A jazzy person who didn't play jazz

Jazz musicians aren't the only people who play jazz.

Jazz is a way of approaching and doing things, not just a label for a body of musical work. It's as much a verb, an action verb, as it is a noun.

I've been operating with this definition since I was made to fully understand it in an impromptu conversation with legendary musician Ornette Coleman in 1983 in New York City.

Since then, my travels have caused me to encounter a lot of folks with a real jazzy spirit even though they didn't play music: bus drivers, bartenders, clerks, retirees, chefs, people in all walks of life, some celebrated, some not.

Lately, I've been thinking about writing about some of them in this space.

Now, I'm convinced.

The passing of Philip Simmons, master blacksmith, on June 22 made up my mind.

He was a dear friend, a muse, a role model and a teacher to me; a natural man who I've known all my life.

And, in his own way, he played jazz.

So, he is the first of those I will occasionally write about here who are not professional musicians but who live and work according to the principles of jazz. I call them jazzy people who don't play jazz.

Mr. Philip, as I grew up calling him, always sought freedom, just like a jazz musician. He practiced a freedom of expression in his life and in his craft that transformed him and people around him. While he operated within accepted standards and practices, he simultaneously unleashed himself from them with a skill that made something magnificent out of the mundane that was individual to him.

He improvised.

Also, he didn't just construct. He had creative vision. He designed.

Charleston guitarist Freddie Green didn't just strum the strings in the Count Basie Orchestra. He created its sound with his insight and foresight.

Charleston jazz pianist Tommy Gill has his own sound. Mr. Philip has his own look.

He used whatever was available to him. Everything was on the table, or in his case, the anvil.

Saxophonist Coleman Hawkins (1904-69) moved through many styles and periods, from early jazz to the Swing Era to bebop to modern. Mr. Philip (1912-2009) went from shoeing horses to working on carriages to doing auto body work to making tools to crafting ornamental ironwork.

Like Miles Davis, he not only changed with the times, he helped change the times.

Speaking of time, Mr. Philip worked with iron in rhythmic patterns. Jazz drummers do the same thing. Tommy Benford, a Jenkins Orphanage alumnus, was known for his own brand of it in the '30s when Mr. Philip was learning his craft.

In 2004, I conducted an oral history on Mr. Philip for the Charleston Jazz Initiative. I'll never forget it. I had gone over to his Blake Street house to pick him up to go over to the Avery Research Center for our talk. We hadn't seen each other in a long time, so the short trip across town was a good warm up to the taping. He was feeling good.

In his simple style, he waxed philosophically about the melodic and rhythmic characteristics of his work. He said he would strike the iron on the anvil with his hammer at different places for different tones, making a melody. More profoundly, he would hit the anvil in periodic time sequences that created propulsion, like the effect of swing in jazz.

As he was elaborating, a memory of talking to children about his craft seemed to flow into his consciousness.

"I would show them how I hit the iron," he said with his hands as well as his mouth. "As I kept going, I would ask them, 'Do you catch that rhythm? Do you catch that rhythm?' They would smile and get excited and say 'yes, yes, catch that rhythm!' "

He reveled in that exchange with the youngsters, like a call and response among musicians or between a musician and his audience.

The sharing of that story exposes Mr. Philip's humanity. He was connected to other human beings through a higher power in whom he devoutly believed.

His work is full of meaning, symbolism and spirituality.

For me, John Coltrane's 1965 album "A Love Supreme" resonates with Mr. Philip's life. The recording is a homage to God from Trane. It's a four-part suite that comprises the movements "Acknowledgment," "Resolution," "Pursuance" and "Psalm."

Mr. Philip always lived by moral principles. His work over many years in St. John Reformed Episcopal Church reflect that. I have looked up to him for that since I was a child, some 50-odd years ago. I would escort my invalid grandmother to that same church on Sunday, the original one then located at Calhoun and East Bay streets.

He was a giant of a man.

My last time with him was a week before his 96th birthday last year. It was at a luncheon party at Bishop Gadsden Retirement Community where he had gone to live out his life. He was joined by Rossie Colter, head of his foundation; his daughter, Lillian Gilliam; his biographer, John Vlach; an anthropologist; and me.

We talked about a number of things, but most interesting was Vlach's idea that Mr. Philip was part of a very spiritual tradition that surrounds blacksmithing that goes back to Africa.

Just as many of us see Trane's place in the jazz music tradition.

Jack McCray, author of "Charleston Jazz," can be reached at jackjmccray@aol.com.