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Full interview with Andy Bey

4.22.2010

**Recently Downbeat published an article I wrote about an interview i conducted with Andy Bey (http://www.andy-bey.com**) in late 2009. I interviewed him a week or two after i heard him play a solo show at Cornelia St. Cafe in the Village. The article and the interview was written in an attempt to learn & share a few of Andy's concepts, especially some of his unique ideas about the voice and its uses.

Sitting with Andy and listening to his answers was really invaluable, and i hope other folks - especially singers - can gain something from the interview. It gets kind of specific on voice stuff, but then, that's what i wanted to know about. You can read the Downbeat article in the May 2010 issue. The full interview follows. I arranged it with headers according to what topic we were discussing.

ANDY BEY INTERVIEW

REPERTOIRE

SV: Let's talk a bit about repertoire, someone who has been performing as long as you have, there have been a wide variety of standards, originals , covers, ever evolving originals, new ideas. When you settle down to prepare for a particular show , be it Cornelia or anywhere else, what is the criteria you’re using to take from that massive vocabulary, that massive book?

AB: Well, basically i’ve kind of walked away from certain things...not completely. I’m still immersed in certain forms, the standard, the show tune or whatever, but I’m really trying to explore my own music. I had always been working on my music, I sang my music in 1974 and even before that with Gary Bartz.

I always had that thing that I wanted to do, but it was always on hold. You do things with Horace Silver for like 20 years, Thad Jones/ Mel Lewis. You still have your own thing in mind, but you’re gathering this experience. It’s not a good or bad situation but is just something you can add on to your palette , that you can draw from , when you want to .

That’s how Ballads Blues & Bey emerged. ‘Cause I was trying to use my voice in a way, at that time, to show another dynamic. So I started really using more of my head voice and soft palette which I still like to do. That came from people only associating me with Horace Silver, as being the Big voice, the belter. But I always had light moments, so I wanted to bring those out in a recording.

SV: In ‘96, it's Ballads Blues & Bey. I don't think there was one original on there, it was all standards.

AB: All standards, even though I recorded a few.. I did a tune called “All Have a Job to Do”, and I actually did a Stevie Wonder tune called “Part-Time Lover”, in my head voice.

SV: And those didn’t make it on the record?

AB: They didn’t make it on the record.

SV: Interesting . And then the next year, out comes Shades of Bey. The repertoire is so diverse.. standards, other people’s songs, your own songs...

AB: Right, but they’re not really my tunes.

SV: “Believin’ It”?...

AB: I didn’t write “Believin’ It”, that was a Charles Davis tune that actually he did on Impulse with McCoy Tyner.. and (Herb) Jordan put lyrics to it. (this is Illumination! By the Elvin Jones/ Jimmy Garrison sextet, the original title is “Half and Half”)

When I got hooked up with Jordan the producer, he came up with the idea of these different songs. ‘Cause I didn’t know who the hell Nick Drake was, I knew of Sting but I wasn’t particular about singing “Fragile”, he kind of like convinced me, it was a good that I was able to do it, I don't regret it, but when it started getting to the point when I was doing everybody else’s music but mine I kind of rebelled.

SV: So if you were gonna make a record right now, would it basically mirror what I heard at Cornelia St.: a couple standards that we knew, Monk, but a lot of original music?

AB: Oh yeah. Definitely.

HARMONY AND WRITING

SV: In the long form blues, that you used to open up the set the other night...

AB: “There’s So Many Ways to Approach the Blues”.

SV: ...Yeah. We had the lyric, I would describe as human, it’s a human lyric; it's not esoteric, it comes from experience. But then underneath that, what’s happening? It's not 8 bars, it’s not a 12 bar, there was a lot of pulls and pushes. How does that come together for you?

AB: I was still thinking AABA form, some may have been 3 As (laughs). I don’t have no preconcieved thing, it wasn’t planned.. it just started happening. I had written all these lines, to get a rhythmic thing, almost monotonous in a way. Then these melodies started shaping up.

When I started writing, all the little melodies came first. I was still thinking in terms of the lines that I heard Sonny Rollins play, and Miles or Clifford Brown or Dizzy or Charlie Parker,

then the lyrics came later. When I wrote “Pretentious” and “There’s So Many Ways to Approach the Blues”, I was thinking in terms of – not like the vocalise music during that period, all those guys taking solos and writing lyrics to Charlie Parker- my mind was in a metaphysical vein, but not trying to preach to the world. But it was still more spiritual.

I been hearing this way for along time, since the 60s. I was writing these little skips & intervals on a little manuscript paper from the early 60’s, even with my sisters.

In the late 60’s, I was hanging out with all the cats in Chicago, Anthony Braxton and Muhal (Richard Abrams) and all those cats, Joseph Jarman. I was working on stuff during that period, writing a lot of lines. I kind of knew what I wanted to do.

SV: I get that sense, even going back to the 70s, like Experience & Judgement.

AB: some of the stuff I did was influenced by Indian music, (M.S) Subha Lakshmi, “Tune-Up”.

SV: I was just gonna mention “Tune-Up”, such big intervals. In the course of the first, opening bars, an octave and a tritone. One of the things i’ve noticed, about that song for example, there’s a lot of big, intervallic singing. When I think about writing a melody, or even singing a melody, it goes in a stepwise way. With you, it’s big steps, it’s tritones...

AB: ...stuff that I was practicing on on the piano.

SV: You’re hearing wider, so much wider than everybody else.

AB: That's what I’m playing, 12 tone rows.

I’m working on so many things. So many chordal type things in relationship to what I’m tryin to sing against. I’ve always been interested in polytonality, 12-tone rows and all kinds of dissonance,which I don't think my producer could hear. He was always using it as a little thing- little bit here, a little bit there-but I didn’t look it that way. It’s a concept .

I could write melodies from my ear and simplify it, it might be diatonic in some ways, but what I been hearing beyond that: I might play something like (sings a stepwise melody), but if I play a a B 7 raised 9^th with an E7 raised 9 against that, it's a whole different story.

SV: That's 12 of ‘em right there.

AB: right, it's the 12-tone, polytonal. You have to sing those scales to stimulate < your> ear. I am sitting at the piano practicing these augmented triads, it's sounds kind of out, but I m gonna do it.

, I would kinda slow the tempo down, I give them scales to stimulate their ears. Some of them would be going crazy cause i’d be transposing, not up a diatonic or chromatic scale: I would say sing this in C, and then sing it in F, and then sing it in Bb, sing it in Eb- you had to go in fourths, 'cause that’s almost like singing a song. I used to sing it in C for about maybe 10 rounds, maybe 25 rounds until they got it, then we would go to F. So we’d spend whole days on that.

SV: : Sometimes singers, myself included, will challenge ourselves: I’m hearing this, let it clash with the chord. When I get ready to perform it- a tri-tone, sharp 9 stuff like that- a little bit dissonant, but it's supported in the right hand of the piano, or maybe the alto saxophone, a guitar: someone’s doubling the vocal line. The voice slides and it cracks and it doesn’t have the same hammers as an instrument. Singers sing dissonance, but unless they’re scatting, you hear it supported.

You’re a piano player , I’m not, I might tell the piano player, well the tri-tone is in the melody, so please could you catch that. You have all the facility to do what you’re singing. We mentioned “Believin’ It”, it's all over . Maybe it was Geri Allen or maybe you.

AB: On “Believin’ It”? I played the piano on that .

SV: Yeah. Geri Allen would have heard the other thing and naturally wanted to catch it. Here you are playing an Eb minor 6-9, I think it was a C on top, a II-V, and I’m hearing you sing basically an F major scale. It’s two different keys. That’s just one example. It was at Cornelia St., too: the melody as sung by you is not supported. Wow, that’s trust .

AB: Yeah, I might play a G7 ninth chord and I might (sings)...

SV: Yeah, the voice is on its own. You happen to be controlling both ends, but the voice is doing its thing independently.

AB: That's what the polytonality is about. But I don't want it to be obvious, I’m trying to make it musical, make it sound natural and even relate it to the blues in a way – not calculated.

SV: How did you get you wanted to do it like that?

AB: I like the subtly polytonal, with a blues feeling. I kinda knew that in the 70s , in Experience and Judgement.

SV: Yeah, it’s all over there.

AB: I’m not bringing that much attention in a sense. The vocal line is kind of dynamic cause I got a dynamic voice, but I m singing it low enough. But I always think of it as a dialogue. Voice & piano. Not like me playing for myself, but call & response.

VOICE DEVELOPMENT

SV: Your voice can handle big ranges, but where would you like to be seated, in terms of a pasagio, in terms of where the voice is hanging out.

AB: Well, Experience & Judgement is more me even though I’m singing somewhat out of my range.

SV: It gets high, and full voice too..

AB: Well I was younger too!! … But in some ways I think it's coming back. I got more intelligence now. I sing low enough, then I used to sing too high anyway. Horace never wrote songs in the right key for me anyway. He used to always brag and say ‘I don't never have to change keys for Andy’.. cause he never wrote none! He never tried to change, he just wrote it with the horns in mind.

SV: I’ve been there..

AB: I had to juggle around his music to sing it lower and then I would go into the higher thing.

SV: What if you took a standard like Satin Doll - what key would you do it in?

AB: I do it in G, low enough in the first chorus. In the 2^nd, I could get higher, start belting and...

SV: It allows for that in that key.

AB: Right.

SV: If you were with the trio would you do it the same?

AB: Probably so. I used to do “But Not for Me” in the key of Eb; I do it in Bb now, a fourth down, and I can still use enough gusto in the 2^nd chorus without screeching.

SV: A fourth, that's a big difference. if you had said a whole step or a half step, OK, I get that , but a fourth- what accounted for a big change like that?

AB: It just gives my bottom voice, which has gotten bigger, deeper as I got older. I'm what they call a high baritone, bordering on tenor, but my falsetto is very high, it's like a mix now.

SV: But Experience & Judgement, that's like a tenor range.

AB: Right, that's like a tenor range, I was singing Cs. .. I used to do a lot of exercises, I used to put books on my stomach, somebody told me that was a good exercise and I must have wore it out. But now it's not so much about that as it's about singing long tones, which I wasn't doing for a while but I'm back to doing.

SV: if I don't do long tones, I fall apart. My voice wants me to fall apart by not singing long tones. But books on the stomach! I wanna come back to that.

AB: Yes, it absolutely does strengthen your diaphragm. I used to lay on the floor and put 30 lbs. of books and you just breathe in, counting, expanding with the rib cage, and then take in a short breath thru the nose, and then breathe again and hold it, it's really really good. But I don't do it now. I sing a tune on vowel, ‘OO’, and I might think in terms of blues chorus, like 4 or 8 bar blues, and hold it long as I can. And I just breathe out slow (demonstrates) ‘OO’....

When you're singing you don’t take a lot of breath 'cause you fill up the lungs too much, you just take a little breath, and you just catch it. That’s how I was able to hold those notes on “River Man”. 'Cause that helps to be able to sing in the really soft palette.

SV: That is a special space.

AB: Oh yeah.

SV: The trickiest part for me is the lower part of my falsetto, like in the pasagio, it's mixing in, it wants to crack.

AB: People could sing high (demonstates). Anybody could do that, but when you do it in the mid- range, right where that chest is. When you sing in that chest mix. I gotta lot of chest mix. I don't mind using it, I just try to use everyhting that’s available now.

SV: And “River Man” came about in a way 'cause you were trying to get away from big, belting.

AB: Yeah, I was trying to get away from that.

SV: But now, if you were gonna do it what range would you wanna record? Sounds like you may wanna record lower, the way the keys are.

AB: I can still sing hard low, and I can still sing hard pretty high. But it's not about just singing the high note because you can sing high.

SV: It's when you want to, on that 2^nd chorus.

AB: Right, that 2^nd chorus. I can kind of stretch it the way I wanna do it, but at the same time, I feel I can use the breath in the lower voice depending on the song. In some of the songs I’m singin now, there’s some edge there.

UPBRINGING/ INFLUENCES

AB: Blues , R& B, I was always aware of that. Ruth Brown, Wynonie Harris, B.B. King and and a singer that never really made it that I did some shows with when I was a kid. He was a blues singer by the name of Andrew Tibbs.

I grew up around gospel music as a kid. Certain things stay with you- from the time I was in high school I loved modern classical music... all the Broadway music that some of my some of family members love, and the pop stuff like the hit singers of the day.

Billy Eckstine was one of my favorite 'cause I loved the sound of his voice. And Nat King Cole was always somebody that I loved, that he could play so well and that he sang a certain way, like nobody. 'Cause his musicianship was impeccable . and before I understood what the word Taste meant he had it. It was something about the way he could just sing a melody, and sing it with so much soul without doing a lot ,and swing it .

With all due respect to Sinatra and his ablity, Nat to me had the secret -he could take any song and make it something, and not do a lot to it. Not have that attitude of 'I’m the swingingest cat in the world'. Sitting at the piano, the way he comped for himself, it was so connected to his phrasing and his abillity to swing in such a way and making you love it, and still had this thing of saying 'I want to make you happy'. I don’t have that, I guess I have what I have.

But Nat had a way of giving it to you and making you love it. It wasn’t so much about his voice, he wasn’t in the same voice that B (Eckstine) or Tony Bennett or you name it, the guys that supposed to have the chops. But Nat had chops in a way that his intonation was impeccable, his rhythm was impeccable, without even trying.

SV: Like you said, it must have been a piano thing- I remember listening to one of my first Nat King Cole records – was just him, Lester Young, I think it was Buddy Rich.

AB: Oh yeah.

SV: I dot think he sang a note on that record.

AB: No he didn’t sing at all, I got that record.

SV: His comping is so percussive, he’s coming out of this stride stuff, and then when he’s singing it's such a contrast. Some of these other singers they dig in. but his voice was always a little lighter to me, but must have been that pulse at the piano, that swing in the pocket.

AB: He never felt he was a singer. But he did say I know I have the soul, I have the feeling . And you know he was one I listened to a lot.

I got records by all of them, like Sarah, Ella, Billie, Dinah, Carmen, Betty Carter . I love Johnny Mathis for what he does. You get to a point where you’re not listening for how hard somebody swings, yeah that’s cool too, but when I got to a certain point, I started listening differently.... even though I loved, still, rhythm.

I love the blues. I love Aretha Franklin, there are so many people that I can say that have touched me. Some people in the pop world or the rock world, I like James Taylor- I like the things he does; I like Bonnie Raitt.

JAZZ AND SPIRIT

SV: At what point are you like, OK, now go be a jazz singer?

AB: Betty Carter used to say, jazz is bigger than the word ‘jazz’. You can be an artist, and if something catches your ear, it might be a country & western tune, it might be a rock tune, it might be anything. Nowadays you got all these different choices. Jazz- in terms of the tradition- the world doesn’t really seem to care about, but you can’t worry about that.

If you got a muse in you, that’s strong. It takes years- I’m 70 years old, I’m still looking for something, I’m still inspired by something. The most important thing is that you can keep your mind open, and you can still swing with the best of them and you can do whatever you wanna do, and you do it in a way that can reach.

I’m talking beyond the music, it is about your connection to something. I don't care what it is, I don't care who it is, but you're connected to something, somebody's gonna feel it, if you really believe it,-- cause they can tell when you're shucking & jiving.

The blues is something that anybody can feel. If you're giving it to them from your gut – it's not something that you have to ‘figure it out.’ when you listen to Muddy Waters sing you don't have to ‘figure it out’, ‘what is he doing?’. You feel something there, them groans and them moans, you know what it is.

You cant explain a feeling. People say God this and God that, but when you use your interpretation of what God is, that’s coming from your intellect, your limited intellect. But when you get beyond yourself and let the spirit take over, that’s a whole different ball game, and nobody can explain that to you.

When Billie Holiday sang something, even in the most down period at the end of her life, there were times when she was scuffling to try to make a connection or something, but it was still there. Even though she was going through all the pain- the voice had practically disintegrated; you really hear it on Lady in Satin. That life essence, that life thing: if you don't live it, it's not going to happen.

You gotta do something that the people can relate to, but you do what you can relate to. If it communicates, good. Some are gonna like it, some hate it, but you can’t worry ‘bout who’s gonna like it.

It's hard to say what you wanna do, you do it when the moment comes. I wanna be that free to explore harmonically, in any way that I want to. don't know where it's going, and I don't really know, I just want to be open to the process.