My first exposure to Miles was in 1959, when I was about twelve. My dad brought home the Miles Davis–Gil Evans album of Porgy and Bess. (Three of my dad’s friends play in the orchestral ensemble.) Originally, Porgy and Bess was an opera written and performed in 1935, during the Harlem Renaissance, with music by George Gershwin and libretto by his brother Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel Porgy. All three white. Now, opera is definitely not something I would have wanted to listen to then (or, to be honest, now). Nor am I especially sympathetic to the idea of three middle-class white men writing about what it was like to be living in a poor black community in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1930s. But Miles Davis must have liked it, and my dad must have liked it, so I thought I’d give it a fair chance. (Not until much later did I find out that Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes had described Heyward as a man who saw “with his white eyes, wonderful, poetic qualities in the inhabitants of Catfish Row.”) I am so glad I didn’t let those cocky adolescent biases stop me from listening, because that dynamic album became a milepost for me, marking my entry into puberty and young manhood.
Recently, jazz critic Robert Gilbert wrote about the power the album still generates, almost fifty years after its release: “In jazz, only a handful of albums never lose their lustre. Each listening is a magical experience, no matter how familiar the material has become…. Porgy and Bess is one such distinctive recording…. It reaches a higher plateau than most, though, in its way that it can reach the listener on both a musical and emotional level.” Of course, back then, just barely a teenager, I wouldn’t have been able to describe its effect on me so eloquently. I just knew that the music moved me in ways I hadn’t experienced before—and that Miles Davis was the coolest, most dignified man I’d ever seen. That elegant personal style he exuded was as influential on me as the music.
I first saw Miles in person while he was training at the Harlem YMCA on 135th Street and Seventh Avenue, the same place where Harlem Renaissance poets Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes used to read their poetry and where writers Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Claude McKay, and James Baldwin all lived at one time or another. At the time, I was in high school and sometimes hanging with Wilt Chamberlain, who also worked out at the Y. Wilt’s nightclub, Small’s Paradise, was nearby. Small’s Paradise had been one of the most prestigious black-owned clubs during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, featuring roller-skating waiters who would dance the Charleston while carrying trays. This was a favorite club for important Harlem Renaissance figures, including Alain Locke and Countee Cullen. Wilt and I entered the gym and I saw Miles deeply focused on his boxing routine, his white T-shirt soaked with sweat, his sinewy muscles sharply defined. I was immediately impressed by how dedicated and disciplined he was in his workout, as dedicated and disciplined as he was with his music. It made me admire him even more.
I didn’t meet him then; that honor wouldn’t take place for a few more years. In the spring of 1966, we met for the first time at the Orange County Jazz Festival in California. He didn’t know anything about me and was rather brusque, saying only that a guy my size would probably have to pay $500 to have a necktie made. Not exactly the deep bonding moment I’d hoped for. But when we met again two years later, it was a very different experience. I ran into him on the corner of 135th Street in Harlem, just as he was coming out of the YMCA. By now I had achieved some acclaim as part of the UCLA program and he knew who I was. We talked on that busy corner like old acquaintances happy to see each other after a long separation. We spoke about the NCAA tourney and he said he liked the way I played the game. “You’re not like Wilt, dunking everything!” He admired my dedication, discipline, and elegance—all of which I’d learned from him.
After our talk, he invited me to his town house in the West Seventies to watch fight films of his favorite boxer, Johnny Bratton, a welterweight champ in the early fifties. Johnny was seen as a smaller version of the incomparable Sugar Ray Robinson. Sitting there in Miles Davis’s living room, watching his intense eyes follow the fighters around the ring, I could feel his respect for me, which gave me a sense of accomplishment that I’d never experienced before.
Miles Davis playing Porgy and Bess. Still one of my favorites. Two other of my favorite albums are Miles and Gil collaborating on Miles Ahead and Sketches of Spain. Miles’s powerful trumpet blaring out mournful notes something like a lone wolf howling on a moonless night. A sound not easily forgotten.
John Coltrane: A Music from Within
The autumn of 1965 was a rough time for me. I was an eighteen-year-old kid just starting my freshman year at UCLA. Everyone was expecting great things from me, but my usual support system of friends and family were three thousand miles away. Worse, Los Angeles was nothing like New York City. The buildings were short and squat, like a theme-park, kiddie-size version of New York. And what was up with all those frilly-topped palm trees sticking up in rows like parking meters. Where was the noisy subway always pulsing just under the surface of the streets, keeping everyone knocking against each other as they moved about the city? How did people out here interact if they were always locked up in their climate-controlled cars?
One aspect of Los Angeles that helped me adjust was the thriving jazz scene. Listening to jazz made me feel connected to my family, to my friends, to my old neighborhood. I started frequenting the local jazz clubs to plug into that feeling of being back home, to wash away the loneliness. Clubs such as Shelly’s ManneHole, The Lighthouse, and Marty’s on the Hill consistently featured top jazz performers. One day I saw an advertisement for the It Club announcing that John Coltrane would be appearing for a weekend engagement. I was excited because, although I had most of his records, I’d never seen him perform live. I had a slight connection with his drummer, Elvin Jones, who’d gone to high school with my uncle, Steven Alcindor, and I hoped that would be enough to get to meet “Trane.” It was. Elvin was happy to see me and hear news about my uncle Steven. Then he introduced me to John Coltrane.
At this time, John Coltrane was already considered one of the best saxophonists and composers in jazz. He’d played with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Johnny Hodges and was making sounds with his sax that nobody had heard before. But what most impressed me when I met him was his quiet, spiritual presence. I knew he’d gone through some personal changes in the past few years after he’d married Naima, a Muslim convert (as I would one day be). His submission to Islam helped him kick his problems with heroin and alcohol. His spiritual quest didn’t stop there; he’d studied Hinduism, the kabbalah (made popular today by such practitioners as Madonna, Mick Jagger, and Britney Spears), yoga, African history, and even the Greek philosophers. “During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening,” he once explained, “which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.” That year I’d met him, he’d released an album called Meditations, which he’d said was designed to uplift people: “To inspire them to realize more and more of their capacities for living meaningful lives. Because there certainly is meaning to life.” This selfless ambition brought him to study music from all over the world, searching for specific sounds that he hoped would even cure illness. He described his quest: “I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I’d like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he’d be broke, I’d bring out a different song and immediately he’d receive all the money he needed.” (Louis Armstrong had a similar belief in the healing powers of music: he would send records—a variety of sounds, not just his own—to mental institutions and the labor rooms in hospitals, believing the music would nurture people’s spirits.)
As I stood before Coltrane that night, shaking his hand, I could feel a warmth in his grip that seemed to come from some glowing source
within him. He was humble and patient enough to listen to me babble about all his records I owned. Between sets I got into a conversation with Jimmy Garrison, Coltrane’s bassist. He gave me an impromptu bass lesson in the dressing room. I also exchanged a few words with McCoy Tyner, the group’s piano player. But it was those few moments with John Coltrane that most impressed me. Often it’s best not to meet one’s heroes, because the experience can be disappointing, but this was the exception. The evening was even more special than I had hoped for.
If Miles Davis taught me something about dedication, passion, and personal style, John Coltrane taught me about having purpose. For him, it wasn’t enough to just play music to entertain; he wanted his notes to reshape the world, to make it a happier, more fulfilling place for everyone. Okay, that might have been too much for an eighteen-year-old kid to take on, but it made me realize that maybe basketball wasn’t just a game. Maybe, like jazz, it was an art form that also had the power to transform the audience. Maybe when they saw one of us make a difficult shot, they were inspired to try to do something that had before seemed impossible, but now seemed within reach. Maybe when they sat shoulder to shoulder, screaming in unison for their team, they felt like a team themselves, no longer isolated in climate-controlled cars, but like a church choir belting out a gospel song. And maybe they left the building a little happier with themselves and with their world.
Thanks to John Coltrane, I now felt part of all that.
Satchmo’s Wonderful World
I never met Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, but he also had a major impact on shaping an aspect of my personality. Earlier in this chapter I mentioned listening to him as a child, enjoying not just his lively style, but also his joyful attitude. But as I became older, I came to appreciate another less-known but courageous aspect of Satchmo: civil rights advocate.
To most people, even fans of his, that aspect of his life may come as a surprise. It’s certainly not what he’s known for. Instead, he’s known as the man who popularized jazz in America and abroad, among blacks and whites, from the time of the Harlem Renaissance until his death in 1971. Jazz critic Nat Hentoff describes his legacy: “The one undisputed fact of jazz history is that Louis was the first, stunningly original jazz soloist to set timeless standards for imagination, daring, virtuosity, rhythmic assurance and unconquerable spirit.” Billie Holiday put it in more sensual terms: “He didn’t say words, but somehow it just moved me so. It sounded like he was making love to me. That’s how I wanted to sing.” His smiling face and endearingly croaky voice were familiar all over the world. Yet, many people in the black community had a problem with his style. That huge toothy smile seemed to play up to the old stereotype of a shufflin’-grinnin’ Negro from a minstrel show. Was that happy-go-lucky trumpeter grinning onstage who he really was, or was that just a character he was playing to make himself more popular among whites? For many blacks, the jury was out as to where his heart was on the subject of black equality. Even my mom and dad, who were big fans of his music, would wonder from time to time about Louis’s civil rights position.
Then on September 18, 1957, the world learned his true feelings. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus defied federal orders to desegregate the schools by bringing in the National Guard to prevent African-American children from attending Little Rock Central High School. At the time, Louis Armstrong was so popular worldwide that the U.S. State Department had asked him to conduct a goodwill tour of the Soviet Union. Upon hearing what was going on in Little Rock, and disgusted at President Eisenhower’s lack of action in either stopping Governor Faubus or protecting the children, Louis stunned the world with his response. He canceled his trip to the Soviet Union, saying, “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell.” Then he accused President Eisenhower of being “two-faced” and of having “no guts,” and Governor Faubus of being an “uneducated plowboy.” The State Department accused Louis of providing propaganda to use against the United States, not realizing that what was going on in Little Rock gave the Soviets a lot more propaganda material than anything Louis had to say. When selecting Louis as one of the Top 100 Most Important People of the Century, Time magazine commented on the incident, stating that when the Little Rock standoff occurred, only Louis condemned it: “There was not a peep heard from anyone else in the jazz world. His heroism remained singular.”
The backlash was immediate. Recording sessions and concert dates were suddenly being canceled. But Satchmo wouldn’t back down. He took the barrage of criticism from some of the public and press without flinching. In my home—as in many other homes of African-Americans—my mom was pleasantly surprised by Louis’s determined stand. She’d always been a fan of Louis the musician, but from that day on she became a permanent fan of Satchmo the man. Louis’s civil rights stance never diminished. In 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was marching on Selma, Alabama, Louis watched the bloody attacks on the marchers by police while on tour in Copenhagen. Disgusted, he commented, “They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched.”
For me, Louis’s courage in standing up to President Eisenhower despite the consequences taught me something about the responsibility that someone in the public eye has to use their celebrity to make the world better. That’s been a goal of mine ever since. I’ve tried to take vocal and public stances whenever I thought a wrong was being committed, regardless of who was committing it, regardless of the public backlash. I think it would be a betrayal of Louis to do any less. Also, I hope the work I’ve done with various charities, just as Louis was so generous with charities, and the books I write about African-American history, will have some positive effect on the world. In other words, what he taught me was simply this: it’s not enough to be a good trumpet player or basketball player, you have to be a good member of your community. Louis’s outrage at racial injustice never diminished his cheerful hopefulness. He summed up his attitude in a letter he wrote to jazz critic Leonard Feather: “I’d like to recall one of my most inspiring moments, I was playing a concert date in a Miami auditorium. I walked on stage and there I saw something I’d never seen. I saw thousands of people, colored and white, on the main floor. Not segregated in one row of whites and another row of Negroes. Just all together—naturally. I thought I was in the wrong state. When you see things like that, you know you’re going forward.”
Jazz and Basketball
From everything you’ve read so far, there can be no doubt that jazz has made me a better person than I would have been without it. The music inspires my passion to participate fully and richly in life. And the jazz greats I’ve known, from Miles Davis to John Coltrane to Louis Armstrong to my dad, have inspired me to be disciplined, ambitious, caring, and dedicated to my community.
But jazz has also made me a better basketball player.
Now, if that statement motivates a bunch of young basketball hopefuls to rush to their computers and download classic jazz tracks onto their iPods, then I’m pleased. Because the values I learned from jazz to apply to basketball are values that apply off the court as well.
Many people unfamiliar with jazz think the music is all about the solo riffs. A single player suddenly jumping to the front of the stage, the spotlight shining brightly on him, while he plays whatever jumble of notes that pop into his head. But really, jazz is just the opposite. True, there are magnificent solos, but those moments aren’t the point of jazz, they are all part of the larger musical piece. Each person is playing as part of the team of musicians; they listen to each other and respond accordingly. When the time is right, one player will be featured, then another, and so on, depending upon the piece. Indeed there is improvisation, but always within a musical structure of a common goal.
Same with basketball. When you play basketball, everything is timing, just as with a song. You must be able to instantly react to the choices your teammates make. You must be able to coordinate your actions with your teammates’ and you must understand when you need to take over the
action—when to solo—and when to back off. The timing of group activity is a major part of basketball, as it is with jazz. A team of basketball soloists, without the structure of a common goal, may get TV endorsements for pimple cream, but it doesn’t win championships.
Many athletes listen to music while they train, whether it’s jogging, lifting weights, or just stretching. The type of music depends upon what motivates that individual. For me, jazz not only motivated me, but also helped me perfect my footwork on the court. Unlike some other types of music, jazz has a unique combination of being explosive yet controlled, measured yet unpredictable. The exact virtues necessary for effective footwork while in high school. Before every Saturday practice, I would listen to Sonny Rollins for a little motivation. Then I’d hit the gym floor with his music in my head and in my feet.
Jazz has also provided a valued source of camaraderie with other players. During my career with the NBA, some of the loneliness of those long road trips was eased by sharing my love of jazz with other players that were jazz enthusiasts, including Walt Hazzard, Spencer Haywood, and Wayman Tisdale. Wayman was also a bass player and released a few records himself. Most of the other guys also enjoyed pop, rhythm ’n’ blues, and reggae, but I stayed pretty faithful to jazz, listening to other genres only if jazz wasn’t available.
On the Shoulders of Giants Page 27
