Jon Hendricks On Learning How to Communicate

Ben Sidran: On one song, he wanted to keep a take where I was playing piano and I didn’t really know the song.

David Gerlach: That’s pianist Ben Sidran. He’s played with everyone from Van Morrison, Diana Ross, the Rolling Stones, Steve Miller Band. But things didn’t seem to click at this one recording session back in the early 1970s. He was playing with jazz lyricist and king of scat, Jon Hendricks.

Ben Sidran: I appealed to him by saying, “Let’s do another version.” And he said, “No, I’ll never sing it better. We should use that take.” But I said, “Jon, I’m making a lot of mistakes.” He said “Ben, you don’t understand: Sometimes the mistakes are the only parts that’s jazz.”

David Gerlach: In this edition of Blank on Blank, learning how to communicate and the swing of language.

[Music: Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan – “Cousin Mary”]

David Gerlach: Over a five-year stretch in the mid-1980s, Ben Sidran hosted a really remarkable show on NPR. He sat down with legends Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie. I reached out to Ben to see if we could bring some of these remarkable conversations to you, our listeners. Our first remix is a conversation Ben had with his old friend—that guy from the recording session—Jon Hendricks. And Hendricks is any interesting story. He was headed to a career in law until he was at a club in his hometown when he met Charlie Parker. Yet, despite the stamp of approval from Bird, Hendricks says he literally had to learn how to speak jazz.

[Music: Jon Hendricks and the Horace Silver Quintet – “The Preacher”]

Jon Hendricks: You know I came from a very straight-laced, staid family. My father was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal church. And he was the cultural and the moral foundation of our entire neighborhood in my hometown. So we had to exemplify all the things for which he stood. We had to…When we got up in the morning, we had to pray. Before went to sleep at night, we prayed. We learned very early that we are children of a living God and that we bow our head to God, but to no man. So we were militant in our self-respect. So I had a straight life. Never engaged in gambling. There was no alcohol in the house. No smoking. We never used any profane language.

[Music: Jon Hendricks – “Gimme That Wine”]

Jon Hendricks: That’s the way I grew up. Then when I started singing jazz, and I had to consort (laughs) with these musicians, I had to maintain two vocabularies. I couldn’t come to the gig and say: “My wife and I went to a cinema today.” Which would be the way I would normally speak if I were in university. I would say: “Me and my bed buddy took in a flick.” (Laughs) It gave me a much more broad spectrum on life and outlook on life. To this day, I think the language of the American jazz musician is the most functional and, in its way of expressing itself, the most beautiful of all languages. It’s the greatest way to speak, ever.

[Music: Jon Hendricks & Friends – “Shiny Stockings”]

Jon Hendricks: I always try to swing, whatever I do. That’s what I got most from singing with good jazz musicians. You don’t have to swing just on the bandstand. Everything you do can swing. The way you relate to your fellow man—that can swing. The way you pick up your little child and bounce him. There’s a swing to that. Everything can swing. I think everything in nature does swing.

[Music: “Shiny Stockings” continues]

Jon Hendricks: When you are improvising, it’s no mind on the earth at work. Because when you approach that with your mind of the earth, your earthly mind, you don’t even know what that is. And I can see when you speak to jazz musicians about solos that they’ve done, they’re apt to say, “What solo? When?” Because it’s not they who did it; it’s whatever muse speaks through them that has done all solos.

[Music: Lambert, Hendricks & Ross – “Untitled”]

Jon Hendricks: And they are perhaps the last person you should ask about that. That’s when I found that—when I approached myself. I myself was the last authority on what I had done. Because I had no idea. I had to relearn what I had done. I felt stupid.

[Music: Dizzy Gillespie & Jon Hendricks – “Untitled”]

Jon Hendricks: Your own is further away from you than anything. Have you ever had a dream and you’re slowly waking up. And as you awaken, you want to remember this dream. And as you realize you want to remember it, it’s fading. And then when you’re fully awake, it’s totally gone. Has that ever happened to you?

Ben Sidran: Oh, yes.

Jon Hendricks: That’s what it is. Whatever that is, that’s what it is.

[Jon Hendricks begins to sing]

David Gerlach: Many, many thanks to Ben Sidran for allowing us to bring you this interview. Read the transcript, hear the entire conversation, plus more talks with jazz legends at bensidran.com. Amy Drozdowska produced this Blank on Blank with me. Our sound logo comes to us from Jeffrey Alan Jones. And for all the journalists, interviewers, non-fiction authors and documentary filmmakers out there: we want to hear your unheard interviews. So drop us a line to interviews@blankonblank.org. Blank on Blank is presented by the Public Radio Exchange. PRX.org. That’s all for now. I’m David Gerlach. Keep listening.

[Jon Hendricks continues singing until end]