[upbeat music] NARRATOR: Here we have a report on a horn player who hasn't been around in the flesh for a long time, but keeps turning up.

Way back in 1979 at the Oregon Jazz Society picnic, Jim Pepper confronted Johnny Green's song, "Body and Soul".

Virtually every exponent of the tenor saxophone and jazz has at one time or another tested him or herself against the famous Coleman Hawkins rendition of this song, which boosted the tenor into a large prominence in the 1930s.

Pepper, an Oregon born American Indian was and is still famous in Europe.

For those who remember him in Portland his own town, he's frequently thought of as an excessively colorful character.

But he was walking up to the stage playing his saxophone and he could not see the black monitor speaker that was on the edge of the stage.

So with his saxophone in his mouth he tripped over the monitor.

He did a complete summersault with the saxophone in his mouth and came up playing and played on a slow blues played this smoking blues solo that was just, had all these b*g f*t biker women going.

[shouting] At the end of the, I mean it was the most spectacular stage entrance I'd ever seen in my life.

[gentle music] NARRATOR: Pepper created a very singular body of music, which included mainstream and free jazz, performed on a very high level, into this context, he incorporated American Indian chants and songs drawn from his Kaw and Creek origins.

♪ It's good where we've been where we're going ♪ ♪ It's so good where we've been where we're going ♪ ♪ Yes it is ♪ NARRATOR: Floy Pepper, the musician's mother, recently revisited this residence in the park row section of Northeast Portland.

It's a storied place.

Four generations of Peppers lived in this house.

which was also a Haven for scores of musicians and other strays.

Floy, who at 90, is the oldest member of her branch of the Creek nation, had a storied career of her own.

Her memoir appeared in the spring 2006 issue of the Oregon Historical Society Quarterly.

She talked about her return to the old homestead.

It evokes lots of feelings, both good and bad because he played his horn when I wanted to sleep, he insisted on playing his busy, his style, his way.

NARRATOR: Floyd's nephew, Jim Pepper Henry, reminded her of the cost of that horn.

MAN: You've paid for that horn.

Many times over yes, over the years.

WOMAN: Well, yes I did that.

MAN: You told me that you have a box full of receipts and there were how many times that you redeemed that horn from a pawn shop?

I don't know how many times, but it was plenty.

NARRATOR: The recent concert of Pepper music was produced by Sean Cruz.

I asked him how he became the foremost promoter of Jim Pepper's music on the west coast.

Well, it certainly wasn't my plan, but I bought this house four years ago and there was, I didn't know anything about the history of the house.

There was just a special feeling about being in the house.

And I found myself buying Native American music, books, pictures, dream catchers.

I'd been living here for a couple of months when I met the lady on the corner who asked me if I knew the history and I didn't.

And she told me.

NARRATOR: The first outing of Cruz as a producer of Pepper music highlighted an association with World music.

Pepper spoke of American Indian and African music as coming from the ground up.

[upbeat music] Following a trip to west Africa where he performed in straw hut villages, not concert halls, his palette was expanded to include additional musical traditions.

Shortly before his death, he traveled to Peru with guitarist JB Butler and Luciana Proaño.

Her Andean bird danced at the Blue Monk to a recording of Pepper singing a powwow 49 song.

♪ I don't care if you're married ♪ ♪ I still love you ♪ ♪ I get you ♪ NARRATOR: Glen Moore, a founding member of Oregon, a band that is also larger in Europe than in this country, performed with pepper in the Young Oregonians, an endearing institution here in the 1950s.

Jim, who was quite an accomplished dancer, would put on a tuxedo and tap, do a tap dance, and then put on full regalia, Indian regalia and do an Indian dance and then put on a sort of snappy outfit and be the cool saxophonist.

NARRATOR: This musical companion of Pepper early and late, improvised a tribute.

[gentle music] With Regard to the pepper family and our connection to the traditions of the Cor tribe in particular, James Pepper was probably the last of the traditional chiefs.

What we call the traditional chiefs and had we continued the tradition of hereditary chiefs, Then my uncle would've been next in line to be a traditional chief.

A little frightening to think about it.

[laughing] NARRATOR: One of the most rendering of traditional pieces in the Pepper cannon is Lakota Song.

I never get tired of singing Jim's music.

I think there's always a reason to play his music.

He keeps all our spirits alive and well and happy and loving and joyous and soaring.

We're planning the Jim Pepper Music Festival.

There'll be a very strong educational component to it.

We're partnering with Portland State University on this project, and we're hoping to bring out Gunther Schuller and his arrangements of Jim's music.

I see a lot of young people following his music.

I see them playing jazz.

I see them playing blues.

I see them playing almost anything.

And following the way that he learned to do.

NARRATOR: Witchi-Tai-To, Pepper's best known composition, has been covered by no fewer than 50 other individuals and groups.

There's even a band named Witchi-Tai-To in Germany.

Here's the remembrance band at the Blue Monk, followed by Pepper himself many years ago.

[singing in foreign language] Pepper Reportedly declined an invitation to perform with The Grateful Dead.

His journey was shorter than the Dead's long, strange trip but it was probably stranger and his music may endure even longer.

[singing in foreign language]