A weight that would break most musicians pressed on Phil Woods from early in his career. How many young singer-songwriters have been declared “the next Bob Dylan” or young operatic tenors “the next Plácido Domingo”? Woods was burdened with being “the next Charlie Parker,” a jazz legend of extraordinary virtuosity, after the man nicknamed Bird died in 1955. Woods soared to that challenge, not merely becoming the New Bird, as he invariably was dubbed when he was still wet behind the ears, but forging a 60-plus year career as a extraordinary bebop alto saxophonist, as Bird had been, as well as a gifted bandleader and composer.
I first met Woods because of the Delaware Water Gap Festival of the Arts, a jazz festival held each September since 1978 in the tiny eastern Poconos village of Delaware Water Gap.
Woods, trombonist Rick Chamberlain and community organizer Eddie Joubert had founded the festival. While Woods played at every festival until this year, as had Chamberlain until his passing earlier this year, Joubert left this mortal coil in 1981, the victim of a brutal ax murder that left the close-knit community of musicians, artists and Vietnam veterans stunned and bereft.
When I interviewed Woods in 2003 for The Bottom of the Fox: A True Story of Love, Devotion & Cold-Blooded Murder, a book about Joubert’s life and times, he opened his home and heart to me, and we chatted at length in a living room with walls covered with four Grammy awards, a slew of Downbeat and Playboy Jazz Poll awards, and a gold record or three.
Woods and I later became neighbors, if not exactly bosom buddies. He is irascible and then some, although I did hear that he liked The Bottom of the Fox so much that he gave away copies as Christmas presents the year that it was published.
When Woods reprised Parker’s classic Charlie Parker With Strings album with a jazz trio and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in Pittsburgh on September 4, he left his alto sax on stage after the last number, an unmistakable message that his extraordinary public playing career was over.
That career includes 48 albums as a leader and many as a sideman to, among others, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Oliver Nelson, Ron Carter, Quincy Jones, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Art Farmer, Milt Jackson, Bill Evans, Stephane Grappelli, Ben Webster, Kenny Burrell and Gary Burton. That’s him blowing sax on Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind and Turnstiles, as well as on Joel’s “Just The Way You Are,” for which he was paid $300 for 10 minutes of studio work. The single was a Number 3 hit, went gold and jump started Joel’s then struggling career.
While Woods is most closely associated with Parker, his greatest inspiration was alto sax great Benny Carter, with whom he was very close until Carter’s death in 2003.
Woods, now 83, has been battling respiratory and other health problems, and no one is more surprised than himself that he has outlived the other jazz festival founders. But illness won’t silence him. He is a prolific writer, plans a major piece for alto sax with the Pittsburgh Symphony, as well as continuing to teach and present master classes.
As crowning achievements go, Woods’ is monstrous. In 2007, he received the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters award.
“Jazz will never perish,” Woods says. “It’s forever music, and I like to think that my music is somewhere in there and will last, maybe not forever, but may influence others.”
Well, he’s wrong about the not lasting forever part.