Joe Locke remembers the first time he played in Dundee.
The New York-based vibraphone virtuoso can’t pinpoint the exact location of the gig but he knows without hesitation who brought him to town, the Dunfermline-born drummer and latterly host of the award-winning Jazz Bar in Edinburgh, Bill Kyle.
“Bill was such a catalyst,” says Locke, who returns to Dundee as one of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s two American guests, with vocalist Kenny Washington, for their Pop! Rock! Soul! concert at Gardyne Theatre on Thursday February 24.
“Whenever Bill invited me over, I knew I’d be meeting some great musicians. In fact, it was through Bill that I met Tommy Smith, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s director.”
Kyle, it turns out, had also engineered Smith’s first appearance in Dundee when he brought the then teenaged saxophonist to the city’s inaugural jazz festival in 1983.
Smith and Locke later hooked up in Kyle’s Atlantic Bridge band on an extensive UK tour in 1987.
Special fondness for Scotland
The tour kicked off in Edinburgh, making Scotland the first country Locke had visited outside the US. He has maintained a special fondness for Scotland and its people ever since.
Locke and Kyle, who died in 2016, toured in several iterations of Atlantic Bridge and Locke’s continuing friendship with Smith resulted in his appearance on the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s star-studded American Adventure album, recorded in New York in 2013.
Four years later, Locke and Washington guested with the SNJO on a Scottish tour and they were due to return with Pop! Rock! Soul! in 2020, only to be foiled by the Covid pandemic.
They tried again last year but in-person concerts were still out of the question.
Pop! Rock! Soul!
In between these two attempts to tour, Locke and Washington joined the SNJO by Zoom to create a video of the late, great Sam Cooke’s civil rights era classic A Change Is Gonna Come, which Locke arranged.
Tommy Smith edited it, pulling together contributions from musicians in New York (Locke), San Francisco (Washington), London, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The video went on to raise money towards a statue of Nelson Mandela to be erected in Glasgow.
“That’s one of the songs in Pop! Rock! Soul!,” says Locke, who has arranged all the material for the tour.
Selecting the repertoire
“Tommy Smith afforded me the luxury of choosing songs I love, songs which resonate with me personally. I’m pretty confident that many of the songs will resonate with the SNJO audience as well.
“It was also important to find material that would lend itself to this large ensemble format and of course, songs that excited Kenny Washington.
Discussing and selecting the repertoire with Kenny was a lot of fun.”
A musical childhood
Now sixty-two, Locke began playing music at the age of eight.
Drums were his first instrument but his mother insisted that he learn the piano too and at 13, by which time he was drumming in a rock band, she encouraged him to play the glockenspiel in his school’s marching band.
Although not an instrument likely to impress his rock band, the glockenspiel inadvertently led to the vibraphone when Locke’s mother saw one advertised in the local paper in Rochester.
She assumed it was something like a glockenspiel.
Instrument mix-up
“A set of vibes costs thousands of dollars,” says Locke. “But here was a Jenco vibraphone for something like $250.
“I used it for my first professional jobs. If there had been an ad in the paper that day for a glockenspiel, I would probably be a jazz glockenspiel player today.”
By 17, Locke was working with saxophonist Spider Martin and was given the opportunity to play with jazz greats including Philly Joe Jones, Dizzy Gillespie and Mongo Santamaria.
Taking a gamble
In 1981 he moved to New York with a set of vibes and $200, a gamble that has paid off with gigs with everyone from jazz singer Dianne Reeves to symphony orchestras to the Beastie Boys.
Pop! Rock! Soul! includes songs by Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, Stevie Nicks and Steely Dan and Locke has spent many hours arranging them.
“It’s always a thrill to hear your work coming off the page, especially when those results are in the hands of such a great orchestra as the SNJO,” he says. “Coming to Scotland always feels like coming home, so I’m really looking forward to this tour.”
Pop! Rock! Soul! is on at Gardyne Theatre on February 24 at 7.30pm.
