Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,039

This is the grave of Booker Ervin.

Born in 1930 in Denison, Texas (birthplace of Eisenhower), Ervin grew up in the Black part of that segregated Jim Crow southern town. His father was a musician who had played with Buddy Tate and others in the early jazz era and soon Booker would be playing as well. Mostly he played trombone as a kid, which was his father’s instrument. After high school, Ervin enlisted in the Air Force. That meant he avoided combat in Korea and was mostly stationed in Okinawa. He played with local bands there and started playing the tenor saxophone. He proved quite good at it.

Now that the GI Bill was a possibility, Ervin decided to take the saxophone and a musical career seriously after his term ended in 1953. He certainly didn’t want to go back to north Texas. So he enrolled at the Berkelee School of Music in Boston for advanced saxophone education. He did for a couple of years and then took a job in Ernie Fields’ band, based out of Tulsa. That didn’t last too long. He moved around a bunch and finally decided to take his shot in New York in 1958.

Pretty soon, Ervin got the attention of Charles Mingus. The great, if volatile, bassist hired Ervin to play with him quite frequently, which was an enormous break for the young saxophonist. Their association lasted from late 1958 until 1964, when Mingus decided to move to Europe. It’s Ervin’s sax that you hear on many of the legendary Mingus albums, including Mingus Ah Um, Blues & Roots, and Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus. On Mingus Ah Um, Ervin played on every track, while Shafi Hadi was on tenor for some of them as well, so sometimes there’s two saxophonists. Blues & Roots is a big band kind of sound and so there’s a whole group of sax players on it. Ervin was on tenor, with Jackie McLean and John Handy on alto and Pepper Adams on baritone. Mingus liked a big horn sound (so do I) so on Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus, it’s Ervin playing tenor, with Dick Hafer also on tenor, Eric Dolphy on alto and Jerome Richardson on both baritone and soprano. In any case, this gives you a sense of how central Ervin was to this classic era of Mingus–playing a major role on every recording. Mingus albums tend to be remembered pretty much for Mingus and he was a dominant personality to say the least. Whether Mingus ever punched Ervin like he did to some of his other musicians, I do not know. But of course these albums were collaborations and had lots of greats on them and Ervin was key to them.

After Mingus left, Ervin started his own quartet. It’s not that remembered today, but it had Richard Davis on bass, Alan Dawson on drums, and Jaki Byard on piano. Now, Ervin might not be as remembered as John Coltrane, who of course revolutionized jazz in the 60s. He might not be as remembered as Ornette Coleman either, who did the same. And then of course there was Eric Dolphy and Sonny Rollins and Albert Ayler and Wayne Shorter all out there. So it was a golden age for visionary saxophonists. But there were a bunch of guys who played in the same scene and many considered them as good as these greats. That describes where Booker Ervin was in the 60s. At the time, everyone wanted to play with him and if we’ve reduced our memory of great saxophone down to just a few people in that era, well, I suppose that’s natural enough, but it doesn’t take long to go deeper into the incredible richness of the instrument in that era. The pianist Randy Weston, who played with Ervin frequently in the mid 60s, compared him favorably to Coltrane, saying He was a completely original saxophonist…. He was a master….” High praise.

In 2013, Booker Ervin’s 1960 debut as a bandleader The Book Cooks was rereleased. Fresh Air had a review by Kevin Whitehead. He stated, in part:

Ervin came from Northeast Texas on the Oklahoma line, field hollers coming at him from the east and cattle calls from the west. He punctuated his lines with high lonesome hollers before he got to New York and discovered that John Coltrane had a similar move. Ervin got ideas from Coltrane after that, but that cry was always his own. Coltrane’s tone was as glossy as varnished hardwood. Booker Ervin’s sound was more coarse, like a cane stalk shooting up out of rich earth.

For the ensemble shouts and background riffs, Booker Ervin is flanked by trumpeter Tommy Turrentine from Max Roach‘s band, as well as a Lester Young disciple and big-band vet, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. Sims could blow cool — he’d once recorded with Jack Kerouac — but also liked locking horns with fellow tenors. The saxophonists square off in a friendly way on The Book Cooks. Sims’ tone is a little softer and rounder than Booker’s.

The late ’50s and thereabouts served as a great period for jazz rhythm sections — mighty bass players in particular. Nowadays, most bassists set the strings low to the neck so their fingers don’t have to fight so hard. Back then, strings were higher and players couldn’t get around so quickly. But they could pluck a string so hard, it made bass a percussion instrument. In “The Blue Book,” for example, the great George Tucker’s bass beat and Dannie Richmond’s hi-hat and cymbals mail his message home.

The Book Cooks was Booker Ervin’s first album under his own name, and it kicked off an early-’60s hot streak. He’d make the classics The Freedom Book and The Space Book with another great rhythm section, and recorded other good dates involving Tommy Flanagan, George Tucker or Dannie Richmond. But what really makes all those records is Booker Ervin’s Texas shout on tenor saxophone, a sound that’s both down-home and majestic.

Ervin spent a bunch of time in Europe in the mid 60s as well, living there for nearly two years between 1964 and 1966. There were tons of American jazz musicians doing the same thing at this time, not to mention all the young Europeans excited to play with these living legends. He did a lot of work with Dexter Gordon over there, as well as recording with own quartet. He returned to the U.S. in 1966 and did a bunch of jazz festivals. He wasn’t really a free jazz kind of guy, so he began to lose some of his centrality to the scene there for awhile.

Ervin may well have returned to being a central jazz player once the screeching of the free jazz guys was tempered a bit by the early 70s and the earlier styles became more popular again, plus the fusion scene that a lot of these jazz players managed to work in one way or another. But Ervin had kidney disease. I’m really not sure of the details around it. But he was barely playing by 1968 and he died in 1970 of it. He was only 39 years old. When he died, he received a New York Times obituary, but it was only about 100 words and didn’t give much information.

Let’s listen to some Booker Ervin.

That ought to take care of your jazz needs this morning.

Booker Ervin is buried in Long Island National Cemetery, East Farmingdale, New York.

If you would like this series to visit some of the people Ervin played with, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Mingus had his ashes scattered in the Ganges, so that’s a bummer. But Randy Weston is in Brooklyn and Jaki Byard is also in East Farmingdale, but a different cemetery (there’s a lot of them out there). Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.