Everything that we had thought and projected started happening in Paris
- Lester Bowie
In Oakland, California in the early 1990s, Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy came to town. The morning after the show, I met Lester for breakfast at the restaurant of the hotel where he was staying. As I was waiting at a table, he came down the stairs with his wife and children. They all sat down, and we had breakfast together. After breakfast, his wife took the children back upstairs.
We bonded instantly - two old military guys talking about our Army experiences. That was when I learned that Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Malachi Favors, and Bowie were all Army veterans.
When we finally got around to talking jazz, he told me about his days in France and the cooperative nature of the Art Ensemble, when they finally came together as a leaderless unit. In particular, he recalled six days in June of 1969, when they recorded three important albums that helped them realize their potential, culminating in their epic recording of People In Sorrow the following week.
On this week’s journey, we’ll look at those two weeks in Paris in the summer of 1969. But before we get to Paris, we need to set the stage a little and meet the cast of characters who came together in Chicago one year earlier.
In February and March of 1968, at the Ter-Mar (Chess) Studios in Chicago, the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble recorded Congliptious on the Nessa label.
This seminal moment sparked a newly discovered approach to jazz music that differed from avant-garde jazz popular in New York City at the time. This was Chicago’s sound.
The Art Ensemble recorded Congliptious shortly after their drummer Phillip Wilson left Mitchell’s quartet to go on tour with the Paul Butterfield blues band. In 1975, Mitchell explained the impact Wilson’s departure had on them, “When Phillip left to go with Paul Butterfield he had just really spoiled us from even considering having another drummer. This is the period when the percussion instruments started to emerge and Malachi always did have some percussion instruments that he would play. It started and just really emerged, just really emerged.”
Again, in 1992, Mitchell expands on this concept, “…at the time it was a good thing and a bad thing because Phillip was the one that brought on the situation where we had to think of an alternative and this is when we started to add more percussion through the coaching of Malachi Favors.” He went on to explain how that pivotal step expanded their range of percussion instruments: “…it stimulated people to come up with individualized percussion set-ups of their own.”
The departure of Wilson was the first important step in the Art Ensemble’s development. The next important step was the addition of Joseph Jarman, whose horns allowed for further expansion and development of the group’s percussion instruments, particularly from Mitchell, who continues that development even today.
Roscoe Mitchell first met Joseph Jarman at Wilson Junior College in Chicago, where they were in the music program with Malachi Favors, Henry Threadgill, Jack DeJohnette, and Anthony Braxton. Mitchell soon formed a sextet with Jarman and Threadgill that included Walter Chapel on bass, Richard Swift on drums, and Louis Hall on piano. They played clubs down on 42nd and 43rd streets and some community centers. It was at that time Jarman turned Mitchell on to “new” jazz possibilities.
Mitchell recalls:
When I was in Europe in the army I heard Ornette Coleman and I just passed it off as something that was funny or something. I didn’t really pay that much attention to it because I was a staunch bebop type of a person. Then after I got out of the army, Joseph turned me on to one of Trane’s records, as a matter of fact, the Out Of This World record (Impulse! 21), and I think this was kind of the breaking point for Trane. It opened my ears up to another way of playing, because basically at that time I just thought of playing the songs and the chord structures…. It was very good for me to meet Joseph Jarmen at the time because he always played really strange to me, in a bopish strange way. I think he was a very good influence on me at that time.
Mitchell and Jarman then went on to develop their own groups. Jarman formed a quartet that included Christopher Gaddy on piano, Charles Clark on bass, and Thurman Baker on drums. In the fall of 1966, they recorded Song For, an excellent album on the Delmark label:
By the fall of 1967 and into 1968, Jarman began performing with Mitchell’s Art Ensemble; however, when they recorded Congliptious, Joseph Jarman was not yet an official member of the group. He did not play with them as an “official” member until May 24, 1969, at a farewell concert at the University of Chicago’s Blue Gargoyle - four days before the Art Ensemble left for France.
The Exile
In the spring of 1969, Lester Bowie was getting restless. He felt that the only way for the Art Ensemble to find musical and economic success was to leave America. Arguing that their music had not found an American audience, he approached the Art Ensemble with a plan to move to Paris, a city that had welcomed black performers for more than fifty years.
They decided to take the show on the road. On May 28, 1969, they left Chicago for New York City to board the SS United States.
Their cargo included: a dog, Favor’s Volkswagen van, Bowie’s prized BSA Thunderbolt motorcycle, Mitchell’s Honda motorcycle, and of course their “arsenal” of musical instruments.
On June 2, they landed in Le Havre in Normandy. They were greeted by Claude Delcloo, drummer and editor of the art magazine Actuel, and his colleague at BYG Records, photographer Jacques Bisceglia.
The Art Ensemble initially stayed in a hotel on the Place Saint-Michel in Paris. On June 12, only ten days after their arrival, Delcloo arranged for the Art Ensemble’s Paris debut at the Théâtre du Lucernaire in Montparnasse.
They played a double bill with the Free Action Music Orchestra, a sextet with South African Ronnie Beer and Jamaican Kenneth Terroade on saxophones, along with four French musicians: trumpeter Bernard Vitet, bassist Beb Guerin, Delcloo on drums, and pianist François Tusques, who we’ll spend time with a little further down the river.
Soon, the Art Ensemble moved out of the city. Bowie stated, “We found a real estate agent, dropped a couple of thousand-dollar bills on him, and boom, we was in business. ‘Yes monsieur, whatever you want.’” They landed a six-bedroom farmhouse in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt twenty kilometers north of Paris. This turned out to be the perfect setting for the Art Ensemble to further develop their cooperative social lifestyle and practice together all day with their vast collection of instruments.
Bowie compared their experience with that of their fellow American musicians and, up until then, their own: “Most cats were in the regular jazz thing; you come, you get a hotel room, and that’s it; but we had children (Bowie’s family had made the trip with them to France), a dog…. Most jazz cats were sitting around Paris, and we had a big country estate, cherry trees and apple trees.”
This environment allowed the Art Ensemble’s music to mature and resulted in the memorable July 7 recording of People In Sorrow.
The Music
From the time the Art Ensemble arrived in France, it took only three weeks to record their first album, A Jackson In Your House. It was recorded on June 23 at Studio Saravah in Paris and released by BYG Actuel. Paul Steinbeck, the author of the excellent book Message To Our Folks, sums up well this album:
We hear a remarkable variety of sounds, musical styles, and compositional structures - everything that captivated French critics and listeners when they encountered the Chicagoans. We also hear many of the intermedia elements that define the band’s performance practice: verbal commentary, vocal sounds, theatrical scenarios, and poetry.
From the military-inspired Get In Line to the thoughtful Erika, this was a solid debut. Here’s Get In Line:
For me, Jarman’s poem-song Erika is stark and beautiful. I love the way he fades away with “Alone, rise up. Alone, rise up” and how the song seamlessly rolls into Song For Charles - their friend and bassist Charles Clark, who died just nine weeks before the recording. The entire album is dedicated to him.
Listen to Song For Charles and revel in the first five minutes as Favors’ soulful bass plays a fitting memorial:
On June 26, the same week they recorded A Jackson In Your House, the Art Ensemble went to the Polydor Studios (Dames II) in Paris to record two albums for the Freedom label: Tutankhamun:
…and The Spiritual:
From the groovy Toro to the epic The Spiritual, the Art Ensemble finds its footing and sets the stage for People In Sorrow.
Here is the title track from The Spiritual:
In fact, I find this song a kind of dress rehearsal for the song People In Sorrow. For example, you can hear the theme from People In Sorrow in Mitchell’s flute playing at the 1:50 minute mark and then again in Jarman’s bassoon and Bowie’s trumpet that join him later.
At the 7:50 minute mark, during some random group rapping, Jarman says, “What is that song that you always sing there Sugar Babe? Play that song. That song ain’t got no name. It’s just a spiritual.” Then Mitchell repeats the theme again on his flute. As it turns out, in five days, that song finally would find a name, and it was People In Sorrow.
People In Sorrow
When I met Lester Bowie for breakfast, I wanted to learn more about the history of the AACM, as I knew he was a founding member. But he talked mostly about the Art Ensemble of Chicago. To this day, I admire his patience and graciousness with me when I admitted to him that I had never heard of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. I remember asking him to tell me about their music. He paused for a moment, looked me deep in the eyes, and said, “Listen to People In Sorrow.” That was it.
On the 7th of July in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, The Art Ensemble of Chicago recorded People In Sorrow for Pathé-Marconi:
I think this album not only constitutes one of the greatest albums of the New Thing, as the avant-garde was called at that time, but I do not hesitate to place it among the top albums in the history of Jazz.
When you have 40 minutes free and access to an excellent sound system, listen to People In Sorrow:
I think in this quote Malachi Favors was able to boil down the source of this song’s essence: “It seems that the people today are more interested in fairy tale music…. That’s the great imbalance in our culture. You got to dig deeper into the spirit, soul, and the meaning of life to come up with something besides, “I love you, baby.” …I find that’s what’s wrong with society, too much make-believe. Our ancestors sang about their surroundings and family.”
Like most artistic masterpieces, they rarely just happen - they develop slowly, over time. Such was the case with People In Sorrow, which followed a trajectory that began in Chicago in 1967 - I hear the theme in the first two minutes of Mitchell’s album Sound - continued with three albums in Paris and was finally realized in Boulogne-Billancourt, France on July 7, 1969.
The Art Ensemble of Chicago returned from Europe in January 1972 and shortly thereafter recorded Live at Mandell Hall for Bob Koester’s Delmark label. By September, they were recording for Atlantic Records. Their exile had ended, but more importantly, they had the sense that the time had finally come when their music found its American audience.
Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in to explore the waters of composer, bandleader, and war hero James Reese Europe.
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Until then, keep on walking….
Art Ensemble in Exile
C.L. - The amazing thing about this story is that after I had breakfast and Lester told me to listen to People In Sorrow, I went to Amoeba Records in Berkeley and there it was in the used record section. I had no idea how lucky I was at the time to find a copy.
People In Sorrow is one of those albums I love without qualification. You’re right about having the time to invest in listening: the album commands one’s attention without distraction.