The great
Gerald Wilson, who brought his big band to the Playboy Jazz
Festival one Sunday in 2004, is one of the last hot hands in the game of bebop.
And he had some mighty deep secrets to tell, having cocked his ear to
the very first cries of the new genre when it was getting itself born in
the underground Harlem nesting grounds of the 1940s.
"When I got to New York," Wilson remembers, "they were already working
on this: Monk and Dizzy, and guys out of Teddy Hill's band, and Eddie
'Lockjaw' Davis. And there were others, young players around, into it
already, like Benny Harris. Then Charlie Parker came to New York, and
that only enhanced it, because Charlie had it already, Charlie was
already the sensation when I joined Jimmy Lunceford's band in 1939."
Young Wilson was wandering
around Manhattan with that ear of his when he wasn't off touring in the
trumpet 
section with
Lunceford (the band that Benny Goodman copied) and writing innovative
instrumental hits like "Yard Dog Mazurka," which was soon stolen by Stan
Kenton as "Intermission Riff." And he noticed a very interesting thing.
"One of the big contributors (to bebop) was, of course, Art Tatum,"
Wilsonrecalls. "He's the man that knew the chord structure that was the
foundation. But that was not invented by Tatum."
No?
"It was invented by a Russian composer, Maurice Moszkowski," Wilson
says. "I heard the piece of his called 'Melody,' and right in the middle
you find the secret of playing bebop. You find the two-five, A-minor
seventh to D, the cycle of fifths. Tatum had brought that to New York."
A Russian invented bebop! The American jazz players that fed on the
genre for another 40 or 50 years never knew. But today there are more
secrets to learn, and Wilson is still keeping an ear cocked.
"There's a new style going now," he says. "You take the five trumpet
kings: Right now the trumpet king is Wynton Marsalis, any way you want
to talk about it, and he does it from the heart. It's his music, he
loves it; he's from New Orleans, where it all started.
"You got Roy Hargrove, out of Dallas, Texas — same thing, they got
plenty of chops, they can compose, they arrange their music," Wilson
says. "Wallace Roney — they're monsters."
These three
happened to be
on the bill with Wilson at the Playboy event, which also featured Herbie
Hancock, Christian McBride, Hugh Masekela and Charles McPherson, among
many others.
Appearing during Wilson's sprightly
and satisfying set were a couple of singers, the great Barbara Morrison,
a blues stalwart, and the great Renee Olstead, a 14-year-old with
promise to spare. In the trumpet section were the great Snooky Young,
who replaced Wilson in the Lunceford band back when, and Oscar Brashear,
one of the most advanced brassmen of the day.
Wilson goes on to complete his five
trumpet player list: "Nicholas Peyton, Terence Blanchard — they're all
right down on the intellect."
Renee Olstead, left, and Barbara Morrison.
A
professor at UCLA,Wilson
is now 85 and carrying numerous honors on his shoulders: five Grammy
nominations, top honors in the Downbeat International Critics Poll, the
Paul Robeson Award, the NEA American Jazz Masters Fellowship and two
1997 American Jazz Awards for best arranger and best big band leader.
It's the third time he and his big band have appeared at the Playboy
Jazz Festival, and since he took up residence in town in the 1940s, he's
seen the venue metamorphose to its present grand and polished state. "On
my own, including other bands I've conducted, I'd say (I played there)
over a dozen times. That's pretty good out of a lifetime," he says.
Wilson spends another
afternoon at the Bowl.
Right now
Wilson is writing a book outlining, among other things, "my
theory of eight-part harmony."
"That's why my band is so strong," he says. "Most bands, they're still
playing mostly four-part harmony. The trumpets play four; the trombones
play the same four. We've got eight notes out of the 12 tones. My brass
players are playing eight different notes! And this is not a tone
cluster; this is all theoretically correct."
The patriarch thinks for a moment. "There are still four more notes," he
adds, "and I'm gettin' into them."
