The Last Music Podcast
The Last Music Podcast
Tony Kofi: Another Kind of Soul, Part 1
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In this three-part Last Music Podcast series, reknown singer and televison host China Moses sits down with Tony Kofi and Alex Webb to talk about the making of "Another Kind of Soul," a new portrait of Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, released April 24 on the Last Music Company label.
The album can be sampled and ordered here.
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Come visit us at https://www.lastmusic.co.uk to see what we're up to.
I'm Malcolm Mills from The Last Music Company. That was an all-too-brief snapshot of the title track from Tony Kofi's Another Kind of Soul album, which is the subject of this podcast. You'll hear the whole of that track in this episode. Among his many ongoing projects, Tony has a quintet dedicated to the life and works of Julian Cannibal Adelaide. The show is named Portrait of Cannibal, and it always attracts a large and enthusiastic audience. Adelaide's spirit is unmistakably in the house at their pack gigs, and so I decided to record a live album and release it on vinyl for full effect. China Moses kindly agreed to talk with Tony and his collaborator Alex Webb about the recording and their motivation for the project. The interview was recorded in the conservatory at Alex's house, which, as you'll notice, would be a great place to cut a rockabilly record. It's divided into three podcasts, and here's the first of them.
SPEAKER_03Hey guys, how are you doing? Great to meet you, Johnny. Great to hang with y'all. I'm so happy that you guys are doing a tribute to Cannonball Adelaide. So, Alex, um, Tony? Okay, we're gonna start with the beginning.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03How did you guys meet?
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um I was aware of Tony for a long time. I mean, he's been a force on the jazz scene for a while, and in those days, some years ago, I was more in the business end of things and working in venues and stuff, as you know. Um, but then I got involved in uh started producing some shows, and I think the first show we worked on together actually was probably the Billy Strayhorn thing. Is that right? Yeah where uh me and Frank Griffith put together a big group um to do the Strayhorn material for the London Jazz Festival, and um and then uh we sort of stayed in each other's orbit and we'd meet on the scene and stuff, and then we started working together with the singer Joe Harrow. And uh and I think it was you know how it is on gigs, you have lots of conversations about the music you love and stuff. Some point during that time we found we had this mutual love of of cannibal. So that so that's sort of that's just where the seed was planted.
SPEAKER_01But I think where I first met you was at the other palace with um Frank Ruth. Yeah, yeah, that's when when both of you came to uh concert I was doing. So that's where I met you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, I mean the obvious question is okay, we have a love for a lot of musicians, but you guys chose Cannonball, that's where you guys meet. Why is Cannonball someone you wanted to pay tribute to in the city?
SPEAKER_01It goes back to when I was a teenager when someone gave me a um a cassette. So now we're going back. Someone gave me a cassette of uh Nancy Wilson and Cannibal Andy. Now, I I wanted to learn um the so one of the tunes on there, which is called I I Can't Get Started. And um I noticed that, you know, when I first put the cassette on, the sound of Cannibal, the sound was absolutely mind blown. Because before that I was like, listen to Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, but then I got used to his cannibal and I was like completely sorry. I thought this guy had such a an amazing uh voice on the saxophone. And uh and that's when I stopped, you know, heard Nancy Wilson as well, but the um the force of how he played and and it was almost like very gospel church kind of sound, and so it goes way back to that. Uh and then I kept listening and listening and discovering that he did a whole amount of music that I it was ac accessible to me and I got into, so yeah. So I I always carry that with me. The fact that Cannibal was an amazing force, but he wasn't um he wasn't as well known like people like Charlie Parker, you know, but uh I I just perceive that that uh that force he had. You know, it was for me it was great to to be able to um get into his his uh his sound, his uh his music. It was um almost like learning for me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. How would you define his sound? Because you're talking about talk about the church aspect, but can you give me a a a more in-depth description?
SPEAKER_01Like a voice, like like a natural voice. Like your voice? Well, not like my saxophone voice, but like a a singing voice. To me, uh when I heard uh heard the way he sounded, it was almost like he was singing. It was a very happy and joyous sound. Whereas Bird uh had a completely different sound, very direct but quite dark. But Cannibal was that happy sound, whatever he played, and and his rhythm was different as well. So he was very balanced in rhythm. So, yeah, but for me it was like his voice, like a natural singing voice. Yeah, and that's what really struck me about uh how he played.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that touches on something else that Tony and I both believe in. It's about jazz as a communicating force, you know, and if there's one thing about Cannibal, he was a communicator, and he'd really he never accepted that jazz should be a niche or be unpopular. He always thought it was of music for the people, and we would go on record about that again and again. Um, and I think that's partly you know, we all want to play for bigger audiences, but it's also it's a sort of an outlook. I think that Tony and I don't have this feeling of jazz as a kind of ivory tower thing. We want it to actually belong to people, relate to people, yeah. Um, and so that was another thing that sort of you know, uh again talking about cannibal, it's just it's not just about the music, it's about the idea of that that of music's placed in society kind of thing. Um, and and you know, alongside the sound of his actual horn is the sound of the band. No way that canniball was one of the people that introduced put back into jazz uh blues gospels uh feeling, you know, the term soul jazz starts to be used. So that's kind of interesting too. You know, um all things that we we sort of drew us drew us in that direction, you know.
SPEAKER_03I have a question that I didn't ask, which is the one that needs to be asked. What is this project called?
SPEAKER_02The show's called A Portrait of Cannibal, but we thought a better title for the album would be Another Kind of Soul, which really expresses what this music is, you know, as a Nat Adelaide composition.
SPEAKER_03Let's take a listen to the song that gave its name to this live album, Another Kind of Soul.
SPEAKER_01Um, yes, something I've that's always stayed with me, and I like the fact that it's not just about um the horns, it's about the ribbon section. The rim section plays the bridge, but I like the fact that the ribbon section are almost like a force of its own and it gives it gives the um the horns a chance to respond to what the ribbon section is doing. So uh it's almost like they all come in together and then it splits off with the ribbon section doing a QA. So I like I like the fact that um this this composition deals with that QA and then boom just you know gives the uh the the soloist a chance to uh to launch.
SPEAKER_03Um what helped you guys choose the people in the band?
SPEAKER_01Hmm. Well, the drummer Alfonso uh Vitali, I met him uh at a jam session Ronnie, and right there and then he had that Louis Hayes kind of uh swing, you know. And he had the groove as well. So um I kept him in mind, but I met him five years before that. You know, but I always kept him in mind. Um Andrew Klander, uh I've worked with before. Very, very solid bass, very soulful, you know. So these you know, these are the guys that had you know um a lot of soul in their playing as well, you know, as as well as being you know um technically, you know, able. Uh and obviously Alex, uh our connection uh with uh you know the stray horn thing and other shows that we've done. So yeah, and uh I think that was our connection. That was that that was all we needed, you know. And originally it was Byron Walla. Uh but uh Byron's uh he's a massively busy, busy guy and uh he was hard to uh ping him down, but then we got um Andy Davis and he was almost like a depth, but then you know he really got into the music and he really really plays you know, plays really well and he has a lot of soul. So so for me it was about it wasn't about how the musician uh handled the tune, it was how they brought themselves into the tune. They they put themselves in, you know, uh a lot of feeling has has gone into this, you know, to be able to deliver this music. So, you know, and I I'm really all about feeling. Um you know, I don't come from a a a technical uh kind of uh way of playing, you know. Because um, you know, I I I'm a self-taught musician, so the feeling was what came first rather than the you know the theory, but the feeling almost definitely.
SPEAKER_02One of the things about the band is it really is a band. I mean hardly ever depth anyone, it has to be a pretty extreme situation. So we always it's always the same guys, and we really know the music now, you know, we we know where we're coming from. Um and again, you know, that Cannibal used to have these very stable bands with these personnel that went for years and years together. Famously, there was a band with you know Joe Sarvanel, uh Sam Jones, and Lewis Hayes, um, and that was and his brother Matt, you know, and so that went for years, really, and and and that's you can hear the tightness and the unity in that music, and so you know in some way we're trying to emulate that.
SPEAKER_01And it creates a signature as well as um you know bringing in our own compositions as well. So it creates a signature within the band that you know you can bring, like we bought in our original compositions and uh it it just plays soft in the you know with the musicians because they know how we play. We know how how each other plays stuff.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So who is in this cannibal adderly tribute crew? Who's the band?
SPEAKER_01Oh the band is uh myself on alto saxophone, Andy Davis on trumpet, Alex Webb on piano, Andrew Kleiner on double bass, and Alfonso Vitali on the drums.
SPEAKER_03Tony Kofi and Alex Webb are keeping the soul of and the story of Canonball Adderly alive, or at least spreading the word.
SPEAKER_01Oh sorry, spreading the gospel of Cannibal Adderley.
SPEAKER_03Thank you, Gentlemen. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_03I'm China Moses, and thank you, ladies and gents, for listening. And make sure you subscribe so you can know when the next conversation is coming your way.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, China. That was the first of the three episodes of this podcast. The next one will be available from the first week in April, and it's easy to subscribe to this short series. Part two features Tony's mesmerizing rendition of Stars Fell on Alabama from the album and another part of this interview with China Moses.