Leimert Park from Acceptance by Billy Childs
This song was composed by me, Paul Jackson and Mike Clark; I had done some work in 1997 with the Headhunters and Mike, Paul and I had a really great vibe together. We decided that we wanted to explore playing together as our own group, which was a huge honor for me, as their work with Herbie Hancock had shaped me as a musician. So about a year later, we got together in a studio. This is the first tune we spontaneously composed; the pattern and groove we came up with has always reminded me of the magical times I spent hanging in Leimert Park. The park (a neighborhood really, spanning a few city blocks) is a central hub of black culture in Los Angeles. The mid-1990s were, to my mind, a high point in the Leimert Park scene, sort of like a Los Angeles (like Harlem) Renaissance. There was the famous jazz club and workshop created by Billy Higgins and Kamau Daaood called The World Stage; it’s still thriving
and managed by the great vocalist, Dwight Trible. There were poetry workshops, the Eso Won Bookstore (I once met Octavia Butler at a book signing in their Altadena branch), artist studios, tea houses, people playing percussion, chess and of course performance spaces. I used to play in a group, led by JMD (Darryl Moore, who used to produce the LA-based Freestyle Fellowship), called The Underground Railroad; we played at a club in Leimert called Fifth Street Dick’s. On any given Saturday night (the night that we played) you could arrive in the neighborhood and the energy of creativity would be buzzing in the air – a palpable, living, breathing entity like I imagine 52nd street in New York might have been during the 40s. Our band would act as the house band where a lot of rappers would come up and freestyle with us, some of which were brilliant, on a genius level.
Tracklist
| 3. | Leimert Park | 5:57 |
Credits
Billy Childs, Paul Jackson, Michael J. Clark • Lunacy Music [BMI], Back Door Music [BMI], Luconchu Music [BMI]
soprano sax – Steve Wilson
Fender Rhodes, keyboards – Billy Childs
electric bass – Hans Glawischnig
drums – Eric Harland
congas – Munyungo Jackson
License
All rights reserved.Tags
Pianist Billy Childs is one of the foremost American composers of his era and has successfully married the musical products of his heritage with the Western neoclassical traditions of the twentieth century in a powerful symbiosis of style, range, and dynamism. Thus far in his career, Childs has garnered several honors including seventeen GRAMMY® Award nominations, and won six of them.