Auteur

Real Talk: A Conversation with Trumpeter David Weiss
On the rigors of bandleading, and the discovery of rare tunes by Freddie Hubbard, Slide Hampton

Significant events can happen quietly in our jazz world (another way of saying they're getting ignored). Like the fact that trumpeter David Weiss recorded a previously unknown Freddie Hubbard composition, "Rebop," on his 2024 sextet release Auteur (Origin). There's a previously unknown Slide Hampton composition as well, the closing track, "One for Bu." Hampton, the great trombonist, composer and arranger who died in 2021, wrote a book of original music decades ago for Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, of which he was briefly a member (little-known fact). The tunes had no titles and were never officially recorded. Weiss gave Hampton's son, who owns the publishing, naming rights to "One for Bu," which is swinging uptempo, harmonically advanced, fairly dark in mood, conceived very much like a Messengers sextet piece.

Weiss also revisits "The Mirror" from his 2004 album of the same name. It's a signature piece, almost a declaration of identity for the group, their equivalent of "Hey hey we're the Monkees," jokes Weiss. "It just seems to be the one that features the band in the best way, and we play it on every gig. It was always a little too fast on the first record."

Along with the originals "Too Little, Too Late" and "The Other Side of the Mountain," Weiss includes "With Gratitude (for Wayne)," a paean to the late Wayne Shorter, which puts one in mind of Weiss's Shorter-themed 2012 live 12-tet album Endangered Species (Motéma). "Resilience (for George)" is for the eminent George Cables, pianist in another of the trumpeter's projects: the supergroup of jazz veterans known as The Cookers, which plays Smoke from January 29 through February 2, 2025. The Sextet is at Smalls on January 10-11 and Scullers in Boston on January 25.

The sextet is not only a platform for the leader's incisive composing and playing, but also a proving ground for younger talent. The band's previous releases—Breathing Room, The Mirror (both Fresh Sound) and When Words Fail (Motéma)—feature Marcus and E.J. Strickland. Tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover, on George Cables' recommendation, appears on Auteur (her current trio release from Savant, Plays, is a tour de force). David Bryant, a superb pianist now based in Japan, plays with fire, depth and poise on Auteur; he also debuted as a leader in 2024 with Coat of Arms (Days of Delight). Saxophonist Myron Walden, of Brian Blade's Fellowship Band, the Weiss-directed New Jazz Composers Octet and often the trumpeter's Point of Departure quintet as well, is in the front line, with Eric Wheeler and E.J. Strickland on bass and drums respectively.

I caught up with Weiss via phone shortly after a sextet tour of the West Coast. The following has been condensed and edited.

Great to connect, David, and thanks for talking to JazzTimes.
I have to say, I remember when I first started working with Freddie Hubbard, and I went out there for the first time and was looking for charts in his garage. I didn't find any music but I did find the very first issue of JazzTimes, it was like a folded newspaper. I think maybe because Freddie was in it or something.

Wow! Would love a photo of that. Tell us about the sextet tour—who was on the road with you?
There were some local tenor players but I took the core group, I took Myron Walden, E.J. Strickland and David Bryant. If they're in place, then I'm pretty comfortable. E.J. goes back to 1999 and Myron's been in the band for 20 years. You're familiar with David Bryant?

Oh yes, great player, I heard him years ago with Jen Shyu and others.
And you might have also heard him with Steve Coleman. You might have heard him with Henry Threadgill. Louis Hayes. He's just, I mean, yeah—he's pretty incredible, a Cooker in the making. We also had Joe Dyson on drums because E.J. had to miss the last couple of gigs. Talk about an amazing young drummer.

What are you looking for in younger players?
Well, everybody's going to school now, or they've figured out how to play, but they don't get to go into a situation where they can actually figure out who they are and how to do it. There's the very straightahead guys and there's the more exploratory guys. Which side do I go to? Do I pull a real straightahead guy who hopefully has the sensibilities to expand? Or do I take a more "out" guy who doesn't have as much grounding as I would hope, but who might find that [over time] in his freer playing? There seem to be very few people living in the middle. Myron, E.J. and David [Bryant], Eric Wheeler to a certain extent, are still guys who live in that world.

That's the world of your Point of Departure Quintet as well, no? That band had a lot of strong younger players: Nir Felder, Ben Eunson, Jamire Williams...
Myron Walden gives me shit about this all the time, he says, "You never sounded better as a trumpet player than Point of Departure. You need to do that shit again, that shit was bad." I mean, yes, I loved it, as a trumpet player I loved it more than anything else. But I couldn't even tell you who the first person is I would hire if I put that band together again. There doesn't seem to be a niche for that anymore. I don't hear it.

Part of what I think I'm trying to do is approximate what it was like to play a club for six months, five sets a night. That was The Cookers—those guys know what happened when, you know, you played in a band. Myron also knows about playing in a band because he's in one of the only bands that's really done that, which is Brian Blade's Fellowship Band. I was talking to [trumpeter] Jeremy Pelt about young musicians who went to school—you send them the music, they learn it at home, come to the rehearsal, read it well and think they're done. I'm like, that's the starting point, dude. And you can tell they're not there because their second gig is a lot worse than their first. Because they relaxed and thought they had it.

You've done a lot in regard to Wayne Shorter's music, both with your Endangered Species band and also directing Wallace Roney's large ensemble premier of Wayne's unknown extended work "Universe," back in 2013. Tell us about "With Gratitude," your homage to Wayne on this record.
Like I used to say regarding Freddie Hubbard, I like to pay my debts. [Weiss's octet was the band Hubbard performed with in the last years of his life.] These guys did things, you know? The intro of "With Gratitude" I'm pretty sure is influenced by something from Phantom Navigator or Joy Ryder.

And the George Cables dedication?
There's a little passage in there, too, that's definitely lifted from a George Cables thing. I played it for him at a soundcheck and asked him if I owed him money.

Finally, if you could say more about these unrecorded Hubbard and Slide Hampton compositions that you've documented on Auteur.
The Freddie Hubbard one is from a live tape, and Freddie announced the tune, so no problem. OK, so we did searches for "Rebop" and did some more digging and came up with nothing. Slide Hampton's tune points to a hole in the [Jazz Messengers] history. [There was] a lineup with [trumpeter] Bill Hardman, McCoy Tyner, I believe Billy Harper on tenor, and then Slide joined the band and wrote the whole book. Blakey said they had a kind of second renaissance of the sextet, with Slide as a great musical director.

So Slide's there, one of the greatest composers and arrangers ever, and they're rocking again. And then he leaves almost immediately. Julian Priester comes in and it's still a sextet, Ronnie Mathews replaces McCoy. All the material is written by Slide Hampton and it's great, the band sounds great. But none of it was officially recorded. There are videos, though—something from Slugs', a European bootleg and I think they did a Newport festival launch party at RCA Studios. Somebody came across it. I started transcribing all the tunes and I had an idea for a project, but nobody gave a shit at all. They gave less than a shit.

Well, that's about to change! JazzTimes is back!
We can change the world, baby! [Laughs] I mean, if jazz is really to have respect, isn't this a little like finding, you know, Beethoven's 11th or something? ◊