Calvin Keys

Guitar stalwart Calvin Keys is a living, breathing giant of the jazz universe. In a priceless career that spans five decades and includes stints in the mid-west, east coast and west coast, Keys has crossed paths with many of music’s greatest pioneers and innovators – from Earl "Fatha" Hines and Ahmad Jamal to Ray Charles and Luther Vandross - leaving significant contributions of his own, including two now-classic albums on the 70’s Black Jazz Records label. Known for making a guitar emulate the tonal breadth of a piano, the man has his own signature Calvin Keys Golden Eagle model (made by Jazz Heritage Guitars). Mr. Keys was presented the "Key to Creativity" honor by Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown in Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in City Hall on Saturday, May 4, 2002 (Oakland’s 150th anniversary) "in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the performing arts and his contribution to the city’s rich cultural heritage." And on August 4, 2005, he will be inducted into the Omaha Black Musicians’ Hall of Fame with other achievers, including drummer Buddy Miles and songwriter Eugene McDaniels.

Calvin Keys is a walking encyclopedia on bygone eras of the black entertainment circuits…its movers and shakers in front of and behind the scenes. As a musician, torch-bearer and educator, he is passionately committed to sharing the blessings of his experiences with others. Any opportunity to converse with Mr. Keys or to enjoy the culmination of his musical gifts in a concert setting is certain to elevate your level of appreciation for the lineages of both African American history and the circuitousness of a people’s adversity-defying creativity.

The eldest of five children, Calvin Keys was born February 6, 1942, in Omaha, Nebraska - raised in what is considered the "near-north" side of the city. He was surrounded by music, from his great grandmother who had a piano in her home and an uncle who taught him how to play the spoons, to his father - a "bootblack" who dreamed of being a drummer. It was another relative – Uncle Ivory- who changed his life forever. Calvin would sit riveted listening to Ivory play Delta blues on an old Kay guitar, falling in love with the sound of the instrument. One day when Ivory caught 14 year-old Calvin sneaking down to his basement to play it, he gave the guitar and its tiny amplifier to him. Calvin commenced to get busy...so much so that one night at 2 in the morning, police knocked on his front door warning, "Young man, will you please turn your guitar down!"

Calvin’s early influences were the blues men he heard on the radio and jukeboxes: T-Bone Walker, Guitar Slim, B.B. King, Albert King and Albert Collins. He got first-hand inspiration when Bobby Blue Bland’s guitarist Wayne Bennett would put on exhibitions in the neighborhood barber shop. With three chords under his belt and drive to spare, Calvin landed one of his first gigs in 1957 playing with Dr. Spider & His Rock `n Roll Web in Sioux City, Iowa at Po Boy's Club 54. Soon after, Calvin’s mother let him go on the road for a month with saxophonist Little Walkin’ Willie (featuring brown, bald and beautiful singer Jewel Brenner) that took him from the Riviera Ballroom in St. Louis for three days to Gleason’s in Cleveland for two weeks followed by two weeks at D.W.I. in McKee’s Port, PA before Willie’s regular guitarist returned. Willie put Calvin on a train home to Omaha with $500 in his pocket. Calvin graduated high school (name) in `59, but knew that the road held the real keys to his future.

He moved to Kansas City (where his father now lived), took up a six nights/seven matinees residency with a blues trio at the club The Nightingale and began expanding his range on the guitar, soaking up the jazz the city had to offer. He got called back to Omaha, though, to take up his first of several associations with organ trios. His first boss was Frank Edwards, a renowned showman who could play "Ebb Tide" with his tongue (drove the ladies crazy….). Also in this group was Richard Ross, who sang from behind the drums in the elegant style of Billy Eckstine.

Emulating the then-hot Jimmy Smith Trio, this group started a residency at Omaha’s famous Showcase Lounge, then hit the chitlin circuit for two month stints at The Voters Club in Denver, The Booker T. Washington Hotel (owned by legendary Black entrepreneur Charles Sullivan) in San Francisco, Don Barksdale's Showcase and The Sportsman's Lounge in Oakland, Esther's Orbit Room and Slim Jenkin's Place in East Oakland. This put Calvin in Northern California’s Bay Area for six months out of the year and he grew to love it, especially the Fillmore District: a proud, predominantly African American community. Here he made a personal friend in jazz vocal pioneer King Pleasure and soaked up the West Oakland blues scene of artists such as Jimmy McCracklin, Lowell Fulson, Little Willie John, Big Mama Thornton and Theola Kilgore (of "The Love of My Man" fame). Jazz was "jumpin’ out of the ceiling" at spots like the El Matador, Basin Street East, the Hungry I and the legendary Jazz Workshop (where alto sax man Norman "Bishop" Williams introduced Calvin to Julian "Cannonball" Adderley and Miles Davis one Sunday afternoon as they ran down chord changes in back).

Earning $150 a week, Calvin stayed with Edwards for five years, memorizing all the standards from Ellington to Basie, then continued his organ apprenticeship under "Brother" Jack McDuff and Jackie Ivory. Later, New York organ giant Jackie Davis tightened and tuxedoed Calvin up on the swanky supper club and private party circuit. Then in 1967, Calvin returned to K.C. to lead his own organ trio, working six nights a week at Ollie Gates’ O.G.’s Lounge. After a full page profile was published in the Kansas City Star touting one of his Wednesday "Kansas City Chiefs Night" shows (shortly after they’d won the Super Bowl), Calvin’s group began to pack the place. This inspired Calvin to take his act to one of the coasts. He chose California.

Following Christmas and New Years gigs at The Showcase in `68, Calvin rode into Los Angeles in a brand new 1969 Buick Elektra 225 with a new guitar, some sharp suits and about $8,000 cash in his pocket. Everybody wanted to know, "Who does this *$#@% think he is?!" Settling in the now-notorious "Jungle" stretch of inner city L.A., Calvin soon found himself thoroughly in the mix. Over the next several years, he did a couple of weeks with singer Damita Jo in Vegas, then six months with the great Oscar Brown, Jr. and his wife Judy Pace at L.A.’s Memory Lane. He recorded on Bill Cosby’s instrumental album Badfoot Bill & The Bunions Marching Band AND was a member of the house band at Redd Foxx’s restaurant on La Cienega Blvd (Richard Pryor would riff during intermissions on material that became part of his Laff Records classic, Craps: After Hours). He was also in Red Holloway’s house band at the Parisian Room where he backed visiting vocal greats such as Carmen McRae, Gloria Lynn and Al Hibbler. And when all the joints closed in L.A., Calvin and the rest of the cats would congregate over at bassist Larry Gales’ after hours coffeehouse on 42nd off of Crenshaw for jam sessions. After the first two years, Calvin sold the Buick that he blew into L.A. with 2,500 miles on it with a whopping 130,000 miles on it thanks to all the county-crossin’ giggin’ he did.

Prior to L.A., the first recording session on which Calvin took part was for Kansas City organist Louis Chachere’s 45 "The Hen (Pt. 1 & 2)." In 1970, Calvin cut his self-titled and super rare debut Lp as a leader (with Billy Osborne on organ and Paul Humphrey on drums) including a version of "One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)" and the original "Keys Karma." Not long after, Calvin got a call to do some sessions at Ray Charles’ RPM Studios. "Brother Ray" liked what he heard and asked Calvin to come on a European tour in place of the guitarist who’d just quit on him. That Monday, Ray’s office got Calvin a passport and the next day he was on a plane to Milan. When they got back to L.A. six weeks later it was only for three days before they were off again...for five weeks in Japan! Calvin and Ray became good friends, shooting craps at every stop. Still, after a year, Calvin wanted to do something else.

Calvin had been playing and recording with progressive keyboardist Doug Carn and his wife, singer Jean Carn, who both recorded for Gene Russell’s Black Jazz Records imprint. In 1972, Calvin recorded his first album for the label – a piano-guitar-bass-drums quartet project titled Shawn-Neeq - named after the niece his youngest sister had at the age of 16. "I tried to capture the beauty of bringing a brand new baby girl into the house with that, one of my first compositions," Keys reflects. Recorded in `72, it was released in `73 and has become an enduring underground classic. He followed it up in `75 with the Lp, Proceed with Caution.

A tip from saxophonist Charles Owens got Calvin a two week gig at The Troubador club in West Hollywood with jazz piano legend Ahmad Jamal that turned into a steady gig lasting from 1974-1980, and a friendship that endures to the present. Calvin recorded on five of Jamal’s albums for the 20th Century, Motown and Catalyst labels, and toured the world with him. Because Jamal was renowned for acoustic trio recordings, the addition of Calvin to make the group a quartet marked a major, somewhat controversial departure. Jamal found something fresh in Calvin. Reflecting on Keys’ contributions to his sound, Jamal told the Mercury News, "Calvin has a tremendous warmth and technical facility in his work. He’s a consummate gentleman and humanitarian." Jamal considers Calvin’s solo on "Autumn Leaves" from his later live recording A Paris (Atlantic – 1996) among his finest hours. For his part, Calvin was so proud to be a part of Ahmad’s musical matrix that when approached about Miles Davis looking for a guitar player, he flatly responded, "So what."

Playing with Jamal truly opened Calvin up to the straight ahead jazz man inside of him. During that period he moved from Los Angeles to the Bay Area, dividing his time between there and New York where Jamal was based. Post-Jamal, Calvin spent the first half of the `80s on an incredible learning curve. From 1981-1983, he was Musical Director for pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines (the last years of the legend’s life). He toured with his own trio (including a 1985 stint featuring singer Brenda Boykins, reintroducing jazz through Hawaii, Guam and Taipan), completed an oft-delayed album for Olive Branch Records titled Full Court Press and, most importantly, formally studied music and guitar with two incomparable gentlemen. First, there was Irving Ashby, Nat "King" Cole's former guitarist. Second, he joined the Los Angeles School of Music and studied with pianist Professor Ernest L. Crawford. "He, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy once shared a house in South Central," Keys shares. "Ernest was a very proud Black man. I studied orchestration with him for two and half years - the equivalent of a ten-year stint at any college in this country. That's how much information he shared with me."

Then in 1986 a monumental event occurred. On October 11, in the middle of a "Jazz in Flight" concert celebrating drummer Billy Higgins’ birthday, Calvin got the call from his pregnant wife to take her to the hospital. The next day, Calvin and his wife Maria brought their daughter, Marela, into the world. Higgins (who prophesized the little Libran’s birthday) was named her Godfather. Old friend Billy Osborne was so touched that he collaborated with Calvin on new compositions to commemorate the occasion which became Calvin’s second Olive Branch Lp, Maria’s First.

Of late, Calvin focused on his roles as father and husband. He took local gigs with the likes of Tony Bennett, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Smith, Donald Byrd, Stanley Turrentine, the Guarneri Jazz Quartet and more. He appeared in music videos with R&B superstar Luther Vandross ("Don’t Want to Be a Fool") and rap star MC Hammer ("Here Comes the Hammer"). He recorded with young, admiring artists such as the Nova Ghost Sect-tet (Life on Uranus) and Gregory Howell who produced a funk-jazz record on Calvin titled Detours into Unconscious Rhythms for his own Wide Hive label.

Keys also took to teaching in local music programs, including guitarist Bruce Forman’s non-profit JazzMasters Workshop. Studio veteran Forman, who met Keys during time spent at the club Keystone Corners, describes Calvin’s sound as "elegant, effortless…and deep in the pocket." Education has been of utmost concern to Keys, who weaves lessons he learned on the bandstand in sink or swim episodes with elders like Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson between the formal studies he acquired much later in life - his way of insuring "the circle of mentorship."

In 1996, Calvin had quadruple bypass surgery which predicated a healthier lifestyle. And now that his daughter is in college, he is ready to re-launch his career. His latest album, Calvinesque (Silverado Records) is an inviting gem featuring fine versions of Chick Corea’s "Windows" and Marvin Gaye’s "What’s Going On" along with the inspired original, "Marela." It follows on the heels of a pair of critically acclaimed live recordings Standard Keys and the double-disc An Evening with Calvin Keys (both on the LifeForcejazz label). Still to come are his Wide Hive Records follow-up Vertical Clearance (featuring saxophonist Sonny Fortune), reissues of past albums, and a sideman date with tenor, alto and flute man Dawan Muhammad (featuring the late Billy Higgins on drums and Bobby Pierce on B-3 organ).

Waxing philosophical about his place in music at the ripe and revitalized age of 63, Keys muses, "The Blues is our creation, built upon brothers and sisters making steady contributions to the music. This music was a release from all the pressures we’ve endured as people. So when we express ourselves, we hold nothing back. Music takes many shapes and forms…. If you look around you and play all you see, you will be playing music from now on. My music comes from my experiences, good and bad. I try to express the love I have for the world in which we live, and the beauty of being. I consider myself blessed to be able to do that."

"I've been playing for over 45 years. And whenever I pick up this guitar, it's a love affair."
 

Heritage is proud to have Calvin Keys playing our Golden Eagle model.