Ernie Watts

I had the pleasure of playing a coupla gigs with Ernie Watts in 1990 & 1992. He sent a big book of charts and said "learn them." Which we did. After much work. Ernie doesn’t mess around. His music is quite challenging and very much on the jazz cutting edge as well as doing honor and justice to his saxophone idols from days past. When I first heard that Ernie was coming to town and I should get a rhythm section together for him, I knew of his Tonight Show band years with Doc Severinson and his work with Lee Ritenour’s Friendship; so I knew he was no slouch. But when he got here I found out that Ernie is in constant motion playing with the world’s finest musicians. He had just finished touring with a quartet that included Pat Metheny and was getting ready to go tour Europe with Brian Bromberg and Billy Cobham. He practices alot. For our shows we had Rich Lamb on bass , Dave Wong on piano and myself, Jon Margolis, on drums. A festival we played at Deer Mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota was made part of a series on PBS and got played quite a bit for a year or so in many parts of the country. Luckily I have an excellent tape of the first concert we played May 1, 1990. It was the best gig of my life.