An integral part of the groundbreaking Black Artists Group in the late 1960s and early ’70s, saxophonist Oliver Lake moved to New York at age 29 with fellow BAG members Julius Hemphill and Hamiet Bluiett. There, they founded the revolutionary World Saxophone Quartet. Though Lake—who’s received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a BNY Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award—now lives in Montclair, N.J., he often returns to St. Louis and performs at Jazz at the Bistro.
There was a drum-and-bugle corps I was part of called the American Woodmen… I played the cymbals and bass drum. They didn’t play saxophone in the drum-and-bugle corps, but outside of that, [older musicians] were interested in jazz—which really tweaked my interest. I would tape their jam sessions and eventually picked up the saxophone.
When I was growing up, integration hadn’t happened, but all the businesses were black. There was a butcher, a fish man, a market, a barbershop. I was close to Easton Avenue, which at that time was the longest commercial street in the United States. It went from the river all the way out to St. Charles. There was so much activity, so many people in the street, things happening. When integration came in, a lot of the black businesses died. That vibrancy that I was accustomed to disappeared. It was the forbidden fruit. It was like, now we can go to this place we’ve never been able to go to before, and a lot of the black businesses died.
I can remember walking to the rehearsals for the American Woodmen, and I would never get bored, it didn’t matter how far I had to walk, because every block was so exciting, with so much stuff happening.
