Tom McDermott—one of New Orleans’ most distinctive pianists and a modern-day keeper (and fanner) of the flame—moves effortlessly and with a distinctive style among ragtime, traditional jazz, R&B, and Brazilian choro, and on August 20, he will be moving onto the stage at Unit B in Santa Fe.
With a career spanning over five decades, McDermott has performed with New Orleans heroes such as Pete Fountain, Irma Thomas, and Gatemouth Brown. He cofounded and arranged for the Grammy Award–winning brass band, the New Orleans Nightcrawlers. His performances with The Dukes of Dixieland placed him in Carnegie Hall, Germany, Denmark, Peru, Japan, and much of America. He has also performed solo in most of the states in the U.S. and in many foreign countries. Harvard University invited him to be a guest speaker three times.
His 17 albums showcase his work in solo piano, small‑ensemble jazz, duets, and choro. His music has been praised by major publications such as The New York Times (five reviews), Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. His tunes were licensed for the soundtrack of HBO’s Treme, where he also appeared on camera as himself.
McDermott is known for a style that mixes the percussive drive of Professor Longhair [aka Fess], the rhythmic sophistication of James Booker, and the syncopated bounce of classic ragtime—then filters it all through his own imaginative voice, with a touch of Brazilian flair.
He graciously spoke at length with Musically Speaking detailing his connection with these musics and his approach to them, with a preview of his program at Unit B. He will be playing one set tracing the history of Afro-Cuban rhythms in the New World, with an accent on New Orleans. The second set will be all originals, inspired by music from the first set.
The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
MS: So I’ve known you for 34 years, which doesn’t seem possible, but it’s the truth, and I’ve really enjoyed tracking your work over that time, which has changed. I think the first time I heard you, it was pretty much ragtime and trad jazz, and a hint of James Booker. Later, you added the Brazilian choro. So you’ve got this really interesting connection with these four musics, and I wonder, which came to you first, and what drew you, how did you connect with it?
TMcD: Well, I grew up in St. Louis, born there in ’57. My mom was a pianist, and she actually played what’s called a novelty rag called “Kitten on the Keys,” and I ended up learning it, as well. But what really set me on fire was in 1970 when Joshua Rifkin started putting out his Joplin LPs, totally different from the honky-tonk feel of a generation earlier. And St. Louis was also the first big urban center for ragtime.
MS: Really.
TMcD: Ragtime starts in Sedalia, Missouri, with Joplin and others, but then, it shifted to St. Louis, which, in 1900, was the fourth biggest city in America. So the world’s fair in 1904, there were a lot of ragtime pianists there. So when I was growing up in the ’70s in St. Louis, they really were proud of the ragtime heritage, and they had two annual ragtime festivals. The world’s authority on ragtime, a guy named Trebor Jay Tichenor, had thousands of piano rolls and sheet music, and I got to meet him when I was 14. I learned the “Maple Leaf Rag” when I was 14, and by the time I was 20, I knew about 60 rags, so I was deep into it. I learned Joplin before the movie The Sting came out and made “The Entertainer ” the worldwide phenomenon it became. So I tell people that, for the first and last time in my life, I was ahead of the popular music. Because I knew a bunch of Joplin rags and could play, you know, at Shakey’s Pizza, maybe other clubs when I was young.
MS: Was trad jazz next on the list?
TMcD: Definitely. When I was growing up in St. Louis, there were also, like, three or four river boats on the Mississippi that had traditional jazz, and one of these ragtime festivals also had traditional jazz bands—people like Turk Murphy and the Black Dogs, people who are largely forgotten now but were important to people who love traditional jazz.
MS: Yeah.
TMcD: Trebor Tichenor, the guy I mentioned earlier, had a radio show, and that’s when I first heard Jelly Roll Morton and Eubie Blake and James B. Johnson. Maybe Louis Armstrong—but definitely the pianists, who started out playing ragtime and turned it into piano jazz.
MS: I see.
TMcD: I played a few trad jazz gigs in St. Louis, but it really accelerated when I moved to New Orleans in 1984. By that time, I had also really become terribly smitten with New Orleans rhythm and blues, especially James Booker but also Professor Longhair, and I had started to learn some of that stuff—and also the Neville Brothers perhaps and a few others.
MS: Well, Tom, what was it? Is there something that’s common to these three that you’ve talked about so far that captured you, that captured your imagination?
TMcD: Well, you know, traditional jazz is difficult to play in some ways, but very easy to play in some ways. It’s very harmonically what I say “inside.” It’s very traditional harmonically, like ragtime. So much easier than modern jazz. I was also interested in modern jazz, but I quickly realized I was never going to be a really good modern jazz player, so I pretty much abandoned it.
MS: Didn’t know that.
TMcD: Whereas, you know, ragtime and traditional jazz and early New Orleans R&B are harmonically very simple. They all share that element. I got my master’s degree in jazz studies, but it really didn’t help me at all. It was free. That was good. I was on a full scholarship. But I would have been much better off just spending the time playing in clubs. But I wanted to be a music journalist. So my boss at the morning paper where I was a jazz and rock critic says, “Well, you need to get a music degree.” So that’s why I did that.
MS: So where did where did the choros come in?
TMcD: Well, in New Orleans, I was given a tape of choro music and also some fortó music. It was given to me by a guy named Rick Elmore, who had spent some time in Brazil, and he thought I would like it. Indeed I did. I really loved it. Then later on, I realized, what I really liked best of all was a composer named Ernesto Nazareth, who was kind of the Brazilian equivalent, roughly, of Scott Joplin. He wrote music that combined African rhythm with European harmony and form and created art music that is played by classical musicians to this day. In Brazil, Nazareth is played both straight, as art music, and also people improvise on it. So, anyway, in 1989, David Byrne of the Talking Heads put out an album called Beleza Tropical, and it is a survey of MPB, Música Popular Brasileira, popular Brazilian music from the ’60s and ’70s. And it was a truly a revelation. It changed my life, that album. I realized I had to just go down there and hear this wonderful music. So in 1989, I went down there, had a great time in Rio, went other places. Unfortunately, I got robbed three times. It cut my trip short. Fortunately, because I had started a group called the New Orleans Nightcrawlers, I got invited to go to Brazil right when choro was starting to reawaken. I’ve been to Brazil 17 times, and I think Rio 16 times. And boy, I just love the culture. I love the music.
MS: I have to thank you because you introduced me to Pixinguinha.
TMcD: Oh, great.
MS: Who, you know, what an amazing—
TMcD: Oh, my God—
MS: musician and composer.
TMcD: Yeah. And you know, it’s funny, ragtime has three composers who are way above everybody else. Actually, Scott Joplin is way above the other two, but there’s also Joseph Lamb and James Scott, who both wrote fantastic rags, a lot of them. And to my ears, anyway, the three great choro composers are Ernesto Nazareth, Pixinguinha, and a guy named Jacob do Bondolim.
MS: OK.
TMcD: Very different composers, but also very, very much alike in that choro, like ragtime, is multithematic. So it has more than one melody, it has several sections. I love this. It’s not like a lot of jazz—just one 16-bar theme played 20 times in a row. No, you know, I wanna be taken on a ride.
MS: You said earlier that you wouldn’t have been a great modern jazz player, but you are an astonishing improviser, Tom. There are so many, many times I’ve heard you play where I hear you go somewhere, and I think, “Oh, Lord, he’s boxed himself in.” And then you always escape.
TMcD: Well, you know, my opinion on that is I have gotten better as the years have gone along. I think I’m still getting better. When I was younger, I was not a great improviser, and I hit a lot of brick walls. But now that really never happens. So I’m very thankful for that.
MS: Something that you do that I’ve never really heard anybody else do is when you play—let’s say a rag—you inject elements from these other three styles of music into your interpretation.
TMcD: Yes, I do that on some rags, like the “Maple Leaf Rag” or “The Entertainer,” which everybody’s heard 100,000 times. But, yeah, I treat them as jazz pieces. The “Maple Leaf” has the tradition of that. Jelly Roll Morton and Sydney Bechet both recorded fantastic jazz versions of that. And so I divide ragtime into pieces that I would never toy with, like Joplin’s “Gladiolus Rag” or his beautiful “Ragtime Waltz.” But then the more danceable, I feel free to take her out, because I just enjoy improvising on them. The purists would hate that. I don’t care. I’m a ragtime purist. I’m also a jazz guy.
MS: Yeah, and an R&B guy, because I think I wrote about one of your ragtime recordings that James Booker was peeking through the curtains behind you.
TMcD: Sure.
MS: So it’s a really unique sound and approach.
TMcD: I’m very thankful that I’ve just found this niche where I play beautiful but unknown music dating back to Louis Moreau Gottschalk, 1829 to 1869, the father of New Orleans piano—of New Orleans music, really. There were surely great musicians in New Orleans, but you know, there weren’t recordings. Louis Moreau had the classical smarts to write it down.
MS: So, yeah, Gottschalk’s another one that I had never heard of until I listened to you.
TMcD: Yeah, nobody knows him, even in New Orleans. Very few people know who Gottschalk is. It’s a tragedy.
MS: So in terms of your appearance at Unit B, I think you mentioned to me that you are talking a bit more about this music that you’re playing.
TMcD: Absolutely, yeah. And over the last few years, I would do a history of New Orleans piano and show, like four pianists who’re decidedly influenced by Africa, Afro-Cuban rhythm—Gottschalk, Jelly Roll Morton, Professor Longhair, and Henry Butler. I can demonstrate it at the piano. I talk about, like, here are the three Africo-Cuban rhythms that Gottschalk heard growing up in New Orleans—the tresillo, the tango habanera, and the cinquillo. They’re all in Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s music. He created a sensation in Europe and in America. He was revered everywhere. He had a very short life, sadly. He died at age 40, but in his day, he was immensely popular, and he was an influence on Joplin, we know. Now, he’s sort of a historical blip. He’s not very influential at all, though there are people who love him—Van Dyke Parks, the guy who is most famously associated with the Beach Boys.
MS: No kidding.
TMcD: Because Van Dyke and I shared this bond for Gottschalk, he eventually— I had a friend who was forwarding all my CDs to Van Dyke, a Hollywood friend who used Van Dyke on one of his movie scores. And because of that, Van Dyke and I eventually connected. He said, “I want to curate an album of your music.” It’s called Bamboola, which is a Gottschalk composition. Yeah, it’s paid off for me. I found a niche by being able to talk about all this obscure music, and not just Gottschalk, but Ignacio Cervantes, the greatest Cuban composer of piano music; Jelly Roll Morton, hugely important in jazz history, but not really well known; Booker; Professor Longhair. You know, these guys are heroes in New Orleans but not really well known outside New Orleans. They’re great.
MS: I believe that Elvis Presley heard Professor Longhair, and—
TMcD: Entirely possible. He definitely heard Fats Domino.
MS: But Fess is seminal. Allen Toussaint called him the Bach of Rock.
TMcD: Without Fess, there’s no Meters, there’s no Neville Brothers, there’s no Allen Toussaint, there’s no Henry Butler. New Orleans music just would have taken a different path. Without Longhair, who knows what would have happened? I’m so thankful he was there to chart the course he did.
Tom McDermott
Unit B
821 W San Mateo Rd., Santa Fe
August 20
Dinner and cocktails starting at 5:30 pm.
Showtime is 7:00 pm.
Reservations highly recommended.
Tickets $18