The last time saxophonist Benny Waters played Chicago, FDR was in the White House, Charlie Parker was in kneepants, and jazz was in its heyday as America’s popular music.
More than 60 years later, neither the White House nor jazz holds quite the same allure for the broad public, and Charlie Parker has long since entered the history books.
Waters, however, is still blowing strong, judging by his vibrant playing on his newest recording, “Benny Waters: From Paradise (Small’s) to Shangri-la” (on Muse Records). So when the 96-year-old saxophonist returns to Chicago at the end of the month, it will be as the world’s oldest working jazz musician.
Or at least no one can think of a jazz performer who’s so close to the century mark. Alto saxophonist Benny Carter, who still tours the world, is pushing 91; violinist Claude Williams, who earlier this year performed in the White House, just turned 90.
To Waters, they are mere upstarts.
“I guess it’s an honor to be the oldest jazz musician, but that isn’t the most important thing,” says the fellow who may be the last person alive to have played with Joe “King” Oliver, Fletcher Henderson and Jimmie Lunceford. The distinction is important, because these three artists helped codify the language of big-band jazz.
“The most important thing is how well I play,” adds Waters, “and I leave it to the public to judge that. I can tell you that every place I’ve played (recently) — L.A., Tokyo, Sacramento — I’ve had standing ovations.”
Waters’ fans, however, apparently aren’t merely applauding the man’s longevity. Critical reaction since Waters returned to the United States from France, where he lived from 1952 to ’92, has ranged from enthusiastic to positively gushing.
“He is, in other words, a walking compendium of jazz,” wrote Don Heckman in the Los Angeles Times, in 1995. “But there is nothing archaic about his playing or his energy, which offer convincing testimony to the idea that creativity knows no age limits.”
Added critic Ira Gitler in JazzTimes magazine last year, “The alto sound is large and lively with arpeggiated runs, glisses and much swing. . . . All I can say is that I would like to be there to celebrate his 100th with him and some of the other birthdays in between.”
The enthusiasm surely stems, in large part, from the quality of Waters’ tone, a ripe, pungent sound that easily cuts through any instrumental texture. That Waters also seems to be bursting with improvisatory ideas, as his new CD attests, certainly helps keep his music sounding fresh.
“I change my style, I’m not playing like it’s 1926,” says Waters, who has influenced the course of jazz history in subtle ways.
Born near Baltimore and reared in Pennsylvania, Waters studied music at the Boston Conservatory, his rising reputation as an instrumentalist attracting two young musicians who wanted to study with him: baritone saxophonist Harry Carney and alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges.
The two were key players in various versions of Duke Ellington’s band, with Carney’s hefty baritone holding up the reed section and Hodges’ exquisitely expressive alto leading it. They gave Ellington’s band a great deal of its musical personality, along the way advancing the art of reed playing, and both owed Waters a debt of thanks.
“I taught (Carney) for nearly three years, he was just beginning,” remembers Waters. “I started him on his tone and on the chords of different songs, the jazz classics of that period.
“He had left the conservatory to come to me, and I taught him alto and a little clarinet. He wanted the sound of jazz, and he couldn’t get it from those teachers at the conservatory. They were more straight: They didn’t have even half the vibrato of the average jazz musician, and they used to criticize that vibrato. . . .
“Now Johnny (Hodges), he had natural ability. When he was 13, he was playing like mad. He didn’t know what he was playing, he didn’t know what key he was in half the time. That he learned.”
Having travelled to France in the early 1950s, Waters found himself in such demand that he stayed for four decades. Like Carter, Coleman Hawkins and a generation of black jazz artists, Waters could not resist the stature he was accorded as a jazz musician in Europe, though his residency was longer than most.
He stayed, says Waters, “Because I was working all the time, because the people were nice . . . and because in that period, the European musicians wanted to learn — there were not many good jazz men there. You could name the good (European) pianists on two or three fingers.”
When Waters returned to the U.S. in 1992, largely because he could get better medical benefits here as a U.S. citizen, he was a bit disappointed by what he heard.
“It seems to me that there’s a lot of musicians around, and most of the young ones in jazz are really on the bebop kick,” says Waters, referring to a volatile, technically difficult music that erupted in the ’40s and was championed, above all, by altoist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.
“I lived in the same house (in New York) where Dizzy (Gillespie) used to live in the ’40s, and I remember when Charlie (Parker) and Diz used to practice together. I didn’t know exactly what they were doing at the period, but I thought that technically it was great.
“The things that Dizzy and Carlie Parker did, regardless of the criticism they got, were great.
“But I’ve never been interested in playing it,” adds Waters, who lost his vision about three years ago, after a cataract operation failed to save his diminishing eyesight.
Even so, he maintains a busy performing schedule, his lung power still substantial, his ability to play full sets undiminished.
“It’s like Eubie Blake used to say,” quips Waters, who lives on his own. “If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. But, actually, I feel fine.”
Says Russ Dantzler, Waters’ manager, “He’s beautifully independent. That can be difficult, because he goes off and books some of his own dates, but it’s beautiful because when I take him in front of kids who claim not to like jazz, they quickly fall in love with him.”
The man’s occasional vocals and light comic patter tend to disarm listeners, but beneath the high spirits stands a deeply serious artist.
“My idols are Earl Bostic, Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter,” says Waters. “If anybody listens to me now, it might remind them a little of those three. Johnny was a genius. Benny, I admire his technique and his tone, his musical ability.
“And Bostic, he was a trickster. Those high notes that you hear from him, every sax player now tries to do, but he was doing that way back in the ’30s.
“See, good swing playing never goes out of style.”
———-
Benny Waters plays March 31 through April at the Jazz Showcase, 59 W. Grand Ave. Phone 312-670-BIRD.
