Jazz exile

On August 21, 1968, as Soviet tanks rolled into Prague, 20-year-old Jaroslav Jakubovic was in a wing of the presidential palace complex, where he and his colleagues in the military orchestra used to rehearse. In their innocent way, Jakubovic and his friends returned the fire. They opened the window of their rehearsal room, below which stood Soviet tanks, and started playing the music that was for them (and for many in the Eastern bloc) a symbol of freedom: jazz.

"The picture that stayed in my memory is this," recalled Jakubovic during a conversation at a cafe during his current visit to Tel Aviv, "we are sitting and playing in front of the open window, as loud as we can, and the Russian soldiers - most of whom, by the way, had slanted eyes and were from all kinds of remote parts of the Soviet Union - are putting their heads back into the tanks."

Jazz was Jakubovic's boyhood favorite and the music that supported him and earned him a reputation in the 1970s, but for 30 years, up until last year, he abandoned his one true instrument, the baritone saxophone. He played the tenor sax in a countless number of Israeli rock albums - and until two years ago at a Czech restaurant in Queens, when the baritone sax came back into his life.

Jakubovic, who has lived in New York since 2001, was in the restaurant with George Mraz, a friend from the happy days in Prague who became one of the leading contrabassists of American jazz. Jakubovic told Mraz he was toying with the idea of going back to playing jazz, and Mraz immediately said: "Let's go to the studio, and bring your baritone."

Three other top musicians also came: the trumpeter Randy Barker, the pianist Phil Markowitz and the drummer Adam Nusbaum. The result: "Coincidence," Jakubovic's first jazz album since the 1970s, which will be distributed in Israel starting this week. It has elegant melodies in the soul-jazz spirit of the 1960s, and uninhibited playing that is full of momentum and has an excellent groove. A big surprise for anyone who thought that the only thing Jakubovic knows how to do with a saxophone is blow into it with all his might, so that even those in the last rows at the Tzemach amphitheater will be able to hear him.

It was a surprise, even for Jakubovic. "I was very scared of entering the studio with these animals," he says. "I had been through all sorts of bad productions in Israel and thought, how could it be that after all those things, and after so many years of not playing jazz, I could play with someone like Randy Barker? Where was I and where was he? But then I heard George's sound, which I've known my whole life, and there were tears in my eyes - and then I was just on a trip, and felt that things I once knew and thought I had forgotten were coming back to me."

Two weeks after the Soviet invasion of Prague, Jakubovic defected from the Czech army and fled to Israel. He was here for two years, played in many productions and in 1970 went to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Good baritone sax players were a sought-after commodity, and Jakubovic was pulled out of Berklee by the great drummer Buddy Rich, and later joined Lionel Hampton's legendary band, where he was one of only two white musicians.

His colleagues, who couldn't pronounce his name, used to call him JJ and that is how he has been known since on the American jazz scene. When the concert tour with Hampton's band ended, the saxophonist Eddie Daniels phoned Jakubovic and offered him the job of tenor saxophonist with one of the top bands in America, the one that played on the Dick Cavett Show and appeared each week at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.

"But I'm not a tenor player," Jakubovic said.

"If you want to play in this city, you have to play tenor," Daniels replied, and Jakubovic bought a cheap saxophone and showed up at the Waldorf Astoria. When he arrived he was shocked to discover that he was supposed to replace Daniels, the undisputed star of the band. He was stricken with fear and barely managed to play.

"During the show's intermission, the band's leader, the drummer Bobby Rosengarden, called me and said, 'What is this, kid, you don't have any sound.' It was terrible. The other players started whistling to themselves as if they didn't hear. I decided to tell the truth and confessed that I'm not a tenor saxophonist and until yesterday had never touched this instrument. And then Rosengarden said, 'And you have the chutzpah to come here and play with the best musicians in the business? Nice. You're hired.' Then he pulled out $1,500 and said, 'Go buy yourself a real saxophone.' See what generosity is. I hope he's now in paradise."

Jakubovic stayed in the band for four years and also played on albums by Paul Simon and Carly Simon, and accompanied Bette Midler in her performances. In 1978, he came third in Downbeat Magazine's annual survey in the baritone sax category. ("Imagine: Jerry Mulligan, Pepper Adams and me," he beams).

In the late 1970s he signed as a soloist with Columbia Records, and says that his first album sold 150,000 copies and his second album (with the ensemble Blast) sold 250,000 copies.

So why, at the height of his success, did he return to Israel in 1980? "I'm second generation," he says. "My mother was a Holocaust survivor, my father died when I was young, so I myself am practically a Holocaust survivor. Before I ate, Holocaust. Before I drank, Holocaust. Before I played, Holocaust. When I got married, I promised my mother that my children would grow up in Israel and there was no way in the world I wouldn't keep my promise."

Immediately upon his arrival, he started working as a producer at CBS records. Israeli pop and rock wanted America and Jakubovic came from there. In 1981 alone, he produced and arranged albums for Shalom Hanoch, Gali Atari, Meni Beger, Sari, Yitzhak Klepter and Premiere. Hanoch's rock album Hatuna Levana ("White Wedding") is the most famous among them, although it was at the time criticized for its raspy tone.

Jakubovic says that his work style as a producer was always very minimalist and modest. "I'm not one of those producers who takes the singer to the beach at 3 A.M. and talks to her about God. I make music. If the singer sings poorly, I tell her: 'That was not good, try again.' That's all. There was one singer who didn't want to work with me because she said I don't suffer enough with her. She said, 'We don't live together, we don't get together all the time.' And I said: 'Why do we have to live together? I have a family of my own.'"

Besides Hatuna Levana, Jakubovic is very proud of his collaboration with Margalit Tsanani, several albums he produced for Chava Alberstein and his solo albums where he recorded instrumental versions of Israeli songs. He is not proud of, and is even embarrassed by many awful productions, as he puts it, that he did in the 1980s and 1990s.

"Israel is a very materialistic place, and for someone like me who comes from a socialist country it was always very jarring. Nevertheless, I got caught up in it. I ran after nothing. To make money I got into all sorts of productions of bullshit that made me want to vomit. Terrible things. And in the end I also didn't make money. Not long ago I met someone in New York who said to me, 'People are making a living, but they don't live.' That's exactly what I was like."

Did the awful productions make him leave Israel in 2001? Jakubovic fidgets uncomfortably in his seat: "Not exactly."

So what happened?

"I don't want to talk about it. I'll say this: Bad things happened to me and my family, and these things caused me to break. I made a bad decision and I left. I'm not pleased with this decision, but it happened and I have to deal with it."

Over the past few years he has composed music for a film, set up a group called Skylight that combines rock and world music, and recently established together with his sons, David (a director and film editor) and Daniel (a rock musician), a disc company, VMM, which is releasing the new album. The company is based in New York and promotes, among other things, Daniel's rock band, Against the Wall.

One of Jakubovic's goals is to operate in Israel, too. Around a year ago, he searched at length for an Israeli singer, "someone classy, along the lines of Chava or Esther Ofarim," and found Noa Redelman, a young singer "with no poses and mannerisms."

He asked Rachel Shapira, an old friend, to write texts for Redelman and he and his son composed and produced the album, which is to be released soon by their company.

Jakubovic, who is now looking for other Israeli talents, says working on Israeli music fills a spiritual need of his: "I'm not planning to return and I really don't miss the industry and the cliques. But I can't disconnect from this place. The roots have sunk in deep. I miss Israel without realizing. It's totally missing."