NPR Science Correspondent Joe Palca Discusses the Possibility of Human Cloning.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 07, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 010701NP.217
Type: CORRECTION
Head: Human Clone Clinic
Sect: Science
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Less than one year after a baby sheep was cloned from an adult sheep, a scientist in Chicago named Richard Seed has announced that he plans on opening a clinic in the next 90 days to clone human babies. Seed is a physicist who was involved with fertility research in the '80s.

In a few minutes, we'll hear from Gina Kolata, a New York Times science reporter who has written a new book about the history, science, and ethics of cloning. First, we have NPR science correspondent Joe Palca with us. Yesterday, he broke the story about the planned human cloning clinic.

What does Richard Seed want to do at his clinic?

JOE PALCA, NPR SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: Well, he wants to provide this as an alternative to infertile couples who want to have babies. And he's described certain scenarios where cloning would be a couple's only option. For example, if a man can produce no sperm at all and he wanted to have a genetic offspring related to him, he would have to give some of his DNA from a -- not a sperm, and that would essentially be cloning him by putting it into presumably his wife's egg, which had had its DNA removed.

GROSS: This fellow sounds pretty confident that he's ready to begin human cloning. But what are some of the scientific obstacles he has to overcome in order to actually do it?

PALCA: Well, they're really enormous. I mean, the Scottish scientists who succeeded with cloning Dolly only succeeded after more than 200 attempts. So, to say that he's confident is more than anybody in the world says about trying this in any animal. Sheep, where it's been done, there have been reports that -- I've talked with people who've said they've tried it in cattle and there may, in fact, be some pregnancies now from this same technique, but only like a handful.

And so to say "well, I'm going to take this technology" -- which hasn't been proven in animals and never attempted in humans -- "and I'm going to try it and I think it's going to be at least as successful as current in vitro fertilization techniques" is pretty wishful thinking, I think.

GROSS: Can he legally start cloning humans in Chicago?

PALCA: Well, in one sense, he can. Right now, there's a federal prohibition on spending any federal money on cloning. So if you're a private citizen and you want to spend money on cloning, that's OK. There is one state that I know of, California, that has passed a law that makes cloning illegal, so you can't clone in California -- cloning human beings.

So in principle, he could try, but now the Food and Drug Administration has said: "well, you're going to be manipulating cells and tissue in the body and putting it back into people, and we've decided we have jurisdiction over that kind of thing." So in theory, at least, although they haven't seen the details of what Dr. Seed is proposing, they would have authority to look at his plans and approve or reject them.

GROSS: What is the ethical debate surrounding his proposal?

PALCA: Well, I think it goes back to the question of when is it appropriate to try this. There's a larger debate about whether anybody should do this ever, right? And there are some people who say "no, cloning is beyond what we were intended to do." And there are other people who say "yes, cloning is not that different than other kinds of assisted reproduction."

So that's the big debate and that's still an open question. But the debate about whether it's ethical to try today, when you haven't finished proving that it works in animals, seems to be clearer, and most people seem to think it's unethical to do it today.

GROSS: Joe, in your report on Richard Seed, he said that he thinks human cloning will bring us closer to God because God made man in God's image, and now, if man makes man in his own image, that's going to bring him closer to God. And I wonder what kind of reaction that comment has gotten, if you know?

PALCA: Well, just judging by the people around here that have heard it and I've talked to have heard it, it's -- it's one of those comments that encompasses a great deal. And it's so huge in its philosophy that it's a little hard to know how to judge it.

It gives a -- almost a messianic quality to his interest in this, which makes it seem -- makes some people uncomfortable. I think you have to realize that this is not a man in the mainstream. He's a bit of a fringe player and he's a big thinker. And clearly he's seeing this as a calling, in some way, and that makes people uncomfortable. That doesn't make him wrong or doesn't mean he can't do it, but it certainly makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

GROSS: Do you expect anyone is going to try to prevent him from setting up the clinic in Chicago?

PALCA: Yes. I think that the notoriety that has already begun to occur now that his story has been, you know, been out on the national media and picked up in several other news organizations is going to focus a very sharp -- very bright spotlight on him. And I think that, you know, the president was very clear -- President Clinton back in June -- when he said "I'm asking the private sector not to do this, and I'm prohibiting the federal government from spending money on it."

I think it would be very hard for someone to proceed in that climate in such a public way.

GROSS: Well Joe, thank you very much for talking with us.

PALCA: You're most welcome.

GROSS: Joe Palca is NPR science correspondent.

Dateline: Joe Palca, Washington, DC; Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest:
High: NPR science correspondent Joe Palca, who broke yesterday's story that Richard Seed, a U.S. physicist who has done fertility research in the past, is proposing to set up a clinic that would clone babies for would-be parents. President Clinton has proposed banning such efforts for five years, saying it is morally unacceptable and could undermine society's respect for human life.
Spec: Science; Ethics; Health and Medicine; Politics; Government; Cloning

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Human Clone Clinic
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 07, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 010702NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: The Road to Dolly
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:15

TERRY GROSS, HOST: A new book called "Clone" looks at the scientific breakthroughs that made Dolly the cloned sheep possible. The book also examines the ethical debate around cloning.

Yesterday, I spoke with the author Gina Kolata, who's a science reporter for the New York Times. I asked her first to describe the basic concept of cloning.

GINA KOLATA, SCIENCE WRITER, THE NEW YORK TIMES, AUTHOR, "CLONE: THE ROAD TO DOLLY AND THE PATH AHEAD": The idea of cloning is to take the genetic material from a cell -- and let's say it's an adult skin cell, for example. You take the genetic material from a skin cell and you use that to create an entire new organism that is -- that will be born as the identical twin of the person or animal or whatever that gave you that skin cell.

It's kind of an amazing concept because it's saying that you can take the genes from a cell which has already had its fate determined -- take them all the way back to the state they were at when sperm first fertilized egg, and create a new being from those genes. It's amazing, really.

GROSS: The most famous cloned organism is Dolly the sheep. And she was cloned from the cell of an adult sheep. What was so remarkable about the case of Dolly?

KOLATA: There are a couple of things that were remarkable. First of all, these were -- these were cells -- udder cells from a sheep that was long dead and the udder cells had been -- had remained frozen in a test tube in a freezer for three years. What was absolutely amazing about this is people -- many people had thought that this was impossible; that once a cell has reached its final destination, its final fate, you can't turn the clock backwards.

For example, a brain cell never becomes a liver cell; a lung cell never becomes a kidney cell. So, why would we think that a cell taken from an udder of a sheep could become an embryo -- the very earliest embryo -- and develop from there into a newborn baby which is the genetic identical twin of that sheep who's dead; whose udder cells were remaining in the freezer.

GROSS: No, let me stop you right here, and make sure I understand. An embryo cell -- the cells haven't differentiated yet into heart tissue and lung tissue and facial tissue. Whereas once you take the cell from an adult, it's already differentiated. It's become the tissue of a particular organ.

KOLATA: That's right. And people had thought that once you reach that state, the final state of the cell, that something is changed and you can't take the genes backwards again to what they had once been.

GROSS: But this is what the scientists who made Dolly were able to do.

KOLATA: That is exactly what they did. They were able to take those genes and make them into every cell of a new organism because Dolly is a newborn -- was a newborn sheep that had exactly the same genes as that other sheep who's already dead.

GROSS: Now, how did the scientists do it? How did they take this cell from the udder of an adult sheep and clone it?

KOLATA: Well, all the work was done by the egg, which is what makes this really remarkable. The egg is really the cell that does what scientists can't do. What the scientists did was they took an egg from a sheep that was not related to Dolly; just a sheep of a totally different species. And took the genetic material, the DNA, out of that egg. Then, they added into the egg the DNA from the udder cell.

And the way they did that is not as important as the fact that they just added in new DNA into an egg, and the egg reversed the genetic program so that it was no longer DNA that was only going to make new udder cells and turned it back so that it was DNA that could create a whole new sheep.

GROSS: What are the implications of this?

KOLATA: Well, the thing that makes scientists so excited about this is the idea that if you can make -- if you can allow an egg to bring the DNA of a developed cell, a differentiated cell, back to ground zero, back to where it started from again, then why would you have to have that new thing develop into a whole new organism? Why couldn't you force it to develop into whatever you want -- for example a new bone marrow only; just bone marrow? Or have perhaps in the future some time, a new heart or a new liver or new lungs?

In fact, that's why scientists have been so concerned that we not act too quickly in trying to ban cloning, because they say what's going to really change our lives is not cloning new human beings, which although I think it's going to happen, it will probably happen very rarely and for very special reasons -- but actually thinking of, like, when you're 60 years old and your heart is giving out, taking some of your -- some cells -- a scraping from your mouth; taking those cells; putting them into an egg or whatever we end up doing in those days -- in those days in the future; and then letting that new cell grow into a new heart for you or a new liver or a new bone marrow.

And that's going to change our whole idea of what we are as a species. We no longer will have to think that when a part of us starts to give out, that that's it. We can start to think about possibly growing our own replacement parts, and that's just astonishing.

GROSS: It certainly is. Now, you said at the beginning of that thought that you thought human cloning was going to be a pretty rare occurrence if it happens. Why do you think it will be rare?

KOLATA: I think it's -- it's -- oh, I think it's going to be very expensive, just like in vitro fertilization and other assisted fertility techniques are very expensive. But more important, I think most of us will probably want to have children with our partners.

However, there -- I think that there are a few situations when people may -- when cloning may seem like the best option. And in those situations, I think that there are in vitro fertilization clinics that are interested in providing this as a service.

And moreover, I think when it gets provided as a service, we're going to open the door to genetic engineering, which is something that we haven't had -- hasn't really been feasible in the past and is feasible now.

So if you like, I can tell you the situations when I think people might want to clone themselves, and then the situations when they might want to genetically engineer as well. Should I go on?

GROSS: Yeah, well when do you think people might want to clone themselves?

KOLATA: OK. Well I think there's a couple of situations. One of them is -- some people even today have had children in order to have organ donors. Now, this is very rare and it sounds sort of crazy, but ethicists actually have said that it was -- some ethicists -- have said that they thought that this was not objectionable, really.

The one situation in which -- that I read about and almost everybody else did too -- was a family in California named the Ayalas (ph). And they had a teenaged daughter who was dying of leukemia. The only thing that would save her was a bone marrow transplant, which meant they had to take the bone marrow from somebody else and give it to her.

But unfortunately, there was nobody in her family and nobody in a huge computerized data bank of bone -- potential bone marrow donors who matched closely enough to make this possible. So the mother said: "I'm going to have another baby so that I can have a bone marrow donor." And the father had a vasectomy -- said he want -- he wanted to do it so badly he had a vasectomy reversed. The mother was in her 40s.

Somehow, miraculously, she became pregnant. There was one chance in four that the baby would be close -- genetically close enough to match their daughter who was dying. And it worked. The daughter -- the baby was close enough. When she was a year old, she provided bone marrow and she saved her older sister's life and now the Ayalas have two children instead of none.

Now, when I wrote about this for the New York Times, I asked: has this happened before? And the answer I found was yes, it happens more often than people realize. And it also happens with kidney donors. And some families actually abort if the fetus is not of the right -- is not closely related so they couldn't use it as a donor.

Now, you may say that you find this abhorrent. But the problem is that we don't really tell people that there's a -- that they have to give a good reason for having a baby or for having an abortion. It's really considered a private reproductive choice.

If you could clone, you wouldn't have to take one chance in four of having a child that would be of close enough genetic match. You could have an identical twin. Now, the identical twin might be born years later, but who would even have to know it was a clone? I mean, just because they resemble the child 10 years later or something? But you would have somebody that would be the perfect donor. And it could be a private decision of yours.

I think that that would be very tempting for some people, and I think that that's one reason it would happen.

GROSS: Do you think that in the future, cloning might become an option for people who have infertility problems?

KOLATA: I think that there's a human urge to have children that are genetically related to us. And I think that's one reason that so many people go through so many years of agony and spend so much money in in vitro fertilization clinics.

Now, there are many people who for one reason or another -- I'm thinking, many women who for one reason or another don't have a partner and they would like to have children. Some of these women are reaching their 40s, let's say, or maybe even 50. And it gets increasingly difficult, even if you say "I think I'll just take some sperm from an anonymous donor and have my own eggs fertilized," it becomes increasingly unlikely as you grow older that you'll be successful.

So these days, you have a choice. You can choose an egg donor -- a person who's unrelated to you that you don't know -- and you can choose her according to all sorts of characteristics. Is she the same ethnic group as you? What's her IQ? What were her SAT scores? You can go through a whole list of characteristics and choose what you think is the perfect egg donor.

And you can do the same thing for a sperm donor. And then a fertility clinic can mix the sperm and egg, create an embryo just for you, and you can try to become pregnant and have that baby.

Now, I think that there are going to be people who would say: "I would rather have a child that's genetically related to me. I would rather clone myself, and it wouldn't really be me because after all, say I'm 50 years old, I have a clone of myself -- this baby may resemble me, but she will be born 50 years later in an entirely different world. It's not really me. And anyway, isn't that my own private reproductive decision? Whose right is it to tell me whether I can have a baby or what the genetic inheritance of that baby should be?"

So these are some rare situations where I think people -- some people are going to want to spend the money to clone. And I know that there are infertility clinics that will provide that service when it becomes -- when they've had some more experience with manipulating the cells that they will have to do.

GROSS: My guest is Gina Kolata, author of the new book Clone.

More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

We're talking about cloning with New York Times science reporter Gina Kolata.

How does the possibility of human cloning affect the possible things we could do with genetic engineering?

KOLATA: What cloning does for the very first time is allows us to think about -- seriously think about -- doing genetic engineering of human beings. And the reason is that one of the problems with genetic engineering is: how are you going to get those genes into the cells?

Say you wanted to make a child that was going to be resistant to AIDS, could never develop AIDS. We know there are genes that confer resistance to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. But how would you get them into every cell of a human being?

Well, if you cloned, it's actually not that hard. For example, you could take a cell -- let's take the kind of cell that everybody always wants to take -- a scraping from the roof of the mouth, because it's so easy to get. And you could grow it in the laboratory into huge sheets of -- millions of cells if you wanted them. You could have a lot of those cells.

Now you could add to those cells a gene that confers resistance to AIDS. Now, most of those cells, when you add genes, most cells don't take them up. Most -- almost every cell just rejects the gene. And even those that do take up the gene, don't use it. But there may be, like, one out of every several thousand that does take up the gene and does use it properly.

Well, you don't care. You've got millions of cells. You just find the one or two or three, whatever you need, that has the gene that you wanted to add. It's inside the cell now. It's being used. You clone that cell. And now you're going to make a person whose every cell in their body has a gene that makes them resistance -- resistant to AIDS.

And we can think about that for a lot of genes that we're now finding with the human genome project and with other research, that confer resistance to diseases, like, let's say, Alzheimer's disease. So, we can think about doing something that's morally equivalent, I think, to vaccination. When you make somebody resistant to polio, you do it in a very different way, but the result is they can never get that disease.

The questions will come in when we get more complex genes and more complicated traits.

GROSS: What do you see as the real hazards, the dangers of cloning?

KOLATA: We actually don't know for sure, but everything we know about cloning indicates, sort of paradoxically enough, that it would be safer than normal reproduction. Now, this is going to sound weird because you've probably heard a thousand times about all the dangers of cloning.

But in fact, most of the things that go wrong, go -- when -- and -- and create birth defects or more likely, embryos that just die, so the woman has a miscarriage -- go wrong right in the very beginning when you're starting -- when an egg is start -- when an egg cell is starting to get itself ready to be fertilized or a sperm cell is developing so that it can fertilize an egg.

And with cloning, you avoid those steps altogether. You're starting out with genes that have already gone through that step because they come from an adult organism. So you would avoid -- so, if this -- and these common birth defects -- they're so common that by the time you get into your 40s or so, about 90 percent of all fertilized eggs don't survive because they have these -- these genetic defects.

And the other thing that makes -- that makes human reproduction so chancy is chance -- is mutations that can occur that can be lethal or that can cause serious diseases. You don't have that problem with cloning. You're taking a cell whose genes are fine. You know that. Otherwise, that -- that -- you wouldn't have even gotten that cell because that animal or that person wouldn't have survived.

So you actually avoid a lot of the things that make -- that make it so chancy to reproduce the normal way.

GROSS: You know it's interesting, Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists who cloned Dolly, opposes human cloning. What are his reasons for opposing it?

KOLATA: Ian Wilmut's been very careful about this. He says that he finds it abhorrent and he doesn't like human cloning. When I asked him about some specific examples that were sort of along the way, he wasn't quite as adamant.

For example, I asked him: suppose you were infertile and you wanted -- and you were having a lot of trouble having embryos. And suppose you only could get one embryo, but the doctor said "let me clone this embryo" -- not cloning the human being; clone the embryo -- "and make eight or 10 instead of the one that you have, and then you'll have a better chance to become pregnant. And then if you have a few left over, we can freeze them and you can have the identical twins a few years later. Is that objectionable?"

And he said no, he didn't really have a problem with that. Now, that's still creating identical twins born years apart. But then you say, well, what is objectionable? And he keeps coming back to the fact that he really wants to go ahead with his research, which he and I and many others believe is going to really advance medicine in a different way because it's not cloning humans, it's cloning animals. So, it's also going to advance science.

And he doesn't want people to think that he's interested in being out there saying "I'm going to clone" and that he's some sort of a madman. So, I think he's been purposely cautious, scientific, and I think appropriately, too. And he's stayed away from things which he has no interest in doing. He's not going to clone. He doesn't work with human cells. And his work is not really directed toward that.

GROSS: Gina Kolata is a science reporter for the New York Times. Her new book is called Clone.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Gina Kolata
High: Science writer Gina Kolata of The New York Times. She's written a new book about the science of cloning, "Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead." It's about how the sheep Dolly, cloned from an udder cell, became the first clone in July 1996. It's also about the implications of cloning for genetic engineering as well as the ability to clone human beings.
Spec: Technology; Science; Health and Medicine; Ethics; Sheep
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: The Road to Dolly
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JANUARY 07, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 010702NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Elvin Jones
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:40

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Drummer Elvin Jones recently celebrated his 70th birthday. His most influential work was with John Coltrane from 1960 to '66. Their Village Vanguard sessions were recently re-released in a CD box set.

Jones has topped Downbeat's readers and critics polls for the past two years. As a recent cover story said, "Jones is instantly recognizable by his rumbling feel, his free-form solos, the signature touch of his brushes, and the sheer force with which he hits the drums. Perhaps more than anyone else in the history of jazz, he has proven that the drummer can be more than just an accompanist."

Jones is from one of the most celebrated jazz families. In fact, his first recording as a leader, made in 1961, featured brother Hank at the piano and brother Thad on trumpet.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, JAZZ DRUMMER ELVIN JONES, ACCOMPANIED BY BROTHERS HANK AND THAD JONES, PERFORMING)

ELVIN JONES, JAZZ DRUMMER: I wanted to play since I was two years old.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

JONES: And I've always wanted to play drums. I never really wanted to play another instrument. You know we had a piano, and Hank -- and an older sister who played piano as well. She was a classical pianist; and Hank, you know. All the rest of the -- we all -- my other brothers and sisters all -- they -- everybody took piano lessons. And they could do something, at least play the scales.

GROSS: How did you know that it was drums for you?

JONES: Because I saw them. I used to see -- I used to see the circuses -- Ringling Brothers. We lived in a place in Pontiac, Michigan where right in front of our house was a huge -- a great open field -- I guess about, you know, maybe 1,000 acres or so. And it was just where all the circuses used to come and they'd pass right by our house to, you know, with all their elephants and, you know, zebras and horses and all of that -- camels and all these things. I just -- I just used to see them when I was a little boy.

And, you know, I'd see -- they would always have a circus parade and I just got fascinated with the drums, with the percussion. I'd watch the drummers, you know. They'd be dressed up in these fancy, beautiful uniforms. I thought they were very -- there was a similar type -- just the uniforms I used to wear around when I started playing in the high school band.

But I guess that started me off. So I was very, I was just -- enraptured with that -- with that, and I always -- I would follow that band for a mile or so, and just -- just to walk next to the drummers.

GROSS: You were in the marching band in school, weren't you?

JONES: Oh, yes.

GROSS: Do you think that the kind of parade drumming and marching band drumming that you were so fond of as a child affected your drumming later in life?

JONES: Well, it certainly -- I developed a good sense of time, 'cause one had to march and -- for -- the standard tempo was 120 beats per minute, and of course that -- it gives -- it does something to you after you walk -- if you march for two or three miles and go out to play a football game, and go through the formations of making letters or whatever. And I think it certainly gives you another sense of what percussion really is all about and what -- and how it relates and how it blends with everything else; that it's just as much a part of music as any other instrument in a band.

GROSS: When you started to play the drums, what did you do to strengthen your hands and to learn how to coordinate your hands and your feet?

JONES: Oh, God. Well, I didn't start using my hands and my feet that much. I -- you know, I started simply with a pair of drum sticks, a textbook, and a drum pad. And all together, the whole thing cost about -- less than $3. And it was not so easy to get $3 in those days. But I was just -- had to learn the basics; had to learn the rhythm and stride; had to learn to -- you know, I did what my -- what, you know, the assignments given to me by my teacher.

GROSS: How old were you before you had an actual set of drums in your house instead of just a drum pad?

JONES: Oh, I think I was 21 years old. I had been in the army, to the air -- Army Air Corps rather. And did my service. And when I got discharged, I, with the mustering out pay that I had, I borrowed another $35 from my oldest sister and I bought a set of drums. That's when -- that's the first set of drums I ever had. I was almost 22 years old.

GROSS: When you got out of the military, I think for a while you played in a house band in Detroit at a club where a lot of well-known musicians came and you accompanied them.

JONES: Oh, yes.

GROSS: So that -- that must have been a great way to get exposed to playing with a lot of people.

JONES: Yes, it was. And it certainly improved my education a great deal, because my main purpose was try to learn as much as I could about what -- what the music that had fascinated me so much, because I was in the Army, I was in the air corps when I first heard a real -- what I would think -- organized big-time what I thought was one of -- some of the greatest music that I've ever heard in my life, on a recording. I heard Dizzy Gillespie and -- Big Sid Catlett (ph) was the drummer who -- out there -- is just amazing, this guy.

He -- and he -- and they played Dizzy's composition of "Salt Peanuts," and Sid Catlett played an intro -- an eight-bar introduction. And it was -- and on brush -- with brushes. And I never heard anything so beautiful, so precise, so musical -- that I was completely enraptured by that. And so, I -- from that point on, I tried to -- I listened to every -- every record that I could possibly get. You know, there weren't very many records floating around in barracks in those days, and they're all -- and even if there were, it was not so easy to find a record player to play them on. We had one, and you know, the needles were all dull, so -- you know.

But we managed to listen to it anyway. But that -- I thought that was just fascinating -- I was just fascinated. I've been fascinated from that point on. I've never lost that enthusiasm. I think it's just the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard in my life.

GROSS: My guest is drummer Elvin Jones. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with drummer Elvin Jones.

Now, I know you auditioned for Benny Goodman's band, and I'm thinking how jazz history would have been changed if you ended up playing -- playing with Goodman and going in that direction when you were a young man. He didn't hire you. I guess he had his reasons.

JONES: Well, you know, I had this audition. And I think, you know, I was -- it was mainly instigated by my brother Hank 'cause he was playing with Benny Goodman then. And they had -- Benny had made this movie, "Benny Goodman Story," so...

GROSS: Oh yeah, with Steve Allen as Benny Goodman.

LAUGHTER

JONES: Yeah.

GROSS: Yeah.

JONES: Anyway, yeah. So Benny had reactivated his big band and Hank was a prominent part of that because Daddy Wilson (ph) didn't -- you know, they were going to just re-form the band and go on a world tour to promote the film.

So I -- my brother, I think, was planning -- he was -- dabbled in a little nepotism at that time to get me to come to New York and -- maybe be a part of that -- that band. So anyway, I didn't pass that -- I didn't make the audition. And I didn't really feel so bad after I found out that they had been auditioning drummers for about a week before I got there.

And just -- and the day before, one of the drummers that I really admire, Shadow Wilson (ph), he didn't pass the audition either. So, I didn't feel so bad about that thing.

GROSS: How did you end up playing with John Coltrane in the early '60s? -- I mean, when you first started playing with him in the early '60s?

JONES: Well before that, when I lived on East Sixth Street, right off Second Avenue, and on Fourth Street in the Bowery, there was this club "The Five Spot" -- one of -- the first Five Spot. And there I met Thelonious Monk. He was playing there every night, with John Coltrane and with Shadow Wilson and Wilbur Ware (ph) -- that was the bass player.

And I used to sit there every night with a, you know, hold a glass of beer for three or four hours and listen to that music. And any rate, that's how I first -- I met John Coltrane there. And then later he started to play with the Miles Davis Band and I had occasion to substitute for Phillie Joe Jones (ph) once or twice.

And during this time, John asked -- was thinking about forming his own group. And he asked me, if and when this happened, would I consent to play with him. And I told him I certainly would. And he only had to -- when the time came, you know -- all he had to do was ask me.

GROSS: Since the Village Vanguard recordings that you made with John Coltrane in 1961 have just been reissued, why don't I play something from that. I think we'll hear "Spiritual," which is a Coltrane piece inspired, I believe, by a spiritual.

JONES: I grew up in the church, you know. My father was a deacon and...

GROSS: In the Baptist Church.

JONES: ... in the Baptist Church. And Coltrane's grandfather and his mother -- he grew up in this -- almost the same kind of atmosphere that I did. And so Spiritual was -- is something that is very deeply ingrained in our -- in our character. And we -- when I -- Spiritual to me brings memories of my father on Wednesday night -- on Wednesdays prayer meetings we used to have in church, where he would get down on his knees and pray for hours. And you could feel -- you know, even if you couldn't hear or understand all of the words that he was saying, you could certainly feel it.

And that's what when Coltrane played it -- this music -- song Spiritual, then that's what -- that's the kind of feeling that it invoked in me and I suppose a lot of people who have heard it or who had the experience enough to understand what it was he was saying.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, THE JOHN COLTRANE BAND PERFORMING "SPIRITUAL")

GROSS: John Coltrane, with my guest Elvin Jones on drums, recorded in 1961, live at the Village Vanguard, a session just reissued.

I'm wondering if your drumming in the opening of Spiritual as recorded at the Vanguard was composed before -- you know, was thought out before hand? Or if this is improvised?

JONES: It was all improvised. We never had a rehearsal in the whole time that we were together -- not one time. Everything was improvised. As a matter of fact, I never really knew, until I heard a downbeat, exactly what it was we were gonna play. It was sort of like that. You know, once you started play it, then we just sort of fell -- sort of rallied around the flag.

LAUGHTER

And it came off like -- it's very unique. I'd never been -- I never had that kind of experience ever before or since.

GROSS: Did you ever say to him: "I want to know more before we start?"

JONES: No, I wouldn't -- I didn't have that much -- I couldn't -- he was the bandleader. He -- I thought he could play anything he wanted. And I knew he was capable of playing anything -- you know, he could play it in the New York Philharmonic if he wanted to. You know, he had that kind of a discipline. You know, he was a disciplined -- as well as any other musician I've ever seen, you know, on any kind of orchestra or whatever.

And so he knew exactly -- John always knew what he was doing and he had -- he had confidence enough in the rest of us that we would be able to complement and enhance and -- and make it into something that was tangible.

GROSS: Now you've said that the band would never rehearse. I imagine you didn't see any charts or sheet music before -- before playing. Is that right?

JONES: No.

GROSS: No.

JONES: It was all in our heads -- all in our minds.

GROSS: Would John Coltrane talk with you about the pieces? Like for instance, he had a composition "Alabama" that he said was inspired by the tragedy when a -- a church in Alabama was bombed and I think it was four girls were killed.

JONES: Yeah, well...

GROSS: Did he talk with you about that before the piece? Or did you know that the piece was inspired by...

JONES: No, no. He didn't say anything about it. That thing which you're -- that you're referring to -- liner notes. I think somebody -- or he made -- that was an after-thought.

GROSS: That was a after-thought?

JONES: At least as far as the general public is concerned. I don't know what he thought in his own mind. I know what I thought in my own mind and I thought that -- that melody sort of illustrated a lot of the things that -- well, most -- a lot of people were feeling. And it gave us a -- a -- when I was playing that piece, I was -- the tears were coming from my eyes. Everybody in that -- in the group had -- including Coltrane -- had -- was -- it was very sad.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, THE JOHN COLTRANE BAND PERFORMING "ALABAMA")

GROSS: We'll talk more with drummer Elvin Jones after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with drummer Elvin Jones.

When John Coltrane's solos got longer and then your solos got longer too...

LAUGHTER

... I wonder -- I wonder what it was like to accompany him in like, what, 40 minute solos? I mean, that's about the length of a whole set.

JONES: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you. There was one occasion in Philadelphia, where you are now. You remember the Showboat Lounge?

GROSS: Yeah, that was a jazz club before I moved here.

JONES: Yeah.

GROSS: Yeah.

JONES: Anyway, we used to play there quite often, and Pep's Bar (ph) and all, and the Blue Note up there in North Phillie. But we used to play -- the routine was on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, there would be a matinee. And we played a matinee -- that -- this particular matinee, John was playing a very fast tempo piece, and something happened to his horn, like his pad fell out or whatever, you know. And it was just all he could -- he could barely get a tone out of it. It was just squeaks and squawks.

So -- and he wouldn't stop. And so we -- he played until he finally got -- he finally learned -- he finally started making scales out of all of these sounds that were coming out of his horn. And he played this piece for three hours.

LAUGHTER

And everybody -- but the thing about it is, when he -- when we finished, I didn't -- I was ready for -- ready to play the next piece. I said "OK, what are we gonna play next?" And the matinee was over, you know.

LAUGHTER

But you're talking about 40 minutes was -- I thought he -- sometimes, you'd -- it -- it - the way that group was, I think it was -- the time didn't really have any significance, you know. I didn't get tired. Nobody got tired. It was just to pursue an idea or a mode to its natural conclusion, and if it took an hour or 40 minutes, two hours, whatever -- then that -- so be it.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, THE JOHN COLTRANE BAND PERFORMING)

GROSS: What about when the music of the group started moving away from time signatures and getting freer? As the drummer, how did you feel about that?

JONES: Well, just like anything else -- I don't think any -- It didn't -- It really didn't matter 'cause that's what you -- what you -- what you refer to as an abstract. And so, there was nothing strange about being -- about abstracts, 'cause I used to like to watch with -- look -- watch -- look -- watch, you know, going to a museum in Detroit, they had a lot of Jackson Pollock's paintings, you know; and Matisse and Picasso and all these guys. That's all abstract. You know, I didn't think it was any different than anything else. It was just a musical abstract.

But the portrait is there nevertheless.

GROSS: What were your brothers' Hank Jones and Thad Jones reactions to your work with Coltrane? Did they -- did they think it was getting too far out? Did they like it?

JONES: I guess so. I don't know. I know Thad -- they liked me, you know, that's the main thing.

LAUGHTER

They didn't care what I played. I'm the baby boy.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: So, did you not even know what they thought of the music?

JONES: No, I never -- I don't know. They always knew I could play very well, and I know I was a good drummer. And they told me that many times.

GROSS: Elvin Jones -- his Village Vanguard sessions with John Coltrane were recently released as a CD box set. Jones now records for the Enjah (ph) Label.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: Elvin Jones
High: Drummer Elvin Jones is considered one of the most influential drummers in the history of jazz. He gained an international reputation playing with the John Coltrane Quartet in the 1960s where he developed his improvisational style. Last year he turned 70 years old. Jones is now performing with his Elvin Jones Jazz Machine.
Spec: Music Industry; Elvin Jones; Jazz
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End-Story: Elvin Jones
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