REVIEW AND ARTICLES
DOWNBEAT PAGE 59 https://archive.maherpublications.com/view/907113060/
LINER NOTES
The Second Act of Bobby West
By Eugene Holley, Jr. Contributor to Down Beat, Publishers Weekly and Hot House Jazz Guide.
He is also featured in the anthology, Ain’t But a Few of Us: Black Writers Tell Their Story (Univ. of Virginia Press)
When novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald proclaimed that, “there are no second acts in American lives,”
he clearly didn’t know about the careers of jazz musicians, even though he wrote The Great Gatsby
in the so-called “Jazz Age.”
The release of Big Trippin’ by the pianist/composer/bandleader Bobby West-the follow-up to his 2021 debut,
Leimert Park After Dark - represents that second act in his musical life, where he became an overnight
sensation after four decades on the scene.
West was born a fifth generation Louisianan, with deep ancestral roots in New Orleans, and prior to that,
recently discovered lineages through his enslaved ancestors to the Caribbean and West Africa. He inherited
his gift for music from his father who was a very fine blues and gospel singer.
At age 8, West moved to Los Angeles during the Great Migration and grew up inspired by the jazz legacy of Central Avenue, and the city’s piano professors from Hampton Hawes to Horace Tapscott. He went South and earned a degree from Grambling State University, and from the seventies, he split his time between L.A. - especially that vivid venue known as The World Stage in Leimert Park - and many ports of call in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, particularly Taiwan, where he currently works and lives. Despite being well-respected at home and abroad, West never released
an album until 2021, when he dropped his critically-acclaimed debut, Leimert Park After Dark, which was highly ranked
in several jazz and roots music charts.
West’s new recording Big Trippin', is the next step in his ever-evolving artistry, and is his aural counterstatement
of the challenging times we live in. “I never thought I would see what I was seeingon my TV,” West says. “People
[dying] of COVID and the attack on the United States Capitol, I was shakento my core as to what I was seeing and
what was happening. So all of that had me tripping hard …big trippin’!”
Rather than wade in the shallow waters of despair, West harnesses the profound power of his music emphasizing
beauty instead of ashes. On this recording, West is supported by his Leimert colleagues, drummer Jerrell Ballard,
who has played with Kamasi Washington, Azar Lawrence, Chico Hamilton, and the late bassist, James Leary. “Jerrell
and I were just in awe of James Leary” West says. “He played with Count Basie, Bobby Hutcherson, Nancy Wilson
and George Duke. After befriending him over the years,he became a teacher that I held in high regard. We did many
gigs over the years…I dedicate the album to his memory.”
The ten selections on this recording exhibit the swinging simpatico and three-way telepathy that make
the jazz trio tradition the enduring genre that it is. West’s florid, formidable and finessed pianism is in
full effect. That’s apparent on the selections of standards on this disc. The early twentieth century ballad
“Only a Rose,” played in fine form by West and company, is also a tribute to Rose Gales, wife of bassist
Larry Gales, who played with Thelonious Monk. “She was a beautiful lady, and a second mom to me as well
as a fine jazz pianist” West fondly recalls. That selection, and the Latin-tinged, Tin Pan Alley song “Say Si Si,”
were recorded by Pete Jolly (1932-2004), a West Coast-based, pianist/accordionist who influenced West in
his formative years. West and his terrific triad’s reading of another time-honored standard, “I’ve Grown
Accustomed to Her Face,” is a haunting blend of Errol Garner’s rhapsodies and Bill Evans’ sonic seances.
Growing in L.A., West was familiar with Osvaldo Farris’ “Tres Palabras.” “It’s not Spanish or Brazilian,
it’s Mexican”, West firmly states. “I've heard it throughout my life because I live in Los Angeles. I used
to hear it at Mexican weddings. Then I heard a version that Brad Mehldau did. He played it so beautifully.
It’s something that I play all the time. People really seem to love it.” In contrast, Henry Mancini’s “Charade”
swings with what West calls an “Afro-Waltz” feel that falls between 3/4 and 6/8 time. West’s haunting,
D-minor solo piano take on the Beatles’ “Michelle,” evokes the music of the French movies of the fifties
and sixties his Aunt Maudie exposed him to.
The rest of the selections are composed by West. The title track is an angular Monkish, twelve-bar blues.
“Right Here, Right Now” is a minor blues swung in the style of those funky and soulful sixties Lou Donaldson
tracks that would be sampled by today’s hip-hop DJ’s and producers. For this writer, the highlight of this
recording is West’s spontaneously-created solo, “Mode For Morpheus.” “That was an experiment,” West reveals.
“I went to the studio with a blank canvas, the way Keith Jarrett would do a solo concert. it’s
[kind of] free-form and has a modal kind of character to it.”
Another impassioned, impromptu, in-studio performance is “Variations on Various Faces,” one selection
of West’s twilight-toned, pointillistic sound portraits of key individuals in his life. This first variation is
dedicated to Tapscott, who as West explains, was “one of my early mentors and a surrogate father, who
taught me that this music is Black, proud, and powerful. When I was a young musician, Horace told me
that this music, jazz, could make you a man. I heard this manhood he was talking about in the music.
I heard the struggles, the pain, the ferocity. He told me that the music is not frivolous. It’s serious, man.
And it’s spiritual.”
All told, this record is a signpost that tells the listener where West has been, and more importantly, where
he is going. It is also the latest chapter in the ongoing aural autobiography of a master musician. “For me,
it’s all about evolution and growth,” West relates, I’m two years older. Hopefully, I’m two years better, and
I’m two years closer to my destiny. And what you hear on this record are the results of a life on this planet
for 66 years. Everything that I have strived for, is encapsulated in this music.”
He is also featured in the anthology, Ain’t But a Few of Us: Black Writers Tell Their Story (Univ. of Virginia Press)
When novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald proclaimed that, “there are no second acts in American lives,”
he clearly didn’t know about the careers of jazz musicians, even though he wrote The Great Gatsby
in the so-called “Jazz Age.”
The release of Big Trippin’ by the pianist/composer/bandleader Bobby West-the follow-up to his 2021 debut,
Leimert Park After Dark - represents that second act in his musical life, where he became an overnight
sensation after four decades on the scene.
West was born a fifth generation Louisianan, with deep ancestral roots in New Orleans, and prior to that,
recently discovered lineages through his enslaved ancestors to the Caribbean and West Africa. He inherited
his gift for music from his father who was a very fine blues and gospel singer.
At age 8, West moved to Los Angeles during the Great Migration and grew up inspired by the jazz legacy of Central Avenue, and the city’s piano professors from Hampton Hawes to Horace Tapscott. He went South and earned a degree from Grambling State University, and from the seventies, he split his time between L.A. - especially that vivid venue known as The World Stage in Leimert Park - and many ports of call in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, particularly Taiwan, where he currently works and lives. Despite being well-respected at home and abroad, West never released
an album until 2021, when he dropped his critically-acclaimed debut, Leimert Park After Dark, which was highly ranked
in several jazz and roots music charts.
West’s new recording Big Trippin', is the next step in his ever-evolving artistry, and is his aural counterstatement
of the challenging times we live in. “I never thought I would see what I was seeingon my TV,” West says. “People
[dying] of COVID and the attack on the United States Capitol, I was shakento my core as to what I was seeing and
what was happening. So all of that had me tripping hard …big trippin’!”
Rather than wade in the shallow waters of despair, West harnesses the profound power of his music emphasizing
beauty instead of ashes. On this recording, West is supported by his Leimert colleagues, drummer Jerrell Ballard,
who has played with Kamasi Washington, Azar Lawrence, Chico Hamilton, and the late bassist, James Leary. “Jerrell
and I were just in awe of James Leary” West says. “He played with Count Basie, Bobby Hutcherson, Nancy Wilson
and George Duke. After befriending him over the years,he became a teacher that I held in high regard. We did many
gigs over the years…I dedicate the album to his memory.”
The ten selections on this recording exhibit the swinging simpatico and three-way telepathy that make
the jazz trio tradition the enduring genre that it is. West’s florid, formidable and finessed pianism is in
full effect. That’s apparent on the selections of standards on this disc. The early twentieth century ballad
“Only a Rose,” played in fine form by West and company, is also a tribute to Rose Gales, wife of bassist
Larry Gales, who played with Thelonious Monk. “She was a beautiful lady, and a second mom to me as well
as a fine jazz pianist” West fondly recalls. That selection, and the Latin-tinged, Tin Pan Alley song “Say Si Si,”
were recorded by Pete Jolly (1932-2004), a West Coast-based, pianist/accordionist who influenced West in
his formative years. West and his terrific triad’s reading of another time-honored standard, “I’ve Grown
Accustomed to Her Face,” is a haunting blend of Errol Garner’s rhapsodies and Bill Evans’ sonic seances.
Growing in L.A., West was familiar with Osvaldo Farris’ “Tres Palabras.” “It’s not Spanish or Brazilian,
it’s Mexican”, West firmly states. “I've heard it throughout my life because I live in Los Angeles. I used
to hear it at Mexican weddings. Then I heard a version that Brad Mehldau did. He played it so beautifully.
It’s something that I play all the time. People really seem to love it.” In contrast, Henry Mancini’s “Charade”
swings with what West calls an “Afro-Waltz” feel that falls between 3/4 and 6/8 time. West’s haunting,
D-minor solo piano take on the Beatles’ “Michelle,” evokes the music of the French movies of the fifties
and sixties his Aunt Maudie exposed him to.
The rest of the selections are composed by West. The title track is an angular Monkish, twelve-bar blues.
“Right Here, Right Now” is a minor blues swung in the style of those funky and soulful sixties Lou Donaldson
tracks that would be sampled by today’s hip-hop DJ’s and producers. For this writer, the highlight of this
recording is West’s spontaneously-created solo, “Mode For Morpheus.” “That was an experiment,” West reveals.
“I went to the studio with a blank canvas, the way Keith Jarrett would do a solo concert. it’s
[kind of] free-form and has a modal kind of character to it.”
Another impassioned, impromptu, in-studio performance is “Variations on Various Faces,” one selection
of West’s twilight-toned, pointillistic sound portraits of key individuals in his life. This first variation is
dedicated to Tapscott, who as West explains, was “one of my early mentors and a surrogate father, who
taught me that this music is Black, proud, and powerful. When I was a young musician, Horace told me
that this music, jazz, could make you a man. I heard this manhood he was talking about in the music.
I heard the struggles, the pain, the ferocity. He told me that the music is not frivolous. It’s serious, man.
And it’s spiritual.”
All told, this record is a signpost that tells the listener where West has been, and more importantly, where
he is going. It is also the latest chapter in the ongoing aural autobiography of a master musician. “For me,
it’s all about evolution and growth,” West relates, I’m two years older. Hopefully, I’m two years better, and
I’m two years closer to my destiny. And what you hear on this record are the results of a life on this planet
for 66 years. Everything that I have strived for, is encapsulated in this music.”
Leimert Park After Dark
By RJ Smith Author of The One; The Life and Music of James Brown – considered the definitive biography
and was among the New York Times' "100 Notable Books of 2012" and the biography Chuck Berry: An American Life
and The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Last African American Renaissance.
By the time you read this, Bobby West will be home. That means he won’t be far from Leimert Park.
Composer and pianist West has seen a lot of Leimert Park. It’s a place this veteran of the West Coast jazz scene knows better than most. The majority-Black neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles is centered by a block-long village plaza, a core rising in distinction to the howling city that surrounds it. Art space, autonomous zone, a public place of learning, that center was designed by the Olmsted brothers, designers of New York’s Central Park. “It is a sanctuary,” West explains. “Around the corner on Crenshaw there was a time all kinds of shit was going down—but once you made the left on Degnan, you left the police cars behind.”
Climb out of your car and hear the bass player playing with a bow, everybody getting spiritual, draw your breath in
sharp—something special begins. This is a place of poets and teachers, rappers and boundary wreckers. When he first
got to Leimert Park, West says he knew he was in the right space. “I felt like I made it”.
Bobby West’s life traces a classic California narrative. He was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and his family moved
to Los Angeles in the late innings of the Great Migration, in 1964. He grew up literally on Central Avenue, the operating system for African American L.A., the community’s business and entertainment core. Generations of jazz and blues men and women, New Orleans Creoles, beboppers, and free jazz pioneers, lived along the street called the Main Stem.
At Jefferson High, West was taken under the wing of Patsy Payne, a revered music teacher who viewed him
as a prodigy and drove him to auditions and performances around the region. After school he ran errands
for the guys down the street, scoring the Daily Racing Form for saxman and blues shouter Eddie “Cleanhead”
Vinson, drummer Larance Marable, trumpeter Howard McGhee, entertainer Rudy Ray Moore—you know, just
the usual guys you find conversing in the yard up your street. Education was everywhere.
Around the corner was the great record store Dolphin’s of Hollywood, where Bobby worked and furthered his musical studies. But Black life was moving in the 1960s and onward, and eventually the great wave of Central Avenue artistry crashed on the beach of Leimert Park. West went there, too. Bookstores next to art galleries, freestyle rapping soaking into free jazz. Leimert Park is where Horace Tapscott, pianist, bandleader, and West’s sensei, lived. The way West (and many others) see it, Tapscott envisioned a space where activism, art and education could flourish. And then it grew.
Melody binds everything West plays; he views it as the focus of his musical compositions and performance. Melody surges through every corner of Leimert Park After Dark. There are songs that capture the feeling of getting ready
for a night of who knows what, tightly contoured stop-and-go melodies for when you recalibrate what you thought
and substitute what shall be. There’s West’s waltz “Shadow Ballet,” translucent and full of fragile play. There are
also melodies from Stevie Wonder, Kenny Barron and Bernice Petkere, everything framed by the precise geometries
of West and cohorts—bassist and bandleader Jeff Littleton and drummer Daniel Bejarano.
West talks about a loosely L.A. way of playing, and maybe living, too. All those Blue Note album covers he saw on the walls of Dolphin’s record store, East Coast jazz stars casting themselves as character actors, leather jackets, cigarettes, scowls. West’s sound holds California light, it is aspirational, nimble. He sails on top of the beat, gets your attention
with a playful statement of melody that ties wit, candor and precision together. His playing feels conversational, yet every moment matters. He is reaching for grace.
West is adept at asserting his deeper feelings—his big heart—his hunger to sing—in the context of improvisation. And good in his playing at featuring warmth and depth that holds everything together. Meet a contemporary Los Angeles figure, a player good at surfaces that open up to deep spaces.
A lot is going on here, within the classic confines of piano, bass and drums. A lot of people are passing through this sound, including a procession of Los Angeles pianists who have shaped West’s playing, among them Hampton Hawes, Jack Wilson, Carl Perkins, who West swears could stand on the far side of the piano and play a song by reaching his
long arms across; Gerald Wiggins, Nate Morgan, Art Hillery (“Artillery”),Gildo Mahones, and fire-starter Tapscott. The piano trio is an old jazz form, and the piano trio will be one of the last structures standing, for it is so essential and
so, as the term is used, fungible. It travels everywhere well.
West has traveled the world performing for decades, and a conversation with him flows from stories of his time in New Orleans to “a really magical place called the sultanate of Oman” and beyond. He has stories. West played his last Leimert Park show in January 2020, and then flew out of the country to work a six month stand in a Taiwanese nightclub. Right then COVID-19 hit the planet. Taiwan, locked down tighter than most places, did significantly better than most. West’s stand continued, then was extended. The Rolling Stones were out of view, like everybody else; but Bobby West held down a steady Taiwanese gig.
Now in the spring of 2021, things feel more hopeful, a raft of new sensations ahead waiting for everybody. In Leimert Park there will be new places to play, and the spirit will hit you when you get out of your car and follow your ears.
“I look forward to contributing to my beloved community in ways I always have…and in ways I haven’t before,” he says.
“I know that I’ll have to continue to reach, stretch and make myself available so that I may become an agent of change. Things won’t ever be the same. So neither will I.”
Bobby West is home.
-RJ Smith
By RJ Smith Author of The One; The Life and Music of James Brown – considered the definitive biography
and was among the New York Times' "100 Notable Books of 2012" and the biography Chuck Berry: An American Life
and The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Last African American Renaissance.
By the time you read this, Bobby West will be home. That means he won’t be far from Leimert Park.
Composer and pianist West has seen a lot of Leimert Park. It’s a place this veteran of the West Coast jazz scene knows better than most. The majority-Black neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles is centered by a block-long village plaza, a core rising in distinction to the howling city that surrounds it. Art space, autonomous zone, a public place of learning, that center was designed by the Olmsted brothers, designers of New York’s Central Park. “It is a sanctuary,” West explains. “Around the corner on Crenshaw there was a time all kinds of shit was going down—but once you made the left on Degnan, you left the police cars behind.”
Climb out of your car and hear the bass player playing with a bow, everybody getting spiritual, draw your breath in
sharp—something special begins. This is a place of poets and teachers, rappers and boundary wreckers. When he first
got to Leimert Park, West says he knew he was in the right space. “I felt like I made it”.
Bobby West’s life traces a classic California narrative. He was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and his family moved
to Los Angeles in the late innings of the Great Migration, in 1964. He grew up literally on Central Avenue, the operating system for African American L.A., the community’s business and entertainment core. Generations of jazz and blues men and women, New Orleans Creoles, beboppers, and free jazz pioneers, lived along the street called the Main Stem.
At Jefferson High, West was taken under the wing of Patsy Payne, a revered music teacher who viewed him
as a prodigy and drove him to auditions and performances around the region. After school he ran errands
for the guys down the street, scoring the Daily Racing Form for saxman and blues shouter Eddie “Cleanhead”
Vinson, drummer Larance Marable, trumpeter Howard McGhee, entertainer Rudy Ray Moore—you know, just
the usual guys you find conversing in the yard up your street. Education was everywhere.
Around the corner was the great record store Dolphin’s of Hollywood, where Bobby worked and furthered his musical studies. But Black life was moving in the 1960s and onward, and eventually the great wave of Central Avenue artistry crashed on the beach of Leimert Park. West went there, too. Bookstores next to art galleries, freestyle rapping soaking into free jazz. Leimert Park is where Horace Tapscott, pianist, bandleader, and West’s sensei, lived. The way West (and many others) see it, Tapscott envisioned a space where activism, art and education could flourish. And then it grew.
Melody binds everything West plays; he views it as the focus of his musical compositions and performance. Melody surges through every corner of Leimert Park After Dark. There are songs that capture the feeling of getting ready
for a night of who knows what, tightly contoured stop-and-go melodies for when you recalibrate what you thought
and substitute what shall be. There’s West’s waltz “Shadow Ballet,” translucent and full of fragile play. There are
also melodies from Stevie Wonder, Kenny Barron and Bernice Petkere, everything framed by the precise geometries
of West and cohorts—bassist and bandleader Jeff Littleton and drummer Daniel Bejarano.
West talks about a loosely L.A. way of playing, and maybe living, too. All those Blue Note album covers he saw on the walls of Dolphin’s record store, East Coast jazz stars casting themselves as character actors, leather jackets, cigarettes, scowls. West’s sound holds California light, it is aspirational, nimble. He sails on top of the beat, gets your attention
with a playful statement of melody that ties wit, candor and precision together. His playing feels conversational, yet every moment matters. He is reaching for grace.
West is adept at asserting his deeper feelings—his big heart—his hunger to sing—in the context of improvisation. And good in his playing at featuring warmth and depth that holds everything together. Meet a contemporary Los Angeles figure, a player good at surfaces that open up to deep spaces.
A lot is going on here, within the classic confines of piano, bass and drums. A lot of people are passing through this sound, including a procession of Los Angeles pianists who have shaped West’s playing, among them Hampton Hawes, Jack Wilson, Carl Perkins, who West swears could stand on the far side of the piano and play a song by reaching his
long arms across; Gerald Wiggins, Nate Morgan, Art Hillery (“Artillery”),Gildo Mahones, and fire-starter Tapscott. The piano trio is an old jazz form, and the piano trio will be one of the last structures standing, for it is so essential and
so, as the term is used, fungible. It travels everywhere well.
West has traveled the world performing for decades, and a conversation with him flows from stories of his time in New Orleans to “a really magical place called the sultanate of Oman” and beyond. He has stories. West played his last Leimert Park show in January 2020, and then flew out of the country to work a six month stand in a Taiwanese nightclub. Right then COVID-19 hit the planet. Taiwan, locked down tighter than most places, did significantly better than most. West’s stand continued, then was extended. The Rolling Stones were out of view, like everybody else; but Bobby West held down a steady Taiwanese gig.
Now in the spring of 2021, things feel more hopeful, a raft of new sensations ahead waiting for everybody. In Leimert Park there will be new places to play, and the spirit will hit you when you get out of your car and follow your ears.
“I look forward to contributing to my beloved community in ways I always have…and in ways I haven’t before,” he says.
“I know that I’ll have to continue to reach, stretch and make myself available so that I may become an agent of change. Things won’t ever be the same. So neither will I.”
Bobby West is home.
-RJ Smith