So they left Newark prior to the uprising or riots…

Yes, they weren’t here. In 1967 they were in Florida.

But you were here?

I was here. I was here; as a matter of fact, the night of the riot, I was on my way to Canada. And… Baraka and some of his people came by my pad. See, a lot happened during that time. John Coltrane died. You know? I remember when I was in Canada, the first or second night that I opened there in Toronto, we got the word that Trane had died and I had just left Newark. But Baraka came over to my house during the riot… I don’t know if I should say all that went down, but anyway. He came by; a stop before they were doing their thing. I was on my way to Canada, but I stopped to entertain them for a while and I went downtown. On my way downtown to Penn Station or wherever I was going to get the bus and I was dodging and it was weird… very weird. I had my horn and was trying to get out of town. The first night of the riots.^[7]

We had the whole spirit of what was going on in the world… Civil Rights, the Sixties… the revolution… that whole energy. The whole thing. We were uncontainable.

But, another fast forward, and this is weird… I don’t know how… in 1967 I met my wife before she became my wife. I went to Europe with Archie Shepp. This was the first, either the JVC or the Newport Jazz Festival had gone to Europe. For the first time it was taking it from Newport to an international tour. And Miles Davis was the head of the show. Everybody was on the show. Sarah Vaughan. The Thelonious Monk Big Band. It was a hell of a show.^[8]

And we were the cats: we had Archie, Roswell Rudd, Jimmy Garrison, and Beaver Harris. That was the group. We went over there and tore up Europe. We had the whole spirit of what was going on in the world… Civil Rights, the Sixties… the revolution… that whole energy. The whole thing. We were uncontainable. Nobody could do nothin’ with us… Miles, no one. Miles was very angry at us; they changed our spot to last because we would get a standing ovation that would last close to a half an hour. And that would cut into the time for them to come on, you dig? So they changed our spot to last. After the tour was over we stayed four months after; one club called Le Chat Qui Pêche in Paris. Madame Ricard was the owner, a very old lady, and she owned a club called Le Chat Qui Pêche, which means the little pussy cat.^[9] It was the most prominent jazz club in Paris. We stayed there six weeks.

You said that the band had the spirit of the Sixties, in a sense, the power and enthusiasm. Do you think your music has something to say about the social disturbances of the Sixties?

I’ll put it like this: it wasn’t my music… I was playing with Archie Shepp.

I know he’s a political cat.

See I was a part of that. I want to make this clear: I am a jazz artist. I don’t want to pretend to be something that I’m not. I have been involved with groups that were considered revolutionary groups. That’s because…uh, I had a hard time. It seemed the younger generation embraced me; I was the first trombonist to be identified with the avant-garde. Even though I played with mainstream cats, hardboppers, I had created a form of music to put the trombone in that music. You know. I’m not saying I was the first one to do it, but I was the first one to have major exposure. Therefore, in Leonard Feather’s Encyclopedia it was written that I was the first trombone player of the Sixties to be identified with the avant-garde jazz. It didn’t list anyone’s name but mine. The reason is because my exposure, that it was on Blue Note, which was the main jazz company in the world at the time. That gave credibility to the avant-garde and opened the door for several of the avant-garde pioneers such as Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor and Eric Dolphy to record on that label; they knew my music and the groups that I recorded as guinea pigs to find out that that kind of music worked. They was ready to tear at me. After they saw what I did on Some Other Stuff they was ready to kill me! Because Alfred was out of town when I recorded that and Frank Wolff was the A&R person. Alfred wanted to kill me. [Imitates Lion in a German accent] “Are you crazy… you recorded that?” [laughs]

Oh, man. They found out that all of my music was already published in my company, they really didn’t like that!^[10] They dropped me like a hot potato.

They didn’t ask you to record again?

That’s right. They dropped me like a hot potato…. I recorded with other people a couple of times; but before that they wanted to sign me exclusively. I was rewarded when they did that. I didn’t do that to be funny. I put my music there about a year before I even started recording with them. That was done behind a young lady that was my friend at the time and she was working for Marv Davidson’s lawyer, Harold Levett, and Bruce Wright who was a lawyer at the time before he became judge. Remember they called him “Turn ’em loose Bruce”?^[11] You don’t remember that. And my company was set up at the same time as John Coltrane’s company, Jocal, Cannonball’s, and everybody’s, so I just thought it was the natural thing to do. Now, all those cats were considered to be really well-established musicians; “You’re just coming on the scene and you’re telling me….”