The Evolution of Charlie Hunter
By Dan Oudlette

So, who's the draw? A rock star attempting a jazz career? An acid jazz elder on a national tour? A rapper smoothing out the edges of his oratory with cool jazz curves? Wrong on all counts.

Tonight's headliner is the Charlie Hunter Trio, the hip-bop ensemble at the forefront of th Bay Area's new jazz renaissance. In addition to initiating the young into the jazz realm, Hunter's group - with its self-titled 1994 debut disc on funk-rocker Les Claypool's Prawn Song label, and this year's follow-up, "Bing, Bing, Bing!" on the prestigious Blue Note imprint - is the first local act to export to a national audience its ebullient, groove-oriented music steeped in jazz but infused by hip-hip, rock and funk as well as a hefty dose of humor.

Dressed in a black T-shirt and gray jeans and sporting a goatee and a Woody Woodpecker tattoo on his left forearm, the 28-year-old Hunter and twentysomething bandmates tenor saxophonist Dave Ellis and drummer Scott Amendola blast off with their soft-toned but muscular jazz. With a mischievous gleam in his eye and a wide smile, Hunter playfully introduces himself as Beefus McBlood. He then pilots the gig with his custom-made eight-string guitar, which he uses to lay down fully-developed bass lines a well as tremoloed solos that sound like he's riffing on a Hammond B-3 organ. It's a sit-down show, but listeners can't resist dancing in their seats.

Two nights later at the Great American Music Hall, Hunter takes the stage again. This time he's with his second group, T.J. Kirk, a fun-loving, guitar-heavy quartet that puts its own high-voltage signature on the tunes of idiosyncratic bebop pianist Thelonious Monk, soul godfather James Brown and adventurous jazz reed player Rahsaan Roland Kirk. In addition to his trio drummer Amendola, the gourp features fellow guitarists Will Bernard and John Schott.

While Hunter started it as a lark, T.J. Kirk (formerly known as James T. Kirk until Paramount Pictures, owners of anything remotely related to Star Trek, balked at the use of the name of the USS Enterprise's helmsman) was soon drawing overflow crowds at small jazz venues throughout The City. Around the same time Hunter signed on with Blue Note, he also inked a contract with Warner Brothers for the premiere T.J. Kirk album. It's hard enough scoring one recording gig, but two major label deals, both under the jazz umbrella? Proof positive there's a Charlie Hunter buzz.

At the Music Hall's crowded release party, Hunter - wearing his characteristic "suit" of a T-shirt and jeans - leads the charge into an intoxicating brew of jazz stretched to its limits by funk undercurrents, heavy metal guitar licks, country music shadings and syncopated Afro-pop rhythms. The house responds with enthusiasm usually reserved for rock arenas.

Between those performances, Hunter finds time to touch down at Espresso Roma in North Berkeley and reflect on his meteoric rise during the past year. He's recently returned from a cross-country tour supporting his trio album and is gearing up to climb behind the wheel of a rental van for yet another transcontinental trip of one-nighters, this time with T.J. Kirk. He seems road-weary just mentioning it. "God, touring is a lot of work. It's hard to be on the road for five or six months in a year."

But Hunter also acknowledges the benefits of paying his dues. "It's been great playing for new audiences. That's also how we've been selling records. I understand this is what you have to do to eventually make a career for yourself."

Dressed today in the same casual attire he wears on stage (unlike most New York - based jazzers his age who don suits and ties for gigs, he says he won't take the stage in any clothes that rip or wrinkly easily), Hunter, with his closely cropped, dark curly hair and a thin stirrup of beard that loops from his sideburns to his chin, looks more like a beefy construction worker than a musician.

A Berkeley resident since he was eight, Hunter got his first guitar at age 12. A few years later, the avid music listener was taking lessons with local rock guitarist Joe Satriani and playing Motown rhythms in a variety of bar bands. He even formed his own group, an eclectic rockabilly band called the Grease Monkeys that he critiques as "absolutely terrible." Although he knew other musicians from school, most notable his trio bandmate Dave Ellis, Hunter wasn't a part of the esteemed Berkeley High music program that spawned such jazz stars as Joshua Redman and Benny Green.

"I was a naughty Kid who went through the crazy, angst-driven hysteria many teenagers experience," says Hunter, who admits to rarely making it to his classes. "Because I was from a low-income family, I was tracked in the lowest level of academic courses. You didn't get a chance to develop much self-esteem there, so I decide to focus on something that made me feel good. I graduated be the skin of my teeth."

Exposure to such jazzers as Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker prompted Hunter, at 18, to begin paying more attention to technique and dedicating himself to learning their solos on his guitar. After a stint of performing for tips on the streets of Paris and Zurich in the late 80's, he returned to the Bay Area, where he landed his first big job with the agit-rap group Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.

While he still has a friendship with co-leaders Michael Franti and Rono Tse, he labels his two-year tenure with the group tedious. "Oh, it was interesting, but that whole pop art scene was on overall drag. I love pop music, but it's a lot different when you get to sit back and be on the receiving end."

After enduring grueling tours, including one particularly eye-opening experience opening for a year's worth of dates for U2, Hunter quit. "It was difficult for me as an artist who's dedicated to searching for the spiritual core of music to have to deal with being in a situation where the quest is in the most superficial, consumer-driven aspects of the recording industry. It's hard enough driving for hours to get to the next city. When you get there, you a least want to be able to play music that excites you. That's what I'm doing now with the trio and Kirk."

Hunter retreated to Berkeley. He hooked up with Ellis and drummer Jay Lane (Scott Amendola replaced him in the group earlier this year) and launched his solo career with his first trio date three years ago at SoMa's hip Up and Down Club, one of the local clubs pioneering the burgeoning new jazz scene. Soon after, Hunter and company scored a regular Tuesday slot at the Elbo Room, which is where the guitarist says they began to jell as a group playing a distinctive Bay Area style of jazz.

"That's where we learned to study the past and practice the present."

Looking back on his youth, Hunter makes a strong argument in favor of multicultural music education. "Growing up in Berkeley, we were exposed to all kinds of music, from the Dead Kennedys and Parliament Funkadelic to Art Blakey. In the Bay Area, you have so many different cultures living together. It all gets semiassibilated into a nonpolarized type of existence where hybridization of music is possible. There are so many genres and vibes to work with. That's what makes the music here so special."

Berkeley really is a small town at heart. And while it's 3,000 miles away from the center of the jazz universe (readL New York City), Hunter - unlike other local jazz stars who have had to relocate there to find success - has used his home turf as an anchor.

At one point in our conversation as we're talking about the 1966 Mustang he recently bought and is working on, a middle-aged woman walks up to Hunter. "Hi, Charlie, do you remember me?" He recognizes her as the mother of one of his high school friends and warmly greets her. She tells him she's been trying to catch one of his performances recently, but each time she shows up for one of his shows, the club is sold out. Just like a kid down the street might say it, he respectfully thanks her, tells her to keep trying and asks her to say hi to her son for him.

Hunter says he's most influenced by his golden days of listening to music from the '60s to the mid-'70s. He listened to everything then, regardless of genre boundaries. He loved the soul music of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. He went through a rock phase that made him a lifetime fan of Jimi Hendrix. And he still treasures the old blues records by Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Buddy Guy that his mother listened to. Add to that his jazz chops, and you get a roiling mix of sounds that Hunter organically cultivates into his own style of urban jazz. It's high-energy, improvisationally based music that has piqued the curiosity of the younger generation.

Hunter says that most of the people who come to see his bands are in their 20s. The trio has also played on two Lollapalooza alternative rock tours, garnering lots of respect from grunge-rock fans who told the band members they hated jazz but loved their music. Plus, it doesn't hurt the trio also put its own jazz twist on a a Kurt Cobain tune on its new album. Hutner says, "People who love guitar relate to me. One guy said to me at a Lollapalooza show, 'You shared way more than my favorite metal dudes.' We're seeing young people have a whole new attitude toward jazz."

Why? "They're probably tired of MTV beating up on them and cramming corporate music down their throats."

As for the curmedgeonly jazz puritans who like their jazz in a straight-ahead '50s vein and take pot shots at Hunter's new-fangled fusion, the guitarist says, "I like a lot of different kinds of music, and I like exploring new ways of mixing them into jazz. I don't want to be bummed out when I'm 60 because I never tried new things. Just because a bunch of people want us to play as if we lived in the '50s and '60s doesn't mean we have to. What's the point? That's like some weird serial murderer living with and kissing up to his grandma his entire life."

Behind his dark sunglasses, Hunter would look downright macho if it weren't for his ready sense of humor and quick wit.

On his debut album, Hunter wrote a tune called "Dance of the Jazz Fascists." In a conversation a couple years ago, he lambasted the neotradional movement as bebop fascism. He said, "It's a bizarre Trappist monk mindset where there's no connection to the outside world and an unwillingness to converse with modern culture." Today, even though he's no less patient with that line of thought, Hunter backs away from labeling the phenomenon fascist. He likes the word "seclusionism" better.

"If they don't want to be affected by Change, Maybe these people should take all their cherished jazz records, and move next to an Amish community in Pennsylvania. Then they can just live there in peace and listen to those records for the rest of their lives."

Hunter is encouraged that younger people frequent his shows. "For some kids, this is their first exposure to jazz, " he said.

"They see how cool the music is and become intrigued enough to want to check out records by Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. If our mission succeeds, hopefully we'll have helped to turn a generation of people on to a much more spiritually and soulfully executed music than what gets played on MTV."

While Hunter's always ready to crack a joke, he takes his role as a jazz musician seriously.