Eddie Henderson and George Cables of The Cookers Talk Jazz
The jazz supergroup The Cookers will headline the Williamstown Jazz Festival on Saturday, September 12, at 8 p.m. at the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance.
By Jaclynn Kastrinakis
Online Exclusive
Known for their explosive energy and deep-rooted mastery of hard bop, The Cookers brings together some of the most influential musicians in jazz history, including original members Cecil McBee (bass), George Cables (piano), Dr. Eddie Henderson (trumpet), Billy Hart (drums), and David Weiss (trumpet), as well as Donald Harrison (alto sax, joining in 2013) and Azar Lawrence (tenor sax, joining this year).
For tickets to this and other performances during the three-day festival from September 11 to 13, go to jazzintheberkshires.org.
We talked with Cables and Henderson just weeks before Sunday’s performance. Here are excerpts:
GEORGE CABLES:
Cables, a founding member of The Cookers, is a highly celebrated American jazz pianist and composer. He is revered as both a definitive hard-bop bandleader and one of the most trusted sidemen in modern jazz history. Cables grew up in Brooklyn and was a classically trained musician studying at The High School of Performing Arts and Mannes School of Music. He is the ultimate "first-call" sideman for jazz royalty, most notably anchoring legendary bands led by Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Sonny Rollins, and Freddie Hubbard. Beyond his foundational work as a collaborator, Cables has led a highly distinguished career as a bandleader, composing enduring jazz standards like "Helen's Song" and "Think on Me.”
The Cookers started as a one-off tribute gig and became permanent. What has kept it going for this long?
I think it’s that we actually like each other and we love playing music. We're committed to playing music. We have a lot of love and respect for each other. I'm the youngest of the old guys. We've got so much history, so that really is helpful, and the fact that we’ve played with each other over the years in different situations— from the ’70s and late-’60s—it’s sort of like a family affair.
Because you have been described as being such a close-knit group, what does that sound like on stage?
Chaos! I mean we love playing. It's such a high-energy band. That's how we like to present ourselves. There's a wide age range in the band. I'm the youngest of the original members, and Cecil is the oldest. Everybody is a seasoned musician, and we have all been in different bands and different playing situations. We all have a common playing concept.
After spending so long working in a group setting, what have those relationships taught you that you wouldn’t have learned by working and practicing alone?
When you play with other people, I think this concept can be a metaphor for life. You just don't sit there and do your thing and play what you know and leave it at that. Just like in life when you're in a situation where you’re in a room with other people, you interact and don't just sit to yourself and mumble. You learn to adapt to other people, to listen to other people, and to know when to contribute. In music, sometimes you're playing with people that you maybe don't like, but everybody kind of likes each other in the band. And you may disagree with the people that you do like. But you have respect for those people, even if you disagree with them. My role in the band is the piano, so I feel like I'm the glue because I’m in the rhythm section and in the band. I listen and contribute. And personally, as a pianist, I think I have the best seat in the whole house. I get to listen.
I've learned in my lifetime of playing music in different groups is to learn how to listen and learn how to give and take; learn how to be there for others and to play and help them, and then you do things to bring other people in as well. I think this music is a great life lesson. It's a gift. Not everybody's going to like everything you do. But the idea is that you get enough people to like most of what you do. The goal is just to bring an audience together because music and art is something that has the ability to bring people together. Which is only one of the wonderful things about art in general, and music in particular.
After a long and successful career, what is something you still chase when sitting down at the piano?
It's what's next? What can I think of now? Maybe it’s writing another piece, or maybe it’s starting with somebody else's composition for a basis of a whole new composition, because every time you play a piece, it's going to change. Something is going to be different. It’s not just how you phrase it, but when you improvise there's a section where you're just making up a whole bunch of stuff. You have the structure, but you're doing something different over it every time. So, it’s music that just allows you to be yourself, but I think, really, to make this music, it demands that you put yourself in the composition.
DR. EDDIE HENDERSON:
Trumpeter Eddie Henderson got his first lessons from jazz legend Louis Armstrong at age nine. He later earned a medical degree from Howard University while continuing to build his career in jazz, eventually joining Herbie Hancock’s band in the early ’70s. In addition to his performance on Saturday at 8 p.m. with The Cookers, a 30-minute documentary film on his will be screened at Images Cinema as part of the Rhythm and Reels jazz film festival on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., which is part of the Williamstown Jazz Festival. The full lineup of films include Unfinished Song (2026), a documentary on Wanda Houston; A Great Day in Harlem (1994), a documentary film about the creation of an iconic 1958 group photograph featuring 57 legendary jazz musicians; Jazz Infernal (2025), a Canadian short about a young trumpeter from the Ivory Coast who must confront his late father's musical legacy; Dr. Eddie Henderson: Uncommon Genius (2024); and The Modern Jazz Quartet: From Residency to Legacy (2018). Purchase a day pass or a three-day pass at jazzintheberkshires.org and sit in on one or all of the movies.
Uncommon Genius profiles the extraordinary, multi-faceted life of Dr. Henderson. Directed by filmmaker Michelle Bauer Carpenter, the documentary explores how Henderson broke racial barriers and balanced multiple, vastly different high-level careers over his lifetime. We had the opportunity to ask him some questions related to those topics and more.
Eddie, have you ever been to the Berkshires? What made your band want to be part of this festival?
Yes, I’ve been there once before. Actually, I think twice before. I’ve known Daphne Bolden, who runs the festival, since way back in San Francisco in the ’70s. Daphne was the girlfriend of Todd Barkin, emcee for the Williamstown Jazz Festival, who owned the Keystone Corner, the main jazz club in San Francisco, and I would be a frequent there, practically every night.
The Cookers started as a one night tribute gig, and then became permanent. After so long, what do you think has kept the band going?
The first inception of the band was the record called The Night of the Cookers was a record made in 1965 and featured Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan, two fantastic trumpet players. That was the incentive to form the band called The Cookers. And it is still going strong. The name “The Cookers” means a lot to me because I’m a trumpet player. Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan were my heroes. I would just follow them around to all their gigs, and I was there at that initial performance of the live record. So it means a lot to me to be a part of this particular organization and perpetuating that style of music.
Because you’ve spent a lot of time working alongside other jazz musicians, what have those relationships taught you that you wouldn’t have learned by practicing alone?
When playing with other jazz musicians, you hear them play with their expertise, and it gives you an incentive to practice and come up to the bar of a musicality that they perform. It’s a competition, but out of love and respect for the other musicians. you don’t want to let anybody down, so you keep your skills as sharp as they can be. When everybody comes to the gig, it’s different every night, because we’re improvising. That’s what life is about. So it’s a reflection of life, and you want to put your best foot forward, which makes you practice at home alone by yourself.
You went to school to pursue medicine and to become a doctor. Was there a point when you felt like you had to choose between jazz and medicine?
Well, it wasn’t really a choice. When I was nine, I only wanted to play the trumpet. My first trumpet teacher in life was Louis Armstrong because my mother knew him. When I was 14 years old, my mother remarried because my real father had passed away. She married a very wealthy doctor in San Francisco, and he told me at age 14 that being a doctor was the closest thing to God. He told me I would never become a doctor because I wasn’t smart enough. Well, he told the wrong person when he told me that. I said “Oh, really? Watch.” So I went out of my way to be a doctor just to prove him wrong. But it all worked out well; I did both fields simultaneously. It really enhanced one another because they’re both disciplines. Once you learn discipline at an early age, which I did by studying the trumpet at age nine, that discipline carried over to the discipline of studying medicine. Also, during my teenage years, I was a competitive figure skater—the first Black figure skater on this planet to be in competition, and I won a bronze medal at the Midwestern Championships. I was sort of like Jackie Robinson in baseball. So the discipline of studying music at early age and studying figure skating at an early age, when I got to medical school it was a walk in the park. That’s the common denominator. It linked all trajectories of my career: the music, figure skating, and medicine. Once you learn discipline at an early age, it’s easy to do many things, but it’s harder to acquire discipline at a later age because there are so many life obstacles in the way.
Miles Davis was an important influence on your early career as you developed your own voice. Was there a point when you consciously had to move away from your influences?
Yes. Like all musicians when they’re coming up, they have idols that they try to emulate. I met Miles when he stayed at my parents’ house when I was 17 or 18 years old. I was just mesmerized by his sound. I think a lot of his style and sound rubbing off of me. Everybody talked about Miles Davis like he dropped out of the sky, but his style was copied from people before him, such as a gentleman named Freddie Webster. So, everybody is a derivative of their predecessors. The present people stand on their shoulders.
Do you remember a specific instance when you realized that performing jazz is what you were supposed to be doing?
Absolutely. When I first got a chance to play with the iconic Herbie Hancock from 1970 to 1973. It was my first experience playing with musicians of such a high caliber, and it just changed my whole life. I knew that music is what I wanted to do, even though I did practice medicine after, that spark is what instilled in me by playing with Herbie Hancock. It really changed my life.
What part of your performing has changed the most for you, and what still feels the same?
I have always loved performing from the beginning when I was trying to improvise, but I really didn’t have that much knowledge about it. I’ll say that I didn’t know the language of improvising and performing in public. Now, I get a thrill every time I walk on the stage, because I just like improvisation. When I walk on the stage, I really don’t know what I’m going to say through the horn. It just happens in the moment; it’s spontaneous. And that’s the thrill.
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