The Ernie Watts Interview

I left Tucson I did some great interviews with some Sennheiser 441s and an IPhone. One of these was with Ernie Watts who is one of the most legendary saxophonist's of our lifetime. He played with Oliver Nelson, Cannonball Adderley, Joe Henderson, Buddy Rich, Frank Zappa and Steely Dan. His move to Los Angeles coincided with Motown's move from Detroit to Southern California so he played a ton of Rn B sessions (The Mack) and on Hollywood soundtracks. This interview is great because Ernie, in very elegant prose, talks at length about Coltrane's influence on him as a young boy, his musical experiences in Africa and how the music business has changed. (BTW, if you wanted to rent an apartment back in the early seventies and you were a musician in order to qualify you had to put musician/composer)