The atmosphere was wide open in those circles that we traveled in.
In jazz, you listen to what the bass player is doing and what the drummer is doing, what the pianist and the guitarist is doing, and then you play something that compliments that, so you are thinking simultaneously and thinking ahead.
In symphonic music, when you are conducting, you do the same thing. You are feeling the whole orchestra, thinking ahead so you can prepare for a change.
A few years later, my Uncle David took me to the Earle Theatre to hear Duke Ellington.
I learned from my uncle that jazz, like symphony music, was built to last.
When you are accompanying someone, you are listening to them the way you listen to a Bach Chorale, where four parts are going on at the same time, all of which are gorgeous melodies, all being played simultaneously.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a tremendous education as an artist and also an enormous knowledge of literarture.
Allen Ginsberg was a world authority on the writing of William Blake, and had an incredible knowledge of classic literature and world politics.
Franz Kline, who became known for his black and white paintings, did a whole series of gorgeous landscapes and wonderful portraits that may still hang in Greenwich Village.
We met with the poet Frank O’Hara, who was a link between Upper and Lower Bohemia, and who worked at the Museum of Modern Art, where we had hoped to do the readings.
Today’s trend ends up in tomorrow’s landfill.
Morley is one of the outstanding voices of her generation, as a singer, songwriter and bandleader she’s in a class of her own, transcends all categories and is making a major contribution to contemporary music.
Esquire, in a July, 1957 issue, has a photograph of me playing the French horn at the Five Spot.
The first time I heard Ron Whitehead read I felt what I imagine those who heard Abraham Lincoln deliver The Gettysburg Address felt.
In a jazz atmosphere, the audience members were so quiet and respectful of the musicians that you felt you were almost part of a meeting at a church or a temple, where everyone was completely in tune with the sermon and what the whole event was about.
I wish to share and pass down some of my generation’s traits, and encourage young people to create their own art, music, and literature.
When today’s generation reads Jack’s books or they listen to the music created by some of us, I believe that they see there is a different way of approaching today’s life and today’s sometimes seeming hopelessness that can provide answers.
That by listening to some music, by reading some books, by looking at paintings, and most important by hanging out with one another – by collaborating with one another and creating your own network – you can achieve something that is much better than what is out there.
The idea of the peace movement and of people who spent their entire lives trying to have a more egalitarian, just society, suddenly became swamped by the record industry, by the new rock and roll culture, and by the idea of not trusting anyone over thirty.