Dear Ted, Thank you so much for the braided layers of emotion, aesthetics and intellect you bring to the first-person narrative genre of Musical Memoirs as carefully crafted after heated bouts of spontaneity by rootsy innovator-human navigator-poet turned performer turned professor collaboratively transformed with neighboring East Bay colleague Ishmael Reed into indie co-publisher championing those without heed of Market Forces and later ripened into novelist while earning his nut professing comparative lit at U.C.-Berkeley, Al Young.
I also very much appreciate your restraint from letting any judgment issue forth projected onto clearly terminally under-valued muse and artist Dupree Bolton, who I'd surely never been aware of until your first Substack essay brought him to my attention. Were you rolling audio (or video) tape of your interviews and meetings with Dupree Bolton and are the transcripts available anywhere for longer-form musical and other memoirs?
Mitch, you rock bro. The God in you speaks to me and I don't know if you've got to your last stop which is Jesus yet but bro, there is raw truth in you. I'm here for it.
This is the first experience I've had of the man whose name I first thought was AI (Artificial Intelligence) Young until I noticed that what I saw as an upper case i was actually an l (as in Al). I'm truly amazed by this man's writing about Coleman Hawkins - like, he's riffing with the Bean. And finally, tonight I saw this on Monk in, 'Drowning in the Sea of Love' - and I'm going to sleep happy.
"Thelonious Monk was as much a part of me then as he is now. All kids who listen to Monk's music seem to love it at once. It's a child-like music; compelling and attractive in a fundamental way. There's no way, really, to put this all in language (spoken luggage), but when has being at a loss for words ever stopped a writer? On one of those nights, one crazier than usual, I spent a rapt three sets at the Gallery with my guitar buddy Perry Lederman and with Gordon Hope, a drinker with writing ambitions. We had put away a gang of ale and cheese, crackers and onions over at McSorley's Irish Saloon, and now we were checking out Monk, who had Coltrane with him just then. It was also a night when Steve Lacy was sitting in with the group on soprano saxophone. Charlie Rouse was the other hornman. Actually, Monk and Trane were being featured separately as a double bill, but Trane's energy level was such at the time that he managed to ease in on Monk's sets with no apparent strain."
As a trumpet player I find it sad that he did not own one at death. To be able to blow through the scales, the rhythm, the intensity of breathing through the instrument, to let go and let the instrument be your momentary sound, no matter if it's harsh, rash or melodious is just sad to me. He died repressed. That is heartbreaking for such a legend.
Ted, with your extensive knowledge of jazz, it would be interesting if you did a piece on musicians with a drug habit, and the myth of whether it is actually helpful to producing good music. Could probably argue that it is not helpful? how many great musicians didn't have a drug habit?
There isn't a player alive who's used drugs, who will tell you that it made him a better player. At best, it allowed him to forget about himself and be the music. But be a better player, never.
yeah, drugs is always romanticized when related to art. But JK Rowlings of Harry Potter fame, was poor when she was a child. She says 'poverty is romantized only by fools" that probably applies to drugs and music as well
But is it really that often romanticized? I hear nothing but sad tales about wasted talent and wasted years. Never heard any musician who survived it (like Anita O'Day) say it improved anything at all about their music, their life, or their experience of either.
I too met Dupree on the streets in Chinatown San Francisco. In 1982 or 83’. My trumpet teacher, John Coppola, was a fan of The Fox and I loved that LP. I heard Dupree was on the streets, so I found him playing. I requested “The Fox” and he played it for me and my two friends. It was amazing and he was shocked that a young person like myself knew of him. I gave him a $20 bill and I told him that I played trumpet. He then invited me to his house, so he could show me” how to play fast”. I drove out to Oakland and the neighborhood was very scary to me, so I bailed. Pretty amazing!
The loss of gifts of the spirit produces a kind of wrenching of the soul. There is no redemption in the story of Dupree Bolton, only pain without absolution. Perhaps this is the fundamental tragedy of the human condition.
The 50s seemed to be an era of Jazz junkies. I knew Frank Morgan and Frank Butler and they were sweet guys who would steal your underwear to buy junk. Great players and miserable people. Morgan eventually got straight, left L.A. for New York, where he died. The last time I saw Frank Butler was at a gig in Ventura, Calif. His skin was grey and he was rail thin. He had no energy in his playing. I sat in for a set and when Frank came back for the next set, he saw it as a challenge and the real Frank Butler came back to life. He died shortly after.
Sad, so, so very sad, but it’s also a reminder to do what little we may while we are on this planet. Thank you for what we have left of your gift to us.
I’m sad that those final recordings were destroyed. Perhaps that search for delicate beauty in the melodic lines might have taught us something about instrospection as older musicians that youthful fire knows nothing of.
I met Dupree in China town in San Francisco in 1984.. I was young and still dumb but open minded to a brave new world after coming out to the west coast from Boston on my own. I was attending Berklee college of music and was hell bent on learning and understanding the language of jazz (Bee-Bop). I was a guitar player. I lived in Oakland in a flop house and pumped gas at a Chevron to live. And I loved every minute of it. I used to take my guitar on a Saturday and hop on the Bart and go over to the city. I fell in love with SF instantly. I would get off in the financial district I think it was Market street and head up into China town. My destination was the Cafe Italy in North Beach. A small cafe just like the ones in Europe. Old Italian men sitting around talking about soccer and drinking espresso. I would go there and get a coffee and sit at a table in the corner and pull my guitar out and practice scales. The old woman who ran the cafe seemed to like me and liked that I was studying and she always greeted me with a hug. I felt at home. One afternoon when starting the walk into China town I heard a beautiful sound in the distance. As I got closer I knew it was a trumpet. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and almost ran to it. There in front of a Chinese bank was Dupree. Playing to the wind and also the young hip tourists that would stroll through arm in arm with not a care in the world. I watched him how he played to the crowd. A showman but with a tone that I only heard on records from the likes of Miles and others.. It was honestly beautiful. One day I mustered up the courage and asked him if I could play with him. He said sure. But there was a catch. He told me when the "money" comes you need to "Lay out" Meaning he plays and I don't. I was obviously going to chase the money away. He was kind and on slow Saturdays he would teach me through playing and he never told me no. We became friends. An old black jazz musician and a blond farm kid from the East Coast. He and San Francisco stamped an impression on me that I will have for the rest of my life. I know you are up there Dupree and I thank you.
Late to the party, but I ran into Bolton playing on the street in San Francisco's Chinatown - not sure of the year, but my wife and I were on a trip, and it might have been about 1985. My wife came over and said to my "there's a trumpet player playing over there." I listened, and there was just something about the sound that told me he wasn't an ordinary street musician. When he told me his name was DuPree Bolton I almost fell over. He actually gave me a card, which I no longer have; he was being helped by a man whose name I cannot remember right now, but it was familiar as someone who did things in the jazz field but who was a doctor (an optometrist? I recognized the name and IIRC he was Asian; I would recognize it if I heard it again).
You mentioned Dupree playing with drummer Frank Butler in San Quentin in the 1960s. Surely it is worth clarifying for us if it is the same Frank Butler who is the drummer playing with Dupree and Harold Land on Land’s iconic The Fox recording in 1959. That would have been an interesting side story to know…
Dear Ted, Thank you so much for the braided layers of emotion, aesthetics and intellect you bring to the first-person narrative genre of Musical Memoirs as carefully crafted after heated bouts of spontaneity by rootsy innovator-human navigator-poet turned performer turned professor collaboratively transformed with neighboring East Bay colleague Ishmael Reed into indie co-publisher championing those without heed of Market Forces and later ripened into novelist while earning his nut professing comparative lit at U.C.-Berkeley, Al Young.
https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=205
1 thought on “Al Young’s Musical Memoirs”
I also very much appreciate your restraint from letting any judgment issue forth projected onto clearly terminally under-valued muse and artist Dupree Bolton, who I'd surely never been aware of until your first Substack essay brought him to my attention. Were you rolling audio (or video) tape of your interviews and meetings with Dupree Bolton and are the transcripts available anywhere for longer-form musical and other memoirs?
Keep on doing.
Health and balance.
Appreciatively and respectfully yours,
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\LookseeInnerEarsHearHere
Mitch, you rock bro. The God in you speaks to me and I don't know if you've got to your last stop which is Jesus yet but bro, there is raw truth in you. I'm here for it.
This is the first experience I've had of the man whose name I first thought was AI (Artificial Intelligence) Young until I noticed that what I saw as an upper case i was actually an l (as in Al). I'm truly amazed by this man's writing about Coleman Hawkins - like, he's riffing with the Bean. And finally, tonight I saw this on Monk in, 'Drowning in the Sea of Love' - and I'm going to sleep happy.
"Thelonious Monk was as much a part of me then as he is now. All kids who listen to Monk's music seem to love it at once. It's a child-like music; compelling and attractive in a fundamental way. There's no way, really, to put this all in language (spoken luggage), but when has being at a loss for words ever stopped a writer? On one of those nights, one crazier than usual, I spent a rapt three sets at the Gallery with my guitar buddy Perry Lederman and with Gordon Hope, a drinker with writing ambitions. We had put away a gang of ale and cheese, crackers and onions over at McSorley's Irish Saloon, and now we were checking out Monk, who had Coltrane with him just then. It was also a night when Steve Lacy was sitting in with the group on soprano saxophone. Charlie Rouse was the other hornman. Actually, Monk and Trane were being featured separately as a double bill, but Trane's energy level was such at the time that he managed to ease in on Monk's sets with no apparent strain."
Unbearably sad
But his playing on those two LP's-the original 'Brother from Another Planet'!
As a trumpet player I find it sad that he did not own one at death. To be able to blow through the scales, the rhythm, the intensity of breathing through the instrument, to let go and let the instrument be your momentary sound, no matter if it's harsh, rash or melodious is just sad to me. He died repressed. That is heartbreaking for such a legend.
Ted, with your extensive knowledge of jazz, it would be interesting if you did a piece on musicians with a drug habit, and the myth of whether it is actually helpful to producing good music. Could probably argue that it is not helpful? how many great musicians didn't have a drug habit?
There isn't a player alive who's used drugs, who will tell you that it made him a better player. At best, it allowed him to forget about himself and be the music. But be a better player, never.
yeah, drugs is always romanticized when related to art. But JK Rowlings of Harry Potter fame, was poor when she was a child. She says 'poverty is romantized only by fools" that probably applies to drugs and music as well
But is it really that often romanticized? I hear nothing but sad tales about wasted talent and wasted years. Never heard any musician who survived it (like Anita O'Day) say it improved anything at all about their music, their life, or their experience of either.
She's correct. I grew up in poverty; it sucks.
I too met Dupree on the streets in Chinatown San Francisco. In 1982 or 83’. My trumpet teacher, John Coppola, was a fan of The Fox and I loved that LP. I heard Dupree was on the streets, so I found him playing. I requested “The Fox” and he played it for me and my two friends. It was amazing and he was shocked that a young person like myself knew of him. I gave him a $20 bill and I told him that I played trumpet. He then invited me to his house, so he could show me” how to play fast”. I drove out to Oakland and the neighborhood was very scary to me, so I bailed. Pretty amazing!
The loss of gifts of the spirit produces a kind of wrenching of the soul. There is no redemption in the story of Dupree Bolton, only pain without absolution. Perhaps this is the fundamental tragedy of the human condition.
A beautiful tribute.
The 50s seemed to be an era of Jazz junkies. I knew Frank Morgan and Frank Butler and they were sweet guys who would steal your underwear to buy junk. Great players and miserable people. Morgan eventually got straight, left L.A. for New York, where he died. The last time I saw Frank Butler was at a gig in Ventura, Calif. His skin was grey and he was rail thin. He had no energy in his playing. I sat in for a set and when Frank came back for the next set, he saw it as a challenge and the real Frank Butler came back to life. He died shortly after.
Thank you… always
Sad, so, so very sad, but it’s also a reminder to do what little we may while we are on this planet. Thank you for what we have left of your gift to us.
I’m sad that those final recordings were destroyed. Perhaps that search for delicate beauty in the melodic lines might have taught us something about instrospection as older musicians that youthful fire knows nothing of.
Thanks for this Ted. You mentioned that Mr. Bolton's first recordings were under an assumed
name. Do you ever find those..? and were they made in New York or California ?
Just before posting these questions I was thinking of Jessica Williams and was more than
surprised to see comments by Jessica J ( Thanks Jess, I check your substack) . As you know,
this superlative pianist used her full name (?) Jessica Jennifer Williams on her early recordings.
I am looking at the notes to "Ergonomic Music" as I write this. Perhaps someday you could
share something about her . Although not a near-unknown artist like Dupree , her recordings
attest that she should have been better known and appreciated.
Thanks again Ted and thanks to all these artists who help us keep our heads straight in a
perplexing world. Talk about "Healing Songs" !!!
Tragic story, thanks for a great story!
I met Dupree in China town in San Francisco in 1984.. I was young and still dumb but open minded to a brave new world after coming out to the west coast from Boston on my own. I was attending Berklee college of music and was hell bent on learning and understanding the language of jazz (Bee-Bop). I was a guitar player. I lived in Oakland in a flop house and pumped gas at a Chevron to live. And I loved every minute of it. I used to take my guitar on a Saturday and hop on the Bart and go over to the city. I fell in love with SF instantly. I would get off in the financial district I think it was Market street and head up into China town. My destination was the Cafe Italy in North Beach. A small cafe just like the ones in Europe. Old Italian men sitting around talking about soccer and drinking espresso. I would go there and get a coffee and sit at a table in the corner and pull my guitar out and practice scales. The old woman who ran the cafe seemed to like me and liked that I was studying and she always greeted me with a hug. I felt at home. One afternoon when starting the walk into China town I heard a beautiful sound in the distance. As I got closer I knew it was a trumpet. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and almost ran to it. There in front of a Chinese bank was Dupree. Playing to the wind and also the young hip tourists that would stroll through arm in arm with not a care in the world. I watched him how he played to the crowd. A showman but with a tone that I only heard on records from the likes of Miles and others.. It was honestly beautiful. One day I mustered up the courage and asked him if I could play with him. He said sure. But there was a catch. He told me when the "money" comes you need to "Lay out" Meaning he plays and I don't. I was obviously going to chase the money away. He was kind and on slow Saturdays he would teach me through playing and he never told me no. We became friends. An old black jazz musician and a blond farm kid from the East Coast. He and San Francisco stamped an impression on me that I will have for the rest of my life. I know you are up there Dupree and I thank you.
Late to the party, but I ran into Bolton playing on the street in San Francisco's Chinatown - not sure of the year, but my wife and I were on a trip, and it might have been about 1985. My wife came over and said to my "there's a trumpet player playing over there." I listened, and there was just something about the sound that told me he wasn't an ordinary street musician. When he told me his name was DuPree Bolton I almost fell over. He actually gave me a card, which I no longer have; he was being helped by a man whose name I cannot remember right now, but it was familiar as someone who did things in the jazz field but who was a doctor (an optometrist? I recognized the name and IIRC he was Asian; I would recognize it if I heard it again).
You mentioned Dupree playing with drummer Frank Butler in San Quentin in the 1960s. Surely it is worth clarifying for us if it is the same Frank Butler who is the drummer playing with Dupree and Harold Land on Land’s iconic The Fox recording in 1959. That would have been an interesting side story to know…