What Coltrane-inspired saxophonist tours with the Rolling Stones AND Pat Metheny, records with soul queen Aretha and perfectionist pop-rockers Steely Dan, inspires Michelle Colombier to compose an orchestral piece for him and helps jazz singer Kurt Elling win his first Grammy for their tribute to ‘Trane and Johnny Hartman?
Just one: Ernie Watts, who leads his Quartet at A Place for Jazz Friday. There’s more than unprecedented versatility to the veteran tenor saxophonist. The Frankfurt Music Prize honored Watts’s “strikingly melodic saxophone style and his original tone language, with which he has already enriched several generations of musicians.”
Ernie Watts. Patricia Watts photo
Watts, who turned 81 last Friday, started early and never slowed down. A self-proclaimed self-starter at 13, his life changed on hearing tenor god John Coltrane on Miles’s “Kind of Blue.” As Watts recalled on his website, “…it was like someone put my hand into a light socket.” He left Boston’s Berklee College of Music (and a Downbeat scholarship) to fill in temporarily with the Buddy Rich Big Band when its tenor player Gene Quill left. “Temporarily” turned into two years, world tours, two Rich albums and a move to L.A.
There, Watts worked with everybody, then he played everywhere, as a sideman valued for his versatility and tone and leader of his own bands, both here and in Europe.
Friday, he plays with Marc Seales, piano; Bruce Lett, bass; and Bob Leatherborrow, drums and vibes.
He testifies on his website, “I see music as the common bond having potential to bring all people together in peace and harmony. All things in the physical world have vibration; the music I choose to play is the energy vibration that touches a common bond in people.” 7 p.m. $25. www.aplaceforjazz.org
OCHS SONGS AT THE 8TH STEP
An annual legacy project, the Eighth Step’s Phil Ochs Song Night Friday honors the activist singer-songwriter as an all-star troubadour crew performs Ochs’ songs, rich in persuasive moral conviction.
Phil Ochs, above; Wikipedia photo; Reggie Harris, below; provided by the Eighth Step
Friday’s edition stacks the stage deep with area singers, songwriters and players, listed here alphabetically: Betty & the Baby Boomers, Greg Greenway, Reggie Harris, Magpie, Pamela Means, Kal Teaux, and Pat Wictor.
In his early-60s Greenwich Village heyday, Ochs was famed for advocacy anthems including “There But for Fortune,” “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “Draft Dodger Rag,” “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” and “The War is Over.” (If only…)
Gone too soon at 35, his music lives in sister Sonny Ochs’ work, drawing admirers together to honor him. Starting small in 1983 in New York City, it grew to include Dave Van Ronk, Melanie, Tom Paxton, Suzanne Vega and Christine Lavin – just as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger and others have recorded Ochs’s songs.
When Sonny Ochs moved upstate, she brought her mission of celebrating her late brother with her and found the Eighth Step a welcoming home, starting in 1987. Sporadic at times, it’s been an annual celebration since 1999. Sonny has also taken the tribute on the road, but always came home to the Eighth Step.
In her essay “Remembering Phil Ochs,” Sonny explained the Song Night’s format. “Each performer would sing one or two of Phil’s songs, depending on how many they knew, and that was it.” She wrote, “The philosophy…was to keep Phil’s music alive, to give all the monies collected to organizations in the folk field who were struggling financially, and to showcase performers.”
When Song Night performer Sammy Walker told Sonny, “Phil Ochs draws a larger audience dead than we do alive,” she changed the format. Now, ”Each performer would do one of Phil’s songs and one of his/her own, thus giving the audience a taste of what is being written today…this is still the formula we’re using.”
Phil Ochs Song Night honors the late great entertainer/agitator Friday at the Eighth Step in Proctors GE Theatre. 7 p.m. $34.50, front and center $57.50. www.eighthstep.org or www.proctors.org 518-346-6204
MICHAEL JERLING BACK AT CAFFE LENA
Michael Jerling stands tall among Ochs’ heirs; his “Long Black Wall” mourns those slain in the same Vietnam War Ochs had protested, and eloquently sympathizes with its survivors. Jerling plays Friday at Caffe Lena, where he has performed for decades and where he recorded his lively and deeply felt live album “Music Here Tonight.”
Michael Jerling. My photo
“Long Black Wall” appears in the Smithsonian/Folkways album honoring Fast Folk’s 20 years of celebrating and collecting top troubadours’ work; he also won the Kerrville (Texas) Folk Festival New Folk competition. Here at home, he kicked off Music Haven’s August 2025 Wanda Fischer/WAMC all-star folk revue and is rightly celebrated for literate, sometimes sardonic original songs that examine large-scale contemporary issues or heart-deep intimate truths. 8 p.m., doors 7:30. $23.86 members, $27.11 general, $13.56 students and children. 518-583-0022 www.caffelena.org
