Thursday, June 9 2011

We Live in Brooklyn Baby

Brooklyn, New York. The County Of Kings. I could list the the reasons why living here is the best but that list would always be incomplete, as I learn something about my home every day that I walk these streets (and I do a LOT of walking, mind you.) But ultimately Brooklyn is a place that is made out of the fabric of my dreams. Since I first started visiting here in the very early 90s to when I first moved here in 1994 (to Williamsburg before it was “Williamsburg” – I guess making me an original hipster) to when I finally came up for good in the early 21st Century, I have fallen in love with this place over and over again. Perhaps the only place that I’ve been to that struck me as hard was on my recent visit to New Orleans. But that is another story, for another time, about a different type of magic, and another place made of a silk and satin of a different set of dreams, and a story that is yet to come.

Brooknam, The Planet, is easily one of the most culturally rich places on earth and that’s reflected in the creations that pays homage to it. You can run down a laundry list of songs, art, literature, cinema, that all are their own love song to this mighty place on earth, but one always comes to mind first and foremost – I’m talking about the Roy Ayers masterpiece “We Live In Brooklyn Baby” from his 1972 album “He’s Coming.”

It’s funny to me that such an impassioned song about the outer-borough would have been written by an Los Angeles native. But you can hear the love and the desperation to succeed in the pocket of  the arrangement of the one and only Harry Whitaker. Harry Whitaker was a one-of-a-kind genius who was one of those musicians whom you knew his work, you knew his sound, but you never knew him. He was born in Florida, raised in Detroit, but eventually located to Mighty Mighty Fort Greene (my current place of residence.) No wonder that the song sounds so absolutely genuine to me. I knew that Harry was still alive and active in the New York jazz scene for years, and so it was a bit of a shock to me when I found out last November that he had passed away at the young age of 68. Immediately on my Facebook I started to post records and songs that I knew he had been involved with, and as I delved further and further into his oeuvre I was kind of shocked at the depth of it.

One of the sad testaments of the modern age, and with the way that we’re all plugged in at all times, hardwired to the word and the constant stream of media and information, is that sometime the news of someone’s passing comes hastily and unexpected through the channels of social media and general connectivity. I remember Saturday, August 29th, 2009 quite well. I had just left Portland, OR that morning after an amazing show at Branx, the ultimate night for our tour. Me and the 3 other DJs I was touring with all went our separate ways, me heading north to Seattle. After landing and settling in at my hotel room, I turned on my computer and immediately bombarded with a torrent of messages, Tweets, Facebook status updates – DJ AM is dead. Dazed, I did my best to get confirmation, to verify, to somehow learn that this terrible news of the death of OUR KING, and someone whom I had know for almost my entire life, had left the planet. Once I learned it was true, one of the first things I did was call my DJ friend whom I had just been with in Portland the night before, who was one of his closest friends (he shall remain unnamed out of respect.) In a shaky voice to him I said Man I just can’t believe this, this can’t be happening. What are you talking about, replied my friend. I asked him Have you not turned on your computer or anything like that? No I just to the hotel not too long ago he said. I gently said to my friend, Man, can you please have a seat? I have something to tell to you… And as awful as I still feel about having to be the one to tell him that our friend had died, as terribly guilty as I will always feel for having to make it so that I am so intrinsically tied to a moment of such pain in my friends life, I still don’t regret being the one who told him. I’m glad that he heard it from me, as opposed to how I learned about it, from a torrent of Tweets from strangers and the name of my friend splashed across the front page of TMZ.

Now you might think that story was an awfully strange turn from my tale of Harry Whitaker, of a Brooklyn love affair, but it’s not. You see, the day of his passing, and in my initial foray into posting information about this guy and his work and his legacy and quiet but potent impact, I forgot that maybe he was not just some mythological figure but a real man of flesh and blood that people knew and cared for. Not long after my Facebook tribute to Harry I got a phone call from one of my oldest Brooklyn DJ comrades, DJ Monk-One. Andrew and I go way back and he’s not only one of the DJs I most admire and respect but also one of the guys that I have a kinship on a musical level more than most. Cos, is this true about Harry he asked. Sadly I had broken a rule that I established a year before, and let someone know about a passing of a loved one in a most impersonal manner. See, Monk and Harry were tight. We got to rapping about the dude, his power and genius, and mostly about the relationship that Monk had established with Harry during the last years of his life. It was at that time that Monk revealed to me that he had, in his possession, a copy of a recording of “We Live in Brooklyn Baby” that Harry had done recently, that had never been heard by any ears before. Of course you know I’m going to want to live and needed to hear it ASAP. Monk slid it my way and I was floored by the sublime jazzy take on this masterpiece. A true reinvention. 7 months later (meaning TODAY) as I looked out my lofty window at BAM and the Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower, at Fort Greene Park and LIU, I was reminded about how much I love it here, and I pulled up on iTunes “We Live In Brooklyn Baby.” And then I saw the secret version by Harry Whitaker. And I listened to it, and it moved me, and I had to ask Monk about sharing it with the world. With his blessing, and the story behind it, here it is. Monk, take it away…

“The story behind that unreleased We Live In Brooklyn: Around the time I talked to Harry for that Wax Poetics article, I had the idea of hooking him up with Kenny Dope to do a new version of We Live In Brooklyn, ala MAW’s version of Nautilus:  a respectful, musical but tough update.  Kenny, Harry and I actually met and listened to some stuff, including the unreleased 1981 sessions with Bartz and Sybil Thomas mentioned in the article. Harry wasn’t particularly interested in doing the WLIB remake but was eager to see something come of that other session.  For various, typical reasons (scheduling, etc) nothing ever came of those projects.

Fast forward to last year, when I happened to be DJing at a lounge on the same block as the pizza place where Harry played every Thursday.  I hadn’t seen him in a while, and it was slow at the lounge, so I put on a mix and dashed down the street to see if he was there.  He was.  Same as usual, doing his thing while waitresses hoisted trays of drinks and pizza over the piano, most people not paying much attention, with the exception of the small clique of musicians and singers who would always gather in awe of his talents.  We talked for a couple minutes, and as I was leaving he suddenly said, “Hey remember that We Live In Brooklyn thing we were talking about years ago?  I finally recorded a version with my band.  In fact, I have a CD-R of it right here if you want to listen.”  I grabbed the disc and ran back down the block hoping the manager at the other spot hadn’t noticed I was gone.

I wasn’t really expecting much when I popped the disc in and listened on the cue a few minutes later.  You know how older jazz and soul dudes tend to ruin their early, killer tunes by trying to make them “hip.”  But you should’ve seen the grin on my face when I heard what he’d done.  Sick! Tablas, drums popping, nice acoustic bass and piano.  Wow.  I called him the next day to urge him to let me put it out as a single.  Again, after trading a few phone calls the whole subject sort of faded away as other daily business took precedent.  Anyway, I still have the disc of course, and hope to contact his son to see about releasing it.  I assume it will be a lot harder now that Harry’s not around to greenlight it, but who knows.

I will miss his dry sense of humor and the unmistakable glow that came from being in the presence of a legend…”

Thanks Monk, for sharing that story, for sharing this music, and for allowing me to share this music with the world. For those of you out there, know this – there are few DJs that I respect as much as Monk One, from both the perspective of being an artist as well as a human. If you get a chance to see him do his thing, do it. If you get a chance to BOOK HIM at your show, do it. Me need more fellas with this much authenticity out there continuing to carry the torch for music that truly matters. Check out his Facebook Page, and also the site of his crew, Names You Can Trust.

Harry Whitaker “We Live In Brooklyn Baby” (Unreleased Demo CDR, 2009)