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Interviews
Jeff "Tain" Watts: Moods and Melodies of a Drummer
R.J. DeLuke
R.J. DeLuke is an indefatigable jazz fan and arbiter elegantiarum who aspires to ultimate hipness; also an upstate NY freelance writer for various media.JW: Yeah. It's a really beautiful story of an artist. To show that Miles did his stuff in the 70s, and he felt like he wasn't hearing anything, so he took a break. And then came back in conjunction with Marcus Miller and some other people. But people should know that music that came out influenced jazz today. Miles also managed to have an influence on pop music. So texturally, I think that artists like A Tribe Called Quest, or Erykah Badu, certain feelings and grooves and colors that are used by people like Mary J. Blige, probably Sting and probably some other people, a lot of that texturally and feel-wise wouldn't sound the way it sounds today if Miles Davis hadn't specifically done that stuff in the 80s.
It's cool. You don't have to say it's oo-bop-shabam jazz. But, when you cover an important artist, they needed to show that whole arc, and show how he had an influence on all this music. The stuff from the 70s is still influencing like drum and bass, jungle music and also popular music. To take a break, and be in the center of something that influences music that's going on right now, whether you like it or not. Just say something about how you can use jazz to do different things, other than just play your baddest solo.
AAJ: How did the "Tonight Show" thing go? You were already with Branford.
JW: Yeah. I'd been with Branford. I stopped working with Wynton in 1988. Over the next year and a half I was just bouncing around. I did some work with McCoy Tyner. I did almost a year touring with George Benson, doing mostly his pop thing, but at European festivals it became a more jazzy thing. We did things in conjunction with people like Jack McDuff and Clark Terry and James Moody. I definitely learned some things from that. The Branford put together his quartet. We toured for a couple of years.
The quartet became a trio for a time and we worked on some other music. I was able to learn some things from that setting. And then the opportunity to do the "Tonight Show" presented itself. I actually think that Branford didn't want to do it. He didn't see himself doing it. The guys in the band said, "You might want to look at this." It was actually something we never actually pursued. It wasn't a question of "Let's do it," so something can happen or it was such a happening job. It was more of a sense of, "Why not do it?"
AAJ: Branford didn't seem comfortable in the non-music role Where he'd banter with Jay Leno.
JW: Who Branford? Yeah.
AAJ: I don't know if Branford influenced it, but it seems like you guys had more jazz guests. I remember when you had Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams, Herbie and Wallace Roney in the tribute after Miles died. That probably wouldn't have happened if Branford wasn't there.
JW: There was definitely more accommodating jazz during the first couple years that we were there. Sonny Rollins came on. Joe Henderson came on. Also, we played with Betty Carter there. The Lincoln Center Orchestra was on. Harry Connick Jr., who will still be on there, for other reasons.
But, at a certain point the show was really getting beaten up by the David Letterman show, as far as ratings, which is the bottom line. There is a tendency within the hierarchy to keep pointing fingers until you get somewhere where everybody can really point the fingers. It was really easy to point the finger at this bunch of New York guys that moved all the way out here and they're playing a bunch of crazy stuff. They instructed us to play things that were "upbeat and recognizable." Those were the specific words. So, we kind of did that.
We started out playing fusion, jazz, Latin jazz, rock, a variety of things. It kind of turned into that. After a while it wasn't upbeat and recognizable enough, so they specifically cut the jazz jugular vein. Then we really had to sneak and disguise jazz to play it at all during the show. Even though it's just to keep the audience excited during commercials. We used to play with a lot of musical guests and artists on the show, but some people in the group really didn't want to do that. But I thought that was one thing that really kept it somewhat interesting for me. So we started backing up less musical guests, and we just really turned into a hokey house band.
The whole experience was fun for like maybe a year, a year and a half. I played with Lou Rawls, Johnny Mathis, Elton John. It was definitely fun on that level. But after a while the grim reality set in that when you do something over an extended period, it becomes who you are. I started to see that's who I was. I'd grab my lunchbox and jump on the Freeway in my nice car and drive to the valley and work with these people every day, every day, week after week.
