Meet Mikel Combs
Since 1994, John Goldsby has been a member of the Westdeutscher
Rundfunk Big Band (the Cologne Radio Big Band). The son of a Baptist
minister, John was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He played
piano, guitar, and electric bass before taking up the double bass at
age 18. His early musical experiences include work with hometown jazz
greats Jimmy Raney, Helen Humes, and Jamey Aebersold. In 1979, John got
the gig with the house trio at a jazz club in Louisville that brought
in famous jazz soloists to play with the trio. For almost one year,
John played with some of the legends of jazz including: Jay McShann,
Buddy Tate, Johnny Hartman, Barney Kessel, Tom Harrell, Dave Liebman,
Buddy DeFranco, and others. When this gig ended, John knew he had to
move to New York. In 1980, he put the bass in the car and made his
move...
Get to know more about John Golsby...
MC: Diving right in, what are some of the ways you see jazz being continued and/or
expanded throughout Europe, acoustically and
electrically?
JG: I think especially in the last ten years or so, jazz has
really come into its own as a world music. The internet and overall
access to the music has contributed a lot to its expansion. European
musicians used to have to wait until the summer festivals to hear what
the American players were doing. The Americans probably hardly ever
heard what the Europeans were doing, except for maybe some ECM records.
With the record business, it used to be that a band recorded a record
that was available a year later. Now you can go on the internet and log
in live at Smalls and hear exactly what's going on there in real time.
The state-of-the-art in jazz does not seem so remote anymore.
Europeans do not see American-rooted jazz as a bad thing, but a lot of
them do not see that as the only thing. There are many more players
here in my opinion, which will only play their own music—no standards,
no familiar jazz tunes. They might appreciate Coltrane, but they would
never practice Giant Steps, because they see that as something that has
already been done. The process of "imitation, emulation and innovation"
(Clark Terry) is not so ingrained in jazz pedagogy in Europe.
MC: Of those elements, if any, what are the ones that carry the most weight?
JG: A big difference seems to me to be the fact that many
European musicians want to do their own thing—they want to play music
that comes from their background and upbringing and put their personal
voice on it from the time they are students. A lot of them try to do
this before they have mastered basic instrumental jazz skills. It is
actually a very pure approach, but I feel like many of them spend a lot
of time re-inventing the wheel so to say.
