Ask jazz musicians
to name their influences and most will give you a "who's-who"
list of players. Fredrick Sanders, on the other hand, claims that
every person he has met, musician or not, has influenced his music.
The title of Sanders' first recording as a band leader, East of Vilbig,
comes from an intersection near the home where he grew up in west
Dallas. The compositions, Sanders says, are about family, friends
and memories of that period in his life. It is, therefore, fitting
that Sanders' debut recording as a leader would be about the place
he first called home.
East of Vilbig
It was an environment some might find antiquated. In Sanders' home,
values were clearly defined and highly regarded. Although money was
generally tight, there was never a shortage of faith. It was a neighborhood
with so much identity, you could almost tell what street someone lived
on by the way they carried themselves. Sanders grew up with his mother,
grandmother, grandfather, and aunt, but even the neighbors played
a part in raising him. "All of the adults in the neighborhood
had permission from my mother to spank me," he recalls. This
was the setting that engendered ideas such as the importance of family,
respect for one's elders, and the obligation of attending church on
Sundays.
It was here that Sanders developed his deference for honesty and uncanny
sense of purpose. He can be philosophical and jovial at the same time.
If you play a recording of a great pianist for him, for example, he
will not only explain the musical theory behind the player's chordal
voicings, but, if he hears a moving passage during his explanation,
he will start shouting and hollering and might even spring out of
his seat.
His energy does seem limitless at times. He rises early in the morning,
although he's often up all night. In fact, during the time of this
recording, Sanders was living in San Marcos and driving forty-five
minutes every night to Austin to play. He would get off of the gig
around two o'clock in the morning and head back home. Once he got
back, instead of going straight to bed, he would spend a few hours
practicing. Sanders spends little time with his eyes closed, but when
he does sleep, it is with such determination that he can be found
snoring within several seconds.
Early years
Sanders remembers that secular music was not allowed to be played
in the home. He says, "classical was okay, but if music had too
much of a backbeat it was questionable." His grandmother had
a radio always set on the gospel shows aired from local station KKDA-AM.
His grandmother also had a piano, but wouldn't let Sanders play it.
It was used as a mantle for family photographs. Sanders attended the
nearby Galilee Church of God and Christ, the place where he garnered
some of his first musical experiences. He began playing drums around
the age of seven, but they didn't let him play on Sunday mornings
right away. Sanders says his rhythm was "terrible." He says
his opportunities came later, "when no one else could show up
to play." It took time for people to take his musical abilities
more seriously.
His interest in music, however, continued. As a kid he gave a neighbor
a bag of Jolly Ranchers candy in trade for an acoustic guitar without
strings. Sanders found a rubber band and stretched it as much as he
could across the instrument. He taught himself how to play the theme
songs to television shows. Seeing his interest in the instrument,
Sanders' mom bought him an electric guitar from Sears. "I told
my mom I wanted a bass," Sanders says, "but she said, 'well
this is all they had.'" He was so excited to have a real instrument,
he blew up the amp the first day.
In the fourth grade, Sanders began training on violin in school. Actually,
he says, he wanted to play upright bass, but because his mom didn't
have a car at the time, he didn't have any way to get it home. The
violin didn't keep his interest long, though, so he migrated to an
instrument that was a bit more portable than the upright bass and
less shrill than the violin--the cello. Actually, cello is the instrument
that Sanders has played longer than the piano and it is one that he
considers to be his first instrument. "The cello," Sanders
says, "is so melodic. It has the presence of a bass and the clarity
of a violin wrapped up into one."
Sanders says his experience with various instruments actually attracted
him to the piano. Sanders explains that "each instrument is a
tool, every instrument makes you feel different. The piano helped
me bring everything that I've learned together--a string instrument,
the drums, and an entire orchestra." Specifically it was his
desire to play harmonies that made the piano an ideal medium. He says
that he was trying to play be-bop on the cello, but the more that
he sat down with the piano, the more his taste grew for the instrument.
Sanders summarizes his experience with the piano by saying that, "the
piano is probably the easiest for anyone to learn and the most difficult
to master."
Meeting Roy Hargrove
Part of the reason Sanders started playing piano was because he heard
Roy Hargrove in the jazz ensemble at Dallas' Arts Magnet High School.
Sanders went there to continue his cello studies, but was so inspired
by Hargrove he decided to learn the piano just so he could play in
the jazz band. Sanders says he will never forget the first time he
heard Hargrove. Sanders recounts, "It was the first day of school,
third period. I think they were playing 'Red Clay', a Freddie Hubbard
tune." Hargrove was in the tenth grade at the time and was already
attracting a great deal of attention. Sanders excitedly asked the
director if he could play in the band, but the director said there
were no parts for cello. Determined, Sanders spent the time that he
had, in between or after cello practice, banging out songs on the
piano. In fact, his skills were so unrefined at first and he was so
persistent in his efforts that one faculty member told him to "get
the hell off of the piano."
He was initially intrigued by the II, V, I progressions that he heard
from listening to the jazz ensemble at Arts and he spent the summer
practicing them. When school started up again the next year, Hargrove
would play for Sanders some chord progressions from his compositions
on the piano, sharing his understanding of the music. By the time
Sanders reached his senior year, he could play some blues changes
and improvise. He auditioned for the jazz combo and he made it into
the band. The first thing he did was write an arrangement for the
band that had a cello part. Unfortunately, Sanders never got to play
with Hargrove in the band--by the time he made it in, Roy graduated.
But, Sanders had made great strides. As a senior at Arts Magnet, he
received Downbeat awards for cello performance and for arranging.
Offers to study cello came in from the Berkeley School of Music, Northwestern
University, and The University of North Texas.
Playing Piano in Texas
Though these offers were promising, Sanders says he felt like he "wasn't
ready" to go to such challenging schools. Besides, he really
did not have enough money to move away and live in cities like Boston
and Chicago. Sanders says that he always wanted to go to college,
but he "never had any intention of finishing." Mainly, he
wanted to become a better player. An offer to play piano came in from
Weatherford College and Sanders knew some guys there that were good
players. The band played a lot of the Basie repertoire which Sanders
says was familiar to him because it has a similar spirit to the music
he had heard in church. He thought he needed the time to "learn
how to play." Actually it was not until then that he was seriously
exposed to the music of artists like Miles Davis, Ahmad Jamal, and
John Coltrane.
During this time, Sanders had a few chances to play with some of the
great Texas tenor saxophonists. He remembers that James Clay frequently
chided him about his playing. Clay advised that Sanders listen to
Horace Silver for his comping and Wynton Kelley for his solos. Later,
Sanders was surprised when he got a call to play a New Year's Eve
engagement with David "Fathead" Newman. The first-call pianist
could not make it, so Clay recommended Sanders for the job.
In June of 1991, a bassist named Mike Oughton told Sanders about some
musicians he had heard at Southern University in Louisiana at a jazz
camp lead by clarinetist Alvin Batiste. This is where Sanders first
heard about several of the players who appear with him on this recording:
bassist Roland Guerin, drummer Donald Edwards, and guitarist
Mark Whitfield. Batiste, for many years, had been quietly organizing
one of the most important gatherings of young jazz musicians in the
South, and had along the way encouraged the development of great players,
such as alto saxophonist Wessell Anderson, pianist Henry Butler, alto
saxophonist Donald Harrison, bassist Reginald Veal, and tenor saxophonist
Branford Marsalis.
Driving to Baton Rouge
The next spring, Oughton brought some of these players up to Dallas
for a gig and he called Sanders to play piano. Sanders says the performances
changed his life. The group played three nights and afterwards Sanders
decided he had to move to Baton Rouge. He had a 1978 Chrysler that
was in need of repair. After spending $900 getting the car in a condition
that would complete the journey, he had about $60 left. He took the
remainder of the money, filled up the car with gas, bought some canned
goods, and headed for Baton Rouge. No one there knew he was coming.
Sanders pulled up to Southern University about 15 minutes before Batiste's
class concluded. He had just driven through one of the stickiest and
hottest parts of the country during the Summer in a car that had no
air conditioning. He walked right up to Batiste and announced, "Sir,
I came to study with you."
After only three months, Batiste took Sanders with him to Europe for
the De Oosterport Groninga New Music Festival in Amsterdam. It was
Sanders' first trip overseas. He remembers, "It was incredible
for me to be in a situation where I was a guest artist along with
all of these other great players." He remembered the attentiveness
of the European audiences: "We would get up to play and there
would be total silence. I had never experienced that before in the
states." Batiste even featured one of Sanders' compositions at
the festival and asked him to play the introduction by himself. For
Sanders, it was an inspirational experience, "I had a whole new
fire about what I wanted to become after that."
Batiste taught Sanders, among other things, to take every gig seriously.
"Music was serious business," Sanders declared. One had
to practice and rehearse for every gig from the local coffee house
to Carnegie Hall. Sanders recalls one time when Batiste's lesson came
in handy: "Batiste had asked me to play a gig, but didn't tell
me where it was. His drummer, Herman Jackson, came to pick me up and
we drove up to this recording studio. I asked Herman, 'What are we
doing here'" The gig was a recording session for Batiste's album,
Late, on Columbia. Again, Batiste's advice proved valuable when Sanders
least expected it. Once a week, he would drive eighty miles to a New
Orleans coffee shop to play a gig on the establishment's beat-up piano.
There were no formal bookings--whoever showed up first got the gig
and everyone played for tips. One day Delfeyo Marsalis, who is best
known as the producer of many of his brothers' albums, called Wynton
on the pay phone. He held up the phone for his brother and said, "Check
these guys out, they're swinging!" You never knew who might be
listening.
Sanders wanted to continue his studies with Batiste, but ran out of
money. He describes the education he received from Batiste as "totally
different."
He depicts Batiste's teaching style as being somewhat Socratic in
nature: "Batiste had figured out how to educate individuals without
insulting them about what they didn't know. He pulled out of them
what they did know." Sanders stayed in Baton Rouge and studied
with Batiste without enrolling in school.
He worked the graveyard shift as a "flashlight cop" at a
local hospital. When he got off from work, around eight o'clock in
the morning, he would go to the practice rooms at Louisiana State
University before going to bed. Sanders used to pray for the outside
watch at the hospital so he could see the sun rise. Seeing the sun
rise every morning, Sanders says, was the best part of the job: "I'm
still trying to figure out how to write a tune that sounds like the
sun rising up in the morning." Sanders says that his time in
Baton Rouge was "bittersweet." He was financially strapped.
His car broke down. Some of the musicians were misinterpreting the
time Sanders was spending working, which he had to do to make ends
meet, as evidence that he was not serious enough about music. Actually,
Sanders was doing everything he could to keep playing music. Despite
the disappointments, Baton Rouge is also memorable for Sanders because
it is the place where he met a young vocalist named Sheila Perkins,
whom he married on June 18, 1994.
returning to Texas
Anxious to continue his formal education and out of money, Sanders
came home to Texas and ended up at Southwest Texas State in
San Marcos. A trumpet player he knew from Dallas, Ephraim Owens, suggested
he go there because it was close to Austin and there were opportunities
there for musicians. The pianist James Polk, who had been a music
director for Ray Charles, was teaching at Southwest, but Fred had
never heard him play before. Sanders says he had to hear Polk in order
to make the decision, so he went to hear Polk at a gig in Austin.
Sanders says, "He had one thing I really wanted--groove."
Sanders felt that finishing school has always come into conflict with
learning how to play. Southwest was a place where he says he was able
to develop the skills he needed as a player. The first year Sanders
was at Southwest he and his wife lived in different cities while she
finished her degree in Baton Rouge.
Being at Southwest gave Sanders the chance to play cello again. He
played cello in the orchestra and piano in the jazz band. Again the
opportunity came to travel abroad when the orchestra did a tour of
eleven European cites. He played both cello and piano on the tour
and he was a featured piano soloist at the Chopin Conservatory in
Warsaw. Back in Austin, he started playing in Elias Haslinger's group
and appeared on Elias' second recording. Sanders was not presenting
his compositions to the public much at that time because he did not
think they were ready. He continued to fine tune them and practice.
Then the jazz combo at Southwest got an invitation to go to the North
Sea Jazz Festival in Holland. For the first time in his life, Sanders
says, he felt like he was in New York City although he had never been
there. Sanders recounts, "I've never been in a jazz environment
where you had to get to a show an hour early just to get a seat in
the back row." As is usual for the international jazz event,
virtually every living well-known jazz musician was there--including
Roy Hargrove. After one performance, Hargrove recognized Sanders in
the mob and invited him out to one of the late night jam sessions.
Hargrove, surrounded by the media and fans, could not talk long and
their conversation was cut short.
Sanders says he knew that the jam sessions were held at the Bel Air
Hotel in The Hague and eventually he got a badge to get inside. As
he walked in, he passed James Williams, Mulgrew Miller, and Cyrus
Chestnut on his left. James Carter was on the stage dueling it out
with another horn player. Carter was apparently annoyed by the alto
player's never-ending, showy strings of notes and belted out a single,
raucous tone that made the altoist's sound inaudible. Sanders realized
that he was surrounded by the best jazz musicians in the world. When
Greg Hutchinson got up to the drums, Sanders jumped up and sat down
at the piano. Hargrove, who then came on stage, had not heard Sanders
since high school. Afterwards, Hargrove pulled Sanders aside and told
him how great it was to see his progress and that if he ever needed
anything to call.
The session
Three months later, back in the states, Sanders called Hargrove at
his home in New York City to see if he would be available to do a
recording. Hargrove immediately agreed and scheduling arrangements
were made. The rest of the musicians, who had been so inspirational
to Sanders in the beginning, were also brought together in June of
1997 to make this recording. The recording was conducted over two
days with little rehearsal time at an old converted fire station in
San Marcos, Texas. Sanders found that leading his own record date
was a challenge: "I've changed since that session in June. I'm
trying to prepare myself to be better for the next time around. For
me, It's all about developing."
Sanders, unquestionably, has a tireless drive which must have been
leavened by the constant necessity to confront and overcome obstacles.
Like many artists, he has accomplished a great deal against the odds,
and this in many ways has become a hallmark of his art. One thing
that makes Sanders different is the way that he has handled these
setbacks. He attacks them with unequivocal faith. Amazingly, things
seem to happen for him.
Critics (and musicians) will always find fault with any record. Although
this recording will be no exception, it represents a personal milestone
for Sanders. What it may lack in precision it more than makes up for
in honesty. These days, given the resources, nearly anyone can make
an impeccable recording. An honest one is harder to come by and ultimately
more important.
Mark Elliott
September, 1997
