During rehearsals for this gig, as is our way, I told a story during a break about Buddy Rich. I was actually passing on a story told to me by Harry Miedema, a tenor sax player touring with the O’Jays in SA in the ’70s. He had said that Buddy Rich was an intense and not really likeable bandleader, and was privately known to his musicians as “Ruddy Bitch”. He illustrated this opinion of Mr. Rich with a story about a tenor player (himself?) who was in the back of the bus between gigs, smoking weed. Buddy was on the bus for that trip, and smelled the sweet smoke. It didn’t take him a minute to head to the back, find the culprit, and kick him off the bus. That was harsh, because not only was this in the middle of the night, but it was also in a raging blizzard. Harry (or whoever the tenor was) found himself alone in the swirling, freezing snow. However, this turned out OK, he said, because within minutes a snowplough arrived, saw him, and picked him up. He was no sooner settled in the comfortable, heated cabin when the snowplough operator said, “Would you like a smoke?”, and proffered a reefer—turning this, Harry said, into one of the greatest rides of his life!
Harry went on to tell another story, about Buddy Rich’s high-note man, Lin Biviano:
“Well, as you may know, one of the trumpeter mottos is ‘If you fall off, stay off’. This is especially applicable to the ‘screech chair’, as the high-note trumpet is known, because it is really very audible, and thus very ugly, if you fall off while thundering away in those stratospheric notes. So, the screech man did have the misfortune to fall off once, and did not follow that wisdom. With a menacing scowl from his kit, Buddy fired the guy instantly, bellowing ‘Get off my f—ing stage!’, and the screech man took his stuff and shakenly kinda stumbled off the bandstand.
In time, Lin Biviano came to be Buddy’s screech man. About that time, Buddy’s management called a meeting with Buddy and the band. These management guys said, ‘You know, Buddy, you’re not going to change, and we aren’t going to try to change you, and we know you are going to fire guys and kick them off your bandstand. But what we would like, that will make it that much easier to sell the band, is for you to, you know, smile when you fire a guy. The audience can’t hear what is said on the bandstand, so if you smile, they will not think anything heavy is going down. And we would like it if you sidemen in the band, when you get fired, would also smile and leave the stage. Then the audience will see nothing amiss, and it won’t look like something bad went down.’
And so, of course it was always gonna happen: one day Lin Biviano is screeching around a double high C or something, and he fell off, and didn’t stay off—tried to climb back on, and it was a mess, you know. And Buddy puts this goofy smile on his face and says, ‘HEY LIN, YOU’RE FIRED!’ And Lin puts an equally goofy grin on HIS face and says, ‘Gee, thanks, Buddy!’, and packs his horn and trudges off the bandstand.”
This story went down really well with Bra JG and the others in the band. The ‘bones were Gwangwa, Mfaniseni Thusi, Jabu Magubane, and me, and we and the rhythm section produced a round of guffaws at the notion. They kept saying, “Gee, thanks Buddy!”, hamming goofy smiles, and getting up and leaving as though fired.
When it came to the concert itself, it was a massively wonderful vibe in the precinct, and the “Gee, thanks Buddy” story was reprised in quite another way. We were playing a song, “Shebeen”, where I was on the top voice, on a high C, with four phrases repeated, and there was just no opportunity to breathe between phrases. It happened that in the excitement I ran out of steam, and on the third phrase I pitched a B-flat, a tone lower than the required C. I recovered on the fourth phrase, and then we all took a breather. I glanced (probably sheepishly) to my right along the line of ‘bone players. As I did so, that beautiful round head of Gwangwa, black beret and all, leaned forward, and with a beatific smile, he mouthed very clearly the words:
“YOU’RE FIRED.”
Hell, the front line collapsed in chortles and sniggers. And I thought, “So much for playing high C all night.” I kept cool enough to not fall off again, and the concert was just amazing. I asked people later, and nobody had even noticed the glitch, but they did notice the band packing up with laughter at something they did not understand!
A year later, a party of a hundred or so SA musicians flew to Lisbon, which had been selected as the European Cultural Capital of the Year. We performed in what had once been a bullfighting arena. After the African Jazz Pioneers delivered a cracking set, we filed down into the green room in a basement under the bullring. As we came down the steps, the big, genial, beautiful, round head of Jonas Gwangwa leaned out of a booth and shouted:
“YOU’RE … HIRED!”
And that was Bra JG. He was one of the funniest men I have ever worked with. Once during a break, I joked:
“Bra JG, why don’t you and I do an album? I mean, J & K did one. We can call it J & J.”
He said:
“OK, but it must be called DJY en Ek.”
The first concert he had booked me on was as lead for a show that was to run at the Civic Theatre in Johannesburg, in a big band. That still remains the most treasured of my big band memories, not only because it was a special-sounding, one-of-a-kind big band, but also because of the calibre and cohesion of the talents that went into it. Two of the personnel in that big band were not around for many years after that concert: Jethro Shasha, the Zimbabwean—for my money, one of the greatest drummers for “our feel” that I ever worked with—and Jabu Nkosi, son of the great Zacks Nkosi, on keyboards. The sax section was star-studded too, including Barney Rachabane, Sydney Mnisi, and Khaya Mahlangu. Included on trumpets were Johnny Mekoa and Prince Lengoasa.
He was badly let down by the SABC in the event. They pulled the financial rug from under his feet by cancelling the television broadcast, and the show had to be shortened to a run of a week instead of three weeks. If there were anyone in the SABC worth any salt whatsoever, which I truly doubt, and if they themselves had any idea of music, context, and history, they would sorely rue reneging on their contract. I don’t know the contract details, but I do remember that Bra JG felt sorely abandoned by the SABC and maybe others. It was especially painful that he (and we all) perceived the SABC to be freshly run by Black leaders in the new dispensation, and it was a bitter let-down to see that they behaved no better than the treacherous louts they could be under apartheid.
With more than half of his budget tugged out from under his feet, Bra JG kept his remarkable cool. I have said he was a gentleman, and I know few more so, but he was not meek. To his credit, he was resolute that the music was important. It was, you can say, a carry-through from his Amandla days. Amandla was the ANC-funded orchestra he ran for the movement in exile, and this concert was one which locals, who had never had a taste of the exile orchestra, thirsted to hear. It was to be the big, fat raindrops on their dusty, liberation-starved hearts. The SABC was ANC enough that Pieter-Dirk Uys would refer to the broadcaster in his comedy sketches as the “SANC”, making it all the more bitter that the entity should prove so straw-footed when such a fresh cultural opportunity presented itself.
Had the SABC carried through on its promise, those recordings alone would be worth preserving for posterity, let alone the great Jonas Gwangwa himself. A powerful trombonist, he was the deputiser of choice for Wayne Henderson, and gained deserved fame for his score to the movie Cry Freedom, but for me, the concert at the Civic was his crowning musical achievement once back home in SA. Well, the SABC got what it deserved, going forward to shame itself time and time again in all sorts of ways. I am lucky to have been in that band. It was a joy like no other, all the better for its originality. It did not sound like any other big band; no harmonies nor voicings were “borrowed” from American bands. Those harmony choices and voicings were all born out of local bands and out of the wonderful acumen of “Bra JG” himself.
One day, during a break in rehearsals, I saw a man engaged in what appeared to be a contentious argument or discussion with Bra JG, during which he many times glared at me. Only me. Everyone else was spared this man’s frowning disapproval (not to say “hate-stare”). This continued long enough for me to find it difficult to ignore or forget. Later, one of the other musicians amused himself by telling me the story. He was standing close enough to overhear the whole episode.
“BC-journalist-kinda guy,” he said. “He was indignant that Bra JG had booked a white guy, and challenged him on that. Bra JG retorted: ‘I book him because he can play. Find me a Black trombonist who can play our kind of music, and who will hit high C all night long, and I will book that Black trombonist. But I have not been able to find one. And anyway, this is my band. I can book who I like.’. Bra JG gave it to that journo pretty strong, but just like all these BC guys, he knows better than the bandleader. He can’t let it go. They can do nothing themselves, but do not hesitate to tell others what-what.”
The “BC-kinda guy” journalist moved elsewhere in the foyer, and soon I saw him talking with Jethro Shasha. I found out later from Jethro that the journo continued with him:
“Who is the white guy?”
The journo was indignant. Jethro asked who and looked around, not seeing a white guy.
“The white guy. The white guy. The WHITE guy. THAT white guy!"—pointing at me.
“Oh,” (Jethro said it took him a long time to figure the guy meant me) “you mean Jasper. No, ma … Jasper is … one of us.”
Jethro said the journo looked pretty miffed at that, and moved off. Jethro tapped his temple thrice with his index finger, shaking his head.
There was one more thing Bra JG imparted to me, after a discussion about big names and players from the past. Gwigwi Mrwebi came up for a special mention: Bra JG said he was one of the four alto sax players with strong enough sound to lead a section. They were Zaks, Ntemi, Gwigwi and Kippie.
He also said they could take ‘straight down the line legit dotted quaver and semi-quaver pairs’ and make them swing. Now, if you show this sort of writing to brass band players, the martial treatment they will give it swings (as the saying went) ’like a brick’. It is as corny or rooty-toot as it can get. Take Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” as a prime example. Early sheet music available to us had that lead line written as:
The trouble was, they then played it like:
which sounded as
“tut te tut te tut te tut te tut te tataaa”
You can’t get much uglier than that. We giggled off stage at those self-righteous gits smirking and saying “thas wot’s written, innit”.
Oh dear! We wrote it so:
and played it
Du du WA du du WA du du WA du du WAAA
with a vigorous diaphragm whack on the accented notes.
Bra JG, though, told me that many older players accepted the legit writing, playing it as written, but still made it swing. Snapping his fingers, he sang and demonstrated, saying:
“They cracked it out like a whip”.
I saw instantly, recalled some older players phrasing that way. You can make it swing, but not if you don’t have rhythm in you, or can’t hear the difference. I heard a lot of our local musicians murder “In the Mood” over the years, and it was the biggest surprise that many of them were black and otherwise superb, swinging players. It sounded awful, like they were trying too hard. I think partly it was that our black (particularly saxophone) players are big on tonguing, and sport much neater articulation than most of our white players.
I played for years with Tony Armer, a tenor sax player from Durban. After an embarassing (for him) tonguing lesson from George Hayden in front of a whole big band, he candidly confided that he had never tongued a note in his life. I asked what he did instead. “Foo” he said.
“I just go Foo, on each note”.
He would never get by in a township band. I don’t want to make too much of this: the opposite is true too. Let’s not get started on how many whites murder black music.
Ntemi once told me of band member who was fired from a band because of his phrasing. The bandleader felt his phrasing was too corny. He retorted that he had been playing the same way for decades, and wondered why things had suddenly changed. I can’t remember how the bandleader articulated how things had changed, but the departing musician, after packing his horn, turned indignantly and named another band, claiming he was going straight into that band. The firer was dismissive about the destined band: “uDlala ngezimfene”. The fired said (pointing at the band he was leaving) “BengiDLALILE nezimfene”.1. Phrasing is important. No matter how much Ntemi and I laughed at this story, it is sad. I had, as written elsewhere, my own come-uppance with phrasing, and it hurts. But it is way better to fix the problem than being left to one’s own arrogance and playing the dreaded corny rooty-toot.
In later years, “Swing 8s” superceded that dotted 8/16 style of music notation. In all the copy writing I did for various SABC musical directors, we wrote quavers and just specified “Swing 8s” in text above or below the staff, but that was frowned upon by many old school players, and darkly regarded as “American”. That was not a compliment, especially from British people{{fn: By ‘American’, they generally meant Those arseholes who never stop bragging about winning the war, but did not lift a finger against Hitler until every last ingot of Brit gold was safely locked in Fort Knox. I agree with that sentiment. America was purely dollar-principled then, and this was never as evident as it is now, presided over, as they are, by the world’s least funny standup comic. His “Lie, Cheat, Steal” oratory is lifted straight from WWE’s Eddie Guerrero.}}
I am grateful to Bra JG for pointing out that unique South African genre of swing feel to me. Many horn players started on banjo or guitar, both instruments being affordable enough for youngsters. You can’t make rhythm on either without that whipcracking energy, and it makes sense to carry that brisk phrasing through to a horn.
Bra Hugh Masekela
I worked on three albums with Bra Hugh. He was a delight to work with, as he understood brass. So many bandleaders do not understand that metal on lips can bruise us if we are overworked. Once you have bruised chops, it is uphill all the way, and easy passages become challenging to play. Bra Hugh also ensured that there was always a bowl of fresh fruit around for those low-blood-sugar moments. At least two of the albums were recorded at Bop Studios in Mmabatho—these were beautiful studios, a lavish vanity project of bantustan big guy Lucas Mangope.
Those sessions are very pleasant memories. In one particular session, Bra Hugh told us from the outset:
“I don’t know where ‘one’ in the bar is with this number.”
The melody was weirdly “unsquare” even a little wonky, and we went at it over and over again. Eventually, he placed a microphone somewhere near the centre of the studio (it was a huge studio, big enough for a classical orchestra) and we danced around the mic, playing toward it. That way, by dancing, we made sense of the number and did not overthink the ‘one in the bar’ problem. Bra Hugh said it was after some Nigerian style. We did attempt after attempt to put it in the can, but someone always screwed something up. I got by for maybe 12 or 14 takes, getting it right, but then started to get tired, and it was my turn to muff it on attempt number 14 or so.
Bra Hugh came and stood nose-to-nose with me and said:
“You’re gonna get this right next time, or else you’re OUTTA here, nigga!”
Some leaders get their way with their charisma—Bra Hugh was like that. I didn’t muff the piece again, and we soon had it in the can!
After finishing recording one of the albums—I think it was Black to the Future—Hugh called us for payment. After sorting out my fee, I rather shyly got up to go, but he said, “Hang for a while, man, I don’t know you.” He was curious. I had to tell him a lot about where I came from, and he was especially keen to know who my teachers were, and very approving when I said, “Self-taught.”
“Sometimes it’s best. You sound like yourself, not like your teacher.”
I asked Bra Hugh why he had booked me. He said Gwangwa had recommended me. Well, I was thrilled to hear that, of course, and kind of shyly asked:
“OK, so did Bra JG tell you to book me because I am an alright player?”
Bra Hugh assumed a serious expression.
“No.”
Note to self: never fish for compliments! He looked at me for a moment, as if wondering what to tell me. Awkward.
“He told me to book you because you are very, very funny. And YOU ARE!”
It was a good “hang”. I told him how I had followed both he and Bra JG via the musicians’ grapevine back in the early sixties, and how I knew that Satchmo had presented him with a trumpet, and how he and Bra JG had received scholarships to the US. It was the talk of the town. We had all been madly impressed. Actually, other than those in that first band, Swing Inc.—a mixed-race band working out of Natal University—I didn’t share that news with or hear it from Whites, not one of whom I can even remember knowing about Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa.
For us musicians in Swing Inc. and with the Shange brothers, they were legends for being in the Jazz Epistles and for playing bebop way ahead of anyone else in SA, with the appropriate skill level and chops that took our breath away. I had bought both Jazz Epistles vinyls as they hit the shops in PMB in the early 1960s, and was duly blown away.
I told Bra Hugh how, one day at a dance gig in the United Services Club on Leinster Road in Pietermaritzburg, an American guy had spoken with me during a break. He was impressed by my playing and said he was pretty sure he could organize a scholarship for me. As I related to Bra Hugh, like most teenage boys, I could not keep this under my hat and soon let it be known that I was expecting a scholarship to the US. The American guy had said I should give it a few weeks and then visit him at the US Consulate in Durban, which I did.
I had to hitchhike to Durban and walk a long way. Once inside that building (it is staggering to think now how little there was by way of security inside there compared to nowadays), I waited in a large room, maybe a foyer. After some time, the scholarship guy made his way down a staircase. It was a shock—I saw instantly on his face that he had no good news for me. It turned out that the scholarships he had in mind had already been awarded. And then he told me to whom: Jonas Gwangwa and Hugh Masekela.
Well, that was alright, I told him. However crestfallen I was, I could never match the level of those two players back then, and they thoroughly deserved it. It didn’t stop me feeling like a fool the closer I got back to Pietermaritzburg for shooting my stupid mouth off about the US scholarship I “had” in the bag.
“We live and learn,” I said to conclude this story to Bra Hugh.
In response, he threw back his head and roared with laughter.
“IT MADE NO DIFFERENCE! HERE YOU ARE NOW, WITH US!”
Those words echoed many times through my mind from then on. It was a wonder to me to think on how I had started out in Pietermaritzburg, hearing about Bra Hugh and Bra JG and their scholarships, to actually playing and recording with these two brass heroes from my teenage years.
SAA Standoff
Returning from a big band gig in Durban once, a cabin crew member rejected my trombone case, saying it had to go in the hold.
I never liked SAA. Unfortunately for them, around that time I had enjoyed good experiences with the other airlines—namely Nationwide, Mango, and Kulula—none of whom had a problem with me keeping my trombone with me in the cabin. The cabin crew woman who ordered me to take my trombone to the hold made several mistakes. Firstly, she was just plain imperious. Afrikaners back then were unsuited to service industries - they were baasklas - boss class, not servant class. Secondly, she was not a good listener. Thirdly, she obviously needed to win at all costs. I knew I would never win against her: there is no winning against a malcontent like her. In SA, ’no’ not ‘yes’ always wins. Ugh-Ag.
The argument raged on. It took place right at the door to the cockpit. After twenty minutes of it, the captain emerged from the cockpit, but the purser woman yelled at him. She clearly felt that years of service in SAA made her senior to him. He soon saw she was in a weird state and backed off.
She tried to grab my trombone from me (I honestly cannot see an English, French or Asian cabin crew trying that), but I would not let it out of my hand. The plane was by now delayed going on half an hour, and the purser woman couldn’t give a fig—she was going to WIN. A compromise was reached: I was allowed (against all the regulations, she hissed) to go down to the hold to hand the trombone to the loadmaster. I told her the loadmaster may just as well have been a demolition expert for all he knew about handling musical instruments.
She now screamed, “They IS qualified to handle FRAGILE, SIR!”
So my guitarist colleague, Nkaka Khumalo, whose guitar was being similarly rejected from the cabin, and I made our way down the gangway and filed around to the rear of the aircraft, where we found the hold still open and a very annoyed loadmaster crouching behind a pile of baggage, waiting for us. There was a quick, semi-underhand exchange in Afrikaans between him and the purser woman. I hung back and took up the cudgels with her again:
“This is a very bad idea. You are about to see two musical instruments damaged, maybe beyond repair, and neither of you gives a fig about our stuff.”
Purser woman was red and livid by turns.
“GIVE ME THAT!” she screamed, reaching for my trombone. I swung it away and out of her reach. What an awful harridan.
Sweet, conciliatory Nkaka then relented.
“It’s OK, here you are,” he said, and passed his hollow-body guitar to the loadmaster. The guitar was in a canvas cover, not a hard case.
The load master placed it gently enough on top of some other bags. I followed, passing my trombone to him. And then, we—that is Nkaka, me, and the purser-woman—watched in frozen horror as he dumped my heavy bass trombone with a hefty thump, right on top of Nkaka’s hollow-body guitar. Both instruments were festooned with FRAGILE stickers.
Purser-woman now began screaming at the load master. That took some minutes. In the meantime, I had reached in and grabbed my trombone. When purser-woman and loadmaster quietened, I turned to her.
“That’s it. I have seen enough. I am not, and my trombone is not, travelling on this or any other SAA plane, ever again.”
Nkaka returned to the cabin after inspecting his guitar for damage. I refused to get back on the plane. The captain arrived again. The plane was now going on forty minutes late. He was no longer afraid of purser-women. Arrangements were made, the screaming purser-woman overruled, and I was taken back to the terminal building in an airport vehicle.
There, I spent some time reporting the incident to a very gracious and understanding SAA staffer, a calm, Indian looking guy. I went through the necessary steps to get a refund, then left the building in a shuttle. Back in Aliwal Street, I booked a coach ticket on a Greyhound coach. After that major row, I was told later that baritone player Chris Vernon strapped his baritone sax into my seat, where it travelled safely with him to “JNB”. Maybe the fact that Chris looked like General Rockjaw and was an ex-British Army tank commander worked for him. I got in perhaps eight hours after the flight arrived, made a bite to eat, and sank into a dreamless sleep. I wish I could say that I never flew SAA again, but it is almost true: I never paid for an SAA ticket again.
These airlines are gone now, whether they were permissive about trombones or not. SAA has made a comeback, having been sold for R1. Last evening, while out for a walk, an SAA plane flew, very low, over my complex. One engine sounded really dodgy and sick. There has been nothing on the news, so I presume the plane landed safely at ORT.
The crew on the plane wore the stamp of everyday apartheid on them, from head to toe. They were never cut out to be public, or any kind of, servant. They were masters and madams. My brother once told me about flying SAA again after 17 years in exile. He did not find the cabin crew either willing or pleasant.
“Herrenvolk” is how he described them. He clearly also found them unsuited for serving people. They, he said, “had the baasskap” disease. He also pointed out that SAA was the only airline of all the many that he had travelled that displayed “No smoking” signs above every seat, three in a row, down the full length of the plane. On his first trip to SA after the unbanning of the ANC and other organisations, including IDAF where he worked, he said he sat down in the plane, saw all these ‘No Smoking’ warnings, and felt like saying:
“Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright”,
once for every sign from the nose to the stern of the plane. It is possible that his telling was coloured by another incident on the same return trip to SA from exile, not unrelated in style.
After the unbannings, he decided to get a South African passport again, since it had been confiscated back in 1968. He felt conciliatory and a little sentimental about it, and was glad to collect the passport. Although long in possession of a British Passport—something he had needed to wait at least five years to get after his arrival in England—he decided to exercise what he believed to be his birthright, and to enter SA using his SA passport.
In the event, on proffering his passport to immigration, an expressionless immigration officer led him to a room where he was instructed (not asked) to wait. They kept him for more than an hour, then he was addressed by a senior immigration officer who said that his passport had been confiscated. Again. A law or regulation about the need to “apply” for permission to hold two passports (or more) was quoted, and he was told he would have to wait in the transit room, presumably to be deported. They did not think to ask him if he had another travel document, and looked even more sour-faced when he produced his British passport. They let him into SA without a word, clearly disappointed at their lack of any further technical gotchas to fuck him around further. So much for his sweet, sentimental return. It is easy to think that this sort of thing is long in the past, but I will be wary of zealot Afrikaner Nationalists to my dying day.
Thinking back on all this, and the current state of SAA, I can’t resist saying “En kyk hoe lyk sy nou”.2
Don’t think I am glad about the demise of SAA. I have personally known three of their pilots, and one of their technical staff. As an airline, they had a very good safety record. One of the blemishes on their safety record was the SA Helderberg. It is arguable that plane was a casualty of apartheid. It was carrying an explosive hazardous cargo, and it has, to my knowledge, never been confirmed that the plane’s captain fully knew what was on the cargo manifest. One wonders, if he were aware, whether he would have had the choice to unload the hazardous cargo, or at least refuse to take off with it. We were all supposed to close ranks and go along with all of that apartheid madness: the pressure would have been on him to do so. I like to think that he would have done the right thing, but I still wonder to this day.
As to their record of technical excellence, British Airways entrusted servicing of some of their long-range aircraft to SAA, who carried out those servicing jobs in the hangars at then Jan Smuts airport. Say no more.
President Nelson Mandela
Madiba only ever said two things I will never forget. One was immediately after his Union Buildings inauguration. The other was something Bill Clinton reported him to have said.
After his inauguration, he insisted on thanking the AJP in person. The band assembled in a line, and waited. He emerged from his bullet-proofed Merc, strode over to the band, and began with Bra Ntemi Piliso. He actually remembered that he and Walter Sisulu had been the law firm Ntemi instructed in a case involving an employer assaulting Bra Ntemi on the job. Good memory. The case had been some forty years prior, and Mandela had spent nearly thirty of them on Robben Island.
Madiba continued down the line of musicians. He apparently just knew their languages by looking at them, because each member was addressed in his own, and he moved fluently through them all: Sotho, Tswana, Pedi, Shangaan, Swazi, Zulu. I was last in line. He looked at me, then said, with his head bobbing in that characteristic jocular way:
“I think you are the only person here who has no identity crisis”.
Astounding! As he walked away, I wondered: “How does he know?”
About Bill Clinton, the former president recalled Mandela phoning him in the difficult time during the Lewinski scandal. Clinton never forgot Mandela’s advice, something like:
“Do not allow this to possess your heart and mind”
Clinton said it was his single most useful received advice. It kept him steady throughout. When I think of Mr Mandela, I think “boxer and lawyer”. Both win when they keep a cool head. As “Brown Bomber” Joe Louis said first, “Everone has a plan until they’ve been hit”, and there was no cooler head than his.