Marzette Watts
Encyclopedia
Marzette Watts was an American jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 alto saxophonist. He had a brief career in music but is revered for his 1966 self-titled free jazz
Free jazz
Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...

 release.

Watts played piano early in his life, but did not play music regularly in his teens. He studied at Alabama State College, where he was a founding member of SNCC
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...

; this association led to his being forced to leave the state at the behest of the governor of Alabama.

He moved to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, where lived in a loft building on Cooper Square which also had as a tenant Leroi Jones (later Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...

), with whom he participated in the Organization of Young Men. Watts returned to college in New York, completing his studies in 1962; he then moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 to study painting at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

 and began playing saxophone for extra money.

Returning to New York in 1963, he studied under Don Cherry
Don Cherry (jazz)
Donald Eugene Cherry was an innovative African-American jazz cornetist whose career began with a long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. He went on to live in many parts of the world and work with a wide variety of musicians.-Biography:Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and...

 and played in his loft and around the city with Jiunie Booth
Jiunie Booth
Arthur Edward Booth , known as Jiunie, Junie, Junius, Joony, Juini, etc., is an American jazz double-bassist.Booth began playing piano at about age eight, and switched to bass at 12...

, Henry Grimes
Henry Grimes
Henry Grimes is a jazz double bassist, violinist, and poet.After more than a decade of activity and performance, notably as a leading bassist in free jazz, Grimes completely disappeared from the music scene by 1970...

, J.C. Moses
J.C. Moses
J.C. Moses was an American jazz drummer.Moses worked early in the 1960s with Clifford Jordan, Kenny Dorham, and Eric Dolphy. In 1963, he performed and recorded with the New York Contemporary Five, a group that included Archie Shepp, John Tchicai, and Don Cherry among its members...

, and others. He also developed his painting ability, producing work strongly influenced by that of Willem De Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....

.

Marzette's loft attracted many established and up-and-coming musicians, who would hang out and at times play for parties, including Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....

, Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...

, Don Cherry
Don Cherry (jazz)
Donald Eugene Cherry was an innovative African-American jazz cornetist whose career began with a long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. He went on to live in many parts of the world and work with a wide variety of musicians.-Biography:Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and...

, Archie Shepp
Archie Shepp
Archie Shepp is a prominent African-American jazz saxophonist. Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s, which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by the African-Americans, as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five, Horace Parlan, and...

, and Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders
Pharoah Sanders is a Grammy Award–winning American jazz saxophonist.Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world." Emerging from John Coltrane's groups of the mid-60s Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on...

.

In 1965 he decided to devote himself to music more fully, and moved to Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 for further study. While in New York in 1966, he recorded an album for ESP-Disk
ESP-Disk
ESP-Disk is a New York-based record label, founded in 1964 by lawyer Bernard Stollman.From the beginning, the label's goal has been to provide its recording artists with complete artistic freedom, unimpeded by any record company interference or commercial expectations—a philosophy summed-up by the...

, and recorded for Savoy Records
Savoy Records
Savoy Records is an American record label specializing in jazz, R&B and gospel. Starting in the mid 1940s, Savoy played an important part in popularizing bebop.Savoy Records is an American record label specializing in jazz, R&B and gospel. Starting in the mid 1940s, Savoy played an important part...

 in 1968. He wrote film scores and did production work for his own films, eventually abandoning music to work in film and record production.

Later in his life he moved back and forth between Europe and New York, teaching briefly at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

. Late in his life he moved to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. He died of heart failure in 1998.

Discography

  • Marzette Watts & Company (ESP-Disk
    ESP-Disk
    ESP-Disk is a New York-based record label, founded in 1964 by lawyer Bernard Stollman.From the beginning, the label's goal has been to provide its recording artists with complete artistic freedom, unimpeded by any record company interference or commercial expectations—a philosophy summed-up by the...

    , 1966)
  • The Marzette Watts Ensemble (Savoy Records
    Savoy Records
    Savoy Records is an American record label specializing in jazz, R&B and gospel. Starting in the mid 1940s, Savoy played an important part in popularizing bebop.Savoy Records is an American record label specializing in jazz, R&B and gospel. Starting in the mid 1940s, Savoy played an important part...

    , 1968)
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