Once an artist reaches a major turning point in their career, they choose to move forward or look backwards. The musicians that live in the past find themselves following similar patterns throughout their artistic lives. While they may make slight changes upon their concept, their musical output consists of the same foundation over time. They may hold different reasons for this stagnant approach, ranging from the popular commercial appeal of a certain sound to a unwavering dedication to their comfort zone. Artists that move forward look ahead with an unforgiving focus and a burning desire to discover exciting new musical territories. They consistently engage new projects that push the limits of their musical concepts and force them to rethink their ideas about improvisation. While they may revisit ideas from their earlier career, they always look at the concept from a different angle, pulling new ideas from the initial thought. Once an artist steps away from the past and moves in a new direction, they inherit a musical fire that sends them into overtime exploring the possibilities in front of them. Whether an artist stays locked in the past or looks boldly into the future, they build a path into their later career - only one approach guarantees an interesting output in later life though.

After hitting a number of career highs, Mark Weinstein put his past success aside and started upon a new musical path. He had become one of the busiest trombone players on New York’s busy Latin music scene during the sixties, playing with everyone from Eddie Palmieri to Ray Barretto. Weinstein recorded a groundbreaking combination of jazz and Cuban folkloric music, delivering Cuban Roots to the world. This album would become a favorite among Latin Jazz connoisseurs, but during the sixties, Weinstein’s forward thinking musical approach just couldn’t find acceptance. Feeling rejected by his peers and audience, Weinstein continued moving forward, dipping his toes into the rock scene. Weinstein received a ludicrous offer to work for Janis Joplin, which served as a breaking point - he turned down the gig and walked away from the music business completely. He returned to college, earned a PhD in Philosophy, and began working as a college professor. When life changes altered his course once again, Weinstein picked up the flute, initially hoping to pursue it as a hobby. Old habits die hard though, and Weinstein soon found himself honing his jazz flute skills, recording, and performing live. With a new lease on his musical life, Weinstein set forth onto a mission to redefine himself through diverse directions which included several re-imaginings of Cuban Roots. Once Weinstein started upon this path, he moved forward with a passionate inertia, producing a prolific output of recordings.

As Weinstein returned to an active performance and recording career, he built upon all the lessons of his past to create some of his strongest work. In part one of our interview with Weinstein, we discussed his early career, and in part two we looked at the creation of Cuban Roots. The third part of our interview follows Weinstein’s first major forays into recording as a flute player, leading to the creation of albums such as Algo Mas, O Nosso Amor, and Con Alma.

LJC: Cuban Roots bled into The Orisha Suite then Cuban Roots Revisited and Algo Más - I see those records all along the same line. What do you see as the progression of each recording?

MW: Orisha Suite was how I tried to redo Cuban Roots now that I was a flute player. I liked the fact that there was singing on it, but once again, that was much too avant-garde for the room. It went nowhere; I never even finished the album. I actually had more material recorded - drums and voices - but the two inch tape got lost because I didn’t have any money. So that was ancient history, it didn’t work.

Cubop Records wanted to re-release the original Cuban Roots. They got in touch with me and I got them in touch with the guy that I thought owned the rights to it. At that point, he had just licensed a track from Cuban Roots for a Rhino compilation of the best Latin Jazz from the sixties. I guess he thought that this album was going to be a big money maker, so he wouldn’t give Cubop the rights. So Cubop said to me, “Can you reproduce the album?” I said, “Sure - the only thing is that I don’t play trombone anymore. But I’ll put together some trombone players and we’ll make the album.” So then I confronted a whole new concept, using the trombones as a choir and sent the charts out to the West Coast. My nephew Dan Weinstein, who does an awful lot of recording on the West Coast, was working for Cubop - he was supposed to rehearse the trombones. I went out to the West Coast and it turned out that Dan hadn’t even copied the parts, more or less rehearsed the trombones. He was supposed to write some charts, and he hadn’t written the charts; it turned out to be one of these comedy of errors. So once again, the album was recorded with inadequate rehearsals in two days, and we mixed that entire album in one day. I was broken hearted, because once again, my stuff was getting messed up, because I didn’t have the support from the record company to do the job right. But Cuban Roots Revisited is what it is what it is, and I got to meet Omar Sosa through it, which was an important thing. The album actually gave me enough credits to join NARAS, so it was all part of the process. But I really wanted to do the folkloric stuff right.

Then I started to record a whole bunch of different albums - a whole bunch of jazz albums, a Jewish jazz album, Tudo de Bom, a couple of straight ahead albums, and I just wasn’t getting anywhere. The Brazilian stuff was not getting me anywhere. So I decided that the only thing that I have to do is make Cuban Roots again. I called up Bobby Sanabria and I said, “Is there a drummer in New York city who really really knows the tradition but has an open mind?” And Bobby put me onto Pedrito Martinez. Pedrito was playing at a club in Union City, which is the center of Cuban culture in New Jersey, playing rumba with singers and dancers. So I went down there and just somehow convinced Pedrito to do an album for me. I brought in my friend Jean-Paul Bourrelly, who is actually a great guitar player, he’s really an underrated guitar player. He had heard Cuban Roots Revisited, and when he heard Cuban Roots Revisited, he said, “Man, you’ve got to get me into the studio with those drummers.” He plays a lot of hip-hop and afro-pop and he just loved playing with those drummers. So we went into the studio. I hired Santi Debriano, who had done an album with me called Jazz World Trios. I knew that Santi understood drums because he played a little conga and stuff like that. We went in there, again, with no music.

We recorded the Toques De Santos the first day - Pedrito would sing a Toque to Jean-Paul; Jean-Paul would figure out the harmony; he would then teach the harmony to Santi; and then we would play the Toque. Pedrito was very upset, because he didn’t really understand what Jean-Paul was doing. But, you know, you’re in the studio, and if you’re a musician in the studio, you play as well as you can. He had his crew, he had his drummers. Pedrito wasn’t playing drums at all, he sings on the album - he sang the Toques. All the flute stuff on the Toques is overdubbed, because I didn’t want to get in the way. But I told him to leave space for me. So we did that, and the next day we did rumba. And all the rumba is live. We just played. The first note that they heard me play was the first melody that I play on “Consuelo De Como Yo.” That was the first time that anyone heard me play. Then, after the basic tracks were recorded, I just went into the studio with all my three flutes and just started to improvise. I started to do the Barry Rogers thing - I’d lay down a line on flute. I’d experiment until I had a good basic riff, and then I’d lay another line down and another line down. Some of those tracks have six or seven tracks of flute. But there is not one written note of music on Algo Más. All of those flute harmonies are completely improvised. And, you know, that’s basically the way that I’ve been playing ever since I started to play flute. It’s all about my ears and my hands. It’s not about writing, it’s about playing. You know, for better or for worse, that’s why the music sounds the way that it sounds.

I don’t think that I’m a great musician; I’m struggling to be as good as musician as I can. But I manage to get amazing music out of musicians in the recording studio. That’s why I put the line of the psalms on all of my records. This is no post-Coltrane religiousity. I literally don’t understand why I can go into the studio with these great musicians and get such great music coming out of them. So I just look at it as a total gift. That’s why I put the line of the psalms on all of my records - just to express the fact that there’s some magic stuff happening when I go into the studio with these guys.

By the way, that’s why I called it Algo Más - you know, one more time . . . to do Cuban Roots one more time. So Algo Más got me the relationship with Jazzheads, but it didn’t sell. You know, it just didn’t sell - it got a couple of good reviews, but no one really understood the music. It was just too out, too different. Then I switched over and started to record with the Brazilian guys and made O Nosso Amor. And Brazilian records just don’t sell man, they don’t get radio play.

So I’m sitting in my house and I’m saying, “Man, I’ve got to make a record for this guy that will sell or else he’s not going to let me record any more.” Mark Levine had just gotten a Grammy nomination, and I said, “That’s the ticket!” So I called up Mark Levine, and said, “Hey man, do you want to do a record for me?” I always give co-producer to my main guy, and I said, “You do the co-producer.” Mark is a serious, serious guy, you know, he goes through 50 CDs to pick tunes, and all this stuff. Then I used Santi, because Santi’s a great jazz bass player. Since Mark is such a mainstream Latin Jazz player, I wanted to get him in the same room with these new Cuban drummers. So I called up Pedrito and said, “Do you have a drummer for me?” He said, “Sure.” I said, “O.K., we’ve got a record date.”

Again, we had two days to record. We were supposed to record Friday and Saturday. So I fly in Mark, pay his airfare; Santi Debriano is up teaching somewhere in Massachusetts, so he’s coming in. Wednesday, before the Friday that we’re supposed to record, Pedrito calls me up, all flustered. He explain to me that it’s unavoidable, he can’t do the Saturday date. So I said, “O.K., we’ll go in, we’ll record Friday, then we’ll record without the conga on Saturday, then Sunday, he’ll overdub the conga.” Mark and Santi and I were supposed to rehearse the day before; but Santi came in really late and he was exhausted. He drove in from Massachusetts; both of those guys were staying at my house. The choice was to either have some dinner and get some sleep or rehearse, and the choice was obvious - forget rehearsing!

So the next morning, we get into the studio at 12 noon, and the record date goes off like clockwork. At one point, Mark comes over to me and he says, “Man, that’s the greatest bass player I have ever played with in my life.” Santi at another point comes over to me and say, “Hey man, thanks for calling me for this date man. Those drummers are amazing!” So we record about half the album, and we’ve been in studio six or seven hours. I’m isolated, I’m in a booth, and Pedrito comes up to me in the booth and he’s really aggitated. I say, “What’s wrong?” He said, “I’m never going to be able to get this energy overdubbing. You’ve got to let me finish the album.” We’ve been recording for six hours, right? “You’ve got to let me finish the album.” So I call the guys together, we go into the main room, and I said, “Well, Pedrito wants to finish the album tonight.” Santi says, “Oh great, that way I can drive back and not cancel a bass lesson” - because he’s teaching bass over at the college. And Mark says, “Oh great, then I can get a day in New York before I have to fly back!” So we ended up recording the album in twelve hours. We basically had head arrangements. Mark had some things written out, we multi-tracked the alto flutes on one of the tunes, but it was basically head arrangements.

We were a tune short and so Mark said, “Let’s play Stella.” Now, there’s actually an interesting history to that. When Mark first came to New York, he was up in Boston and he was a valve trombone player. But he was playing piano a little bit too. I was a trombone player, and trombone players meet trombone players, so me and Mark hung out one day and he gave me the changes to Stella - The hip changes to Stella. This was right around the time when Miles had recorded “Stella” in the concert in Europe. I sat down and looked at those changes and I couldn’t figure out why they sounded good. The substitution where you go back to Bb by playing an Ebmin7 - Ab7 - the standard substitution to Cmin7 - F7, the turn around to Bb Major. I couldn’t conceptually understand why those chords sounded good. I actually learned how to play extensions by figuring out why “Stella By Starlight” sounded so good. So whenever I was at a jam session and anyone would ask me to call a tune, I’d always call “Stella.” So we played “Stella” and Mark has this little arrangement, so everything goes good. At the end of “Stella,” the drummers play solos. The solos they played after being in the studio for twelve hours were amazing. I mean, Pedrito was as fresh . . . The fill at the end of Stella is as fast as anything imaginable. All of the Cuban guys - I’ve subsequently realized what’s going on with these guys - all of the guys that come out of Cuba now have studied folkloric music. Seriously studied it, the way they study jazz, the way that they study classical music. And the drummers who play folkloric music, these guys play for hours and hours and hours on end. What amazes me is just the physical strength of those drummers; the endurance of those guys. Maybe I’m still locked into the sixties Cuban-Puerto Rican thing . . . I don’t know, I don’t think it’s genetic, but it certainly is contextual. The great musicians who are coming out of Cuban are working in such a fiercely competitive environment that the good ones are better than anybody.

LJC: You’ve done a great chain of Brazilian albums, which seemed to start with Jazz World Trios. How did that evolve?

MW: The Jazz World Trios album is a story. I had done Cuban Roots Revisited and I didn’t know it at the time, but I was suffering from diverticulitis - I lost a foot and a half of colon. I had constant stomach pain and fever becuase it’s an infection of the colon. I was really sick when I did Cuban Roots Revisited. I came back and I was really disappointed with the album, so I did an album called Three Deuces
with just guitar duets. Then I had this operation, I was feeling a lot better, and I decided that I want to record again. My friend Jean Paul was in town - Jean Paul is Haitian and he knows the Toques De Santos stuff through some Haitian religious tradition. So I got him in the studio with Milton Cardona. I actually tried to call Steve Berrios, but he was in Europe. So I went in the studio with Milton Cardona and we recorded those two long tracks of Babalu Aye and Elegua. But I didn’t know what to do with it.

I heard about Romero Lubambo and I got his phone number from somebody. I sent Romero the stuff that I had done with Jean Paul and I said, “I want to do the same thing with Brazilian stuff.” He was interested in the concept, which was extended form improvisation. I said to him, “What I want you to do is find me a very, very fundamental tune and then a really obscure bossa nova.” So he came over to my house and he brings me this tune - he didn’t even know the name of it. He said he thinks the name is Baião Grafino, this old, old folkloric baião. It’s actually a blues; it’s a three chord blues. He shows it to me and I said “Great.” He shows me the bossa nova and I said, “Great.” We were going to do the session and he said he was going to bring Cyro Baptiste.

On the way out, he says to me, “Oh, by the way, write me some changes.” You know, like a challenge. You want me to play with you? Show me that you know something. So I sit down and I write a whole bunch of substitutions. I write about three of four different kind of substitutions. The tune is in C and Romero says, “Since there is no bass player, I want to play with open strings.” Which means he wants to play the tune in E or A, right? I don’t want to do that - so the tune’s a blues; it’s C7, F7, Ab7, G7, those are the changes, right? So I write all of these sort of hip substitutions and I said, “But this isn’t going to satisfy him, because he wants open strings.” So I said, “I’ve got an idea - I’m going to play the melody in C, but the root isn’t going to be C, it’s going to be E.” So the C7 is actually an E altered. The F7, the root is A, so it’s an A altered, the Ab7 is a D and the G7 is the one chord that’s a chord. So I go into the studio and I say, “Alright, here’s the concept man. We’re going to play it in C, but the roots are E and A.” Romero looks at me like I’m crazy. He plays this beautiful introduction and I bring the melody in . . . twice as slow. What that does is just open it wide open, because what I really did is shocked him. The harmony was set up for extensions, and it showed him that I’m not just going to play the damn thing, I’m going to mess with you. Again, it became one of those things - 18 minutes later the tune was finished!

So that was literally the first time that I had ever played Brazilian music in my life. I just felt that it was natural; that Brazilian music was really my music, even more than Cuban music. Romero was very happy with the date too. I have funny time - Dave Valentin swings his ass off, Herbie Mann swings his ass off, every flute player swings his ass off. Not me. I float - my concept of time is the concept of the flute. I don’t play time like a sax player; I play time like a flute player. The flute is all the way up there, it’s a fast instrument. I play over the time; I don’t play in time, I play over the time. That works really, really well with Brazilian music, because that’s the way that they singers sing. The singers sing all loose in the music. I love Brazilian music.

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Make sure that you check out Part 1 of our conversation with Mark Weinstein where we discuss his early musical development, his time with Eddie Palmieri’s La Perfecta, and his relationship with Barry Rogers. Check it out HERE.

Don’t miss Part 2 of our discussion with Mark Weinstein, where we talk about the recording of Cuban Roots, his step away from the music business, and his evolution into a flautist. Check it out HERE.

Don’t miss Part 4 of our interview with Weinstein where we talk about two incredible recordings, Tales From The Earth and Timbasa. Lot’s of great stuff in this chapter - check it out HERE.

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Check Out These Related Posts:
Latin Jazz Conversations: Kat Parra (Part 2)
Latin Jazz Conversations: Jose Madera (Part 2)
Latin Jazz Conversations: Poncho Sanchez (Part 3)
Latin Jazz Conversations: Mitch Frohman (Part 3)

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