The Kirk Lightsey Interview

In the late sixties and early seventies many of the cats who were playing improvisational music were trying to add on to the musical thesaurus that was John Coltrane.

A spinning wheel of scales and rudiments played within different scales and modalities. Expanding consciousness and spirituality in that people got to witness these performances live.

Maybe it was at a bar with 9 people but this music the music of Train and Dizzy, Miles and Charlie Parker affected every musician of the next generation. Rock players, blues players, southern Dixie -  you knew if you could or could not play that kind of music but inherently the respect that was garnered across the board is a testimate to the authenticity of these players.

My guest today is one of the cats who borrowed from the masters and then added his own individual voice. For any pure jazz session my guest got the call, playing with Roland Haynes, Joe Henderson, Herbie Lewis, The Skipper Henry Franklin, Charlie Owens, Calvin Keys and Carl Burnett.

But reading of names and record dates does not do justice to my guest playing which comes through him. It is his ability to leave his physical body and transcend that allows the music to be spiritual. Like Randy Weston and Ellis Marsalis and Thelonius Monk my guest was closer to the source of the music and was able to gofarther back in the lineage to see where the music came from, how it was cultivated and where it had changed. He played with the great Yogi Rudolph Johnson and was smokin' with Roy Brooks in the Chet Baker Quintet.