LOOKING BACK ON A LIFE IN MUSIC

by Dick Saunders

After a lifetime in music, Alfie Pollitt is having a breakthrough. At age 60, he’s made his first recording. “It’s like a new career, with the CD out and the feedback I’m getting,” says Pollitt, who was born and raised in Bryn Mawr.

The 12 songs on Alfie – composed and performed by Pollitt – “represent where I came,” he says. The CD is a kind of career retrospective, taking him from his beginnings to the present. He began composing in 1958, when he was only 15. One of the songs on his CD – “15th Street” – goes back to that time, when he first started playing jazz professionally.

He was too young to drink in the bars where he played. “”But the older guys I worked with would kind of look out for me.” He started playing piano at age 3. He’s small, studious-looking guy now, so it’s hard to imagine him even reaching the keyboard as a tot. “I studied with my godmother, who taught a lot of people along the Main Line. Very astute in the classics and expandable into other types of music.

“When I was attracted to jazz, she asked me to bring in some music that we could learn. I brought in a Thelonious Monk book. It was kind of foreign to her, but she didn’t turn it down.

“My parents were musicians as well. My mother, Mae Hemsley, played violin, and my dad, Alexander Pollitt, played cello in a black symphony orchestra, called the Philadelphia Concert Orchestra, between the 1930s and the ‘50s. They would have preferred me staying with the classics. But in time, they embraced what I embraced.

“In fact, my mother used to come down to Lancaster Avenue in West Philly, to a place called the Carnival Bar. She was a church woman and didn’t go to bars. But she came to hear me play.”

One of the songs on Alfie – “Momma Mae” – is named for her. “She’s deceased now, but she got to hear that song, and she liked it.

In his teens, Pollitt played rhythm and blues as well as jazz. And in the ‘70s, he worked with Philly Sound pioneers Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell at Philadelphia International Records.

“It was like an internship. A great experience to be around that kind of discipline. Writing songs on deadline. Playing piano on the road. Touring with Billy Paul and Teddy Pendergrass.”

On his CD, he works in the classic jazz-trio context, with bassist Mike Boone and drummer Eddie Jones. The record was produced by Will Smith Sr., father of the celebrated actor and rap singer. The senior Smith has been in the ice business in Wynnefield, Pollitt says. “Being around his son and other music people, he got bitten by the musical bug. He decided he wanted me to have documentation of my own material” on Smith’s own label, Philly Through My Ear.

At the beginning and in the middle of the CD, you can hear Will Smith Sr. and some of his grandchildren talking about jazz. “What is jazz?” the children ask. Then Alfie and his colleagues answer with music instead of words.

Some of Alfie’s songs have spiritual titles: “(Good Things) Come to Those Who Wait on the Lord,” “The Divine Light.”

“I view spirituality as my path, not any particular religion,” Pollitt says. “I respect them all. I believe that the Creator is in people, water, plants, nature, everything. I don’t see any separation, like God is there and I’m here. The Creator is in all of us.”

Alfie Pollitt’s CE is available at stores, including Tower Records. Or you may check the Web site www.phillythroughmyear.com for more information.

Main Line Ticket, Main Line Times, June 2003