes in between
EI: But its still the cats, essentially, with Tain and Kirkland.
NP: Right. I have a lot of theories about the direction of that album and the juxtaposition of those, ThinkofOne and
BlackCodes. I think BlackCodes is a great album, dont get me wrong, but by then the band conception became
codified. A lot of what I used to love about what Wynton and Branford and Doc Tone and Phil Bowler be it Phil
Bowler was on bass or Ray Drummond was on bass or Charles Fambrough was that when they burned out, they
could go anywhere. When they played Knozz-Moe-King, it could go anywhere. There was no set chordal structure
and it was almost like they were picking up where the Miles 60s quintet left off.
Now, by the time it got to BlackCodes there are real chord changes on the forms and prescribed meter changes,
whereas before it was just completely open, what wed call burnout.Burnout is the term for a style of spontaneous
composition where the musicians collectively create a sound based on minimal or no chordal sketches. Usually high
energy, but can also be sultry and romantic.
Theyd just burnout, and thats what I loved about them. Later, they had a system of cues, but the way those cues
functioned became different, then by the time it got to the quartet, particularly at Blues Alley, it became really
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codified. It became worked out, prescribed: When we do this, well turn around whatever and then Tain will play this
and then well do that. In fact, I read your interview where he kind of expounded upon that concept and he was like,
No, they were doing this wrong or doing that wrong, while that other band, to me, he didnt have that much control
over.
EI: Well, also because Kenny Kirkland was a little older. He had been around the block.
NP: And a lot of people forget that Branford is Wyntons older brother. I mean, the conception a lot of times is that
Wynton was the serious one and Branford was the jokester so it made it seem like Wynton was his older brother and
Branford was sort of like the young spaz. But yeah,ThinkofOne I love. Also HotHouseFlowers. Wyntons playing on
there is superb, and those arrangements by Bob Freeman are great too.
EI: I dont know if youd agree with me here, but one of my theories is, like, that burnout stuff owes a little bit of debt
to the Dave Liebman-Richie Beirach world. Kirkland played with Liebman in the 70s, and they sort of took that
Coltrane model but put some of those more crunchy, whatever, Eb triad over E chords and made that more the base,
rather than the Coltrane modes. I hear this faint echo of that in that burnout music.
NP: Its out of Coltrane and its out of Miles. I would say, at least how it manifested in Wyntons band, more on
Miless side of things. You can actually see in Tains playing at a certain point, like on ThinkOfOne, Tain is definitely
leaning more towards Tony, then later it became a thing of him embracing Elvin and maybe Jack [DeJohnette]. This is
just my theory.
Still to this day, I think JMood was a really fabulous record, and different. Its a very romantic and intimate record,
perhaps with the exception of maybe Skains Domain, which again is codified burnout. But Melodique, Marcuss
tune Presence that Lament Brings, its a very melancholy album, and that made a strong impression on me.
EI: Wynton plays with restraint, considering he can play everything.
NP: It was kind of a change for him at that time. It was interesting because years later when I would join Marcus
Robertss band, when I made my first record, the vibe of my record I wanted to be very melancholy. I wanted Marcus
to be on it and play sort of like he did onJMood, when he was still heavily influenced by Herbie and Kenny Kirkland,
in particular. I wanted Marcus to play in that style and he flat out told me, Well, man, if thats what youre looking for
then you need to call somebody else, because Ive worked years to get that stuff out of my playing.
EI: Interesting.
NP: So I went to Mulgrew Miller instead.
EI: Marcus was so good so young.JMood is his first record, I think. He comes out of the gate so strong.
Anyway go back to your personal history. We left you off with brass bands.
NP: I played with James a number of years in the All-Star Brass Band. I started doing gigs with a lot of other people.
It was through that band that I went on my first tours, went on a cruise ship, and thats where I met Clark Terry. At the
time, when I met Clark, I was playing trombone because basically James was the leader. Hes a trumpet player, he
said, You can make this gig, but I dont want two trumpet players on this gig. If you want to make this hit, you gotta
play trombone, and I had never really played trombone, but I wanted to make the hit so I got my trombone chops
together and made the gig.
Our first gig on the ship, were playing and Clark Terry and Al Grey come and sit right in front of the band, and were
like, Aw, shit. This is Clark, because another big album for me at this time was Clarks album ClarkAfterDark,
which, in my opinion, has always been my favorite Clark Terry record. Its not a very popular record amongst a lot of
people, but certainly has always been one of my favorites.
EI: Whos on that again?
NP: I think its like an orchestra, European cats if Im not mistaken.
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EI: Okay, its not one I know.

NP: Yeah, check it out. His playing is really beautiful, mostly ballads.
So I was like, Man, this is my big moment to meet Clark, so after we finished I walked straight over to him. Before I
could make it over to him, Al Grey intercedes and is like Oh, what you got there, young man? and he picked up my
trombone out of my hands and he moved the slide around and said, Youve got to work your slide. Come to my room
and Ill teach you how to keep your trombone in better shape, dut duh-dut duh-duh. He just kind of held me captive
there and by the time I was able to break away, Clark was gone and that moment was lost.
The funny part about that whole cruise was every time I would see Clark, I would try to talk to him, but Al Grey would
always be there and, after a while, hed start to get annoyed because I wouldnt be taking him up on his offer to take a
lesson with him or whatever. My whole memory of that cruise is Clark avoiding me and Al Grey getting continually
peeved with me because I wasnt serious about playing the trombone.
Fast forward to a couple months later: Clark came to New Orleans, and we wanted to have this big jam session at this
place called The Shop, which was this warehouse that we used to shed in. This time I had my trumpet in tow, and we
jammed, and when I first started playing I could see Clarks eyes light up from the other side of the room. When we
finished, he came up to me and he was like, Man, I didnt know you played trumpet! I didnt know you could play like
that! I just thought you were some sad trombone player whose arms were too short to reach sixth position.
And from that moment on he took me under his wing and was like a musical father of sorts, invited me to play gigs
and just a really, really great mentor.
A lot of my first early record dates in New York were through Clark. The first major label album I was on was with this
cat, Amani A.W. Murray, who was noted at the time because he was this 12-year-old kid who could play Bird solos. He
was on like maybe David Letterman, he was on Showtime At The Apollo, these TV shows playing Charlie Parker
solos. He was making his debut album for GRP, which was a huge label at that time, and the band was Billy Hart on
drums, Bob Cranshaw on electric bass, and Benny Green on piano.
Shortly before that, I got invited to play in Marcus Robertss band. He knew me through Wynton. I actually met
Wynton when I was 12. He called the house to speak to my father and I picked up the phone this was post-me not
liking this arrogant young cat so I started listening to his records. Keystone 3 with Art Blakey was an album my
father had and that was another one Id listen to nonstop, the Messengers band with Billy Pierce, Bobby Watson.
EI: Theres that tune they played I really like, Wheel Within a Wheel?
NP: They did play that in that band, but thats not on that album. Yeah, thats a great Bobby Watson tune.
I was really into the Messengers at that time and particularly because I saw that Wynton and Branford were in that
band and Duck [Donald Harrison] and Terence [Blanchard] followed them, so in the back of my mind it was, to me,
Get your chops together, get your shit together, go to New York, and play with Art Blakey. This was a thing that had
already started crystallizing in my mind. I wanted to be in the Messengers like Wynton and Terence, so I was listening
to a lot of the Art Blakey stuff. I started listening heavily to Wynton and Duck and Terence.
Speaking of 80s music and how its not really been dealt with historically: That first Blanchard/Harrison album on
Concord, NewYorkSecondLine, is where they began to bridge this gap between the burnout and this New York/New
Orleans sound that Branford and Wynton had become known for. But Duck and Terence fused the second line and the
Mardi Gras Indian thing with it, which gave it a whole other coloration to it. They were pioneers in that thing. Its
something I dont think Donald Harrison gets properly credited for.
They did a version of the Saints on that second album, Discernment, and not many people talk about it. You know
those are great records, the Columbia records, and then they did several for Columbia, BlackPearl, like Ninth Ward
Strut and all this stuff. I mean, very, very unique albums. I dont think theres been anything in music like what they
had together before or since very special band, very special energy they had. And there was something exciting
about the competitive spirit, like not only between Wynton and Branford and Duck and Terence, but their competition
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with each other, to one up one another, because I think by the time Wynton started fusing that New Orleans thing into
his music was like BlackCodes. That was the first song that I can recall that he recorded that hinted at a New Orleans
groove, a lot of those tunes were influenced by one of our mentors I spoke earlier of, James Black. That thing of
putting a bar of in there, that was a James Black compositional element from way back in those records he was
doing in the 60s on A.F.O. Records with Ellis Marsalis.
EI: Right. Yeah, there was so much energy in all that 80s music and it really had its impact. It became one of the
ways to play ever since. I was just reading Robert Glasper talking about making the Kendrick Lamar record, saying
that the direction was Branford and Kenny Kirkland for a tune, you know what I mean? Total 80s reference.
NP: I heard that as soon as they did it. Before they said it, I said, this is MoBetterBlues. I just got it in the voice over
and the way, even the feel, the bounce, it had.
Now, theres a difference between the bounce of the 90s and the 80s swing because the 80s swing didnt really have a
bounce to it. My feeling about it is cats didnt really learn to swing yet. Some did better than others, but a lot of those
cats were first generation musicians who were just getting exposed to swing with the exception of Wynton and
Branford. A lot of these musicians who were playing didnt come up in the tradition of hearing it in households, really,
or being connected to swing music. In some cases it took a few years before cats started getting their swing feel
together and by the 90s now, that coinciding with the New Jack Swing era, where there was this hard bounce to the
music.
Branfords band in particular seemed to captivate that feel in a certain way. Bob Hurst has that bounce. There was a
hump to it, and by the time you got to like your Rodney Whitaker, who played with Duck and Terence, then when he
went on to play in Roy Hargroves band with Marc Cary and Greg Hutchinson and Ron Blake, that album OfKindred
Souls, in particular, theres a hard edge to it. Theres a certain bounce on the swing that, you know, that was when cats
were eschewing the pickups, bass players were digging in harder, there was this pro-black message. Public Enemy had
just done whatever. KRS-One was doing his thing, you know, MalcolmX the movie had come out with Spike Lee, and
all these things sort of fused together. You had these hard beats with Teddy Riley, what he was doing for Keith Sweat
and Blackstreet and Michael Jackson, and this imagery that 80s music had where, particularly from a male
perspective, there was this effeminate kind of R&B sort of thing that Michael Jackson and Prince had with the Jheri
curls and the wet hair and the androgynous vibe.
Now to counterbalance that, we saw this hard-edged thing that kind of got introduced through a woman: Janet
Jackson. She had the kneepads on and the jeans, and shes in a basement with leaky pipes, and what was this sort of
soft, R&B androgynous element became this very masculine bravado that became reflected not only in the imagery but
in the style of the music.
And like I said bass players started unplugging, Wynton and Branford started putting on their albums that Delfeayo
produced that they were not using the dreaded bass direct, and bass players were getting calluses on their fingers,
and things started to change a bit.
Wynton took Reginald Veal from Duck and Terence, and he got Herlin in the band and started embracing New
Orleans in a more obvious way.
The thing Ill say aboutJMood also, which I hadnt really heard many people or any people talk about, is that thats an
essentially New Orleans record. Chordally and that melancholy, I think what attracted me to it is that it reminded me
of the type of harmonic language that I heard in cats like James Black, who to me was like the Wayne Shorter of New
Orleans. He was the compositional guru, he was the one who I first heard implement polychords and unusual root
movement. Their harmonic movement was very similar.
Eventually, I started to study Wayne Shorters music. I realized how similar it was to James Blacks music. First of all,
they favored sus chords and polychords and a lot of movements in half steps and thirds, either major or minor thirds.
The way the chords would move, that just creates a certain type of harmonic energy. And that record in particular, that
kind of pathos and melancholy I associated with JMood.
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Now, I was hanging out with Wynton a lot at that time, but I hadnt seen him play live yet with his band. The first time
I saw his band live was in 88 and...the first tune they played was "Majesty of the Blues." Now, MajestyoftheBlues I
dont think had come out yet, BluesAlley was the last album that was out, so we were all expecting to hear him
burning out again, and when we heard the first tune, Majesty of the Blues, it was a shock.
It was a momentary disappointment, but at the same time it was unlike anything we had ever heard. There was
somethingIm trying to describe the feeling. It was an ominous sort of thing taking place. It was familiar because of
the New Orleans and the Herlin and Veal connection in the rhythm section, but there was this other layer to it. And I
think particularly because I was expecting him to burnout, hearing that coming off of BluesAlley was likeId liken it
to maybe what people felt like when maybe they first saw like Miles when he was playing BitchesBrew, like, What the
fuck? What is this?
Even if you loved it, it was like a complete culture shock.
EI: For me, too. At my stage in my development I didnt really know that much about Black music or New Orleans
music, frankly. I mean, I had my record collection there in Wisconsin, but what did I know? Anyway, I really rejected
it at the moment. Ive since gone back and listened to TheMajestyoftheBlues and its actually more creative and edgy
than I remembered it. But to go from BluesAlley to MajestyoftheBlues was a hell of a thing, for sure.
NP: That was a big jump, a huge jump: and to see it, to have that expectation of thats what youre going to see and to
hear that liveit was a cool feeling, though. And to Wyntons credit, he really made me respect and develop more of an
appreciation for my connection to Armstrong.
Because when I was trying to playyou know, I started with Miles and Freddie and all this stuff, I wasnt trying to hear
the Hot Fives and the Hot Sevens, you know, playing in brass bands and stuff like that.Its interesting to some degree,
maybe like vicariously, it was good that I met him at that time because he perhaps missed out on some of that.He was
like, Dont miss out, dont do like me and piss away your teenage years thinking Louis Armstrong was an Uncle Tom.
And because I had so much respect for him and he was saying this, it made me look at Armstrong differently, like,
Well, okay. If hes saying this, then there must be something to it.
But what was weird was that the connection was like this: It went from almost being ashamed of Armstrong to being
like this was some language that I had known for years, and all I had to do was change my mindset and it would come.
And almost as instantly as I changed my thought about who Louis Armstrong was and what he represented, I began to
get comparisons to him, playing-wise. The funny thing was that I didnt really listen to him that much; I might have
transcribed one Armstrong solo. Even to this day I dont consider myself an aficionado of his recordings, but there was
something on a cellular level that I just got.
And its one thing to feel that, but also guys like Doc Cheatham and Jonah Jones and Sweets Edison and these people
who knew Armstrong told me that they felt Armstrongs spirit in what I played. Jonah Jones once said, Man, youre
better than Armstrong!
I dont think I would go that far, but it was important to get that affirmation from guys who, particularly in Docs case,
too, who was mentored by Armstrong. When Doc Cheatham moved to Chicago, all the other cats were kind of mean to
him, but Armstrong and King Oliver embraced him. He would sub gigs for them and what not.
Part of this circle: I first met Doc on a cruise ship. I was playing with Clark Terry at the time. I went from being
snubbed by Clark to being in his band, and when I introduced myself to Doc after his first set and I told him I was
from New Orleans, he just lit up and instantly began telling me all these stories about Armstrong and Oliver. Not even
hearing me play a note, he invited me to come sit in the whole second set with him. That was the beginning of a
relationship I had with him from the late 80s for the rest of his life.
EI: This is of course all New Orleans again. New Orleans is still probably one of the best places, if not the best place,
where you can get an idea of the spectrum of the musicfrom the brass band to the latest dance moves, right?
NP: Yeah, we even had our avant-garde free movement in Kidd Jordan and also one of my mentors I spoke of earlier,
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Clyde Kerr Jr. They did an album in the early 80s calledNoCompromise! Its killing because its interesting to hear
concepts that we sort of associate with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry but with this underlying New Orleans
undercurrent.
To me, whats always been unique and important about Ornette is that he brought the music back to its New Orleans
polyphonic roots at a time when, post-Bird, the music became sort of codified. Whereas people used to improvise
within a concept of free rhythmic and melodic thought, Bird had developed this system that people had interpreted as
a paint by numbers thing so if you have a set amount of chord changes, we dont really have to think or improvise
anymore.
His rhythmic inflections and the shapes of his lines is to me what is most important about Bird. Yeah, the notes are
beautiful and they have their place, but what set Bird apart from his predecessors was not the notes. If you look at cats
like Don Byas, Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, in many instances they were perhaps more harmonically daring in some
ways.
EI: There can be more extensions on the chord, at any rate.
NP: And it hadnt become a codified thing because Bird had a certain way he liked to move from note to note,
whereas before cats didnt have that guide so it could kind of be anywhere. So when it became a thing of cats getting so
drenched in the harmonic or the intellectual aspect of it, I think lines started to lose shape and they just became lines.
What Ornette made cats remember is, That shits not really important, you know. Like, we dont even have any
fucking music. I can have 10 cats here and we can all kind of play, you know, polyphony, and just create with reckless
and wild abandon within a blues context: melodic structures, play shapes, as opposed to playing things that are only
shapes that a musician can hear because they understand harmony. Normal people cant hear that. Whats exciting
about bebop to the average listener is the shape of a line. [scats rapid, shaped line] When you bring this excitement
somewhere, you dont know where its going to go. Once it becomes something where you actually have to understand
how a scale works over a chord to be able to hear the shape, then, to me, thats not really a shape anymore. So I think
thats what Don Cherry and Ornette reminded cats of.
EI: Well, theres such a vocal quality in the playing, right? And certainly its the blues. The thing about Bird and
Ornette is that theyre always playing the blues.
NP: Exactly.
EI: It doesnt matter what the context is or even the content, as you are saying. Its got this cry of the blues is in there.
NP: And essentially thats what all Black American music should have, at the very least, regardless of your stylistic
preferences. It should be a given that youre a blues player. And I think the music at a certain point got away from that.
EI: No doubt!
NP: And were still suffering from that to this day.
EI: Lets go back to the 80s because you talked about Wynton and Branford a little bit and then about
Blanchard/Harrison a little bit. So then, whos next? Whats the next stage of the development? You mentiond Roy
Hargroves OfKindredSouls
NP: Yeah, I touched on that a little bit. Ralph Petersons V, that album he did with Terence and Steve Wilson and Geri
Allen and Phil Bowlerthats a very pivotal record. Donald Browns albums! The importance of Donald Browns
compositions cant be stated enough.TheEarlyBirdGetstheShortEndoftheStick is a very important album that
people dont talk about.
And Im almost afraid to open this box, for missing cats: Ralph Moores Images, which Terence was on. Charles
Fambrough's TheProperAngle.Billy Pierce as a voice, the impact that he had on saxophonists, Branford in particular.
I dont think wed have a certain amount of the language were it not for cats like Billy Pierce and Donald Brown and
James Williams.
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EI: I finally was checking out some James Williams at last. He was a blind spot, but Noah Baerman gave me a mix CD
of prime James Williams that made me realize that he was really a gospel player at heart. This unlocked a piece of the
puzzle for me.
NP: Again, gospel is the blues. It all comes back to the same communal spirit of Black music, which is central and
fundamental.
Jazz becomes problematic, because jazz sits outside of that perspective. Traditionally, from the beginning from
the earliest jazz with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band! we see it sitting outside and being a caricature of the music,
as opposed to an acknowledgment of the community. You read statements of Nick LaRocca basically promoting a very
white supremacist idea that he had, like his shit was better than this Black stuff, even though, like, Yo, you wouldnt
even be doing this if it werent for King Oliver and people like that.
EI: Ok, hold that thought, well get back to that, but before we do
NP: Its hard to discuss that without maybe perhaps being politically offensive but since when the fuck do I care
about that?
EI: No, Im in, but while I have my chance Id like to finish up on that scene with Donald Brown and Ralph Petersons
V and some of the other guys were talking about. Is there a way to characterize the feeling the musicians had about it
at the time? You observed it, you knew the cats.
NP: Ok, back to Wynton. As I said, this energy from Wynton doing his thing and the burnout became codified on
BlackCodes. That was like the swan song of Branford and Kenny leaving. I mean, he had to change; he couldnt
continue. Its like after Trane and Cannonball and Red Garland and Philly Joe werent with Miles anymore, Miles had
to figure out something else to do. It wasnt about a style; it was about these musicians bringing this to the music. They
are the progenitors of a certain idea and without them, you can kind of force it, but its just not really quite right, so
you gotta figure out something else to do.
I think Wynton tried to find other sax players for which he had that connection, but he never really found that
telepathic kind of thing he had with Branford. From outside of just being a musical kindred spirit, this was his older
brother. They shared experiences. Thats even different than Miles and Trane having a connection; you can have a
connection with somebody, but when somebodys your fucking brother? You cant trump that. And its something
thats intangible because even years later after all the scuttle went down and they played again on Cain & Abel from
TheBeautyfulOnesAreNotYetBorn, they still had that thing where they were finishing each others sentences.
As a side note Wyntons sound had changed. BlackCodes is, I think, the first album where he played the Monette. The
Bach has a distinctive tone to it; when I think of Bach, I think its a real trumpet sound. The Monette, while a
brilliantly designed instrument, is a Monette. It is the difference between a flugelhorn and a trumpet: its not the same
type of sound, its not the same type of instrument. A Monette is its own instrument.
My idea of the Monette is because its kind of a reedy thing as opposed to brass I think Wynton was able to find
that sound he had in oneness with his brother. It was that sound, the Monette sounds like a trumpet and the
saxophone together in one horn, and thats kind of how I looked at what the Monette was.
EI: This is some real trumpet stuff now. We talked about Wynton, Roy, Terence: How does Wallace Roney fit in this?
NP: Fuck that motherfucker he dont fit in at all.
EI: [Incredulous laughter, waits...]And Roy? You have anything more to say about Roy?
NP: I think Roy and I met Wynton around the same time, even though Roys a couple years older than me. Roy was
someone I heard about through Wynton. He would kind of taunt each of us, you know. Hed tell me, Man, theres this
cat in Fort Worth who you gotta watch out for, and years later Id find out Wynton was telling Roy the same thing
about me. It actually felt like a long lost brother by the time I met Roy because Id been hearing about him for years.
Wynton had an ear to the streets and knew who all the young cats were across the country, so wed just hear a lot
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about each other through him.

It was also in the late 80s when Ellis Marsalis had moved back to New Orleans to start teaching at the University of
New Orleans. Also on the faculty was Harold Batiste and another New Orleanian who had moved to Virginia with Ellis
to study with him, and had moved back with him to teach, Victor Goines. Ellis moving back brought a lot of these cats,
young musicians who had studied under or had been fans of Wynton, like Jeremy Davenport, a lot of St. Louis cats
Peter Martin, David Berger, Chris Thomas, they all went to the same school, so there was this influx of a lot of cats to
New Orleans through that program that Ellis had started at UNO.
I was hanging out with all of them and this was when I was like 16. I started playing with Marcus Roberts, and this was
around the time I first met Brian Blade. He was studying with Johnny Vidacovich over at Loyola, and we used to have
these Sunday jams at this club called Tipitinas on Sunday afternoons, a matine.
I remember when Blade first came down, we were all vibing him because he was this kind of meek cat with these little
round glasses. He still has that kind of meek persona. He got on the drums, he hadnt really put it together yet, and
cats were kind of vibing him. I didnt see him again for another three months and he went into some type of Jimmy
Smith-in-a-warehouse with the B3 or like some Sonny Rollins-on-the-bridge shit, because when he came back to that
session the next time, he sounded pretty much like how he sounds today, like that kind of force. It was like, What the
fuck did this cat do? Like, what happened? Of course hes developed since, but he already had that sound thats
associated with Blade now.
We started playing together a lot. We were a part of Victor Goiness quintet. In fact, we made an album called Genesis:
myself, Blade, Peter Martin, Chris Thomas, and Victor, obviously. Theres a video of part of the band on YouTube, but
Peter wasnt on it. It was Glen Patschaon piano and Roland Guerin is on bass. I was a few years younger so I didnt
begin going to college with them until like two years later, but we did a lot of playing and hanging. That was the first
time that, for me, I felt connected with people close to my own age who were playing outside of a New Orleans brass
band thing. Up until that time all the cats pretty much around my age were playing brass band music or trad music.
No young cats were playing outside of NOCCA, where we learned Bird tunes and stuff like that, but no one around my
age was playing things other than brass band repertoire or traditional New Orleans music.
I felt a sense of camaraderie with these cats closer to my age who were into a lot of the things that I was into. We used
to watch In Living Color and shit. This was like the first generation of cats younger than Duck and Terence and
Branford and Donald Brown and all these guys. We had been listening to their music and we were the first cats under
them coming up, so we shared this spirit of being the first generation of cats who were influenced by that body of work
and playing that music. That was a really special and fertile time in the New Orleans scene. We were all broke as hell,
you know, but it was music all the time. I remember going to gigs and Brian Blade had this VW Bug, and wed stack all
his drums in there. Id be on the floor under shit, with Thomass bass I dont know how we got all that shit in his bug
going to do a gig. We were lucky if we made five dollars, but it was all music. We listened to records all day, we
jammed all day, and wed play gigs, and I learned a lot in that period.
A lot of us started working with Marcus Roberts at the time. Chris was already in the band, Herb Harris was the tenor
player, Scotty Barnhart was on trumpet, and the first drummer in the band was Billy Kilson. A lot of people didnt
know that there was that connection between Kilson and Marcus; Kilson only did a couple gigs with us and then he left
Marcuss band to go play with Dianne ReevesMarcus was pretty pissed about thatand then Blade came in the
band.
EI: Say something about Marcus Roberts.
NP: Whew! Obviously a force, and I admired him on records for years. There was such an intensity about him, and
you could see that even when you would watch videos at the time, like when he played: very little body movement,
animation to what he was doing. It was super, super serious, and when he would do interviews there was this very
super-concentrated-type thing. When I joined his band, that was, to this date, the hardest situation that Ive ever been
in. He was so hard on us.
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EI: Like in what way?

NP: I mean, we rehearsed from like twelve noon to like three in the morning.
EI: Really?
NP: Yeah, and there was no music. Marcus is blind, so we would learn parts by ear, and he was coming out of
Wynton, so when he started writing the long form, through composed stuff in the spirit of Majesty of the Blues wed
be learning these parts, note by note, piecing them together. In a sense it was good, because by the time we would
finish learning a tune I knew everything about that tune. Listening to him play, I knew the tenor part, the bass part,
the drums, you know. But wed be in rehearsal, wed start at noon, itd be seven oclock, and somebody would be like,
Uh, Marcus, weve rehearsed for seven hours. Were kind of hungry. Hed be like, Okay, somebody call for pizza so
we can shed til it gets here. [laughs] Wed take a little break and then wed go back to shedding.
It was like that every day. But also, besides the endless hours, he was mean! He was fucking mean. Talking about
paying dues!
When I met up with him, we were rehearsing in Tallahassee, where he lived, and we were staying at Scotty and Herbs
house. He said, Catch a bus and Ill reimburse you, so I took a 14-hour bus from New Orleans to Tallahassee and I
got there and we rehearsed for like a week, might have done a gig after that. Then at the end of the week I needed bus
fare to get back home, so Im like, Yo, Marcus, Im going to need to get the bus fare home, and you said youd
reimburse me, and he kind of brushed me off.
I remember I told my father, Dad, yeah, Marcus dont want to pay me. He told me hed reimburse me. He said, Boy,
you better get your money or dont come your ass back home! [laughs]
So I was like, shit, I had to man up, and I went back to Marcus and I was like, Marcus, Im gonna really need you to
reimburse me, and he reluctantly reached in his wallet and said, You ought to be paying me. [laughs]
But he gave me the fucking money, though.
Shit like that. Wed be playing, wed be doing a gig somewhere at a festival, and hed feature everybody on something
and hed introduce such and such, Scotty Barnharts going to play this and Herbs gonna play that, And hed get to
me and hed be like, Yeah, were gonna feature Nicholas Payton now. Hes only 16 years old and he doesnt know what
hes doing, so forgive him, yall. Here he is: Nicholas Payton!
EI: No
NP: And, you know, Im supposed to go play after that! But, man, I remember at times being so fucking pissed
because wed be in rehearsals and hed basically be having us feeling like we werent shit hed say things like, You
cant play, I dont know why youre here and after a while I just started feeling like, Why are we here. Were so sad,
like, why are we here? There must be something you like about us, so why are we here? Years later I thought about it,
and I think a large part of it was because Wynton was his first gig and he didnt really have any other experience. I
think he got hazed really bad in Wyntons band. That was his rite of passage, so he thought thats what youre
supposed to do.
EI: Ive heard that theres always hazing with Wyntons band
NP: hoooo!
EI: Branfords band too, right?
NP: Oh, yeah, man, big time, like college fraternity, likereally fucking with you. And while I grew up in a hood where
cats rib all the time, theres a different power dynamic when its your peers and yall just talking about each others
momma or whatever else than a cat thats like five years older than you and you listen to their records and shit
EI: And you really want the gig, besides.
NP: Yeah! I think I got from my dad putting it in my head, like Dont let no motherfucker I dont care how much
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you revere them dont let them fucking talk to you any kind of way. And so I would kind of talk back or I wouldnt
take the shit or I would stand up, and they didnt like that.
But, to Marcuss credit years, later, maybe like 10 years later, I went down to see his band at the Vanguard, and he
pulled me to the side and he was just like, Man, Im really sorry for how I treated you. I was a young man, I didnt
know what I was doing. And I respected that.
EI: Right, he was young at the time. Later he knew better.
NP: Those were some hard years, man. And a lot of cats didnt make it. A lot of cats fell by the wayside because this
was a lot of cats first gig and they thought if this is how it is then why should they stick around?
Ive always saw both sides. On a certain level perhaps you should be more encouraging to young cats, and then on
another level if you dont have the emotional fortitude to withstand some hazing, then maybe you cant be out here,
because there are a lot worse things youre going to have to deal with in this music business than somebody hazing you
or telling you you aint shit. People going to be telling you that to some degree for the rest of your musical career, so if
you dont have the wherewithal to wade through it, then maybe its not for you. So I kind of feel two ways about it, but
I saw a lot of my friends and a lot of cats who I thought would be major contenders wave the white flag and do
something else.
EI: Im not sure if Im right about this, but when I think about when the music existed in a time when there was
segregation: The cats who were going to play in a band, they were representing something bigger than just the music.
They really had to prepare. It was a very serious thing to play in one of the bands that would actually have a gig and
tour and be presented to the culture as a whole. It seems to me like thats one of the reasons that music was so good in
those eras.
NP: You were playing for your life.
EI: You were playing for your life.
NP: You were playing for generations.
EI: Exactly.
NP: Were all counting on you. Yeah, it was that kind of pressure. It was a life or death kind of thing. Youre
representing ancestry, youre representing a lot of people, and youre breaking down doors. And for musicians, long
before there was a Civil Rights Movement, you were going in places that Black people were not allowed unless you
were serving, so there was a lot resting on you at that particular time.
Like I said, there was a bit of that energy coming back in the music in the 90s because there was this resurgence of the
Black Power edict. Coming off post-Reagan and post-War On Drugs, post-crack infiltrating, there was a certain
vibration in the air and the music meant something larger than a gig or just playing. You were representing, for Black
people and fight the power and all these things; the swing had that feeling in it. It had that same burn or that same
edge as Coltranes Alabama, or it was another 60s in a sense.
EI: This might be a stretch, but is some of that hazing from Wynton or Branford might be connected to that feeling,
like, Were taking on the big guns here; we need the biggest guns we got, you know what I mean?
NP: I would like to believe that, but honestly I think it had more of a root in insecurity. But there was also a
resurgence of Black Power, though.
You can look at interviews and read what cats were saying then about Black culture and about Black people versus
what theyre saying now if theyre addressing it at all. Its just interesting to me to see the juxtaposition of where
certain musicians were then and what they were speaking of versus now. A lot of the same people arent even
addressing the cultural aspects of it anymore, so thats interesting to me.
Although maybe at a certain point, you just get tired. Theres a line in Kendrick Lamars thing, at a part of the
interview where they create this thing where hes talking to Tupac and hes talking about, Yeah, you have this
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window, and (Im paraphrasing), You catch a black man and up to a certain age, the teens and twenties, and after
that you just lose that fire. You lose that fight. You lose that thing that makes you feel like you want to challenge the
status quo.
EI: Lets talk about your own activism.
NP: For me, contrary to a lot of popular belief, it doesnt come from a space of railing against something just for the
sake of it. Its not that these things were not important to me at a time, but as Ive grown older and saw the changing of
the guard and a lot of your Ray Browns and your Elvin and Hank Joneses the people who I worked with who kept
shit in check a certain way the generation that followed, my generation, the generation or so after kind of dropped
the ball.
And Ive seen the milk and honey years of the Young Lions, and record deals, and a certain type of fee structure, and
things that took years to build come crumbling down in such a short amount of time things that were not
acceptable, that people fought for them to be not acceptable, are acceptable now, like musicians undercutting one
another. You should leave this shit better than what you found it. We shouldnt turn this over to the cats who are
under us in worse shape. In extreme cases those cats died for us to have the opportunities and the privileges we have.
Unfortunately Ive had to and I say had to because I dont really have a choice step out in many instances alone
or be a sole voice in something, when I think that should be mitigated by my peers. A lot of them are like, I aint
touchin' it! so Ive had to bear the brunt of a lot of shit because its not being spread out between a lot more people.
Even if we dont agree, even if you dont like the way I do it, whatever, then wage your own movement but there
should be a sense of solidarity where it can be like, Well, we arent going to pay you because we dont agree that its
Black music or whatever, then they shouldnt be able to go to you and be able to take the gig for less, or get you to take
it and make that concession. Whereas at one time there might have been instances and not this utopian thing where
we all fight together or whatever, I mean, a lot of those older cats hated each other and fucked each others wives and
cheated each other out of money, so its not a thing of being morally perfect but there was a time when there was
even a code of ethics among criminals, certain things that people wouldnt do, a certain moral code that I find is little
to non-existent now.
As I said, Im the only one speaking to certain things, because a lot of other people are too worried about losing a gig
or something. But you ultimately do lose when you start to see the fee structures going down. It gets to the point where
you cant live anymore. When that next generation under you comes and starts undercutting you, then what are you
going to do? And when the frame of reference gets shorter and shorter. My generation and maybe a little before is one
the first generations where I felt that cats wouldnt give other cats their due.
For instance, I was always the youngest cat in a lot of the situations. I remember how strange it felt to me when there
were cats coming up who started sounding like me and started playing like me. And I didnt consider myself old yet,
but I guess when, by a certain amount of years, I had developed a sound and a body of work and a concept
particularly when I was working with my quintet there were people who looked up to us. To these high school and
college kids, we were their Miles Davis or whatever, in the same way that Wynton and Terence was for me. But then to
see a lot of these young trumpet players come out here cats who I gave a lesson to, cats who I turned onto records,
they were always at my gig, I would get them in for free then they come out here and pretend like I had nothing to
do with their development at all.
And I think it does a disservice to the music because a lot of the critics, they dont know, they cant hear. Like when I
hear some of their records that are lauded as this, that, and the other, Im like, Man, I played that on such and such a
record, but these critics, a lot of them, their frame of reference is even shorter, so they dont know that on such and
such a record this was done, or that one.
But we see it happening with the generation that preceded me with your Billy Pierces and your Donald Browns and
those cats not properly credited. And it just spirals, so then with each successive generation theres less homage and
credit paid. I shudder to think about those cats who pretended like I didnt exist: Now, what do you think is going to
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happen to you? So yeah. It just really becomes cannibalistic and incestuous and doesnt serve the music at all.
EI: I think your voice is an important one and that youre having a really positive influence on what people are
thinking. Ive seen how people who were so certain of themselves five years ago are maybe now not as certain, and
thats positive.
NP: I agree, and it was funny to me when I started seeing it. When some cats who had a staunch position against me
started to echo some of the shit I said I was like, Oh, okay. Thats just how it is.
EI: I think jazz education is one of the biggest problems in term of honoring a black aesthetic in the music. The
history of jazz education has been somehow very uninterested in the blues. At the beginning there was the Stan
Kenton-supported Lab Band from North Texas, and the next coup was Gary Burton and Berklee world. These are the
iconic starts of jazz education. Its not that there isnt good Kenton or Burton music of course, but at the same time
preserving a black aesthetic was almost what they didnt want to do.
NP: Exactly. Its funny: its not even a thing of so much like were gonna ignore it, but theres gonna be a missive to
try to erase it.
EI: Get rid of it.
NP: Yeah. You dont have to love Black music, but do you have to hurt it? Thats another level of commitment right
there!
But you know, man, I often think the white cats who have benefited and had their lives changed playing Black music,
they know better. They know because they were able to go in hoods that they probably couldnt if the elders didnt say,
Yo, this white dude is cool, invited you on the bandstand, invited you into the culture. The white cats should be more
vocal than anybody. You should be louder than me because you owe your life, you owe your livelihood literally,
whatever riches or whatever things youve established and its no secret that if you look at fee structure of artists,
typically white cats get better offers than black cats. (There are some exceptions, obviously.)
EI: Ive tried to argue this with a few people and it doesnt always go over, but nows the right time to bring it up.
Affirmative action can have flaws, but to me the cats who really should have done some affirmative action were Dave
Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan or some of these lauded white old-school jazz motherfuckers who then were millionaires and
only hired white guys and played for rich white people.
Not that Brubeck or Mulligan werent great, or that I wouldn't love to have a conversation with them and try to learn
something. And Im painting in broad strokes. Those two in particular are not even very similar musicians and dont
think they were similar people, either.
Its just very odd, you know, the trajectory of many of those kinds ofcareers at some point when they were really
established.
In fact, Miles talks in his book about being disappointed in Bill Evans. Now Bill was one of the cats, although Bill
Evans wouldnt have been one of the cats if it hadnt been for Miles Davis, right? But after Miles consecrates him Bill
sort of goes off into his white trio world and that whole other thing. You just wonder how the music could have been
different if Bill had made some consistently more affirmative action-type choices. Thats what Miles hints at, anyway.
NP: I feel like you owe it. You owe it to the Black community.
EI: Well, youd think so.
NP: Come on, man. At least talk to it.
Okay, I see it both ways: hire who you want to hire, play what you want to play, and play what youre comfortable in: I
get that. I, for one, have never if cats have been all black in my band, its never because I said, Imma have an all
black band. I just hired who the fuck I wanted to play with. Im not gonna hire a Brotha whos less talented than a
White guy on the same instrument just because hes Black. Im just not gonna do that.
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So, again, I dont fault people on a certain level for hiring people they feel culturally or personally connected to. Fine.
Have an all white band, play music that is heavily-laden with European concepts and light on the Black aesthetic, go
ahead.
But if youve earned status as a millionaire or become rich off of playing something you know is Black music, I feel you
should be louder than any Black person about the injustice that Black people have to go through. Not only to play this
music just to be human.
And I dont want to say accepted as human because I dont give that level of power to any man to decide whos human
and whos not. Thats a whole other discussion to get into, human rights or civil rights, I just dont get fighting for,
begging for, I just dont get the whole Black Lives Matter, Hey, system, recognize us as human. Fuck asking
somebody to recognize you as human I dont give a fuck what you think. Im not going to let you talk about the
ancestors and just say what you want to say, but Im not begging or asking you to see things a certain way.
Once I even called out Dave Douglas and Joe Lovano after they were getting lauded for the SoundPrints thing for
Wayne Shorter. One day, I was just like, You know, you guys should be talking about these things Im talking about.
They have a band playing and profiting off of the music of a Black musician.
This is regardless of what Wayne Shorter thinks about it. I dont know him to address or talk about race. Thats fine.
He doesnt have to.
EI: Hes from Newark, for Christs sake.
NP: I mean, you know he knows what that means!
But Dave and Joe are smart guys; they should be speaking to this shit morethanme.
If you benefit from being invited into Black culture and being taught and groomed by Black masters, your debt, your
bill, is bigger than mine at the end of the day. I mean, Im already Black.
EI: Yeah, I hear you, man, I definitely hear you. I personally don't think you need to explicitly address race if you are
covering Wayne Shorter, but I also wish I had started considering this point of view sooner.
NP:I'm not saying Lovano and Douglas should address race solely because they profit from covering Shorter. I'm
saying all White musicians who make a living playing Black music have a moral obligation to speak about racial
injustice. By being silent on such issues, they aredefacto supporting the supremacist and oppressive forces that
enable privilege to them as White musicians while marginalizing people of color. And using Black culture to make
financial gains without regard for the Black people who create it is racist.
EI: Again, this makes me think about jazz education, which is where the money is these days.
NP: Well, money is the whole thing. But I dont expect them to figure it out in jazz education. Thats just what that is.
Im gonna let jazz education be what that is.
Now, if youre gonna invite me into your school, Im gonna talk about what this shit is and you can decide for yourself
how comfortable or uncomfortable that makes you, and by this point if youre asking me, you kind of have an idea of
where my stance is.
But thats the whole point of jazz to skirt around the culture and find some other inroad to deal with the music and
to deal with all of everything they love about it except the unsexy parts: the struggle, the ugliness.
Thats what jazz is. Its a way of, Lets have fun, and lets play this music, and lets do this and lets do that. But
when it comes to the real shit about what it is to be Black, they dont want to deal with this other part of it.
You cant go to a jazz school expecting enlightenment, because, if you just deal with the music and let it exist in its own
habitat and its culture, you will learn this music is not designed for that Western pedagogy. Its a different pedagogical
system; its a different system of thought.
Im not saying Black thought is better than Western or European thought. Its different, though: In almost in every
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way it is diametrically opposed to those Western systems.

You cant expect to transfer this information within that construct because, first of all, who decided that somebody is a
professor? Who gave you your degree? Who said you were qualified to teach somebody? Did Clifford Brown say you
were qualified? Did Max Roach say you were qualified? Who have you worked with?
So you have these people deciding in an education system, most of which probably dont give a shit or care about jazz
anyway. And, if they do, where do they get their ideas from? You dont have the true masters.
It used to be that the true masters decided who was next. There was a clear lineage in place: whom begat whom. You
play with this person, youre alright. Whore you playing with? You cut your teeth with them. You serve tutelage in
several bands or several people before you struck out on your own. You pay your dues. That system doesnt exist
anymore and now we have these competitions that engenders a whole other kind of construct. You go to such and such
a college, then you do this competition and were gonna lay $20,000 on you and then give you a record deal and kick
start your career. That shit is outside of the culture. Also, we all know that a lot of these competitions are rigged.
They would never ask me to judge at the Thelonious Monk Competition
EI: Well, when you look at the list of winners and finishers of the Monk competition, while some great players have
gone on to have a career, its interesting that most havent. Perhaps it is because its, as you say, outside of the thing.
NP: A lot of cats who otherwise would have liked to be playing with their own bands or gigging as a means of fulltime support found themselves having to supplement their income in other ways. Teaching is one of them, and thats
not to say theres no joy or beauty to be found in the educational system, particularly if its cats who know better.
But even when theyre in those certain constructs, have you noticed that when you put a musician in some famed jazz
school and then theyre artistic director, how long do a lot of the real cats last?
Because the games they have to play and the board meetings they have to go to and the lesson plansall that shit is
not conducive to disseminating the real information. There are certain things you have to do. There are certain games
you have to play to be in that conversation, to get tenure, to have that job, to have that teaching position. So if you go
in there espousing these issues that are upsetting within that construct, you might have a hard time or find yourself
not lasting very long. Its like politics: what you have to compromise to get yourself a position, once you arrive at that
position, your original goals are no longer important. Now, you might say, Well, if Im in such and such a school, then
maybe I might be able to mitigate some of the damages. Well, what do you have to compromise to get a job there, to
keep your job?
The things you can and cant say to students like, that didnt exist. My dad used to cuss elementary kids out and
throw erasers at them. Youd be in jail for that today. The older cats were 10 times less politically correct than I am.
Their language was far more harsh, but a lot of people dont know that side of folks.
With all my love to Clark Terry, you know, he had a very congenial spirit about him, but Ive seen him cuss people out,
call women bitches. Talks Ive had with Ray Brown pulling my coattail, getting in my shit and cussing me the fuck out,
you know, if he felt certain things I was doing werent cool. But it came from a different space; I wouldnt call that
hazing, and not that these old motherfuckers would be right all the time, but for the most part it came from a space of
love, even if it was kind of jive.
Whereas some of the younger hazing is just jive for no reason or jive for insecurity, it was never about that with the
older cats; it was always an issue of respect, from my experience, that kind of respect has died. Its died with a lot of
those masters who were here, who made sure shit was kept a certain way, so in many aspects to some people I might
seem like an anomaly or a relic or something. But, I mean, Im far nicer as a leader or even in general than a lot of the
cats who people think are so clean-mouthed. I mean, these were some of the foul-mouth-est, misogynist-type
motherfuckers, you know what I mean? Im speaking about this not to disrespect anybody, but I think people need to
know this because too much niceness sends a wrong message. Such and such came to my school and they were the
perfect gentleman.
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You know, they knew how to play the game. They knew how to do a certain thing, and a lot of these older cats came in
an era where if you said or did some certain shit, you might not be here tomorrow, you know?
So I think its important at a certain point that the whole totality of how shit is gets documented. Im crucified for
saying motherfucker or for talking about pussy, but when you look at cats like Mingus and Miles I mean, read
some of their DownBeat interviews! I dont say shit nowhere near as offensive as some of the things they said!
I think a perspective has been lost, perhaps, because weve created this sanitized view of jazz and what its supposed to
be, particularly in educational centers.
I just think sometimes theres no way to talk about something but how the fuck it is. Thats the way we were taught,
thats how it is. And thats not to say that theres not room for a message to evolve, but sometimes theres no substitute
for the well-placed motherfucker.
EI: Right, Id agree.
NP: Sometimes its necessary to say that shit the way it is.
EI: You must know that interview with Lester Young where he shows that he is a true virtuoso of the word
motherfucker.
Well, to close out, there are two musicians Id like to ask you about.
You mentioned Ray Brown already. You knew Ray and worked with him, so Id like to get some insight because Ray is
kind of not my man, you know. Something about him bothers me.
Of course, hes essentially an immaculate musician. But I think I like him best almost in the studio environment, when
a string orchestra or big band going on and he gets to be the funky bass counterpoint to it. Then its beautiful. But in
more of a playing situation I just find him a little uptight, like Ill see him on a video with Kenny Clarke and it doesnt
even sound like hes listening to Kenny Clarke, hes just pushing on top next to Klook. Theres something that just
bums me out about him as an ensemble jazz bass player sometimes.
NP: Yeah, I dont know. I guess I dont get that. I hear what youre saying and I know, quite frankly, that some of his
peers perhaps felt that way about him. But when I think of him I think of Negroidery and just nastiness on the bass.
Hes top of the line to me.
EI: And it felt good playing with him, with the beat and everything?
NP: Oh, definitely. Did he play on top? Yeah. It still felt great though.
I know theres some drummers in particular who just didnt like to play with Ray. I think it depends; you know, certain
musicians have a certain temperament with certain people and its almost like a parent can love all their children, but
theyd be lying if they say they didnt have favorites. And if you werent their favorite, you might get disciplined a bit
more, you might get a bit more struggle in that relationship, you might get away with less.
And Im not gonna think I can speak for Ray, but maybe if you werent a certain type of musician to him, or a
drummer that he looked at a certain way, then there might be that fight with him. Me, personally, Ive never felt that,
and talk about just nastiness, as far as playing bass, I will cite this example, and Ive turned a lot of cats onto this
album:GeneHarrisTrioPlusOne, with Stanley Turrentine and Mickey Roker. Whew!
EI: I gotta get that.
NP: Man, like, if he never made another record other than that, that would be enough to seal this position in the
canon of great bass players, in any genre, at any time.
But then you juxtapose that with like I know years ago I read the interview you did with Mickey, and he didnt even
want to talk about Ray.
Ive had bands like that. Like when I had my quintet: I remember we were doing some shows and we were out with
Josh Redmans band. We would just fuck with each other all the time. We would say the lowest shit you could say
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about someone to each other, and Joshs band looked at us like we were crazy, like, How can yall talk about one
another like that? And still be cool? How could you talk about his mother like that and you still have a job like, how
can you?
But, man, all that shit went into the music. Thats why we played the way we did; thats why theres a certain urgency
and a fire about us.
And we had our falling outs and our issues. There were times where Adonis Rose and Anthony Wonsey would get into
it, and Wonsey might piss Adonis off and Adonis would be burning behind everybody and, get to the piano solo, hed
crash the cymbal and just fold his arms with the sticks and just let Wonsey have it. In fact, on my album Paytons
Place on Paraphernalia he does exactly that. They were fighting I dont even know about what that time.
EI: Its like Tony Williams laying out behind Herbie or George Coleman on MyFunnyValentine. He was pissed at
them.
NP: Yeah, all that kind of shit. But its like family; sometimes you get into it with your brother or your sister, Im not
speaking to that motherfucker right now, and all of that goes into the music. And I think the music misses that a bit,
you know.
Not to say that you cant have great music without dysfunction, but you look at most of the great bands, theyre bands
full of leaders. Strong personalities. Theres gonna be clashes, theres gonna be issues, somebodys gonna fuck your
girlfriend or wife because people are human. Some of this shit is morally reprehensible and I strive not to indulge it.
But I do think theres something to when bands were full of cats who, I dont know, they might pop a cap in
somebodys ass or stab a motherfucker. Or the drummer walks around with an ice pick or a gun. What that music
sounds like as opposed to now where everybodys doing yoga and
EI: eating raw kale.
NP: and you know, juicing. Kudos to health, but you know what Im saying?
EI: Oh, I hear you.
NP: Theres something about the spirit or the authenticity when people didnt feel such a need to be politically
correct. Like, shake the shit up.
Hey, if youre really a yoga-loving person and you really juicing, if thats authentically you, thats fine. Like Mark
Turner, like thats who the fuck he is, but a lot of people are posing like Mark Turner or faking it. Thats who Mark
authentically is, thats him, whatever, thats what Im saying.
But other people are afraid to be themselves, and I think thats reflected in the music.
People are being celebrated and exalted to this status without having passed through the lineage, or getting positions
of prominence and authority within a jazz construct because thats what jazz enables. It enables an environment where
you can say, This is the cat, without them having to have to played with anybody or pay any dues or anything.
We just gonna say this is the cat because DownBeat says or because the GRAMMYs say or because whatever construct
outside of the music says. It dont have nothing to do no more with Because Ray Brown said, or Because Art Blakey
said. Because they paid certain dues, because theyre tied to a part of the ancestral lineage. And anybody could be
entitled to ancestral lineage; I dont know why so many white people sometimes feel like I said they cant be in the
lineage, too. Never said that. Nowhere will you find me saying that, even though some white people always feel Where
am I? in my talk.
Thats your insecurities, not mine. Plenty of white cats are a part of the ancestral lineage because when you really look
at it from a genetic point of view, we all have African roots. But your ability to accept the way things are and to deal
with your own shit affects how you connect to that. If, as a white person, if youve been endowed certain privileges, you
have other steps to go through to get to that than someone Black. Life is unfair. It was unfair to my fucking ancestors
on the ships.
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EI: No one ever said you gotta play Black music to a white person. Thats their choice. The white person wants to play
music that Black people originated, thats the white persons choice.
Elvin Jones. Lets finish up with Elvin.
NP: [pause] Gangsta.
Just did the fuck what he wanted to do. Said what he wanted to say.
These are complex individuals, you know. They cant be sized up at face value. Like you just see them and you know all
their fucking labors? Hes from that era of Black men him, Hank Jones like when you listen to them talk theres
an aristocratic accent in their voices, you know what Im talking about?
EI: Yeah.
NP: Theres a bit of a European-English-type of thing that they talked with. You can hear it in Marvin Gaye. Its a
certain era of Black, but theyll fuck you up. Like youll listen to them talk and he seems meek and humble, but theyll
joog you in the back with a knife if you do something crazy, so dont get it twisted.
I remember one of my first tours through Europe and I thought it was cool how on the plane they serve you a little
wine with your meal, so I started collecting these wine bottles. I didnt drink at the time, I just thought it was a cool
souvenir, and I was gonna give them to people when I got back. Elvin had peeped me doing it for a couple days, but he
didnt say nothing.
So one morning it was an early departure somewhere, like six in the morning and he follows me into the bathroom
and hes like, You got those wines?
Im like, Yeah, theyre in my trumpet case, so I crack open my trumpet case and gave him a bottle.
He was like, You aint gonna have none?
Im like, No, I dont drink.
And then he looked at me with the most disdain anyone has perhaps ever given me in my life, and he said, very
deliberately, Something aint right about somebody who dont do nothing wrong.
And that just hit me. Going back to this thing I talk about, this idea of perfection and being pristine and the whole I
dont do this and I dont do that. Now, granted I was fucking 18 years old and theres a lot of shit that I really didnt
do, but him saying that just really brought some things to home. Like, these were real motherfuckers.
And, in his case, because theres no other way to put it: he was a real fucking Nigga.
Like thats what the fuck he was, from Pontiac, Michigan, from the elements they grew up in. And being a heroin user
at a certain point in his life, like the type of environments he would have to be able to negotiate when youre involved
in drug culture just to survive. What that makes you.
That shit goes into the music. That shit goes into your ride cymbal.
Now Im not saying you have to shoot up and Im not saying like you gotta live in the hood to have this certain kind of
thing, but Id be remiss to say that those parts of your collective experience doesnt go into the music.
A lot of times we dont have to go through that if someone has paid those debts for us, and we acknowledge them. Its
almost like a Jesus Christ-type of syndrome: they died for your sins therefore you dont have to, so there has to be the
respect there.
You could take the long way, and many people have, shooting up and doing this and doing that and getting your teeth
knocked out and being whatever if you feel like thats what you need to have your music be real. Or, you could just
really respect the motherfucker and listen to whos been through that, and know enough and learn enough to know
like, I can get all the advantages of his struggles and his sacrifice without having to have a motherfucker jack me up in
an alley trying to get some heroin.
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I cant stress enough that jazz sits outside of that. Jazz wont tell you that. You might get kicked out of a school for
talking about the content that Im talking about with these people. These are the real stories and these are the stories
that theyve shared with me and there are some stories that I would never tell because its just not my place to tell
somebody elses personal business that they shared with me but theres some things Im beginning to feel need to be
said, because this sanitized view that we have of the music is actually serving to kill the music.
These stories were told to me for a reason, and some of them need to be shared for the sake of the music.
EI: Please keep sharing your stories, Nicholas. Ill keep reading you, and thanks for your time today.
--NicholasPayton'sblog.
04/22/2015
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Interview With Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

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Interview With Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

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6/5/2015

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

EI: Okay, its not one I know.

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

about each other through him.

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

EI: Like in what way?

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

way it is diametrically opposed to those Western systems.

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

Interview with Nicholas Payton - Do The Math

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