Thompson, Malachi

Thompson, Malachi, veteran of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), this trumpeter is an iconoclastic, enterprising musician; b. Chicago, 111., Aug. 21, 1949. Malachi Thompson leads several ensembles, including his regular Freebop Band (documented on his first Delmark album in 1989) and his Africa Brass big band (formed in 1991). He has recorded six albums as leader for the Delmark label, and has recorded as sideman for a variety of labels. A devoted historian, he is involved in spearheading the revival of the Sutherland Hotel on Chicago’s South side.

He received his first trumpet at age 11, began classical studies with a musician in his church band, and took weekly lessons at a music instrument company. His interest in jazz was sparked when his mother (an avid music fan who shared her jazz record collection with her son) took him to see Count Basie perform. He began to learn the language of jazz by combining what he heard on recordings with what he learned through his associations with musicians. An Art Blakey record featuring trumpeter Bill Hardman inspired him to play bebop. In the meantime, he was developing his classical chops, and by seventh grade, beat out the competition for lead trumpet in the concert band.

During the 1960s, Chicago’s music scene was flourishing with active players such as John Stubblefield, Eddie Harris, Gene Ammons, and others. After a dispute with his parents over his playing club gigs, he moved out into his own apartment. Throughout his teens, he had been gigging a few nights a week and, by his high school graduation in 1967, was performing with R&B bands, big bands, and was backing touring R&B artists. He began to tour, playing “bread-and-butter” R&B gigs with a variety of musicians.

He performed his first jazz gig with the AACM, fulfilling a requirement that young musicians produce a concert of original music. He began playing with the AACM big band, learning the principles and the AACM philosophy of integrity and experimentation. As he shifted from playing stock charts to challenging, experimental music by Henry Threadgill and Muhal Richard Abrams, he was enthralled and encouraged. He recorded his debut album, The Seventh Son, in 1972. Before he left Chicago for N.Y. in 1974, he had met saxophonist Carter Jefferson, with whom he would eventually form a quintet and begin a 20-year association that lasted until Jefferson’s death on Dec. 9, 1993. The last time he saw Jefferson, they recorded a tribute tune Thompson wrote, “CJ’s Blues,” which appears on his 47th Street album.

At the coaxing of Jefferson, he moved in 1974 to N.Y.C., where he had been playing gigs on tour since he was 18. He remained in N.Y. for nine years, freelancing most of the time, playing with small groups led by Jackie McLean and Joe Henderson, and with the Sam Rivers big band. From 1975 to 1980, he and Norman Spiller co-led Brass Proud, the forerunner of Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy and a band featuring seven trumpets and a rhythm section. Olu Darà, Tommy Terrentine, Victor Lewis, and others were in the band and they worked around N.Y. and along the East Coast. He was also still leading his Freebop band. It was back during N.Y.C.’s “loft” days, and he absorbed all that he could until he burned out and moved to Washington D.C. after his marriage ended in divorce. While D.C. was a hotbed of activity, he remained a road musician, working mostly with the short-lived N.Y. Hot Trumpet Repertory Company, featuring trumpeters Lester Bowie, Olu Darà, Wynton Marsalis, and Stanton Davis. He left D.C. and lived in Vienna, Austria, for a few years. He had been working frequently in Europe with the Freebop band, and after moving there, he participated in special projects with David Murray, Oliver Lake, Stan Davis, and Philip Wilson, and performed in large ensembles and with all-star big bands. He was doing well until 1989 when he was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma. He returned to Chicago for treatment and spiritual renewal, and today is cancer-free.

He is a member of the Sutherland Community Arts Initiative, a community-based organization that seeks to restore music to the Sutherland Hotel and Ballroom located at 47th and Drexel (his old neighborhood) on Chicago’s South side. It was there during the 1960s that jazz artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Nancy Wilson, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, James Moody, and others performed.

He also teaches music through the Urban Gateways arts education program. In 1995, he was recognized for his lifelong achievements as a recipient of the Arts Midwest Jazz Master Award. He was selected as 1996 Chicago Tribune Chicagoan of the Year, and was a 1997 Chicago Endowments for the Arts honorée for his support of the arts and his community involvement through arts residencies. On Sept. 18, 1997, his stage production, The Sutherland, opened at the Victory Gardens Theater. Highly autobiographical, it is a musical about a young musician who grows up in the shadow of the Sutherland Hotel, leaves the U.S. to go on a European tour, and returns to discover that the tight-knit neighborhood he knew has deteriorated. Some of the music is performed on his 1997 Delmark CD, 47th Street.

Discography

Spirit (1989); The Jaz Life (1992); Lift Every Voice (1993); New Standards (1994); Buddy Bolden’s Rag (1995); 47th Street (1997).

—Nancy Ann Lee