31. Jazz for Peace

[00:00:00] Rick DellaRatta: "I just saw a black person who was absolutely a genius, hands down. So why could it be that he's not allowed to vote?  I mean, if anybody should be not allowed to vote, the geniuses would be the last people you'd want not voting, you know.  He knew now in his heart that there were problems that needed to be addressed [00:00:20] and he dedicated his life to it. And when they finally said,   "What is it that made you accomplish so much in your life?" In just one word he said, "Jazz".  [00:00:40] [00:01:00]

Introduction

[00:01:11] Steve: About three years ago the family and I went to New York and to the 9/11 Memorial. My youngest is 21, and [00:01:20] it was incredible to think that he wasn't even born on that tragic day. it was an unbelievable experience and a very fitting memorial. And of course it brought back memories of that day, memories of a person three and a half thousand miles away. And even from that distance, [00:01:40] those memories are still fairly intense. But nothing compared to those directly affected, those who lost loved ones, friends, colleagues. Life simply changed that day. Rick DellaRatta is a larger than life American [00:02:00] jazz pianist and singer. He watched it all happen from the roof of the apartments where he was staying. As a result, his life also changed for good - and for the good. But we'll come onto that in a second. To understand that "good", we need a little bit of [00:02:20] background.

[00:02:20] Steve: So I started by asking Rick if he remembered when he first started performing, and he told me about his high school teacher. [00:02:40]

Progressing to Jazz

[00:02:40] Rick DellaRatta: He wanted me to play in a band with his sons that were starting a band that was gonna play in the high school dances and the, you know, the school dances - junior high, all that stuff.

[00:02:48] Rick DellaRatta: So I got in that band, and then a grown up band wanted me to play in their band, and they were like, "Listen kid, we know you're underage, but we'll sneak you in and out, you know, lay low,[00:03:00] don't worry, we'll pick you up. We'll drive you home". So I got in the grownup band, now I'm in the kids band. And then on top of that, my mother, who was the church organist, she drops that on me too.

Riffing in church

[00:03:11] Steve: Now, one of your developing areas of expertise was improvisation, the foundation for any jazz musician. [00:03:20] I'm curious to know how improvisation went down at the church.

[00:03:25] Rick DellaRatta: A lot of times in the church they'd say, "You know, you have to play for the offertory, you know, when the people do this and after the communion they're gonna do this. You gotta keep playing. Just keep playing". And, you know, the average church organist might have Brahms and this and that. But I was [00:03:40] like, "Screw that. I'll give you the music and I will just improvise and I will just make it up. And after a while, the priests started to figure out that I was just making these things up 'cause they never heard the same thing twice.

[00:03:51] Steve: But presumably you couldn't just riff willy-nilly in a church.

[00:03:55] Rick DellaRatta: When I did those improvisations, I had to be careful to be [00:04:00] cognizant of the moment in time, where I was, who the people were out there. I had to connect somehow in order to play something that was completely improvised, completely new, but would somehow resonate with the moment that would somehow be right.

[00:04:17] Steve: Okay, so your career [00:04:20] started to develop, as I suppose a lot of us develop a career, by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Artie Shaw to Dizzy Gilespie

[00:04:37] Rick DellaRatta: I was starting to play with well known people [00:04:40] in Boston at that time. And one of them was the Artie Shaw Band that was famous and it reformed in Boston, which was kind of fortunate for me. The phone rings and it's, you know, "We want you to go on tour with the Artie Shaw Band as our pianist". It was very special for me because it gave me the feel of a big band, it's in my soul [00:05:00] from playing all these gigs, travelling and playing on a bus and playing all these concerts with such a high quality big band. World renowned and all that stuff. So that was a great experience. I also, it was in a situation where The Platters... an old band from the fifties, they had [00:05:20] reformed and they had reformed with people from Boston. And, you know, the thing is in that Boston area, when something comes up, I'm in the mix because I had gotten a... sort of a notoriety in that region, and I got the opportunity to play with them.

[00:05:35] Steve: But then it went one stage better, didn't it?

[00:05:38] Rick DellaRatta: I'm sitting with my [00:05:40] roommates and I had... some really outlandish roommates, almost like, you know, the movie Animal House was back in those days with John Belushi. It was definitely off the wall. The phone rings and I get this crazy phone call and the guy says, "Hi... is this Rick DellaRatta?"

[00:05:54] Rick DellaRatta: "Yeah, this is me". " Well, hi... this is so-and-so from Tinkers Jazz Club, and [00:06:00] my father was the owner of Tinkers, and he was shot and killed, and I've had to take over". I mean, it's an outlandish story, right? " I've had to take over and we've got these acts coming in. My father's trusted friend is all I have to lean on. This old man has told me to call you. And I'm like, which one of my friends [00:06:20] is playing this crazy joke on me? But it's the craziest thing. It turned out to be true because I had been calling this guy over at Tinkers and the guy would answer and he would talk to me 'cause like most people won't talk to you, you know, you're just a student. He became the confidant of this son whose father really did get killed, got shot.[00:06:40]

[00:06:40] Rick DellaRatta: The son said, "Listen, we've got some people coming in. And he tells me, "Which one do you wanna be the opening act for?" And he said, "I've got Dizzy Gillespie..." I said, "Did you say Dizzy Gillespie? "Yeah, I got Dizzy..." I said, "Wait a minute, which one is that?" And Dizzy was real soon, and this other great singer was further back. And I'm [00:07:00] thinking to myself, "You know, with all the turmoil, who knows if this club will even be open by the time that person's date comes up?" And so he literally put me in a mentorship situation with Dizzy Gillespie where we shared the same dressing room. You can't buy that kind of experience. There's no amount of money [00:07:20] that will do it, you know.

The great Dizzy Gillespie: Gotfryd, Bernard, photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

[00:07:21] Steve: Absolutely. So your career blossomed from there through the eighties, with the nineties being split between Boston and New York. On the 11th of September 2001, you [00:07:40] were in New York City. Tell me about that day.

9/11

[00:07:43] Rick DellaRatta: So on 9/11, it was basically a normal day, nothing outlandish with the weather... it was it was a clear day, it wasn't a rainy day or anything like that. There was no part of that day that was normal because I was woken up by a phone call [00:08:00] from a woman who had a job on Wall Street and who was a wannabe photographer, and she was actually quite a good photographer. She calls me from Wall Street and she says, "Hey, something's up. I'm so sorry to call you but I, you know, we had spent the day together yesterday and I just didn't know what to do and you came to my mind". I said, "No problem. What's the problem? What is it? Tell me". And she says [00:08:20] this crazy thing about one of the buildings. I said, "Well, you know what, I can see that right from my... why don't I just go up on the roof? I'll take a look." And I go up on the roof and, what unraveled was nothing I was prepared for.

[00:08:30] Steve: So at this point you are actually looking at the Twin Towers?

[00:08:34] Rick DellaRatta: From where I was staying, which was on the Lower East Side, it was less than a quarter of a mile away [00:08:40] from the Twin Towers, and that's how close I could see them. So I was looking right at the Twin Towers right from my roof. I mean, I literally had a luxury box seat. It was almost like being at Yankee Stadium and watching the World Series in a $500 box seat. How many people were that close with that kind of a view of [00:09:00] what happened? Not many, but I was one of the few.

[00:09:02] Steve: And what were your early thoughts about what was happening?

[00:09:07] Rick DellaRatta: I literally watched the whole thing crumble down. You're seeing incredible fire, incredible destruction, people jumping out of windows. You're looking at a tragedy of [00:09:20] phenomenal ramifications. You were literally in something that would only exist on a movie screen.

[00:09:32] Steve: Now at this point, you do something that is not what most people would do, I think...

[00:09:38] Rick DellaRatta:  What do you [00:09:40] do? Well, you're kind of frozen. I remember someone saying, "Go give blood, run and give blood". And I'm thinking, you know, "A million people are gonna go and try to go and give blood, you know, everyone trying to do the right thing. I have words that are coming out of me so I'm just writing the words on a piece of paper that are just coming out. It was like giving birth.

[00:09:59] Steve: Shouldn't a [00:10:00] musician instinctively write melodies, not words?

[00:10:03] Rick DellaRatta: I was really just giving birth to words, so I wasn't thinking music, I wasn't thinking anything. I was responding to what I experienced and my response was words, and the words came out and I wrote them down.

[00:10:18] Steve: [00:10:20] Now we're going to talk about the Savannah Festival in a moment, which was a couple of weeks after 9/11. During those two weeks, what was the overriding emotion?

[00:10:36] Rick DellaRatta: It was uncertainty, you know, we just didn't [00:10:40] know what the ramifications of all of this was going to be. We just did not know. It was a lot of uncertainty. I was so close to that area, to the World Trade Center, that the entire region where I was, was closed off completely. And if I wanted to get groceries, I had to literally show my [00:11:00] ID and my address to guards to get to and from a grocery store or wherever I had to go back into my apartment. Again, it was within that quarter of a mile radius.

Memorial Festivals

[00:11:10] Steve: So you went to perform at the Savannah Jazz Festival and you took those words with you. Tell me what happened.

[00:11:18] Rick DellaRatta: So I went and [00:11:20] recited those words at the Savannah Jazz Festival, finally they opened things up where we could fly again. And me and my trio flew down to Savannah for this. And even they didn't know I was gonna read this. I just read it as part of my performance.

[00:11:36] Steve: And the press picked up on your poem and it became known as [00:11:40] Jazz for Peace. So tell me about the New York concert soon after.

[00:11:44] Rick DellaRatta: That was already on my schedule. We picked up the very well known Cuban sax player, Paquito D'Rivera, who had been brought over to the United States by Dizzy Gillespie in conjunction with Jimmy Carter. And so [00:12:00] we picked him up in our band to round it out to make it a quartet for that concert. And little did anybody know, I was gonna open that show with Jazz for Peace. And then off the top of my head, I said, "You know, if we fill our souls up with our greatest qualities; creativity, artistry, individuality, [00:12:20] humanity, if we do that, we will have a better chance at avoiding the behavior that leads to destruction. And if you type in Rick DellaRatta famous quote, you'll see that sentence that I just told you - just went viral all over the world.

Jazz for Peace approaches United Nations

[00:12:36] Steve: So now you are really building a head of [00:12:40] steam. Jazz for Peace is becoming its own entity. It seems that whether you like it or not, an animal has been let loose and there was no stopping it now.

[00:12:51] Rick DellaRatta: [00:13:00] The article comes out, DellaRatta starts show with Jazz for Peace. Things connecting me to Jazz for Peace because of the poem were taking a life of its own. I told my manager, I said, "Listen... you know, I'll probably do a few concerts in New York City, Jazz for Peace concerts, 'cause I have the poem [00:13:20] and we have all the fanfare and all that. But I said, "Listen... I'd like you to contact the United Nations, show them all of my credentials, all the things I've been doing and say, "Look, this guy would like to bring Israeli, Palestinian and American jazz musicians together for a concert inside the United Nations, just to show how we can get along and how we do get along in a very [00:13:40] positive way. Well, one day, we were talking about something, I think I had something in Luxembourg and I had something in Paris and then something in Italy. "And by the way, that United Nations idea you had? Yeah, they wanna do that". [00:14:00] She talked about it in the same breath as, you know, just the other gigs, you know what I mean? That's fine. Whatever. But in my mind, I was like, "Jesus". I never thought I'd be able to even have a shot at doing something of that magnitude, so I was combining the type of musician I was becoming with the type of person I was becoming, which I believe is related. [00:14:20] As you develop as a musician, hopefully you're developing as a human being.

The Rick DellaRatta Trio perform at the United Nations

[00:14:31] Steve: And that United Nations appearance really was the catalyst to start the worldwide Jazz for Peace movement that you are still driving [00:14:40] today.

[00:14:40] Rick DellaRatta: I would get letters from, you know, from people in high places, including on our 500th concert from Barack Obama, the president at that time. You know, I'd get letters from them just saying, you know, "Your United Nations concert, you made a statement with that".

[00:14:54] Steve: So just rewind a little. I'm curious to know why it's 'Jazz' for Peace. [00:15:00] Apart from the fact that you are a jazz musician, what's the relevance of jazz?

Why Jazz?

[00:15:04] Rick DellaRatta: When I said, "If we were to fill our souls up with these qualities, well all of those qualities are found in jazz. You find creativity. You find artistry. You find individuality. You find humanity. A lot of Americans don't even know [00:15:20] how much jazz has made an impact on the world. It's spoken in every country. And music in general cuts through all of these barriers.

[00:15:28] Steve: And to really get this point across, you tell the story of a certain Charles Black.

Charles Black

[00:15:35] Rick DellaRatta: [00:15:40] He had grown up in an area where he had become a racist by default without even knowing it. And here he was at this dance, or whether it was a high school dance or college dance or whatever. And all of a sudden he fixates on the trumpet player [00:16:00] and he is convinced that the trumpet player is a genius. So now he's got issues because he walks outside that place, and "I just saw a black person who was absolutely a genius, hands down. So why could it be that he's not allowed to vote? I mean, if anybody should be [00:16:20] not allowed to vote, the geniuses would be the last people you'd want not voting, you know. They'd be the last people you want on the back of the bus. They'd be the last people you want segregated". He knew now in his heart that there were problems that needed to be addressed and he dedicated his life to it. And when they finally said,   "What is it [00:16:40] that made you accomplish so much in your life?" In just one word he said, "Jazz".

When It's Sleepy Time Down South from Rick's album Live In Brazil

[00:16:45] Steve: And of course, you left out one small detail about that trumpet player.

[00:16:51] Rick DellaRatta: The black man he was watching turned out to be Louis Armstrong. [00:17:00]

[00:17:01] Steve: What a fantastic story. So the Jazz for Peace beast is up and running, and whether you like it or not, you are in it. And here we are 20 plus years later, and Jazz for Peace is a global organization reaching nearly every corner of the world. Now it's not just a [00:17:20] series of concerts, so give us a summary of what Jazz for Peace is all about.

What is Jazz for Peace? - Part 1

[00:17:24] Rick DellaRatta: Well, Jazz for Peace is really three things. One thing is it's an educational opportunity to bring music back into the schools and to set an example that music is something, it's a stimulator of the intellect. We have done numerous things, [00:17:40] educational series events, which we have videos of that you can see, and which need to be proliferated. And that's helping bring music back in the schools with these school performances for kids.

What is Jazz for Peace? - Part 2

[00:17:52] Rick DellaRatta: But it's also a musical instrument donation program that donates musical instruments to children and adults who are underprivileged [00:18:00] because a musical instrument is a weapon in itself, but it's a weapon against that which oppresses us.

[00:18:08] Steve: So Jazz for Peace, parts one and two are; educational series events for schools and a musical instrument donation [00:18:20] program for the underprivileged. Fantastic. But it's part three that jazz Peace is really known for globally, isn't it?

What is Jazz for Peace? - Part 3

[00:18:28] Rick DellaRatta: So then we have the biggest thing of all, which is the Benefit Concert Series. And the Benefit Concert Series started before the... United Nations event. It was already going on in New York City in just small [00:18:40] amounts. And we start to expand it. If we're who we say we are, we gotta at least go to the rest of the state. Well, now we gotta go to the other states. Some of the cities were doing Jazz for Peace Day in Alabama, all kinds of amazing events, amazing things. And then it started just branching out all over the world, leading up to our ninth trip to [00:19:00] Africa, which was part of the 20th anniversary celebration of that United Nations concert.

[00:19:05] Steve: Now, alongside the Benefit Concert Series comes some very practical help.

[00:19:10] Rick DellaRatta: We're interested in helping those who are helping others. Because a lot of people just think that if you throw money at something, you can solve it. [00:19:20] With a jazz for Peace event you can unite all of your supporters, staff members, team players, and you can unite them behind the event as VIP guests of honour. So this is an opportunity to thank, reward and honour those people that have tirelessly been [00:19:40] in the trenches for that organization.

[00:19:42] Steve: And if you head over to the website show notes, you'll also see how the Jazz for Peace Organization invites new fundraising ideas, links those great ideas to fundraising bodies, provides far greater awareness for the events than could otherwise be achieved, and of [00:20:00] course, with the greater awareness comes greater levels of sponsorship, and so the virtuous circle goes on. It's a great leverage model. It's an extraordinary organization.

[00:20:11] Rick DellaRatta: And that adds up to a helpful step forward, which is ultimately what we wanna do. We wanna give a helpful step forward to those who are helping others, [00:20:20] because by helping them, we're reaching all of their outreach as well.

Reflections

[00:20:23] Steve: Will Jazz for Peace go on for another 20 years?

[00:20:26] Rick DellaRatta: I see the mission of Jazz for Peace far outliving me. It's far bigger than I'll ever be or ever imagine.

[00:20:36] Steve:  And how have you changed as a result of Jazz for [00:20:40] Peace?

[00:20:40] Rick DellaRatta:  It's enriched me in a way that actual money could never do and actual material goods could ever do, and it's something that I would really want for other people. It's a type of wealth that is... really genuine and can't be taken away. [00:21:00] It's been an incredible learning experience for me.

 [00:21:20] [00:21:40] [00:22:00]

Thank you for our cover image to World-Telegram staff photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.