Some Jazz Records: Steve Lacy Clippings (Watazumi Dōso Special)
Comments on recordings from musicians and other actors of the jazz scene. Random and not-so-random listening cues from the archives.
Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy attached special importance to shakuhachi player Watazumi Dōso, whom he met during his first trip to Japan in 1975. "Dōso was a great master for me," Lacy said during a 2002 Wire blindfold test included in Jason Weiss’s book Steve Lacy: Conversations. "I took two lessons from him and studied his music a lot. I still have seven or eight LPs of his. They’re masterpieces, all of them. He’s one of the greatest improvisers I’ve ever heard in my life, maybe the greatest. He had an amazing life, full of colorful stories, like real Zen food. I was lucky enough to meet him, go to his house and have a lesson; and then ten years later I had another lesson. They were very far-out lessons, but they were very important to me. […] Dōso was an extremely important influence on me, and I retain a great admiration for him. He was the most modern improviser I’ve ever heard in my life. He surpassed anybody I could think of, including [Anthony] Braxton, or Derek Bailey. Dōso, to me, was just … whew, outside all of that, really. Of course, he didn’t even admit to being a musician. He said, 'Music? No, it’s just practice.'"
The saxophonist doesn’t provide details on which LPs he studied, but in the introduction to his book, Jason mentions that Lacy once lent him his Watazumi Dōso albums to make cassette copies. I asked Jason if he still had the references, and it turned out that not only did he have the information, he had also digitized those cassettes before the music started to independently circulate online. Jason kindly forwarded his digitized copies, so for this special installment I’ll be sharing tracks from each of the six albums Lacy lent him. As can be heard, Lacy must have played his LPs quite a bit. Not reading Japanese, I haven’t been able to verify release dates but, if Discogs can be trusted, Lacy probably brought most of these albums back from his initial 1975 Japan tour.
"The shakuhachi, I have one over there, that’s the hardest instrument in the world! I can’t play it at all really, but I used to practice it just for the breath," Lacy said in another Wire piece. "I had a couple of lessons from an old master in Tokyo. He’s changed his name to Roshi now, which means old master, but then he was called Watazumido-so. He’s the absolute master of the shakuhachi. He’s more notorious than famous, a radical player, very unorthodox. He has his own school and his own disciples. I had a lesson from him in [1975] and another one ten years later. This guy is perhaps the greatest improviser I ever heard in my life. The sound is more modern that anybody in jazz, the concept they have of sound as material is timeless, ancient and super-modern. He’s playing with the components of sound, the vibrations."
Excerpts from Steve Lacy’s personal copies of Watazumi Dōso recordings
Watazumido-so, His Practical Philosophy, Columbia ZX-7016~7-N, 1974, 2 LPs.
海童道, 臨暮四道 (南から北へ), Philips PH-7520, 1974, LP.
海童道, 群鶴, Philips PH-8503, 1974, LP.
海童道老師, 海童道の世界, Polydor MN 2010, 1974, LP.
海童道, 霊慕と前衛, Philips PH-8505, 1975, LP.
海童道, Watazumido, CBS/Sony 25AG 406, 1978, LP.
Jason Weiss will be presenting and reading from his new book, Other Lives Our Own, at Souffle Continu in Paris on April 4, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. The evening will be shared with Benjamin Duboc and Franck Andrieux.