Sound Colour Vibration

Q&A with Larry Coryell
Conducted by Nick Abitia
Summer 2013

Nick: Thank you again for your time Larry, we really appreciate you sitting down with us today!

Larry: Your welcome!

Nick: Lets talk about the early days of music in your life, what drew you toward the guitar?

Larry: Well, I was a musical young person and I initially was playing the piano. I started gravitating toward the guitar when I became more aware of the instrument and I just found the guitar to be more attractive than the piano. I was just naturally drawn to it that’s all I can say. It just seemed like I was able express myself better on that instrument. The piano is a little bit more traditional and the guitar was kind of the new thing, it was really the new instrument for my generation.

Nick: Can you talk a little about your work with Chico Hamilton? How did that relationship come to be?

Larry: Well I became very good friends with the guitar player in Chico Hamleton’s group. He was a Hungarian guy named Gabor Szabo and I was very interested in the way he played because he played differently. He was an innovator and he played differently on purpose. He didn’t want to play like the jazz guitarist of the time, who he respected of course. He felt it important to develop his own voice, so I followed him in his footsteps. By the time I was playing with Chico I was very conscious that I needed to develop my own voice.

Nick: How about the time that you spent with The Free Spirits? Was that an adequate outlet for developing your voice?

Larry: The Free Spirits was more of a ‘band’ thing. We were trying to get into the marketplace that was occupied by groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, frankly, those were the paradigms in The Free Spirits. At that time, successful efforts in pop music came from many different sources. Sometimes they came from folk music, other times they came from straight blues, other times they came from R&B, and still other times they came from imitations to The Beatles like English music hall type of compositions. So we just thought if we could do something good, doing it the way we know, maybe we could throw our hat in the ring and be successful like the Beatles.

Nick: How about the Vanguard days? Do you feel that time allowed you to pursue that creativity?

Larry: I was focusing more on being a ‘jazz guy’ by the time I started with Vanguard. I still wanted to infuse jazz with influences that normally weren’t entering the realm of ‘jazz technique,’ or the realm of ‘jazz conception.’ And I think that first record was a good try. I had a lot of different things going, I had Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. The problem with that first record was that it was so poorly recorded – that was neither here nor there – but I remember seeing letters go back to the person from vanguard records, complaining about the recording quality of that record.

Nick: You worked with the great Eddie Kramer on Barefoot Boy, can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like?

Larry: Well, Eddie Kramer was a modern engineer. He knew how to listen to the kind of guitar that I was trying to play. It was still a fundamentally jazz voice, but it was because I was so influenced by Hendrix, we had that in common. The fact that he was Hendrix’s engineer and I had known Jimi, worked for both of us. He had a good sound. He had a very good sound.

Nick: Speaking of Jimi, can you talk a little bit about the time that you did share with Hendrix? Do any stories come to mind?

Larry: Well, I spent a lot of time being a groupie for Hendrix because I wasn’t anybody too special and he was on top of the world. He was touring the world, making big records, traveling in limousines, he had an unlimited amount of money, and the women were just throwing themselves at him. My focus was not so much on the trappings of his success, but the way his talent and his music and musicianship contributed to his success. I had grown up around blues and around rock, and found a lot of attractive qualities around blues and rock, that could be translated to my own voice. He was a very good example at an artist just between ‘rock’ and ‘roll.’

Nick: Can you talk a little bit about those little jam societies that were around back then. What was it like for guitar players and musicians at the time?

Larry: Well, it was great! I remember one time we were playing a club when I was in the band called The Free Spirits. I remember we were playing and all of a sudden Randy Brecker and Dave Liebman came into the club and grabbed their horns. And I turned around and Joe Beck had walked into the club with his guitar and started to play. Somebody recorded it, and its an incredible listening experience. I also remember one time in London when I went to see Maynard Ferguson. Maynard said, “I hope you have your guitar because I’m going to need you to sit in.” He knew that I liked Indian music and he had a band piece that was based on some Indian music ideas. He had a melody that was kind of Asian, Eastern, and he taught me the tune right there on the stage, and we played it, and it was great! A lot of times you had to play it better when you sat in with other people than when you sat in with your own band, I don’t know why. I guess it may be the surprise, and the spontaneity

Nick: Introducing the Eleventh House was an extremely important record in the minds of music historians and collectors. What do you feel were the elements that added to its unique character and what separated it from the other albums of the time?

Larry: Well at that time, Return to Forever was doing their thing and The Mahavishnu Orchestra was doing their thing. Those were all fusion bands consisting of jazz musicians. We were trying to show our respect for the jazz music that had come before us by creating our own version of jazz, which we called ‘jazz rock,’ or eventually ‘fusion.’ We brought in a lot of elements of funk, and that was very strong because, you gotta remember, pop music had Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin and people liked that. That was considered really important music at the time to the average listener and to those of us who were doing music as a profession. We heard something in that music that we felt we could incorporate into our original voice that we were formulating in bands like The Eleventh House. Even if we were doing something that was funky, Randy Breckere would go off on a tangent, a halfstep below the tonic, a half step above the tonic, and create these beautiful dissonance that raised your eyebrows when you heard it.

Nick: In 1977 you played on the Charles Mingus record, Three or Four Shades of Blue. What was it like working with him?

Larry: Incredible! It was fantastic! It was something I really wanted to do. Randy Brecker, when he and I became friends in 1964, kept talking about how he wanted to play with Mingus music and wanted to play with Mingus. I started listening closer to Mingus, and I realized what Randy was talking about. So when they pulled me in on one of those records, I just thought ‘here I am! …put me in couch! I want to be around the great one!’ The great Charles Mingus. He was a great mentor. A fantastic mentor!

Nick: That is amazing. That same year, you put out three more albums. How were you managing your time throughout all of this? That is unbelievable!

Larry: Well I was just lucky. I was presented with a lot of good opportunities. I liked to play a lot and I also liked also to play in different styles. You know if we were doing a Mingus thing, we would focus on that paradigm, or if I was doing an acoustic solo thing, I wanted to focus on that style. That’s how I separated the different projects in each genre. I’m still doing that.

Nick: In 1978 you released 7 albums, for someone to do that today is unheard of. What advice do you have for other musicians who are to following in those steps, working on multiple projects, and trying to stay true to themselves?

Larry: You still must maintain your own voice. You still have to maintain your integrity. The integrity of the individual musician develops and has a life of its own. Even though its continuously evolving, it is still, his or her thing. When you go into different projects as a musician, you will often have to approach the music according to the project. For example if you’re going into something that’s heavily bebop, you gotta get with that feeling and do that bebop thing 100%. Or if you’re doing something that’s really more outsides of that, which is post-bop very often, then you have to adjust your phrasing to fit that paradigm. What’s really important, if I could give any tips to the younger musicians coming up, I would say: Develop your own voice, develop your own way of playing, develop your own concept. Also, when you’re playing, don’t play everything that’s in your mind. Try to leave more holes, try to make space, because that unexpectedly opens things up for more interesting improvisation. Learn how to not finish a phrase every time you’re trying to play one.

Nick: Absolutely beautiful advice, thank you so much Larry. Is there anything right now that you are working on?

Larry: (Laughs) Funny you should bring that up! The first week in September the eleventh house is playing at Jazz Alley in Seattle for four nights (information here).

Nick: Larry, thank you so much for your time

Larry: Thank you!