William Parker Quartet - O’Neal’s Porch
That was the first recording that I did with William, under his name, with his group. Myself, William, Lewis Barnes and Rob Brown. It was the first thing I did with William outside of Peter Brötzmann. William and I first met at the first concert we did with Peter’s group Die Like a Dog, in maybe ‘89 or ‘90. I met Peter in 1987 in Chicago. It was Peter who brought us together. Peter connected Toshinori Kondo, myself and William and brought us to Wuppertal, Germany. We did our first concert there and Peter called the group Die Like A Dog. The first recording that I did with Peter was called Dried Rat Dog [laughs] - it was a duet recording. So, a couple of years after the formation of Die Like A Dog, William brought me to Chicago to record with his quartet and the record was called O’Neal’s Porch. That was a great experience because we were playing tunes with swing but we were also playing a very open sort of way. It gave me the opportunity to play with William, but in another type of music. With Die Like A Dog we played very free, but O’Neal’s Porch was very song based. Dried Rat Dog was an important recording for me, because after that recording, I started going to Europe to play with Peter. Peter introduced me to a different set of musicians than I met when I was playing with Don Cherry, like Alexander von Schlippenbach.