Too old to be identified with young lions such as Wynton Marsalis and Marcus Roberts, too young to be revered alongside elder statesmen such as Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody, saxophonist Bobby Watson tended to disappear into a kind of ”lost generation” of jazz musicians.
Though critics and aficionados have been well acquainted with Watson`s versatility and eloquence on alto saxophone-for several years he has made the Down Beat Critics Poll under ”Talent Deserving Wider Recognition”-to the rest of the world he was just another working musician.
Until now. In the last year or so, Watson, who opens at the Jazz Showcase on Tuesday, has become one of the fastest rising stars in jazz. He recently was lured from Blue Note to the commercially more formidable Columbia label;
his first Columbia recording, the excellent ”Present Tense,” has been on the Billboard jazz chart for months; his name now is routinely mentioned among artists who are defining the course of jazz in general, the alto saxophone in particular, in the `90s.
”God only knows why it`s all suddenly happening,” says Watson, who seems a bit mystified by his sudden, though richly deserved, good fortune.
”It`s sort of like a big puzzle where everything finally comes together after you`ve been working on it for ages. But it`s coming together better than I could ever plan it.
”Maybe it`s just because I`ve been working at it so long,” adds Watson, who turns 39 later this month. ”I`ve been in New York for 16 years now, and maybe after a while people get to see your consistency and sincerity and dedication.”
It`s called ”paying your dues,” and Watson has paid his with interest. During his long apprenticeship, he has worked as music director for Art Blakey`s Messengers, duetted with tenor great George Coleman, arranged music for Sam Shepard`s play ”Shepard Sets,” held his own in New York`s 29th Street Saxophone Quartet and so on. If it was complex, sophisticated and technically demanding, Watson played it.
That breadth of styles and philosophies enriches ”Present Tense,” which acknowledges a variety of jazz traditions yet also ventures well beyond them. Yes, you can hear blues melody, shades of Ellington, intimations of Thelonious Monk, church harmonies, funk rhythms and the like. But the sound and attitude is utterly modern, lean and concise.
Harmonically, Watson and his Horizon band (with Victor Lewis on drums)
explore unexpected modulations and refreshingly complex chords. Rhythmically, the album ranges from straightahead passages to freely non-metered sections to rhapsodic sections where the beat constantly changes.
And yet, this is a music so direct and dramatic that the most casual listener likely would find it attractive.
”You`ve always got to find something in the music that will reach people,” says Watson, who views jazz as a music of inclusion.
”That was one of the great things about playing so many different kinds of music in these past 16 years. It makes you more well-rounded, and it makes it possible for you to play something that will help people get into the music.
”I mean, I can play some pretty far-out ideas, but I always try to keep putting in things that people can recognize, something they can identify with, like a clear beat or a blues progression or a fine tune. You`ve got to keep touching people during various points during the night, so that they`re still with you.
”If you can`t reach them, what`s the point?”
The art is in the shrewd and subtle way Watson and friends accomplish that. In the ”Monk He See, Monk He Do” track on the ”Present Tense,” for instance, Watson and the ensemble make discreet, passing references to the intense musical language of Thelonious Monk. A dissonant interval here, a strident chord there, an odd phrase-length someplace else-these elements subtly underpin a piece that appears sleekly melodic and nonthreatening on the surface.
In the album`s only standard, Ellington`s ”I`ve Got It Bad And That Ain`t Good,” the reference point is still more direct, with Watson`s alto vibrantly evoking the bent-note, blues-drenched sound of Johnny Hodges.
”I just couldn`t resist putting in a little of Hodges,” says Watson with a laugh. ”I dig him, and, frankly, I think a lot of things he did on alto still apply. You better believe it.”
The unique musical synthesis that is Bobby Watson has been in the making virtually since childhood. Born in Lawrence, Kan., Watson would hear the jazz records his father continuously played around the house.
”My Dad was in aviation but played tenor (saxophone) on the side, so I`d hear that. Musically, I basically grew up in church, playing gospel and R&B.
”But the jazz scene was pretty much dead when I was growing up. It was all rock and fusion and funk, so I had to search for jazz. And all my friends in school couldn`t stand it, so I was really isolated.”
So why was Watson drawn to jazz, instead of the easier, more lucrative world of rock.
”I don`t really know, except I`d have to say that when I first heard Bird (alto genius Charlie Parker), I just heard this aura around his sound,” says Watson. ”Certain people I listened to just had that aura, an optimistic spirit around their notes.
”Like Trane (tenor saxophonist John Coltrane), you could hear this probing and searching in everything he played. People like that were expressing themselves so fluently, saying things on their horn that cannot be said in words, and that really hit me.”
Obviously, Parker and Coltrane inspired whole generations of jazz artists, but their virtuosity often cut both ways, serving to frustrate young players who realized they never could attain such prowess.
”That never really happened to me,” says Watson, ”because I believe your mind is a powerful thing. If you can see yourself doing something, it`ll happen. If you have dreams, if you have faith, if you have power of the mind, you`ll do it.
”Now some of the stuff that Parker or Coltrane would play, not only could I not play it, I couldn`t even understand it. So I`d just put it away and stick to things I could hear and learn how to play that.
”Then you come back to it when you`re ready, and you realize you didn`t have a clue back then. I thought I didn`t like the old stuff at first, but it wasn`t until years later that I could hear what people like Lester (Young) and (Don) Byas were about.
”Plus I`d always say to myself, `Rome wasn`t built in a day. Trane didn`t play that way all the time and neither did Bird. It even took them time.` ”
Not surprisingly, Watson considers his greatest lessons to have been learned from Art Blakey, whose Messengers long served as a kind of training ground for young talent, the all-star alumni including Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea and scores more.
”From Art I learned how to present the music, the pacing of the sets, how to build your solos,” says Watson. ”Just watching a great artist like Art to see how he acts is important.
”He taught through action, just the way he lived his life, the way he dealt with different situations.
”Being with Art was like going to school,” adds Watson, who graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in theory/composition in 1975.
”But you can`t stay in the Messengers forever. I was there four and a half years, and it was time to go-he told me that.
”Leaving wasn`t that scary, becuse I had gotten such a thorough education with Art, and I already had been around the circuit.
”It`s being an artist that`s scary, because you never know where your next paycheck will be, so you`re going to have scary moments in your life-you`re facing the unknown.
”But I don`t regret the hard years. In fact, I sort of feel sorry for a lot of those `young lions,` because all that success is going to stunt their growth. You need to have time when no one`s paying attention to you just to experiment.
”But when you get thrust into a position of authority and esteem, you`ll be afraid to even ask somebody a question.
”It`s still the same old thing. If you want to be a real artist, you`ve got to learn, you`ve still got to pay your dues.”
