Jaimoe – HuffPost 9.2.14
Mike Ragogna: 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]