Courtney Pine – UK Jazz News

“I was at Buckingham Palace and deep in conversation with Joan Armatrading – and Shirley Bassey and Dame Vera Lynn walked past …” is not a line you hear very often from a jazz saxophonist. Or indeed from anyone.

But Courtney Pine is truly one of a kind, a force of nature who is both one of the UK’s greatest jazz instrumentalists and one of the biggest-selling and whose inimitable music has variously – and sometimes simultaneously – contained elements of reggae, ska, hip-hop, turntablism, electronica, drum’n’bass, merengue, mento, classical and whatever.

Out Of The Ghetto: A Modern-Day Jazz Story, a double CD compiling assorted tracks released between 1986 and 2000, gives some sense of the range of Pine’s music and his prowess on various saxophones, flute and bass clarinet. “I’ve always tried to move on to the next project – I’ve got seven projects in my head right now I’d like to do – but at this point I thought it was an interesting idea to evaluate where I’ve come from,” he says of the compilation.

The album, which Pine co-compiled with journalist Kevin Le Gendre, begins with ‘Children Of The Ghetto’, from his debut album Journey To The Urge Within. The song, composed by Eddie and Chris Amoo of 70s English soul band The Real Thing, is sung spinechillingly by Susaye Greene who had been in a late version of The Supremes. “[Producer] Roy Carter said he knew a singer from his church who could do it – and she just happened to be from The Supremes and the composer with Stevie Wonder of Michael Jackson’s ‘I Can’t Help It’! So she came in and worked with the band and she handled us youngsters as if she was born to do it. And the session went really easily.”

Depressingly, the song’s lyrics are as topical now as they were when Pine recorded it. “That’s why I play music, to get out of depression,” he says. “There’s not much has changed since the 80s but as creative people we’ve got to go out there and show another side to our humanity through music, to show we can make a cosmopolitan, United Kingdom work even in this day and age.”

Journey To The Urge Within sold astonishingly well for a British jazz album, earning Pine a silver disc, and he almost overnight became a musical and socio-cultural phenomenon. Pine’s dedication to his art enabled him to stay grounded. “Jazz is humbling,” he says. “If you play jazz properly you realise you’re only a small part of an immense legacy. For me playing jazz is such an honour I don’t have time to rest on my laurels or think I’m doing anything good, I just have to keep developing and learning and growing because that’s what my heroes have done.”

Pine recalls encountering hostility in the jazz community, early in his career. “I met some hardcore guys who just didn’t like what I was doing and they told me I shouldn’t bother, that I wasn’t good enough, that I should just stay playing reggae and funk music. And when the album came out I got a lot of naysayers but I’m still here and I’m still giving it a go and for me [it was] the only path I could have taken.”

Pine did receive encouragement from some on the jazz scene including Charlie Watts, in whose big band he played in the mid-1980s. “Oh man,” he smiles, “Charlie was great. He was so chilled, he was so supportive. I was different to everybody else [in the lineup] but he was encouraging, he wanted me to go further and deeper.

“And he loved the band. He was like a fan – of his own band!”

But was Watts as good musically as his band members? “Oh, he was fantastic,” enthuses Pine. “It’s not just about virtuosity – it’s not classical music. When you play jazz your gig is to make everybody else sound good. There’s a generosity of spirit – you don’t want to just play over everybody. And Charlie Watts personified that. He had this great ability to make everybody sound good.”

Delfeayo Marsalis produced Destiny’s Song + The Image Of Pursuance (1988), The Vision’s Tale (1989) and Within The Realms Of Our Dreams (1991) from which there are eight tracks on Out Of The Ghetto. On the latter two of those albums American musicians like pianists Kenny Kirkland and Ellis Marsalis were used. “Kenny Kirkland would show me that they got their knowledge from elders and it’s here for you if you want it. There was none of this, ‘I’m a supreme jazz musician and I’m going to work on my own sound,’ which was the style here in the UK. The musicians were so welcoming and they made the records very unique in terms of how they approached what I was trying to do. Like sometimes I would play 3/4 and 4/4 at the same time which would get resolved at the twelfth bar. They were fascinated with why I wanted to do this – and it’s because my culture is dual,” says Pine, a London-born son of Jamaican immigrants.

1992’s To The Eyes Of Creation included ‘Eastern Standard Time’, which was originally by ska legends The Skatalites, and, although it’s not on Out Of The Ghetto, Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’. Were many of Pine’s early jazz fans, who saw him as a musician in the tradition of John Coltrane, wrongfooted by his new repertoire? “I’m just reflecting who I am and where I come from,” explains Pine. “The first sounds I ever heard were ska – and I found out later that some of the guys who created ska were jazz musicians. [Millie’s] ‘My Boy Lollipop’ was arranged by Ernest Ranglin! And the people who supported my music welcomed it because they’ve also, in the UK, grown up with this music. The reaction was really positive.”

There are eight tracks on Out Of The Ghetto from 1995’s Modern Day Jazz Stories. “That record utilises the flavours I was into at the time,” says Pine. “I was still going out to clubs, going to after-hours parties, and I met dj’s who were using turntables as an instrument and I wanted to incorporate that. So that became the essence of Modern Day Jazz Stories – a jazz approach but with hip-hop.”

DJ Pogo’s turntabling on Modern Day Jazz Stories turned off some listeners. “It was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize that year but sometimes when you hear a new sound and a new instrument it’s very scary and a lot of jazz dj’s couldn’t handle it,” recalls Pine. “And I can remember when we played clubs, when I would give the dj his moment of stardom, all the men just got up and went to the bar! Night after night! It was just so anti what they were used to that they would just leave and wait for the dj show to stop!”

Is it possible that if Pine had stuck to one style he might have sold even more records than he has done? “I don’t know,” he muses. “Maybe I would have – but I would have got bored and given up! I just love the way that Thelonious Monk’s music modulated, that Miles Davis’s music continued to push the boundaries, that Coltrane’s music moved on constantly, reflecting who he was … I just think that this is what jazz is about.”

Out Of The Ghetto includes an interpretation of Joan Armatrading’s ‘Love And Affection’, sung by Kele Le Roc, which was originally on 2000’s Back In The Day. “You can do so many different things with songs like that that have such wide appeal,” says Pine. “And Joan’s so creative. She’s a great musician-producer. There are people who only stay in one category. But people like Joan are the category!”

As a schoolboy Pine was given the old heave-ho from his A-Level Music class. Now some of his music, including ‘Love And Affection’, is actually on the A-Level Music syllabus. “It’s unbelievable!” he declares. “I was told that black people don’t go to university, that ‘There’s no point because from your culture you can go and play reggae and funk.’ That’s why I was kicked out and discouraged from further education, not because I was a troublesome kid. [Now] they’re studying my work at A-Level!”

Pine still regrets, however, that he was deprived of the opportunity of studying music at university. “I definitely would have gained,” he says. “Education is so important. But I had to do it like Charlie Parker and Don Byas and Lester Young and just apply myself and go to jam sessions and sit in and work with elders and ask the relevant questions.”

For virtually his entire career as a jazz musician Pine has been a bandleader. He explains his approach: “I try to encourage musicians to play something different. I don’t tell them, I just suddenly give them a solo on a different tune or play a different tempo and I try and make the environment open and conducive to being as creative as possible.”

He explains also the personal qualities which have enabled him to have had such career longevity: “I think I’m flexible. I have an attitude that you just have to give it some, every chorus, every song, every concert. And you have to look to the future but also learn from the masters and the legends and the innovators that have come before, and reflect your cultural background as well. All in one chorus! I think it’s called ambition, for want of a better term!”