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Jazz Master/Trumpet King Jeff Lofton
​Gives An Engaging Interview On Music And Racism In America
by    Timothy Abbott,  Photos by  dhillsphotography
Courtesy of Sound Profile Magazine
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​Jeff Lofton steps in the room and he looks like a reggae artist or Rasta priest. Dreadlocks hang down from his head, he’s relaxed, easy-going.  He’s been working in the studio putting finishing touches on his upcoming release planned for February, which features Carolyn Wonderland on a Less McCann number, plus some original compositions. I don’t know Jeff, I don’t run in his circle, but I’ve heard him play, know him to be the real deal on that level  and I appreciate his chops on the horn. He really DOES evoke images of Miles Davis. A distinctly East Coast sound.

Timothy Abbott:  You have a new record coming out. Tell me a little bit about it, is it different from your music in the past?

Jeff Lofton: Well normally I like to do originals, it’s easier in many ways and I want to hear my songs myself. The other thing is this album is going to spotlight a couple of different voices. I want to highlight crossing over of different lines. When you listen to instrumentals, and then vocals, it just changes the whole feeling of the music and how people relate to it. I’ve done alot of producing with vocalists, hip hop artists and stuff in the past.

TA: Who are the vocalists?


Jeff Lofton: Carolyn Wonderland and Murali  Coryell, he’s the son of Larry Coryell [ who played with Miles Davis] . Great singer.

TA: You’re more of an instrumentalist, so this is new. Carolyn has a huge following. Love her voice, attitude, guitar abilities.

Jeff Lofton: I put her at the top of the new generation of female blues singers. And of Austin singers, I’d say she’s one of the top female singers out there. As far as I know, there are no guitar players who can sing like that, and play the chops she can.

TA: It’s a great pairing, she’s one of a kind and so are you.

Jeff Lofton: I came up with it. I wanted to do a version of the ’69 Montreaux  “Compared To What”  tune by Les McCann. And when I do projects like this, sometimes with other musicians but particularly with singers, I have a song already and I have a voice already in mind. My first thought is …who do I want to sing this song ? Of all singers I ever heard sing, no one else can sing this song. You know what’d be really great? Is if Janis Joplin could sing this song. But that can’t happen. So what’s the next best thing? Carolyn Wonderland. So  it’s like that music was already in me, it was already in my mind and so she was just completing the circle… It’s just one tune, the remaking of the Les McCann, Eddie Harris number.

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TA:  How many songs are on the record?

Jeff Lofton: Nine…two with vocals… it’s mostly a jazz quartet album. And so, It’s going to appeal to that. But it’ll also have a couple of tunes that will appeal to everybody.

TA: When are you going to release this?

Jeff Lofton: I believe in February. I actually have those vocals numbers mastered and copied. The other stuff is still ongoing.

TA: Many of us here at Sound Profile Magazine write music… it’s easy for us to understand how it is you can write to another person’s voice in your head. And the other vocal track is the same tune, but different singer,completely different song…these are like bookends.

Jeff Lofton: Yes, yes. I took his voice, and put her female voice on it, which is the Roberta Flack version. Then I took his male voice and put it over her female voice. Two very different songs, though it’s the same song. Originally I did this album and I had to take the keyboard player off the track. So I got James Polk[ noted Hammond B3 player]  to come in and redo the stuff. So that right there set the whole schedule back. Murali was working with Ernie Durawa[ noted drummer]  and I was too, I mean I play with him about every week, and Ernie said , “Hey, Murali can play, but he’s got a great voice,too”…and I was looking for someone to sing on it. I had asked Akina Adderly to play on it, but she was too busy. I thought she had a really good voice , and I kinda wanted to follow the Roberta Flack version, but she wasn’t available, she was recording and just didn’t think she could dedicate herself to it. and it just so happened that Murali was there. Ok, then that was just perfect.

TA: Where was this recorded at?
​

Jeff Lofton: Ear Studio, on East 11th, the other stuff was done at Premium, though I think the name has changed.

TA: You play out pretty regularly , where at?

Jeff Lofton: Ruth’s Criss on Thursday nights , and Zed’s, for Sunday brunch.

TA: Ever do much touring outside of Austin?

Jeff Lofton: I’ve tried to, want to. It’s difficult to get booking at that level. It’s one recurring theme with all musicians. Carolyn Wonderland’s husband once said to me, ” It’s hard to get booking!”…It was a little discouraging but hearing that made me feel a little better.

TA: You’re an East Coast sound, like Miles, but I can hear some Chet Baker in there, too.

Jeff Lofton: Towards the end, Baker took on a more edgy sound, you know, it’s the Coltrane thing, it just invaded everything.And took a long time for people to get it. Know what I mean? It’s not easily accessible. But I think that whole sound eventually affected just about everybody.

TA: Got a wish list of people you’d like to work with?
​

Jeff Lofton: I’d really like to work with Linda Oh, Helen Sung, and Masumi . I always had this idea of doing this Asian all-star,all- female  band backing me…I’d use Masumi Jones, Lindo Ho, and Helen Sung. I’d be “Jeff Lofton & The Asian All-Stars” [ laughs]. Masumi would be in, but Helen Sung is from Houston, though she knows Masumi. Linda Oh would be really hard to take her away, as she’s been playing with some real heavyweights, but I love her bass playing. To me the biggest market for jazz  is Asia, especially Japan. You go to the clubs and they are full of Japanese people listening to jazz. Really into it, alot of players say that as well. Really, 50 years from now jazz might be played all the time by Japanese. In Japan, Miles Davis’ image is known, well-known, like Marilyn Monroe is here. Here, no one has a clue as to who that image is. He’s probably the most famous jazz musician who ever lived.
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TA: Billy Cobham doesn’t like to talk about him. Probably because he’s been bombarded with Miles questions for decades. He thanked us jokingly at interview’s end for not asking any Miles question[ laughter]. Jeff, you’ve been here since 2007. Ever think of touring Europe? You’d go over good there.

Jeff Lofton: Our music is played in over 33 countries, on television, movies, internet radio from Vietnam to Poland…in Europe, they appreciate things more. In America, we have GMO cheese, over there, they have brie. Just a cultural difference. They do not want schlock. That’s not what they’re growing up on, that’s not what they feed their kids. They want…art. And that what tears me, it’s really that simple. To me the highest form of jazz is live concerts . It takes the most giving of what you have to give, and is also determined by the people you play with. To me it’s the most immediate satisfying experience when it goes well, and just like anything else, it has the potential to go anyplace. But when it’s done well, and you have three or four minds working together …  each one playing different versions of whatever form or sound there is … the pairing, unity, creating their own parts, there’s no higher form of expression to me.

TA: When you write, how does your song -writing process work? Everyone is different. Does lightning strike you as you drive down a street, or is it a more methodical approach?
​

​Jeff Lofton: Sometimes I just play, I don’t have a radio in my car, haven’t had one in a while now, and it really helps me in some ways. It’s like that time is naturally spent musically for me. Normally, I would play and then something would just come out  and I have so many things that I use the process of elimination. If the melody comes back, I keep repeating it and if it doesn’t do that, then it’s just one of the many potentials that never happens. That’s my process. I have so much going on, it’s hard for me to remember, unless they’re really significant they come back. This is the best way, not the easiest way, maybe not the most efficient way, but it produces the best songs.

TA: Where were you living at before Austin?

Jeff Lofton: Columbus, South Carolina. [ Note; Knowing what a racial powder keg South Carolina has been, having lived there myself for a year, I knew we had something to talk about that was deeper than Miles Davis, but yet still connected , as Davis faced his share of racial abuse, likely Lofton did, too. ]

TA: How’d you like it?

Jeff Lofton: It sucked.

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TA I’ve been to South Carolina. I lived in Charleston after Hurricane Hugo smacked into it for  over 9 months. The level of racism I experienced was enough to make my jaw drop. I was thinking, am I in another country?

Jeff Lofton: Charleston, South Carolina is one of the most racist cities that I’ve ever encountered. Oddly enough, the most racist cities I ever experienced were Chicago, Miami, and Charleston, the 3 most racist places I’ve been. Charleston, in particular. One of the major tourist sights is the former Slave Market…it is so racist that in comparison to where I’m from in Columbia, it’s far worse. There’s alot of that, and one of the things I like about Austin is that there’s ALOT less racism here.

TA: I grew up in very blinding white Iowa. It was so white that when a Hispanic family moved into town, it was almost a scandal. That changed when their daughters grew up to be beautiful women and all the guys fell in love with them[laughter]. Then I moved here, and had black friends, brown friends, Asian friends, gay friends for the first time in my life. Then I went back home to visit, and I felt very much like an outsider.

Jeff Lofton: This is what most of America doesn’t get about racism. Check this out. You go fill out a form, any form, and it asks you what race you are. I mean, no one ever thinks about that. It’s just what you do. Just the fact that they are asking you what race you are, why, what’s the reason for this? They have a whole bureau dedicated to counting these numbers and until you get some realization, that in America people do that, people do this, the reality  is not American. Most people DON’T do that. Not what most people do. It’s just so isolated from the reality of how incredibly the rest of the world has… dark skin! It’s just not an issue in most other places. For me, if I go to Switzerland, or Montana, where there’s whites everywhere, there’s less racism than there would be in Miami… Miami! Multicultural Miami. It’s not been developed the same way in Montana. What I’ve really found is that Americans don’t have a clue about how they got to where their perspective is honest, they just don’t understand how we came about. They know Civil War, ok…we know that happened…well, like  how was Jim Crow developed? The South had black senators after the Civil War, how’d that happen? Only one way it could have been, there were more blacks voting than whites. Does anyone even know that? That’s REAL history. The only way you get a black senator in South Carolina is you got more black people living there. Are there more black people there  now? No. They don’t even ask these questions, it’s just ‘this is what is, and this is what has always been’. It was developed, it was created. It was brought forth to be a specific way. University of South Carolina, that’s where I went to school, me and my wife. And on campus there’s this historical marker, and on the marker it refers to when the University was closed down. Why was it closed down? It was because there were more black students than white student,  that’s why. All the white students left, and the so the University was shut down for a few years. You can come from another country and not be racist, but will turn racist here. It’s like, where I grew up, if you were not black or white, you became black or white. Because there wasn’t enough of any other thing because of the conditions of the economy. So when I was there, we didn’t have any Chinese restaurants, no Mexican restaurants,because [laughs] THEY WEREN’T COMING TO SOUTH CAROLINA TO RELOCATE ! [ laughter] And so you didn’t get it till later. Chinese people move here, they become as racist as anyone else. Black people are racist. There’s alot of racist black people. Why? Because they live in America, that’s why. There’s no racism like this living in Canada, or France, it’s here because of the culture we have developed here. It is so inbred in our culture that we don’t even notice it. [ Note; Lofton was candid, brave, and I believe, spot on in his assessments of how inbred racism in our country has been over the ages. Most artists in the music world are afraid to speak out, speak up as it might alienate some fans. Lofton is a man of his beliefs and convictions, some not popular, but he is very pointed, and direct at what the root causes are. ]

SPM: People don’t talk about race in other countries like they do here. Take France, for example. For decades, over a hundred years ago, blacks flocked to France because they were accepted as talented entertainers and normal human beings .They became celebrities, many. They flourished, even.

Jeff Lofton: The big jazz heyday was partially brought about because of  France, I mean, Bird went to Paris and played. That’s when he got the ” Oh my God, I’m a star!”  treatment. That’s when he felt really accepted. And that’s why a lot of cats never came back…

TA: Josephine Baker…when we spent a month in Europe, it just felt like…why is there so much less racial shit here? Racism is bred into us at an early age it seems.

Jeff Lofton:  Right, it’s so …into every single part of culture. It’s meant to keep you in the culture, too….it seemed especially bad in the 1980’s.

TA: Discrimination happens on many levels, too…

Jeff Lofton: I’ve  experienced discrimination from black people because I have dreadlocks. From white people because I have dreadlocks. From Latino people because I have dreadlocks. Because of hair. You know what I’ve found? More than race? Americans are obsessed with hair.[ laughs] Way more than race, Americans are obsessed with hair. If I just cut my hair, so much less attention would be paid, just because my hair. Just because of something that grows naturally  on me. It’s really important that people understand my hair is not a statement on race, it’s not a statement of me, it’s really just…this is how hair grows. That’s what freaks people out the out, I tell them I didn’t do anything to it, this is just what hair does. I just let it grow.

TA: How long have you had dreads?

Jeff Lofton: Since the 1980’s. It wasn’t much fun wearing dreads in South Carolina in the 1980’s. It caused some experiences, not good experiences.

TA: You really have this family affair with Dean Lofton, your wife, being your agent. She is a natural at it. You work well together.

Jeff Lofton: She has a degree in management, marketing. And what’s the phrase? ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ and I need to work, not as in being a telemarketer, so she had already worked with a number of bands so she just started doing it for me. She’s a natural, yeah! She had written press releases before, but nothing to make a career out of and…it blossomed into a career. She’s done so much for me and her. Our daughter is 7, and she’s a singer…I was playing Coltrane’s  “By Bye Blackbird” and she was singing right to it[ laughs] It took me forever to follow that solo. .

TA: Did you meet Dean at U of SC ?

Jeff Lofton: We had actually marched together in the marching band, but I didn’t meet her till later. She was a drum major.

TA: One last question. Any tentative title for the upcoming release?


Jeff Lofton: “  Jericho”

TA: That’s appropriate…

Lofton got more comfortable and opened up as our time cruised by. Going into the interview, I was aware I really didn’t know his world. But I also don’t  know other artists’ worlds any better,so what the bloody  hell. So some of us have different tinted exterior packages. Some of have different colored hair, some of us, no hair.  Jeff’s a handsome man with, yes, that  mountain of grey-flecked dreadlocked hair. He might pass as a Jamaican Rasta prophet, though he is nothing of the sort. You can’t escape his iconic look. And it is a natural look, as natural as you can get. Jeff wasn’t into fashion, fashion found Jeff. He was just letting his hair grow, because he felt it was  a normal thing to do. It’s also his way of saying “Look, I’m me. I’m no fake or Put On. This is me.” .
So here were two  middle-aged to older men, of different skin colors in the same profession talking about race. I found it liberating as always, discussing race with people. I grew up in lilly-white Iowa, not exactly a haven for tolerance and having spent time in Charleston, was shocked at the treatment of black folks in the hotbed of the Old South.  Discussing race with  people seems pointless at times, but when I do, I go to the heart of the matter, because it is the heart that beats inside a man or woman that I want to get to know. Jeff Lofton made that easy. He has a big heart, and it has it’s share of lumps and bruises. Once I found out he was from South Carolina, the  race topic was be impossible not to broach.
More people of all colors need to be having these discussions. It’s important to get a perspective of what it’s like to walk a mile in each others’ shoes. And we are all Americans. We’re all in the same foxhole. We’re all on the same team. That team should be color blind.
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Jeff Lofton has been pushed before in NARAS competition, and with his new release in 2016, I’ll be looking forward to voting for him when I get the chance in the jazz categories. Jeff doesn’t just play the trumpet. He coaxes it, toys with it, beckons and coos it,  knows it inside and out, and has studied trumpet from about every angle imaginable. If you love the sound of a horn man, and take great pride in choosing the best to listen to, you can’t miss with Lofton. He marches to the beat of a different drummer.
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