Roy Campbell told me a story about a time when he was playing with fellow trumpeter and his friend the great Hannibal Lokumbe. The stakes were getting higher and higher. They were trading and kept climbing higher and higher into the sky. They were both on a high A above high G on the horn, (this is really up there on trumpet). In that moment, Roy went up a minor third, and Hannibal looked at him in a way that said you got it! From a non-trumpet perspective, playing up in space like that is almost like a super power. In joking with Roy I called this area the tazzosphere. Only he could go there and do the impossible being himself. I saw Roy at Merkin Hall live with Dave Douglas playing Don Cherry's Symphony for Improvisers. I’ll never forget how Roy opened his first solo with a long sustained high F above the staff. High F has always been the most difficult to control for me, and Roy just owned it. Miles still has me shook with his F’s on My Funny Valentine live. Starting a solo this way is a feeling coming from deep inside. Roy and I talked on the phone about where it came from and why it needed to go down. It was a musical truth bomb. Roy’s playing was the ultimate version of the way he talked. Every time I talk to Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, or Ras Moshe we end up talking about Roy.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard him. As I was new to playing free, drummer Ryan Sawyer advised me to go hear Roy. I went to the Knitting Factory and heard his band Shades and Colors of Trane from the balcony. Roy has so hot on this set that a woman was standing near him in front of the stage waving a big towel to cool him off! I immediately started getting his CD’s and we formally met when I walked up to him shortly after at the Pink Pony, and showed him my copy of New Kingdom in my Disc-man that I always had with me in the NYC subway, and said “You know man, this is how I know what’s up!” We were instant friends.
A side note: I’m new on Substack and I learned quickly that a paywall virtually eliminated my readers. I have no pay wall because the whole reason to write is to be read. I do however truly need the support, say like $5 subscription for example. Half of my posts thus far are about the survival blues. I have a lot of plans here either way, such as deep dives on the music of Bern Nix, Giuseppi Logan, and more on Roy Campbell to start. That being said I truly appreciate all reads and also shares if possible as I attempt to build an audience out here. Peace to all.
At some point soon after this Roy heard me, and at the time I was always going for it vibe wise, though I never had that extreme range he had. Those that knew Roy knew he had a term called crude oil in reference to the energy and sound of your playing. He heard that in me. From the beginning he had my back as a fellow trumpet player. I didn’t know his history then of studying with Lee Morgan and Kenny Dorham. Lee had the most personal impact on him I feel as he told me a story that he was in a lesson with Lee when a white person entered the room and interrupted them asking “Are you the great Lee Morgan?” Lee said “Yeah! So the fuck what? Can’t you see we’re busy? Get the fuck out!”
As fate would decree perhaps, William Parker was looking for a third trumpet player for his Little Huey Music Orchestra. Roy was in the group and WP asked me to join. I came down with a bad case of what is now called imposter syndrome on stage, I still catch it sometimes. My baptism of fire occurred live at Tonic, and was called Inscription!
I tell you now, I knew everything, everything was on the line. This was that moment where you play as if your life depended on it-it did!! I left it all on the field, a real moment and transition occurred. Where was I though?
While the band churned on after my solo, I was looking at the floor. I simply did not feel myself worthy of the moment. I thought I crashed and burned.
Roy saw me sinking spiritually and came over and gave me a real hug on stage. He didn’t say it, but I got the message:
You belong here. You can Play. You’re one of us.
In my musical and spiritual life, this is the moment where without it I might not exist.
Some people don’t need official sanction to exist, but I certainly did with the life I had led up to that point. Roy always had my back and there was another moment captured here:
and also here on Portrait of Louisiana!
Incredibly I was soloing with Kidd Jordan. This was in Milano, Italy on William Parker’s Essence of Ellington project.
Outside of Little Huey, Roy and I talked about hooking up. We were in smaller improvs many times, but we formally started New York Trumpet Nemesis with the Little Huey Trumpets with Lewis Flip Barnes, and we asked WP and Michael T.A. Thompson to play with us. Nemesis is a story all it’s own. One time Raphe Malik joined us and Kidd Jordan was in the front row who told us to give the drummer some. T.A. certainly obliged. Raphe caught fire on this set at an art gallery curated by Steve Swell. I asked Roy afterwards what he thought and in standard Roy honesty he said Raphe was e-training. E stood for ego which meant Raphe started playing more about him then the group. I never tried to “battle” Roy myself, though we had many moments trading ideas without the who’s louder, higher, or faster. I also loved to play bass clarinet with Roy, which happened several times at the Brecht Forum and once at Zebulon.
Three more playing memories come to the surface:
Joe Maneri had a birthday celebration at Tonic and invited Roy and I both to sit in. The place was packed and Joe had the room deeply feeling every note when he brought us up. I played and did my microtone blues thing, Joe dug it. and the crowd gave me a B I think, then Roy got on the mic with a pocket trumpet..
Within seconds Roy did something super high, but quiet and impossible. It was so pure him. The crowd just lost it right there in the beginning of his solo. Joe Maneri shouted out ROOOYYY!
Another time we were at a session Charles Gayle was leading on alto. He had called Giant Steps to see how everyone responded. Roy and Charles really mixed it up playing wise and Roy took over the session and called me up on Bass Clarinet. On BC I could cut loose like I couldn’t on trumpet and I went full fire. Roy met me there as a launch pad. Let’s just say he started from where I peaked and went on up from there. We talked about a band together as far as discussing who would play bass and drums but it never got to happen.
I asked Roy to join my Morcilla project in 2004 for a commission I received from Roulette, and incredibly, here it is!! An hour and 40 minute set! At 30 minutes Roy and I are trading on flugelhorns! Listening back to this concert 20 years ago is really something.
Now on to the real of the real, Roy’s music.
I loved to talk to Roy about his so personal sound and where it came from. We had just started an interview when he suddenly left this vibration. Roy was very open about his story. His father was a trumpet player that played with Ornette! In his early days in the 70’s like many others in the history of the music, he started doing drugs. That was not his path however and Roy summoned the spiritual strength to stop using permanently. He credited this to the music of John Coltane, and specifically the album Crescent. He played Coltrane’s music throughout his life in addition to his own, and it was always interesting to hear a trumpet in that context. I don’t doubt that Trane welcomed him home. Another major aspect of his story was that he suffered a stroke around this time. The doctors told him he would never play trumpet again. In the beginning he said he could hardly talk. Three months later he was back on stage at full power.
There’s more and more levels to where someone’s sound can come from. Early on in our friendship Roy believed that I could hear crude oil in the music, as my music was comprised of it. I observed once that he was dealing with extreme levels of this energy, the most I had ever experienced in my life. He dug that I could hear and see it. He would do this with plungers and “break” the tone where he would vocalize in the extreme LOWER registers. In this space Roy would be vocalizing and outright saying all kinds of extremely real human truths, comfortable or not. He might even curse someone out that had messed up. Going past that, he believed the original source of his sound, tone, and music was Ancient Egypt. He was very open about this in his music with records like Ancestral Homeland, and in live performance of his Akhenaten Suite. How does one relate to Ancient Egypt from personal experience? It’s not easy to explain something so mystical, but I don’t just feel, I know that Roy and I were there, as well as many of the people in my close musical circles. The following painting I did just came to me in this way, I would have given it to Roy:
One of my favorite Roy Campbell moment’s is one where I was not there, and just a kid in high school. In the documentary Rising Tones Cross there’s a moment of live on stage performance with Charles Gayle, Frank Wright, David S Ware, and Peter Brotzmann all playing extreme tenor sax together. One really cannot conceive of this level of musical and spiritual power. Who is the one and only trumpet player that could enter such an impossible supernatural arena?
you know it… ROY.
I implore musicians out there to check out his music. The Wikipedia has a good discography. Some say Woody Shaw was the trumpet man of the 70’s. For me Roy was the man for the 80’s and beyond. Roy was friends with and played with Woody. He told me a story that he and Woody would go to jam sessions together. One night Woody said “C’mon Campbell, lets go, but first I have to take care of something.”
Woody then hoisted a bar stool up and threw it behind the bar destroying all the liquor!
“Ok, Campbell, now we can go.”
At Roy’s jam session at The Lenox Lounge in Harlem, I heard Roy play a whole set of Woody tunes.
Roy’s other favorite story was he was standing outside the Tin Palace when a limo pulled up and Miles got out in his boxing gear! He asked Roy “Where’s Stanley?” Stanly Crouch had recently gone after MD in print. Years later when I was the jazz buyer at Tower Records Lincoln Center I made a whole display for Roy’s great recording Ethnic Stew and Brew . Stanley came in and saw the display and got pissed off and stormed out. The issue was I was putting Roy up and not King Wynton. Roy was dragged when he was with the David Murray octet and the red carpet was rolled out for WM. When I was the jazz buyer at Tower, I booked a jazz brunch series. One of my first group’s was Roy’s TAZZ quartet who played a 2 hour and 20 minute set! Roy would also sing on occasion. I heard him sing a whole set once on a FONT Festival.
Back to Roy’s music, he was inspired by Don Cherry sure, but Don opened the door into a place where Roy built his own house. He’s the only trumpet player I know to triple on flugelhorn and pocket trumpet, where he extended the language of all three. Roy could go all abstract sound which is very popular today, with one major, major difference: Crude Oil. Roy could also play a great flute, here with musicians in Egypt.
Roy was also a great original composer. While he did a great deal of improvisations in groups like Other Dimensions in Music, his records as a leader all have his written music. My personal favorites are his anthem Thanks to the Creator and The Lower East Side Blues with the Nu band.
Roy’s whole relationship with language was original, personal, and could be straight hilarious to those that knew him. It’s well known that he had nicknames for everyone that had a message about who they were and what they were about. Politicians especially. Here he is on a more serious note.
Roy was there for me in other ways:
As I posted on the book of face recently:
At the Orange Bear in NYC early 2000’s I was blasting on flugelhorn aka trying to rain fire. Roy took me aside and said pointedly:
“Sounds good, but a flugelhorn is not a trumpet.”
Another time at the Brecht Forum Roy observed:
“Sounds good, though I can hear some Freddie Hubbard in your lines.”
Finally a year or so later, again at the Brecht, Roy said
“Brother there’s only one thing I’m hearing now..
-you
Being checked like that is truly being there for someone, and what music and life are all about.
Even further, when Giuseppi Logan came back and I tried to help him go out playing Roy checked me that I wasn’t trying to use G as a way to get over on the Downbeat crowd. It bothered him that people were ready to see G now that he was returning from the abyss, but not before. It was validation of too many stereotypes. Roy never held back on the perversities of the jazz “industry”. He wrote a piece about this in 1982 in a publication at that time called The Bill Collector.
What Is Jazz?
According to the dictionary Jazz has the following definitions:
To copulate
Jive
Make nonsense
Exaggerate
Music that is highly rhythmic with solo and ensemble Improvisations
Jazz is also associated with...
Blues
Pain
Loneliness
Sadness
Depression
Suffering
Frustration
Ignorance
Benign
Critics Polls
Down Beat, also known as BEAT Down
Talent Deserving Wider Recognition TDWR after 15 to 25 years of display
Being referred to as an up and comer at the age of 40 or 50
Instruments in need of repair
No Gigs
No money
Moving fast and getting nowhere
Exploitation
Getting paid off the door
Wondering if you'll get paid after the gig
Being appreciated in foreign countries but ignored in America where the music developed
Clubs, Funky Joints, and Smoke filled rooms
Small stages
Dressing rooms the size of closets filled with trash or no dressing rooms at all
No guests on the guest list or only 2 per week
Wondering if your going to cop tonight
Being fucked up on coke,heroin,or smoke
Groupies
Cheap thrills
One night stands
Pimps, gigolos, and whores
Freaks
Poor Sound equipment
Inhuman circumstances and conditions leading to sickness, and most of all early or premature death.
Yes...early death is an important feature because the best Jazz musician..
Is a dead musician..
After your dead you will be recognized.
People will be saying "Oh wasn't he or she so great?"
Record pirates will release unknown tapes and legendary recordings
All who can will capitalize on the death of the next late great Jazz musician
Roy Campbell Jr.
July 1982
After Roy died some of these things he wrote about were proven: Beat Down gave him a rising star award AFTER his death, and then the Grammies posted his picture in their memorial sequence that same year to millions of people on TV! Where were they when he was alive?!
Roy’s death at 61 hit us all pretty hard. At his wake his message was delivered from the beyond via his sister Valerie, I’ll never forget it. Roy “spoke” to all gathered and said:
“There’s a lot of love in this room. We are here to learn how to love one another, that’s what life is.”
“Nobody understands just how important what we do is. It’s ALL about the music.”
A week before Roy transcended, NY Trumpet Nemesis played the Bohemian Caverns in Washington D.C. I was playing cornet then. It was just was us and Flip, no ritmo section. I remember they brought us dinner right when we had to play. We had a ball as always.
As we were leaving, I was headed to the bus, and Roy was going to stay with Flip. Roy gave me his standard big hug, but as he was leaving to the car he made eye contact and said “Thank you man,” which felt odd. Thank you for what?
Then a week later Matthew Shipp called me at my Sam Ash gig and gave me the news.
What I would like to say is, and I know Roy can hear me now as I write..
Thank YOU man,
Tazz Lives!
Now, and forever..
TBC
For TAZZ (Art Blakey gave Roy that nickname)
Nemesis at the Brecht by photographer Scott Friedlander: