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It's two o'clock in the afternoon. A chill rain is falling out of dense fog and drummer George Brown has just woken up. He was playing into the wee hours at the Opus Café the night before with alto saxophonist Sonny Simmons and things were really cooking. "Oh, man," he says, rubbing his head and looking at his watch, "I wish we had recorded that one..." The first one he ever recorded was when he was 17 "or maybe 18." It was a rhythm and blues record that led him straight to Motown Records. Although Detroit's not far from his hometown, Grand Rapids, the leap seemed enormous for a high school kid. "It was an incredible experience for me, one big adventure." Records for many of the label's stars including The Temptations, The Four Tops and Marvin Gaye followed, yet Brown gave away a budding session career to follow jazz guitar legend Wes Montgomery to New York. What made him do it? "I wanted to play some music and Wes was a genius. Motown's music, but not real, real music. Not to me anyway. You see I learned early on that the drums were my space machine, because they took me to other places. Better places than..." He waves his hand at the street scene outside his window. "But for them to do that, you gotta treat them with respect. That means playing music." Brown made a go of it in New York, even winding up in Sonny Rollins quartet for a spell. Why'd he leave? "New York was getting too weird. I had to get out of there." One day in 1976 he opened a map of Europe and put his hand down. It landed near Paris. He landed plenty of work here alongside visiting and local stars like saxophonists Jimmy Heath, Von Freeman, Hal Singer and George Coleman and trombone giant JJ Johnson. These days Brown is often seen in three different outfits: the quartets of saxmen Sonny Simmons, Steve Grossman and Peter King, with whom he'll be appearing at the Sunset on April 9-10. When I ask which collaboration was the most important to him during his time in Paris, he doesn't hesitate. "Chet. We were working steady together for years." What was Chet Baker like in his final years? "He was like... Chet Baker. Man, he could play." Chet died in 1988 under mysterious circumstances. Did he jump, fall, or was he pushed from that window in Amsterdam? "I can tell you exactly what happened, but only off the record, dig? It was like this..." George Brown and the Peter King quartet, Apr 9-10, 10pm, Sunset, 60, rue des Lombards, 1er, Metro Châtelet, tel: 01.40.26.46.60, 70F/50F. |
