Always in Trouble: An Oral History of ESP-Disk’, the Most Outrageous Record Label in America

Montego Joe

166 Montego Joe A native of Jamaica and raised in New York, conga player Montego Joe (aka Roger Sanders) had recorded with Olatunji, Roland Kirk, and Art Blakey by the time he went to work for the Arts and Culture Division of HAR-YOU ACT (Harlem Youth Opportunities, Unlimited—Associated Community Teams) in 1965. The program had been launched in the wake of the Harlem riots to provide training and constructive guidance for local youth. (Jackie McLean also worked in the program around that time, and his son Rene played in the teenage jazz band.) Montego Joe’s task was to teach Afro and jazz percussion, and when he felt the eleven teenagers in his group were ready, he decided they should record an album—as a reward for the kids as well as the organization, to show what they had accomplished. HAR-YOU Percussion Group’s Sounds of the Ghetto Youth was recorded in 1967 for ESP and has remained to this day a perennial favorite. In June 2010 Montego Joe passed away, a year and two months after this interview. Was Milford Graves your original connection to the ESP label, since he had played on the records you did for Prestige [Arriba!, 1964; Wild and Warm, 1965—these dates also included Chick Corea and Eddie Gomez]? I don’t think so, because he wasn’t involved with ESP at that time. I heard about ESP records, but I don’t know what influenced me to connect with them. Most of the records I heard were avant-garde—Marion Brown, Albert Ayler, all those people. Why did you approach ESP for producing the HAR-YOU Percussion Group? I felt they would do justice to it, rather than Columbia or Blue Note or any of those other companies. B ecause the other companies had str ict guidelines, they were more interested in ha ving groups or individuals who could really sell records. Montego Joe 16 7 What do you recall about the recording session? How did the kids take to that setting? Oh, they did fine. As a matter of fact, I got together a few teenage kids at that time, including one of my daughters, and we got them all together for the clapping and background stuff. So the studio was big enough to fit everybody. Oh yeah. I kne w t he recording engineer [Richard Alderson], s o I was v ery happy that he was going to do the engineering. How closely did you plan the session? Were there multiple takes? It was specifically planned out. I had r ehearsals with the musicians, and if we did more than one take, it was no more than two or three at the most. We had to do some mixing; that wasn’t a problem either. The kids weren’t overawed by being there? They weren’t too nervous? They were nervous, but not extremely. I think my influence over them helped, in the sense that this is something they were going to appreciate for a long time, even when they get older and they hear it, that it would be meaningful. What were the kids’ reactions when the record came out? Did they help to sell it at all? They were very happy about it. There wasn’t a lot of response in the community, because at that time t he musical influences were rock and roll, rhythm and blues. There was some Latin jazz, but not a whole lot. So, they were able to sell it verbally and also monetarily. Did the group perform much in public after the record came out? We didn’t do t oo many concerts, because a lo t of them were in s chool. Th ey were teenagers, and if they were to do any concerts it would have to be in the summer. 168 esp-disk’ as lived and witnessed Was there any response from the organization that oversaw the program? Yeah, moderately. I mean, they were satisfied by what I did with the young men, and overall they were satisfied with what the whole department did—departments like music, acting, because some of the kids that were in the acting did some roles. A couple of them were in Shaft and other black films at that time. And t hen there was another gentleman who had the music department. He was my supervisor , but he had a...