Harold Battiste is concerned about the future, and particularly what will survive. The saxophone player has spent a lifetime in music and has been a talent scout, an arranger, a composer, a musical director and a teacher. He founded AFO—the first record label owned by African-American musicians—but as he ages, he worries about the music that will be lost, particularly New Orleans’ post-bop jazz.
To help prevent that from happening, he has written and published The Silverbook, a collection of compositions by Battiste, Ellis Marsalis, James Black, Ed Blackwell, Nat Perrilliat, Red Tyler and more. That songbook is being performed regularly at Snug Harbor by Jesse McBride and the Next Generation.
Battiste also helps keep New Orleans’ cultural history alive when the opportunities present themselves. In the week between Jazz Fest weekends, he spoke twice at the Ponderosa Stomp Music Conference at the Cabildo, once reflecting on his own career and once with Tammy Lynn to talk about AFO Records. On each occasion, he was self-effacing, telling his story as someone who never planned to assume many of the titles he took on, but his sense of responsibility motivated him to say yes in each case.
He’s modest about his accomplishments, but not too modest. When I approached him to be a part of the “New Orleans Sound” panel with Cosimo Matassa, Wardell Quezergue, Scott Billington and Mark Bingham at the PotLuck Audio Conference June 6 at the Sheraton, he asked, “How could you have it without me?”
I saw you speak recently at the Ponderosa Stomp Music Conference, where you talked with writer Peter Guralnick about your history and AFO Records.
That was wonderful. I didn’t know there would be people there. I thought he’d be by himself. It gave me a chance to express some things to a whole group of people. It was nice, it really was.
Is there something from your experience that you think it is particularly important for people to understand?
[He shows me a flyer he made to advertise a book signing for The Silverbook.] I’m always aiming at uplifting modern jazz and some of the players from my era: Ellis Marsalis, Ed Blackwell, Red Tyler, James Black, Alvin Batiste. A lot of those cats are dead, and a lot of people in New Orleans don’t appreciate what those guys contributed to the future of jazz in our city and from our city. I knew that from the first time I went to Paris. The people there knew more about me than I knew about myself! The people of the world know more about what we do than at home. But I understand that there is such a great variety here.
Unfortunately, all the arts get inundated by the capitalists who want to make money. They promote the thing that will make them the most money, what’s commercial. It’s necessary in a system like ours to separate art from commerce. Art is put over here and is nice, but commerce is survival.
This is one of the bigger problems with medicine. People are making medicines that don’t really work, but they make money. So when it gets to people’s food and many things, they become a commodity rather than the result of the love that people used to put into their work. When things had a brand name and it was your name on it, it meant something to you. It’s corporate names now, not people’s names.
This year at South by Southwest, it was interesting to see how many bands were making good music, but nobody could figure out how to sell it.
That’s what I’m starting to see this year. I don’t know how to sell it. I just wanted to leave this music in the world. Willie Tee and Earl [Turbinton] left last year; after I’m gone, at least something will be here if I can get it in the hands of some young cats. That’s why I try to promote this band called the Next Generation. They play this music, and they put new life into it. They play every Tuesday at Snug Harbor, and they play with such enthusiasm and brilliance that they are gradually beginning to get new people coming in.
When you hear this music played by the Next Generation, do you ever think, “I’d have done it this way?” or “I’d have done it that way?”
All the time. But their way is better than mine. I’ve reconciled myself that I’m an old cat. I can’t play anymore [since suffering a stroke in the early 1990s]. I pick the horn up every once in a while.
Society has moved beyond where I am mentally. People talk too fast, drive too fast. Everything is fast. Even the people on the news. My daughter talks too fast for me. Last night I was at Snug Harbor and Jesse played much faster than I had them in mind. But that’s him; he’s fast.
Did you have these pieces of sheet music [in The Silverbook] around, or did you transcribe from recordings?
This is stuff I had done years ago.
You’re doing a companion book, too, right?
This is music book. The other book is an autobiography.
Are you a saver?
Too much! I’ve got so much stuff I’m interested in, saving what I can. I know I can’t save everything.
I always try to upgrade to the current technology. I remember when I had all those tapes I was left with from Cosimo’s [studio]. As soon as I started reading about CDs, I said I had to put all these masters on something more permanent because I can’t carry all these big old tapes around.
So you were carrying around all of your masters?
Yeah. In California, I brought them all out there. When I started a record company again, I was at UNO. I did it to provide a vehicle for the student to learn how to produce. I started it in 1991, and I said, “If I’m going to start this company, I’m going to take these old masters and launch the company by putting some of those things on CD. The first was Ellis Marsalis’ The Classic Ellis Marsalis, the next one is In the Beginning by the Original American Jazz Quintet, then the next one was Compendium by the AFO Executives with Tammy Lynn. All this stuff I recorded years ago in the ’60s. The fourth one was Ed Blackwell, Boogie Live…1958. That was probably one of the first live recordings, from 1958 in the Booker T. Washington auditorium.
What do you hope happens with this music?
I hope somebody finds it. Like Mendelsohn found Bach’s work. Somebody who cares and has the facilities and resources to do what it deserves.
When you joined the many New Orleans musicians leaving for Los Angeles, was it opportunity or a function of racism?
Racism put me in a position to go there. I was teaching, and the supervisor and I had a disagreement. I was teaching my kids how to read music. The supervisor came by and told me I was wasting a lot of time by teaching them to read. “The parents just want to hear them play some songs.” He didn’t know that I was feeling real militant at the time. I said, “Are you telling them that over at the white schools, not to learn to read? Why do you want me to stop teaching my kids how to read?”
So I had to go to the school board. After that meeting, they gave me the option to comply with my supervisor or I could offer my resignation. So that settled it, and put me in that position. Ed Blackwell and Ellis Marsalis were planning on going out there. Ornette Coleman wanted Blackwell to go out there. He had sent him money for a bus ticket. Ed spent the money, and I had a car, so that put the three of us on the road to California!
Did you have other jobs at that time?
When I got out of Dillard University, I taught school in a little country town called DeRidder for about two years and had the same racial problems out there. I played gigs with Joe Jones and a few bands around here.
I ask because we tend to think of musicians who made famous recordings as making music a full-time job.
Few cats can do that. Cats always had a day job or something. The music was because you liked to do it. You loved to do it. If you can make a living, good, but you can’t count on it. That’s why my mother didn’t want me to be a musician. She wanted me to study medicine. We came to a compromise; I studied to become a teacher. Then I’d be something decent (laughs).
At the Ponderosa Stomp conference, you talked about your career with AFO and in California, and it really sounded like it was a period of personal improvisation.
I didn’t really plan for anything beyond the school teaching. When I went to California, I was wide open. I did want to become a jazz musician; that is what the idea was. I also wanted to be a husband and father, and I already had one child. Every time an opportunity arose to produce something that would make me be able to take care of my family, I would do it.
The first thing was the thing with Specialty Records. I was going around trying to promote a little demo I did with Ornette Coleman. That’s when I ran into Bumps Blackwell, who talked to me about coming back to New Orleans and becoming a scout. Sonny [Bono] used to come by trying to sell songs, so I got to know him and he got to know me. He always thought I was so brilliant because I had become a school teacher, and he had dropped out of high school. He was driving a meat truck. He was a good, smart hustler. I used to listen him talk to people on the phone. He could sweet talk them into almost anything.
Did you learn from him?
Yeah I learned a lot from him and Art Rupe, who owned Specialty at the time. I was a novice at this side of things, coming from where I came from as a potential jazz musician. That’s when I learned about the record business. I didn’t really learn anything, though; I thought I had learned. I just learned the surface stuff. That encouraged me to feel we can do something about the situation here. In New Orleans, there was so much talent and nobody black owned anything! At that time, I was thinking we ought to own some music. Everybody got a little piece of this in New Orleans. There were all those little record labels. Joe Ruffino had Ric Records, but nobody black owned anything. That’s what the premise was in my mind.
How did you feel when AFO showed you the ugly side of the music business?
I got my first real lesson with Juggy Murray [the record distributor who lured Barbara George away from AFO after she had a hit with “I Know.”] When he did that, I begged him not to do this. “You know how to sell a record, but you don’t know how to deal with this person.” [George’s career stalled with Murray, and her personal life descended into addiction.] He was a crook; that’s what I learned, and black face doesn’t mean a thing. It just means I’m more vulnerable, because when he showed up at the airport coming down here—“Oh, this guy’s black. He’s going to do alright.” We signed up with him.
That’s what really set me to record Ellis Marsalis then. If the record business is like this, I can’t deal with it, so I might as well record some stuff I really love. We had the hit with Barbara and a little light hit with Prince La La. It can’t go on like this. I’d rather record some stuff that I love.
You recorded Lee Dorsey, right?
I recorded him before I did Barbara. Reynold Richards used to manage Lee before Allen [Toussaint] met him. Allen had come to me while I was at Specialty. Anyway, Reynold Richards had Lee Dorsey out in Donaldsonville. He wanted to do a tune, “Lottie Mo,” so he asked me to do an arrangement on it. That’s how I knew Lee.
Lee was going to do a record for another cat, but he couldn’t do it because he was under contract with Joe Banashak. He asked me if I’d do it, so we did “Ya Ya.”
Are there songs you recorded that you’re more proud of than others?
Of course, for different reasons. Recently I’ve been really reacquainted with some charts I did for Willie Tee out in California for an album called Anticipation. Those cats we did it for, they never did much with it. It was one of my things that I was most proud of.
Recently—since he’s dead now—I heard some cat on the radio talking about it, saying it was Willie Tee’s best work. I though that, too in 1976 when I did it. In New Orleans, he should be as big as Marvin Gaye is because, What’s Going On—the songs that Willie Tee wrote for this album were every bit as profound as that. It’s all about the situation, and he had a song about the crack in the Liberty Bell. I really enjoyed that.
