SAMUEL BLASER: ROUTES

SINGLES

Silver Dollar From A Green Island

A music festival is a long journey through sound in a short space of time, be it a few days or a fortnight. These events can also plant the seeds for new work that grows in the weeks, months or years after the final notes have been heard and the artists left town. This is the case for Samuel Blaser’s album Routes. The point of departure for this stellar groove adventure was the Tampere Jazz Happening in Finland.

At the 2018 edition of the event, the Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser appeared with the veteran American saxophone star Oliver Lake. During downtime after the concert Blaser shot the breeze with Tampere’s artistic director Juhamatti Kaupinnen, soon discovering that the two were bound by a shared love of reggae. Unbeknownst to many, the latter also records under the name Kuhnafar-I. An alliance of sorts led to notable happenings. Blaser made a guest appearance on Kuhnafar-I’s Dub One. The horn player and composer was thereafter invited to put together an international sextet that would interpret the songbook of Don Drumond, one of the most gifted and enigmatic artists to have emerged from the golden age of Jamaican music.

“His playing was unique, and the melodies he created very touching. I was intrigued by his life, which was so mysterious to me,” Blaser says of the legendary trombonist, whose music he first heard some 15 years ago. 

“I really love the way he improvised… he was clearly ‘living it and living in it’. It was always simple, extremely melodic with lots of soul. That's when I started to discover the trombone in a context other than classical and jazz.”

Drummond was a pivotal member of The Skatalites, the group that helped to usher in the revolutionary sound of ska, whose sparky, skanking rhythms in the ‘50s laid the foundation for rocksteady in the ‘60s and reggae in the ‘70s. When Blaser was a student at La Chaux-De-Fonds Conservatory in the early 2000s, he performed with local combos that had fallen under the spell of these styles. A magical new artistic world opened up. The boogie got into the boneman’s bones.   

Furthermore, Blaser had the chance to hone his understanding of the many intricacies and subtleties of Jamaican music by working with the likes of dub innovator Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, poet Oku Onuora and multi-instrumentalist-bandleader Dennis Bovell. Most importantly of all he attended jam sessions in Switzerland at which he was able to hear up close, in person, one of Don Drummond’s inspirational artistic heirs, the great Rico Rodriguez. “That was the first time I heard an authentic trombone in this music,” he explains. “Rodriguez often came to Neuchâtel to see his dentist and huge fan of his music. Back then, he took advantage of those trips, to perform with local bands.

Since the 2008 release of his album Seventh Heaven, with guitarist Scott Dubois, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver, Blaser has become a prominent member of both the Swiss and European improvised music scenes. His collaborations with forward-thinking mavericks such as pianist Benoit Delbecq and guitarist Marc Ducret have revealed astute phrasing and a richness of tone, which moves seamlessly from floating sensuality to ballooning aggression to create appealingly strange soundscapes. The Drummond project was, in keeping with the source of inspiration, more groove-based, and the band that Blaser led at Tampere featured players with a command of calypso, reggae, salsa and African music.

Bassist Ira Coleman, pianist Alex Wilson, the artistic director of Routes, drummer Dion Parson, saxophonists Soweto Kinch and Michael Blake, and guitarist Alan Weekes, all performed magnificently. While retaining the off-centre rhythmic tantalization and attention to detail of Jamaican music, Blaser’s group brought a distinct freshness to the stage. 

“The main challenge was creating our own musical world without falling into the trap of becoming a tribute band,” explains Blaser, who also researched his subject thoroughly. “Reading the fascinating biography written by musicologist Heather Augustyn helped me connect to Drummond and imagine what he was like as person.

To create my own tunes, I imagined the context he might have grown up in and the kind of music he would listen to. Knowing that he had spent a lot of time in the Wareika Hills with Count Ossie, Nyabinghi rhythm is a central to my album. I also took my inspiration from beautiful melodies of Jamaican folk repertoire.”

When it came to recording the album Blaser decided to expand the line-up. “We kept the original Tampere band and added a few extra guests like Carroll Thompson, Steve Turre, Glenn Ferris, Edwin Sanz and John Fedchock. Having a versatile group of musicians comfortable with both jazz and reggae, provided the flexibility needed to create high quality music with outstanding, unique solos.”

“It was a real challenge to avoid sounding too clean while keeping the dirty sounding vibe of those old pieces,… nothing is together, it’s even out of tune, but it still sounds great!

That was a major challenge I faced when arranging my favorite tunes from the repertoire. We had to find unique orchestrations for ‘Silver Dollar’: Soweto simulatenously played and vocalized his part, and for ‘Thoroughfare’ we added a melodica. With ‘Green Island’ arranged for six trombones (Steve Turre, Glenn Ferris, John Fedchock, Jennifer Warthon, Johan Escalante and me,) I harmonized Drummond's solo. That piece is the real tribute on Routes to his music.” 

With the onset of the Covid pandemic in 2020 international travel ground to a halt, which was a nightmare scenario for a project of this nature, that drew together players across borders. Blaser had initially planned to record the songs in London, but, given the prevailing restrictions, the only feasible way forward was to assemble the entire album online. “Alex Wilson and I spent hours on each track to make it impossible to hear the album was recorded remotely,” he explains.  

Overcoming that hurdle is a major achievement, given that the album, beyond its coherence, also manages to retain some of the cosmic, vaguely Sun Ra vibe that illuminated the Tampere concert. Furthermore the input of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, who cut dubs of a few tracks before his untimely death, brought a devilishly dada character to proceedings. 

The beauty of Drummond’s music was undercut by tragedy, as mental illness took hold of the trombonist. His life irrevocably spiraled out of control and he eventually died in a prison asylum. Yet Drummond remains one of the key figures in the annals of ska, the music that enabled Jamaica, the ‘small island’ to make a big noise around the world, and the echoes of his trombone, the mighty brass that was his burning torch, are heard the world over to this day. Routes celebrates that history by what is a very unique journey in sound.    

Kevin Le Gendre
Don’t Stop The Carnival: Black Music In Britain Vol 1

From the balcony, Don Drummond stands at the back of the auditorium which is packed to capacity tonight. He is quiet. He is still. He waits. Outside the multitude clamor to move closer, toward the gates, towards the doors. The spotlight clicks on and immediately finds Don on his mark. Simultaneously the sight of the man and the sound of the trombone energize the crowd who rise from their seats like snakes to the charmer. Don walks toward the stage, following the light, down the stairs, through the aisles, into the crowd who stare with rapt attention, moving to the rhythm of the notes that hang in the air, float outside, into the sky, into the universe, back from whence it came.

            Donald Willis Drummond was born on March 12, 1934 in Kingston, Jamaica. He gained his musical education at the legendary Alpha Boys School where he attended after being sent by the courts on December 10, 1943 as a result of truancy. He was guided by the vision of Sister Mary Ignatius Davies who saw an opportunity for her boys in military and jazz bands on the island and abroad. She took Don Drummond under her wing and encouraged his music education. Starting on the euphonium, but quickly moving to the trombone, Don learned musical theory and practice, studying classical music but also listening to jazz on the radio. He showed extraordinary proficiency on the rather difficult brass instrument and was, by all accounts, absorbed in his art. He performed at school functions both inside and outside of school and soon gained the attention of bandleaders looking to recruit. He also began to compose songs of his own. Some might say, he was a prodigy.

Don Drummond left school six weeks before graduation on October 31, 1950 to take a position with the Eric Deans Orchestra having been scouted by world-renowned guitarist Ernest Ranglin. Here Don gained experience in performing jazz with a sizeable horn section, touring the island as well as Haiti, and playing for wealthy audiences that were largely white. Jamaica would not gain their independence until August 6, 1962, and colonial classicism was strong then, as it remains today. It certainly had an impact on young Don whose mental health had already been tenuous. His talent was big enough to gain access to any stage in the world, but he was limited by race and class. He was considered a “downtown musician” by Jamaica’s upper class.

By 1954, Drummond was headlining his own band, the Don Drummond All-Stars and the Don Drummond Four. He had made a name for himself, and so other bands and performers sought Drummond out for guest appearances. He performed with Baba Motta, Lester Hall, Tony Brown, Roy Coburn and his Blue-Flames Orchestra, Vivian Hall, Kenny Williams, and many others. In 1956 he performed with the great American jazz singer Sarah Vaughan and in 1959 with great American jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and both were in awe of his talent. Vaughn even proclaimed that Drummond was in the top five trombonists in the world. All of Don’s compositions and shows during the 1950s were never recorded since they were performed live prior to any semblance of a recording industry. 

But in the late 1950s, the recording industry did in fact begin to pick up steam. Sound system operators like Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd turned to their island’s own talent instead of traveling to source American material for their dances in clubs and yards such as Chocomo Lawn, Forresters Hall, and Jubilee Tile Gardens, to name a few. Drummond began recording for Coxsone Dodd in 1959 with a solo on the Owen Gray hit, “On the Beach.” He followed the next year with his own “Don Cosmic” for Coxsone and in 1961 with “This Man is Back.” It was a song he wrote after being away for some time, one of the many times he went away, as a patient in the Bellevue Mental Hospital.

Even at a young age, Don Drummond was described by many who knew him as quiet, strange, and of an unusual mind. As he grew older, however, these characteristics became not just descriptors for his personality, but insights into his mental condition that was finally diagnosed and treated through primitive means. With the modern benefits of an advanced understanding of mental illness, one can now speculate whether or not this diagnosis was accurate or whether his condition may have been more symptomatic of bipolar disorder or something else on the spectrum of disorders. But at the time, such behaviors as eating clay and dirt, urinating from the stage into the pit during a performance, playing the trombone without actually producing any sound during live and recorded performances, and standing cruciform in the middle of street traffic were symptoms of a disorder assigned to many black men who affiliated with Rastafarians—schizophrenia. 

Drummond did associate with Rastafarians, as did a number of musicians during the 1960s. After a show, musicians communed in the Wareika Hills to perform with drummers, namely Count Ossie and his bredren at the camp. They performed in a free-flowing atmosphere of creativity and spirituality. Although Don Drummond was not a Rastafarian, the titles of many of his compositions reflected the reasoning he gained from his attendance at Wareika, songs with names such as “Addis Ababa,” “Marcus Junior,” and “Beardman Ska.” He utilized minor chord with a plaintive, melancholy feel. He employed Rastafarian rhythms in his songs. He became creator of the “Far East Sound,” one upon which reggae later built.

Drummond formed a professional bond with many of his fellow musicians in the hills, as well as the musicians in the clubs and recording studios, which now began to grow in numbers with the growth of the recording industry. Musicians such as Drummond could gain work for any number of record producers who used them as studio musicians to back up vocalists like Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, and others. In 1964, one of these musicians, Alpha alumnus Tommy McCook, organized a number of the studio musicians who frequently performed together during these sessions to form their own band, the Skatalites. They became known as the seminal ska band during this era, comprised of musicians who could all be leaders in their own right, but McCook, an elder, was the one in charge, and Don Drummond was responsible for most of the original compositions and arrangements of the group. They blended the jazz upon which their careers were founded with the American rhythm and blues heard on the radio and the freeform riffing of the hills. In short, The Skatalites were innovators and developers of ska music. Don Drummond was central to this creation.

Don continued to struggle with his mental illness, and despite seeking treatment many times at Bellevue Mental Hospital, he was not able to receive the proper mental illness help he desperately needed. On January 1, 1965 he stabbed his girlfriend, Anita “Margarita” Mahfood, to death. As a result he was found guilty of homicide and detained to Bellevue Mental Hospital where he died on May 6, 1969 as a result of cardiac failure and anaemia, likely the result of untrained staff and the administration of medications that have since been banned.   

Don Drummond will always be known for his genius, both in performing on the trombone, as well as his compositions which may number between 300 and 500. He was incredibly prolific during his 35 years in Jamaica and he was never able to leave the island to pursue a career in the U.K. or U.S. as many other musicians did. He was a sufferer in the true sense of the word, unable to escape the chains of poverty, but he left the world with a wealth of creativity that evolved into many other forms and inspired countless other musicians and their art.

It is upon this foundation and history that Samuel Blaser and his ensemble of skilled musicians builds their tribute to Don D. As legendary trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis wrote of Don, “If he had been afforded the opportunity to share experiences with musicians from different cultures as is customary today, his music could have expanded to even greater heights.” Blaser’s work is the way that Don expands, lives on, through the music of others who receive the signal from this master, process the sound through their own interpretations and experiences, and produce a sound both familiar and new. It is a tribute that celebrates Don’s body of work in both ethic and aesthetic. These are the songs that Don could not write. They interpret the past by adding the genres, technologies, and skill of now and bring to life an inspired sound.

 Heather Augustyn - author of books on Jamaican music and ska, professor of English composition at Purdue Northwest