Old Way of Teaching.

"The Next Forty Years"

By Dave Liebman 

I had many mentors mainly Pete La Roca, Elvin Jones and of course Miles (Davis). They each had there own particular way. Pete was quite an intellectual and very smart. He could explain things to you in detail. Elvin was not that verbal about the music itself but he was an amazingly beautiful player. What he played was enough. Miles said hardly anything. You kind of had to decipher the code. It was a subculture, the jazz world was unique. Mostly African American till the seventies. You were entering a whole other way of thinking, certainly speaking, living and making a living. There was a lot to be gleaned just from innuendo and nuance and your imagination. I think those guys were all kind of "Zen like."

I have my quotations from each of these guys that I use for teaching. I'll say, this is what I thought of that then and this is what I think of it now. They didn't say, "play that play this." They said, "play like I do or watch me."

We had more playing and when you have the process of on the spot in the moment learning there's nothing like that. Even listening to a record is remote until you're on the stage in the heat of the battle. Each of them gave me words of different depths. I'd take that home and think, "what did he really mean by that?" You didn't go back to ask these guys, this was not the scene. You said "thank you" and thought about it for the next forty years."

*excerpt of my radio (Jake D Feinberg), interview with Dave Liebman from yesterday's broadcast of the JFS on Powertalk 1210 

Drummer Elvin Jones playing with John Coltrane.