Jazzman Take My Blues Away
Theo Croker’s
distinctive sound defies classification. His innate talent is a gift from his
grandfather, the legendary Doc Cheatham, but his music is entirely his own.
Cultivated from deep jazz roots that he nurtured with years of study and
practice, it is a unique blend of jazz, hip-hop, R&B and pop influences. Theo’s
newest project, entitled Afrosonic
and produced by the celebrated singer Dee-Dee Bridgewater for her label DDB
Records, is the result of Theo’s relentless search for originality.
Theo Croker was
born on July 18, 1985, in the small town of Leesburg, Florida, the second son
of William Henry Croker, a civil rights activist, high school principal and
farmer, and Alicia Cheatham, a guidance counselor. As a young boy Theo loved to
listen to his grandfather’s records, and when he was about ten years old he
picked up his older brother’s horn and started to play. That same year his
parents drove the boys to Sarasota to watch their grandfather play live at the
Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, an experience that would shape Theo’s future.
After that he would sit in his room for hours, learning new notes by listening
to and playing along with his grandfather’s records. “He had a very appealing
sound, the strength behind it was always a melody," Theo says. “I noticed
that I could fit in with what I was
hearing harmonically.”
When his
grandfather died in June 1997, Theo was invited to participate with Wynton
Marsalis, Clark Terry, Warren Vache, Benny Powell, Al Grey, Jon Faddis, and
countless others in a memorial concert at St. Peter’s Church in Midtown
Manhattan. Wearing his grandfather’s trademark fedora, Theo sat in the old
master’s chair and played On Broadway,
mesmerizing the audience with his resemblance to his grandfather, both musical
and physical. “I was only eleven years old, but the way the music touched
people and the way it made me feel was enough to set me for life. I knew it was
what I wanted to do.”
Two years later he
joined veteran trombonists Al Grey and
Benny Powell at the New Orleans
Jazz Festival, where they asked him to sit in on a set in the Preservation Hall
Jazz Tent. “Al Grey asked what song I wanted to play and I said C-Jam Blues. I didn't know how to
improvise. I would usually just play the melody and that's it. After I played
it Benny told me that I called the song so I had to solo, meaning improvise
alone. I told him I didn’t know how to solo, and he said, ‘Now you’re about to learn. Start playing.’ That
was my first time soloing, on stage at the New Orleans jazz & Heritage
festival. He showed me scales and chords to practice after that. Al Grey and
Benny Powell really nurtured me after Doc died. They took a sincere interest in
my development. I was just a kid.”
At sixteen Theo
left home to attend The Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville,
Florida, where his talent and drive attracted attention both in school and with
local audiences. After seeing one of Theo’s solo performances, the director of the
Ritz Theatre, a former black movie house transformed into a museum with a
performance space, commissioned him to compose music for and lead a
seventeen-piece band, eventually becoming the theater’s first Artist In Residence.
Meanwhile he stayed in contact with the musicians he’d met at Doc Cheatham’s
memorial service five years earlier. Wynton Marsalis, who had been particularly
moved by Theo’s performance there, invited him to study with him in New York over
school breaks and encouraged him to move there after high school. Donald Byrd,
the virtuoso jazz trumpeter and pioneer in jazz education, drew Theo to college
in Ohio.
The
Oberlin College Conservatory’s jazz studies faculty includes active composers
and performers like Donald Byrd, the renowned trumpet player and academic
ethnomusicology pioneer. Gary Bartz, Robin Eubanks, Billy Hart, Wendell Logan,
Marcus Belgrave, and Dan Wall, among many others, have taught there. Theo had
first heard about the school when The Oberlin Jazz Septet performed at his high
school during his junior year. “That’s when I got interested, cause they blew
me away. Then my father took me to visit and we saw Dr. Donald Byrd in concert.
He was a huge fan.” Bill Croker passed away in February 2004, but he did see
his son’s first performance at Oberlin on October 20, 2003.
When
he began his conservatory studies in the fall of that year, Theo met pianist
Sullivan Fortner and drummer Kassa Overall, musicians who shared his interests in
musical experimentations. They quickly became close friends, and continue to
perform together years after they graduated. Theo received the Presser Music
Foundation Award in the spring of 2006 and used the proceeds to finance
his debut album, The Fundamentals, for
which he composed and arranged every song.
Recorded over the summer over 2006, it features fellow Oberlin students Sullivan
Fortner and bass player Chris Mees, and received wide critical acclaim.
During
spring break the previous year, Theo met Roy Hargrove at a jam session at
Cleo’s in New York. Hargrove, impressed with the younger trumpeter’s abilities,
invited him to his house the next day. “When he asked about the horn I was
playing I told him it was on loan as I had recently broken my own beyond
repair.” Hargrove let Theo try a few of his instruments, including a rare and
expensive Martin Committee trumpet. “When I played the Martin he was like ‘yes,
that one! Play that one.’ So a few months later I did and still do.”
Theo
booked his first international gig as a
headliner at Shanghai’s House of Blues and Jazz, bringing the Theo Croker
Quintet to play with him six nights a week from September 2007 through February
2008, when he returned to New York to record his second CD, In The Tradition. That album featured Tootie Heath on drums, Benny
Powell on trombone, Sullivan Fortner on piano, and Joe Sanders on bass. After
another stint freelancing in China Theo booked five shows at the Rubin Museum
of Arts’ Harlem In The Himalayas
series with Jimmy Cob, Winard Harper, Benny Powell, Billy Hart, and Wycilff Gordon.
In the fall of 2008
Theo made Shanghai his base. He worked with various bands playing salsa,
fusion/rock, and blues, in clubs all over China. In 2009 he formed the Theo
Croker Sextet, with four other American musicians based in Shanghai. In November 2009 the quintet was hired as the
house band for Asia Uncut Star Network,
a late night TV show modeled on the Tonight Show, with Theo as bandleader and in-house
composer.
He stayed with Asia Uncut until April 2010. The
following month Dee Dee Bridgewater, who had met Theo the previous year when he
played in her band at the Shanghai Jazz Festival, came to China on a ten-day
jazz education tour with Herbie Hancock. When the tour came to Shanghai, she invited
Theo to her concert at the World Expo Entertainment Hall, and later that night joined him onstage at his gig at JZ Club. The next day she asked him to lunch
to discuss possible future collaborations.
Having recently launched
her own label she was looking for a fresh act to sign. “She didn’t want another
traditional jazz record, but something crossover or eclectic,” Theo remembers.
He had just started the Afrosonic
Orchestra project, an ever-changing collective of international musicians
based in Shanghai. The group explores Afro- influenced music such as Hip-Hop,
R&B, Afro-Beat, and Jazz. “It’s a
concept,” Theo explains, “not a genre. The goal is to blur the line between all
genres with fresh interpretations, adaptations, and original compositions, in
many ways it exemplifies the new vibrancy of 21st century popular music. The
concept appealed to Ms. Bridgewater, who invited Theo Croker to be the first
artist to sign with DDB Productions.
Theo immediately started
making demos, refining the Afrosonic
concept. In July he met the singer China Moses, Dee Dee Bridgewater’s daughter
at the Strasbourg Jass Festival in France. Ms. Moses joined the Afrosonic Orchestra at the JZ Jazz Festival
in Shanghai that October, and again at the Blues to Bop Festival in Lugano,
Switzerland in September 2011, where they appeared as the headliner. That
performance marked the group’s European debut.
Using original material primarily
sourced from the Afrosonic Orchestra
repertoire, Theo recorded the album Afrosonic at Avatar Studios in New York City
on April 21-24, 2011. Produced by Ms. Bridgewater, the album features Dee Dee
Bridgewater, Roy Hargrove and China Moses on vocals, Steffon Harris on vibes,
Karriem Riggins on drums, Dave Gilmore on guitar, Sullivan Fortner on piano,
and Michael Bowie on bass.
Theo marked another milestone
in his career in July 2010 when he became the first Artist in Residence at Shanghai’s
famous Peace Hotel Jazz Bar, the oldest and longest running music club in
China. The Theo Croker Quintet played to a packed and enthusiastic crowd every Tuesday
through Saturday night until his residency ended in April 2013. As one popular travel blogger wrote, “I have
never been a big fan of jazz, but the Theo Croker Quartet just might have made
a convert out of me. I would definitely enjoy spending another evening soaking
up their cool vibes. These guys totally rock.”
DDB Productions will
release Afrophysicist, Theo’s third and
most eclectic album, in the summer of 2013.
