Ralph Peterson 35th Annual Student Music Awards - Downbeat

Kenny Garrett
ranging from Garrett’s high school mentor Bill
Wiggins (“Wiggins,” which starts in the balladic
zone before revving up, with the alto saxophonist
dancing in the grooves) to a musician he
has only met briefly twice but has long admired
for his lyricism, Keith Jarrett (“Ballad Jarrett,”
with its quiet melody played on soprano saxophone).
Also in the mix are Duke Ellington,
Woody Shaw and Thelonious Monk, together,
on “Do-Wo-Mo” (“I heard all of their voices
when I was writing this,” says Garrett) and his
hero Joe Henderson, on an iTunes-only track,
“Joe Hen’s Waltz.”
A more nuanced influence is on exhibit via
John McLaughlin, with whom Garrett played
in the Five Peace Band. Seeds features a flurry
of odd time meters. “I’m always challenging
myself,” says Garrett. “I started to play with
that band, and John would be playing in 15. A
minute later he’s playing in 6. So that influenced
my writing, which I’ve been doing more on the
piano. On the saxophone, the odd times allow me
to phrase differently. I figure, if you don’t usually
play in odd meters, well, go ahead and try that.”
To illustrate the point, Garrett singles out
his odd-meter deliveries on the title track (which
features him quoting from Nat Adderley’s
“Work Song”), “Haynes Here” and “Laviso,
I Bon?” (inspired by Guadeloupean guitarist
Christian Laviso).
28 DoWNBEAt JUNE 2012
musical chilDhooD
garrett inside the Iridium on feb. 26, with photos of Les Paul in the background
The new album opens with the spirited
“Boogety Boogety,” buoyed by a catchy
melodic head, clipping percussion and Garrett
playing rhythms on his saxophone toward the
charged close. If Top 40 AM radio were still
around, this would be an instrumental hit. The
seed? Garrett’s father, who drew his son in
close to the magical wonders of the saxophone.
“This comes from way back,” he says, noting
that his father (actually, his stepfather) was
a tenor saxophonist who practiced regularly.
“The strongest thing about me being interested
in the saxophone was that I loved the smell
of my father’s case. It was an old case with a
velvet cover. I’d sit and listen to him practice.
I loved the sound of the saxophone, but it was
the smell that kept me there.”
Garrett’s dad recognized his son’s interest
and gave him a plastic sax for Christmas when
he was 7 years old. Seeing that little Kenny was
expressing more than a fleeting desire to play
the instrument, his dad upgraded him with
his first alto saxophone. “Someone had shot it
with a bullet,” Garrett laughingly recalls. “But
the hole was soldered and it played well. My
father taught me the G scale, and that was the
beginning.”
As for “Boogety Boogety,” Garrett says it
comes from the sound of quick-clopping
horse hooves, which he heard when watching
Westerns with his father. “I like melodies,” he
says. “When I played with Miles, we played
melodies every night. I like to write melodies
that people can remember. ‘Boogety Boogety’
is a different kind of melody for me, but when I
wrote it, it reminded me of the galloping horses.
And I was thinking about dancing. There
are harmonic things going on in this song, but
it’s basically about having fun.”
When Garrett started his secondary education
at Detroit’s Mackenzie High School,
athletics was a focus for him. He was interested
in playing his saxophone on the side
and practicing on his own, but he devoted a
lot of time to football, tennis and track. He
would carry his alto saxophone to school in
its case, which one of the teachers noticed.
“Mr. Wiggins was a friend of my father’s,”
Garrett says. “Our school didn’t have a band,
so Mr. Wiggins was determined to start a stage
band and a concert band. He’d always ask me,
‘When are you going to join the band?’ I told
him I wasn’t interested.”
But one day in the school hallway, Wiggins
approached Garrett again and pushed him.
“When are you going to join the band?” he
asked. Garrett resisted, and Wiggins pushed
him again. “The next thing I knew I was in