[Noah] Howard eventually moved to New York and Europe, but James Black, a drummer from his hometown, remains one of that city’s underground heroes. The New Orleans ‚funk‘ beat is so unique that even Berry Gordy, the Motown president, made reconnaissance trips to secure it for his recordings; James Black is one of its major exponents. He plays with a kind of nonchalant arrogance, and is considered to be a ‚musicians‘ musician‘ in New Orleans, a label he slightly resents but one that ensures he is seldom out of work. He left New Orleans with a rhythm-and-blues pianist called Joe Jones. During six years in and out of the city, he worked with Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver, Yusef Lateef and Lionel Hampton. He was one of the musicians who chose to return, although with his talent and credentials, he could have made it anywhere.
His initial experiences in New York illustrate the way the unproven musician must operate on arrival. He was befriended by two men – the late Frank Haynes, the tenor player, who taught him all a musician needed to know in the city, and Brian Perry, ‚a drummer of sorts who was really a pimp‘, who had another speciality. ‚Brian showed me all about the other parts of the action, the gangsters and whatever. I looked around and I’d say, „Wow – New York!“‚
Black’s main contact, though, was Wilbert Hogan, the New Orleans drummer who worked with Lionel Hampton and Ray Charles. Walking down Broadway together one days, Hogan pointed out Hampton to the younger man and proceeded to collar him. ‚Gates, this is James Black, a drummer from my hometown. He’s a bad motherfucker,‘ announced Hogan. ‚Why don’t you let this cat come by and audition for a job? He needs one.‘ Hampton’s reply was ‚OK, Wilbert, if you say so, he’s good.‘ Black made the audition and got the job.
‚Wilbert Hogan was sort of like my passport, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have gotten into anything. He was in with all the local cats and they all knew and respected him. By me being from New Orleans we had a mutual admiration thing going – he’d just pull me on in.‘ Black remembers the other musicians as being ’sort of friendly‘, but most were indifferent. At first he thought their attitudes stemmed from dislike, later he realised it was fear of competition. ‚I used to ask could I sit in and some would say „No!“ But some would say OK, so I’d sit in and do it. And them cats’d be looking at me strangely and saying, „Yeah, that was pretty good.“ They’d growl „thank you“ and and that’d be that. Nobody wants to lose their job and if there’s anything you can do to keep somebody from taking it, you’re going to do it. So they look at you like, „Here comes another one, maybe we can discourage him and send him back.“ But I wasn’t very easily discouraged.
Noah Howard, returning home after two years in the army, found New Orleans stifling in spite of its charm and had to leave. To James Black it was ‚the Big Easy‘ after the tension and squalor of New York. ‚I was ready to go at a moment’s notice all the time, but here I can relax, kick my shoes off, and walk down the street in my undershirt if I want to.‘ He also noticed that the most talented musicians were often the ones who worked the least, while those who could just about scrape by would always be on the bandstand. To stay off the breadline, he formulated an aggressive technique for dealing with clubowners. ‚If you just sit there and wait, you’ll never get anywhere. You got to be able to go in and grab a cat by the collar and say, „I’m so-and-so – give me a job!“ And, „If you don’t give me a job, I’ll burn your place down“ – so to speak.‘~ Valerie Wilmer: As Serious as Your Life. John Coltrane and Beyond. London 1992 (erstmals 1977), S. 141f.
Black (1940-1988) ist u.a. auf den grossartigen „Live at Pep’s“ Alben von Yusef Lateef sowie dessen Studio-Alben „Psychicemotus“ und „1984“ (schade, dass das wie weitere Lateef-Impulse-Alben es nie ins CD-Zeitalter geschafft haben!) und auch Nat Adderleys „In the Bag“ zu hören.
Die Credits bei Allmusic sind wenig hilfreich, das sie voller Composer-Credits sind, die mit diesem James Black vermutlich gar nichts zu tun haben.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #158 – Piano Jazz 2024 - 19.12.2024 – 20:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba