What's up everybody?
Peter Martin here.
Welcome to the You'll Hear It podcast.
We have a very special deluxe exclusive audio only version.
This week I had the honor and privilege of being a guest on Kirk Hamilton's wonderful
strong songs podcast a couple weeks back, and he was generous enough to share
it, the episode with us, and we thought you guys might get a kick out of it.
If you hadn't heard Kirk's wonderful podcast, you should go check that out.
Strong songs, we'll have a link to that.
But this is the episode in its entirety.
We're talking nineties jazz, two thousands jazz.
He took me back to some really fun record dates and performances I did back
in the day, all the way up till today.
We just nerd it out as we do.
I hope you enjoy it.
Hello everyone.
Kirk here.
Still hard at work on season eight of strong songs.
And in the interim, I have been running interview episodes like
the one that you are about to hear.
This one is with someone who will be familiar to some of you jazz pianist.
Peter Martin is no stranger to the world of music podcasting,
his own music podcast.
You'll Hear It, which he co-hosts with fellow pianist.
Adam Maness is a great listen and I was actually a guest earlier this year.
Talking with them both about Tower of Power.
I ran that episode in this feed a little while back, so
some of you probably heard it.
The folks at Open Studio Peter's online jazz education outfit reached
out to see if I might wanna have Peter on strong songs as a guest.
And I thought, Hey, it's not every day you get to talk with someone who played
on some of your favorite jazz records of the nineties or really of all time.
Peter is the real deal as jazz players go.
He spent the nineties and two thousands working as a side man with artists
like Betty Carter, Dianne Reeves, Roy Hargrove, and Joshua Redmond.
He's also just a killing player.
You'll hear a lot of his.
playing in this episode.
He is man, the guy can play.
He's also of course, led his own groups.
You're hearing a track right now from a recent record of his called
Generation S, which he recorded over the course of a single recording
session at the open studio space in St.
Louis.
Peter and I talked about a bunch of interesting stuff, his musical background,
what it was like to come up learning the Suzuki method, how the nineties jazz scene
differed from the scene of today, and some of the many players who influenced
him as a young pianist from Wynton Marsalis to Kenny Kirkland and many more.
And I do just wanna note, we had some issues with Peter's audio file that
required some creative fixes in the edit.
Hopefully you won't notice too much of it, but if you hear any weird levels or
audio issues, that is what that's about.
It was a great conversation filled with a ton of great music.
I really hope you enjoy it.
So without further ado, here is my conversation with.
Peter Martin.
Peter Martin, welcome to Strong Songs.
Oh, what's up Kirk?
Thanks for having me.
Great to be here.
Yeah, man, I'm so happy to have you here.
It is not every day that we have a player of your caliber on the show, and I'm
hopeful that you can impart some of your chops to our listeners through osmosis.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.
I'll try not to overdo it so as to run.
True music lovers away of which I'm a true music.
I'm not just a, a player.
It's like the old hair thing, you know?
I'm an, i, I love music and I know sometimes as jazz players we can
overanalyze and and nerd out, which is part of the fun too, though.
We've done that a little bit together before, so No, it's true.
It is.
It's kind of a, um, I'm noticing that more these days.
I think maybe it's because of the work that I do, and of course you
guys' show as well, you'll hear it.
Um, I, there is a kind of a new strain of music appreciation from people who
could be snobs, who have the musical training maybe to be very snobbish about
what they listen to and who are instead dedicating their knowledge to kind of
explaining other like non jazz music and just finding the jazz in everything since
so much music, you know, has elements of jazz or has derived from jazz in some way.
Yeah.
I'm starting to realize that there's way more people that are interested in, in.
Jazzy things or jazzy elements mm-hmm.
Or parts of jazz than actual hardcore jazz.
I mean, I think when people are exposed to it and can kind of come to it in
an organic way through a love of a, an album and you do such a great job
of, you know, breaking things down.
I remember you're so what, uh, episode?
I think that was the first time I became aware of you.
It's such a interesting place to come at this music.
And then of course it becomes this not a rabbit hole, like about 3000 rabbit holes
that are all interconnected and stuff.
Uhhuh.
Um, but it's, yeah, I mean, I think jazz, if anything, it's influenced
on so many other forms of music and the little parts that have been taken
and borrowed and thrown around is, is really one of the most interesting.
Aspects of the music for sure.
It's something that, you know, it goes across sampling and it goes across
pop music and fusion and into, I mean, just there are so many groups now I,
all these new, you know, young artists that I listen to who are insane jazz
musicians, but are making music that I don't think I would like categorize
as jazz, or certainly isn't, you know, hard bop, adjacent acoustic jazz, uh,
but has so much jazz, harmony and so much going on that it is very fun to
kind of tease that out for people and show them the links in the chain since.
The links in the, like, that's the whole thing, right?
That's kind of what makes American music so fascinating and always has going back
to, you know, the, the 19th century.
Absolutely.
Well, let's talk a little bit about your story about the links in Peter Martin's
chains since I think some listeners, uh, won't know, you know, won't know you.
You, you are of course a brilliant player and worked as a sideman for
many jazz luminaries, and I would argue are a jazz luminary in your own right.
But also being a jazz luminary is still being a jazz luminary.
Jazz is a, is a little more niche and, um, some people won't
have, have heard your stories.
So how about you?
Give listeners a little breakdown, just how did you get your start?
When did you first start playing piano?
So I was playing, I, I come from a very musical family.
Uh, both my parents, uh, were and actually still are, uh, professional musicians.
Oh, nice.
What do they play?
Like what, what are your Well, they dad and mom instruments,
well they musicians primarily.
My mom plays violin and my dad plays viola, but he also plays piano and organ.
And he's a super talented guy.
Really my kind of just musical mentor in, in addition to my father, you
know, but I mean Right, right, right.
Really just I think a lot of, and my mom as well, she was, she was, she's
kind of semi-retired now, but she was, uh, really my first teacher.
'cause I started on violin.
She was a Suzuki teacher.
Um, and even before I was in school, she'd kind of bring me along
when she was teaching other kids and sort of stuck a violin in my
hand, partly just to be babysat.
Um, but that was really my first.
Instrument.
And then my older sister was playing piano, so I saw that and
my dad played piano, and actually my mom played piano too, so there
was a lot of music in the house.
I was, I mean, I was born in 1970, so it was kind of coming up in
the seventies and early eighties.
It was a, it was kind of a, it was a great time, like to be bored and then have
to find something to occupy your time.
You know what I mean?
It's like, yeah.
Oh yeah, sure.
Uh, and so I love music and heard a lot of great music, so that was
kind of how I occupied myself.
Like the piano was as much just sort of this like machine
or video game or, or mm-hmm.
It was just something that made noise and I could touch and sit at
and, you know, play around with.
And then, um, so, so there wasn't a lot of distractions, you know?
Right.
Um, I mean, there was like.
Four hours straight of cartoons on Saturday morning
for us to rot our brain on.
But that was a very specialized time.
Right.
There was no Roblox, it was a pretty different time.
Although think he watched Hee-Haw every single night, like while my
mom was, you know, making dinner.
Yeah, definitely a different time.
Yeah.
But I heard music and I really came up playing, I guess, you
know, kind of classical music.
Uh, I mean, not when I was two and three in first playing, but I, well,
I, I did learn in the Suzuki method, which I think is a, it's a really
important part of my story and a number of jazz musicians more than you would
think that came up with this method.
Really.
Could Could you explain what the Suzuki method is for listeners?
I don't think I've ever talked about it on the show.
Yeah.
Is this a four hour podcast?
'cause we can do that.
Yeah.
No, this will be act one.
Yeah.
Uh, Suzuki is a, Che Suzuki was a Japanese violinist, uh, that I think came up out,
I mean, I wanna say like the fifties and sixties, but it really came to the US
like right around 19 se early seventies.
Uh, and in fact, my mother was one of the, one of the first American
teachers that kind of imported this.
And she went over and studied with Suzuki, uh, later on, like
in the early eighties in Japan.
Oh, wow.
And knew him.
But he wrote this wonderful book called, he wrote a bunch of books, but
he wrote one called Nurtured by Love.
That's all about like learning music, that same way we learn.
Uh, our first language, what, what they call the mother tongue.
So it's like you typically learn that from a parent or a caregiver,
grandparent, whoever is raising you, you learn English or Japanese what,
whatever your mother tongue, your first language, and you learn it at such a
young age, you're not learning it by.
Reading it, obviously you're just imitating the person that's
giving you hopefully love and attention and, and mm-hmm.
Protection in the world and that's your communication device.
So it's kind of a method that's based around learning music in the same way.
So they start very young in Suzuki, sometimes even as young
as two and three years old.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and you don't learn reading music, you don't learn theory,
anything you just learn.
And it started on violin, but it's been ported to the piano.
Yeah.
And cello and flute and a bunch of instruments.
Uh, but it's just this great thing of learning by ear.
And so it, I think it really helped me years later when I got into jazz and
different kinds of improvised music and trying to learn things by ear.
'cause I had that tradition of learning stuff by ear sort of built into me.
I did learn to read music.
Fairly young, which was atypical for, uh, Suzuki.
'cause I was doing more like traditional piano, but on the
violin I always played by ear.
And yeah, that, that was such a cheat code for me.
Uh, in, in kind of a similar way to some like Gospel Church musicians
coming up where they, they, they learn.
In the church by listening and then trial by fire and imitation and
mentorship and, you know, getting looked at bad by the church elders.
If you're messing up a cord, but they're not learning, there's no charts.
You know what I mean?
Right, right.
And so it's, if you think about learning any foreign language, it's, it's a
very interesting and organic way.
It, especially if you're doing it at a young age, it's a great entry point.
Yeah.
It's so funny, I think of the Suzuki method from my own experience with
it as just something, I bought a Suzuki method book for piano uhhuh.
'cause I am a middling pianist.
You know, I, I learned in school and, uh, you know, took jazz piano,
but I was studying saxophone.
Yeah.
And, and wish I had taken it more seriously.
And then later in life was like, okay, I'm gonna finally start to get
my piano technique together and got a Suzuki book, which is, it sounds like.
Not actually really, uh, true to the core of the Suzuki method, which is
more about having a teacher, having a mentor, and in fact the really original
way, and it's still done like this.
In fact, we did it with our kids and which was a great experience
to kinda have that next generation.
Yeah.
But, but the teacher, the first teacher is actually the parent.
So when you go to a like authentic Suzuki method teacher, the parent.
Learns first, sometimes for months.
And the, the, this, the kid really watches the parent learning the instrument.
And, and in fact, when we did it, my wife did it because I
already knew how to play violin.
Like for the kids to be able to see the parents struggle and learn
something that's a part of the process.
And they're usually too young.
And then they are, are getting, you know, amped up to like, I wanna get my own viol.
I wanna try this.
And you start with a little box and like a chopstick instead of a string.
It's a whole thing.
It's a little, it's a little bit cultish to tell you the truth, but
in a really, I think, fantastic way.
I mean, Suzuki, like the authentic thing is a very particular thing, but it's,
it's had amazing results most importantly.
That's so interesting, the idea that watching your parents struggle to learn
something helps you find a way in which I could totally imagine being true.
I mean, so much of what I do now, I mean like.
Learning guitar is, guitar has been my main focus for the last few years.
I am, I will never be as good at guitar as I am at saxophone.
Right.
But there just came a point on saxophone where I was like, well,
I kind of wanna do other things.
Yeah.
And putting myself back in that place of struggling, of not just being
able to easily play the instrument has been really good for me.
Yeah.
And I could, I'd never thought of it as, you know, something that you could
watch somebody else doing, somebody else struggling with and learning in that way.
It's that beginner's mindset.
And, and a big part of it too, for Suzuki, is the parent needs to know it's,
it's such an interactive thing because you go in once a week for a lesson.
If you're 3, 4, 5, 6 years old, you've got six days of how do you, like the
parent has to be the teacher actually.
Mm-hmm.
That's what it's really about.
But it's not just like, well, you're fiddling around and just fiddling.
Ha.
Catch that dead there.
Inadvertent dad jokes.
Um, you know, somebody has to be teaching at home and a lot of these
methods kind of fall short because you're just having to go by the book.
You don't have the one to kind of Correct.
And especially for violin, it's such a physically awkward in, I mean, when I
switched to piano, I didn't really switch.
I started, I added it.
I was like, oh, this is my home.
It just, oh yeah, you get to sit down.
Ergonomics alone.
All the ergonomics are off the chart.
Yeah.
Press the button, you get a note.
It couldn't be simpler.
It's in tune.
Well, it might not be in tune.
But's not your fault if it's not, you know?
Right, right.
That's so funny.
But that was really my beginning.
It was like so much music in my house.
It just seemed like a natural thing.
It's like the ultimate like.
Sort of cultural privilege, I think, to come up in a household of, um, you
know, I mean my parents loved me too.
They didn't just gimme music.
They were great parents.
Right.
Which is not a given either, but still it's a nice extra thing.
Yeah.
So, I mean, just mu making music and thinking about that as a
profession and or a vocation seemed normal as opposed to mm-hmm.
Most kids get into music and their parents are like, I'm not paying for
you to go to some stupid conservator man, and, you know, get a real degree.
It's so true.
I, I recently made an episode about my dad and he was very much
not that he also just treated.
Wanting, me wanting to be a professional musician as something reasonable,
like, as just a, a career profession, like a profession that I could have.
And it was so important.
And I, after that, I heard from so many people who said something
similar and from a few who said the opposite, basically, my parents never
believed that being a musician was something like a real goal for me.
And so I didn't feel supported and I've regretted it my whole life.
So yeah, that is, that is very important.
Yeah.
But we could go on a whole tangent here.
I mean, I kind of, now I want to ask about the Orff method really quick.
Do you know about the Orff method?
Wait, what's the difference between the Orff method and Suzuki?
I don't know it as well, but I actually did some of that too in
like a. Preschool that I was in.
Um, I remember it sounds, it sounds kind of similar understanding of it right?
All it's the kids like mallets and no reading.
Yeah.
I remember having a lot of fun with the Glock and Glock and spiel.
Yeah.
I, I've taught some students who learned the Orff method, which is
essentially you the same kind of idea.
A lot of ensemble playing.
Yeah.
Focus on rhythm, your training.
Um, and seems like a very cool thing.
I mean, the thing is like music, it's like all these different methods.
I, I think, I mean, some of 'em I think are a little bit whack, but
the main thing is like, music is fun.
Like for kids, like any method where they're not engaged, it doesn't mean
there's not gonna be different levels.
And of course there's the talent we bring to it.
But one big thing in Suzuki is like, it is so much more about how you're nurtured
in music than what your natural talent.
Like they, one thing that's not accepted in Suzuki is like that some people are
not talented enough to play an instrument.
It's something that's so deeply ingrained in me, um, that.
Like if you're sur I mean, people like when they found out my story, they're
like, oh, both your parents, oh, that's why genetically you were predisposed.
I said, no, I just, they played a lot of music around me.
I got to hear a lot of good stuff.
I got lucky on some things.
Yes, I had some talent, but I would say the talent part was way, way, way less
than people think as opposed to mm-hmm.
Kind of a nurturing musical environment.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And kind of tracks with what you're doing now, which I guess we, we could get into
a little bit later just talking about, you know, how you've approached your
own style of teaching and kind of, you know, bring, bringing that forward and.
And offering a lot of people of different skill levels, ways to learn,
since I agree the, the talent thing is typically overblown, even though
it always feels a bit rich coming from someone who, you know, was like, did
grow up with in incredibly skilled parents and like, has been playing for
a really long time and, and has been a brilliant player from a young age.
I mean, you know, it is, it's true.
I could also give you stories about how my parents screwed me up.
There's all, there's those like, we'll, we'll skip over though, so I don't
wanna make it like it was all, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no.
It's, uh, no parent is perfect.
Um, so how did you discover jazz?
When was, when was your jazz awakening?
So I had heard a fair amount of jazz, like from my dad's records, uh, from when I was
pretty young, if not from the beginning.
Like he's, he's really a classical musician, but he's always enjoyed jazz
and, and had a nice little collection.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and so I, I definitely heard it growing up, but it was more like,
that's dad's music, that's whatever.
What were some of the first records you remember hearing?
Uh, well, the first ones I remember were.
There was a great box set called, um, the Smithsonian.
Uh, what was it like the Smithsonian Jazz?
The classic Jazz Collection.
Yeah, I remember that.
And it was like a thing that you had to order or like donate or
become a member of, and then mm-hmm.
And mail this beautiful, like five LP set and like I definitely heard that stuff.
Later on I kind of, when I really started to get into jazz, I dove into
that and it was such a great thing.
Like, like, um, nice Miles Davis, uh, bags, groove is on there.
Mm-hmm.
With Thelonious Monk, art Tatum.
My dad had a record called Art Tatum.
Piano Starts here.
That's, that's the first like real hardcore jazz record that I'm conscious.
Like I remember when I heard that, I was like, what?
Like, what is that?
And then Miles Davis, my funny Valentine, that was a little
bit later, but mainly that.
That classic jazz collection had so much had Ornette, it went all the way up to the
current time, which like the, the craziest thing was like Ornette Coleman in 1968.
I think that's about when that thing was put together.
So it was funny 'cause that's like, wow, we're right.
We're going from Lewis Armstrong West End Blues I think was
the first track on there.
Oh no.
Maybe had some um, jelly Roll Morton even before that Mead, Lex Lewis was on there.
Ah, nice.
So much great stuff.
Yeah, it's interesting to put, to put this in time, you know, you're
listening in the sort of mid seventies.
Yeah.
Which isn't that far after, you know, you talked about my funny
Valentine, that was what, 64?
Yeah.
So it's only like 10, 11 years after that.
So this is like, you're listening to music from, for us, something from 2014.
Right.
But I mean, man, the sixties seemed like, I mean, still to me seems
like because I wasn't alive and it's like, man, that was ancient times.
But yeah, for sure it wasn't.
Yeah, well, in some ways it was even in the seventies and so much changed
just in like recording technology.
The recordings just sounded so different that, that I would
imagine it was very different.
Yeah.
So did you find, uh, a jazz piano teacher pretty soon after you
started getting interested in jazz?
Not really.
I mean, well, I found some sort of mentors and some sources of information.
Um, I never, I, I always had a really great.
Uh, piano teachers coming up.
I grew up in, mostly in St. Louis.
I was born in central Florida, but I, when we, when I was five
years old, my family moved to St.
Louis.
Okay.
And, uh, 'cause my father got a job playing with the St. Louis Symphony
and it was kind of a random move.
He was just like looking to, to, uh, a whole nother story.
Anyway, like that was the first orchestra he, he auditioned at and it was kind
of a warmup 'cause he was gonna go audition at some other orchestras.
'cause normally you have to, and he just sort of got offered the job.
Um, and so it was like, we're moving to St. Louis.
You know, I don't remember any of this or hardly any of it.
Um mm-hmm.
But the idea was that.
Like they, through the orchestra.
I kind of was, I grew up around the symphony players a lot.
I used to go down to the hall, it's funny, it's like a block
from where I'm sitting right now.
Yeah.
Come full circle.
Powell Hall.
Um, so I, I was always around a lot of other good musicians and they,
they got plugged in pretty quickly to some really good piano teachers here.
And I always had, I had three different teachers.
The main one was, her name was Jane Allen, was just an amazing teacher.
Nice.
At that time.
And St. Louis still kind of is like, it was a little bit of an epicenter
for like youth music education.
Mm-hmm.
Especially in the seventies and eighties.
Uh, and even still, so like the band programs really good, the orchestra
programs, a lot of that's trailed off.
But like, it was just a lot of luck that I was here, even beyond my parents.
So I had great classical teachers, but I didn't really have, I had a
couple of jazz teachers sporadically.
Uh, but it was more the classical teacher.
I was listening to records.
Um, and then the big aha moment was in like 1983.
I met Winton Marsalis, who came to St. Louis and played
with the St. Louis Symphony.
And it was right around the time I was really getting into jazz.
Like, I was kind of like, man, I like this.
Mm-hmm.
And he, um, my dad was playing and he met him and said, Hey, my son and some
of his friends, we were in middle school, like, have this kind of jazz band,
you know, you got any advice for him?
And he's like, man, can you bring them down tomorrow to the rehearsal?
I wanna meet them.
You know?
Um, nice.
And that began like a whole, so we got to skip school and we
came down and, and Wynton wasn't that, I mean, he was probably.
I think he's like maybe nine or 10 years older than me.
So like he was in his early twenties.
This is like, he's in the jazz messengers around this time.
Is that right?
After the jazz messengers, but not that long after.
I mean, this was probably like, no, he had already done like his
first couple of Columbia records.
Mm-hmm.
And I was kind of aware of those, especially one because, well, he played
on a Herbie Hancock record mm-hmm.
With the Vs OP two.
And I was really into Herbie Hancock.
I just got into Herbie Hancock.
And so I kind of knew about him from that.
And then he was a real, it was like an explosive time for him
because he won a Grammy for best classical record and for best jazz
record, which had never been done.
And he played live on, I remember I watched that on like CB.
He played classical and jazz.
Can you imagine that?
Yep.
In the main, I know.
Prime time.
They don't have none of that on anymore, you know?
No, it's always been the amazing thing about Wynton, he, um, Monnet
trumpets, the trumpets that he plays, those are made here in Portland.
Sure.
And I know a bunch of guys who work there, so they'll, they'll
get seats for when Winton comes out here, like with Lincoln Center.
Yeah.
And you get to hear him play and Yeah.
I remember even from the first time I heard him, it was that
album, uh, is it called Carnival?
It's like with the Eastman Wind Ensemble.
Yes.
And it's, uh, it's, you know, him playing classical music and
just crushing, I mean, playing.
Oh, yeah.
I don't know.
Circular breathing stuff.
Playing flight of the mumble bee, doing all this totally ridiculous stuff.
Yeah.
And of course that's simultaneous with he's putting out these
groundbreaking jazz records.
Yeah.
So, yeah, he had a big eighties and nineties for that matter.
Yeah.
And I remember my dad was like, slightly, I don't think my
dad had heard him play jazz.
Um, I knew he, he was just like, I remember him just saying, mm-hmm.
He's like, man, this is the best classical trumpeter we've ever played with.
And they'd had like Ma, Maurice, Andre perform with him and stuff.
And he's like, this kid is Unbeliev.
I'm like, kid, man, that dude's old, you know?
But it was just fun to meet him because he was like, um, I mean like the first time
I met him, he gave me his phone number.
It was like, if you have any questions, I remember he told me, he was like,
man, check out Thelonious Monk.
And I'm like, writing stuff down.
I'm like, what?
How do you spell that?
He's like, for what?
Yeah.
And I went to the rec, you know, the vintage vinyl the
next day, the record store it.
Mm-hmm.
Oh man.
You know?
So he really was, was a huge, um.
You know, just open things up for me, even though I knew a few things.
But, uh, he told me about this, this McCoy Tyner solo on la these
lament on an album called Crescent.
And, and I just always stayed in touch with him.
Turns out he was doing that with like a bunch of kids around
the country as he traveled.
Yeah.
You know, um.
And then he ended up connecting us.
And I know we're probably gonna end up talking about Roy Hargrove, um, at
some point, but that was, that first connection I had was through Wynton.
So I mean, like Wynton was, he really was the internet of the eighties.
I, for jazz, like he was the, like, if you wanted to connect with something or
find out some information that's, that was, he was so generous with his time
and, and you know, whether or not there was a ne nefarious diabolical plan to
like, create little underlings to come up.
That's another, I'm not sure, I don't think so, but maybe a little bit.
That's not so diabolical though, you know, that's like, I kind of
get why he would wanna do that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I mean, he was also very controversial at the time.
I, I wasn't totally aware of that.
Mm-hmm.
Because I just didn't have a big worldview.
But I mean, in terms of the jazz community and what he represented, his records,
the amount of money they, and press and marketing they were putting behind him and
his really steadfastness in terms of like.
Defining acoustic jazz is the only real jazz.
I mean, I'm mm-hmm.
I'm simplifying, but I mean, yes.
There, there was a lot of controversy with that, which just, you know, made the story
even more interesting, I think, to people.
Right.
I mean, this was a time where yeah, you could, you could look at Branford
playing electronic, you know, or like funky jazz and Wynton kind of
not being into that style of music.
And then there could be a kind of a narrative of us, like these two brothers,
oh, they differ in their philosophy.
And, and that was some drama that people could get into, which feels kind
of quaint, given today's standards.
But, uh, it was definitely a thing.
I mean, I remember even from when I was young.
Yeah.
And I mean also, I mean, like that next year, he came back and played.
With his quinte at Powell Hall, just a jazz show.
And that was the first time I, and he had Kenny Kirkland on
piano, um, charette mt on bass.
Yeah, Jeff t I'm guessing on drum.
Jeff on drums.
Charette Moffitt was like 17 or 18 years old.
Good God.
Yeah.
And Kenny Kirkland and Branford, you know.
And then the next year when he came back.
He had a different band because Sting came and kind of swooped up Kenny Kirkland.
Right.
And, um, Branford and kind of what you alluded to, there was a little bit of
a, a inter-family feud between Wynton and Branford for them to, you know,
he, he, he described it very much as his brother and, and them selling out.
I mean, he used those words.
He's like, they're selling out to the music and stuff.
So,
yeah.
It's interesting to think about Wynton being this incredibly generous sort
of, uh, vanguard of jazz education, which he very much was when he also
has, you know, later a slightly like a reputation of being kind of conservative.
Yes.
And he is, but he was, he was out there.
You know, I, I know people who've had similar experiences with him.
Um, so I grew up actually in, in Bloomington, Indiana,
like on campus at iu.
David Baker is like kind of a similar kind of figure in the world
of education, and I'm very familiar with what you're talking about.
Some listeners might not know this, like Midwestern.
Jazz scene.
Yeah.
And actually I think people still think of New New Orleans and New
York as being the kind of two like central points of jazz in America.
Yep.
And don't realize that Chicago and Missouri, you know, Kansas City and
St. Louis were just as important.
I mean, Chicago was probably more important.
It was maybe the most important city for jazz.
Yep.
And once you've kind of learned the actual history of jazz and scene,
the way the music kind of moved through the country, it starts to
make more sense how somewhere like St.
Louis, you know, you could land there and suddenly be in the middle
of just this huge world of jazz.
And there was.
There was all this, um, innovation going on in jazz education,
specifically, like what Dave Bak was doing at IU was really groundbreaking.
The way that he was kind of codifying and learning how to kind of build a
pedagogy, I guess, around bebop and how to teach bebop vocabulary, that wasn't
really something anyone had tried before.
And there were a lot of people in that, in that area doing that.
Yeah.
I mean, David Baker, I got a chance to meet him when I was in high school.
And what a guy, one of the cool, one of the coolest guys.
So cool.
Really?
Yeah.
And I actually did a summer program at, at iu, uh, when I was in high
school one year and Oh, cool.
Studying classical with Manam Presler, who was incredible.
Yeah.
Okay, nice.
Um, but I went over and met David Baker and, and, um.
He was so kind.
And we even played something in his, you know, famous office and stuff,
and he was just like, yeah, if you end up coming to iu, let me know.
And, you know, the whole thing, which is probably a mistake that I didn't, I did
audition on classical there, and, um, I, it was one of those, like when I, I
graduated high school in the 1987, there were not a lot of, there was Berkeley,
there was Indiana, I mean, like mm-hmm.
Real jazz programs.
And I would say Indiana's was actually way more real than Berkeley's at that time.
Yeah.
Um, and then a smattering of other things, but like Julliard, where I
ended up going, they had no jazz.
They had a couple people secretly playing jazz and it was New
York City, but they had nothing.
So I, I, I kind of miss that.
I mean, now it's like so many choices.
Miami, I guess Miami was already happening by that time.
It was, yeah.
And by the, in the 80, late eighties, nineties, that was really when it was kind
of picking up like the early nineties.
It had, it was a very different program than when I went there.
So I, I graduated high school like almost exactly 10 years after youth.
So in 99, and then went to Miami right through the turn of the century.
Yep.
And it was, I mean, it was a, it's a great program.
It was very different, I think in the late eighties and nineties.
It was like a little more intense.
I think there was more cocaine there.
And it was also just like a little more studio music focused.
Yeah, man, it was Miami in the eighties, but it was starting out and
they were definitely very influenced.
By Indiana, like Whitt Seidner who one of the, the, you know, big guys there.
He was an IU guy, which actually didn't even know when I went there
and only found out later that Whitt was like in the band at iu.
So you can see how people like David Baker and Jerry Coker, who
I know was, I think was directing the band that, uh, Whitt played in
when he was at IU kind of influenced the whole world of jazz education.
'cause their graduates then went on to right run programs all around the country.
And really quickly, we have now this huge ecosystem where like, I, I mean
there are a ton of universities with really, you know, killer programs.
I mean, yeah, I, I would say probably.
Like, there's three people that pop to mind, two of which we've already
talked about, that are probably the most influential and arguably
important jazz educators of all time.
Definitely David Baker, no doubt.
Mm-hmm.
Winton, you know, through his, mm-hmm.
You know, his institutional stuff at Julliard later, but all the, just
informal stuff that he continues to do with inspiring kids and teaching.
Um, yeah.
And Barry Harris, you know Barry Harris.
Yeah, man.
Like, just in terms of like the most probably.
Uh, you know, identifiable, uh, system.
Like, like he's the ultimate, like the Barry Harris system, which to be honest,
I don't even totally understand it myself.
I'm ashamed to say.
Yeah.
I've never spent a long time with it, though.
I'm familiar with it, but it's, but it's like one of those things,
it's like that, that DaVinci code thing, it's like once you, it's
like a cipher of piano, you know?
Um, and once you get it, people just are like, you know, you talk about a cult,
but a beautiful cult, Barry Harris.
Mm-hmm.
And, and the same thing, like, he taught a lot of people and then
they're, they're continuing his thing on after he's even passed.
So, can I throw a fourth name out there?
Jamie Aber sa.
Oh.
Possibly as influential as those three.
Absolutely.
One, two.
1, 2, 3, 4. I mean, I, I went to a Jamie Abu.
I had like, I won Allstate something.
Allstate Sure.
Soloist or something.
Got a scholarship to go to.
Mm-hmm.
Al's camp in, um, blooming actually Bloomington, Illinois.
Confusion.
Yeah.
Confusingly enough.
Uhhuh.
But yeah, I mean he was, yeah, he was hugely influential.
Yeah.
He kind of, so to anyone who doesn't know, Jamie Bal, um, was at the forefront
of play along CDs, among other things.
That's what he was best known for in the nineties, was he would
buy, you know, all Bird, that was one of the ones that I loved.
Or the Sunny Rollins one.
He would get great players.
I think like Ron Carter's playing bass on the Sunny Rollins, maybe the bird one.
Yeah.
He gets.
Always the top guy.
So he would get a top band and they would record kind of just a small group playing,
you know, whatever, some tune and then just cut out the soloist and you'd get the
rhythm section and they'd buy it on CD or on tape, or I guess vinyl back in the day.
And then you had something that you could practice with.
This was before the internet, you know, gave us thousands of options like that.
So it was a really big deal for people like me to just, when I
was a kid, to just practice with.
But in addition to that, he also ran these large programs.
I, yeah, I went to his, he, I think he was doing one in Missouri when I
went, um, one of his summer programs.
And it was huge.
Other big, he would, Midwest, you know.
Have you ever taught at one of those?
I feel like you would, you could totally be.
I never say one of those.
I never have, but I was really in, I was just, remember back
to that one week program I did.
I met Pat Lebar.
Oh man.
Um, who was like teaching my ensemble kind of changed my, I mean, he like just
showed me one thing and I was like, damn.
You know, it was a, it was a cool place.
Adam Nusbaum, my first, met him there.
Yeah.
I mean, oh yeah, for sure.
Real New York players, you know, like out mm-hmm.
Out in the sticks in Illinois.
It was fun.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It was a, a big deal and kind of, yeah.
Part of, I think I always called them the Midwestern Jazz mafia.
Yeah.
The kind of, uh, the, the Aber SA players who would show up at those summer camps.
So, all right.
Yeah.
Let's get into, like, you are, you've gone to Julliard, as you mentioned,
uh, it was a classical program, and, and out of that, pretty quickly, it
sounds like you were playing with Roy.
What I'm, I guess what was the sort of the story of that, like going from
school to playing with Roy Hargrove and just how was that experience?
Yeah, so I, I went, I mean I was really, I was at Julliard for three semesters,
um, full, full disclosure, although it's one of these funny schools they
send you, even if you're just barely there, they treat you like an alumni.
'cause I think so many people left early.
It's like, Berkeley, Berkeley's the same way.
It's like, yeah, didn't Roy Hargrave like go to Berkeley for like a year or so?
And they're like, they send me all the alumni magazines and all that stuff.
Of course they do.
Yeah.
That's so funny.
But I was there.
But I mean, it was really about, I wanted to go to New York,
you know, and I just, yeah.
I couldn't get organized enough, or I didn't know there weren't a lot of
actually good jazz programs in New York.
Um, and because I got a scholarship at Juilliard, I was kind of like,
yeah, you do that for classical, but it was a little bit Sure.
Tough place because I, I really decided I wanted to play jazz by then.
And my teacher at Julia was like, I heard you play jazz.
You cannot be in my studio if you're practicing.
Oh, it was one of those, oh.
I was like, this is 18 nine.
What's going on?
You know?
Wow.
Um, but anyway, I got, I got to meet a bunch of musicians.
Just, I used to go downtown and Sure.
And I met like Larry Goldings the first week I was in New York.
He had just, there was a whole scene.
That that year.
'cause the new school had just started, like the new school jazz program.
It was like literally the, either the first or second year.
And I had a couple friends from St. Louis that I knew that were going
there, Mike Wilner and uh, Dave Berger.
And so I would go down, I met Larry Goldings, um, I met, uh,
Jeff Keyser around that time.
Just a bunch of Really?
Oh yeah, sure.
Yeah.
And I'd already met Roy.
Roy wasn't in actually in New York yet, which was crazy.
I think he was, that was the year he was at Berkeley.
Uh, but then he was mm-hmm.
New York, the, the, the very next year.
Um, and, and just, you know, Greg Hutchinson, I met him the very
first week I was in New York.
He's from New York and was, he was actually still in high school
that year, but was like playing Europe chores and stuff already.
And so mm-hmm.
It was a really exciting time and kind of the beginning of that jazz lions
thing that they called, you know Yeah.
The young lions.
The young lions of the nineties.
Young Lions.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, so this was like 88, 89, but then I didn't really.
They, I didn't actually play with, I played a few things with Roy, but
I didn't play in his band until 94.
Um, okay.
In the meantime, I had kind of a detour.
I ended up moving to New Orleans, um, which ended up being, it
was a little bit on a whim.
I had some friends down there and, and there was a trumpet player named Marlon
Jordan, who was like really being hyped up, actually a sort of the next Winton.
It was like Roy Hargrove, I think had just gotten a deal on like, Verve records.
I mean, it was crazy.
Like, young players were like, yeah, it was a different world.
It was a d were getting like big, I mean, big.
They weren't like, you know, it wasn't Taylor Swift, it was.
Sure.
But I mean, it was like real record deals and, you know, CDs
had really gotten established, so there was like this mm-hmm.
Everybody was having to replace their LPs, so it was like a lot of
money and, and it was pre streaming and, and, um, Napster and all that.
So, um.
Yeah, Marlon Jordan was from New Orleans, so he brought me
down there to do some gigs.
I met some musicians and I was like, man, I love the scene down here.
So I ended up staying there and I mean, I really lived in New or in New
Orleans from 90 through, um, 2005.
Uh Oh wow.
Really?
Yeah.
I didn't know that.
Yes.
I mean, I did.
I went and stayed and spent a lot of time in New York during that
time, but I was really down there.
I mean, I ended up, um, getting married and having started a family and stuff.
All my kids were born in New Orleans.
They're all over.
Oh, man.
All over the place.
Oh, so New York, St. Louis and New Orleans.
Have you lived in Chicago?
You've almost got all the four major jazz cities, or Kansas City?
I, my daughter lives in Chicago, so I, I Okay.
Yeah, I know Chicago next best thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh, but yeah, new Orleans really became my, my finish, my, my real like.
Finishing jazz school, you know?
Hmm.
Like I got a chance there.
I met Brian Blade and Christopher Thomas.
Well, Chris Thomas I knew since we were in middle school in St. Louis.
Right.
He was my friend.
I've been playing with him.
And then we, we ended up playing with Josh Redmond together, but I met Brian, um, in
90, might, maybe even at the end of 89.
He was going to Loyola School of Uh Oh, I didn't know that.
Okay.
And this is for listeners drummer Brian Blade and Bassist Christopher Thomas.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Who played in the Joshua Redmond Quinte with you.
Right.
And then Brian, they had just started a jazz program at UNO and Brian
transferred over there, but then he was starting to get some gig.
We all were kind of getting some gigs here and there, but the cool thing was we were.
There was gigs in New Orleans during that time, like good gigs.
Yeah.
Victor Goins, who's a great saxophonist, um, would started hiring us to do gigs.
Jermaine Ba, a wonderful singer.
We played at Snug Harbor, we did trio gigs.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and that actual trio of Brian, Chris, and myself became kind of like my man.
'cause they were like my best friends.
And we would, we would just get together and rehearse every day.
Even if we didn't have a gig, we'd go get coffee, play chess,
and then like make arrangements.
And we all love the same kind of music.
Sit and listen to records.
And so like, that was such a beautiful period that early
nineties, um, in New Orleans.
A lot of really great players.
Do you think that, so some of that is surely just because you're young,
you don't have a lot of, you know, a lot of requirements on your life.
Yeah.
It's, it's a little easier to play together, but also you're describing.
A world that does not exist, like a world where there's enough work to support
this kind of mid-tier economy of jazz.
Where, you know, you mentioned Taylor Swift now the music industry, right?
It's, you're either making literal billions of dollars, or there's just
not very many gigs and not much work.
Do you think that just the fact that there was so much work made it
possible for you guys to play together, it just seems like that would be
such an essential part of building the kind of tightness that you had.
'cause that rhythm section, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm sure I'm playing
some examples of you guys, but you guys were in absurdly tight.
Like you had clearly just like lived music together for so long
to have that level of connection.
Yeah.
I mean, it was, it's, it's kind of what you're saying.
It was just sort of like luck of the time of us finding each other
and then Yeah, being able to play.
Together a lot in different kind of situations.
We were doing like traditional New Orleans gigs, modern stuff, funk stuff.
We would sort of have our trio vibe when we could.
Um, a lot of playing with Jermaine Basil, so getting to play with
a great singer where you gotta like change keys Yeah, sure.
And all this weird stuff.
Um, and.
Yeah, I think the economics of it, I, I think we, we forget about, or
we take that for granted, you know?
Um, and it was a time, I mean, it was like we were just doing a hundred dollars
gigs, but the thing is, like those gigs are still a hundred dollars gigs.
It's like, but a hundred dollars was, you know, that's what's
crazy about it doesn't go as far.
Yeah.
It's like the gig.
So at that time, that was a pretty good gig, you know, and mm-hmm.
We, we were, and then we were also starting to do some touring even before
like the Roy and the Joshua thing.
Like, we were, like, in 91, I got a chance to play with, um, Betty Carter,
who was, that really was like my graduate school, you know?
Like that was, that's when I really started to like, oh, all the stuff
I should have learned, or I think, I know now you're in the big time.
You know, because she was, she was legend status by that point, and she was also
kind of, you know, she had been on the Tonight Show and she had this record that.
The poster for, it was in one of the kids' walls on the Cosby Show in
like the late eighties, Betty Carter.
You'd see it like every, I mean like she was a thing then, right?
It was very rare in jazz.
And so when I got a chance to do that gig, I was 20 years old, but I was just
like, oh my God, this is Betty Carter.
And so I was living in New Orleans and she'd always kinda had a requirement
that you, everybody would always live in New York, you know, her groups.
Mm-hmm.
And so I kind of just didn't talk about it a lot.
And I'd stay with Greg, Greg in Brooklyn and you know, I'd stay his apartment and
then we were on the road that whole year anyway, so it didn't really matter, uh,
where I was living, but like that was.
That was just crazy.
Like what I learned and like, we're playing Big fa, we,
we did a seven week tour.
I mean, talk about stuff that doesn't happen anymore.
Yeah.
We did a, it was my first European tour ever.
First time going to Europe, a seven week tour, and I mean like hitting almost
every night and like trains and, and like just, you know, random flights.
Like, wait, which airport are we?
I mean, paper, itinerary paper, everything.
It, it was great.
It was great and, you know, um.
That was probably the biggest amount of growth that I've ever had.
But then I came back to New Orleans and was like playing with Brian and
Chris again and like doing this stuff and like we're bringing all these
different things that we learned back.
So it was, it was really just.
A, a perfect storm of, for me, in terms of like, just growth and joy in my life.
Yeah, I can imagine.
That sounds great.
I mean, especially given that you were playing for, you know, audiences
playing real jazz for audiences.
Yeah.
Some, you know, guys I went to school with, so I went to school in Miami, right.
And the cruise ships would run out of there.
So a very common thing to do would be, over the summer you'd get your piano
trio a gig on like a carnival cruise.
And that was a way to have what you're describing, you
know, a like eight week tour.
Yeah.
Essentially you're playing every night, but you're on a cruise ship.
You're kind of playing for people who maybe aren't that interested.
So it's, it's like, it's not quite as much fun, but it is kind of the
way that a group, especially a jazz group, can kind of build that chemistry
and learn how to play together.
And I'm sure the amount of learning that you do is just, is just totally wild.
Yeah.
It's, yeah.
I don't know.
What do you think about the fact that it's so difficult for young players
now to have the same experience?
Well, I mean, you know, it, it's.
I, I, I, I don't like it, but I'm also like, you can't turn time back.
It's kind of like, what I do want to have is for young players, and maybe they're
doing this more than I realize is to find their version of that for today.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Because everything is, is different.
And that's not always a bad thing.
I mean, we look back on those days as being like, yeah.
I mean there, there was a lot of problems in it too.
And a lot of like, there was a lot of like gatekeeping in a way that I think the
younger musicians now are so much better about, you know, overcoming, um mm-hmm.
And not just musical, just like, I mean, it was such a
good old boys network, you know?
And so I think a lot of things are better, but I mean, in terms of like.
The, the core elements, it's beyond just Jet.
Like, what we had was not just a chance to play together, but we would hang
together, we'd listen to music together.
I think that's why your podcast and, and hopefully ours and these other
kind of musical geekery podcasts, I think are so important because for
a lot of people, that's their, for younger people and for older people,
that's their version of what we used to have just hanging around listening
to music and talking about, wait, what, what was that chord you played?
Man, that felt great.
Really?
I love the way it, it segues to this.
Mm-hmm.
Or listen to the way they mic the drum, whatever it is.
Like, we would do all that.
And it's like that, that communal, cultural, uh,
attenuation to the music mm-hmm.
Is so important.
And so a lot of times people are like, well, everybody's
so separate in social media.
And it's like, yeah, but that's gonna be hard to put this genie back in the bottle.
Yeah.
So it's like, how do we use the podcast?
How do you use Instagram?
It's like, yeah.
Kids don't have, as, as many young people, don't have as many.
Of these communal, maybe performance or touring opportunities, but they
also have the ability to like DM Robert Glasper and he might answer
you back, you know what I mean?
Like I had to wait for No, yeah, for sure.
Kenny Kirkland once a year to come through town and, and maybe I could get his phone
number, see if he'd dance with a number.
But I mean, like the communication stuff actually should be and, and
is better, but it's just everybody's still trying to figure out how to
harness it and how to work through just the cacophony of, of information
being thrown everywhere, you know?
Like we had that.
Yeah, no, yeah.
We had that advantage of like.
Listening to one record, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Um, just over and over again.
The sheer volume is definitely, is definitely difficult.
And that's, you know, true across the board with like every type of media now.
Yeah.
But it is true.
I mean, it's very easy to look back at what you're describing, you know,
this heyday in the nineties and Yeah.
And what was clearly like a really, a really amazing time in a lot of
ways, uh, for you personally too, and just be like, ah, that was,
that was the best, uh, 'cause it does sound like it was pretty great.
Yeah.
But, um.
It's good to look at that and kind of try to understand what was good
about it and how to transpose that onto the world we now live in.
Because yeah, like you can't change the way things are.
We can't rebuild the whatever economy of compact discs in 2025.
It's just not gonna happen.
And uh, and so, uh, it's more about thinking, thinking through what it was
spec, what was special about what we were doing, because I completely agree
with you and I think you'll hear it.
Your show really does, uh, something very similar to strong songs and trying
to, you know, get back to that feeling.
'cause I, you know, I learned just as much when I was in school sitting
around with the guys I was in school with, listening to records and
talking about them as I did in class.
And I learned a lot in class.
It was a great school.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just, I learned a ton from that experience for sure.
And, uh, yeah, there are ways, there are ways you can have that experience now.
Yeah.
Because like, we look back and it's like, oh, you know, I met
Wynton, then I met Kenny Kirkland and he showed me these things.
Like, that was great, but what's even better is if Kenny Kirkland, you know.
RIP Kenny Kirkley.
But if he was still around to do a podcast, breaking this stuff
down, then every young pianist that's interested could hear that.
They don't just have to be lucky, like me and my dad happens to know
Whitton 'cause they work together.
Well, you know, it's like Right.
Or like you happen to live in Bloomington, Indiana or St.
Louis.
Like you happen to live somewhere that people come through.
You could live in whatever, you know, rural Nebraska or some, somewhere, just
a long ways out and still be able to, through the internet, get access to that.
Yeah.
Which is, you know, pretty awesome.
Yep, for sure.
So, all right.
So you play with Roy, you play with Joshua.
I guess we can kind of conclude on this part.
'cause this is like the, this is just like peak nineties jazz.
This is when, I mean, this is the stuff that I, when I was a teenager, was
listening to and was just knocking me out.
It was like the hottest new players, Joshua Redmond, who
I've talked about on the show.
Yeah, plenty of times.
One of the most exciting sax players I've ever heard.
I just like love his playing so much personality.
That group, that quintet that you had with him was just so much fun.
And yeah, I'd just love to hear any, I guess, any additional thoughts on, on this
period, on the kind of transition and just what it was like playing in that group?
It was great.
I mean, I had, you know, I did the Betty Carter, then we did a thing called
Jazz Futures, which was the same trio.
Me, Chris and Brian.
Right, right.
Uh, but then with, uh, Nicholas Peyton, we were working, that's another one I
should mention in New Orleans as well.
Yeah.
I thought you played with Nicholas Payton.
That's right.
Yeah.
He was a big part.
I mean, he's a couple years younger, so like when we first started
playing with him, we were like 20 and he was in high school still.
Oh, wow.
And this is of course for listeners Nicholas Payton, a great jazz trumpeter.
Yes.
Who, uh, outta New Orleans.
Really just another great player of the, the same sort of time period.
Yeah.
And then I played, started playing with Roy in 93, at the
end of 93 and all through 94.
And that was a beautiful, I like that was not with the same rhythm.
That was not with Chris and Brian.
Mm-hmm.
Um.
That was at Rodney Whitaker and Greg Hutchinson, who I kind
of reunited with from playing with Betty Carter and meeting.
Yeah.
And man, you sent me this video.
I'll be playing a clip from this right now.
This live performance in Germany with both Ron Blake and Josh Redmond
on tenor sax along with Roy on trumpet in that rhythm section.
Just absolutely killing what a performance.
Oh yeah.
Well, and actually that gig or one of the gigs that same week, like I was
playing with Roy then and Oh yeah.
And Ron Blake was on.
Like that's probably, I mean this is not to like, that was the most exciting
like jazz group I have ever played with.
Redmond solo.
He just goes and goes.
At one point he kind of stops.
It's this amazing moment where he's like, slows down.
And he, he's still playing his solo, but he just doesn't build it the whole way.
He kind of stops.
He takes some time, he leaves some space.
Yeah.
Builds it back up,
man.
I mean, he was, what, he was pretty young at that time and uh,
he has like a full head of hair.
Yeah.
It's, uh, it's funny to see him then he just, man, he sounds good.
And yeah, Ron Blake sounds brilliant as well.
What a group.
Yeah.
And that was right.
That kind of was the reason.
Um, I mean, I, I actually knew Joshua for a while.
In fact, Josh came down to New Orleans a couple times and played with us.
So we all kind of knew each other.
But when I was playing with Roy that summer, that summer of 94, Joshua did a
couple guest things, like whatever that gig was, and we sort of started talking
and he knew about me and Chris and Brian.
And Brian Blade was already playing with Joshua then, and Brad
Meld was on piano in his band.
Right.
And this is like right around, so Redmond won the Thelonious Monk
competition, which you also won, right.
This is, and that was kind of a big, in the nineties, especially like
a big kind of coronation, I guess, for up and coming jazz players.
Weird, ridiculous.
Like that's a part that I don't think was great.
I didn't win either.
Yeah.
Joshua did win.
I came in, oh he did?
Third or second.
I think I came in second.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Ja.
Jackie Terra.
Not that I'm bitter about.
It came in first.
Yeah.
Oh, that's right.
I remember people made a big deal out of this thing big that Joshua
Joshua or the, the, the Felonious Munk competition every, it was big because
it basically came with like a major record contract and, right, that's right.
Like an agent and all the things now that you don't kind of don't need in a
way that's, yeah, it's another thing.
But yeah, it was a big deal then.
And um.
But yeah.
So this was a couple years after that, I think, but not many.
Okay.
Like Josh, he had wish had come out, which was huge with Papini.
Right.
And that has meld out on it, right.
Ish.
Exactly.
Uh, no.
Yeah, that's, I think, no, I think it's, no, the next record Mood Swing has bread.
Oh yeah.
Mood Swing has Mel out.
Yeah.
And this is that year 94 when like, mood swing was really big.
Great record and Yeah.
Fantastic stuff.
And so I'd been talking to Josh and he kind of started calling me
and was like, Hey, I'm thinking about maybe making a change.
He's like, Brad, I don't know.
You know, like, might be doing his own thing.
Mm-hmm.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Brad.
Mel, now he kind of sucks.
I don't know.
Can't really, can't really play.
Yeah.
I think I'm gonna fire him.
I mean, and I'd known Brad for a long time.
We're like exactly the same age, and, and like I've always been a big fan of
stuff, but I was so happy in Roy's band.
Like I was kind of like, uh, but then.
So Josh sort of started, it became a little bit more of like, well, maybe
I might make a change on bass too.
What if it was like Chris Thomas on bass, you on piano?
And of course if Brian will stay Brian.
And so then I was kinda like, wow, that sounds interesting, you know?
Um, and we were still playing together a lot in New Orleans whenever I was
home and, and they were doing some other things, but, uh, so it just,
by 95, kinda the beginning of 95, it just sort of became inevitable.
And when Brad left, Josh hit me up and that was like the
hardest decision ever to leave.
Roy's man, I only played with him for a year, so I, I really felt
like it was unfinished business.
And so when I looked back on that, I'm like, was that a mistake?
I don't know.
Um, mm-hmm.
But, uh, but it was a great situation to go in with, with Josh, and I think
that was the time when he really felt like he'd sort of figured some things
out from his first couple of bands and like when he had Pat Metheny with him,
that was more, I mean, it's Pat Metheny.
It's not really like, yeah, right.
Your band, you know.
But I think he was kinda like, I want to, you know, he had some different
ideas about music and stuff and so we started like, I think February or March
of 95 and like went straight through.
I mean, he had so many, I thought I toured heavy that year before
we were growing, but this was just like, yeah, constant, constant.
It was fun.
I mean, we were doing bus like, um.
I don't want say rock star buses, that's what it was.
Bu whatever, like But a tour bus you for a jazz tour, which is not nothing.
Exactly.
But then we did it so much and so I was telling some younger, but they were like,
what A tour bus on a, I was like, yeah, in the nineties we did that all the time.
I mean, were crazy man.
Mean we were playing so much, it was probably saving the
money 'cause it was like.
Day one night, or one night or one, you know, just mm-hmm.
College gigs, clubs.
So it was fun, and I loved that group.
It was Quartet, I think for the first year or maybe two years.
And then he added Peter Bernstein, who on guitar, which was great.
We were all big fans of his and friends.
Yeah.
And really opened, opened things up in the, in the arrangements too.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny, I, you mentioned my episode about, um.
So what and about kind of blue.
Yeah.
You talking about this trio that you had with Brian Blade and Christopher Thomas.
It makes me think of Winton Kelly's Trio, like of the idea of a jazz piano
trio being the core of other groups, but like working as a trio together,
which just seems like it's this really important element that's easy to forget
about when you're looking at liner notes and who's playing on which record.
Like the trio being its own little identity.
Yeah.
It just seems very, very crucial for a band having a sound like you guys did.
Yeah.
And I think for Josh, um, it was, uh.
I mean you, you know, one's memory or the perception of one's memory from
that time is always a little funky 'cause it's been sure for 30 years.
But the, I think the, my impression with him was always like, he liked
that he was getting this rhythm ready made rhythm section where we had
all this rapport, but he was also a little bit like, hold on now, like.
This is my band.
How do I, how do I keep this from getting outta control?
'cause it's three against one kind of thing.
Um, I feel like his musical relationship with Brian Blade
especially was so locked in, I mean, the way that they played together.
Yeah.
For me as a listener, especially when I was young and first hearing you guys, I
didn't know that about the rhythm section.
Yeah.
And I always really gravitated to that musical relationship
between Brian and Joshua.
Yeah.
He was totally the bridge.
Not only in terms of he's, so the band before was Brad mailed
out Christian McBride on base.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, Josh and Brian.
And so like Brian was the bridge between that, but also like, I
really like took that serious, like when he called me to do it.
And that was when mood swing is still out.
Like I studied that record.
I learned all the things in my year and like I, um.
Really checked out the way Brad was playing, but I also was like,
okay, I want to bring my own thing.
And Josh always wanted that.
He's like, I don't want to do this stuff the same way.
No, yeah, sure.
You know, um, although he kind of did, you know, it's always like, you kind of wanna
do it, but you want to see what else.
And I think we did a good job of like bringing and like what,
what a rhythm section that has.
Years of, you know, personal and prof, you know, professional on stage, rapport.
I think Josh was smart.
You know, like, I think he saw an opportunity to like, and then
really helped to organize things in a way where we were playing stuff
that we had never really played.
I mean, it wasn't that big of a departure, but like Josh has always
been, I think a fantastic and, and a little bit underrated as a composer.
I think he's one of our generation's.
Oh man.
Best jazz composer.
I completely agree.
Just having transcribed and learned a bunch of his songs.
He's a great writer.
Yeah.
A really interesting sense for melody.
Yeah.
I've been listening to some of those old records and I just, I remember every
single melody, cold, even if there, it's a song I haven't listened to in a long time.
Just 'cause the melodies are so unusual and beautiful.
Yeah.
And of course, yeah.
Is harmonies great stuff to me.
Yeah.
Well, we're gonna talk about some music and, and make some recommendations.
We're gonna talk a little bit about Kenny Kirkland.
Before that though, I want to ask you a little bit more about Open Studio.
Yes.
Just because we've been talking about teaching jazz, this is this
major thing that you've launched.
I guess first could you just give listeners a kind of backstory?
I know some will be familiar, I know some take courses with you guys.
Yeah.
But some will not be.
So maybe just give a little bit of a, a nutshell of what Open Studio is.
Sure.
Yeah.
We're, we're, um, a jazz community for folks that, um, wanna learn
how to become better players.
But I think.
What it's really become is more like how do you live a musical life as mm, at no
matter what your level, no matter what your age, no matter what your ambition
level, but just like kind of having this connection of jazz or jazz adjacent.
Oh my God, I never thought I'd use that word there.
Well, but I mean just like jazz and like the harmonies that jazz represent,
just like wanting to be creative with your development as a player.
Um, and, and we really have folks, you know, all the way up into their nineties.
Uh, we have some younger folks, but we mainly serve people that are like, Hey,
I'm just getting back to my instrument.
Like I retired early, or I have some time on the weekends, or I just, I don't
know what to practice and I don't have access to a teacher, but I wanna, I don't
wanna just sit around watching YouTube videos and I get lost or whatever.
Um, so this is not like Berkeley School of Music online.
This is not, how do you get to the Village Vanguard in the next year and a
half week guarantee, or your money back?
This is really about like, how do you just get a little
bit better sometimes some big.
Jumps ahead, but kind of know how to practice, know how to take.
Living a musical life with your instrument every day, like enjoying the journey.
Um, it's, it's very much like, you know, I've gotten into marathon
running over the last like, five years.
Mm. So sort of later in life.
And it's like, how do you enjoy the training each week?
What's the training plan?
And then hopefully so that you can have a great marathon day, but
also so that even if the marathon gets canceled, you're like, man,
I'm so glad I went through this.
When's the next one?
You know, oh man.
Have you read Dave Leeman's book, Self-Portrait of a Jazz Musician?
Do you know that that book Lieman is 'cause he's a long distance runner.
He made this crazy album.
This is Leman the saxophone player, who was actually a, a big influence on me in
a number of, of ways when I was young.
I had a very important conversation with him.
Uh, I think I've talked about it on the show.
He has this album called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
that I always found fascinating, especially when I was younger.
It's a lot of like ob dubbed soprano sax stuff.
There's actually a cool version of it that he did live where he, he
reads a bit of an intro, uh, for like the concept of the piece as
I imagined what a marathon runner.
I must endure.
It seemed like the perfect metaphor for the journey of an artist.
Upon further thought, I realized that artists are not alone in
experiencing life's journey, but they do articulate the voyage for all
mankind to see here and reflect upon.
But in the final result, the long distance runner is all of us.
His book, Self-Portrait, a jazz musician, is like a very interesting
end marathon, uh, informed look at jazz.
So it's very, it's just interesting that you mentioned that, but um, but that
totally makes sense, like to that, that kind of mentality, that that long paced
mentality could change how you think about jazz and man, I mean, I gotta say.
It's, I love that approach.
Like I love the way that you describe it and what it looks like Open Studio
does, and it stands in such contrast, I think, to the way that I learned
jazz and I think the way that a lot of people learned jazz in the nineties.
You mentioned gatekeeping earlier, it's like there was this turbocharged feeling
of exclusiveness, like it was so about the like meritocracy, about auditioning
and like cutting other players and the best player gets to be in the band.
And there was so much like talking smack about other players and kind of, you
know, just a lot of competitiveness.
It was very male, it was very aggressive and.
That is just, I feel like so many musicians now who, or jazz musicians
who've reached middle age have kind of rejected that and said, you know, so many
people could play this music or love this music, or, you know, learn to appreciate
it and have it be part of their life.
You know, live a musical life without needing to play at the Village
Vanguard without needing to take this incredibly intense approach.
And actually by dropping that approach, you open the door to so many more
people, you know, loving the music and making it a part of their life.
So, uh, it's, it's interesting to hear that marathon running
was the thing that got you there.
Was there anything else?
Like, I don't know, any other experiences that, that Yeah, I mean that the, the
marathon run was more about like, I was already well into doing open studio
when I got on that, but it, it like helped clarify, like, I think when I
started this, it was really just about like, I'm gonna pass on information
that I learned, that I was taught from other players or on the band
center or from records or whatever.
Mostly stuff that, like, it was nothing I invented, it was more like.
Yeah, sure.
I, I knew how to teach it and, but it would really just be like showing, it
was very, not very, but it was generally intermediate to advanced jazz piano stuff.
It's like, this is the way you can play Misty.
I'm using this five note voicing.
If you put the sixth here, it'll sound like this.
Just showing it in a way so that if somebody could play pretty good,
it was super useful for them, those lessons, because it's like just having
somebody that's a pro player just sit there and show you, you know, yeah.
How to do it.
And so I always thought, well, that's what this will be, and then I'll
add other instruments and all this.
And then it turned out like all the people that wanted me to
teach them in that way mm-hmm.
I got pretty quickly.
And that like, that's kind of, because there's not that many of them.
There's not that many, you know, and they're, there's relatively few of them.
Yeah.
And so like, I kind of got.
I learned how to get comfortable on the camera and like how to make videos and
how to, like, it's weird when you're teaching not directly to somebody, but
you know that they're gonna be there.
Mm-hmm.
So it took me some time, sets some reps on that.
And so during that, well this is also something that Adam is really great.
Adam Maness Adam who does a lot of these because I taught
him everythings Of course.
No.
Yeah.
He's fantastic.
He is.
He is really good at that though.
Like talking to you like you're there, you know, even though
he is just talking to a camera.
Oh, hi there.
I'm musician and middle-aged influencer, Adam Maness.
Today I wanna talk to you about approach chords.
Why do approach chords matter?
Well, we wanna have several ways to approach important
chords in our progression.
Yeah.
And it's, it's kind of the kind of thing you just have to do a bunch,
or at least for me to get that.
Mm-hmm.
Oh yeah, sure.
But then when I started realizing, I was like, wow, there's so many more people.
Well, there's a lot of people like what you're describing, people that got
gatekeep out in the nineties mm-hmm.
Or the eighties that are coming back now and being like.
Oh, wow.
I, I want to connect with the music I've given up my dream.
Yeah.
Like actually the dream of getting to the village Vanguard is not that important.
I just wanna learn how to play bebop.
Right.
That'd be, yeah.
To the best of my abilities.
And so that's what, mm-hmm.
For me, the running has been about, like, it's not about, yeah.
I mean, sometimes I'll think, oh, this would be cool to do this time
goal, but it's not, I'm not rating myself in relation to other people.
Mm-hmm.
It's all about mm-hmm.
Me and my journey.
And also a community of supportive other runners, you know?
And so right when I started looking at Open Studio, I was like, this is
not just about, yes, we'll give the specific training on these tunes, but
it's also about the beginner level.
It's about you haven't played your instrument for a while.
Is there still a place for you in the music?
Absolutely.
You're a kind of a folk singer songwriter on guitar, and you're interested in
jazz because you wanna learn upper extension stuff, but you, we're not
gonna keep you out because you're not like West Montgomery or nothing.
But you know, it's like, yeah, right.
No, let, let's, let's talk about those things and so.
When we started to be more inclusive with that.
And Adam has been huge for me because he's always kind of come
from more of a multi-gen approach.
Yeah.
I mean, he's very much a jazz pianist, but he's always had more, like I came
up, like all the great things from what we talked about, but also all
the bad things as far as like Right.
Swing out.
You're not, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And so that mm-hmm.
That, I mean, I'd been opening up over the years anyway, of course, but Adam was
huge once I brought him into the fold.
And so now we just kind of let the community direct us in terms of
like what their needs are and try to create programs and courses.
And we do a lot of live classes now.
Um, I mean, we've got.
People in 124 countries active members.
Wow.
Which is crazy, but Makes sense.
'cause the music is internet.
Is is global.
It's a global language, you know?
Do you find space for getting people together to play since I would
imagine that's the hardest thing about teaching jazz online, right.
Is that it is a music that you make together.
Like it has to be made in the moment in space.
But as you grow, I would imagine it's more and more possible to
have meetups or for people to get together and play with one another.
Yeah.
And we've been having a bunch of spontaneous meetup among the members and
now we're kind of trying to Hell yeah.
Help organize that.
And you know, we've got an, we've got a, we.
Community area of our site called the hang, very unimaginatively titled, but
I think it's apt, you know, accurate harkens back to those days where
people can connect and message and like propose different things and like we're
starting to get a lot more of that.
And in fact we have some in real life events that we're
organizing ourselves for next year.
And so that's kind of the next frontier.
We've had folks here too, at the studio, members that have come
in to do different programs.
Um, I mean that's the hardest part.
Like the beautiful part is connecting people from 124 countries potentially.
Yeah.
Just like that, you know?
Mm-hmm.
The hardest part then is like, how do you connect them Certain places
like London, New York, Los Angeles, like we have some places where
we have a lot of members, right?
So it's been easier for that to start happening.
Um, but I, I foresee more of that.
In, in person stuff in the future.
That's really cool.
Yeah, it just seems like a pretty, a pretty amazing thing and it's,
it's cool to hear how it got started and, and how it's grown.
Yeah.
Let's, uh, let's talk about some music.
So I always ask for music recommendations and I know we wanted
to talk a little bit about Kenny Kirkland, who's come up a few times.
Yep.
The late great Kenny Kirkland, uh, jazz pianist extraordinaire who
played with a number of people.
Um, I first heard him playing with Kenny Garrett, but I
think you heard him earlier.
So let's start with Kenny.
What is your, your background with Kenny?
Kenny Kirkland?
Well, Kenny was really the first jazz pianist that I heard in person and on
record around the same time Oh, wow.
That I was like.
Oh my God, I wanna do that.
I want to be that.
I want to be him.
Nice.
Whatever him is, you know, that I was just like, mm-hmm.
Transported like that.
It's that weird combination of like awe and inspiration and like, yep.
I could never do that, but wait, wait.
If I could, you know, just mm-hmm.
Inspired, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Um, now, I mean, I'd heard Herbie Hancock and McCoy, I'd
even gotten into McCoy a little.
Like there was like legends, but like Kenny Kirk, because I saw him
lie, like that was such a big thing.
Right.
Uh, in 1985, he was playing with Win Marcellus and I was 14 and like,
it just hit me at that right time and I got a chance to meet him.
I just went up to him after the show.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, that's another thing.
Young people have to get back to doing that.
Like Yeah.
Everybody's like, oh, I'll just wait in DM and like, no, go meet the Ians.
Yeah.
Like that's, go say hi.
Like, people are generally very nice.
They'll talk to you.
Yeah.
I mean, I remember it used to be so many more pe young people
would come up to us after shows.
Mm-hmm.
And now it's like, I'll be going up to them, I'll be like, Hey, how you doing?
And they're like, ah.
You know, that's so funny.
But, uh, I went up and met him and he was so, I mean, look, there's always
the risk of they're gonna be an asshole.
That's, that's, yeah.
But that's always been there, you know, and always.
And the exception not the rule.
Exactly.
Speaking guys are usually pretty chill.
Yeah.
Um, but Kenny was so great.
I mean, he was just like, Hey, you know, just.
He had a warmth about him.
Mm-hmm.
And I was just in awe.
I just heard him play all this incredible stuff.
And, um, but he was like, let's keep in touch.
And then the next time I saw him, he remembered me, which is like,
when you're a 14 or 15-year-old kid, that's like everything.
He's like, Peter, right.
I was like, what?
And so he just really was like, he never did anything huge, like gimme
any secret scrolls or anything, but he just was kind and like, what was, and
it was never like, you need to do that.
Like win was more like, have you been practicing all that thing?
I told you you Uhhuh candy was way more laid back, you know's he'd answer.
That's funny.
Anything I'd ask him, but he was never gonna be like, but
I mean, I just connected with his playing, like on record.
Yeah.
And then when I heard him and like always was like there was something
about his, his style, um, that just like really became the foundation
of a lot of the things I played.
I mean, I'm probably not the most.
Like, I mean, you can hear us playing in, in my playing, but I think
because I have a lot of influences, it's not as obvious as some people.
Like, um, Joey Razzo I think is the ultimate, like Kenny Kirkland disciple.
Mm-hmm.
Like he studies his stuff.
He can play just like him.
I mean, he amazing player and of course has his own song.
Oh yeah, yeah.
You know, played with Branford for all these years.
So like he fits into that role of some things that Kenny did.
So for me, it's not as much about that, but just his joy,
his approach to articulation.
His dance man.
Yeah.
You know, his, his swing feel so particular and
like, so it's so funk fused.
Like when he's swinging there's such like a kind of backbeat undertone to it.
Really exciting stuff.
Yeah, it's funny, I had a, I had a similar actually experience to what
you described, seeing Kenny Kirkland.
Seeing Kenny Garrett.
He came to my high school in Bloomington.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, this is when he was playing with Chris, Dave, and I can't
remember who the piano player was.
It was post Kenny, but it was around that songbook era.
Yeah.
Like late, it was maybe 98, maybe a year after a songbook.
Yeah.
And, um, then going and listening to Songbook and Kenny
Kirkland plays on that record.
And man, I mean, sing a song of song, that song the Kenny Garrett kind
of pop song with the four chords.
Yeah.
Um, it just knocked me out at the time.
I just didn't really know that A straight ahead jazz group could sound like that.
And Kenny's.
Kirkland's playing on that record.
I mean, yeah.
Two down, one across.
Mm-hmm.
Um, his solo on that, the way he sequences ideas and something in his swing.
It's not, he's not just like rat ta ta ta ta.
Yeah.
It's like it has this kind of bounce to it.
Yeah.
There's this kind of ebullient bounce.
He kind of carries over top of the groove.
It's a hard thing to explain, and I'm not much of a pianist,
so I've never transcribed him, but there is a joyfulness.
I think that's a perfect way to describe the way that he plays.
Yeah.
No, I mean it's, yeah, it's, he has that bounce.
He has it's personality.
It's like he has, yeah.
Yeah.
His technique.
He shaped it so well around his musical persona and like bringing
that out in everything that he plays.
Even if it's something like very, I. You know, kind of somber.
There's that song on songbook, the, um, the beautiful ballad
where he's playing the melody.
Melody.
Oh yeah.
Um, you still feel, I mean, that's not like a swinging, bouncing thing,
but you feel his his way of like, just bringing tone out of the piano.
An instrument that's hard to like, personalize.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, no, it's true.
It's true.
It makes it more remarkable when someone does, you know, bill Evans.
Really?
Yeah.
It's like always came most famously, but you know.
Yeah.
And he was just such a cool guy to such a nice person and such an interesting story.
Really tragic, you know, about us losing him so young.
I know.
Yeah.
It's funny we're recording this right after DeAngelo died, and I
like, am increasingly just, it's harder and harder every year to
deal with these brilliant musicians who I grew up loving, dying young.
It's, it's really awful.
Yeah.
Um, so for, uh, for, for a pick for Kenny Kirkland, you also talked
about, uh, brother John this Elvin Jones record that, uh, that I had
actually never heard and is great.
So, uh, I'll play a clip from it, but maybe talk a little bit about that.
Well, this was like, after I met Kenny and heard him play in 85, I
was like, went to the record store.
I was like, I gotta find everything this guy's played on.
Nice.
And which he hadn't played on.
I mean, he had played on some stuff, but it was all like, kind of not mm-hmm.
Underground, but just like real insider New York stuff.
But this is one of the records I found, or, or maybe the only
one at that time, um, outside of Black Coats from the Underground,
which came out a few months later.
I actually hadn't heard that yet, but I'd heard do it live.
But yeah, this is, I mean.
The, the great, the legend Elvin Jones, it's a kind of quirky record, but like.
In the eighties, even going back to the late seventies, I think Palo Alto
records, there was a great, uh, gentleman whose name I'm forgetting now who
started that and ran that record label.
And even like, I think the first Dianne Reeves record was, he
actually had her do a jazz record.
I mean like some really great stuff.
And it was his studio and I think he lived in Palo Alto, so that's
why it was called Palo Alto Records.
Kirk here as I'm editing the episode, and the founder of Palo Alto Records
was named Jim Benham, who Yeah.
Founded it in 1981 in Palo Alto, California.
Yeah.
Kenny Kirkland.
Yeah, man, he's a, a great player.
Um, well let's just go through your other two, uh, music recommendations for
listeners since, uh, since we're coming to the end of the episode, and I want to
give people even more things to listen to.
So number two is, uh, a Roy Hargrove album that you guys just did an
episode on, uh, of, of, you'll Hear it talking about this album.
This is one of my favorite Roy Hargrove records.
Yeah.
Hard group.
So this is Rx Factor, his first, uh, record with the Rh factor
Convi with, with that band.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and, uh, you know, it's, it's top of my mind there, there's a bunch
of great Roy, I love Roy Hargrove.
I mean, I, I came up with him.
So it's, it's, it's bittersweet.
Every time I think about.
Him, his or hear his music because you know, he died.
Yeah.
What, six years ago now?
Way, way too early.
And it's, it's really, I mean, it's like one of those shocks in the jazz community,
especially for players around my age.
Yeah.
And it's kind of a hole that it's gonna be, I don't know.
It's, it's, it's not gonna be filled.
Like, 'cause he was just such an influence and, and then he was such an
influence on this current generation.
The more I learn about that, um, I mean he certainly influenced me, but, but.
Where, I mean, he's like a, he was like a year older than me, so it was more
like we really came up together and, and like I said, went and connected us back
when we were in high school actually.
Um, but this record, like this was very much something that he had
talked about doing, about doing like a crossover project even back in like
mid nineties when, when I was working with him and we even experimented
with some of the Parliament Funkadelic stuff in the acoustic set setup Nice.
With that band.
So he'd always had, this was not as big of a departure as I think a
lot of people thought was like, oh, I'm doing all straight ahead stuff
and all of a sudden, so, but it was controversial at that time, but I just
think he nailed it and talking about.
You know, DeAngelo, he's, he's on this record.
He does?
Yep.
Um, let's stay.
Um, I'll stay.
I'll stay.
Yeah.
And, um, beautiful son,
beautiful, beautiful rendition.
And this is really coming out of.
I think as much of Roy's, you know, upbringing in hip hop, like that really
being the pop music when we were coming up, which it was a, a big part of it.
Um, and then obviously jazz, funk fusion, all the way from like
weather reports stuff to more like, you know, Herbie Hancock funk
type of stuff to Chicka Fusion.
Um, but I think.
And even bigger sort of immediate influence on this project was what
the record he did that he was such a big part of Voodoo of DeAngelos.
Yep.
That I think a lot of, well, and this is like Russell Elva, right?
He produced our H Factor and then all that neo soul stuff.
'cause like Erica Bedu is on this record, common is on this record.
Like it's a lot of the same musicians, uh, who were, who were
doing that stuff in New York.
So it, it totally makes sense that there's that crossover.
Yeah.
So he was very influenced by that.
And it's at the, mostly recorded, the same studio Electric Ladyland.
Yeah.
And, um, man, I love this album.
Um, yeah.
I love, I'll Stay the DeAngelo song though.
I've, I've been listening to a lot of DeAngelo just the last day at it.
Makes me very sad, but it's nice to his music.
And then Pastor t actually, which is a kind of random trek.
It's just this like uptempo funk song.
Yeah.
I'm not much of a drummer, but I'm All right.
And I turn that one up when I'm playing drums and it makes me think
that I'm as good as the record.
Yeah.
And, uh, that's such a killing song.
I mean, I've, I've heard it so many times 'cause I like warm up on drums playing to.
Yeah.
But yeah, I love, love this band.
Yeah.
And I loved you guys' episode about it too.
People can definitely go check that out if they want to hear
you and Adam talking about it.
Yeah.
It has one of the greatest, it's such a e simple thing.
Mm-hmm.
Um.
But like that board fade as it comes in.
It's such a weird thing, like the fact that it works so well though.
It does though.
And like no one does that.
People do fade out still sometimes.
But why not just have it, it's like already in motion.
Yeah.
Here we go.
That's probably a Ross Elva thing.
That was probably his idea.
That's, it's such a cool call.
Yeah, that's, man, that yeah, that is a great call.
That's something I might steal just 'cause no one does it.
And it would sound, uh, and it would sound really cool.
I mean, the timing of it is everything for that.
That's like the, like you gotta, like, they probably just went
back like, no, move it a little.
Mm-hmm.
Like, try it here.
Yeah.
You gotta nail that.
Well, 'cause really that Oh yeah, man, I can talk about it forever.
Just, it, it kind of lands right at the perfect moment
of Roy's solo kicking it off.
But, uh, yeah, I love that.
I love that album and that band just totally rules.
Well, all right.
And so for number three, you've got a classic that we, we referenced earlier.
Yeah, so this is Miles Davis, Maya, funny Valentine live at, at,
uh, the Philharmonic, of course.
Mm-hmm.
Lincoln Center, a legendary concert.
Herbie Hancock Piano, George Coleman Saxophone, Tony Williams,
drums, Ron Carter on Bass.
Like this record, I think is, I mean this is not like an insider pick at all,
but No, but it's also not like, this was a super influential record to me.
'cause this is like the first like stuff when I was like,
oh my God, Herbie Hancock.
And I like tried to put every note on this record of his, so I know it really well.
But you know, how is like, sometimes you study a record so much, you're like,
you just have like ear, like you Yeah.
Fatigue from it.
You know?
I think a lot of people get that with kind of blue, right?
Right.
They've heard it so many times, studied it so much that then you have
to kind of get outta your brain and then you listen to it and you're like,
oh, this is just a really good Yeah.
Really good album.
But this record for some reason, I've never, like, I love it every day.
Yeah.
Every month.
Like it's never.
I, I've never turned away from it, even for a hot second.
And I think it's so, I love live jazz records that are done well.
The sound is great on it.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not perfect.
It's a live record.
It's not supposed to be perfect, you know?
Mm-hmm.
But I think it's sort of miles at his peak.
You've got this young man, they were all pissed off with miles.
Like they Yeah.
That's the story, the stage, which is great.
You know?
That's fun.
Mm-hmm.
He was like, what?
Not paying them.
He was like, this is gonna be a charity gig.
Yeah.
And they, they were like.
Well do, you're rich and we're not, you gotta pay us.
Yeah.
He rolled up in his like Lamborghini I, his Ferrari.
It was like, oh yeah, let's not paid.
Let's go play the story.
And especially 'cause Coleman just rips it apart on this.
And then on foreign more, which when I was coming up foreign more, which
is the kind of uptempo, you know, B sides, I guess it's the second release
of the same concert, same band.
Yeah.
Coleman just tears it apart on foreign more and it's funny thinking
that he was just really pissed and that, yeah, that was part of why
he played so well with such fire.
I'm sure Miles took credit for like Yeah, I was just trying
to piss him off so they played.
Oh yeah.
Right, right, right.
It's all mind games.
These Machiavelli over here.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a great record and a great pick.
Um, and one that, yeah, like I said, I, I listened to four and more, a little
more coming up and just you picking this when I was, you know, prepping for this
episode, I went back and listened to it.
And Nan, what a record.
That's Stella by Starlight on this record.
Oh, maybe the best.
I, it's one of my favorite versions of Cell by Starlight now that I've
been back listening to it, like it's just a beautiful rendition.
Yeah.
And, uh, yeah, really great, great record and yeah, maybe not an inside
pick, but one that everybody listening to this could stand to go listen to.
Yeah, and I mean, if anybody wants to go on a. A deep, kind of beautiful
rabbit hole around that band.
Um, there was, uh, and when I got a chance to interview and, and work
with Ron Carter, something I remember asking about this and like, he had
such clarity of that period, I was shocked that he, man remember, like,
I'm trying to remember the nineties.
This dude, I'm trying to remember my neighbor's name.
I'm trying to remember what happened to me yesterday.
Ron Carter like remembers the bass on the certain gig on the tour.
Oh man, man.
Yeah.
But it's like, basically they were playing the same repertoire, like the
four more stuff that my friend, I'm from this concert for like about a year.
Oh no, it was less than a year, he said.
But they did this like Europe tour where they played, you know, like
Autumn Leaves and Stella by Starlight.
Mm-hmm.
And on Green Dolphin Street, it was like, before they were doing, it
was before Wayne Shorter came in and they started doing, you know,
other kind of material and like.
There, there's a bunch of records.
There's like live, there's one called Live in Europe that's kind of in and
out of print, but it was live in, in Antibe, uh, Juan Lapin, France
from that great festival there.
That's a stunning live record, like almost.
Oh, nice.
I would actually say that's kind of on the level for me with this
band as, as my kind Valentine.
Um, and then there's like Live in Tokyo, live in Berlin.
There's all these, and they're playing like a lot of the same songs.
The saxophone has changed a little.
'cause when Coleman left before Wayne Shorter came in, they had, um.
I can't remember who.
Somebody Sunny Stitt.
Maybe There's a couple.
Really?
Yeah, there was a couple of little things, but it was mostly
George Coleman on that stuff.
Nice.
But there's a lot of live kind of bootlegs type stuff that's pretty
available that you can just, if you wanna hear five versions of
how these masters played, autumn leaves, like kind of different, like
surprisingly different night to night.
Mm-hmm.
You know?
But it's very spontaneous, very exciting.
Yeah.
That's cool.
Yeah.
I hope some people out there do that deep dive, like finding those, especially
those kind of two great Miles groups, you know, the 58 group, the kind of
blue group with train in, in Cannonball.
Yeah.
And then this, this later group with Tony Williams and Ron and, and Herbie.
Yeah.
Like listening to other versions of these songs, which I've
actually haven't done that much of, uh, is probably a lot of fun.
Yeah.
It seems like you'll, you'll hear the songs evolve over
time, which is really cool.
Yep.
Well, nice man, this has been a delight.
Wow.
There's a lot of listening to do.
Everyone listening to this.
You have, you have your assignments, you got your links, go uh, go listen
to some of this music and check out Open Studio and check out Peter's
music as well, because there's a lot of really great stuff there as well.
Peter Martin, this was so much fun.
Thanks for coming on the show, man.
Man, thank you, Kirk.
Keep it strong as always.
I know you will and, uh, much I will much love and listening enjoyment
to all your listeners and to the, uh, the podcast music community.
Cheers, man.
Cheers.
Peace.
And that'll do it for my interview with the one and only Peter Martin for a
list of all the recordings you heard excerpts from in this episode, check
out the show notes and I really do hope you'll go and check out some of
the great players that we discussed.
I also hope you'll check out Open Studio.
It's pretty cool what Peter and his crew are doing over there in St. Louis.
I love that town.
I actually have some friends with the family there, so maybe one day
I will swing by their studio and see what they're up to in person.
At any rate, as always, if you enjoy strong songs, I hope you'll
consider supporting the show.
I don't sell ads or have sponsors or anything like that, so I really
do count on listener support to keep this whole thing going.
There is a link for various ways you can support the show down in the show notes.
I hope you'll give that a look.
Alright, that'll do it for now.
Work continues on season eight of the show.
I'm very ex. Excited about it and pretty excited about music in general these days.
For now though, I will catch you the next time around.
Take care and keep listening.