Booker Ervin at the Danish Radio, June 4, 1969
photo ©Kirsten Weinoldt
A couple of weeks ago I was called in to sub with the Danish Radio Big Band. At one point my fellow trombonist Peter Jensen looked at me intently: "You knew Booker Ervin, right?" I admitted to that fact and that we had been friends for the last year and a half of his life. "Yes, I thought so", he said, "so I thought I'd tell you that Booker's original music for his Booker 'n' Brass recording has been found in the vaults of the Danish Radio recently and been put aside with other music that doesn't belong to the radio. I think you should take it, take care of it. Nobody knows what to do with it".
Here I'll intersperse the historical aspects of Booker's and my friendship, short, but intense, as it was:
In the spring of 1969 I was called in one morning early to sub with the Danish Radio Big Band. I hastened over there to be ready for the 9 am to 3 p.m. mixed rehearsal and recording session. In those days American soloists of the highest order guest-appeared with the band on a regular basis, so it was no surprise to find a soloist waiting in the wings. I rushed in, unpacked my horn to be ready for the downbeat (living very near the Radio I could be there in a flash). I asked another musician: “Who do we have today?” “Booker Ervin”, he said. I flipped, looked around, and there, in a corner, assembling his tenor, was Booker, easily recognizable, the big Texan with his Afro haircut and his Mexican moustache. My hero from the Mingus bands! There were still a few minutes left before the downbeat, so I rushed out in a frenzy, grabbed a phone and called my then girlfriend who was a great jazz photographer: “Get out of bed, grab your camera and get your butt over here in a jiffy! Booker is here!” A few minutes later she sneaked in as we were going through the first chart. She took some beautiful pictures, one of which turned up on ‘Lament for Booker’ (ENJA Records) some years later.
Timid as I was in those days, I overcame my shyness and struck up a conversation with Booker at a break. He was so sweet and unassuming, belying his imposing appearance. As it was he stayed for a while, some days, in Copenhagen, playing at the Montmartre. We met several times, went for walks and struck up a friendship. When he learned I was coming to the States in September to study at Berklee in Boston on a Down Beat Scholarship he told me that when I came down to New York, I could stay with him, his wife Jane and the kids (Lynn and little Booker) at their apartment at East 13th Street and 3rd Avenue on the lower East Side, which I did, enjoying the incredible hospitality of the Ervins.
Booker was ‘between gigs’ as he was recovering from an illness, eager to get back into the swing of things. So money was not an object, it was virtually non-existing. But if they had some money, we'd eat. Suffice it to say that the family I never had, I got here. (Actually I had quite a large family in Denmark – but to me, and to them . . . we were strangers.) I'd call from Boston: “Hey Book, it's Al (that's what he called me, short for the Danish pronunciation of Erling) I'm coming down to NY next week.” “Very good, Al, just hit the buzzer when you get here, but watch out for the cat in a red T-shirt who hangs out on the corner, he's an addict and mean”.
I'd hop on a non-stop bus to Port Authority, grab the subway, getting off around Union Square looking out for the mean cat on the corner, hit the buzzer and Booker would poke his head out the window inquiring, “That you, Al?” and throw down the key, wrapped in some tissue, to his 4th floor walk-up. The door would be slightly ajar, and I could hear the sound of the TV with a ball-game in progress. I knocked on the door, heard Booker's booming voice: “C’mon in, Al!” I stepped in, closing the door behind me. Booker was sitting in front of the TV with his beloved Bud in his hand, cast a glance at me over his shoulder, momentarily taking his mind off the game, “Sit down and relax, Al, Jane’s in the kitchen, she'll be here in a second” and his eyes went back to watching the ball-game. I put my trombone in a corner and sat down . . . and it felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. I just sat there nothing expected of me except . . . being there. Never felt that relaxed or peaceful ever before. It was really like coming home, accepted, taken at face value. Just Al.
Friends would drop by, like Vishnu Wood, Richard Williams and his wife Lynn. Mondays I'd walk over to the Vanguard to catch Thad & Mel. Jimmy Knepper, whom I met, also in Cope, a few months after meeting Booker, would meet me at the entrance and get me in for free and I'd hang with the cats in the kitchen between sets. Thad, Mel, Snooky Young, Eddie Bert, Pepper Adams . . . Man, that was like heaven. I sipped my lonely coke, all I could afford, had to last me all night, while they partied, joked, told stories, enjoyed their vodka . . . whatever. After the gig we would go to this coffee-shop and chat some more before splitting up, usually me going with Jim in his beat-up old car to his home in Staten Island. A mind-shaking experience with Jim at the wheel, tired and cognac’ed up. I remember telling myself: “If I have to go now, at least I go in grand company with my hero of the trombone,” thinking about the sad demise of Jim’s friend Willie Dennis who killed himself going home from a gig some years before, like Jim put it, “He was tired and forgot to make that left turn going home through the Park and slammed right into a tree killing himself.” We would eventually make it in one piece and we would sit in the kitchen of his house at Bayview Place, overlooking the Statue of Liberty and the southern tip of Manhattan drinking coffee out of big mugs and talking about this and that. At some point Maxine, his wife, would poke her nose into the kitchen, “Jim, don't keep the young man up all night!” Jim would say “Max, Erling wants to go up in the attic and copy some of my music before he sleeps, he's fine”. Max would shake her head in mock disapproval and disbelief. But my experiences with Jim is another story. Back on topic.
Booker had never heard me play (except as an anonymous 3rd trombone player with the Radio Big Band) so I played some of my music for him and Jane that I had on cassette tapes. Original compositions played by my quintet. They liked what they heard. I remember Jane looking at me curiously at one point commenting: “But Al, you are such a happy guy and still there is a streak of sadness in your music, how come?” And Booker would look over the rim of his glasses at Jane and me while we talked, sipping his Bud.
One day Booker said to me: “There's this small dive over in the West Village that sports a solo piano player where one can sit in on Sundays. We're gonna walk over there with Jane and the kids. Richard and Lynn are coming too. You bring your horn and sit in.” It was a lovely afternoon. Booker had told me that the regular piano player was a blind cat called Eddie Thompson, as I recall. However on that day the piano was in the hands of Richard Wyands. Booker introduced us and I was invited to sit in. While we were playing at white cat with pony tail stepped in, unpacked his tenor and clarinet and sat in with us. Bobby Jones was his name. Very nice cat and we got to talking about Mingus (what with me being there with Booker and all) that he, like I, always had wanted to play with. (He eventually, some months later, joined Mingus’ band and we became good friends, yet another story).
Last time I saw Booker was in July of 1970, shortly before I returned to Denmark. Booker was in the hospital for some preliminaries before his scheduled operation that should eventually put him back into business, back on his axe. He was home on leave from the hospital (had to check back in before midnight or something) and he was talking about how much he was looking forward to be able to play again and that he wanted to do another “Booker ‘n’ Brass” recording: “I want you to play trombone on it, Al”, he said. I almost fainted. Was THAT a dream coming true: playing with Booker Ervin! “Who are the other trombonists gonna be, Book?” I asked. “I don't know, who do you suggest?” “We gonna have Jim Knepper, your old pal from the Mingus days!” I ventured. “You got a point there, Al. Think Jim’d want to do it?” “No doubt, he'd love to, and then he can play lead and I'll play 2nd”.
Eventually Booker had to get up and leave to go back to the hospital. We said good-bye and he wished me a safe journey home, and we'd stay in contact. I wished him a speedy recovery and he shuffled down the stairs. I can still vividly see his stout figure crossing East 13th Street to the corner of 3rd Ave. He turned around and waved back at me as he turned the corner. That was the last time I saw Booker.
I went back to Denmark, got busy with getting my Danish-American quintet together for tours and my first recording ever under my own name. Brought over bassist Jeff Czerbinski and vibes player Jon Eriksen in August. One day we were walking into a record store and Jeff (he had met Booker once in New York with me) said: “What’s that about Booker?” with horror in his voice. On the wall of the store was a hand-written note with Booker's name and two dates: Booker Ervin, October 31, 1930 – July 31, 1970.
We were in shock! Tears streaming we walked out of the store.
When I'd composed myself, I eventually called Jane (was THAT hard), telling her I just got the belated, sad news. We talked for a while and she told me what had happened. They had decided to remove one of Booker's kidneys, which should leave him all right with just one to sustain him. Everything went well and as Booker came out of the anesthesia first thing he said was: “Doc, when will I be able to play my horn again?” “In two weeks, Book!” and he dozed off again, happy. Then the other kidney set out. There was no money for a kidney transplant so he died, 39 years old.
In October we went into the studio to record my first album as a leader called “MUSIC BOOK dedicated to Booker Ervin”.
Post scriptum:
So Booker ‘n’ Brass is unearthed from the vaults of the Danish Radio in 2006. How did the music end up there? Booker must have brought it over with him in 1969 and must have somehow forgotten to take it with him. The music was not performed here. He played as a soloist with the Radio Big Band from their book and then played quartet at the Montmartre. He never mentioned losing it to me.
No matter, the music exists, the nine originals from the recording plus one more, also arranged by Teddy Edwards. Scores, parts, the works. One page is missing from Booker's part of East Dallas, but I've copied that out from the score. I'm now in the progress of getting the music back to the rightful owners, Booker's heirs, and am in contact with Vishnu Wood who in turn is in contact with Lynn, Booker's daughter.
However I've gotten an idea. I have contacted the Copenhagen Jazz Festival about doing a tribute to Booker in 2007, utilizing this music. 2007 will be forty years ago Booker ‘n’ Brass was recorded. The festival is interested in putting up Celebrating Booker Ervin – Booker ‘n’ Brass Revisited. I'll assemble the brass and the rhythm-section, play lead-bone and conduct. Booker's parts will be handled by five distinct local tenor-greats, each playing two songs. The most obvious choice would have been Bent Jædig, Booker's old pal, but, alas, he died two years ago. But I have in mind such players as Bernt Rosengren, Tomas Franck (who always loved Booker's music, a fact we have discussed many times), American expatriate Bob Rockwell III, Pernille Bévort, a lovely lady with a wonderful sound, Hans Ulrik and Christina Dahl, another great tenor-lady. Then I have a good mind to rearrange a beautiful composition by Jeff Czerbinski that he wrote in commemoration of Booker for my quintet, ONE FOR THE BOOK, for the occasion.
This is all in the works . . . .
Erling Kroner
Copenhagen, November 28, 2006