Interview with Phil Schaap
Contents
Phil Schaap is the curator of Jazz at Lincoln Center, a radio host on WKCR, and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. He has won six Grammy Awards. He is a jazz educator.
Louis Armstrong and Garnet Clark
Max Raskin: What single recording do you think you’ve listened to the most in your life?
Phil Schaap: I wouldn't know. I certainly have listened to Louis Armstrong's “West End Blues” a great deal.
MR: Which recording?
PS: The primary one, the one that you should already know about. So you tell me.
See it's a little illustration of why your posts get a thousand hits and mine get none. I've obviously wasted my entire life. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five – June 28, 1928 on Okeh Records. With Earl Hines on piano, Fred Robinson on trombone, Jimmy Strong on clarinet, Mancy Carr on banjo – who’s listed in the books always with a misspelled surname, but it’s C-A-R-R. And I learned that from Louis himself, among others. And Zutty Singleton on percussion.
Louis Armstrong vocal and trumpet.
MR: Which recording do you think you’ve listened to the most over the past year?
PS: On behalf of the late Melissa Jones – her research was very focused on an obscure piano player named Garnet Clarke. In honor of her, I did the Garnet Clarke research in her image of how it should be. I was typing like mad. It was very strange for me; I was working around the clock if I could stay up. And I finished it in time that she saw it. It's rather lengthy – it’s 18,000 words. Garnet Clarke made very few records and there’s some tangential material that needed to be examined, and I’ve listened to that a lot since December. It would be atypical to the center of my listening – not that I don't enjoy Garnet Clarke, he is amazing and deserving of what I did.
MR: Do you dictate or handwrite or type?
PS: You know it’s funny, again, referring to the late Melissa Jones, I was on the phone typing something and she asked me, “Are you using a manual typewriter?” And of course I wasn’t, I was just using a regular computer keyboard. I can’t feel the keys, so I really hit ‘em. My chemotherapy has caused neuropathy in my fingers.
MR: Do you take notes when you interview people?
PS: I definitely record, but I have a good memory.
MR: Do you ever interview non-musicians?
PS: Of course.
MR: Who’s someone that you’ve interviewed?
PS: James Van Der Zee. He was the incredibly long-lived photographer in Harlem.
MR: What about non-artists – were you ever interested in politicians or businessmen?
PS: I'm interested in a lot of different things. And there have been interviews with people, for instance, family members of musicians. I have a great range of knowledge, if I might tip my own cap. But the center of my research, the center of my life is jazz music.
Burgers with George Washington
MR: Do you snack when you’re on air?
PS: No.
MR: Do you snack when you write?
PS: Yes.
MR: What do you snack on?
PS: The last few years healthier stuff – I just had eggs and toast for a very late lunch. I’ve been doing more fruits and vegetables than I did in my youth.
MR: When you were young what did you used to eat?
PS: I probably ate too many sweets.
MR: What kind of candy did you like?
PS: I liked chocolate bars.
MR: What kind?
PS: You always had the higher price stuff . . . like Cadbury was two notches about Hershey’s and there was Nestlé – it really didn’t matter. When I was really young – meaning a child – was it called Three Musketeers? That’s going back over 60 years.
MR: So you like chocolate the best?
PS: There was a bakery in Brooklyn called Ebinger’s. They eventually opened a satellite bakery in Queens, where I lived. I really liked Ebinger’s cakes.
MR: Is there any restaurant from New York that's closed that you missed the most?
PS: Is Fraunces Tavern open? You know, it often closes for a couple of years.
MR: It’s open now. You and George Washington ate there together.
PS: Yes, we were there, I heard his speech in 1783. I used to take my students there for an American history lesson.
MR: Are you a night owl or a morning person?
PS: I used to be an around the clock person.
I wouldn't sleep too much. I would work at the West End. And in those days, I often was on the air at 5 a.m. It even made the front pages of Billboard – I was basically working 130 hours a week at the top of the 1980s.
MR: Is that the period that you were the most productive in your life?
PS: I wouldn’t have an accurate way of assessing my own success, I dwell more on my failures. The most complete set of activity in my career would be the West End, because it had an appropriate beginning, middle, and conclusion. And it was wholesome through and through and did what it needed to do completely.
MR: Where's your favorite pizza place in New York City right now?
PS: Probably Gaby's in Hollis, Queens or Sal & Carmine’s on Broadway and 102nd. Jazz people loved V&T Amsterdam at 110th. I still am known to go there. I remember back when it was four blocks north.
MR: How do you get your pizza?
PS: Regular. No additional ingredients.
You're gonna be really sorry you didn't decide to make this a jazz interview. I'm not terribly interesting or well-rounded.
MR: You spend your whole life talking about jazz. Who knows what kind of pizza Phil Schaap likes?
PS: I like Gaby’s. I like V&T’s. I like Sal & Carmine’s
MR: Did you ever practice a religion?
PS: I’m mixed heritage. I was bar mitzvah-ed. My mother’s side of family is Protestant. I was rejected as a witness at a wedding of one of Benny Goodman's cousins because I wasn't Jewish because of my mother. I'm still mad about that.
If you really go back, my mother’s father was a church organist.
Jerry Orbach a.k.a. Lennie Briscoe
MR: Do you watch TV?
PS: I have since I got sick. I didn't have a TV from 1969 to 2005.
MR: What made you get one in 2005?
PS: Well, my father died. In his waning years, I moved back to Hollis, and there's a TV there.
MR: What’s a show you’ve watched recently that you like?
PS: I don't know if I like any of ‘em. I've been known to watch a Law & Order rerun.
MR: Regular or SVU?
PS: The regular.
MR: Which was your favorite ensemble?
PS: Jerry Orbach – the Lennie Briscoe character. He was a jazzy and wanted to buy a whole night of Swing University. And I still have his cell phone number if you want it.
MR: He’s dead.
PS: I know.
And I was at Jesse Martin’s Thanksgiving event in 2004.
The Phil Schaap Film Festival
MR: What about movies?
PS: I haven’t seen too many of those. One of the jokes in Wynton’s office is the “Phil Schaap Film Festival” – a festival of the films I’ve seen in the last 50 years. It’s a short list. I’m not sure I can name everything – there’s Chinatown, The Buddy Holly Story, Reds, Manhattan, JFK, Sense and Sensibility, Titanic, Kung Fu Panda, and Motherless Brooklyn.
MR: Who do you think is your most gifted student throughout all time – in terms of knowledge of history and knowledge of jazz – who could go toe-to-toe with you?
PS: Knowledge of jazz going toe-to-toe with me is not an easy thing to contemplate. I mean it’s a worthless skill set, but I have it.
MR: Is there anyone who is close?
PS: Ben Young was great. You know this woman, she’s a lawyer on CNN, Laura Coates. She was my student at Princeton. The recently deceased Melissa Jones. She was great. More recently: The Fat Cat (Matthew Rivera), Colin Hancock, Charles Iselin, Jerome Jennings, and Jackie Santos.
I don’t really want to rate my students. I’ve had over 35,000 students. And now that I am sick, taking them at one fell swoop – 35,000 people, I can’t do anything that’s really effective.
Lincoln v. McClellan
MR: If you could have kind of been there as a fly on the wall in any presidential election in American history, which would it have been?
PS: My favorite election of all time is 1864. I think that's the zenith of the American concept working.
MR: McClellan versus Lincoln.
PS: Yes. Because the nation’s at war. The sitting president, who's determined to win the war, seems to be destined to lose. The opposing party runs his initial leading general as a peace candidate. And they had the election. Lincoln wouldn’t cancel the election. In his cabinet meeting, they told him you have to cancel the election because if you don't, we'll lose the war – we’ll lose everything. He says, if I cancel the election, we'll lose everything.
MR: What newspapers did you read growing up?
PS: In the public schools you got the Herald Tribune for 15 cents a month. And if you finished your arithmetic, you had the balance of the arithmetic lesson to yourself, and I read the Herald Tribune. My parents got the Sunday New York Times. I read the neighbors’ papers: the daily New York Times in the morning and the World, Telegram, and the Sun after school.
MR: Did you do the crossword puzzle? Do you do the crossword puzzle?
PS: That was my dad. The one thing I can tell you about as an overview is I had some really astounding skills for a toddler and child, and that I really dug the fact that I could actually mess with the adults. But if the adults were particularly well-skilled, then I shied away from the topic in its entirety.
My parents, their language skill sets are astounding. It's really remarkable that I even bothered to get a little skill in French, but I lost it. And you know, my father was a translator. My father used to shock people doing the hardest puzzles in ink and quickly. So I never messed with it.
You asked me about chess once. Similarly, when I was a child there was a big thing about chess and young people. I learned the game. My reading skills weren’t that great, but my chess skills were great.
Bobby Fischer and the Knicks’ Gambit
MR: Did you have a favorite opening?
PS: I wouldn’t remember. Remember, I'm talking about like, 1957, man.
I beat the community center’s chess champion and I beat my father. And my cousin Dick Schaap was very much associated with Bobby Fischer at the time, and favorably at that point in time. And all of a sudden, I realized all this pressure to improve my chess game was infringing on what I really wanted to do. So I quit, and I've never played again. I stopped playing chess in 1958.
MR: Did you meet Fisher?
PS: I did. I went to a Knick game with him.
MR: What was that like?
PS: I don’t really remember it. But Fisher blurted out, “What does this have to do with chess?”
MR: Do you ever feel that way about jazz, “What does this have to do with jazz?”
PS: Nope.
MR: Why not?
PS: Well, because when I was young, I did youth group work in Queens. And it taught me the importance of people feeling that they were substantive. It was some outing where we took a wheelchair-bound girl to some matinee at a nightclub. And the bandleader announced her name. And probably was the biggest thrill she may have had in her life up to that moment. She’s doomed to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. And the smile couldn’t be wiped off her face. It had a profound impact on me – that, you know, this is important.
Things that are either for the good or, at the very least, neutral – you’ve got your time on this planet and it makes it better for you. That’s good. Now, I believe that jazz is one of those primary goods. But there are a lot of other things that are good too.
MR: Is there any other music that is good?
PS: All music is good if it’s well-played.
Bird Song
MR: Tell me about the Grateful Dead.
PS: What do you want to know about them?
MR: Do you like them?
PS: It would be past tense. The last time I saw them was April of 1971. I've never seen them without Pigpen. I do.
I think I've mentioned this to you – none of them can sing. I mean, Pigpen could actually sing, but it was a specialized type of vocal. But when they sang in their duo and trio voices and even quartet voices, it was effectively done. I always thought that was a great illustration of musicianship.
MR: Did you know Jerry?
PS: I told you I did sound for him before he had a beard. I was just a kid with some duct tape.
Please belittle any of these accolades, but I taped microphone wires to the patio slates at Ferris Booth Hall on May 3, 1968 – where the Dead played for the strike at Columbia. You could say I did sound for the Dead that day. And because I was dutiful and helpful, they gave another concert two days later, and I was on board for that and did even less. I helped pull things out of a truck and helped put things back in it. Then later, I did some real sound for them in Delhi, New York. I think it was 1970.
MR: Did you know that they were going to be a band that was going to have an influence for decades and decades?
PS: No. How would I have known that?
MR: Have you ever met someone before they exploded, and you knew that they were special? Did you ever meet Obama, for instance
PS: Actually, Obama walked past my presence when he came to a recruitment meeting for the news department at WKCR. And the only reason why I remember him is that he was incredibly skinny. And he had an unusual name.
MR: But you didn’t think this guy could be president?
PS: I didn’t think anything. I thought he had an unusual name and that he needed to put on some weight. That’s the entirety of my thought.
Proust, Plato, and Coltrane
MR: Is there any artist throughout history that you think is overrated?
PS: A lot of pop stars are overrated. I wouldn't want to isolate anybody in particular.
MR: What about someone like Plato? Or Proust?
PS: Well Proust might be overrated, but who am I to make the assessment?
MR: You’re Phil Schaap! You can make the assessment!
PS: No, I can have an opinion.
MR: That’s what I’m asking – your opinion.
PS: No, but an assessment that has substance and could have impact on others is one thing.
MR: But in jazz you could definitely have an assessment.
PS: Yeah, my opinion in jazz does matter.
MR: I’m going to say something that’s going to upset you, but I really dislike John Coltrane.
PS: That’s your option. If you think that it's because his art isn't any good, then you're wrong.
MR: I was just telling Sammy about this. You listen to Charlie Parker and his genius and dancing around the melody makes it more interesting. John Coltrane makes the melody worse and its oppressive.
PS: You’re just saying you like melody, but not really saying anything about Charlie Parker as opposed to Coltrane. But once you get into the pantheon, we peons are not allowed to split the hairs. John Coltrane and Charlie Parker are in the pantheon, and good for both of them, and good for us that they're there.
MR: What about, you know, which 19th century philosopher was better?
PS: Sigmund Freud is part of the 19th century. Karl Marx. Abraham Lincoln.
Like I say, preferences and opinions are one thing. Parsing the actual list of who’s in first place in these matters, is kind of a fool's goal.
MR: What do you think it says that I love doing that?
PS: It says you’re a fan. And there’s nothing wrong with being a fan.
MR: I say this to Sammy all the time, I think I like music more than he does. Do you feel like you’re a fan of music?
PS: Absolutely.
MR: You enjoy listening to it?
PS: It's been its own reward of a whole lifetime.
Schaap’s Speakers
MR: How do you actually listen to music when you're at home? What kind of speakers do you have?
PS: I upgraded my speakers right before I got sick. Alta speakers – his name is Mike Levy. And I’m very, very happy with the speakers. I use his small speakers in my dubbing room, and I use the larger ones for the listening room.
I made some speakers when I was a teenager doing high professional sound, and I gave all of them to the Fat Cat [Matthew Rivera] and he uses them now.
MR: What about headphones?
PS: I don’t like ‘em.
MR: What about on the subway, do you listen to music?
PS: Never. Never. I like to keep my ears free to notice my surroundings.
MR: I talked to Billy Taylor’s daughter who taught me criminal law. She said Billy Taylor never used to listen to music when he was driving or anything like that because he could not not focus on the music.
PS: I’m with Wynton on that. I don't mind some element of background music, particularly if it's intentionally background music. But I don't like music in the background because it's too distracting.
MR: What about when you're driving?
PS: Rarely. If the Fat Cat’s on the radio or one of my former or current students.
MR: Who’s your favorite talk radio host throughout the years?
PS: Me. That’s a joke. That’s a joke, son.
MR: You’re my favorite radio DJ.
PS: I'm hopefully not a talk show radio host.
I'm not sure that I have a favorite. I like the guy Robert Siegel. He was news director of WKCR when I first got there.
Shoot O’Malley Twice
MR: Who’s your favorite sports announcer?
PS: I think Red Barber.
MR: Do you like Vin Scully?
PS: He was kind of duplicitous about the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn and about what happened to Connie Desmond getting fired. So I've never felt comfortable about him. But of course, I don't know his side of the stories.
MR: What do you think about Walter O’Malley?
PS: I hate him.
MR: You know the joke about O’Malley? Stalin, Hitler, and O’Malley are in a room and you have only two bullets.
PS: Shoot O'Malley twice.
MR: Were you a Dodger fan growing up?
PS: Of course!
MR: Now who’s your team? The Yankees?
PS: I’m not a big fan anymore. In my day we couldn’t root for the Yankees. And when the Dodgers left, we weren’t going to root for the Yankees. I am pleased that the success of the Yankees in the ‘70s helped New York City resurrect itself. But it wasn’t a sports thing.
Kind of Blue Historical Revisionism
MR: Do you ever listen on Spotify or anything like that?
PS: My students force me to hear something on their phones in class to make a point. But I would never do it.
MR: Do you listen primarily on vinyl or primarily on CD or primarily on audio files?
PS: The best source for the music in the best playback available or totally live acoustic.
MR: But if you were going to sit down and listen to Kind of Blue, how would you listen to it?
PS: Probably Mark Wilder’s CD on a good playback system.
MR: So not vinyl?
PS: I have it on what they call 6-eye Columbia stereo and mono. But the stereo is a little off speed. I'd listen to that too. I don't really listen to Kind of Blue that often. I would listen to it on those three sources. I also relisten to my own remastering of “So What.”
MR: You’re a kind of Kind of Blue revisionist.
PS: I’m not the revisionist. What you’re referring to is probably the revisionists. You have to more define . . .
MR: The view is that Kind of Blue is the greatest, best-selling, most best jazz album ever.
PS: The greatest jazz album is an aesthetic judgment that cannot be voted on. The best-selling in its time is of course a canard. It’s not even the best-selling Miles Davis album in its time. It’s the best-selling CD reissue. And so you convert that far after-the-fact specific and make it the generic, and you have a falsehood.
MR: The phase is “retroactive continuity” – it’s where a current truth gets grafted onto the past.
Breslin, Hamill, and Remnick
MR: What was the last album that you fully listened to start to finish?
PS: You got a point there that needs to be parsed. You’re dwelling on music being grouped as albums.
MR: Yeah, that is what I’m asking.
PS: But I don’t follow music that way. I acknowledge that there are things called albums.
But music exists to the specific of a composition and of a performance of the composition.
You’re asking me to branch into your analysis of how to categorize music.
MR: I'm asking a very just factual question.
PS: I guess the last album I listened to was my student Gideon Tazelaar’s album.
MR: What about the David Remnick interview? Did you like that article that came out of it? I loved that article.
PS: It was a very important article. And he did me a great solid.
I'm not as modern as you are – some of the back-and-forth in contemporary journalism is a necessity. But I remember when it wasn’t. If Dick Schaap thought there was something wrong with you, he would write an article saying something is wrong with you. And if Dick Schaap thought there was something right with you, he would write an article saying something is right with you. I think David Remnick wrote an article saying there's something right with me. But he certainly left some warts in there. That's modern, and I understand it, and I'm thankful for what he did for me.
MR: I thought that was such a beautiful piece.
PS: Everybody liked it. I'm a little too close to me to fairly assess it.
He certainly has been very nice to me checking in on my health and in one or two other instances. I see how much he cares for what I tried to do with my life, and I'm thankful for that.
MR: Pete Hamill or Jimmy Breslin?
PS: Well I knew Breslin.
MR: So Hamill?
PS: I have misgivings and positives about both of them. Again, maybe I'm not modern enough. Breslin was an exceedingly aggressive individual, and he was incredibly smart. And he certainly was a real New York character. Now that's what they say about Pete Hamill. So maybe they're the same and I just don't know it.
MR: Did you find yourself gravitating more towards one?
PS: Breslin was very close friends with Dick. I was sick for a while in 1963, and when Dick visited me in the hospital, Breslin was with him. And they gave me that book on the Mets . . . do you know that book – Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?
Who Is Roy Eldridge?
MR: You don't like what's going on in New York?
PS: Did I say that?
First of all, what's going on in New York?
MR: Whatever.
PS: I mean, I think LaGuardia is better than the mayors in my lifetime. Is that an overt political statement? Or is that a fair analysis of a good man as opposed to contemporary humans?
MR: I think you’re pessimistic about how things are going, but I think your own expression was very good – if you don’t like it, just stick around.
PS: I don’t think it’s my expression, but I did paraphrase it.
MR: Listen, I so appreciate it. I’m going to hopefully do a great job with this and we’re going to get the word out there.
PS: Just remember, for every 6 million fifth graders, there are between two and five who know who Roy Eldridge is. Getting the word out is not an easy task, but good for you.
MR: I’m going to talk to you soon.
PS: Enjoy jazz. Jazz is great.