This page on the Corky Siegel website will serve as an Ernie Watts info page while his site is under construction.
2-time Grammy Award winner Ernie Watts is an extraordinary force of nature with a very diverse history, recording with everyone pop including Marvin Gaye, Earth Wind & Fire, Carole King, Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, (and three months touring with the Stones) plus a long history playing jazz, with people like Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, Thelonious Monk, and Arturo Sandoval. Not to mention 20 years with "The Tonight Show Band." So when you hear a special saxophone sound that you know so well--that's Ernie! “He is one of the greatest living tenor saxophonists, at the top of his game." - Ian Patterson / All About Jazz
Read his story here and see some of his current activities and partial disgography.
Jazz Icon Ernie Watts
"He is one of the greatest living tenor saxophonists, at the top of his game." - Ian Patterson / All About Jazz
The two-time GRAMMY-winner first picked up a saxophone almost 60 years ago, at 13. He heard John Coltrane at 14, on the album ‘Kind of Blue,’ and says, “It was as though someone put my hand into a light socket.” At 16, he was a featured soloist with the Delaware Symphony, but learning jazz by ear as a neighbor lent him jazz records. At Boston’s Berklee College of Music on a Downbeat Magazine Saxophone Scholarship, he joined Buddy Rich’s Big Band when the lead alto quit in Boston. He was to be a “bright student fill-in” to get them to NYC, but instead toured the world with them for two years, and recorded two albums with the band. “I guess I got the job!” he laughs now.
In 1968 Watts moved to Los Angeles, where he knew many players from doing summer TV shows there with Rich’s band. He began working in the big bands of Gerald Wilson, Louie Bellson, and Oliver Nelson, doing a 3-month State Dept tour of West Africa with Nelson’s band in 1969. Soon Watts was guesting in and recording with Cannonball Adderley’s Quintet, and started to receive calls to work in the studios. He became “first call” for all the reed instruments, and did films, TV, and recordngs with pop icons such as Marvin Gaye, Steely Dan, Carole King, Frank Zappa, all the Motown artists, and many others, plus had 20 years in Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show band, but still regularly played jazz in area clubs and led his own group. Charlie Haden, the iconic jazz bassist, heard Watts at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles, and asked him to play. Watts joined him in Pat Metheny’s Special Quartet touring Asia, then as a charter member of Quartet West, Haden’s jazz quartet from 1985 til his death in 2014. Playing with Haden inspired Watts to move from commercial music in the studios to his central love, live jazz, on the road. By 1992, he had shifted his work entirely to jazz.
In 2004 Watts and his wife Patricia started Flying Dolphin Records, so Watts would have creative control of his music. “Wheel Of Time” (2016) is the label’s ninth release, recorded with his EU Quartet, which has been together for over 15 years. He dedicated the title tune, one of his four originals on this project, to his bandleader and friend for nearly 30 years, Haden. In 2014, Watts received the Frankfurt Music Prize in Germany, for excellence in performance, composition, and lifetime achievement in music; of the 32 musicians honored before him, only 5 others are jazz players. The American Ambassador to Germany attended the ceremony. 2015 saw him chosen as Guest of Honor at the Telluride Jazz Festival, playing on the Ernie Watts Stage with his own Quartet.
Recently he has also been featured in multi-genre bands that meld his jazz saxophone in with other music traditions, such as his work with Dr. L. Subramaniam, the celebrated South Indian Classical violinist, and his traditional Indian group; Corky Siegel’s ChamberBlues, which has renowned Siegel on blues harmonica, a tabla player, a string quartet, and now the Watts horn, and with Marcus Schinkel in Germany, whose group fuses jazz with classical composers such as Beethoven.
Watts tours in Europe, Asia, and North America, often with his own Quartets (and sometimes Quintets) with whom he plays his original music plus jazz classics, and teaches master classes at colleges and universities during his tours. One of the latest projects, in 2015, was the Sligo Jazz Project and Festival in Ireland, a week-long workshop with students with two festival concerts as well. He also performs with symphonies, most recently in 2016 in Long Beach California with an 84 piece orchestra, featuring a piece written for Watts, “Nightbird,” by film composer Michel Colombier, which was first played the night he met Charlie Haden.
Believing that music has the power to connect all people, Watts says,
“Music is God singing through us.”
Partial Discography: Four Plus Four • To The Point • Analog Man • Spirit Song • Alive • Reflections • Blue Topaz • Classic Moods • The Long Road Home • Unity • Reaching Up • Stand Up • Afoxé • Project Activation Earth • The Ernie Watts Quartet • Sanctuary • Musican • Chariots Of Fire • Look In Your Heart • The Wonder Bag • Come Together • Planet Love
ERNIE WATTS PLAYS KEILWERTH SAXOPHONES EXCLUSIVELY,
PETER PONZOL SYNTHETIC REEDS ON TENOR, AND
D'ADDARIO JAZZ SELECT REEDS ON ALTO AND SOPRANO.
Ernie Watts Calendar of Current Events
2023
November 30 • The Barclay Theater, Irvine CA • with Diane Schuur
December 9 • The Grape, Ventura CA • with Janis Mann
2024
January 13 • The Baked Potato, Studio City CA • The Ernie Watts Quartet
January 17 & 18 • The Back Room, Berkeley CA • with Corky Siegel
January 26 & 27 • The Green Mill, Chicago IL • with Brad Goode band
February 2 & 3, Cincinnati OH • with Brad Goode band
March 7-25, Europe • various cities and venues • with The Modern Standards Supergroup
April 21, Long Beach CA • California State University, Long Beach • with Jeff Jarvis Jazz Band
May 7, Calgary, Alberta • Concert with Diane Schuur
June 21, Phoenix AZ • The Music Instrument Museum • with Diane Schuur
June 22, Las Vegas NV • with Diane Schuur
July 14, Long Beach CA • All Saints Episcopal Church • concert with Bill Cunliffe
That’s all so far! Check back often.
Description of Ernie and Corky Duet
Jazz Icon Ernie Watts from California and Chicago blues harmonica ace Corky Siegel first met 15 years ago, far from their homes, in India of all places, at the The National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai. They were each invited by the distinguished violin virtuoso, Dr. L. Subramaniam to perform in his Global Fusion project. They have been best of friends from the moment they met and continued to collaborate in celebrated performances and on acclaimed recording projects. Ernie is featured on both recent releases of Corky’s revolutionary project Chamber Blues that received Downbeat Magazine’s Editor’s Pick in 2017 and a nod for one of the best CDs of the year for 2022. Corky of course was the co-founder of the popular Siegel-Schwall Band. Ernie has performed and toured with the biggest names in music history (i.e. Rolling Stones), crossing genres and borders bagging two GRAMMYs in the process. Additionally, Watts was a member of the Johnny Carson Tonight Show Band. The series was ranked as one of the greatest TV shows of all time. The evening will be a display of musical fireworks from these two iconic masters, filled with remarkable stories and humor from two extraordinary lives. Corky is known internationally as one of the world's great blues harmonica players, a blues pianist, a singer-songwriter, and is a Blues Hall of Fame Inductee. In Corky’s words; “Ernie and I are Innocent victims of incredible good fortune."