Charles Sullivan -

Charles Sullivan — aka Kamau Muata Adilifu (born Nov. 8, 1944) — is an American post-bop/jazz-funk trumpeter, flugelhornist, composer, and bandleader from N.Y.C. He worked with McCoy Tyner, Yusef Lateef, Lonnie Liston Smith, and Carlos Garnett, then opened his leader catalog with the 1974 Strata-East album Genesis. Sullivan followed with Re-Entry and Kamau, while later credits included sessions with Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Fortune, and Idris Muhammad.

Background

Charles Henry Sullivan was born Nov. 8, 1944, in New York City. His uncles Herman and Hubie James played trumpet, and Hubie gave him private lessons from age ten for two years. Sullivan joined the Hubie James orchestra in 1962 after six months of renewed lessons. Cecil Collins taught Sullivan at the Manhattan School of Music from 1962 through 1967, when Sullivan completed a Bachelor of Music degree.

Sullivan joined New York theater pit bands in 1965 and won a solo-trumpet chair in the Off-Broadway pairing of the Bertolt Brecht play The Exception and the Rule and the Langston Hughes musical The Prodigal Son. The Donald McKayle Dance Company took Sullivan through Europe for five months on a 1967 tour. Lionel Hampton hired Sullivan for a 1968 tour that reached Las Vegas, where Sullivan met saxophonist Sonny Fortune from the Mongo Santamaría band.

Sullivan approached Apollo Theatre house-band leader Ruben Phillips for a job after the Hampton tour. Phillips hired Sullivan within two weeks. Sullivan joined the Roy Haynes Hip Ensemble in 1969 after the Apollo engagement. Count Basie hired Sullivan as lead trumpeter for a short 1970 tour. Sullivan met pianist Lonnie Liston Smith at a Countee Cullen Library concert led by Andrew Cyrille, and the pair worked together in a 1971 band.

Sullivan played with Sy Oliver in 1972 after the Smith engagement. Norman Connors featured Sullivan in an April 1973 Village Vanguard group with saxophonist Carlos Garnett, pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs, bassist Alex Blake, and singer Dee Dee Bridgewater. Sullivan appears on two tracks from bassist Teruo Nakamura’s Unicorn, cut across May and June 1973 at Sound Ideas. Dollar Brand used Sullivan on the Nov. 7, 1973, New York session for African Space Program with fellow trumpeters Cecil Bridgewater and Enrico Rava.

Garnett used Sullivan on the Jan. 18 and 21, 1974, sessions for Black Love, alongside Gumbs, Blake, drummer Billy Hart, and Bridgewater. Bennie Maupin used Sullivan at the Record Plant in March 1974 for The Jewel in the Lotus. Sullivan and Fortune also played together in Collective Black Artists, where Fortune proposed a quintet with Sullivan. The pair brought separate first-album projects to Strata-East. Sullivan began the Genesis sessions at Sound Ideas on June 20, 1974, with Fortune, Blake, Hart, Bridgewater, pianist Stanley Cowell, and percussionist Lawrence Killian.

Discography: