The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-27)

E14 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 27 , 2022

your candor, confide in you. She

can challenge your interpretation

of her. She can try to keep you, or

decide she’s done.

All of these seem fair. Right? To

make her an equal partner in the

direction your friendship takes?

You might even find it’s

salvageable, if she’s not too far

gone or you haven’t waited too

long to speak up.

Regardless, talking to her this

way leaves you with a shorter

path to travel if you decide it’s

time to back out of the friendship.

“I’ve been talking to you about

this, but nothing has really

changed — I just feel like we’re

going in different directions.”

In fact, this is really a back door

to knowing whether any of us has

been fair and honest with

someone over the course of a

relationship: When we say we’re

through, how blindsided will the

other person be? Assuming

they’re not in denial, how much of

our discontent will they be

hearing only now for the first

time? Someone we call a friend

deserves this chance to remain

one.

Write to Carolyn Hax at

[email protected]. Get her

column delivered to your inbox each

morning at wapo.st/gethax.

 Join the discussion live at noon

Fridays at washingtonpost.com/live-

chats.

Essentially, she has changed

over the past few years and so have

I. I find her materialistic nature

unbearable since she married

again. The way she speaks to her

new husband reminds me of the

unhealthy ways I used to act years

ago before lots of therapy.

Quite frankly, she’s different

from any of my friends and I no

longer find it amusing.

— It’s Not You, It’s Me

It’s Not You, It’s Me: If you’re too

close to waft away, then you’re

close enough to tell the truth in the

incremental, relevant, productive

way people do when they share an

intimate connection:

“When you talk to your

husband that way, I feel really

uncomfortable. What’s going on?”

“Noooo, please, no more talk

about shopping!”

“I’m surprised to hear you say

that.”

“If we keep bragging about our

vacations, we’ll be the people we

used to commiserate about.”

“I think of us a few years ago,

and this just seems really different.”

Some of these are difficult, too.

But they’re bite-size truths as

opposed to one big, “I don’t like

you anymore,” side of insult beef.

Plus, they fit the moment — and,

so important, they allow her to

understand how she’s coming

across to you and respond in the

moment. She can check herself,

change the subject, thank you for

BY MICHAEL J. WEST

It was announced eight
months ago, but Billy Hart’s Na-
tional Endowment for the Arts
Jazz Masters Fellowship still baf-
fles him.
“All of my heroes are jazz mas-
ters. It’s hard to see myself as one
of them,” says the drummer, a
native Washingtonian who spoke
by phone from his home in Mont-
clair, N.J. “These are people who I
admire and respect, and I’ve
spent so much time trying to fol-
low in their footsteps — I’ve based
my whole life on some of the
things that these people have ac-
complished. So, to put me in their
category ... you wonder if the
people that are giving these
awards know who’s who!”
Nobody else doubts Hart’s fit-
ness for the honor, a lifetime
achievement award that is the
United States’ highest recogni-
tion of jazz musicians. “Billy is on
the highest level of playing jazz —
uniquely confident and uniquely
personal,” says Ethan Iverson, the
pianist in Hart’s quartet for 25
years. “He has been my most im-
portant mentor in learning about
the tradition.”
Hart and the NEA’s other Jazz
Masters for 2022 — bassist Stan-
ley Clarke, vocalist Cassandra
Wilson and saxophonist/educator
Donald Harrison Jr. — will be
feted at a San Francisco tribute
concert and live stream on March

31. This 40th anniversary class
    joins a roster of 165 previous hon-
    orees including Miles Davis, Son-
    ny Rollins and Quincy Jones.
    Now 81, Hart’s résumé reads
    like an encyclopedia of jazz since
    the 1960s. He spent that decade
    recording and touring with three
    of its biggest stars: guitarist Wes
    Montgomery, organist Jimmy
    Smith and saxophonist Eddie
    Harris. In the 1970s came tenures
    with keyboardist Herbie Hancock
    and saxophonist Stan Getz (the
    latter continuing into the ’80s); he
    spent much of the ’90s with saxo-
    phonist Charles Lloyd, then in the
    2000s joined the all-star septet
    the Cookers and formed his own
    working quartet. Throughout, he
    was also a freelancer — one of the
    most in-demand of his genera-
    tion, with more than 600 album
    credits and countless national
    and international tours under his
    belt.
    “He can play any genre of jazz
    but always sounds like himself,”

says Iverson. “At bottom, he has a

really authentic swing feel, and he

would credit that to Washington.”

Indeed, before he was jazz roy-

alty, Hart was a kid growing up in

Northeast D.C. He learned the

music on the bandstand and in

jam sessions partly with touring

acts but mostly with local players,

the mentors who enabled him to

take D.C. swing around the world.

“Those are the guys I came out

of, learning to play that Washing-

ton style of grooving and swing-

ing,” he says. “If you got a chance

to hear those guys, you would

know me.”

Born in November 1940, Hart

was raised in Deanwood, then a

middle-class Black neighborhood

east of the Anacostia River, where

he was initially more interested in

baseball than music. He played

snare in the drum-and-bugle

corps at Kelly Miller Junior High

(now Middle) School, then got a

full kit after he’d moved to McKin-

ley Technical High School. His

real awakening, though, came not

at school, but at his grandmoth-

er’s apartment building on Divi-

sion Avenue NE.

He visited her one afternoon

and wound up meeting a neigh-

bor, Roger “Buck” Hill. A postal

worker by day, Hill was by night

the District’s most fearsome tenor

saxophonist. He was known to

take on — and take down — all

comers to U Street jam sessions.

But Hill took a more generous

stance with Hart, giving him four

castoff records by saxophonist

Charlie Parker.

“I had never even imagined

that kind of music,” Hart recalls.

“It was unbelievable. I guess you

could say I fell in love with bebop

jazz. The music captivated me: I

can still sing some of those solos

as we speak.”

Hill also got Hart his first pro-

fessional gig, accompanying the

“Wailin’ Mailman” at a Saturday

afternoon jam session. He faked

his way through the first two

songs, but the third tripped him

up.

“I was heartbroken,” he says.

“And I started walking away, tail

between my legs, but somebody

grabbed me by my belt buckle.”

The woman who stopped him had

been accompanying them on pi-

ano. She said, “Don’t feel so bad. It

takes three of us to make a rhythm

section, it wasn’t all your fault.”

That was how Hart met singer-

pianist Shirley Horn, a D.C. musi-

cian even more renowned than

Hill. Hart counts both among his

mentors. But when it came to his

own instrument, he had a stable

of heroes to choose from.

“Washington, D.C., was famous

for having pretty good drum-

mers,” he says. “Everybody knew

Jimmy Cobb [who played on

Miles Davis’s 1959 landmark al-

bum “Kind of Blue”]. There was

Dude Brown, who went out on

tour with [R&B saxophone star]

Illinois Jacquet. Fats Clark, Ber-

nard Sweetney, Bertell Knox.”

But there were two drummers

who became Hart’s primary mod-

els. “Harry Saunders — they

called him ‘Stump’ — he played

with both Shirley and Buck, and

then later he played with Sonny

Rollins. He really had that kind of

swing that Washington drum-

mers are famous for.

“And then there was another

straight-ahead drummer who

went on to play with Ike and Tina

Turner; his name was Ben Dixon.

He was the first person I heard

play in odd times — like in 5/4

time, 7/4 time, stuff like that. Ev-

erybody’s doing that now, but this

was in the ’50s! Sometimes people

think of me as kind of experimen-

tal; Ben was like that.” (Saunders

died in 1994, Dixon in 2018.)

At McKinley Tech — a school

that has graduated an astonish-

ing number of revered jazz musi-

cians — Hart found a peer group

as well. Pianist Reuben Brown

and guitarist Quentin Warren

were two years ahead of him;

Warren’s bass-playing nephew,

Butch, was Hart’s age. Along with

Hill, they became the house band

at a club called Abart’s on Ninth

Street NW. They played five

nights a week for nine months but

would get weeks off when out-of-

towners came through. Among

these was the John Coltrane

Quartet, whose rumbling drum-

mer Elvin Jones would be added

to the list of Hart’s idols.

By this time, he was at Howard

University, studying engineering.

(Jazz was then verboten in How-

ard’s music department.) There,

Hart widened his circle of jazz-

playing friends: bassists Walter

Booker and Mickey Bass; drum-

mer Joe Chambers (yet another

model for Hart); trumpeters

Charles Tolliver and Eddie Hen-

derson; and saxophonist Andrew

White, who later joined Hart in

forming the JFK Quintet.

Around that time, the drum-

mer joined the house band for

another local venue: the Howard

Theatre, one of the jewels of the

“Chitlin’ Circuit” for touring Afri-

can American entertainers. His

job was to accompany the pop

acts who played there. That put

Hart in the company of a young

Aretha Franklin, as well as Mo-

town Records revues featuring

Marvin Gaye, the Temptations

and the Supremes.

But if Washington nurtured

Hart, it couldn’t keep him. Hart’s

collaborations soon took him on

the road to play the hard bop of

Smith and Montgomery, the soul-

jazz of Harris, the funky fusion of

Hancock’s “Mwandishi” sextet

and the avant-garde of saxophon-

ist Pharoah Sanders. Over the

next 50 years he would revisit

each of those styles, as well as

everything in between, with equal

confidence — earning the title of

“Jazz Master” well before the NEA

made it official.

Washington swing has been

Hart’s touchstone, but never a

millstone that kept him from

mastering another approach. “I

like to remember what my friend

[drummer and bandleader] Mel

Lewis used to say,” he says. Lewis

told him, “‘I made every band

sound like it was my band.’”

The NEA Jazz Masters Tribute

Concert takes place at 7:30 p.m.

Pacific time (10:30 p.m. Eastern time)

on March 31 at SFJazz’s Miner

Auditorium in San Francisco. Live-

stream it from arts.gov or sfjazz.org.

Billy Hart now must acknowledge he really is a Jazz Master

DESMOND WHITE

D.C. native Billy Hart, part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2022 Jazz Master class, will be celebrated March 31 in San Francisco.

MIKE DU JOUR B Y MIKE LESTER

decide instead to listen and

acknowledge your point of view,

even when she disagrees. That’s

something non-abusive people

find ways to do respectfully.

Her view is a common, self-

serving distortion of emotional

basics. I’ll explain using the royal

“we.” We are responsible for our

own behavior and feelings, yes,

but that includes our effect on

others. It’s our job to read that and

respond morally, compassionately,

productively, judiciously, to the

best of our ability. That doesn’t

mean caving — just being mindful

of our impact.

The royal we can also choose to

be a complete ass instead, since

we do have the option — but the

repercussions of that choice are

on us. Being despised and

avoided, for example.

Now for your part: When

someone does things you find

hurtful or offensive, then you can

decide to speak up. Then, if

nothing changes, you can decide

to weigh whether you’re the one at

fault or to adjust your behavior in

hopes of getting different results.

Then, if the results disappoint,

you can decide that there’s no

healthy way to be around

Carolyn: My wife
can be a pretty
harsh
communicator.
And if I tell her she
has offended me
or hurt my
feelings, she
replies, “Nobody
can offend you/
hurt your feelings — only you can
decide whether to react that way.”
I feel shut down and invalidated.
I hope you can help me either deal
with my feelings better or help us
communicate more effectively.
— A.

A.: I’d say her communication is
ruthlessly effective and clear. She
doesn’t intend to change
anything to ease your emotional
distress. Your move.
She is a harsh communicator
because the views she
communicates are harsh.
Yes, you decide how you feel
and behave. But the same applies
to her — so if she’s knowingly
hurtful, then blames you for
hurting? Only she can decide
whether to act that way, to
borrow her phrasing. And her
choice sounds abusive. She can

Wife: It’s not her fault

if she hurts his feelings

Carolyn

Hax

alone. If you’re diminished by yours,

then it’s not working. Solo therapy

or a call to RAINN, 1-800-656-

HOPE, can help you start to rebuild.

Dear Carolyn: How do I break up

with a friend? Ghosting is out

because we’re too close, and I

want to do it in a mature, honest

way. However, if I’m honest it will

hurt her.

behavior like hers and decide

what’s next for your marriage.

I am happy to validate you:

Your feelings matter.

But the validation you need is

your own. Treat your feelings as

worth standing up for against your

wife’s resistance. The point of

marriage is to combine (emotional,

physical, material) resources for a

stronger unit than each of you was

NICK GALIFIANAKIS/ILLUSTRATION FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

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