As a clarinet devotee, I was pleased, Buddy, to hear that you and John were making another album together. How did this one work out?

Buddy De Franco: Fine. We always get along pretty well. We were both kind of tired at the time, but that was no problem. As far as playing, it doesn’t really matter if you’re tired you seem to get the energy from somewhere. I know that many times you go on the stage and you think you’ll never make it and it comes out. Sometimes better than when you’ve had plenty of sleep.

Yes, it arrives. Was this somewhat different from the one you did before more freewheeling, perhaps?

De Franco: No, it’s more of the same, I think. Well, we had a fair amount of success with that first one; so, whenever you’re fairly successful with one, you do one like it. The only thing is: the selections are a little different, and... maybe there’s a little more freedom on it. What do you think, John?

John Denman: There’s a little more Latin—type music in this one.

De Franco: More original stuff too; before, we did more songs that everyone is fairly familiar with.

Did you include anything of a classical nature?

De Franco: Well I’ve gotten away from classical music mainly because I can’t play it.

Denman: Don’t take any notice when he says he can’t play it! Actually, the fugue that I wrote after Bach the first time was very, very difficult for both the clarinets. Nobody builds the kind of technique Buddy has without playing straight first. This time we played the theme from the “Raymonde Overture”, which somebody stole and called “Hush—a—bye”, in a fugal treatment I thought it would be nice to have something of that nature in there.

It makes for variety, I’m sure. Who was on the session with you?

Denman: On piano we had Jeff Haskell, who is Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Arizona he flew over specially and we had Kenny Baldock on bass, Don Lawson on drums. So it’s fairly international, I suppose. I’m not sure where I am—I don’t belong anywhere any more! I speak either language.

You two have had a general playing and friendly relationship for some time, haven’t you?

De Franco: Oh, my gosh, yeah. The first time we were scheduled to meet, though, poor John wound up in the hospital. What year was that?

Denman: That was 1976. We were supposed to be meeting at the Clarinet Clinic in Denver, where Buddy was doing the jazz part of it, and I was, if you like, to have represented Great Britain as a legit clarinettist. I went to Tucson, Arizona principally to find somewhere to live, buy a car and that sort of thing, but I got ill and was put into hospital. Which was where I met my wife Paula, actually she was a volunteer nurse. I was so frustrated by the whole thing I played a concert in a wheelchair, with Paula playing electric piano.

De Franco: So you got her instead of me: a wise choice.

Presumably, you’d say your association has been of mutual benefit, musically?

De Franco: I like to think so I hope so. Well, I think we can play off one another, feed off one another, influence one another. John has a remarkable command of the clarinet. I’m one of those guys, as you know... if a jazz artist plays good jazz but has a limited technique, I appreciate what he plays but it’s only half the picture. I like to hear the instrument played to the full. Sometimes I’ve been criticised, and so have some of the best players that I’ve heard, for “too much technique”. That’s a mystery to me—that’s like saying someone’s too healthy! I don’t understand that.

Denman: You know, one of our concerns when we play is that we play too many notes. Buddy’s always saying to me: “Don’t use so many notes!” And it’s sometimes difficult to hold back if you get excited, because when you do, it hopefully goes straight to the fingers.

De Franco: Then people accuse you of “showing off’. What else is it? You certainly wouldn’t play in a room by yourself, without anybody saying: “Hey yeah!” Right? Part of any performance is to show off to show what you can do. If you’re not going to show what you can do, forget it.

Well, it’s like a conversation. When you’re having a conversation, you bring a lot of different things in, because it makes it interesting.

De Franco: That’s right. You’re not just going to lay back and sleep. You do what you do.

Denman: But since the days when I started copying him from those little yellow 78s, like “Buddy’s Blues”, I’ve heard Buddy change his harmonic approach.

I’d like to hear what Buddy says about this. Do you agree with what John says about your harmonic approach having changed? Has this been a conscious thing with you?

De Franco: How can I put this? It’s an unconscious/conscious thing there’s a double meaning behind it. In other words, it was kind of like when I wanted to play Bach on the clarinet right before I did, and right before I heard Charlie Parker, there was a big empty space there I wanted to fill. I knew it was there, and I knew somewhere along the way I was going to find it. When I heard Bird, I said: “Yeah that articulation’s what I want. That’s what I want to do.” Harmonically, it’s been that thing; I’ve always gravitated toward little different harmonic structures, and it just grows I find more to do. And the more I change, the more I find. Which makes it interesting it’s endless.

Denman: It does. I must say, until we started doing things together a few years ago, I’d been copying you. There were a number of licks that would come out like Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and Buddy De France. But now that you’ve got me going with all these added notes, extensions, substitutions and things, my style’s changing in the same way, I think.

De Franco: It has to change.

Denman: Instead of going up and down all the time.

De Franco: Yeah, and that’s another important thing too. All clarinet players that I can think of have a tendency to spell out the chords when they play or rely on licks. We all do I’m not criticising anyone. The trick is to get away from that ostensible spelling–out. Okay the only way you can do that is by developing that harmonic knowledge to the point where the knowledge is unconscious, and it’s like the brake pedal and the gas pedal in an automobile it’s automatic; you can see the red light or the green light, you know what to do and it just happens.

Denman: That’ll be the day—I’ll be very happy when that happens to me.

De Franco: So that’s what we strive for that’s when you’re playing really spontaneous, unedited jazz. Unedited, but highly developed. We all try to do that; I’m not saying we do it all the time—I certainly don’t, but that’s what I try to go for. Even though you’re harmonically developed, and becoming more, say, sophisticated, you try not to make it an obvious process.

Denman: What you’re saying is in keeping with what I think about this art form which is peculiar to America it started there. With Americans you find that this spontaneity does exist. Now, you spend a lot of time in Japan, I know how do you get on when you go there? Japanese people are not given to doing things by instinct they’re very disciplined people.

De Franco: Well, in Japan I met three young clarinettists who have all of my albums and all of my solos transcribed. During a concert intermission they came to me and said: “This is your ‘Lady Be Good’ you played this in 1950; Sonny Clark was on the piano...” and they whipped out ten pages of manuscript.

One young fellow says: “Will you play this?” I looked at it, and I said: “I can’t play that!” And they couldn’t figure it out; “Now why can’t you play that? That’s yours. You played that, didn’t you?” I said: “But I can’t play it now I can’t read it.” As I explained to them, I don’t think there’s a jazz player that I know who can read their own solos on sight. You can’t.

It’s the same situation as having a successful solo on a recording: everybody remembers it and when you play live they expect you to reproduce it note for note but you don’t.

De Franco: You don’t—you really shouldn’t. It wouldn’t be really good jazz. That’s why I used to like Artie Shaw—he was one of the few fluent players. I mean, he had his licks; we know that I—used to copy them but he could play with such fluency. I just loved the way he played.

Denman: He played a lot of high notes too.

De Franco: Oh, yeah. Did you know this? Somebody just told me that he put a piece of a wood reed inside of his mouthpiece, right past the baffle but he used a plastic reed.

Denman: Did he? He got up there on a plastic reed? That’s unbelievable, because usually they don’t vibrate too well. Well, they did it with saxophones—with the Roc mouthpiece. You remember those, with the tone chambers inside at the top of the baffle? There are all kinds of saxophone tone chambers, but with the clarinet it’s always been the opposite way. With the saxophone you nick something out; with the clarinet you fill it in. Maybe that’s altered.

De Franco: Kenny Daverne insisted he did that because he got high notes better.

Denman: Sometimes it’s a job to get high notes in some places you play even some recording studios because of a dead atmosphere.

De Franco: Not only that, there’s the weather. If you have damp weather, the reed is going to get waterlogged immediately, and you’re not going to get anything above an A. As soon as that reed gets waterlogged, you’re finished.

Denman: Well, you can get it, but you wouldn’t want to keep trying, say, on a record.

De Franco: You hurt your lip too.

This surely is a hazard travelling as much as you do, in so many different climates.

De Franco: Especially with a clarinet because you never know what the clarinet will do. You simply never know. There’s a famous story about Johnny Mince, talking to his clarinet after a job. he said: “Okay after forty years, you win! You win okay.”

Incidentally, Buddy you did that album of your own etudes with just a guitar; have you done anything else like that?

De Franco: No, I haven’t. What I did more recently is two albums with Martin Taylor as part of the rhythm section. I think he’s one of the best I’ve ever heard any time. What I love about his playing: it’s very modern and very clean he’s a marvellous technician but he has a flair of Django, which he may have gotten through working a lot with Stephane. That funny little bit of Django he has in him is great and I think it will set him apart from most other guitar players.

Denman: He’s got the same sort of drive.

De Franco: He does it all. Working with him is not a matter of him being part of my group or me being part of his it’s a collaboration, like John and I, or Terry Gibbs and myself. It’s a mutual thing. Sometimes the billing puts my name first, but I don’t like that.

How about your reunion album with Oscar Peterson—that went very well, didn’t it?

De Franco: It was a very happy reunion. It was Joe Pass, Niels Pederson, Martin Drew, Oscar and myself. I’m really happy to have it out, because I hadn’t seen Oscar in so long, and the way our lives pass each other, I feel that may be the last chance for us to work together you never know. And very few pianists play behind a clarinet like Oscar he’s exceptional, besides being a great, great artist. He complained of having some problems with arthritis and you’d never know, listening to that album.

Denman: It’s so nice to have a rhythm section that you can just ride along with, and you don’t have to attend to the time as well as the changes of what you’re playing. I imagine that’s the thing about playing with Oscar his time is so great, apart from anything else.

De Franco: And there’s a certain amount of energy that emanates between Oscar and Niels you can feel that. And it seems like you’re playing to an audience of twenty thousand even though you’re alone in the studio. You know what I mean? Yes, there’s that same excitement.

As regards your work together have you encountered some surprise that a major jazz soloist and a major classical soloist could join forces so effectively?

Denman: Well, there was a review of the first album that suggested Buddy played most of the jazz, and that most of the music was written.

De Franco: Totally wrong—John played as much jazz as I did. Maybe more, because he’s bigger!

Denman: And it was just lead–sheets, as was the second one. But it’s a funny thing you get that label. If you’re a legit player, you can’t play jazz that’s it.

De Franco: I’ve got a label that’s lasted forty–seven years. That’s the description of my playing as being cold—frigid. I’ve read this many times. One particular writer started that off years ago, and it’s stuck. And even when I’m interviewed by some young guy or girl for radio or a paper, and they read up on me, the first thing they say is: “What do you think about this attitude to your playing being so cold?”

I think Lee Konitz has suffered the same way.

Denman: It’s possible to say that, from the way Konitz plays melodies, but the organisation of his music is certainly not cold. The way he plays is cool, rather than cold it’s a style. A lot of people play like that, but Buddy doesn’t. I don’t think his playing is cold at all.

De Franco: That just stayed with me, somehow. I’m past the point of worrying about it. At my age you don’t worry about too much, except staying alive!