The Book Cooks Better Do It Now Before You Die Later
From Chapter 8 New York knocked me out. It was the first time I had ever been in a big metropolis like that. It was happening! I mean, all kinds of shit was going on. New talents, new ideas, and new art forms were merging in New York in the sixties. It was a different kind of world. I’m no more than twenty-nine years old and I’m playing like a motherfucker. I know I can hold my station, but I’m with all these giants. I was like a little boy in a candy store. I said, “Look a-here, gang! I wish y’all could see me now!” I was on the scene now and one thing led to another. Big things started to happen. My first big gig was with Sonny Rollins at the Village Gate. He was the big king in New York at that time – high and mighty and a very good cat. They called him Newk because he looked like the great Black American baseball player Don “Newk” Newcombe. I used to call him Newk and he called me Simmons. I never would call him Sonny; he never would call me Sonny. He said, “Two Sonnys. Fuck that, man.” Newk found out where we were living and one morning at four o’clock he came over there. He said, “Where is that boy that plays that plastic alto?” Prince Lasha was living in the front part of the apartment and I had a room in the back. I wanted to be off to myself where I can practice, study, and compose. So I look up and Newk is standing there in my room: “Get up, Simmons. Get up and get your horn. We’re going to practice.” I jumped up like a soldier, put my shirt on, grabbed my horn, and went with him. Now I’m thinking that this early in the morning, we gonna start by getting coffee and pancakes and eggs and bacon. No. This cat drove straight uptown, across the George Washington Bridge and over to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. We out in the woods overlooking the Hudson and I’m hungry as a big dog. We got there about a quarter to five in the morning and practiced all day, from sunup to sundown. When it got to lunchtime I was blown out. I asked Newk about taking a break: “Hey Newk, let’s get some chow.” He was standing about ten meters from me in the woods, and he just turned around, looked at me, and stomped his foot on the ground like a mule. He kept walking in the woods, playing like a motherfucker. He wouldn’t stop. I looked at him and I said, “Goddamn, this cat is impossible.” But he’s my hero, so I kept on practicing. That shit went on for hours. I was wondering how in the hell he got this energy. I realized later that this cat was probably full of cocaine. Cocaine kills your hunger. That’s how he had that drive and didn’t stop. I had never met a motherfucker that had energy like me, but mine was natural. I wasn’t dealing with no drugs or nothing. I wasn’t even drinking. I was a clean bird. I was very hip to the drug world, but my parents always cautioned me to stay away from using and I did, until I was forty-two years old. So I was a little naive about certain things. I’m thinking his energy was natural, too. After that one time I didn’t see Newk no more for about a week. And then he came back mysteriously to get me. He said, “I want you to play with me tonight at the Village Gate.” And here comes Prince Lasha. Newk told him, “No, ain’t nobody playing with me tonight but Simmons.” Here I was in New York – right there in the Apple – with the giant, the king of New York City, Sonny “Newk” Rollins, my man. When I was playing tenor as a young cat coming up, I’d buy everything in the record store with Sonny Rollins and I could sound just like him. I wasn’t trying to sound like him. I have a natural, big sound on tenor and I just adapted to Newk’s concept and the style he was playing. He was right with Bird on tenor. I built my endurance by playing and working with Newk in New York. I learned so much from him. And what flattered me one day – what really knocked me out – is when he said: “Simmons, I want to play like you, man.” * * * One session it was me, Don Cherry, Grachan Moncur, Richard Davis, Charles Moffett, Prince Lasha, and another bass player, a quiet brother named Don Moore. I had just written this new tune, “Music Matador,” so we were practicing this beautiful melody and getting it together. At that time I was just writing what came to me. I’m hearing this melody in my inner ear and in my heart and writing it down, and me and Don Cherry were practicing it. Prince Lasha was huffing and puffing, hitting and missing. I didn’t even pay no attention to him; I was tired of that shit. And here comes Eric Dolphy. Now, he didn’t pull out his horns right away because he’s very respectful. After we went through practicing this new tune, he said, “Hey, Sonny, I like that melody you just wrote. That reminds me of home. I want to record it.” And I’m thinking he is joking. I’m just laughing, flattered. I said, “Yeah, sure,” and I didn’t think nothing of it. But Clifford Jordan said, “Did you hear what he said, Sonny? He said he wants to record it!” And that’s how we got together. It reminded him of home because Dolphy’s people were from Panama and it had that calypso, Mexicano, or Caribbean flavor. I heard a lot of Mexican music in California like that. I had no idea that I would create such a beautiful melody from that type of influence, after thirty years of listening to music. But sure enough, I did. A lot of times when I’m touring and playing somewhere in Europe, people still want to hear “Music Matador,” so I try to play it everywhere I go. About that time Dolphy said, “I’m doing a date for this cat Alan Douglas.” Charles Moffett and Richard Davis were there. The beautiful Clifford Jordan was on the scene. Another bass player, Eddie Khan, was on that date, too. Khan used to play in San Francisco at Bop City a long time ago, and there was a thing between me and him. He had an attitude towards me. I don’t even know why and I didn’t give a damn. Now here he was on that date with Dolphy, but he had changed. When he saw me he lit up: “Man, you got this cat? All right!” He didn’t have no attitude no more when he saw me with Dolphy. I had developed my art and learned a little bit about playing the saxophone. So he was cool then, especially with Richard Davis being there, because Richard was playing so much shit it was ridiculous. We had done about half of the session – just finished “Music Matador” – and here comes Woody Shaw, this young, light-skinned kid walking in the studio with his trumpet. He didn’t say nothing to nobody. Just pulled his trumpet out of the sack and started playing. Dolphy gave him the music and this cat went right on through it. I said, “Damn, this cat sounds like Freddie Hubbard almost, but he’s got his own thing.” He’s just eighteen years old and he’s hip. I said, “Yeah, man, this kid sure is tough. Watch out, Freddie!” Dolphy talked to him for a few minutes and then he came back to me. He said, “Sonny, what do you think?” I said, “Hire the kid, man. Give him a break.” If a cat asked me, “What do you think about so and so?” I always said, “Hire him.” I would always give them a break. If I had said no, they wouldn’t have done it. I don’t know why they would confide in me; they were the giants and I was just a cat coming up under them. But I would voice my opinion because, as a musician, I always believed in helping gifted cats, cats with talent and potential. A lot of cats never knew I was behind that. I didn’t go back and tell the cats, “Hey man, you don’t remember the time I helped you...” I just let it be. Woody could read; he got right with us. Dolphy was elated and we had a great session. Dolphy asked me, “Should I use him on the other session, Simmons?” Because he had two days in the studio. I said, “Yeah, man, use him on the other session.” It was beautiful. And then Alan Douglas fired J. C. Moses and me. The arrangements had already been laid. Dolphy had written everything out. But Douglas wanted to change and do some other kind of shit. We were in the studio in the middle of the session and this motherfucker ran out of his office screaming, “Hey, hold it. Hold it, Eric. Hey, hey, hold it.” Dolphy is playing – fully into improvisation – and here comes this motherfucker talking about, “No, no, no, we gonna do this and that.” He was rough and he was disrespecting Dolphy – talking to him like he was a punk. That pissed us off, so me and Moses went into his office and protested. We told him that we didn’t like his attitude or the way he was talking to Dolphy about the arrangements. He was behind his desk, so Moses went on one side of the desk; I went on the other side. We were going to get this motherfucker. This is the sixties; revolution’s everywhere in America and we’re young rebels. We ain’t going for that shit. We wanted to kick Alan Douglas’ ass because that’s how we were at that time. But Dolphy heard the argument between us and he ran out of the studio into the office to break the fight off. He cooled Alan out and asked me and Moses, “What the hell happened?” We explained that we didn’t like the way Alan was treating him. We were looking out for Dolphy as a man we owed respect as a great artist. He was our hero; you don’t talk to him like that. That’s the first time I’d ever seen Dolphy mad. I had never seen him angry the whole time I was in his presence, but he got mad that day in the studio. If you see some of the shots on the original cover of the record, you’ll notice that when he was playing flute this bump he had on his head protruded. That’s because he was angry. I knew he was pissed because of Alan Douglas’ bullshit. The fact that we wanted to kick Douglas’ ass upset him, too. After we finished the session Dolphy had to let us go. Douglas didn’t want to use us on the next recording date. He said he was scared of us. And Dolphy had to agree because he saw that we were gonna put a hit on that cat.
© 2025 Sonny Simmons and Marc Chaloin
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