Happy Birthday Joe McPhee!

Celebrating the birthday of saxophonist Joe McPhee with an interview, his classic "Nation Time" and more. 

Saxophonist Joe McPhee launching new memoir Straight Up, Without Wings

Joe McPhee will discuss his new memoir Straight Up Without Wings at Chicago's Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery on Friday.

Here's the scoop... 

On Friday (October 18), Chicago's Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery (2156 West Fulton St) is proud to host a  launch for the new Joe McPhee memoir Straight Up, Without Wings: The Musical Flight of Joe McPhee, published by CvsD. The book, written together with Mike Faloon, will be available for the first time at the event, as will the equally new CD Nineteen Sixty-Six by The Jazzmen, featuring a young McPhee in a band led by bassist Tyrone Crabb.  This is the earliest McPhee recording yet heard, from a period when he played trumpet exclusively.

In this special convening part of our programming for the exhibition Hubcap Diamond Star Halo: Corbett vs. Dempsey at Twenty. McPhee and Faloon will be in dialogue with gallerist John Corbett, who has worked with McPhee for nearly 40 years, discussing the genesis of the book and touching on McPhee's brilliant legacy and his seasoned approach to improvisation. After the conversation, saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark will perform a set of solo works dedicated to and inspired by McPhee.

Books will be on hand, as will the new CD. For more info about the event and the Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery go here.

In Straight Up, Without Wings, Joe McPhee surveys sixty years in creative music. Starting with his trumpeter-father's influence and formative years in the U.S. Army, McPhee recounts experiences as a Black-hippy-cum-budding-musician based in upstate New York, perched at an ideal distance from Manhattan’s free jazz demimonde of the 1960s and its loft scene of the 1970s. A natural storyteller, revealing never-told tales and reveling in the joys of noise, McPhee puts the influence of – and encounters with – Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler into the context of an independently-minded young player, ravenous for experience, dealing with the crucible of racism, seeking to break out beyond the bounds of a regional Hudson Valley scene that he knows like the back of his hand. The memoir draws forward through thrilling passages in Europe and across the United States, as McPhee gains momentum, as his music becomes the impetus for multiple record labels, as he collaborates with figures from Peter Brötzmann to Pauline Oliveros, and as he eventually goes on to inspire musicians far and wide. Written as an oral history, deftly conducted by Mike Faloon to preserve McPhee’s unique narrative voice, Straight Up, Without Wings includes “reflections” by eight musicians from across the protagonist’s rich history.

Saxophonist Ken Vandermark will be previewing his tribute to longtime pal Joe McPhee.

Adds Ken Vandermark...

This Friday at 7pm there will be a free event at the Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery to celebrate their publishing of Joe McPhee’s memoir, “Straight Up, Without Wings: The Musical Flight of Joe McPhee”. Joe and Mike Faloon, who wrote the book with Joe, will have a discussion with John Corbett about the memoir and Joe’s work. Afterward I’ll present six new compositions I’m writing for Joe, a collection of music I’m calling “October Flowers”, an homage to Joe in sound and an attempt to celebrate his profound impact on me, which began in 1981 when I first heard Joe’s solo album, “Tenor”.

Saxphonist Joe McPhee shares his poetry on Musings of a Bahamian Son

Joe McPhee is joined by fellow saxophonist Ken Vandermark to duet during nine interludes between his poems.  Photo: Michael Jackson

Here's the scoop...

Joe McPhee is one of the great multi-instrumentalists of contemporary improvised music. His instrumental battery has included saxophones, clarinets, valve trombone, pocket trumpet, sound-on-sound tape recorder, and space organ, but another arrow in his quiver is text. 

McPhee has been writing poems since the 1970s. He occasionally introduces one into performance, as an introduction or afterword to music, and in recent years he's been known to do full-on readings, text only, featuring his inimitable sense of dramatic timing intoned in his rich voice. The poems range from the observational to the political to the surreal. They're composed in rhyme or according to an internal rhythm, sometimes utterly prosaic, sometimes fantastic and flamboyant. A few of them capture the immediacy of improvised music more acutely than any critical writing on the subject, his half-century immersion in the craft of free music having given him a bottomless cup to draw on and his sensitivity to the nuances of language providing a host of palpable metaphors and metonyms, similes and strophes. 

The poems are marvels on the page, but they really take flight in McPhee's mouth. In 2021, during a flurry of pandemic-inspired poetic activity, he traveled to Chicago expressly to record a program of his poems. For the studio date, he invited saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Vandermark to play duets as interludes between groupings of the poems. Then Vandermark, engineer Alex Inglizian, and the CvsD team sat breathless in the Experimental Sound Studio control room as McPhee proceeded to perform his poetry nonstop and without repetition for nearly two hours. The result is Musings of a Bahamian Son, the first full-length release dedicated to McPhee's writing, with 27 poems interspersed with nine musical interludes and a postlude. 

Writes collaborator Ken Vandermark: 

"I can’t put into words the impact that Joe McPhee has had on me over the last 45 years, as a creative force and as a beautiful, powerful human being.  So, I celebrate every encounter with him: socially, onstage, or in the studio.  And, right now, there is a lot to celebrate in this regard - Corbett vs. Dempsey have just released, “Musings of a Bahamian Son: Poems and Other Words by Joe McPhee,” a collection of pieces read by Joe with duo improvisations with me used as interludes and a postlude.

"The material was recorded by Alex Inglizian in a single afternoon at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, on October 15th, 2021.  Things began with a series of 10 concise duo performances where Joe played soprano and I used Bb and bass clarinet.  From the first moment the music felt timeless, phrases transcending concepts, going straight to expressing the idea of being alive in that moment, side by side, exploring wherever the sound and feelings led us.  Then the miraculous took place.  

"Joe read poem after poem straight through without a break for more than an hour, every poem read with a different rhythm, another tempo, a unique voice.  The few of us in the engineering room glanced around completely mesmerized by Joe’s presentation of his words, unable to believe the performance we were witnessing, thankful to the core that all of it was being captured, not gone in the air.  Now it’s out in the world for all to hear.  I’m so grateful to Joe, John Corbett, and Jim Dempsey for making this celebration possible." 

This CD release anticipates the forthcoming McPhee memoir, Straight Up, Without Wings: The Musical Flight of Joe McPhee, written with Mike Faloon, a book that will be published in the fall by CvsD. 

Get a digital copy of Joe McPhee's Musings of a Bahamian Son via Bandcamp where you can listen to a few excerpts right here.

CD available at found.ee/Musings or Catalytic Sound right here. 

Listen to Joe McPhee Po Music perform "The Lonely Woman" from 2012 below.  

Watch Joe McPhee, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten & Paal Nilssen-Love in Houston, 2010

Here's a trio performance by saxophone great Joe McPhee with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love back in 2010. 

Joe McPhee's DKV Trio collaboration documented with 6 CD box

Recorded live during a European tour of 2017, the six DKV Trio concerts featuring Joe McPhee included a performance of "Nation Time"

Here's the scoop...
Not Two Records presents The Fire Each Time, a 6 CD boxset of recordings from the DKV Trio with Joe McPhee as a guest, and dedicated to James Baldwin. The music was recorded during the quartet's tour in Europe which took place in November of 2017, and at shows in Chicago and Milwaukee from December of that year.

These performances are historic in many respects: the DKV Trio – with Hamid Drake [drums], Kent Kessler [bass], and Ken Vandermark [reeds] – has only recorded with other musicians on four occasions in it's two decade career (with Fred Anderson, [Okka Disk, 1997]; Joe Morris on "Deep Telling" [Okka Disk, 1999]; with Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love and Massimo Pupillo on "Schl8hof" [Trost, 2013], and with The Thing ["Collider," Not Two, 2016]); also, this is the first time all four musicians have worked together as a band; and the material documented over the six concerts included in the collection features performances of Joe McPhee's compositions – like his classic "Nation Time" (listen below) as well as completely improvised music generated by the participants.

Happy Birthday Joe McPhee!

Celebrating Joe's birthday with "Shakey Jake" off his Nation Time LP reissued by Superior Viaduct on Nov 23.

Not The Music featuring Joe McPhee @ The Music Gallery, Sunday

Here are a couple of interviews with saxophone great Joe McPhee followed by his classic "Nation Time" from 1970.