Wyly Bigger’s new album on MadJack was produced by Mark Edgar Stuart and features a full cast of Memphis players, including drummer Danny Banks, guitarists Jad Tariq and Matt Ross Spang, sax legend Jim Spake, and Stuart himself on bass.
“Hello, Is That You?” is the rollicking first single. “This track is actually a cover of an old tune by a group called The Red Tops out of Vicksburg, Mississippi,”says Bigger. “A couple years before she passed, my grandma gave me her collection of 45rpm singles from the ’50s. I was digging through them and saw a label I’d never seen before, so I threw it on the turntable, and really dug the sound. Come to find out, it was the only recording The Red Tops ever did — just that A-side (“Sewanee River Rock”) and B-side (“Hello, Is That You?”). I started playing “Hello” at some of my shows, and when it came time to start picking a cover or two for the album, I pitched that one to Mark, who produced the record, and he was into it! The original is a bit more big-band-ish, so we decided to rock it more and make it fit my sound better.”
The video was conceived, directed, shot, and edited by Landon Moore. It features Bigger rocking and rolling in some familiar Memphis locations. “For the video, we wanted to shoot it in a place that was relevant to my career with people who were important to me. So we went with Earnestine & Hazel’s, one of my favorite spots in town to play with my band, and I invited a bunch of friends and family to be in it.”
Take a look.
If you would like to see your video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
(l-r) Liam O’Dell, DeAnte Payne, Martin Carodine, Charles Pender II, and Kurtis Gray (Photo: Steve Roberts)
Sometimes the best way to champion the music of today is by looking to some milestone from the past. Take the experience of David Less: Having worked in and around Memphis music for half a century, writing dozens of articles and the bookMemphis Mayhem, promoting shows, producing records, he’d known about an especially rare Memphis jazz LP for some time. “Fred Ford had told me about it in 1975 or ’76,” he says, “and told me what a great record it was. I always wanted to hear it, but it was very hard to find.”
So potent was the album’s music that when Less finally got a copy, he was motivated to produce one of his own.
The legendary album in question? Young Men from Memphis: Down Home Reunion, released in 1959 on United Artists Records, for which the groundbreaking producer Tom Wilson assembled a band that reads like a Memphis jazz who’s who: on alto saxophone, Frank Strozier; on tenor, George Coleman; on piano, Phineas Newborn Jr.; on guitar, his brother Calvin; on bass, Jamil Nasser; on drums, Charles Crosby; and on trumpet, Louis Smith and Booker Little.
“It featured the great Memphis jazz players when they were young and just getting to New York,” says Less. “That group of people later became very well-known, but at the time they were not, so the record went into obscurity.”
Other Memphians also knew of the album. “Johnny Phillips, whose father owned [record distributor] Select-O-Hits and later bought my record company, Memphis International Records, had heard it,” recounts Less. “In fact, Johnny kind of grew up listening to it. So when I found a copy, Johnny and I and his son Jeff, who owns the label, started talking about doing an updated version of this.”
This April 2nd, at a Memphis Listening Lab event from 6-8 p.m., the world will first hear the full realization of that thought, Playing in the Yard by the Jazz Ensemble of Memphis (J.E.M.). (It will be officially released on CD and vinyl three days later.)
Just as Wilson had done, Less set out to recruit a band. “First of all, we approached the teachers, where it all comes from,” he says. “We called Sam Shoup, Gary Topper, Steve Lee, Michael Scott … you know, the guys! And we found these five players. Some of them knew each other. Most of them didn’t.”
As the sessions for the album unfolded, the players developed a powerful group chemistry. Tenor saxophonist and flautist Charles Pender II, a University of Memphis alum, was the senior member of the group, 26 at the time. His grandfather, E.L Pender, taught such greats as Maurice White, David Porter, and Booker T. Jones. Keyboardist and vibraphonist DeAnte Payne, 25, a standout member of James Sexton’s band, plays the vibes with a breathtaking, playful dexterity. Bassist Liam O’Dell, 21, is an Arkansas native and University of Memphis graduate who made a splash locally before pursuing a master’s of jazz performance degree at the University of Texas at Austin. Trumpeter Martin Carodine,19, came to the sessions from the University of Miami. And drummer Kurtis Gray, 17, is, in Less’ opinion, “an absolute savant.”
On the title track, there’s a notable cameo from the old guard. “Jim Spake is on the first song, playing soprano,” says Less. “I brought Jim in because I was afraid that they would not know where we set the bar for this record. I wanted them to understand that this is the best saxophone player in town. I wanted to put them with him, playing at that caliber, from the very first song. And so we cut ‘Playing in the Yard,’ which is by Sonny Rollins.”
The bar clearly set, the ad hoc quintet shines through the rest of the album. The Ellington staple “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” also featured on Down Home Reunion, is the clearest echo of that 20th-century predecessor, while other tunes, like Willie Mitchell’s “The Crawl” and Dan Penn’s “The Dark End of the Street,” situate the album squarely in Memphis. Payne’s vibraphone casts a spell on “When You Wish Upon a Star,” a tune that’s reprised at the end as a pensive arco solo by O’Dell. The album feels like an instant classic.
While clearly delighted, Less is not surprised by the results. “Memphis is a jazz city,” he says. “Jazz is just as good as it ever was in Memphis.”
David Cousar with Janet Holloway Cousar (Credit: David Cousar)
Even before David Cousar passed away last Thursday at 73, after struggling with cancer, social media was overflowing with tributes to him from fellow musicians, friends, and fans who were touched by his art. The gifted guitarist, songwriter, and singer was also a gifted writer who had shared his journey through the illness with poetic, philosophical, and humorous posts for at least three years, and now the community was staying with him through the endgame. While some misinterpreted the flood of memories to mean that he’d died already, he was weak but relishing the earliest wave of shout-outs.
“He would have been seeing them through Tuesday,” recalls his wife Janet Holloway Cousar of the numerous posts. “But he went really fast. He was alert and we were talking, and he knew everybody was posting things on Wednesday, but he wanted me to read them to him later. And there just wasn’t a later.”
Still, the many memories were a moving tribute to a music-maker known for his blend of spontaneity and discipline, restraint and audacity, in equal measures, and sharing them was clearly cathartic for the local music community. The posts continued even after Bob Mehr’s thoughtful obituary was published last Friday, as people struggled to come to terms with the loss of Cousar’s sprawling, omnivorous talent. His playing had a depth and breadth that was both instantly engaging and difficult to fathom.
Saxophonist Jim Spake was among the first to encounter Cousar’s talent, back in the wild frontier of the 1970s, when musical genres were arguably less siloed than in the current era. “I was in my first or second year of college when Doug Garrison introduced me to him. And we started playing gigs together by ’75 or ’76. He was already more seasoned by then. He was seven years older than me, but he didn’t seem that much older. He was always really youthful acting and looking.”
David Cousar on a trip to New Orleans, ca. 1983 (Photo: Courtesy of Jim Spake)
Even then, Spake witnessed Cousar’s venturesome spirit, his appetite for learning and expanding his horizons. “He loved Wes Montgomery, Ry Cooder, and Taj Mahal, and the way they would reimagine pop standards,” Spake recalls. “He would do Joni Mitchell songs. His ears were always open to stuff that was new to him, always looking for new sounds to incorporate into his own music, you know, even in his formative years of music playing. He came up to visit me in Boston when I was at Berklee [College of Music], and slept on my floor. While he was there he hunted down Pat Metheny and got a lesson with him. David was pretty over the moon about that because Pat Metheny was brand-new then; he was new and fresh. A lot of people hadn’t even heard him yet. Back then you could still do this.”
Though self-taught on guitar, Cousar was a disciplined student of the instrument. “He started out as a young rocker, but he took those Berklee correspondence courses and that was back when it was done by mail. That was sometime in the ’70s,” recalls Spake. “He struck me as somebody who always was looking for ways to improve.”
Later in life, he would share his studies of everything from “Minuet I” by Sylvius Leopold Weiss to klezmer music. That in turn filtered into the imaginative playing he brought to other artists’ music, ranging from Al Green to Amy LaVere to Marcella Simien and beyond. He also had a fine-tuned understanding of Caribbean music, from reggae to Bahamian folk auteur Joseph Spence. His knowledge of such music grew exponentially during the many years he spent in Florida.
“He played with this white reggae band in Florida called Lazy Day, and they would play in the Keys as well,” recalls Spake. That heavily influenced the material covered in one of Cousar’s earliest Memphis bands, the Bluebeats, formed in the early ’80s, which also included Spake. “I was already into reggae. And you know, I think we played some pretty good stuff. I’m sure there was too much Bob Marley, but also some more obscure stuff like the Melodians.”
Ad hoc group featuring David Cousar on bass, with Randy Haspel, Richard Roseborough, Donnie Baer, and Jim Spake, ca. 1982 (Photo: Courtesy of Jim Spake)
That group would become a fixture at Jefferson Square, the Bombay Bicycle Club, and other venues for years, but Cousar was also sitting in with the many ad hoc groups that played in Memphis at the time, including the Midtown Jazzmobile. Yet what many fans treasured most were his solo shows, notably at The Buccaneer before its demise, where Cousar’s playful spirit could have full rein. Such moments were testaments to the singer’s spontaneity, as with this reimagining of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.”
This venturesome, eclectic spirit stayed with Cousar until the end. As his wife Janet recalls, “he played his guitar up until the last few weeks of his life, playing classical, jazz, and his own songs.” He also read and listened to music voraciously, listening to Marc Ribot, Neil Young, B.B. King, Wayne Shorter, and Ry Cooder as his health failed. “He was always devouring information,” Janet notes, adding that his last readings included The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard P. Feynman — a perfect title to sum up Cousar’s approach to life.
The story of Janet’s presence in his life reads like a novel in itself. As she describes their first encounter in the ’80s, “I met him and it was just love at first sight. We went out on a date and we were living together from that point on for four and a half years. He was the love of my life and vice versa.”
Yet lifestyle differences came between them, and they went their separate ways for decades. By the time Janet found herself free to start seeing him again, Cousar was already ill, but that didn’t dampen their mutual passion in the least. “We never got back together until a little over a year and a half ago,” she recalls, noting her divorce from her then-husband at the time. After that, “I called David, knowing he was sick and did not have long. I wanted to spend whatever time could with him. And you know, he was just happy as can be. Nothing had changed!”
It was a charmed moment for them both. “When we started getting back together, he wasn’t playing. He wasn’t really talking to a lot of people. Though at least his friends would message him or text him just out of the blue, saying how much they loved him.” Cousar ultimately rallied to play on recordings by Billy Swan at Southern Grooves studio this January and in a series of Murphy’s shows with Rick Steff and Shawn Zorn this summer.
Meanwhile, his health issues brought practical concerns that complicated the romance. “When you’re sick and you’re on Medicaid, you don’t want to lose it. We started talking about getting married in February of this past year, but every time I got closer, I was like, ‘I don’t want you to lose your insurance.’ So we waited. We almost waited too late, but I’m so glad we got married. It just means everything.” They had a small bedside ceremony officiated by their close friend Susan Marshall on October 22nd. “He was very sick,” recalls Janet, “but he rallied for that day.”
Since Cousar’s passing, Janet, who works in the medical industry, has been acutely aware of the dire healthcare issues confronting musicians like her late husband. “If I could just get a group of doctors who are fans of music, who would agree to do screenings or something … I just feel very, very passionate about getting people to a point where they feel comfortable going to the doctor,” Janet muses. Fellow musician Vicki Loveland has set up a GoFundMe campaign focused not only on funding a memorial to Cousar at Elmwood Cemetery, but assisting other musicians. “After David’s final expenses are covered,” reads the GoFundMe page, “the family will donate all future donations from this campaign to MusiCares in memory of David,” referring to the medical assistance fund for musicians set up by the Recording Academy.
Meanwhile, Janet Cousar is left picking up the pieces, reflecting on the Renaissance man she knew so well. “David had an amazing philosophy on life,” she muses. “He only looked forward and never back. He lived with hope instead of regret. He encouraged me not to be sad where we were, but look forward to what life we had left. He saw beauty in the mundane that most people don’t notice. Up until the day he passed away he talked about where we would go for our honeymoon. In every step he took in life, he was a true artist.”
