by Mark Jordan
ames
Williams is coming home in two ways this weekend.
Most obviously, the Memphis-born-and-bred jazz pianist, who now lives in New York, will physically be back in town Saturday for a pair of shows at Automatic Slim's Tonga Club. But those gigs also represent a musical homecoming for Williams, a return to his roots in the sounds of the South -- the blues and gospel.
With the Automatic Slim's shows, Williams will be debuting his new group ICU, featuring saxophonist Billy Pierce, bassist John Lockwood, vocalists Roger Holland and Miles Griffith, and fellow Memphian Tony Reedus on drums. Williams describes the group as a jazz-gospel ensemble, and judging from its debut CD, Truth, Justice, & The Blues, it is an apt description. ICU has an uncommonly soulful sound compared to most contemporary jazz bands, full of catchy, soaring melodies backed by a swinging rhythm section that will have your head bopping. In short, ICU doesn't play the insular, self-absorbed style of jazz that sprang up in the wake of the initially daring experiments of be-bop. This is music that, like the gospel it's based on, is joyous and inclusive.
"We
have a wide range of expression with this group," Williams says. "You
don't have to be a jazz aficionado to enjoy this music. This is just people
music."
For Williams, who got his early training playing organ at Memphis' Eastern Star Baptist Church and in the blues clubs that dotted the city in the late '60s and early '70s, the decision to reach back into his own past to feed his musical future was an easy one.
"Most jazz musicians up until the '70s had some experience playing rhythm-and-blues and playing in church," he says. "It sounds more unusual today than it is because that line has been broken. In ICU, we're trying to reconnect that musical thread.
"Jazz has its roots in spirituals and the blues. So, that combination plus a few other influences are really what jazz is authentically. It's not smooth jazz. It's not all these other titles that no one has ever heard of, or the instrumental pop that sometimes gets thrown into the category of jazz. [ICU] embodies the entire spirit and language of jazz. The whole thing is very uplifting."
Considered one of the finest of contemporary jazz pianists, Williams' combination of the traditional and the new in jazz is especially uplifting at a time when the music appears to have stagnated. But it is a move that should have been expected from a player who, with deep and solid roots in music's past, has never been afraid to grow in new directions.
Williams began taking piano lessons at the age of 13. After graduating from the University of Memphis in 1974, the then-22-year-old Williams accepted a teaching position at the esteemed Berklee College of Music in Boston. Over the next three-and-a-half years, he established himself in the Boston jazz scene, working with artists such as Alan Dawson, Art Farmer, and Woody Shaw. But in 1977, Williams left Berklee to join Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, playing in one of the group's most celebrated lineups, which included Wynton and Branford Marsalis. The Jazz Messengers, because of its grueling tour schedule and drummer Blakey's intense leadership, was known as "Jazz U."
"It was a finishing school for musicians, no doubt about it," Williams says. "Those that stayed there long enough and did it the right way learned things that stay with them for a career and a half."
Williams left the group in 1981 and was replaced by his friend and fellow Memphian Donald Brown, starting a legacy of Memphis pianists in the Blakey band that also includes Brown's successor Mulgrew Miller. "Art used to say, `I can't get away from you Memphis pianists,'" says Williams.
Williams has embraced the Memphis piano tradition on two high-profile projects -- 1983's Memphis Piano Summit, a video and CD of a live performance featuring Williams, Brown, Miller, and Harold Mabern, and the ongoing Contemporary Piano Ensemble with those artists plus "young lion" Geoff Keezer.
Today, Williams spends his time in New York, writing and playing. Increasingly, however, his time has been absorbed by a new endeavor: Finas Sound Productions, Inc., named for Williams' chief mentor, the late Memphis pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. FSP has been involved in developing and recording a number of jazz artists as well as staging concerts, including recent all-star tributes to jazz greats Ron Carter and Milt Jackson at New York's Merkin Concert Hall.
The activities of FSP have put something of a crimp in Williams' own musical career. "I have my hands full right now," he says. "I'm trying to refocus some of these things so I can have more time to spend on music."
Nevertheless, ICU has already recorded a second, untitled CD due out sometime this summer. "[The new disc] is different from Truth, Justice, & The Blues," Williams says. "I wanted to have a different twist to it. I wanted it to have the same spirit and to be a continuation of the first record, but I also wanted to have something that would make people go `Oh yeah, we weren't expecting that.'"
Until the new CD is released, Williams and ICU will be calling the road home for a while, a prospect that doesn't bother Williams at all. On tour, Williams gets the chance to do workshops for young musicians, putting to use once again the teaching skills he hasn't employed regularly since Berklee. "I enjoy teaching," Williams says. "I just don't have the time to associate myself with an institution full-time."
And the road also allows Williams to go where he and his music are most at home -- the tiny, packed clubs where he says jazz most comes alive.
"In a small club like that, you can see the group up close and you can feel the vibrations. You don't have to depend on a sound system; you can see the music take shape right before your eyes. It's like looking at a painting -- except you're looking at a sound portrait."
Welcome home, James.