A Conversation with The Allman Brothers’ Jaimoe – HuffPost 9.2.14

Mike Ragogna: Let’s talk about The Allman Brothers’ jillion-disc reissue of The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings. I’m guessing you know how big an impact these concerts made on the rock culture of that era. What are your impressions of that?

Jaimoe: John Coltrane.

Mike: John Coltrane?

Jaimoe: Somebody was having a conversation with Duane [Allman] and Butch Trucks was an atheist; right now he can’t make up his mind whether he is or not. Duane said, “What we do is like a religion, we’re like Jesus Christ, we just play music and He spreads the word.” So to say John Coltrane or to say Miles Davis or whatever is not absurd or out of my mind or whatever, because in our circles, we’ve done as much as Coltrane or Miles did in terms of the contemporary music scene, musically and financially.

Mike: Let me ask you about that. When those two names come up, improvisation is the first thing you think of. When you think of The Allman Brothers, your jams–which, to me, falls under the “improv” category–are legendary. And so many bands have been influenced by The Allman Brothers. What was that creative spark among you guys that over the years enabled you to improve as smoothly as you have?

Jaimoe: We’re carrying on the lineage. We’re just disciples of the music and whatever you prepare yourself for, then you get the information. It doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s racing cars, lawyering, doctoring, counting money, whatever. When your mind is physically as up as anything can be on that, you get information that other people don’t get because their minds are not there to get it. They’re not qualified to get it. I’m not trying to make it sound like it’s so simple or anything. It is, but you have to work at it. Anything you can do to be good at, you have to work at it, as an individual, about your instrument. In our case, it’s about teamwork more than anything. Two people have to think as one. You can think as Einstein as much as you want, but when you come in contact with another person as a work unit of some kind, you have to think as one. You have to figure out all the things that you’ve studied and that your mind is telling you and then you have to figure out how to make it work as one or you have a broken down team.

Mike: What is a rehearsal like with The Allman Brothers?

Jaimoe: You go in, and it’s “Hey man, I’ve got this song, let’s try it here. I heard it on the radio the other day and it goes similar to this.” [hums tune] You relate to that like bouncing a ball against the wall. The ball comes back, but it’s not going to come straight back at you unless you’ve figured out how to actively make it come straight back at you. So you’re responding to sound. You learn what the map is and you may play it the way that you heard it or you may choose to take out a couple of verses or whatever. But the kind of band rehearsals that I would have in my band, Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band, there’s a little map. The map tells us how to get from Brooklyn over to Manhattan. From Brooklyn over to Manhattan, a lot of things can happen. That’s the improv.

Mike: You’ve had your career on the side and done your own things, what it is about The Allman Brothers that keeps you as family after all these years?

Jaimoe: The music, and the love for each other. People say, “You call that love? They’re fighting all the time, this and that.” Who’s not fighting all the time? It’s just normal life within a group of musicians. Whether Keith and Mick speak or not–they don’t need to speak, they’ve been together fifty years. They speak with their instruments. After a while, you’re around people. I’m getting ready to go out the door and Lamar [Williams] says to me, “Hey man, would you pick me up a carton of milk on your way back?” I didn’t need to say I was going to the store or what. A lot of telepathy.

Mike: Was that bond always there?

Jaimoe: Yeah.

Mike: What do you think of The Allman Brothers’ legacy at this point?

Jaimoe: There are a lot of things that go on with the band, and when you think about it, how do you deal with that? You just do. Once you figure out what it is you’re doing and are supposed to be doing, you have to be careful with that because it can get in your way. If you get off in some zone and don’t know how to handle it, it can be a dangerous thing. Ask Mike Tyson. When you reach a kind of a level like that, it’s a very powerful place to be. To know that and to understand it is well and good. To know that and not understand it and how to deal with a lot of things is pretty dangerous territory.

Mike: It seems like you guys are handle it well.

Jaimoe: Yeah, we do. We screw up just like everybody else does. I’m talking about life. The music, going to the grocery store, whatever.

Mike: What is creating music like for you these days?

Jaimoe: It’s great, because I’m at the edge of getting out of my way and enjoying some of the things that are being allowed to come through us.

Mike: What is your advice for new artists?

Jaimoe: Whatever it is you do, practice your art, practice your trade. Learn as much as you can about what it is you’re doing and apply that as much as you can, because the application of it is what is going to mostly get you where you think you want to be. And some other places. When you apply yourself there will be things that you will learn and pick up that you didn’t hear anyone do or say. That’s because you’re studying about what it is that you’re doing. There are so many things that I learned and I used to wonder, when I’d hear someone else doing something similar, “Boy, that sounds like me.” I finally realized through the years and application of that we weren’t the only ones who figured out how to build cars. We weren’t the only ones that picked up a can, put a piece of string in it and figured out that you could hear the vibration in the distance. When Bell discovered that, there was somebody else who discovered that, too. It’s because they applied themselves. They studied a lot of the same things. When you prepare, when the wheel is spinning and it throws off little crumbs and stuff, you get some of them because you’re qualified to have it.

Mike: “Qualified to have it.” That’s beautiful.

Jaimoe: It is. That’s just a fact. One year, ’69 or ’70, we were in New York during the December holidays. I think we might have played the Fillmore. We had about a week off or something and we had to be back in New York. We decided, “Let’s spend Christmas and New Years in the Big Apple!” So we did, because it didn’t make sense to drive to Georgia, turn around, and come back. So we stayed in the city. We went to The Village Vanguard and Rahsaan Roland Kirk was playing there. He’s not with us any longer, but he played three or four instruments at one time. We’re sitting there listening and Rahsaan says, “Yeah, you show me somebody that can do what I’m about to do here anybody in the world and I’ll show you Jesus Christ.” And he proceeded to just amaze everyone.

Well, this one guy was so blown away, Twiggs Lyndon, who was the road manager for our band and a dear, dear, dear friend of mine. I could not believe that a person could do what this man was doing. Twiggs was a genius, he was always coming up with incredible stuff. Twiggs gave Rahsaan his submarine ring–he graduated from submarine school and that’s the ring you get–this was a very special ring, more special than that Superbowl ring. They became real tight friends, real tight friends. At the same time, Butch and I are sitting right next to each other and Butch elbows me in my ribs out of nowhere and he says, “Man, that f**king guy sounds just like you!” And I went, “Yeah, tell me about it.” I’m sitting here just blown away.

Alphonse Mouzon was a musician from Charleston, South Carolina. Alphonse Mouzon did a lot of things that I did. He played in the high school band, he played with this rhythm and blues person, that rhythm and blues person, and he loves to play jazz. The information that was thrown out, I got a piece of it, Al got a piece of it, and some more. There are a number of musicians that are in some brotherhood, not through anything other than the application of whatever it is they were doing. Being influenced by a certain kind of people. You say, “Man, you sound just like so and so and so and so and so and so,” that reason being that’s a very high level of information. It would be surprising if you didn’t sound like that. [laughs]

Mike: That’s awesome, I never thought of it like that.

Jaimoe: That’s basically what it is. And who does it belong to? “What them white boys doing playing our music?” Whose music? The music belong to the universe, and we should be happy, very happy that we were chose to have it, and for us to serve you a plate of it. [laughs]

Mike: Jaimoe, when you listen to the Fillmore concerts now, is there anything revelatory for you? Anything you’re just noticing after all this time?

Jaimoe: I may have “had it.” Fifty-fifty the chances are ninety-nine and three quarters to one. The level that you’re playing at when you start–as they say, “shedding”–you eventually get smart and get yourself a tape recorder, and when you begin to start rehearsing, you turn the tape recorder on. Now at a certain level, there are very few things where you stop in the middle of it and start trying to analyze it. When you’re practicing and you hear what you just played, say we’re at bar twenty-one, what you’ve just heard was in bar twelve, you’re thinking in the past because your mind is moving so fast.

When you’re so qualified in whatever it is you do, you go back and you analyze that later on because you do not want to stop the flow of what’s going on. That’s not the object of the game. Like I said, I got a tape recorder, and when you’re practicing, you can go back and listen to that because when you’re at that level, there’s probably twenty tunes in a matter of eight bars, idea to idea. People improvise differently. It doesn’t mean that Stevie Wonder or Bobby Bland or Boy George don’t improvise. People do things at different levels. That doesn’t make it less intense. [laughs] Don’t ever be fooled by that. That don’t make it any less intense than what you’re doing at your high level.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne