Jazz Epistles Verse One

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Jazz Epistles Verse One - a Classic SouthAfrican Jazz Album

Classic Jazz from South AfricaBy Tony McGregor

July 2008

On 22 January 1960 six of the top jazz musicians in South Africa went into the Gallo Studioin Johannesburg and recorded one of the truly great South African jazz albums: Jazz EpistleVerse 1. It was an unprecendented album in South African jazz history.

The group consisted ofAbdullah Ibrahim (thenstill known as DollarBrand) on piano, HughMasekela on trumpet,Jonas Gwangwa ontrombone, Johnny Gertzeon bass, Makaya Ntshokoon drums and the "sadman of jazz" Kippie"Morolong" Moeketsi onalto and clarinet.The bandwas called the JazzEpistles and became verywell-known to jazz lovers

in South Africa.

This group had grown outof the band put together

by visiting United Statesjazz educatorJohnMehegan which recordedin 1959 two albums calledJazz in Africa Volumes 1

and 2. This band had as rhythm section Claude Shange on bassand Gene Latimore on drums with Mehegan on piano. These

recordings are described by Gwen Ansell in her bookSoweto Blues (Continuum, 2004) as "...music at the cusp, with elements of the old swing training and discipline, plus the risk-takingand speed of bebop and a conscious African awareness, on original and standardcompositions."

When Mehegan left to return to the States Moeketsi in particular wanted a group to play moreadventurous and challenging material and so he, Masekela and Gwangwa looked around for arhythm section and found Ibrahim, Gertze and Ntshoko who were prepared to go further inexploring new ideas in music. This group came to have an extensive following after playingat various venues around the country. And where the Jazz In Africa group had played mostlystandards with a sprinkling of South African material, the Jazz Epistles included no standardson their album. All the songs were composed by members of the band, four by Moeketsi,

three by Ibrahim and one by Masekela.

1 Cover of the CD re-release

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2 The Sharpeville massacre

This studio date was two months almost to the day before the Sharpeville massacre whichwas to turn South African politics into an international affair with the outside worlddenouncing the killings which shocked many into an awareness for the first time of theviciousness of the South African fascist regime.

"On March 21, 1960 theSharpevillemassacre occurred when the South African policeopened fire on black civilians protesting the abhorred Pass Law, which restricted them tocertain areas and forced them to carry passes at all times. 69 people were killed and 178wounded by police during the violence. "Sharpeville Day has been commemorated since thenon 21 March, and since 1994 has been the official Human Rights Day public holiday." (Fromthe Wikipedia article on Sharpeville.)

The album opens with the Masekela composition Dollar's Moods, dedicated to the group'spianist. This is an upbeat and humorous number with some lighthearted but interestingsoloing from Moeketsi, Masekela and Gwangwa before the dedicatee weighs in with a chorusor two of his own, with some typical Ibrahim chords. Gertze also has his say before the group

brings it all to an energetic close.

The next number Blues for Hughie, written by Moeketsi, is a 12-bar blues excursion which,after some rather funky ensemble work in the introduction gets down and dirty with somefine soloing from Masekela, including some interesting tonguing, before Moeketsi gets in onthe act with a fine bebop take on the melody. Gwangwa makes it all rather sombre with hissolo sounding like a melodious fog-horn. Ibrahim's solo takes it all back to the beginningagain, with the ensemble closing off the track.

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3 The Epistles

Uku-Jonga Phambili (looking ahead) is a number written by Ibrahim a few years before andis a great showcase for his playing, which he does alone on this track with only the rhythmsection in attendance. Gertze contributes a beautiful, soulful solo.

Next up is Moeketsi's hauntingly beautiful balad IRemember Billy, which, according to the linernotes, was originally titled Free and Easy. Moeketsi

plays this number on clarinet, as he does on thelater Jazz: The African Sound album which I will

be writing about soon.

The next selection is Ibrahim's rather jaunty Vary-Oo-Vum, which according to the liner notes isdedicated to "Cape Town author HowardLawrence." According to the wonderful bookCape

Town Jazz 1959 - 1963, featuring the photographsof Hardy Stockmann, "Howard was a close friendof Dollar Brand." (Copenhagen: The Booktrader,2001). At the time of this recording Lawrence was a

journalist on the Post newspaper and indeed wasknown as "Mr Post." I have looked for otherreferences to Lawrence and the only one I have sofar found is in anti-apartheid and former Robben

Island prisoner Ahmed Kathrada's autobiography m. Kathrada callsLawrence a photographer working for the Cape Times newspaper.

Lawrence died in September 1981.

Carol's Drive, the next song, is by Moeketsi with a wonderful alto, bass and drums sectionwhich Moeketsi himself apparently loved. The authorship of this tune is somewhat in doubt

4 Kippie Moeketsi

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as Gwangwa lays claim to it in his comments quoted by Gwen Ansell in her bookSowetoBlues. Gwangwa described the influence the Epistles had on him as a musician and how hestarted to compose: "I was in Cape Town and we were rehearsing there with the Epistles andthe guys left me alone - I don't know why, but I woke up and they weren't there! I sat at the

piano that whole day, messing around until I came up with this tune ... 'Carol's Drive'. Then

my composing thing was stating out ... and a style was being formulated, of course, only Iwas not aware of this."

A piano solo piece by Ibrahim follows called Gafsa. According to the CD inlay notes: "It tellsof a man who was madly in love with a wonderful woman. She dies, but her vision comes tohim as he walks through the streets of Cape Town on a misty night." Beautiful, typicallyIbrahim, evocative and lyrical, befitting the subject as described.

The final track is a theme by Moeketsi and is "about" the treatment of the band by a whiteclub owner. The incident is described in Peter Esterhuysen's book Kippie Moeketsi Sad Manof Jazz (Viva Books, 1995): "One evening the Jazz Espistles were playing in a Johannesburgnightclub. When they took a break the owner led them to the kitchen. He gave the musiciansa meal. Then he went back inside his club. While the Epistles were eating, Kippie becamevery cross. He said, 'By right, you know Dollar, this is all nonsense - this idea of us beingtaken into the kitchen when there's a break. Are we 'kitchen boys'? Aren't we here to entertainthe people?' 'Ja ou pellie,' Dollar answered, 'ons kom nou en dan by die kombuis ... thescullery department.' Kippie started to make up a new song right there in the kitchen. Hecalled his new song 'Scullery Department.'"

Each member of the band had an interesting life story.

Probably least known of this group outside of his home country, the "sad Man", KippieMorolong Moeketsi was often referred to as the Charlie Parker of South Africa. He was aman of immense talent and imagination, whose sensitivity led him down a self-destructive

path of alcohol and neglect in the face of repression and exploitation. Moeketsi, after the

Epistles, joined the pit band of the show King Kong and was with the show for its Londonseason. While there he had many confrontations with the management of the show and thisled to more erratic behaviour and his eventual stay in a mental hospital where he wassubjected to Electro-Convulsive Therapy and then sent home.

Makaya Ntshoko had trained as a boxer who had ambitions of becoming a champion. Ormaybe his family held those ambitions. The other musicians had to beg his family to let him

play, especially when Ibrahim and Gertze wanted to take him to Europe with them. He wasborn in Cape Town where he had connections with many of the great names of the jazz scenethere: Morris Goldberg, "Cups" Nkanuka, Banzi Bangani and Phakamile "Phaks" Joyo andothers.

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Johnny Gertze was also from Cape Town where he had worked with Ibrahim. He was born in1937 and besides the bass played trumpet, clarinet and guitar. After some years in exile withthe Dollar Brand Trio he returned to South Africa in 1968 and died of a brain tumour in 1983.

Abdullah Ibrahim, then known as Dollar Brand, was born in 1934. He started playingprofessionally at 15 and in 1954 was recorded with the Tuxedo Slickers, a 15-piece big band.In 1958 he backed the Manhattan Brothers, a very popular singing group, on their tour of theEastern Cape.

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Jonas Mosa Gwangwa was, along with Hugh Masekela, an alumnus of the famous TrevorHuddlestone Jazz Band. This band was made possible by the well-known Anglican clericwho lived in Sophiatown in the 1940s until he was expelled by the Nationalist Partygovernment in the mid-1950s. Huddlestone vigorously opposed the removal of Sophiatownresidents in terms of the infamous Group Areas Act and so earned the wrath of the

Government of the day, but the enduring love and appreciation of the people of Sophiatown.Huddlestone's bookNought for Your Comfortdetails his struggle to prevent the removal ofSophiatown.

Hugh Masekela grew up in Witbank to the east of Johannesburg. In his autobiography StillGrazing Masekela tells of hearing, at the age of four, the famous Jazz Manics, one of the top

jazz groups in South Africa at the time, and, as he puts it, "... music first captured my soul,forced me to recognize its power of possession. It hasn't let go yet." Moeketsi was a memberof the Maniacs at that time and this was the first time Masekela heard him play. When hewent to St Peter's School in Rosettenville, Johannesburg in the early 1950s he and some ofthe other boys became interested in music. Fr Huddlestone scrounged instruments for themand they began to practice seriously. Masekela says: "Huddlestone enjoyed our enthusiasm."

So the Epistles were 50% Cape Town musicians and 50% Johannesburg musicians, but 100%into a new style of jazz for South Africa - harder-edged, more bop-oriented than the moreusual swing-oriented groups that were popular at the time. This was a historic album indeed.

(All the above musicians' photos above were taken by Hardy Stockmann and published in thebookCape Town Jazz 1959 - 1963.)