Emmanuel Riggins, 1942-2015

Earlier this week, I spoke to Calvin Brooks, a guitarist who appears in the documentary. Formerly of Detroit, Brooks now plays and lives in Las Vegas. Brooks shared the May 28 passing of Emmanuel Riggins, keyboardist on Grant's Green Is Beautiful (1970), Visions (1971) and Shades of Green (1972) albums. Riggins, a native of Ohio, apparently had diabetes. I signed his funeral guest book which is still online.

While reading his obituary, I learned a lot more about Emmanuel than he shared in his interview for the book or the film. Like me, he appears to have grown up in the church. I also learned that he served in Vietnam.

Rest in peace, Emmanuel.

During our time with Emmanuel in his Michigan home in 1995, he shared stories about how, among other things he and Grant were very close as they were Muslims, but often fell out partly owing to how often musicians had to wait to be paid by shady nightclub owners. Although Emmanuel was impatient, Grant always wanted him to come back and play. Emmanuel even shared how Grant had to essentially ask his father if he could even leave his Ohio home for New York to perform with Grant. It was the late 1960s. Social unrest was commonplace. Emmanuel's father wanted Grant to assure him that his son would be safe.

The late 1960s was also a difficult moment for jazz. Musicians often resorted to funkier playing to sell records and as the documentary reveals, it was often that very music that was sampled by hip hop artists and pop musicians from the 1990s to the present day.

Emmanuel appears about 34 seconds into the trailer.  As he says in the film, he and Grant eventually settled in Detroit, Grant's last home. It was clear from the stories Emmanuel shared that he and Grant often had a good time on and offstage.

Notably, he's the son of Karriem Riggins, a talented drummer who has performed with everyone from Diana Krall, Hank Jones, Ray Brown, Oscar Peterson, Milt Jackson, Donald Byrd, Cedar Walton to Bobby Hutcherson, Kenny Burrell, Benny Green, Mulgrew Miller, Ron Carter, Gary Bartz, Common and Erykah Badu.

His father's passing was hard to hear as he joins a list of people with whom I've crossed paths since work on this documentary began: greater St. Louis disc jockey Leo Chears, Cornelius Watts, owner of Detroit's historic Watts Club Mozambique, which was recently destroyed in a fire; Ollie Matheus, St. Louis nightclub owner who put blacks and whites onstage in his The Holy Barbarian club, angering many; Ollie's brother Virgil, a Ohio businessman who has distributed recordings made in the Barbarian; St. Louis drummer Joe Charles; organist Jack McDuff; saxophonists Stanley Turrentine and Joe Henderson; Ruth Lion, widow of Alfred Lion, founder of Blue Note Records, the label on which Grant was the house guitarist in the early 1960s; and Bruce Lundvall, former president of Blue Note when it was relaunched in the mid-1980s. I could go on and on. May they all rest in peace.

One aside: I have started reaching out to people who appear in the film and worked on the film to let them know that it is finally in post-production. It would have been great to share as much with Emmanuel.