Hugh Masekela tells all in new book, 'Still Grazing'

Jet, July 12, 2004

South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, known worldwide for his signature hit Grazing in the Grass, says there's one gift that he will never forget--a trumpet from the legendary Louis Armstrong.

Masekela was 17 years old and living in a township in South Africa when Armstrong mailed him one of his personal trumpets.

Masekela, 65, shares that experience and many others in his revealing autobiography, Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela (Crown Books, $24.95), written with noted journalist and professor D. Michael Cheers.

Still Grazing was published to coincide with the 10th anniversary of a free South Africa and the release of the trumpeter's greatest hits CD, Still Grazing, on Verve Records.

Armstrong's trumpet catapulted Masekela and a group of young musicians to local fame. "His trumpet got us on the front pages of every print media in South Africa," Masekela told JET during an interview at the Johnson Publishing Company headquarters in Chicago. "You didn't see Black people in newspapers in those days. That introduced us to the music community in South Africa."

He writes: "This horn was my connection not just to Armstrong but to a long, powerful tradition that had crisscrossed the Atlantic from Africa to America and back. It was a sign my direction in life was cemented."

He thanks his childhood chaplain, anti-apartheid activist Bishop Trevor Huddleston, for telling Armstrong about him and his youth band and asking him to send the trumpet.

Years later, Masekela won international fame with his 1968 No. 1 hit, Grazing in the Grass. He also got a chance to meet Armstrong and to thank him for his early encouragement.

The trumpeter doesn't miss a beat as be opens up and shares everything from his childhood in South Africa mining towns, defined by music, racial oppression and the bloody tragedy of apartheid, to his rise to the top of the music industry. He shares his warm friendships with Harry Belafonte, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and South African singer Miriam Makeba, to whom he was married for two years in the 1960s. He also discusses his commitment to fighting apartheid in South Africa. He also talks candidly about his failed marriages, his former bout with alcohol and drug abuse and how be survived it all in the powerful book.

"I've had a very eventful life, many travels. I've been all over the world. I've had a lot of unexpected great fortune and then also a lot of dysfunctional periods in my life," he tells JET. "I've interacted with people in all walks of life and stations."

He adds, "Writing this book has given me the opportunity to try to apologize to the people whose heads I stepped on, on my way up and my way through my madness. And it gave me the opportunity to maybe help a lot of people to avoid the pitfalls that I went through. It has given me the opportunity to thank all the people who helped me get to where I am today, a place where I did not expect to be," he says with a smile.