Peter Martin.
Hey, what's up? I'll tell you what's up.
I'm excited about today's show
because on today's show we've got the guys from the One
Song podcast joining
Us. Oh, I love that podcast
you talking about with,
uh, Diallo and Luxxury.
Exactly. It's a great show.
And those guys have such cool names, Diallo and Luxxury,
and we're sitting here with, you know,
just Peter and Adam. I thought, well,
That's okay. Peter Adams okay.
It's all right. But I thought maybe today we can give
ourselves some really cool nicknames, you know?
Oh, okay. I got it. I got it.
Um, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock.
It's a little on the nose. I like where your head's at,
but it's a little too obvious.
What about like, I'll be Ello and you could be Top Shelf.
How about if I'm Top Gun in your Cialis?
Uh, I don't think I want to be Cialis for this show. Okay.
No, but what if it's Maverick and Goose?
Uh, you know what? No, no, no.
Um, I think I'll be, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be sure.
Alright, that's good. Then I'll be
Christopher Williams. How about that?
Oh, I'm in,
I am Adam Maness. And I'm
Peter Martin, And you're listening
to the You'll Hear It podcast. Music, Explored.
Explored brought to you today by Open Studio.
Go to openstudiojazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs.
Peter. We say it every single week,
almost nowadays that it's a big day.
No, you know what? We're throwing out all those previous
weeks where we said it's a big day.
'cause today, today's, I mean,
look at this. This is a big day.
We are so thrilled to be joined by Luxxury and Diallo. Yes.
From the incredible One song podcast. We're such huge fans.
Thank you guys for being here.
Thanks for having us, guys. Thanks for having us.
I think we're gonna geek out. Oh, man.
We, we, we've already been here. Geeking out.
We're gonna go next level, right?
For sure. So this is kind of a, this is kind
of the second part of a coin where a couple
of weeks ago we talked to, uh,
the lovely gents from switched on Pop about jazz musicians
playing on popular recordings.
We focused a lot on like Robert Glasper,
on Kendrick Lamar stuff. And who, who,
Sorry. Okay.
Bobby G.
And, uh, but we, in that conversation,
we said we should really talk, like,
have a whole distinct episodes about samples.
And we thought, well, who better talk to about
that than these two guys?
So yeah, we're stoked.
We're gonna dive deep into some of our favorite examples of
samples of jazz recordings used in hip hop.
And honestly, there's so much to pick from.
I was just saying before we started, this is the most full
our illustrious iPad has ever been
setting up, up for an episode. That's right.
That's right. We should have got the higher memory model,
but that's for another discussion.
Yeah. Yeah. But it's interesting that, you know, Adam,
you're kind of putting the ground rules
in, uh, which is interesting.
'cause I think you're gonna be the first one
to stretch the grow rules.
You said Ja, samples
of jazz records rules are meant to be broken in hip hop.
Right. Come on, man. What are we doing? I think Luxxury
diallo myself all, you know, we understood the assignment,
so a little foreshadowing there.
We'll see if you did as well.
Well, maybe we can just start,
I know this is gonna seem very basic, uh, for you all,
but let's talk about what is jazz?
Well, I was gonna actually say like,
Easy, easy.
How are we, how are we defining a sample,
which is maybe a little bit more complicated than,
or less straightforward than it seems.
Yeah. Um, but
how would you guys define a sample
specifically used in hip hop?
Is this a trick question? No,
This is what I'm saying, right? It
seems like, oh yeah, everybody,
We have recorded material in a new composition.
Mm-hmm. Uh, that would be the technical,
boring, dry definition.
Diallo, give 'em some color commentary.
Here we go. Here we go. Army
Black guy, bringing the color.
Check it out. I think, I think
what we wanna say right off the bat is
that we really adhere to the rules.
We we're talking samples, for the most part.
We're talking samples in the jazz field.
And we're not talking about, uh, something that my co, uh,
hosts podcast friend has talked a lot about, which is,
uh, do you wanna say it?
Interation? I knew it was coming.
I knew we were gonna say. I was like,
who's gonna say it? First
Episode? This is
not that episode, Guys,
This is not the Interpolation episode.
This is not the interpolation.
So if you're sampling, if you're sampling, uh, you know
Lonnie Smith, you're sampling Lonnie Smith.
You're not having some guy come in and, and replay Lonnie.
You, you, you, are you, I mean, actually, that is
where my dry definition comes in handy,
because there are people for whom the
distinction, they're unclear.
Right? The difference between an interpolation
and a sample is an interpolation is a replayed musical idea
from another composition from another song.
A sample is you literally take a piece of the recording
and you put it in to the new recording.
Could be a sound, could be a loop if you're in Jamaica.
Could be the entire rhythm, the entire track.
Um, but that's the main distinction between the two terms.
And it's interesting because some,
sometimes interpolation, it's hard to tell
that it's a rerecording of a familiar, original recording.
True. And sometimes a sample is hard to,
as we're gonna find out today, it's hard to pinpoint Wait,
is that actually from that record?
Because we know that producers
and DJs will, will, uh, mess with the original sample.
Slowing it down. Sure. Speeding it up, changing the pitch.
It's been so transformed from the original
that it is a new sound, a new group of sounds, a new loop.
Um, you know, part, I have a feeling
that what's gonna come up a lot today
besides genre porousness, which we've already alluded to,
I don't think my pick kind of deserves
to be called Jazz Franklin, or excuse me,
hip hop when we get to it.
Yeah. I will be. My pick is the one
that will be maligned collectively.
No, I disagree. I love it so much. No, it's a great,
I'm psyching you out saying we were gonna
malign. I don't know that
It's technically hip hop.
I don't think it makes the cut. I,
I, I I think it is absolutely hip hop.
Okay. Hot. And if I have to, if I have to go to bat
for your sample, uh, your,
your example sample, uh, I will, man. I mean,
Hip hop light hot.
Is that a term hiphop light?
'cause that would Well, what, what makes we
Get there? No, no. I mean, listen,
I think let's, let's, as I like
to say, let's rip the bandaid off.
In the early nineties specifically,
there was this whole conversation about
what is hip hop and what is not.
Yeah. Let's should say Hammer proper rap is not pop.
If you think that, then stop, you know, like there was a lot
of gatekeeping going on.
But I don't think, I don't think that anybody would say,
look, the jazz artists actually had a, the jazz artists
who were sampled by US three
or us three, um, they, they were excited
to be like, relevant.
And, and in the news again, I think that, you know,
there was something about the dude's flow
and the fact that we didn't know him previously.
If, if Q-Tip had jumped on that track, yeah.
It would probably be considered one
of the great hiphop songs of the nineties.
So I think let's, let's give them a little bit of slack.
They were trying something different. Yeah.
And, uh, yeah, we'll talk about it.
Yeah. Well, now that
we're here, I mean, we're kind of here.
We, we've already already dropped what?
It's, we were gonna save it to the end.
I didn't mean to jump to the head. No, no, no.
I think now did, no, let's,
Let's keep it in order. Let's keep it in
Order. All right. Well, stay tuned to the,
in
Hopeful also something look Forward to, it's very good.
I guess we'll kick it off where we, where we, uh,
had planned to kick it off, which is Peter, your pick.
You wanna tell us what you picked and why you picked? Yeah,
I did. And I think we're gonna go all around.
So this is really, I'm excited to hear everybody's picks
and takes and, and your guys reactions to mine, uh, as well.
But I was thinking about, you know, jazz,
there's so many great samples.
Um, but this idea of,
and you know, Bob James is,
is famously the most sampled artist of all time.
Um, of course a lot of people don't necessarily look at him
as a jazz pist, but he's very much
coming outta the jazz tradition.
Um, Herbie Hancock is up there, number three,
but a gentleman by the name
of Lou Donaldson was the six most sampled and a lot of six.
Who's compiling that? Um, I don't know,
because that's a, that was our,
our production team let us know that, you know,
That's down the list.
It is down the list. But the idea is this is this sample.
And a lot of it is actually Idis Muhammad,
who was an incredible drummer from in New Orleans, uh,
13th Ward, shout out uptown New Orleans.
But, you know, he played with everybody from actually
with Bob James Ahad, Jamal Horace Silver, Betty Carter.
Uh, but he also played with Sam Cook, a lot of r
and b drummers, but he brought that New Orleans flavors.
So on Lou Donaldson's 1967 Blue Note
record, uh, Mr.
Shing-A-Ling, this is Ode to Billy Joe.
And it's become one of the most, I I, you know,
this is the biggest part of the output
of Lou Donaldson's sample.
And it's basically been used as a drum break,
as a drum groove, as an underlying groove.
It's been chopped up in everything, but check it out.
Oh, is Dr. Lonnie Smith on the B3
Think so, yeah.
But I mean, like, the precision of that groove
with the snare drum.
Yeah. It's got the New Orleans Street beat thing. Um,
And it's, and it's on its own,
which in especially early days, makes it very easy to sample
and get some clean sounds out of it. Yeah,
Absolutely. And also, just
the way, so this is an RVG, Rudy van Gelder.
Great jazz, um, friend of the pod. We're not sure. We
We're hoping he's of the pod, maybe. Yeah.
We've been a little bit hard on his piano sound,
but he could record a drum.
And apparently him and Idris were really tight.
Idris loved the way he recorded.
So a lot of this for sampling, you know,
of course the engineering is a big part of it,
but what Adre plays on here is just OB genius.
So should we check out the first one?
Maybe go to the most famous one you
Think? Well, I think this is probably
the most famous,
Most of all,
young and restless,
Almost the exact same temple Too.
That's Kanye West. Jesus walks from college dropout.
Can I just say, yeah. Given everything that's happened
with this dude, the Lion, we're at war
with ourselves takes on such a different meaning now.
Yes, he is absolutely projecting
in such a outrageous way.
Um, man, I, to to to to quote Kanye, I miss the old Kanye. I
Remember, Dude, I remember those days. This
Whole album, college Dropout is so interesting
to listen to right now.
'cause you will get Yeah. Like, it'll be like, oh my gosh.
Like what he said back then. Yeah.
And it's also makes it kind of sad
'cause it was so, it's so sad. Incredible. Yeah.
It's so sad. It's like, it's like you lost a friend.
It is. And you know, anybody who's ever had a friend
and the friendship got ruptured for some reason,
you're just like, damn, were we ever on the same page?
Or did we just think we were on the same page?
I mean, like, I'll I'll say my favorite, um,
my favorite Kanye records are literally,
uh, late registration.
Yeah. And graduation.
I think that those two took
what he started on College Dropout.
They took it to a whole nother level.
The, the, the, the sampling. The looping.
Like, you know, just, it was,
but gosh, we're at war with ourselves now.
When I hear that line, I'm like, Kanye's at war with Kanye.
Yeah, right. It's just
Sad. Kanye was ahead
of his time, but I think
Major downer.
No, no, no. He was ahead of his time.
He might've looped back around to now being
behind the time somehow.
But I mean, I think that those d like, that's actually sort
of, I've always felt like that's the trilogy, right?
That's the sort of Trident of Kanye.
That was the trilogy. Yeah. You know?
Absolutely. Yeah. And graduation was when he permanently,
you know, he famously it was like, um, in Britpop they had,
uh, the Great Escape versus what's the story?
Morning Glory. Mm-hmm.
And in hip hop, you know, like two albums
that everybody's like, if you're a fan, go out
and support your artist.
And graduation came out the same as some 50 cent album,
which I don't even remember the name of it.
And Kanye beat him.
And everybody was like, well that's,
that's the passing of the torch.
And it really was, it was, uh, I feel like
after that 50 cent was never sort of like the, um,
marquee artist that, you know,
this new generation was becoming.
Right. For sure. For sure.
Well, speaking of marquee artists, the next, uh, uh,
artist that uses the O to Billy Joe sample
with Idris Muhammad is huge.
Another huge album here.
Zion. It is
so distinctive with that role. Yeah.
You know? Yeah.
Yeah. This one, they actually took out some of the inner,
this, the snares in between, but the roll there,
This is of course Zion from Lauryn Hill.
Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
And, and who produced that? Who produced
Zion? Who produced that song?
I don't Know. Do we know We don't have
that information in front of us. We
Don't have that. Our wifi
is off. We don't know what
Well, I mean, there's a connective tissue right there.
I'm, I'm seeing that. It looks like it was produced by, uh,
Lauren Hill, who actually gave a production credit
to She Ra.
Oh, nice. Um,
I didn't realize he was that busy in the studio.
No. What's crazy is that, uh, you know,
think about Kanye's very first, uh, all falls down
as a sample of Lauryn Hill.
So he was clearly Yeah.
Digesting not just Lauren's vocals,
but like, some of her production.
So he might have actually heard that, um,
drum on Miseducation.
Yeah. And thought, oh, I'm gonna put
that onto, uh, Jesus Walks.
See, these guys is real podcasting right here.
I know, I know. It's amazing. Can we talk
About Sharp 11 sharp nine chords here?
I'm getting nervous, man.
Uh, we've got, we've got just two more here from the,
the O Billy Joel, real quick.
I didn't know that this was it at all.
I remember this song now that you
Hopelessly Ink, when They say
Eminem from the Marshall Mathers LP,
Believe that it's over here we go all over again.
Next stack, because I'm talking a lot. S**t.
When I'm backing, there's a voice in the pack.
Distinctive. It's that press roll, right? Yeah. Yeah.
And that a press roll. Yeah.
You know, it's almost like that New Orleans
like a tambourine, you know? Yeah,
Yeah, yeah. It's
awesome. And then Peter, you pulled this one out, man.
I don't know where you got this, but, well,
This, this was on my mind.
I actually didn't remember this,
but I just saw the Spike Lee Denzel, uh, Washington movie,
A$AP Rocky, of course, is in that.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And when I saw his name pop up
as a possible sample e of this,
So this is LSD Love, sex and Dreams. Yeah. Not 20
Drugs.
There It is. There's the press roll.
So here's the stem of this.
Just to hear the drums slowed down.
He chopped and screwed it. He chopped.
He chopped and screwed up those, uh, Lou Donaldson.
Yeah. And I mean, that one, even like, the whole thing
of like that groove, like
Say it one more time. It's
such a foundational,
The original here.
Now, before we leave this one, actually,
before we started Diallo, you pointed out
that this, that organ hit is actually sampled Yes.
In this liquid, uh,
song from Tha Alkaholiks. Tha Alkaholiks.
That was, we loved the name of that group.
We thought they were The best name
Of the album is 21 & Over Classic.
There it is. There's the hit.
So good.
Ah, that's good stuff. That stuff, man.
That was upper, some real good stuff. Awesome.
Cool. Well, all right.
Next up, um, we're gonna go with some of dial's picks here.
So Diallo, you started with the Heath Brothers, um,
the Smilin' and Billy Suite Pt. II.
You wanna tell us about that one? Yeah. The
Heath Brothers, uh, um, American Jazz Group out of, uh,
I think they were out of Philly.
And, um, you know, they're just one of those groups.
I feel like, you know, jazz
and hip hop were so symbiotic in the early nineties.
'cause I think that, you know, the rappers were listening to
what their parents were listening to.
And specifically East Coast rappers.
You know, the guys like Q-Tip and pre and,
and Premier, um, and Pete Rock.
You know, you got the sense that they were definitely
listening to the soul and the funk of the seventies.
But like, their parents had dope record collections
because they were also hearing, you know,
everything from Bobbi Humphrey, uh, to this song
that we're gonna hear from the Heath Brothers.
This song in particular, I really like
because it's been picked over.
It's like bison in, you know, native American culture.
Like, it's, it's been picked over every single part
of this song at some point.
It's been used in somebody's great hip hop. Classic. Yeah.
So I think that, uh, I, yeah.
When I think about some of my favorite sampling,
this one tends to come up
because I just hear so many songs that have, uh,
used various parts of it.
It's, and at least this first part of it too, is so easy
to spot because it's so distinctive sounding
that you can hear it Yes.
Fairly easily. Here's the right from the beginning,
you getting out your thumb piano.
Whatcha Are you reaching for
Now?
So, as Watch this. Here Comes,
Here comes, here comes one more part.
Let this part play. Hold on.
Sorry. Um, I gotcha. Because it
Was about to go, it was about to go to the next sample.
Yeah. Watch, watch this.
Just keep this in the back of your head. Right.
Here it comes.
Action.
Laid back. Okay. Now you kill him. Now you can go.
So that's Jimmy, Percy, and Tootie Heath.
Uh, the Heath Brothers Smilin' Billy Suite Pt. II.
Before you play, I just wanna say, yeah, like,
this is such an interesting thing to me
because the, I actually got a chance to play
with Jimmy Heath when he was still around, you know,
amazing saxophonists.
And then, uh, Percy was the baseball.
I mean, I used to transcribe his baselines from Miles
Davis's records in the fifties and stuff.
And 2D of course, legendary. Like, this is so atypical.
So the stuff that they were known for,
A lot of the stuff we're listening to today is the
atypical cut on the jazz album. Yeah.
And I think it's such a,
like you talked about the connection between hip hop, um,
with, with a lot of, and jazz Yeah.
And jazz from, you know, your parents listening to it
and then cutting up the records, uh, you know,
crate diving and all that kind of stuff.
But I think it's such a, a te like it's a maybe a little bit
of an untold story about how hip hop, especially producers
that are able to find these gems, they're not going
to like the most popular heath brothers stuff.
No. You know what I mean? They're finding these little gems.
They're looking for something.
They're not looking to say, oh,
we took this Miles Davis kind of blue and sampled it.
That's actually not sampled that much.
You know, it's the other stuff. No, it's super interesting.
Okay. Can I just ask a question
because this is one reason why I love, uh,
doing the podcast with Luxxury.
Uh, 'cause it sounds like, I I always say I'm dumb in the
sense that like, my public education,
my public school education failed me.
I, I, other than the drums,
I don't really play a whole lot of instruments.
So sometimes Blake, can you tell me like,
do you know what instrument that is?
'cause it sounds to me like vibes,
it sounds like Ro hair style, vibraphone.
Uh, but it also sounds like, it sounds like Peter and Adam.
It sounds like you guys already know the answer to this.
Yeah. I'll let you guys answer. If you already know.
It's, I mean, I have some of these,
but it sounds like this African instrument
that's this half gorge shaped
and then these metal tins, it's called a thumb piano
or a kalimba sometimes call it.
Um, they get very big Columbo or they get very, very small.
But that's what it sounds like to me. Yeah.
Wow. To me too, we talked, there was an earth wind
and fire episode, I think we alluded to,
to Maurice playing, playing that on one
Of his, yeah. Oh, nice. Nice.
Ramsey Lewis tunes, I think. Something like that. Yeah.
They are murdered to tune.
If you've ever had to tune one, you need like, oh yeah.
Pliers band. Yeah. 'cause you have to bandaid
Adjust the Yeah, yeah.
Yes. My father had a coumba
and uh, I used to fool around on it,
but, you know, my father was part of this like, collective
of black artists in Atlanta called the
Neighborhood Art Center.
And so my house was literally just, it was a bunch of like,
you know, congas and, and kalimbas everywhere.
And that was, those were the,
but I remember, yeah, you used to have to like,
take a thing and just bend it.
It was very, it was very, uh,
You gotta pull it in and out of
where it's attached to the core. Yeah. 'cause the length of
The thing would, would, I
have not thought about that in a hundred years,
But the sort of like, the sort
of imperfect tuning is actually the sound of it.
Actually, let's check out the Heath brothers one more time
before we put the, the samples in our ears.
And that's Stanley Cowell, a great jazz pianist and Columbus
In Columbus. I really love how
Like, cool. What instrument that is.
I love it even more.
Yeah. Oh, and also just to dial to your point,
raise your hand if you went to public school.
Hey, just so we know where we're all at. Come on. You know.
Oh, okay. Blake's. So we we're gonna need some corrections
and some check-ins from you. Sorry.
At least in spelling doesn't Make me smart.
Let's go with, uh, with probably the most well known Well,
maybe the, the most well known version.
This is, uh, Nas -- One Love.
I'm Got six news on that Jack Kid. S**t is real.
Yo, yo. Hey, yo. Check this s**t out. Hey, yo. Go.
Gimme a cigarette, man. Yo, here you go. Here go.
Here you go. Check it out, man.
Check out what I got here, man. What is that?
Yo, my man,
Here comes guys up. But here comes real.
What up kid? I know. S**t is f****d. Doing your b***h.
When the cops came, shoulda slid to my crib. F*****g black.
No time.
Why don't your lady write you
Flipping And listen to that whole thing
that's from 1994 is Illmatic. Of course. That
Was such a, that was such a breakthrough. It's
So hard. It's
so hard to even cut a NAS verse in that period short
because he is telling a whole story.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like, it's just,
you know, shorty don't care.
He's a snake two running with that fake crew that hates you.
Like, you know, like he just, he paints such vivid pictures.
Uh, AIO mad. It's crazy.
I really love the use of that sample in that, in
that track too, because they're,
they're like pumping it in and out.
Yeah. You know, they're keeping Yeah.
The producers keeping like, it's Q-tip,
Q-tip produced it Q-tip Produced.
So the, the piano chords are in there.
Like, I don't think a lot
of producers would've kept in there. It almost
Sounds like do. I
Don't hear any, by the way, saxophone in there.
Um, did you I didn't hear any sax. I don't So I
Didn't Hear either. Yeah. That's
Jimmy's,
Jimmy's Jimmy Heath's main instrument is exactly Sax.
Yep. You're right. Right. The base. You know why?
Because part of, part of my obsession,
and if you listen to our show, you, you,
you've heard me talk about this with, especially
with sampling, is when there's a disconnect between
what you hear used in a sample,
like literally the performances in the,
in the section that was used.
Yeah. And then who's actually been paid?
Who gets the songwriting credit. Right.
And therefore, who had to clear it only
because, like we, I've just been going down the rabbit hole
as we've been listening on this tune.
And so James Heath is the only heath of the Heath brothers
who was a writer of,
of the Smile in Billy, you know, the original tune.
He's the sole. He's, he gets a hundred percent of
of the publishing on that.
Therefore, when it gets sampled in the song we just heard,
he gets 60% of one love.
Wow. And his brothers,
who I think we're hearing, I don't think we're
hearing. We're not hearing
Yeah, that's right.
I don't think we're hearing, I think we're hearing
what I like what I've been calling, uh,
like sample phantoms.
Yeah. You hear their performance. Yeah.
But they aren't named and they aren't paid. Yeah.
And I think, you know, in this tune, maybe it's, uh,
2D Heath on drums, as you mentioned, it might be, um,
pianist Stanley Cal, I see Listed per the,
per the Heath brother named Percy.
Again, not a writer. So that, to me, it drives me crazy.
Like there's such a huge disconnect in copyright law. Yeah.
With sampling between who may have gotten paid
for publishing reasons back in the day,
but sampling hadn't exist, didn't exist yet.
And then in fast forward to the modern day
where the reuse completely is based on a completely
different system than when the song
first came out and it didn't
Matter. Well, let's, let's connect
that to Nas. Right.
Because we talked about that on a song, on a Nas song
that sampled a sting song.
Right. But the part that Nas sampled
has nothing to do with Sting.
Yeah. Like Sting didn't write it and he didn't play it.
But Sting, like Steely Dan likes his publishing
and so he gets all the money.
And the guy who Nas actually sampled that artist, uh, sort
of, sort of kept out of that. It
Happens way too often.
Borderline more often than not, in fact
with sampling. But go on. Yeah,
I was just gonna say real quick, um, also Tume, uh, used
to play percussion with, uh, the Heath Brothers. So Right.
That might be him playing the plucky. It might be him
Playing the right.
We dunno. And Tume, for those who Dunno, did Juicy Fruit,
which was sampled by Biggie for Juicy. This
Is on our, this is right here. It's
A lot of The same folks. Yeah.
Yeah. This is my next thing. Did you know that?
And that's Jimmy Heath's son. Right.
Did you know that Tume is also Jimmy Hit's son? What? Yes.
That's right. I did not know that. James Tume. Yeah.
Another, I know another Heath brother.
That, that part I didn't know. And I mean,
Jimmy Heath, Heath was like, I mean,
he only passed a few years,
I wanna say within the last four or five years.
What? Yeah. But I mean, he,
this was the son he had when he was like 2019 years old.
Yeah. Oh
My gosh. He, he lived to
be nine three.
Oh, wow. Yeah, he was Okay. That's amazing.
He was the last one. And yeah, he was kicking it.
I mean, I saw him at a jazz festival, I feel like last year.
It was probably six years ago. He
Was probably six years ago. I was gonna
say. But that, it's a great point.
Luxxury about, about who's playing what,
and what is the sample actually built from and
'cause I mean, even your Ode to Billy Joe
with, uh, Lou Donaldson.
Well, it's, it's all Aris Muhammad, you know,
and Bernard Purdy's famously is on every,
But Bobby Gen, Bobby Gentry, Eric Gentry,
however you say her name is the soul publisher of that song.
Right. So every song you heard the drumbeat in Bobby
Gentry's not a state. She's still alive. Guys.
Did we just, and The thing is, with jazz gets paid,
and I mean, even up to this
day, this is such a different thing.
Like you were saying, Blake, how it's like, yeah.
It was only one of them had the songwriting credit on
that Jimmy Heath that was not only was,
but still is super common in jazz.
It's like very rare. We, like,
we're always in the studio collaborating on stuff,
but only one person takes the publisher.
You know why band leaders we're dumb. The band leader. Yeah.
The band leader. Because we're dumb and we wanna stay poor.
That's the jazz musicians too.
Well, wait, why is that between the two of you?
Why don't you have a 50 50 split?
I don't mean to start. That's a great,
Well, great question. That's
a good question. That's why we're gonna have you guys
back to have that discussion.
Guys, did we just start? No, no, but
I mean, listen, I'm so curious, like,
To jump on. Well, no, this is
typically how it'd be,
this is a little bit of oversimplification,
but you're, especially back then, like Blue note, um,
prestige verb, all these like classic recording CTI even
going up into the seventies, like the band CTI.
Yeah. See that, that that's an whole nother sample world.
Freddie Hubbard, George Benson there. Yeah. Oh, good.
But typically, like, you'd come in with the tunes
and you might have a tune
that somebody else in the band
wrote, but just they wrote it.
You bring it in, you either teach it or there's lead sheet,
or you've been playing it on the road, but it's one person.
And then everybody might contribute to it.
But there's no, like, where's the line between, like,
if you're just adding some parts and some solos
and some little, you know, finger things
or whatever, that's not, that's never gonna rise
to the level of, part of the tune.
You know, it probably should though.
But, uh, here's the thing.
I, I strongly, I think that's been my experience too.
And I understand that that is the case for the most part.
That is the established way that it is.
But it also comes from an era of two things.
One, there wasn't any revenue
to be made if you're a performing musician.
Right. If you're a jazz performing musician,
you didn't really think necessarily beyond the next gig.
Right. Or the next gig,
meaning live performance on stage at Birdland or whatever.
Or the next time you got hired to record.
So you're motivated by two things,
not rocking the boat so you get the next gig.
And not necessarily being educated.
'cause I had a publishing deal for at least two years
before I understood what it was.
Yeah. Publishing is complicated. Yeah.
What the two pies of writing, like writers share
and publisher share, it's an obtuse, complicated business.
Yep. And it is easily misunderstood or just never explained.
Right. So all this to say that I I, I have,
I'm glad you guys are buds
and I'm not gonna jump in there and screw that up.
But I do, I do have strong opinions about like Yeah.
What rises to the level of credit as songwriting mm-hmm.
To me, often is based on power dynamics.
And I want to get hired again
and not be, you know, a problem.
Yeah. May not be a Divo over here.
And it doesn't really reflect the reality that since
that norm was established a long time ago in jazz,
in Jamaica, in in Rock, Herbie Flowers famously
with like the Lou Reed, right?
Mm-hmm. And the tribe called Quest sample
that you only hear Herbie Flowers baseline in,
but he got paid 50 bucks that day, right?
Yeah. Hip hop didn't exist yet in 1975.
All that stuff, to me, is a big reason why copyright law
needs a huge, huge
Overhaul. It needs a huge
rewrite. And also, to your credit, Blake,
I'd always assumed like, oh man,
if I had been alive in the twenties,
I would've been on Tin Pan Alley every day.
You know, I would've been down there just copywriting.
But songs, you know, like, here's a song about,
here's a song about escalators.
You know, like, just everything
They were just invented. And
Then, uh, but my favorite Bob, Mr.
Uh, show sketch of all time.
But, um, but Blake unfortunately told me that racism,
racism, his ugly head again.
And like a lot of times these black musicians had, you know,
they were basically kept out of Tin Pan Alley.
So once again, you know, like there, there were so many, uh,
barriers, both, you know, mental
and institutional that,
that kept these guys from knowing their
real, uh, their real worth
Value. Well, I think,
I think like your,
your instinct about just like not wanting to rock the boat,
especially during this era of, I mean,
these guys were making dozens of albums every year,
like as a side man, right?
You would go to the studio all the time
for one day, you would make one album.
You'd sit in, you'd sometimes not know
what you were doing till you got there.
You got there. They called the tunes. You played the tunes.
You got your 50 bucks or a hundred bucks
or whatever it was gonna be.
And that was a good day. You know,
that's a good living to make.
But you're not thinking like, well,
I'd also added the, the intro
Ever samples this, right?
Yeah. Yeah. There's
No consideration of that.
And just to sort of counter, just one last thing,
and I'll get off my soapbox about this topic.
Just to counter the like, logical thing.
I can imagine a listener
or a commenter diving in YouTube right now.
There is, that's just the way it is, man.
That mentality to me is not the,
that's not a good enough response.
Agreed. Like, that's just how capitalism works, man. Yeah.
Because then you, then you then don't take the gig,
like is not an option when you're a musician.
Your options for how you get paid
are pretty limited already.
Yeah. Your knowledge potentially about the industry,
your ability to access a lawyer to vouch for you, all of
that is very limited.
Totally. If it exists at all.
So the idea that you could just like, not take the gig if
what you were offered the 50 bucks
and not a split of the publishing Right.
Wasn't good enough. You don't have that choice.
Absolutely. I mean, and think about this.
Are we part of the solution or the problem here?
Like, we're gonna have, we're gonna clear rights on all this
music when it goes up on YouTube for this episode.
And then Aris Muhammad's not gonna get any of the
Oh, no, he's not gonna get a penny.
Lou do Blue Note Records will for sure. Uh, Lou Donaldson,
Bobby Gentry's estate will be fine, right? Yeah.
Lou Donaldson's estate may be
through the writing part of it.
Um, right. But Adre, Jimmy
Heath, huh? 60%
over there, but the rest of the Heath's 0%.
Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
Now that everybody's completely forgotten
what the Heath Brothers sounds.
Well, let's, let's, let's check back in
with the Heath Brothers here.
Wait on a second. We're, let's look at Rick Anos gonna
give us a little more information
Swipes in like, Oh, it's so great.
There we go. The vibe. And
So that's why we left it off. So
You had, and then can you play us the, um, 'cause
'cause Red Man sampled it very similar to Nas,
but I love how he just let the beat completely, right?
Like, didn't change it at all. It's bus, you know,
It's a play.
Nah, mother,
I was flying through the mother f*****g slow it down.
He's the
got spread from Japanese to s
That's from Red Man's 1996 album, muddy Waters.
It's incredible. Great album.
And then you have, you have one more on here,
Diallo from the same year as Illmatic.
You have the Beat Nuts, uh,
their self-titled album from 1994.
The Beat Nuts, very similar to the Alcoholics.
They sampled another part of the song.
That part you highlighted. Oh,
Yeah, yeah. Yes.
Yeah.
The Kalimba on a Get a Stout. Yeah.
There you go. There you go.
Oh, so good. Um, I just love sampling so much.
And, you know, you said something that I wanted
to call out real quick.
Um, I love that people are finding these songs
that are not typical of the rest
of the jazz artist's catalog.
Yeah. Um, I like the fact that they as much respect
as I have for those artists who take something
that's obscure, but they're taking the first couple
of seconds of the song.
Um, there's another song that, uh, I wanted to talk about,
which is, uh, Ahmed Jamal's.
I love music. This is a,
this is a nine minute epic, you know, Opus,
That's all what we call a typical jazz track.
No, but this is, but this is kind of a, it's free
TikTok. It's Free TikTok.
This is kind of a weird Ahmad Jamal album.
Awakening Awakening is the name of the album. It's amazing.
But it is very, it's not live at the
Persh is almost the equivalent.
It's not po Sienna of like the Heath Brothers that record,
as opposed to the, it's almost the
same kind of thing. It's true.
But if you could, if you indulge me,
could you play like the first seven seconds
of the very beginning of this song?
Because I want people to know
that this song starts off one place
and you have to go like five or six minutes into the song
before you ever get to the part that,
uh, that we're gonna talk about.
Could we just hear like the first seven seconds of the song?
Absolutely. Yeah.
I mean, this makes me want to like, be
in my mansion throwing a glass
of wine at a painting of my father.
It's definitely so specific, Nalo,
Was it good enough for you, dad?
Like, that's what I wanna be
Doing. It's definitely, it's
the beginning
of the film before the credits.
And then we find out why he's
so p****d off at his father later.
For sure. 100% The
Money, the money couldn't fill the hole. His
Soul, it never can. That's
it never came.
Well, it can get close though. Let's find that. It
Really is. It really, it
really is just a beautiful, beautiful song.
I, I'm making fun of it right now.
But like this song, like when I listened to the whole song,
I, I never get tired of it.
It's just a gorgeous, gorgeous,
I was on a bike one time in Paris a long time ago,
and I had this in my headphones
and I was just like, life doesn't get any better.
This, this is a beautiful, beautiful song.
Yeah, but let's skip ahead Key Rock.
It gets weird. Oh, it gets very weird. It gets
Weird. Here's a little
Key. Rock finds something
and that's it.
That's all you used. It doesn't repeat. It's, it's not Lou.
It's like there's nothing there. It's that little section.
One more time here. This
Here's another No,
again, from the Old
Attics, The World is yours.
Great use. I Mean, like, just to take just that tight,
it's like when Dab Punk, uh, when you see
how they put together a song like one more time.
Like they, they took just these tiniest little
pieces of nothing.
And just, that's what makes sampling an art form.
Because really it's such a small part that they technically,
I always say they didn't have to sample it.
Like they could've just played it.
Probably nobody would've ever drawn a connection. Mm.
But that's sort of what makes it an art is that No,
I'm literally, uh, Blake famously, you know,
put together grooves in the Heart by Delight
and showed us how that song is entirely
as not one musician was brought into the
studio to make that song happen.
It's all layered samples on samples.
And I think that Pete Rock's taking this tiny little piece
that's the genius of, of great sampling is that he took
that tiny little piece and built
something magical off of it.
Yes, absolutely. Um,
And most importantly, this was recorded
and came out in 1970,
same year I was recorded and came out into
The world. Very. You go. Very
important.
And actually Caleb, uh, could you,
if you could throw up the album cover
for this Amma Jamal the Awakening album.
It's a beautiful Yeah. Album cover for that era. Yes. Yeah.
Absolutely. Gorgeous. Here's another example of, uh,
I think this is Pete Rock too, on bus rhyme.
Tell you what the Too,
Listen to the wind so I could hear the earth begin a
universe speak round a celebration of my birthday.
That being said, we can stop pretending in our mental,
like all the s**t we witnessed be happening coincidental.
See, back in 98 when I dropped the first extinction level,
I was fighting in the demons with personal scores to settle.
They put it in a movie. 'cause they
knew that we ain't really know.
Funny honey, they trying
to tell us 22 years ago deeply impacted
how watching the flick really move
me as the world was ending.
Mark Freeman was p the movie show.
Let's fast forward the 2009,
the 2012 movie left an impression on the minds
of the people, making sure we remember if we slightly
doubted that the world was ending
and we can't really do s**t about it. Damn.
So can this is what now,
By the way, what you're doing, what you're doing
live in the studio right there.
I'm all for it. This is, it sounds fantastic.
Well, I Just want That's, that's
an interpolation what he's
Now this is definitely an interation.
No, but this is what I,
I just wanna give just some shout outs to jazz musicians for
what they bring to this party,
because we, we, that's what this whole
Episode's About. That's what I'm
saying, man. But this
is what Amad Jamal brings.
It's like this beautiful, yeah.
This beautiful C minor nine voicing. Right.
And I think he's using this, this sort
of block chord structure where you
have the octaves on the outside
And going up a minor third.
Right.
I think it's, is it like a augmented
thing, right?
Yeah. Does that seem right? Like it's a, or,
or like a b minor major seven kind of thing? Yeah.
We just lost all our listeners. I know.
As soon as you said the name of that
Chord, I just wanted just
shout out that because it's like,
No, no, that's, we do that all the time.
This, this, I can't speak those terms.
Luxxury can speak all of that. Oh.
And I couldn't find those chords like that, that was
beyond my chromatic, you know, level my spiciness. Uh, uh
But that's the kind thing that, that I think
as jazz musicians, when we hear hip,
when we hear jazz samples in hip hop, we're like, yes.
Like, that might not happen
with just the producer playing piano chords.
It's like having this genius Ahmad Jamal, who's so
not only comes up with these incredibly creative harmonic
devices, but the way he plays 'em too is like
world class pianist.
It's really, I think,
brings a special thing to these things.
I mean, I, I know the original recording too,
just the way it sounds and everything,
but the actual, what he's playing is super special.
Yeah, for sure. And so cool that it gets to be like,
amplified out and for, I mean, there's, you know,
the counter argument to this is like, oh,
they're only taking a little, you should
listen to the whole nine minutes.
And if you know you're on a, a,
a bike in Paris, and you can do that, that's great.
But it's also like, this sends people back
down the rabbit hole.
It's like, what is that sound?
Or they make that connection when they hear the original
or they hear Po Ciena
or something. We're like, wait, that's that
And, and no to, I love that point.
And I, and I even point out that if, if we went back
and played the little section that Pete Rock sampled,
it's not like he looped it
and you can just, you know,
put it in a Serato DJ app and loop it.
No. Like he, he he cut it up. Yeah.
So like, he did take a little snippet here,
a little snippet here, reverse it,
and then he put like an extra note right here so
that it would all line up to be four four.
Yeah. But it's, uh, yeah.
And I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a little hot take
here and say that there's a through line to what jazz,
especially like coming out of the bebop era.
And who was that, that were just, were famously?
Oh, uh, Roy Hargrove said, you know, hip hop is the grandson
and the granddaughter of bebop.
Like, that's the direct line in there.
And, um, it's, but like, as jazz musicians, like,
we're constantly taking little phrase, little parts.
When we improvise a solo, that's exactly what we're doing.
Like when you're sampling, it's not just like the most
unimaginative players.
And these people don't get
gigs and we don't even talk to them.
They're beneath us, but they're learning a Charlie Parker
solo on a blues and then get up and just play that solo.
Nobody wants to hear that. Not 'cause it's not a good solo,
but you can go hear Charlie Park on a record, you know,
now you take part of,
and no one even wants to hear you play the exact phrase
and then your phrase, it's like using your musical taste
and taking little bits of that.
You know, I mean, miles Davis was the master of that.
Like, he was basically sampling Clifford Brown
and Fats Navarro and Lewis Armstrong,
all these trumpet players, little phrases.
And everyone was like, oh, he's a gen. And he was a genius.
But it ended up that he played on a trumpet
that hadn't been played before. That For sure.
Yeah. Part of this storytelling, it's, it's linked
to DJ culture, which we talk about all the time, is another
undersung musicality tradition is DJing.
Mm-hmm. Like you, so there are, there are people
of certain caliber of, you know, maybe snobbishness
or gatekeeping ness that would say, well do things not,
you don't know an instrument, whatever.
Like, and same with sampling,
but in fact, really what music is intended
for is communication and, and, and storytelling.
Yeah. And a lineage, a tradition.
And when you're calling attention to things that you like,
things that came before you, things
that you think other people should seek out.
Yeah. Little references, little homages, interpolations
and sampling are just part of that larger tradition
of musical borrowing, of using what music came
before to tell the story you are telling now
in your individual way. I love it.
There's something, hold
On. I'm, I'm,
I'm borrowing that term.
Musical borrowing. I'm gonna interpret.
I love that. Something, something is sticking out to me
with this sample with Bus Rhymes specifically.
We don't have to keep this in the show,
but what's the Busta Rhyme song
that uses the Bernard Herman sample from Psycho?
The Oh, the string
thing. Great one.
Yeah. Um, It's very similar harmonically to
what Amad Jamal's playing here.
It's like almost exactly like this Minor nine to the,
to the augmented a half step below.
It's like a similar thing
that Bernard Herman uses in Right. Phrase
One of those Hitchcock movies or
Something. I don't know if that's interesting here.
It's,
It's, uh, yeah, no, I think
that's really, it's like, gimme some more,
Gimme some more. That's it. Gimme
some more Incredible.
But The Strings, it's a similar
vibe, which I think is interesting.
Like, I think Busta Rhymes just sounds good over these like
cinematic, I'm gonna throw my scotch
into the fireplace kind of vibes. Yeah.
Hell yeah. Uh, okay, let's, uh, next one up is,
this was really interesting actually.
D this is another one of yours.
This is, um, young Holt Unlimited.
Unlimited. Right.
That's pretty much it.
That's pretty much the sample People
use strangers in the night.
It goes into a more traditional,
Yeah.
Alright. Welcome Lee
to the Lambert Airport Holiday Inn.
Are we playing at the Wiki Wiki room?
Welcome to the Howard Johnson. Yeah,
Exactly. Yeah. Howard Johnson.
Let's hear that, that, that intro one more time.
Teaching torch time. Yep.
Very cool. Little bell there. Yeah.
Triangle. There's is a triangle
We could have never known.
So this was sampled never known into Return
of the Crook Dodgers, um,
by a group called Crook Dodgers 95.
But this was from a soundtrack to a film
Known, never Taken Brooklyn.
Brooklyn. We did it like that. And now we do it like this.
We did it like that. And now we do it like this.
Yeah. Now clock Kids who got the cocaine,
don't tell me it's the little kids are culture.
The metaphor sent from my brain, from my jaw,
it comes from other places.
Not the tinted phrase. Journalistic values are yellow.
And then of I,
Man, I think it's a bell.
I think it's a, it's a bell
or one of those, one of those things.
So question here, um,
and Blake, maybe this kind of hearkens back
to some things you were talking about, about copyright.
So Strangers in the Night do the songwriters from
this gets some of that sample.
'cause there's none of the melody
and whoever the Tin Pan, I don't know who wrote this.
Oh yeah. Strangers In the Night.
I'm, it's this, this,
this has been happening a lot to me recently.
I am finishing a book about musical borrowing
and it is a taxonomy of all the manifestations of it.
So there's a interpolation chapter
and a sampling and a covers.
And it's funny 'cause it keeps happening today.
I'm writing about John Coltrane today after this and
before this I'm writing about, um, my favorite things.
I'm writing about the phenomenon of jazz covers.
And of course you mentioned bebop before.
Part of the bebop tradition comes out of the recognition
that when you do that, you lose all your money.
Yeah. So let's like flip this one on its head change,
not use the melody in the head or the solo Right.
Contra facts and call it something new. Yeah.
Counteract Exactly. Right.
There's a whole contra fact chapter.
Um, but the short answer is yeah, the composers
of Strangers in the Night, which I, I'll look up right now,
but it's certainly not the, the trio of,
of Young Holt and such.
It's by Bur Bert Campford, Charles Singleton,
and Eddie Snyder would be,
Those guys were definitely hanging out on,
on Tin Pan Alley.
You know, those dudes were,
I mean, that's where the money goes
for on the compositional publishing side for the original.
And if it's cleared properly, which we have
to assume at a certain point it was, um,
they would be getting all of
that publishing money as well. Man. I think
It's the Unal t not the drummer fact,
not the bass player, not the, not the Bell player.
It's apparently Frank Sinatra's most
commercially successful album of all time Wow.
Is the, is the one that produced this one in 1966. So yeah.
Those, those estates are probably still just making all
kinds of crazy money off.
But the crazy part is in terms of like what they sampled,
there's none Melody,
there's not even any, it hasn't gotten any.
It's disconnected. This is, this brings us to my second,
uh, term I'm introducing in the book,
but I'm throwing out there on our own podcast.
In your podcast and just
because it's fun to test these words out, but
before I mentioned Sample Phantom,
you hear the bass player, but he didn't get paid.
Right. The opposite of that is who does get paid?
I'm calling that a credit ghost. Yeah, yeah. Right.
And in this case, the three dudes I just named Yeah.
From the Strangers in the Night Original. Right.
Who wrote that melody
and that lyric, once that got transformed
by Young Holt Unlimited in 1966 into this jazz odyssey.
Yep. It still gets baked into the part that was sampled,
even though that melody and that lyric isn't in there. So
Even the Lyricists, they're still getting paid.
Even the lyricists, even the
Lyricists, even though it's instrumental,
that's the same thing that's happening on the Coltrane,
in the Coltrane situation.
Right. Um, you know, Richard Rogers, Rogers and Hart. Right.
Rogers and Har And it's instrumental. Yeah.
So there's no lyrics to speak of.
Um, so it's a crazy,
another disconnect in how copyright works.
Yeah. Is that all the way down the line all these years
later because of not anticipating the future
and then not changing things when the future came?
Yep. We have these strange disconnects between
what you're hearing, who wrote it,
who got paid, which part was used.
Crazy. Oh, I'm so glad you're talking about this
and I'm so glad you're writing a book about it
because it is something that we've all just,
I think our whole careers have
just said, well, this is how it is.
Yeah. And this is the rules that we have to play by.
But you're right, it's, it's archaic the way
that we're approaching all of this,
and it doesn't make sense in the current way
that people make music. Right.
We have to change it and,
and just like literally, there's, um, Sona,
which is the Songwriters Association of North America.
I'm not sure if you guys are members worth
checking it out and perhaps joining.
It's technically impossible. Songwriters can't have a union.
It's against the law. Great. That's great.
So there are musicians unions,
there's instrumentalist unions, there's, you know,
studio musicians,
but songwriters that profession is for reasons historically,
there, there isn't anything where power can be.
We can unite and have power to negotiate, basically.
Right, right. So this is a group that is trying to
act, empower songwriters essentially.
And it is a stated goal.
I I'm saying this because I just got off the phone with,
if you don't know his podcast,
Ross Golan has a great show called,
and the writer is, and he's giving the keynote.
And he and I just had a really long conversation
where it's like, we need to like advocate for, we need
to start advocating for change, basically.
Yeah. We're all tired of these stupid roles.
It's just the way it is. Hey,
you got your 50 bucks on the date.
Totally. Yeah. Sorry, you died broke. Sorry.
You couldn't pay your medical bills.
No, the number of drummer biographies on Wikipedia who we,
who got sampled that I read and then they died at 41.
Like, come on. Right.
You know, let's get these guys paid,
let's get them health insurance.
Um, anyway, all this that, that's,
I said I'd get off my soapbox. No, no.
Stay On. Stay on.
And actually, I just remember the, the Aris,
um, Lou Donaldson thing.
Lou Donaldson Blue note, shout out Bruce Luva,
who was the president and,
and the head of Blue Note records for a long time.
Great guy. Um, but I remember,
and I don't wanna speak too much outta term,
but I know that this, some form of this happened.
Like they actually got Aris funneled a lot of
that sample royalty as it came in.
And Blue Note of course, really worked hard at that.
And Lou Donaldson authorized that too.
So that was the rare occasion, not
because they had to. That's wonderful.
I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. So was that on the,
that was on the Masters side, like as opposed
to the publishing side maybe? Yeah, I think
So. That's great. I
Think so. That's an option.
Yeah. But Lou Donaldson was one of the funniest guys ever.
Jack, he used to always make jokes about, you know,
like hip hop beba, he had a real high voice, you know?
And he'd be like, I don't know what, I never respected that
until I started getting him checks.
And then I respected, you know,
he had a whole stick that he did about that,
You know. But luckily, to your
point, if,
if musicians are reliant on the benevolence of record labels
to, you know, make their living,
we did that ever work out, it's never gonna happen.
You know, it's good that Buno did that,
but it's not a, it's not something to build a career on.
Now. Um, let's move it along here.
Uh, Dali, you threw this in, sort of, uh,
here in the last bit before we started,
but I really enjoyed this idea.
So we mentioned Bob James at the start.
Most sampled musician. Yeah. Jazz musician in history
According to, um, I don't know, chat,
GPT or something. Okay, good.
Peter. Good. So Diallo,
you brought up Westchester lady.
Come on, Bob James three.
Yeah. Looks a lot like a Pink Floyd album cover.
So what is it about this? Where is this,
where else can we find this?
Well, let me just say real quick. Um, yes.
I think that Bob James is like one of my favorites.
Anytime you put on a Bob James record,
you always hear just a, an avalanche of,
of sampled parts from other songs,
and you're just like, oh, I know that.
Oh, I know that one. I know that one.
And I, I did admittedly, um, this is not a flex,
but I, on the way, uh, here, uh, to my laptop desk, um,
I, I, I texted Patrice Russian,
who's been on our show. Yes.
Drop that name there. I
asked her, you might look on the floor.
Yeah, I did. And I, I did ask her.
I was like, Hey, you know, Bob James, like, you know,
my father was really into bebop.
My dad was really a bebop guy.
And, um, and I remember, like,
I feel like he did not dig the Bob James sound, you know,
like, to him that was like, sort
of like easy listening jazz or something like
That. Jazz, smooth jazz.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I did ask her, um, I did text
and ask her like, Hey, what did,
what did like the black jazz musicians of that time, like,
what did the, what did the George Bensons and the Roy Ayers,
and what did, what did the, what was their impression
of of Bob?
Did they think he was cool? Did they think he was like,
easy listening and corny?
Like, what was the, um, what was the take?
And I, and I did not know at the time, uh,
that you guys had played
with all the illustrious people you played with.
Have you ever heard that about Bob's reputation?
Like, is, is Bob, like, was,
was Bob at the time considered corny,
or was he always thought of as like, Bob, wait,
What did Patrice say? I'm dying to
know. How did she respond to that? Yeah,
Yeah. Totally wanna know it.
She, she, she has not written back yet.
Honestly. I've heard nothing but love from Bob James.
Yeah. First of all, in every circle, Bob
James is one of the nicest, most humble Oh, cool.
Sweetest guys ever.
And, you know, I met him when I was actually a teenager.
He was super nice to me,
and even kind of re seemed like he pretended
to remember me the next time I saw him.
And so I'm a little bit clouded judgment,
but I think like the people you're talking about, Roy Ayers,
um, like really like, sort of gr uh, Grover Washington Jr.
I think that Donald, Donald Bird.
Donald Bird, I think they all really liked him
and was, yeah, I don't think there was like a corny, like,
I think that there was the more hardcore jazzers that
as they got into the seventies, were like,
y'all stole our music and we can't get any gigs because,
and it was really pr I was joking smooth.
Ja. I don't think that term was even happening
yet then, like in the seventies.
No, definitely not. But I think like whatever fusion
and groovy jazz, you know, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zal,
that whole Jocko pesto, I mean like jazz,
jazz adjacent, whatever was happening to them.
Like Bob James was right in the middle of that,
and he was, I mean, was, I love that.
I love that. Yeah. But I mean, I think
that there was always like a, and Herbie, I know him
and Herbie have always been tight and s**t.
Korea. Yeah. I think that there's always this backlash
to any of the successful jazz.
And look, most of the times they, they're pianists
or keyboarders that sell out and go Hollywood.
I mean, this came against Herbie for sure.
Um, once you have a hit once, I mean, you know,
Bob James wrote the theme to Mash.
He did a bunch of TV stuff.
No, he didn't. He wrote the theme to Taxi.
Taxi. That too. Who wrote Mash? Actually, there you
Go. Mash is good too. The
suicide is painless. No, that's
Bob James. Man.
It's not Bob James. Come on.
That's Bob James. Okay. Okay. Anyway, TBD no
One would put it in the comments.
Don't have to worry about Johnny
Mandell. Oh,
Johnny Mandell, who was the Bob James of
Period. That's a great spin
on that.
Bob James, by the way, he put out a, I had
to just check this, but he put out a killing
Tiny Desk last year. Yes. Like he's still
Bob James. Oh, I'm,
He sounds great. I love
That. Yeah. And he's,
I I love it. Listen. Yeah,
Go ahead. No, no. I was just gonna
say also,
he's always had a little bit of a sideline career.
I mean, Billy Kelson, uh, who's a good friend
for many years, I mean, I played
with him since the early nineties, has, has kind
of always been his go-to guy.
When he wants to do a jazz trio,
he'll go do a little tour in Europe,
like just playing straight ahead.
So he's got the chops and the lineage coming from that.
But I mean, I think that whatever, especially
by the late eighties getting into the nineties,
once he had foreplay,
and it probably got into a smoother kind of situation.
I think that was, he definitely got caught up a little bit
in that, that smooth, you know, Lee Riau or that whole,
and when Win Marsalis was kind of come along
and be like, everything needs to be
Acoustic. But I think the jazz
puritanism of
that mid nineties has eroded.
And I think everybody's sort of embracing the smoothness
of the era that we're discussing here
with Bob James at this point for sure.
In jazz history. Because it's, I mean, all the kids are,
that's what the kids sound like.
Yeah. You know what what I'm saying? Uh,
And I love, like, hip hop didn't give a s**t.
They're just like, I like that. Yeah.
It's like, what can I do with this?
Bob James has a lot, has a lot of hip hop to thank
for his resurgence and his career being this long.
Like absolutely. He may have flamed up much earlier. Yeah.
Had it not been for his music being rediscovered and re
and put in some seminal recordings to the point where,
at the Mardi Gras,
or sorry, take me to the Mardi Gras, right?
Uhhuh ding ding d ding. That is the sound of hip hop.
Just that ba boom, either just the fill, if you use
that now, or we did an episode on, uh,
on Missy Elliot, uh, work it, right?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Which famously the very end of, it's kind
of a coda, you hear, interestingly, an embedded sample
of, take Me to the Mardi Gras.
'cause it's the run DM mc sample of it. Right.
They didn't have to do that. They could have gone straight
to the source, but it kind of gave it the,
the song was intended to be a throwback kind
of old school og hip hop love letter.
Yeah. Right. So in that usage, there's reverence
to the history of hip hop.
Mm-hmm. Which includes this Bob James sample,
which incidentally is a cover of a Paul Simon.
That's right. So Bob James didn't get, Sam doesn't get any
Help. Paul Simon's making Bank
Bank. That's right. Yeah.
Uh, finally, finally, Paul Simon,
Probably Paul's getting some recognition.
Some money. Yeah.
Finally, Hey, watch this. Watch this watch.
We tie it into what Blake just said,
because Blake said the Missy sampled the Peter, uh, Piper.
Peter Piper, right. Run DMC version, not technically the,
the Bob James version.
And similarly here, uh, pink Panthers is an artist
who I am a big fan of.
I think she's very exciting, uh, to speak of
what the kids are into.
I really like her music. So there's a line you can draw from
Westchester Lady, which we just heard, uh, to a
seminal drum and bass track that was huge in England,
uh, called Circles.
Uh, and this is by an artist named Adam F.
Can we hear a little bit of that samples, Bob James,
Up to the ninth?
Here we go. You might skip it ahead just a little bit
so we can hear a little bit more
of the west side just a little bit.
I had a queue up in mine. Oh, sorry. Here we go.
Is that the, uh, what's, what's the
Queue number? I don't have,
Go to the 40, go to the 43 second
mark, if you can find that.
There you go.
I love That. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, tick. So
This song was like huge in the uk,
and Pink Panthers has sort of made it a point to sample,
you know, artists like Underworld and, uh, basement Jacks
and some of these, you know, like sort of two thousands, um,
British electronic artists,
because that's when she was young.
That's great. Mm-hmm. You know, that's the music
that she was growing up with.
Mm-hmm. And so then she takes this Adam F Circle song,
which sampled the Westchester Lady,
and then she turns in a song
that I love called Break It Off.
And you'll, you'll hear what she does
with it. I just added some vocal.
No, we'll, have saw me cry
until I left the party the other night.
Do you remember all the things that you said me that came,
I can't tell you how happy this makes me.
So my 15-year-old daughter, who really is at the stage
where she turns up her nose to anything I like,
just asked me to take her to a Pink Pans concert.
Her and her friend, and knowing,
and I don't, I don't really know Pink Pans yet,
but knowing that there's, it's a,
Some she's checking out. It's, she's great
Checking out. There's some Bob
James,
there's some baseball Jacks going on.
Makes me very, very happy for my daughter that she can
See. Listen, listen. I, her
new album is called Fancy That, um,
there's a song on it called Illegal,
which blew up on TikTok.
If you hear it, you might recognize it.
I, I find that even my friends who aren't like, you know,
buried in music, new music nowadays will be like, oh yeah,
I've heard that song sort of around Fancy.
That is the name of the album. I,
I hit up my friend Junior Sanchez, who's worked with,
uh, basement Jacks in the past.
I was like, guys, there are like no less than four basement
Jacks samples on this album.
And that's not even counting,
like when she samples like MJ Cole
and some of these other UK garage artists,
but she's, you know,
we're 20 years past the early two thousands, sadly.
And so now that generation that grew up on that music Yeah.
Uh, is resampling the first the first generation
of Coachella artists, I think you call it.
Um, and she does this so well, I, I, I,
I'm forgetting the name of the her co-producer,
but I think that, I think Pink Panthers is doing it really
well, and for those who want
to hear some new music at a very fast clip,
but like really fun music
that sounds like it's got some life in it.
Uh, fancy. That is the name of Harrell.
I, and I'm just laughing because like,
here's another opportunity.
It really is like the last 30 days.
And then I turn the manuscript in and it's,
That's Right. So now it's
my chance to sort of test the waters
with a couple of concepts that I'm not sure are gonna fly.
So here it is, I'm calling that musical Dro.
Chronol, excuse me. F**k. I f****d it up already.
Musical dro chronology.
In other words, it's like the tree rings, right? Yeah.
You take a slice and inside of any song,
of any musical moment, you're going
to find something connected
to the previous thing built on the previous thing
built on the previous thing.
And what's so cool now for hip hop fans is we're kind of,
at least at the third level, this is sort of the third era.
Mm-hmm. There was the original, the og then there were,
they started to sample some of the samples.
Now we're starting to get some samples
and references to the samples.
Mm. Which themselves came from the
jazz, you know, the original sources.
Yeah. And that's awesome to me
because this is just the literalization
because it's recordings of something
that was already happened in all of the other music.
Yeah. With interpolations and references.
The history of music is,
this has already been happening, but it's not a recording.
So you can kind of hide it, or it can be more subtle,
or it can be, you know, modified or altered slightly.
Yeah. But in recording we have this,
we're living in a cool moment
where we're having this new layer
that's starting to emerge. It's,
One could almost say the whole history
of pop music was interpolation until soft
This came along. That's right. Like,
like sort of softer, like folded in.
Right. So it was not as noticeable. Right.
Not as obvious. Yeah. Yeah.
And I mean, in jazz, because jazz just happened and,
or maybe because of sort of the beginnings of jazz, a
as we know it were right when recording
technology was happening.
You're talking about the twenties. Yes. A little bit before
We can track the whole thing. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, exactly. The whole thing.
And there's more of those circles in that tree,
but they're still always coming, coming back around.
Um, and, and now with the hip hop, well, not now, I mean
for 30 years now
or whatever more, uh, with the hip hop sampling
of this jazz, these jazz tracks, like that's
disrupted the jazz triage, I would say, in a beautiful way.
You know what I mean? And has brought, I mean,
as Bob James on doing a tiny desk at age 86
or whatever last year, had he not been sampled all over the
place, he's still the same composer and player.
But, you know, like Right. You know.
But it's funny you said that.
'cause I was just talking to a friend of mine who's a
producer about The Grain, basically like the sound
of earlier recordings.
Right. Which we can track eras with our ears based on,
we can kind of tell when something was made basically.
Yeah. From 1925
whenever thirties, like the earliest cylinders and whatever.
Yeah. Her majesty's voice mm-hmm.
Up until kind of the nineties, it starts to fall off.
It's, it's clean enough pro tools people,
it's digital enough that anything from the mid nineties till
now, you can kind of fake another era.
You can either fake another era or you can pick
and choose from other eras.
Yeah. What you want your song to evoke. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
But for jazz music, I was just thinking about this, like,
it's harder for me to want to listen to Jazz post Fusion
because I like the grain.
Mm-hmm. I like the, I like the fifties
jazz sounding like this.
And then the Bossanova sixties sounds a little like this.
Yeah. And it's like some of the constraints
of the technology and some of the instrument choices.
Yes. I like that you can map what you're hearing
to when it was and maybe even where it was.
Right. Yeah. And you can't really do that
with modern jazz anymore 'cause it's too clean.
Right. And I'm just so used to jazz having that older sound,
that era connected sound. Yeah. I mean,
For me, I would even flip that to, to rock
and roll, like I love mm-hmm.
Seventies rock and roll specifically.
And I think it's because of the sound of the kick drum.
And I just, yeah. Just don't get that.
Like the nine, I love the,
I grew up in the nineties, so I love that.
But like my heart is really in that seventies.
But I, I hear what you're saying there is
that we can hear the, the era that it's drum.
I mean, we did that, we did Fleetwood Back Rumors a couple
weeks ago, and I was just like, I forgot how great
that record and like, the drumming.
But I, but then when we're like really analyzing the
drummer, I'm like, actually the drumming is not that great.
Is this shuffle simple,
The sound So authentic.
Yeah. And that base, that kick drum
and that, that authenticity and connection.
It's Yeah. Okay. Boomers. Yeah. Okay.
I I got a fairly Boomer pick here. Sorry, go ahead.
No, no. I was just gonna say one last thing to connect to
what you were saying, which is that you're also tapping into
another element
of why we like stuff, which is the nostalgia.
Yeah. Which is the, when we heard it first Sure.
And when we heard it first, especially if we were 13
or younger, is gonna evoke so much like stuff
that you can't put your finger on.
Yes. 'cause it's vague and you didn't
know what the world was as much.
Hundred percent. Yeah. And it's gonna have
that much more power when you hear it later.
'cause it's gonna unlock this sort of, you know,
pristine madeleine of experience that you are going
to probably explore your whole life.
Right? Yep. The rest of your life's a little bit like
figuring out the rest
of your life's a little bit like figuring out
what was 13 and earlier.
Yeah. Yeah. To a degree. Yeah. So
We peak at 13 in terms of our,
it's all calling back after that. Pretty much.
Yeah. Everything's so damn romantic back
Then. Um,
speaking of, I was about 13 I think,
when this next album came out.
This is Tribe called Quest Electric Electric Relaxation.
Oh,
Yourself, yourself.
Set. Where
Would we be without Q-Tip?
Man, we've been talking a lot about Q-Tip label. Yeah.
I mean, I don't think we knew back in the nineties
how much he was producing.
Yeah. You know? Right. I think if you, back then,
I would've assumed that it was Alicia.
He Muhammad did all the tribe called Quest stuff. Yep. Yeah.
I think we did. He needed, did a song for Nas,
but like there's so much He did.
Yeah. Uh, he did the original Kirkland Dodgers, uh, for the,
you know, we just played the return of a little bit earlier.
He did the original. So he is just, he was
so much more prolific than we knew. Yeah.
And I believe, uh, I might be,
I might be screwing this thing up,
but I mean, it would, it would map for sure the Q-tip.
'cause he's right around, I think he was born
like seventy, seventy one.
He's right around my age. But I think he was,
I think he had a parent, maybe his mom
or something that was listening to a lot of like, kind
of soul jazz stuff.
Lot of the blue notes stuff. Yeah. A lot of that.
Like same kind of thing come up. I think he talked about
That. Well, that factor right
into the samples so that the,
the little, uh, piano, yeah.
That starts the track is from Ramsey Lewis. Ramsey
Lewis, the Great Chicago's Finest.
A track called Dreams. Another very weird atypical.
Yeah. This is totally atypical.
Oh, this is that earth wind and
fire track I was just talking about.
This is more ese White is on this. Oh wow.
That's right. Played drums on this, right
Blake?
Actually, yeah. I just Looking, he may not be on this
song, but he was in Ramsey.
He actually, he had already left my bad by 73.
He'd already formed Earth Wind and Fire drummer
Jason Marcellus just made a whole post about Maurice White
in Ramsey Lewis's band.
And he was like hanging out with Ellis sound
Back. I had
No idea. Uh, so
that's that piano sound.
But the, the main chunk
of the sample here is from Ronnie Foster's Mystic Brew.
Yeah, Yeah.
One of the great baselines of all time.
Yep. Mm-hmm. Totally.
That is the definition of vibes right there. That's
Such Good vibes. It's
vibes and vibes play providing vibes. Literally
Vibes.
And then the drums from the tribe, uh, track are from,
I did not know this, but this is a band called Brethren.
And this is a track called Outside Love.
I've never heard of this. It's from 1970,
but this is absolutely smoking.
Speaking of kick drums,
So Meters.
Who is this? So New Orleans
Brethren. They're
from New Orleans. Yeah.
Well I'm just saying that bead in that vibe, man,
I was just thinking the meters.
I'm like this, this man had checked out the meters for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. And you put it all together back again.
Ah, man,
it's
Such an interesting thing.
'cause like for me, it would be so much easier to, like,
I can hear all these different parts,
how they could fit together to be something dope,
but I would just be like, let's just all get in the studio
like, okay, check out this drum part, play this.
Like, like that's the jazz musician's approach to it.
Like, it's almost harder.
Well, I mean, you know what I'm like to take Wasn't
Is pretty f*****g hard, dude.
No, no. But I'm saying like, well, it's harder
to like not make a hit as a jazz musician.
I see. That's why we're doing nine minute track.
It's easy to not Make a hit.
Nine minutes of going nowhere fast, you know?
Right. You're sort of, you're sort of,
I think the implicit question sometimes
that people ask a lot
of times in our comments is like, why sample?
Why not just remake it? Why not just be creative?
Which is sometimes a case, a turn in that direction. Yeah.
And we wanna like shut that down right away.
I mean, I think we can all agree
that this is incredibly creative.
Exactly. Sampling. And just before, 'cause y'all
and I are probably both thinking this.
We did do an entire episode on this song
of our show One song.
So go check it out. Yes.
Because you far into this podcast, you're almost done.
Go listen to ours after.
But we broke down and recreated those samples so we Cool.
Found exactly how they did it.
And you can sort of listen and, you know, sort of, and
It's, it's really twisted.
I mean like it's it the slow motion version
so much deeper than just even sampling it, the manipulations
that they had to, to do to Right. To get that, that
When I, well, this is 1992 technology. Exactly. It's
Exactly. It's not like
Ableton and Splice loops.
Right. So it's Bob Power, who is the engineer on
that session had was, you know, helpful
in making happen the vision,
but just to land the plan on what I just said.
I think to your question, Peter, about like I,
or not your question, but like, here's how I would do this.
Yeah. And as a musician with access to a studio
and musicians, you might correctly think this is a way
to get a similar thing done.
I, my quick thought I just wanted to add, going back to our
grain conversation mm-hmm.
Right? Is the sound matters a lot.
And the specific sound
of something sampled has meaning to it.
It has referential meaning it has personal meaning.
Because in this case, right, we were just talking about how,
um, Q-Tip it was in his, you know, maybe dad's
or mom's record collection.
Yeah. So there's this childhood association of literally how
that vibe recording sounded of that snippet.
So I think just sort of part of, to anyone
probably listening to your show is not in this camp,
but for anyone who's like, why that's so complicated
to use samples, why not just play it yourself?
Um, I, part of the answer lies in
that the sonic quality is different
and the meaning is different.
When you use a sample, you have these other aspects
beyond just the notes, beyond just playing the parts.
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's, to me,
it's like, you know, with visual arts you could have
different, you know,
painting your watercolor and your drawing.
Like these are like different mediums d
different ways of being creative.
Mm-hmm. And they each have their, uh, well,
like we always talk about restricted practices,
but like constrictions to how you're gonna create.
And so the the level of creativity you have
to have when you're taking different samples, you have
to use your creative mind to think of
what it can be when combined with something else.
As opposed like as pianists, we always think, oh,
we can be the orchestra because we've got the widest range.
We've got, we can play big chords.
If you're a trumpet, you can only play one note.
So you gotta get some other people together, whatever.
But the reality is, is like when we arrange something
for an orchestra, you have to use your Right.
You have to imagine what it could be
and then have actual other people do that.
You are thinking about that. You're thinking Tessitura
and you're thinking of Tamra.
Yeah. Right. But those, those are,
those words also apply to sampling.
Yeah. Those are words from the orchestra
and from the classical tradition.
Maybe the jazz tradition. Yeah. But they're important too.
What's, who is playing, what sound
and what register at what part?
Yeah. Is it doubled? Is it tripled? Is it harmonized?
Is it unison? Is it whatever?
All of that compositional arrangement stuff is also part
of the sampling tradition.
Right. And choices that are made.
What to sample, how, how to transform it.
And just one more thing,
because we were talking about the sample fan,
it's the sample phantom thing.
Applying to what you were just saying there on the episode,
you'll hear us talk about this, but like,
here's just a really brief, um, kind
of fun thing to think about.
Is think about the band playing this song.
It's drummer Rick Marada from Bren, right? Mm-hmm.
You're hearing drummer Rick Marada.
You're hearing Bass Player. I believe it's Gordon Edwards.
There's also a double bass.
There's a electric and double bass. Mm-hmm.
George do Vivier.
I won't name all of them, but it's fun to think
Vivi was an amazing classic.
Um, he actually played
with like Art Tatum back in the thirties, I think is Yeah.
Yeah. Wow. Oh, incredible.
Yeah, he's on this one too. That's great.
Those vibes that are so prominent are George Devins.
And interestingly, not Ronnie Foster, he played Organ.
Right. But not on that fragment. That's reused. Right.
But he's 50% of the publishing on Tribe Song
'cause he's the soul songwriter of the original. Yeah.
Amazing. Oh, that's so great.
Well, um, Guys, the time has come. I know it's us.
Oh God, US four, US four will now be listening
to Blake is going Luxxury's going from like one of the peak
of like explanation here.
He's about to pull it all down. Or maybe
Not. I'm gonna mute, I'm
gonna mute the
audio for the next 30 seconds.
Us four will be listening
to Luxuries clip us three cantaloupe flip.
Oh, I see what you did there. Ladies
and gentlemen, as you know,
we have something special down here at
Bird Landing this evening.
A recording for Blue Note records.
Peewee Marquette.
I'm just picturing the Keenan Thompson.
No, no,
Come on. I was just thinking
like, see what Blue can do for you.
It's just been used in so many
Funky, fun, bitty bitty B
and funky, funky to hear the bitty bitty
Only take two at a time.
Enjoy your aged wife.
I might have been shouting over it and I apologize.
But the most offensive parts of the song are the bitty,
bitty Bob and the funky, funky,
funky. I can't tolerate those.
Funky. We're gonna get to the
funky, funky in just a second.
But I didn't even include the sample from the Art Blakey A
Night at Burland, which has the introductory, uh, uh,
monologue from Peewee Marquette who would introduce bands
Legendary radio ho uh, jazz radio host
Friday and Saturday nights.
That's awesome. At Birdland on 52nd
Street would introduce bands. That's the
Only thing Authentic is
that introduction on this. The rest
Of it, I didn't pull the original
'cause it's literally unchanged from played at all.
I don't know if that's, if there's a word for
that Luxxury in your upcoming book,
but like, just using Exactly.
Without anything else added to it.
But yeah, that's what's going
On. They just sampled it
wholesale, like, you know, um,
you know, MC Hammer can't touch this style.
Is that what you mean? Yes. Like just the loop Unformed.
No, but I mean, just the opposite of
what we just heard on a Tribe called Quest. Exactly. Right.
But it's also not melodic or like, what is that?
When you're sampling, when
you're just taking somebody talking. Right. And
There's no Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Right. And
No Musical ment.
Um, I mean, are you saying like from a,
from a copyright standpoint, you could make the case
that it's, I don't know, man, you'd probably have
to pay for it no matter what.
Even any of the song it's part of, right? Yeah.
It depends on who your lawyers and who their lawyers.
Maybe if they're friends, they can
make a deal between the two of them. Yeah.
I was just gonna point out real quick that um,
because I listen, I'll, I'll still always maintain
that there's nothing, I think
where this song probably falls short is the lyrics,
because I don't think musically it's that bad.
I think it's, I think you, you said you, you have a problem
with Bitty Bitty Bop and Funky Funky, which, you know, I,
I can promise you that that was not, you know,
necessarily the soundtrack to my drives, you know, as a
Teenager.
But, um, but I think that, look, you know,
we were just talking about Tribe Called Quest
on the genius of Q-Tip.
I, I will maintain that.
If you'd had, you know, butterfly from Digable Planets
or you know, guru from Gangstar or
or more capable mc, this could have been a,
a really interesting track.
And one of my all time favorite samples is Art
Blakey of the Jazz Messengers.
We were just talking about, um, Q-Tip sampling.
He samples a song. Uh, oh gosh,
Blake, oh, we said Qtip sample
that in something, I think.
Yes, you're right. Oh, that's actually that song.
I was gonna say that, uh, my favorite, uh, chant for Blue,
uh, chant for Boo.
A chant for Boo. A
Ch for Boo. If
You guys can somebody just play the first part of Ch
For Boo? And that was our blakeys,
uh, nickname Boo. This
Is our Blakey and the Jazz
Messengers. Yeah. Check this out.
Our Blakeys nickname was
Boo. Ah, yeah. Yeah.
See that's good. But you see what I mean, like,
you know, like the, all the parts and pieces.
Yeah. For Genius, by the way, A cha for booze.
Just that's that, that might be in my Top Five Tops.
Jazz samples of all time.
Um, all the, all the, all the greatness was there.
And I did, correct me if I'm wrong, the, the whole point
of this was to was for Blue Note to be like, Hey guys,
you know, come to us. We've got all the jazz.
Yes. Yeah, sure. Off of this. But I,
It's Just, you already nailed it.
It's just insufficiently transformed to me
and it's, it's, it's sort of a hack job.
Listen, I didn't know much about it
Named Mc, like named this mc,
I think his name is Hin or something like that. Was
He from London?
Three are British. They're British producers.
Like there you go. It's just,
they should have gotten some New York guys, right?
Yes. On the scene to like,
If we had gotten, if Premier or a Q-Tip
or anybody else had flipped the sample.
Because you're right. What a great opportunity
With Fantasia. I agree.
They Opened the catalog to say, listen,
it's like they do this now with writers' camps.
Right? Like primary Wave.
We'll gather a whole bunch of people, songwriters
and say, use our catalog interpolate these old hits.
Yeah. Make a new hit with something familiar.
That's what they were doing. Which is great.
It's very embracing of sampling.
I'm just saying in this case, no shade
to Jeff Wilkinson from London
and his production partner Mel Simpson,
who I know nothing about, aside from them being us
Three's production team.
Yeah. And you know, it's a little bit to my years.
It's not the pinnacle
of hip hop production, that's all I'll say.
It's sanitized, it's pop
hiphop. I mean, it's like, there you go.
It's sanitized For people who don't know the story.
So US three is the first Hiphop Act signed
to Blue Note records with this idea.
Use our catalog Yeah. For the samples.
And we haven't played it yet. So the name of the,
the name of the track is, which is silly
Though. It's not like they couldn't have
used, I mean I, you know,
anybody can record Canal.
It's all silly. But the, the name of the,
the US three track is cantaloupe Flip
and we haven't played it yet,
but of course this is from the Blue Note.
Uh, recording from Herbie Hancock's. Yeah.
Imperian Isles Cantaloupe Island,
Which is groovy as hell.
Yeah. Freddie Hubbard on trumpet as a pocket
By the Way. They should
have sampled Freddie
On that. The groovy as hell. But
Herbie's, not Herbie's trying
to make something very commercial in this time.
Yeah. Like he's writing this like,
and using it in commercials as well. These, these, this
Was Groo jazz. Groo Jazz. For sure. For
Sure. It's like a baa It's
more of a BAA inspired. Yes.
Straight eight. It's not swinging.
It's literally straight eight notes. Right? Yeah. Yep.
So there's no swinging in terms of the jazz use of
that word, but it swings
because of the drumming and the performances.
Right. But that is all grd out in a pre-pro tools way. Yeah.
Yeah. To me, in the flip plant
version, it's a sort of strict.
So we're about to hear the funky Funky.
I got it. Okay. So I've been trying to defend this song.
What's that? Um,
it sounds like that guy from uh,
Battlestar Galactica the robot Or
was that Yeah, that was, uh,
Bot No, you're right. Is that Battlestar
Galactica? Right. M
Me? No, I,
okay, now I'm gonna throw 'em under the bus.
'cause I do remember me and my hip hop friends.
'cause that is definitely how we were self-identifying
by 92, 93.
Yeah. We would laugh out loud at groovy groovy jazzy funky
pounce bounce dance as we Yeah.
Like we thought that s**t was hilariously hack bad s**t.
Yeah. So it's, you know what, I'm try to defend
It. It's like when I
say six seven in front of my kids,
You're no longer defending it.
When I say six seven in
front of my teenagers, you're taking
Your hat out of the ring.
6, 7, 6, 7. Well
Look, I want to, I'm gonna take it to another,
a different level of, of um, breaking this down. Hold on.
Can we, before we do this, I just wanna get
to the funky, funky real quick.
'cause maybe the best sample that is not, it's only used
for the, for the vocals is Lou Donald back
to Lou Donaldson. Yeah. What's
That? You remember Funky Mama?
Yeah. This is Lou Donaldson.
Everything I do gonna be funky. That
Was Guga midnight Creeper. Yeah.
Midnight Creep. All the yas they're used in. Can
You know why I threw that?
What? Everything I play going be funky
And this track is what I want.
It was bad timing in my life. It was bad timing. This is
What I wanted in my life.
And he wasn't live. I
always, he said everything's gonna be
Funky. This is not improved upon.
And then everything he played was funky. Yeah.
But, you know, and he only said it once.
It was the replica. It was the funky, funky part. Oh,
I'll take it. No, I don't,
I don't think it was just even the repetition.
I actually believe that for a large portion
of my teenage in 20 years,
just the word funky was the lamest corniest
word in the English.
Like nobody ever was like, oh, that's funky.
Like you couldn't say with
A Fake face. I
dunno that I still can. Yeah.
So no, it was, it was bad timing. It was like,
Yeah. Well,
what I was gonna say on the, on the not, not
to go back to the US three U,
is it US three or US three? It's
Gotta be us three, right? Yeah.
So I, I think it might be used, I think it's the three
Supposed to be like you guys used,
But it says the name was Inspired by US three,
A Horace Parlin album from the founder of Blue Notes.
They went deep on the That's deep cut. Yeah. Wow. Wow.
But one thing is they screw up the melody too.
So it's,
uh, yeah.
And then it goes down to here.
They do that which is like obvious, like
that's the equivalent of the funky.
That's, that's amateur hour right there.
That's amateur s**t. Yeah.
Because the melody is Goes
Kirby plays that, that clashing.
That's part of the vibe of the tune.
Like they sanitize the melody.
Even they did, they didn't have to. They're on blue.
No record. They got the
Publishing clear. They put it
into the, the Berkeley
chord scale theory and they
Hadn't noticed that before. Can you,
can you play, can you play that section of,
of how it was so
Sample, if you're listening
to beginner musicians play this at a jam
session, they're gonna play it like this.
Yeah. And and also how you canal loop people have
It. That's all right. I
mean they're kind of on the wrong.
Good. We're still on the one chord.
The a then it goes the
Dfl Herbie it.
Same melody. That's the Herbie version's.
The her, that's the amateur. But they go,
but they don't change the melody.
They put a blue note on it.
I see, I see, I see. That's the
Funky. They move to the,
they move to the second chord. Yes.
Is what you're, is right. Yeah. Okay.
And the whole fun thing, you know,
Herbie's stuff is always a little, eh, you know,
and it's just kind of like, you're literally like, oh,
let's wash off Herb.
What's the British accent? That'll be taking it too far.
But you know, they're washing it off in a way by
The way. They do that. So Us
three does that too. Us three May.
That changes the note job. Yeah,
Let's check it out. Because they're
not sample. The trumpet's not sample on
his, somebody's playing it.
That's not Freddie. Got it.
They didn't sample Freddie Hover, I don't think. Come
Here. It might just be
a cheap Corg. Triton or
Keyboard. Yeah,
That sounds Sad. Pretty
real. For 1990. What's that two?
I see that's not the original.
I'm just now realizing that people that
Do this got, I never noticed that.
Probably know this song from the canal loop flip. Yeah.
And not from the original.
Yeah. Wow. They Would be
so they're playing the wrong version.
Yeah. Anybody like in their mid
to low forties, later forties
Feel called out.
You play that Way. No, of course not.
I mean, that's just a stupid thing. Whatever.
But I think it does go along the lines
with everything is just,
but I do remember around this time being like,
people like this was a hit, wasn't
It? Number seven on the billboard.
Damn. 100.
Yeah. Man, there's no problem for bad taste.
But I mean, it's like, there was, I remember a lot
of people were excited about this.
Ooh, this is jazzy
because it says jazzy, jazzy, funky, lame, whatever.
But I was like, that's Herbie Hancock. That's my hero.
I know her. You know, that's true.
There was a certain amount in the jazz world
of us really being excited.
This is the closest during that period. Yeah.
I I, I remember that. Fair enough.
I remember the jazz artist feeling like, Hey, this is cool
because like, and
because you gotta remember, you place it
in this historical context.
There was all this conversation.
Even James Brown got in
and I like, Hey, if you're gonna sample me,
just keep it clean brothers.
You know what I mean? Like, there was no cursing.
There was no cursing in Canta loop. Right.
You know what I mean? So like, they were,
it was almost like jazz musicians taking,
taking the power back almost from these,
you know, raunchy rappers.
Right, right. So yeah. It, it all played into it, huh?
Yeah. I mean, Ron Carter, I was picking it up.
It's Gerard presence
or replayed that sax line in the US three version.
Okay. I'm, I just found that out.
So you're right, it's replayed Yeah.
By a guy who played it wrong. Yeah,
Yeah, yeah. Um,
and I mean that, well,
Ron Carter famously great bassist when he went on the tribe,
um, was that on Marauders or was that on something?
Uh, that was on, um,
the other one from that era. Uh, we just,
Ron Carter on the base, that was Q-Tip on.
They're calling him out, but he wasn't gonna do the record
'cause he's like, I'm not going on.
My man came by the, the studio
and his name is Buster Robs in effect,
Shahe is in effect.
This is just with Ron Carter and the vocals.
Check it out and give me my snake.
That's Ron Carter. Yeah, You're right. It's the Low end
Theory. Low
End theory. Thank you.
Thank you. Low end theory. But
like, that's Ron playing on it.
When they first call him, they're like, no,
I don't do hiphop 'cause I don't agree with cursing.
And they had to promise him there'd be no
cursing in the, in, in that,
Uh, versus from the abstract. And
That's part of the reason too. I
think they're calling him out so much. Thank you.
Ron Carter. You know, they do all that like, thank you
for coming, showing up.
Yeah. I mean, I will say that I tried
to play Speak of the Devils.
I tried to play the Beat Nuts for my father
because it was so jazz sample.
Yeah. You know what I mean?
And I was like, dad, you'll like this.
'cause this sample's all your favorite like
jazz records I put it on.
I don't think he got past the first course,
but he is like, man, like,
'cause he didn't, he didn't like the courtesy.
He didn't like the, the, the imagery
that they were provoking.
So again, we look back now
and like everybody seems so innocent because, you know,
but it was, uh, that language did not fly with guys Born
during the Great Depression. Right.
I'll put it. Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Well, uh, Luxxury and Diallo from one song.
Thank you guys Yes. For spending this time.
You've been so generous with your time
and with your incredible knowledge.
It's been just a blast to talk to you. Yeah. And so
Much fun. This is
awesome. We gotta do it again.
And everybody go check out one song.
It's literally the opposite
of 40 songs that we're doing today.
Like, well, what they do over day? No,
We do the, we do the same thing on our show.
Okay. We start with one
and then we just, lots of rabbit holes
and connections. It's fun. Yeah.
We will link to your episode on Electric Relaxation
so the folks can check it out.
And we're also link to the one with Patrice Rushing.
'cause I saw that. That is incredible.
Patrice Rush, the way you guys, uh, talk.
I mean, she's such a, you know, insider pick,
but it was just so, and if you could put
In a good word too, we'd love to.
Yeah. If she text you back, tell her we said, Hey.
She always text me back. She's one
of these people she will always text back eventually.
She might be on a plane somewhere. Yeah.
But, uh, I'll, I'll leave it in the comments
of this video, what she said. Okay.
That's Great. Awesome. Thank you guys. Cool.
Well, until next time
You'll hear it.