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LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
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| Set for August 7-10, the “1st Annual Jim Pepper Native Arts Festival,” at Parkrose High School Community Center, celebrates Native American art and the life of musician Jim Pepper, who grew up in Parkrose. |
According to many, his band Free Spirits - active in New York City from 1965 through '67 - is credited with being one of the first jazz-rock or fusion bands.
“Jim had to leave Portland to find his audience,” said event organizer Sean Cruz. “He found it in New York, in Europe, and in the Native American community.”
Pepper died of lymphoma in 1992 at age 50.
Cruz said the festival includes a reunion of the surviving members of the Free Spirits, guitarists Larry Coryell and Columbus “Chip” Baker, drummer Rakalam Bob Moses and bassist Chris Hills. The entertainment also includes: Joy Harjo and the Arrow Dynamics Band; Pura Fe Quartet; the Keith Secola Band; John Trudell & Bad Dog; the Gabriel Ayala Trio, Jan Michael Looking Wolf, JB Butler and Luciana Proaño.
Cruz booked the first showing west of the Mississippi of the Smithsonian traveling exhibition exploring African and Native American identity, IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas for the event.
Some performances are free to the public, while some are ticketed events.
Who was Jim Pepper?
His main instrument a tenor saxophone, Pepper is considered a pioneer in the development of a new music tradition and approach, the fusion of jazz and rock and roll.
Originally, from Oklahoma, Pepper's family moved to Oregon, and he was born in Salem; they later moved to Parkrose where he excelled in athletics at school, particularly baseball, but when he began teaching himself how to play saxophone at age 15, he found his life's passion, his mother, who died in 2010, said in an interview.
After returning to Oregon in the 70s, Pepper played in Portland and all over the Northwest in various bands. Some groups he fronted with his name on it, some without, playing in the brass section of the band or he was the brass section, but, he was a working musician until he couldn't be.
Band mate Moses once said, “He was one of the four greatest tenor sax players in the history of the instrument.” Former community organizer Christine Charneski is less restrained: “He was the greatest jazz musician on the planet.”
As a Native American of Creek and Kaw tribal heritage, Pepper was also the first jazz musician to incorporate tribal rhythms and songs into mainstream jazz; this especially will be honored at the festival, Cruz said.
Musicians performing at the festival include members of the Muskogee Creek, Tuscarora, Kalapuya, Yaqui and Lummi tribes. There will be a showing of the documentary “Pepper's Powwow” by Sandy Sunrising Osawa, and “Indivisible,” a traveling exhibit of the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of the American Indian in its first appearance west of the Mississippi.
His composition, “The Four Winds,” was performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, and by the Cologne Symphony Orchestra.
Cruz, chief of staff to former state senator Avel Gordly, said he was an innocent bystander until he attended a Bay Area jazz festival in the 1970s, where he's from, and heard a tenor saxophonist who “just blew me away.” He learned more at a Pepper Powwow music festival at Portland State University in 2005 and, he says, “I came out of there just raving.”
Among other things, he learned the house he bought in Parkrose on Northeast Fremont St. in 2002 had been the Pepper family home for 50 years. “His mom came by and gave me one of his CDs, which very few people have heard because they're out of print. Every track stands on its own. I promised her I'd do everything in my power to get him the recognition he deserved.”
That one recording started his personal collection - now at 25 - of Pepper's hard to find CDs and vinyl albums.
One of his co-conspirators is Karen Fischer Gray, Parkrose school district superintendent. Cruz loaned her the CDs, and they made a believer out of her, enough to donate facilities at the high school for the event.
The school district is now an official sponsor, as are the Parkrose Neighborhood Association, Parkrose Neighborhood Prosperity Initiative, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission, the Jazz Society of Oregon, the City Club of Portland, Travel Oregon, the Port of Portland, TriMet and KBOO Radio.
“This is a chance to honor a native son, and put Parkrose on the map,” Charneski says.
For more information or tickets, visit the website: www.jimpepperfest.com.
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