A Painting for Marshall

In 1979, I was the trumpet star of Pine Tree elementary, playing Popeye the Sailor Man for the whole school (with a scary high Bb above the staff). My first teacher in elementary school was Mr. Natoli, who struggled with my need to improvise with confidence unscripted in performance. I made my first LP recording with the all-county band pounding out trumpet 3 on March of the Three Oranges. My Mom, rest in heaven, told me decades later she knew which sound was me. In support, my late father gifted with me Herb Albert’s Rise, and of course Chuck Mangione’s Feels So Good. No Jazz in sight.

All at once my parents got divorced, I changed schools, and my grandfather (and hero) died. I was now the school outcast at Monroe-Woodbury Junior High. My teacher was now Mr. Sherman who ridiculed me in front of the band and put me on tuba, because the fat kid played tuba. Sherms put me in a room with a tuba while the orchestra rehearsed and gave me no instruction, not even a book. This musical humiliation of a kid led me to give up music. Before I quit however, I drew the picture below and gave it to my Dad.

Where could this possibly have come from?

I made it back to music when I was 16. I was sitting outside sketching in front of Nyack High School when the school music teacher, Bert Hughes, came over and said he heard I used to play. He offered to help me get my chops back that summer with the plan to join his jazz big band and do a tour of the Soviet Union during perestroika. It was here that I was baptized in my first actual jazz experience. I went to Sam Goody and they gave me Miles Davis You’re Under Arrest which I didn’t know what to do with. I eventually ended up with Miles greatest hits, Louis Armstrong’s greatest hits, and Maynard Ferguson’s Rocky album, all on cassette. Later on I would be told to quit art in college by a teacher I can’t remember, and then drummer Jimmy Lovelace would tell me to quit music at Smalls in NYC. It was persist or perish.

Fast Forward to just a couple years ago. My parents were both going down..hard. Their Twilight’s both had a sharp, crisp, stinging pervasive relentless darkness. As we were clearing out my fathers house, I found the trumpet spaceship drawing from 1982 above. I was always making art for him, though he certainly didn’t deserve it. I was stunned to discover that at 12 years old, I forecast what I would devote my life to around 30 years old when I finally found the realm of free jazz. As soon as I found this drawing, I decided to do a modern day update, now that I’ve been painting since Covid.

Here was the result:

I like to expand painting concepts, and after this one I mused where I could go next. Who would fly a bass spaceship I wondered? There’s only one possible pilot, the great Jamaaladeen Tacuma. I had got to know him through my brotherhood with Bern Nix. We had been talking about a painting. I wrote him asking what bass of his would make a good spaceship? I was stunned again when he responded with the idea for me to do an album cover painting for a record he was producing and playing on: Marshall Allen’s 101, an Audio Odyssey!!

Like all of us, I have always been in complete awe of Marshall. Though he lives around the corner from me now, we never met. I have marveled especially at his creative power, getting even stronger. I’d witnessed him conduct saxophone killers in the Arkestra. The heaviest for me was when he did a Vision Festival Conduction and Daniel Carter went with the vibe, something he doesn’t do. I asked him how that went down and he said the only word that was needed… “Marshall”

I went to work on the painting right away. My car transmission went down, and this gave me a week to really go to town as I couldn’t work. This was the real work. Jamaaladeen asked me to bring by what I had done to the studio where he and Marshall were working on the recording. This was the art without any color. “The ink stage” is what I call it. I went over to the studio nervous to meet Marshall. I had a message to deliver. We showed him the painting and he had an instant musical reaction that said he dug it. While we were all listening to some play backs I gave him my message:

“Man, I have a message to deliver to you.”

“Oh cool, what’s that?”

“Sabir Mateen says hello and that he loves you.”

Marshall Allen then had a wide smile and proclaimed:

“Mateeeeeeenn…”

A few weeks later the painting was finished, and Marshall’s 101st birthday ritual was going down at Solar Myth in Philly. Jamaaladeen wanted us to present the painting to Marshall during the event. It was packed. I was surprised to see Andre 3000 on stage. My friend from NYC, the great Dick Griffin was on trombone. Dick is a fellow painter-musician with his own incredible story. He’s one of the most honest people I’ve ever met. We also played together on Spontaneous with William Parker. My solo on Spontaneous is the space trumpet music I imagined in 1982. Marshall was leading the way musically and he just kept getting stronger and stronger as the night went on. After maybe 90 minutes of music we did the presentation. I’m pointing at the the Ra house, which I placed on top of Marshall’s EWI spaceship.

Now the album is ready to come out on July 24th, and here’s the link! Just yesterday Terry Lawson and I played a parade here in Philly, but on the way Terry said we had to make an important stop. We pulled up to the new Marshall Allen mural, just minutes from my row house.

My music, painting, and writing worlds are all here together on this post.

All 3 of us have a heartfelt salute to the living legacies of Marshall Allen and Jamaaladeen Tacuma.

Thanks for reading. Subscriptions are needed and truly appreciated. My artwork is all at Mattlavelleart on Instagram. I do album covers as well. Please contact me if interested.

Happy Sunday,

ML