“As much as I put on the planet and try to put it out there, I’d like to have more people in droves come check it out. I’d love to get their attention. I want you to have this in your life, too.”
What KCRW host LeRoy Downs is talking about is jazz. Though his show is called Just Jazz – as is a series of live concerts and interviews he produces in Los Angeles – you soon realize while talking with Downs that it is more than just jazz. For him it’s a way of life. A way of looking forward far more than looking back. It’s a personal journey that he takes each and every day of his life that gets compressed into his two hours on Sunday nights.
“I don’t feel like I’m doing a service if I’m playing you music you already know,” he said earlier this week during a Zoom call. “I do feel like I’m doing a service if I’m adding to the palette of your sound. I want to play things that aren’t popular and maybe you can get another jewel. I’m a seeker. I want more and I love that I’m in the position of seeking music out and playing it and putting it out there. If I learn it and love it, the world will soak it up, too.”
If you take a quick look at his most recent playlist you won’t find Miles Davis. Instead you’ll find Ambrose Akinmusire, Stefon Harris, Zim Ngqawana, Christian Sands* and more. Which means Just Jazz is unlike nearly every other show you can find on the radio. That’s precisely the way Downs likes it.
“I actually don’t know too many either,” he says. “Mark Maxwell on KPFK has a show called Rise. He’s one that’s always been putting it out there for decades. My family would probably prefer me playing smooth jazz on the radio and making a couple hundred grand. I can’t do that. There are bigger things out there and I’m so in sync with that.”
Downs spent several years at KKJZ hosting a five-hour show before joining KCRW. He didn’t have the same freedom there as he now enjoys. But with that freedom comes the challenge of getting a bigger audience and his theory about why that can be so difficult.
“I think people become professionals at what they know. They have to have Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Miles Davis. But if I try to hip them up with Vijay Iyer or Gerald Clayton, they go back to what they know. They shut it off. I think the only people who get a chance to enjoy this music are creative people; people who know jazz and the people who don’t know jazz, but are open to it. That is the key. When someone says ‘I don’t know who Archie Schepp is, but I’m willing to check it out,’ those are my favorite people.”
Given the broad range of music Downs embraces and the popular recordings he chooses to avoid, how does he describe jazz in 2021?
“Jazz is this very internal, cerebral, rhythmic, mystical, eclectic, avant-garde, traditional sound that comes out of society. It comes out of the things we experience in our lives. We put those experiences together. We express those things. It’s a collection and a fabric of everyone’s life. We all have our own stories. These musicians are brilliant at telling them.”
As is Downs who did a show called For All The Georges after the George Floyd murder. Something he wishes he didn’t have to do.
“It’s such a shame. It’s 2021 and we still have to deal with this. There are so many things against us. But like a flower that grows out of concrete, you can’t stop the music. It’s going to affect you. I used one of Abbey Lincoln’s tunes where she was screaming. Most people will find that threatening. Good! But if you stick with it you might find it’s an expression of pain which we are still dealing with today. If you didn’t turn away you heard this beautiful sound coming out at the end.”
He thinks that society’s penchant for making quick judgements and moving on isn’t good for anyone and certainly not for the music.
“If a painter starts painting and uses colors you don’t like, you can’t turn away. You have to let the painter finish what they are doing.”
Downs starts his radio shows with the first and second songs selected in advance, but the rest is created as he goes along. That sounds a little chaotic, but isn’t jazz about improvisation?
“I want jazz to be a part of everybody’s life. Everything that comes from me is honest and natural and true. I’m a seeker. I want to follow that journey, too. I don’t want to know the path, I need to find it. Anyone who wants to come along on that journey, I think they’ll be very rewarded. When you listen to one of my shows I better have taken you in at least ten directions – even in two hours.”
*Downs is presenting an online concert this Friday, April 30th, for International Jazz Day. Performing will be the Christian Sands Trio (including Jonathan Pinson on drums and Ben Williams on bass). They will be joined by special guest Theo Croker. The concert takes place at 9:00 PM EDT/6:00 PM PDT. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased here.
Photo: LeRoy Downs (Photo by Jay Masueda/Courtesy Downs and KCRW)