TT 261: Billy Hart

excerpt from memoir about 1977's ENCHANCE

Don’t miss the Billy Hart quartet in Tarrytown this weekend! NEA jazz master Jabali Billy Hart is 82 but playing as strong as ever!

This quartet is also in Rotterdam and Moers next week.

Below, an excerpt of a memoir in progress from Billy Hart. It is the first part of chapter ten, “Leader.”

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Elliot Meadow was from Scotland but ended up in America in the jazz industry, starting with being a roadie for Count Basie. He was a supporter, everybody in the Herbie Hancock sextet knew Meadow. In 1977 Meadow told me it was time, and negotiated my first record as a leader, Enchance, on the A&M Horizon label. 

The packaging on the label was producer John Snyder’s idea: artwork, photographs, commentary from the musicians, a separate set of liner notes from Stanley Crouch, reproductions of two scores and a transcription of Eddie Henderson’s solo on “Layla Joy.” One of the people quoted is my close friend, James Lott:

 The music on this record represents many centuries of paths, struggles and dreams. Being at once rooted in our history and our destiny, the music is creative energy through which we move. Like us, the music moves linearly, spirally, or in jumps. Yet, always interpreting the everpresent, sometimes mysterious, order that dominates the cosmos.

Widen the movement

Open the song

Remind us who we are

Dance on, players.

Lott was a mathematics professor from Atlanta, I met him there on tour with Jimmy Smith, but he was also into the music. For a time he was in Manhattan, teaching at Hunter College, and John Coltrane became a personal friend. John would ask for Lott’s serious opinion after sets at the Half Note, and John even gave Lott an alto saxophone that Lott could play in an avant-garde fashion. Lott was extraordinarily intelligent, charismatic, and philosophical. 

Occasionally I’d pick up the phone and Lott would be there, saying, “I’ll be brief.” 

I’d say, “Yeah?” 

“Do you know what women are?” 

“No.” 

“They’re our teachers,” he’d explain, and hang up.

Every time Lott would say something like that it was true. 

Phone rings:

“Hello?” 

“I’ll be brief.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Do you know the highest form of intelligence in the universe?” 

“No.” 

“The highest form of intelligence in the universe is love.” 

I am influenced by Lott to this day, and still quote him when I can. Lott ended up being close with bassist William Parker, and Parker helped organize a memorial when Lott died in 2018. Because James Lott never made a record, his name is barely known outside of his close circle of family and friends, but he was nonetheless an important part of my musical life. 

Hannibal Marvin Peterson and James Lott shared something in personality: spiritually guided, southern, intelligent, able to bring other people around to their point of view. In that era Hannibal and I were tight. Hannibal was pure fire on the trumpet, but I also wanted lyricism, which is why Eddie Henderson joins Hannibal on Enchance.  Eddie plays melodically on “Layla Joy,” while Hannibal blows the walls down on Dewey Redman’s tune, “Corner Culture.” 

“Layla Joy” was the first tune I wrote and the first one to be recorded. The title was revealed at the very end, just after we finished the take: A phone call came in saying there was a new child on this earth and her name was Layla Joy.

I hear things and can whistle them well. If someone else plays the chords on the piano, I can say whether they are right or not, and sometimes I give certain poetic words or even specific musical references while working out the harmony. “Think of what Herbie Hancock plays at the beginning of ‘Stella by Starlight’” is something I’ve said to a pianist. Of course, there’s a lot of leeway there, which is why my tunes sound so radically different in the hands of different bands. I like the way my tunes have evolved; Duke Ellington’s tunes didn’t stay the same over time, either. 

But I probably wouldn’t have ever really tried to compose any melodies if it weren’t for Dave Holland. When I called Dave for Enchance, he asked me about my music. “Well, Dave, I can’t even find middle C on the piano. Maybe every now and then I might hear something in the shower.” 

I was being a little sarcastic, but Dave replied, “Well, man, you better get back in the fucking shower, because I’m not doing this date if you don’t write something.” 

Dewey Redman helped me with “Layla Joy,” that’s his chart reproduced in the notes on Enchance. I had met Dewey when I visited San Francisco for a week with Shirley Horn, the same week I left Shirley in the lurch when called away by Jimmy Smith. Jimmy Lovelace was one of the great drummers, especially good for vocalists, and he lived with another drummer, Art Lewis (nicknamed Sharkey), in Happy House, 729 Oak Street, later immortalized in song by Ornette Coleman. A lot of people were around the jam sessions at Happy House, including the Englishwoman Caroline Joy Hadley, who became an editor of Car & Driver magazine and for a time dated Bobby Hutcherson. Caroline gave me good advice when she told me, “You’ll always be happy or sad, so what you need is peace.”  

At Happy House Dewey Redman was playing totally avant-garde, with many extended techniques. Later when I heard him with Ornette Coleman’s band, Dewey had mastered that comparatively smooth bluesy thing that characterized Ornette. Ornette and Dewey were both from the same part of Texas, there’s no doubt about it.

I wanted Cecil Taylor to play piano on Enchance, but that wasn’t going to happen, so I called Don Pullen. I didn’t know Don, but he nailed the music. Essentially, since I couldn’t get Ornette and Cecil for my record, I got Dewey and Don.

Oliver Lake was my man, and he still is, for we are neighbors in Montclair. I had met Oliver in St. Louis when he was involved with B.A.G., the Black Artists Group, but it was the LP he made in New York, Heavy Spirits, that convinced me I should get him for my own record. On the opening tune on Enchance, Oliver’s “Diff Customs,” we played free…but with Buster Williams there, it wasn’t just free, it was groovy, too. Dave Holland and Don Pullen also contributed memorable tunes in varied styles. On Hannibal’s “Rahsaan is Beautiful,” Michael Carvin plays percussion. In this era, both Hannibal and Carvin were close to my teenaged son, Chris: when I was on the road, they would all hang out together. 

I was really comfortable on that record date, and the combination of personalities was really interesting. I don’t think some of those musicians played together much before or since, it was a real one-off. 

A lot of people were surprised that my first record would be so avant-garde. Stan Getz couldn’t believe it, saying to me, “What the fuck was that?” 

Enchance made a few “best of the year” lists and then sort of vanished. I was hoping to get a follow-up, but John Snyder’s replacement, Tommy LiPuma, wouldn’t return my calls. Eventually, when I was working with Stan outside the Horizon offices in LA, I walked over and talked my way past the secretaries and saw LiPuma in person. LiPuma told me to my face, “Billy, to tell you the truth, I just don’t like your kind of music.”

Fair enough. But if you do make something of quality, it has a chance of staying relevant. When I did a gig of the Enchance music many years later, Don Pullen wasn’t alive so I called Craig Taborn. Craig told me, “Of course I’ll do this gig with you, Billy! I know every note of Enchance.”

—Billy Hart

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