In the early 1940s, a small boy from Houston snatched up his mother’s broom, drew it close to his lips and blew sweet, imaginary melodies into its wooden handle. He danced with the broom, floating like a mellow saxophonist across the kitchen tile, and the passionate musician’s stern expression made its way onto the boy’s youthful face. He played to the likes of John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, pioneering saxophonists he surely heard often and imitated with his mother’s cleaning instruments. Only five, he didn’t know how to appropriately handle the sax, but he would learn soon enough.
Photo caption: Art Lewis (Photo courtesy of Richard Baron)
He felt utterly transported in time when he opened his eyes, observing himself standing on a club stage, blowing into a real saxophone. The sultry air of the dimly lit club interior made him question if he was dreaming. The sunbathed homely kitchen, his mother’s voice calling from the other room, the broom he grasped between his aspiring hands –– it all vanished in place of the hazy scene. His sharp imaginary notes permeated plumes of smoke. His face was now less youthful, but he still had that musician’s sternness mingling with a child’s innocence, a child’s willingness to continue learning despite his age.
When you hear the sounds of Art Lewis’ sax, said Brad Cooper, a distinguished El Paso Times columnist who explored the El Paso-Juarez nightlife in his Bordernites editorials, “you could be just anywhere. Philly, K.C., Chicago.” He wrote only what he saw: a man making love to his sax, holding it close to his lips, making it whine over the Sun City whose nocturnal life glittered in the intense darkness of night. “He sounds and tastes like sex. No other words are necessary,” Cooper wrote in another Bordernites column about the jazzman who effortlessly jived with his horn. And like so many others who heard the sounds of Lewis, Cooper couldn’t keep the good news to himself. “If you’ve ever heard Art Lewis on sax, let’s just say he plays moist and passionate,” Cooper wrote in November 1988.
Cooper, like many, was mystified and downright intrigued by Lewis’ choice to live out his musical career in El Paso, the quiet border town not very well known for its jazz scene (or lack thereof). “The only reason I can figure out why Art Lewis still is in El Paso is that there must be outstanding warrants on him in all neighboring states,” Cooper stated. Contrary to the journalist’s skepticism, Lewis maintained a clean record. He could have been in any other place, blowing the rooftop off any club, arousing sexual tension among his listeners,and leaving his audiences wide-eyed and entranced, but he chose to stay here, the Sun City. Lewis would have told any inquirer that he owed it to the warm-hearted people of El Paso and the reciprocated love.
Arthur L. Lewis, known to many as “Art,” was born in Crockett, Texas, April 13, 1936, to Burvia B. Lewis and Letha Wheeler Lewis. During his early years, he first interacted with the soulful church music that brings congregations to worship. The music moved him, and he later recalled, “It had so much power behind it, you couldn’t sit down.” The music possessed emotion; it communicated feeling, something beyond the spoken word, and Lewis took the lessons liturgical music taught him and applied them to his own musical experience.
Photo caption: Art Lewis Art Works 1992.
While Lewis’ first instrument may have been his mom’s kitchen broom, there is no doubt he already possessed soul and felt an ardor calling him to jam. It was only a matter of channeling that energy. In an August 1995 El Paso Times article, Jose Escamilla and Adrian Quiz stated, “He got into jazz by watching movies at African-American movie theatres and by listening to jazz musicians.” In high school, Lewis started studying music and playing the tuba, an instrument generally regarded for orchestras and marching bands. It wasn’t until 16 that he owned an instrument all to himself, his very own “axe,” his significant other, a glittering, bronze saxophone, his forever compadre. In a June 1992 El Paso Times article, Nicole Carroll wrote that Lewis asked his mother for a sax. “She thought music might corrupt me,” Lewis told Carroll. When his mother asked her pastor if she should get him his own horn, the pastor exclaimed, “Maybe he’ll convince a lot more people to come back to church.” Lewis’ life-long love affair with the sax had begun, and indeed the sounds he delivered were nothing short of spiritual, perhaps a result of divine intervention.
“Come on, let’s go to work,” said Lewis’ friend, Robert Milbum, who convinced him to start playing gigs in Houston three months after Lewis picked up the saxophone. “Come on, we’ll jam!” Milbum played piano and, as Lewis recalled, “He only knew one key, G. I knew one key, C.” Lewis told Carroll, “He didn’t know that much about piano and I didn’t know that much about the sax. It was how we played that affected the listeners.” In a November 2003 King’s X artist profile, Richard Baron recalled Lewis' words: “Our main goal was to get the customer to drink because the more the listener drinks, the better the band sounds,” as if Lewis couldn’t intoxicate any sober listener with the inebriating sounds of his horn. He continued, “You have to entertain; you have to get that lady on the dance floor.’” As Lewis stated, it wasn’t a matter of knowing a plethora of keys and being able to play like a proficient star. It was about playing those few notes they knew in the right order and incorporating a couple of secret ingredients, personality and soul. Milbum may have called it work, but Lewis would’ve told anyone he had never worked a day in his life. Lewis stated, “The main thing is to get the music played. The money will have to come later,” Tamara Chapman wrote in an April 1984 El Paso Times article. Throughout Lewis’ entire musical career, financial success eluded him, but that never really affected the great jazzman. As long as he did what he loved, ripping out those voluptuous riffs and fervent licks, he was happy. The warm smile on his affable face told anyone, even a stranger, that he was perfectly content making a modest living, which is the mark, or should I say note, of a true musician. It is about the music, not the money.
After playing professionally in Houston, Lewis toured with Bobby Bland, an esteemed blues singer who combined blues, gospel and R&B to create his own unique sound. They started in Florida in 1954 and moved north up the East Coast. They played their instruments like a couple of magicians, hypnotizing audiences at clubs in New York, all the way to Chicago and then St. Louis, leaving a trail of entranced club-goers. Some may be waiting for the duo’s return to this very day. Until then, they remain in their mesmerized trance.
Lewis then parted from Bland to join Louisiana-native Clifton Chenier, an accordion player and Grammy- Award winner. Chenier was known for, and is still remembered as being, the King of Zydeco, a genre that combines blues, R&B and indigenous Louisiana Creole jams. The two musical troublemakers toured the home of jazz, Louisiana.
As soon as he settled in, the Army beckoned him. He cancelled his gig of the night, only to be informed that the war had ended. Baron asserted in his blog post that Lewis found himself headed to Mexico instead, to play tunes there. In the Escamilla and Quiz article, Lewis explained that he wanted to play music in Mexico but realized he needed work permits. In 1960, Lewis stopped at a gas station in a southwestern town bordering the United States and Mexico. “A guy stepped up to the car and said, ‘Can I help you, Sir?’ These were small words, but they were powerful words and I had never heard anything like that before.” These words were the most comforting ones a foreigner in a strange land could conceive. Lewis got a taste of the El Paso kindness that pervades the Sun City. He couldn’t think of letting this hidden gem of a place evade him, and his cravings for Latin jazz were satiated in the land where all cultures are accepted and celebrated. Friends of Lewis invited him to join their band in El Paso and he ultimately decided to stay. The Sun City gained one of its most treasured legends, who at the time was only 24.
Photo caption: Art Lewis. El Paso Art 1997.
The irony is that Lewis seemed to arrive in El Paso from out of nowhere, from out of the blues, as it were. “The truth is, I’ve never asked Art where he came from,” wrote Cooper in a June 1992 Bordernites piece, “because I’m so enamored by the Art Lewis of today –– and tomorrow.” Like an angel who descended from heaven, he arrived with little trace of his past. “When Art Lewis plays the sax, the resulting sound is honey that coats the senses. I once asked what he was doing in El Paso,” wrote Cooper. Many wondered what Lewis was doing in a place like El Paso when he could be making it big in New York, Chicago or New Orleans. Frankly, the jazzman didn’t fit the El Paso music scene. His style resonated with his experiences touring the United States and his deep roots as an African- American musician. His presence in El Paso was radically unprecedented, for there were only a few with similar backgrounds and experiences that preceded him. This gave Lewis his trademark identity in the city. He became El Paso’s most well-known, well-respected tenor sax player, his pervasive jazz chops spewing from his horn from east to west, north to south. Just as for Cooper, many overlooked the question of Lewis’ origins, awestruck by his being, his grandeur, his ability to take a hunk of brass and generate smooth, soothing sounds as he fronted many El Paso venues. As far as they were concerned, he could’ve been an angel from heaven. That would’ve convinced them all.
In his near half-century in the Sun City, Lewis let the howl of his sax guide him from gig to gig. He started his El Paso jazz journey, playing alongside world-renowned bluesman extraordinaire, singer, songwriter, and guitarist Long John Hunter, whose notably best-known song is “El Paso Rock.” The two musicians played at the King’s X on Mesa Street, a bar with a rich history of housing artists like Lewis, still in business today. According to the blog post by Baron, the Lewis/ Hunter duo lasted ten years, a decade of dueling blues guitar licks and blowing jazz changes, both monster players.
A March 1970 El Paso Times issue advertised the King’s X Club, featuring Lewis on a Thursday night as well as on the weekend: “Art (King) Lewis with His Magic Saxophone,” read the ad. Lewis’ glorious sax stuffed the smoke-filled room with its glorious echo, the one that brought Philly, Kansas City, and Chicago to the southwest border town. The audience got a taste of the authentic jazz scene of those far-off places. With Lewis, that cool, mellow saxman adorning the stage, they didn’t just hear the music, they felt their souls stir within their bodies.
According to Baron, Lewis then went on to start his own band: “I became what I call an earth citizen, and that’s how my band The Earthmen came about.” In October 1989, Lewis and The Earthmen played at Shawver Park in the Lower Valley of El Paso at the Texas Jazz Festival, the longest free-running jazz festival globally.
A year later, Lewis and The Earthmen played at a concert series held at San Jacinto Plaza called Art a la Carte. The El Paso Arts Resources Department sponsored the program and showcased a variety of talent within the region, from modern jazz artists to blues.
The opening of the Musicians Bar, or Jam Sessions, then located at 4800 Dyer Street, stands as one of Lewis’ greatest accomplishments. Only open on Tuesday nights from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m., the little adobe building offered musicians a place to flaunt their chops and slide slips during extended jams. In his April 1992 Bordernites piece, Cooper explained that “Jam Sessions is designed to fill the gap that Lewis sees in El Paso.” Lewis claimed, “This is to create more live music, more jamming for the listeners’ appreciation.” This unorchestrated, emotionally-driven, jamming fell in line with Lewis’ style. In his profile, Baron stated that Lewis learned most of what he knew from spending hours on the porch practicing with his grandfather. “He taught me to let your mind be the strongest thing about you, and that words can save you or destroy you…I play things that I’ve never heard. Sometimes when I play a lick on my horn, it’s just that time to play it –– I can’t force it and I can’t delay it.” Jazz Sessions remained an iconic location through the years. Cooper claimed that Jazz Sessions was “very near a couple of places that, as far as I know, are the only African-American bars in the city.”
For Lewis, jamming meant more than just having fun. It stood for a good cause. In a 1997 article, Ramon Renteria explained that Lewis played at the annual Juneteenth celebration at the University of Texas at El Paso. Celebrating the day African Americans in Texas learned of their freedom on June 19, 1865, the Art Lewis Jazz Quartet reveled freely alongside other talented groups, like the Umoja in Motion dance troupe. Additionally, in March of 1988, Lewis performed at a human rights celebration and raised money for the El Paso chapter of Amnesty International.
Photo caption: Art Lewis (Photo courtesy of Hector Montes)
According to Escamilla and Quiz, the jazz legend said he liked “the freedom African-American musicians had.” From a young age, he understood that “back in the ‘40s you had segregation, but it wasn’t for the musicians. They had freedom to play whatever, although the blacks had to stay on the main floor and the whites on the balcony.” Through his heartfelt music, Lewis suggested that music has no actual ethnicity. As a sax-wielding jazzman, he showed people they were all the same. Despite a person’s outer appearance, skin color, their social status or ethnicity, in the dim lights of a steamy nightclub, they were raw, human souls, all together and tranquilized by the sound of the sax flowing through them.
Playing gigs four days a week, Lewis had a jam-packed schedule. He was often sought after to play at numerous events, including private parties. He released Artworks in 1992, an inviting debut mix of blues and border-inspired tunes to include the song “Downtown Bordertown.” In a March 1997 El Paso Times article, Maria Cortes Gonzalez explained that around the time of Lewis’ 62nd birthday, he released a second album called El Paso Art containing Latin jazz tunes. Lewis’ blend of Latin and jazz styles exhibits the diversity of his personality and his love for the music of different ethnicities. El Paso Art is a labor of love, the product of affection for a city represented by multiethnic people and a friendship that began in the 1970s. Hector Montes met Lewis at a Central El Paso bar where he first heard the saxman play. What seemed like a lifetime later, in 1998, Montes found himself producing El Paso Art and organizing Lewis’ annual birthday jams. One of Lewis’ closest friends, Montes knew the jazzman rather well. In a 1998 El Paso Times article by David Borunda, he stated that “he [Lewis] is one of the most authentic jazz and blues guys in El Paso.” Nicole Carroll explained in her June 1992 El Paso Times article that the El Paso City Council declared June 23rd Art Lewis Day. Steve Snyder, a background instrumentalist in Lewis’ Artworks, expressed, “He’s an institution like the Miners or the Diablos…” Through his success, however, Lewis always regarded himself as a student of music. “I call myself a student of music. That way I don’t close the door on knowledge…” said the jazzman in an April 1997 El Paso Times article by Cortes Gonzalez. The article covered Lewis’ 61st birthday. Lewis said, “Age is a state of mind. As long as the ideas are still there – that’s the main thing.” Although increasing in age and wisdom, Lewis’ harmonic spirit remained young and open to new experiences. In a 1996 El Paso Times article covering Lewis’ 60th birthday, he stated, “I was taught that jazz is always a new experience. Any time you play a song –– even if it’s 100 times –– the emotional side of music is always completely new…I don’t think about yesterday too much…Jazz is so close to yesterday. You build off yesterday, but you don’t repeat it.”
In a February 2012 whatsup article, Dan Lambert, a guitarist whose eclectic style fuses rock, jazz and music from other cultures and countries, explained that to be close to his “ailing mother,” the great jazzman returned to Houston in 2004. The Sun City lost one of their greatest legends, but they would never forget his legacy. Lewis passed away in Houston on January 31, 2012, at the age of 75.
“There’s an old saying that says that the end of a song is only the beginning of it. That music never ends and the knowledge of it doesn’t either,” Lewis told Cortes Gonzalez in 1994. “And only if you were satisfied with what you’ve played, that would be the stopping point.” Lewis continued, “I’ve never reached that point.”
Lucky for us, Lewis never found his stopping point. If you listen hard, you can almost hear the wail of his sax hovering over our beloved city. The mellow sounds drift low and close to the glittering city and the barren landscape. You can hear the jazzman’s never-ending song, his emotionally-inspired jams, his legacy serenely making its way through the night. The image of a small boy holding a broom to his lips marks only the beginning of a great song, a song that never ends.
tags: Biography
