Having been rocked out of approaching lethargy at Nice ’84 by the outstanding performance of Houston Person with his band, I took the opportunity of trapping him in the press room during an interval between sets, to talk briefly about his career and his playing. He is a good-humoured man and the first pleasant surprise was learning that he was a Jazz Journal reader; although he told me he liked the magazine, apparently he found it difficult to buy from shops in the USA.
‘I would describe you perhaps as a modern Texas Tenor,’ I told him. Was that a description he liked?
‘Well, if you are describing me from the point of letting people know what you’re talking about, yes, I would agree with that.’ Perhaps he didn’t agree with jazz music classifications, I suggested. ‘Well, you have to classify somewhere if you are talking to other people, but I would broaden it a little bit to say “a southern type player” but yes, that’s acceptable’.
Houston was born in October 1934, and teamed up with singer Etta Jones in 1973 for club dates, concerts etc. after having worked with her intermittently from 1968 onwards.
How did he get started, did he come from a musical family or learn saxophone at school?
‘Well, I had early piano lessons, but I wasn’t interested in music and the piano lessons went nowhere. I was more interested in sports until my senior year in high school – I started late, very late. Most people start when they are six or seven years old, I started when I was 17. I always heard music in the house, my mother played piano, and I was required to listen to all types of music, I was more a listener. I guess that’s why I collect records, even now. I was listening to jazz, rhythm and blues – you know, Dinah Washington, Roy Brown, Stan Kenton, also a lot of Lennie Tristano with Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, and Buddy Johnson – that was my early listening. ’Cos those records were more accessible, and also Dizzy’s big band on RCA Victor. I didn’t learn about the record business till much later – why I couldn’t get certain records – but that’s a good representation of my earliest listening.’
Did you play piano then, I asked him, or had you gone to tenor by this time?
‘Oh no, I never played piano at all, just took a few lessons from my mother because we always had a piano in the house. I came straight in on tenor and began listening to Jazz At The Philharmonic: Illinois Jacquet, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, all those guys. All the good rhythm and blues players too.”
Did he decide right then to be a professional and make playing his living?
‘Oh, I guess it just evolved that way. I am quite sure my parents would have rather I had done something else, however they have co-operated and supported me. But – yeah – it just evolved that way.
‘My home is Florence, South Carolina, but there was nowhere to play around there, so to speak. We had one band around there that was a very good bebop band, Nat Green And His Allstars. That was a good band and they had a weekly radio show too.
I went to college at Orangeburg, South Carolina; then I was listening, and I began working with the college band, playing dances, but I still hadn’t decided.’
Was he still more interested in sport?
‘No, I had given up sports in my senior year in high school when I got my teeth knocked out at football!
‘When I got to college, I took English as my major subject, and music was the minor, and when I left and went in the services, I stayed out of the service band so that I could work at weekends. That’s where I met Cedar Walton, Eddie Harris, Leo Wright, Lanny Morgan, a whole lot of people, and I decided then that I was going to come back and really get serious about music. So I came back and entered the conservatory in Hartford, Connecticut, and then I got a little more serious – not too serious! When I left the conservatory I went on the road for a short while, then I formed my own band.’
Was this an ideal type of group that he had at Nice, I asked him, with electric organ and drums (plus Etta Jones’ vocals) rather than having string bass, piano and/or guitar and perhaps a bigger front line?
‘I have been asked that a lot, but what I really like is people who are going to be sympathetic to what I’m doing. I don’t care what it is, I suppose it’s just circumstances, I just wind up with an organist. But when I’m going to record I usually use piano and bass.’
Did he always play in small groups, or had he worked big bands?
‘Well, I like a small group now – I would much rather have a larger group, but I always want a band with a singer. I try to get all the elements into what I have, ’cos you do have to work with what you have.’
Did he record exclusively for Muse Records?
‘Well, I’ve done quite a few for them (I’ll make sure you get some for review) and that’s it basically; I just like people who swing.’
I commented that his playing embodied rhythm and blues, moved into bebop phraseology, and also into what I called the Texas Tenor and mainstream sound. Did he find it useful to be able to do that?
‘Well, you should be able to do that – I mean the musicians who came before were able to do all those things, and most of them played in r & b bands too. I think jazz would be more acceptable if guys were more broad. But the first element is that it has got to swing, then you can get down to all the other abstractions.’
Had he always played a Selmer tenor?
‘Yes, it’s a delicate instrument but I haven’t found anything else better.’