 |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
       |
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
|
Search our site:           |
|
"When I arrived in Kansas City..., I began to see the city as a jazz shrine, and this was my pilgrimage." In the summer of 1999, saxophonist Travis Jenkins returned to Kansas City after an absence of more than 30 years. Even if you don't remember this KC jazzman from yesteryear, Jenkins' life story -- contained in the following letter we received shortly after his visit -- will keep you glued to your seat. It is a story that, among many things, serves as a time capsule of an oft overlooked era in KC jazz, notes various area musicians who played important roles during that fertile period of time, and documents the life of a musician with KC roots whose wild ride over the last 40-plus years could only come out of a profound love for jazz. Special thanks to Travis Jenkins for sharing his story with JAM. He can be reached on email at cjenkins@bdmail.net and he tells us he would love to hear from old friends.
It's the wee hours of the morning here at my mother's house in Dallas, a quiet time to reflect on the greatest homecoming of my life -- ten days making the rounds of the myriad jazz venues in Kansas City and playing my tenor sax with musicians I had not seen in over 30 years. In August, while my wife, Dr. Carol Jenkins, was doing research on HIV-AIDS in Namibia, Africa, I decided to take a long overdue holiday from Dhaka, Bangladesh where we currently live and fly to Dallas to see my 84-year-old mother. On the grapevine, I heard that my old friend Barry Gould had passed away, so I decided to come to KC and attend his memorial. I also wanted to see my brother Robert and his family, so August 15 I left Dallas with my tenor and flew to Kansas City. I grew up in Kansas City. And I started playing tenor saxophone at Central Junior High School in KCK. My first exposure to jazz was a Charlie Parker 78 rpm played for me by the band director, John Burnau. I took to the tenor like a duck to water. And my classmate, pianist Tommy Roberts, turned me on to the vast world of western classical music -- from Bach to Bartok. We used to spend hours freely improvising on the chords of this medium. This was a stark contrast to my family's musical roots. My grandfather, Sam Bailey, was a banjo picker and a dulcimer maker-player. His brother, Jewel, played guitar with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. My dad was a singer from the Ozarks and admired the music of the Haden Brothers (Charlie among them) of Springfield, Missouri. Jazz has always been the most important thing in life to me. It has been my first priority, that is until I married Carol and started raising a family. As I look back over my life, I didn't realize how lucky I was to have been immersed in the waters of Kansas City jazz. Kansas City is of central significance in the evolution of jazz, as we all know -- the heartbeat in the heartland of America. As the new millennium approaches, one can see that jazz has found seedbeds in the far corners of the earth. It has become a serious course of study throughout the institutions of higher learning. When I arrived in Kansas City on August 15, I began to see the city as a jazz shrine, and this was my pilgrimage. My mind flashed to the idea that circumstances had brought me back to pay tribute to the man I had heard on that long-ago 78 -- Charlie Parker. And there was his Buddha-like statue near 18th & Vine where KC's visionary mayor, Emanuel Cleaver, helped to memorialize an era -- when Lester (Young) leaped in, Benny Moten swung, and Count Basie burst forth. I give my heartfelt thanks to Tom Bisil and Terry Knapp who put me up and drove me around to all the jam sessions in August. And my applause to all the jazz musician friends gigging at the Blue Room, the Majestic Steakhouse, the Marriott Downtown, the Phoenix at Station Casino, the Topaz Lounge, Fedora's, Charlie's Lodge, and Jardine's who let me sit in. And last, but not least, my thanks to all the staunch supporters of jazz in Kansas City. Jazz lives in KC! And, if I can convince my wife, I'd like to move back someday. I remember the old trolleys The lights on the Power and Light building The stockyards The fountains and the glitter of the Plaza At Christmas And the smell of Folger's coffee. With love, Travis p.s. Here is what I can remember of my career in music, the people I've played with, the places I've been... for the JAM archives. May 23, 1939 -- Born in Whiteface, Texas to Joe and Johnnie Lou (Bailey) Jenkins. December '39/January '40 -- Moved to Kansas City, Kansas. Educated at -- Prescott Elementary School (KCK), Central Junior High (KCK), UMKC, KCK Junior College, Memphis State University (music composition). 1953 -- Played with the Jazzbos, featuring Bob Branstetter and "Jazzbo" Bill Hargrave. 1954 -- Formed the Travis Jenkins Combo, with John Doubleday, Tom Roberts, Gordon Taff and Bob Branstetter. 1957 -- Won first prize on Jack Boring's Talent Competition: a cake and some socks. 1958 -- Played with a country & western band called the "Indiana Drifters," featuring Jack Marvin, Ray Harris and Terry Hughes. 1959-60 -- On the road with the territory band, "Little John Beecher" (KC pianist Russ Long got me this gig). We traveled on a sleeper bus through 38 states and Bermuda; charts by Clare and Dirk Fischer. 1960 -- In the pit band at the Follies Burlesque in Chicago. While there, I played with Roland Kirk, Lynn Halliday and Dodo Marmarosa (one of Bird's piano players). 1961 -- Played with Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Russ Long, Stan Kenton and Buddy Morrow; sat in with Gene Harris; and played with the Frank Smith Trio, which included David Williams on bass and Marvin Patillo, Coltrane's drummer in KC. Nov. '61 - Nov. '63 -- Was drafted into the U.S. Army, spent two years at Ft. Lewis, Tacoma, Washington; played "Greensleeves" for John F. Kennedy as a soloist with the 4th Infantry Band, and played jazz in the Seattle-Tacoma area. 1964 -- Had a jazz quartet with Bob Frogge (former vibist with Ornette Coleman), Barry Gould and Charles Mathews. Went with Barry to Omaha to play at a Mafia racetrack club, but ended up with a six-night-a-week jazz gig at the Red Lion club playing with Russ Long, Charles McFarland and York Hughes. After the Russ Long group split up (after six months), I went with York to New York and stayed with trumpeter Dizzy Reece, hung around the NY jazz scene, and jammed with Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Jack DeJohnette and Sonny Murray at a little hole-in-the-wall in the Village called the Castle Club. I moved to Brooklyn and worked in a group with Bobby Pike (vibes) and Jane Getz (piano). Barry Gould came to NY and pulled me out of the gutter and drove me back to KC where I was admitted to the UKC Bell Memorial Psychiatric Ward for suicidal tendencies and for alcohol and drug detox. After three months there, I was transferred to Osawatomie State Asylum in Osawatomie, Kansas for three more months. I was cured instantly one rainy day in May after hearing "After the Rain" by John Coltrane. 1965 -- While married to Gail K., I worked a day gig as a shipping clerk at Grolier Encyclopedia. During this time I jobbed around KC with Tommy Ruskin, Warren Durrett, Bob Simes and Gary Sivils. Gail and I saved our money and planned to move back to NYC and live the straight life. I sat in at the Channel 3 Club with Gary Sivils and Paul Smith and practiced every chance I could get. I played with my own group at the Kansas City Jazz Festival at Municipal Auditorium. 1966 -- Moved back to NYC and took up residence in an apartment (vacated by Larry Coryell) on E. 10th near Tompkins Square. I played modern dance music with Bill Dixon and Howard Johnson, Latin gigs with the Charlie and Eddie Palmieri Orchestras, and I gigged out of town with Les and Larry Elgart. I played in the Music In the Streets Band led by Bill Dixon, which included Robin Kenyatta, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Vass, Bob Pozar, Sonny Simmons, Grover Washington, and other out-of-work musicians in the Lower East Side area. Joe Farrell, a tenor player I befriended my first time in NY, got me the second tenor chair with Woody Herman. I was with Woody for four months and played my last gig with him (and Tony Bennett) on the Ed Sullivan Show. 1967 -- I was flown to Kansas City in April to play at the annual Kansas City Jazz Festival. The group included Frank Smith (piano), Rod Padilla (congas), Charles Mathews (bass) and I can't remember the drummer. While I was in town I had a ball playing with Russ Long, Gary Sivils and Tommy Ruskin. I went back to NYC, broke up with my wife, and played jazz vespers every Sunday morning at the Brooklyn Heights Methodist Church with Bob Pozar, Cecil Taylor's drummer. At this time I was jamming a lot at different jazz clubs and churches with Bobby Moses, Larry Coryell, Jim Pepper, Danny Mixon, Zoot Sims, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders, Carlos Garnet, Rashid Ali and Toshiko Akiyoshi. At a lower east side club called the Port of Call East, I met Kenny Dorham who, at the time, was taking courses and directing the jazz band at N.Y.U. He gave me a lot of encouragement. At the Port of Call East, Jackie Byard popped in one night and took me over to play with him at his single at the Village Gate. I played in the Village with Randy Brecker, guitarist Bob Grillo, pianist Mike Nock, and Teddy Kotick, one of Charlie Parker's bass players. 1968-69 -- 1968 was the year I met my second wife, Carol Feldman who, like Carole King, was trying to break through in the pop field. She had everything in one package that I desired in a woman: beauty, intelligence, humor, business acumen, talent. Plus, I was madly in love with her. We lived in a store front at 1st and 1st below some murderous bikers called the Aliens. They were constantly at war with the NY branch of the Hell's Angels. When the Angels decided to set fire to the building, Carol and I had to make a quick move. This was also the year that I started recording with a jazz-rock-fusion group called Archie Whitewater (after my adopted Cherokee name). We got a deal with Robert Stigwood (RSO) out of London, who managed Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees and who convinced Chess Records to record us. Our first album was finished and released, but soon afterward Chess was bought out by the Rolling Stones and we were shelved. The second album with Bob Mann on guitar (now with James Taylor) and Monty Waters on alto sax was never released, but we did play opposite Tony Williams' Lifetime with John McLaughlin. I was getting fed up with the so-called fusion scene and started gigging with Charles Mingus. It was one of his last bands before he was forced to retire with Lou Gehrig's disease, and it included myself on tenor sax, Carlos Grant (tenor sax), Tommy Turrentine (trumpet), Danny Richmond (drums) and Jackie Byard (piano). Carol and I were married in an uptown synagogue, moved to Greenport, Long Island, and rented a NY architect's converted New England school house where I wrote pop tunes for Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton. None were ever recorded, but I did get Judy Collins interested in a song called "Life is a River." That wasn't recorded either, but I managed to sing harmony on "Amazing Grace," which was a hit for Judy. 1970-78 -- Watching the submarines coming in and out of New London, Connecticut, Carol and I wondered what we were going to do for the rest of our lives. Carol had an uncle named Pete Pedersen who, with his brother and Carol's father Fuzzy Feldman, were in the Harmonica Rascals. Pete was now writing jingles in a studio in Memphis, so Carol and I found a car (an old Saab) on the streets of NY and drove it to Memphis where I got a gig recording jingles and where I started to make some steady money. We bought a house and Carol had Aaron, our first son. We thrived for many years in Memphis, and I started getting more gigs, including recording with Isaac Hayes on his "Black Moses" album. I also started working on a degree at Memphis State University under Tommy Ferguson. With my experience I had no trouble making the "A" jazz band, a roaring college band with James Williams on piano. With this band, I had more fun than being with Woody Herman. Plus, I was getting a monthly check from the government for having been in the Army. I played some amazing Dixieland music at the Cotton Carnival, an annual Memphis festival, with the likes of Nobby Totah, the great American-Indian trombonist. Bebop was a happening thing in Memphis. And I had the honor of playing with pianist Phineas Newborne and tenor saxophonist Fred Ford. And that's not to mention the young piano lions, Mulgrew Miller and Donald Brown. I had my own jazz band that played the Memphis Jazz and Blues Festival alongside of Dizzy Gillespie and Eddie Harris, but, all of the sudden -- in the late '70s -- the bottom fell out of the music scene... and one day I was looking in the closet and getting ready to sell my gig suit for food. Carol then decided that she needed to get her Ph.D in anthropology, which she did in three years. 1979 -- Carol chose to do her Ph.D thesis (on children's growth) in Belize (formerly British Honduras), Central America. I drove us (Carol, Aaron, myself and Dee Dee, our Hungarian sheep dog given to us by Louis Armstrong's former trombonist, Wilber De Paris) through Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula to Belize. Carol did her required work with the Mestizos, the Maya Indians, and the Black Caribs (the Garifuna) while I recorded the different ethnic groups comprising the people of Belize. While in Belize we met Isabel Flores, the greatest drummer in the Caribbean. He taught my son Aaron the fundamentals of hand drums. Eventually we got two NEA grants to study the music of the escaped slaves who mixed with the Carib Indians. They were blacks with African rhythms in their veins and the survival skills of the Carib Indians. The grants were 1) to record the traditional and spiritual music of the Garifuna, and 2) to bring a troupe of Garifuna drummers and dancers to the U.S. to tour some of the major cities where Garifuna immigrants live -- namely NYC, Chicago and Los Angeles... with Memphis thrown in to boot. I was Carol's assistant tour guide, and believe me when I say that this was a blast and a book in itself. It produced two albums of traditional and sacred Garifuna music, and part of a CD on Rykodisk called "The Spirit Cries," produced by Mickey Hart. 1980-81 -- Carol got a job teaching anthropology at Illinois State University at Bloomington/Normal after she received her doctorate. I played dumb gigs at the VFW club and the Elks Club or whatever the union could throw at me. Generally, I was depressed and drank a lot of beer. It was a stagnant scene and my former life came back to haunt and taunt me. I transposed some beautiful Garifuna melodies into a jazz format and got an Illinois Arts Council grant to perform them at I.S.U., which turned out satisfactorily. And I tried to maintain a one-night-a-week jazz gig in downtown Bloomington. One day, my drummer, Dr. Bob McEntyre said to me, "I heard a great guitar player last night at the university. Pat Metheny." I'm sorry I missed that. A lot of great groups had been coming through, like Frank Zappa and Prince.
Carol got the research position at the P.N.G. Institute of Medical Research ten miles outside of Madang surrounded by groves of palm trees with the Pacific ocean visible over the top of the jungle. We met villagers and learned the language -- Melanesian Pidgin, a trade language that includes English, German and Italian words. While Carol did her work, I drove into town and taught piano to primary school students. Later we started venturing into the mountains and deep bush to work on human growth. I applied for a position teaching music at the Goroka Teachers College in the Eastern Highlands and got the job of tutor. We moved to Goroka where the headquarters of the Institute of Medical Research was located. Carol was transferred there and we were one happy family in the town which the Guiness Book of World Records calls the most beautiful place in the world to live. I taught music for one year, which is not the same as playing music, and I also became a medical photographer at the Institute. Carol and I worked together and did medical patrols on boats visiting islands in the Coral Sea. She measured people and I recorded their music on the Institute's Nagra tape recorder. We went back in time to study incredible cultures that have existed for millennia. In the highlands of New Guinea we went by helicopter way the hell into remote areas that had never been explored and we encountered a tribe that had never seen by an outsider, let alone foreign Americans. For over ten years we studied, photographed and recorded the Hagahai people, this remote tribe of hunters and gatherers. At first they were as shy as deer, but over time they came to regard us as redeeming saviors who brought cures for the diseases that were decimating their line. Being out there among the Hagahai in their pristine rain forest was akin to being on another world... far away from the grinding stress of people, machines, politics and civilization in general. "In Goroka I sometimes led a band called The Bops, which stands for 'Bird of Paradise.' We once played for 40,000 highlanders upon a high stage. Their mouths were agape as we played 'Watermelon Man." 1985 -- Ryan, our second son, was born in Goroka on May 13 (same birthday as Stevie Wonder), and as soon as he was old enough we took him out to the Hagahai territory on a helicopter. By this time, National Geographic had heard of our work with the stone age people and had assigned two of their top staff members to come to New Guinea and make a documentary. This documentary (on the National Geographic "Explorer Series") is still obtainable. It is called "Out of the Stone Age." Parts of it are also included in the National Geographic Explorer video, "100 Years of Exploration," which starts out with Admiral Byrd and the North Pole, and continues chronologically through Jacque Cousteau, the chimpanzee studies of Jane Goodall, the gorilla studies of Diane Fossey, and concludes with Carol Jenkins' study of the most remote human primates, the Hagahai. It's like, I started out studying Bird, found the same trajectory as Admiral Byrd, and ended up in the land of the Bird of Paradise. In Goroka I sometimes led a band called The Bops, which stands for "Bird of Paradise." We once played for 40,000 highlanders upon a high stage. Their mouths were agape as we played "Watermelon Man." 1996-1999 -- After 14 years in New Guinea, one night the currency dropped to less than half of what it was the day before. So it was time to move on. Fame and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee. "We have been on Bangladesh TV several times, and when I walk down the streets of Dhaka, people stop and stare and say, 'music show." We moved to Bangladesh where Carol got a good-paying job with CARE as health sector coordinator. A lot of her time is spent on the possibilities of and the defense again an HIV-AIDS epidemic. When I got there, I started teaching music again. Piano, flute, saxophone. A small jazz group evolved and we played at a local curry restaurant that had a nice bandstand, good sound and a growing group of jazz fans. We played "Nature Boy" and some minor modal Trane tunes and the atmosphere was almost as hip as the Club Bohemia. But all the rich Bangladesh kids went back to school in the States and London... and I fell down at home and cracked my skull, which meant MRI time in Dallas. When I came back to Dhaka I joined yet another fusion group called: "Dhaka." Our cassette just came out. We played in Calcutta -- amidst generated smoke and swirling colored lights -- for 7,000 screaming university students. We have been on Bangladesh TV several times, and when I walk down the streets of Dhaka, people stop and stare and say, "music show." I'm working on another cassette with another popular Bangladesh band, and when I return from this trip to the States, there will supposedly be a lot of work waiting. It doesn't pay a lot of money. This is one of the poorest countries in the world -- so poor that the majority of the people can't afford to fork out 65 cents for a cassette. As I said, fame and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee. And now 35 years have passed and I have never recorded a jazz album of my own. That is my dream. I hope I can convince Carol that a move back to KC will be a move in the right direction. I'm going back to Dhaka and I'm going to woodshed, form a group and begin doing my own thing. Recording time is cheap (3 hours for $50); I'll try to get some good demos and use them as a springboard. When I get back to KC I want to use the most compatible cats available. Spread the word -- Travis will return! Shoulda, woulda, coulda, dammit! Shall, will, can! And one more thing: be sure and tell Pat Metheny that he was there with "Off Ramp" when I needed him in the jungles of Papua, New Guinea. And, I didn't even realize he was from Kansas City! Best regards, Travis RETURN TO FEBRUARY 2000 MAIN INDEX ------------------------------------------------------------------------ © Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors 1996-2001. All rights reserved. |
|
           |
|
|||
 |
|||||||||
