There we go.

So.

So do an intro.

Yeah, let's.

I'll do a real quick one.

Unless you want to do it, Dan.

No, no, thanks.

You got it.

All right, so this is the get you some productions podcast.

I'm not even sure what episode we're coming up on.

100.

This might be 95, 96, 97.

This is a podcast devoted entirely to one man's life.

John Esposito covering his.

His life from zygote in great detail.

No, the real story is we are a podcast covering all things related to music production from the first note to the last fan.

We cover everything.

We cover production techniques, musicianship, fan relations, music marketing, fashion.

Everything that has to go into everything that goes into the life of a musician.

We're happy to cover it.

Dan and I usually have shows, or we often do have shows where we just talk about how we're building this business or our plans for the podcast.

And we think it's kind of fun to do that and just put our process in full view so you can see how it's done from the ground up and how inept we are and have been in the production and creation of the show.

But our favorite thing to do is to do interviews.

So we have John Esposito back, and John was John.

John is a very seasoned jazz pianist and composer with a storied career, and he has had a great impact on Dan and I because we studied with him many, many years ago.

I'm going to say 1998, 99.

And so if you want to check out the first bit of John's life in music, you want to go to the prior episode and actually, I'll just say this so I can remember to do it.

I'll put a link in the show notes to that episode because you check that out and you get the first, I don't know, 20, 30 years of John's musical life and hopefully we'll get into the next, like, 40 years or so in this show or there and.

Or thereabouts.

Yeah.

And I do want to give a shout out to our affiliate, reverb.com It's a great, great website for you need any musical gear you get, your studio, even just practice gear, anything.

They've got all the mainstream gear, all the way down to some niche products at mom and pop stores.

It's a great website.

And if you become, you know, follow our link, you can buy what you need anyway and also help out our little production here, that'd be great.

And so right before we Hit the record button.

Wanted to reintroduce John Esposito.

And John is an instructor faculty at Bard College right now.

So we were just going into.

I'd like to pick up where you left off about educational institutions and jazz.

You were going into how that, you know, classical music was entrenched and then jazz started picking up in the 80s.

So.

Welcome John.

Thanks for having me again.

Yep.

Yeah, I think we were talking about how I ended up teaching at Bard.

And initially I had actually been hired to replace someone in the.

A student of mine who was the jazz guy or jazz.

An electronic person.

It was one program and that was in the mid-80s.

And I got the job, but it didn't work out.

I was the dean of the college at the time, was at war with the department chair, music department chair.

So he basically scotched that and I was left kind of.

It was very inconvenient at the time.

I had.

I was told I had the job and then nobody told me I didn't until September rolled around.

So I was not in.

Not really in a hurry to go go back to have anything to do with Bard.

But a friend of mine, David Arner, had asked me to accompany dance classes and I eventually was persuaded to do so.

And it turned out to be, you know, a great experience.

I didn't know how to do it at first, but I really turned it into a way of.

Of learning to improvise freely in different styles while being harmonic.

So it wasn't free music was very structured, but it had to be, you know, I needed to play something in the style of Mozart, something in the style of Beethoven, you know, that kind of thing.

And.

And as well as popular music and tangos and, you know, other other things.

So that was a great experience.

And while I was there, I met Leo Smith who was teaching.

Was Leo teaching when you were there or was it Thurman?

Thurman.

Oh, it's Thurman.

It was a one person program still.

It was Leo, great trumpet player for.

For a number of years.

And I think he was not tenured.

So he moved on.

And Thurman came in the tenure track position.

They tenure one person in.

In Jess and Leo asked me to help out and I.

And I was still kind of burnt on.

On the idea of doing anything at bart.

So I kind of said no, but you can send me some students.

And then Thurman, that same thing.

Can you help out with the theory stuff?

And no, but you can send me some private students.

So I did that.

And eventually one of the.

One of the students named Barbara Smith, who runs a school I think in Vermont.

We know Barbara well.

Yeah.

So tremendous musician.

She played jazz saxophone and classical flute.

And so I taught her for a while and she asked me to.

Basically she got a petition together and this asked me to teach and there were I think 25 music students at the time.

And so I felt bad about turning.

I didn't want to turn it down because she was so great.

And she asked.

That was our.

We guilted you into it.

That was our class.

Yeah.

And so the, the.

That class kind of took off and then around the same time Erica Lindsay was assisting.

Started out assisting Thurman with the big band and it just became apparent that there was like a big interest in jazz and there weren't enough teachers.

So ultimately Erica and I both ended up with a quarter time position.

I don't know exactly what year, but early 2000s.

And as the, the number of students grew, you know, build it and they shall come.

And I ended up being full time as did Erica.

And you know, that's pretty much a story.

Thurman has left retired.

Angelica Sanchez is now the tenure.

She's up for tenure, which I'm sure she will get.

And she's fantastic, fantastic musician, fantastic teacher and great with the.

Dealing with the administration and all the administrative stuff and finding funding and connecting with people and she's like an unbelievable find.

So, you know, I hope to retire or die in a few years and she's.

Everything will be in her hands and so I feel really, really good about that.

Great.

Yeah.

Great to hear Barbara's name, Barbara in that context.

Keith and I, we played in a jazz band with her in Tivoli and, and all that and she was in my moderation and senior project and she was a real blessing to have.

Loved working with Barbara.

We played in the band with her for a couple of years at least.

Right, Dan?

Well, you had played with her and Ted.

Right.

First and then.

And then you took over and then.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a limited number of bassists I guess available at the time.

So it's always with me.

Yeah.

It's the right instrument to play.

Yes.

You want to stay busy.

Yep.

Yeah.

So that's pretty much.

That's pretty much it.

I've been there since then and still full time.

It's great.

It's well deserved because you know, I think that when we were.

When I started at Bard and for the record, I happen to really love Bard, but you know, it was kind of the school where You.

When I showed up and I talked to Thurman during some open house or something, and he was like, yeah, you can do anything you want here.

And I was like, can I study jazz and be a biology major?

And he says, yes, you can absolutely do anything you want here.

This is the most wonderful.

You know.

And I showed up and I was like, great, how do we do this?

And like, no, you gotta figure it out.

And I was like, I'm 17.

I'm a complete fucking moron.

Like, what do you.

I don't know how to do shit.

I thought you were gonna help me.

But.

So it was.

I felt like I was struggling to get, you know, any traction until you did the theory course.

And then when you taught the theory course, that was like, oh, this is what I was missing.

It was.

It was this deep dive.

What is jazz theory, actually?

And I had no.

I felt so lost until that class.

And then I was like, oh, now I'm just finally beginning to understand.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

And.

And.

But it was.

That was the necessary thing that.

That I needed.

And I think that's why so many students signed that petition.

I'm sure I was one of them.

Because it was like, we need.

We didn't know what we needed, but we needed something.

That's what Barbara said.

Yeah.

It was more or less like, yes.

She.

She said, I know we suck, but I don't know why she had me come listen to the big band, you know, which was actually a small band, but.

But, oh, that's amazing.

Yeah, she's.

I know we suck.

Can you tell me why?

And I said, well, you know, it's customary to tune up before you play.

That's great.

And then that.

So that was the start.

And then it was like, well, your drummer can't.

Your drummer doesn't know which, you know, what the hi hat does.

And the, you know, bassist isn't spelling the chords, and the piano player doesn't seem to know any voicings, and nobody seems to be able to improvise.

And.

Da, da, da.

You know, and so it was like, a lot of thank you.

Thank you for leaving me out of that.

By the way, your guitar.

Your guitar player is nowhere in the right universe of this.

So.

And I remember being in that state at 17, you know, and getting.

I mean, even get.

Getting called on gigs where, you know, I think I knew, like, five tunes or something maybe, and really didn't understand harmony.

And.

And, you know, I would get to a gig where it was like no bass player.

It was like Fender piano, drums and trumpet, you know, and they needed somebody who could actually play.

And that was.

And I needed to figure it out.

And it was very daunting at 17 and 18 to figure it out on my own.

And I'm pretty quick with figuring out musical structures that that was.

I don't want to say it was easy for me, but.

But I had a sense of.

Kind of an intuition of how to go about it.

So, you know, for the average person to walk through the door and not know any of that and be.

Be expected to play and figure it out on your own, especially like you're going to college, you're paying somebody to show you.

So it's really crazy.

The idea that you would, you know, oh, you can explore everything on your own is, yeah, I don't need to pay whatever.

However many thousands it was at the time in order to do that.

So all of that, that class and.

And I promise you it's gotten better in the last 25 years.

My teaching, I think, has gotten better.

But all of that was a result of me banging my head up against the wall figuring things out because there were.

There was.

Well, there was no Internet, so, you know, there were almost no.

Nobody writing about how jazz worked or what they were writing was.

Was not very helpful and kind of assumed it was the same thing.

Taking college course in theory, there was a lot of assumptions about what you already knew.

So for me, it was.

It's always been, I'm starting this from scratch, so.

So I've worked sometimes, like work as a drummer and it was the same thing.

It was like, how does this work?

So I ended up doing very basic things that drum teachers don't generally teach because they kind of assume eventually your feet will work.

And for me, it was like, my left hand needs to be able to do the same thing as my right foot.

Etc, you know, kind of cross wiring your limbs.

So I spent time doing that and it saved me a lot of work ultimately.

And the same thing with harmony, I kept on realizing that I didn't understand.

Well, you don't understand that because you don't know all the scales and you're fine while you're in C, but as soon as it modulates to E, you're lost.

So it meant going back, learning scales, learning chords.

The chords were difficult because I really didn't see intervals.

So then it was like, oh, you should go back and like learn the difference between a minor third and a major third.

So it always came back to doing much more fundamental missing work.

So when I started teaching, it really was from the viewpoint of let's assume that they know nothing and that if they can play already, it's because they've been playing their whole lives, but they still know nothing.

So they're, they're going to be at a brick wall.

So I start very fundamentally.

So it's intervals, chords, scales, basic chord progressions.

How, how does all that add up to basic song structure?

And that's, you know, that's a whole semester's work.

You know, the keyboard final now is like, you know, play one of these simple standards which, you know, these are popular songs that fall into, you know, from 1900 to 1950, whatever.

And they fall into maybe half a dozen, six or seven categories.

And I have maybe two, two or three examples of each type of song.

So, you know, like 1, 6, 2, 5 type of songs, songs that are basically in the key of C, but they modulate to the four.

Those kinds of things modulate to the relative minor.

So they're popular music formulas that are, of course, very similar to classical music formulas, but they're explained in a way that makes it usable information.

And I do insist on, you know, learning, learning the basics in each in every key, since that's how they happen in the real world.

And I find doing that, you know, when I finally did it after five years of playing and just surviving on, you know, flying by the seat of my pants, when I finally got organized, I made a tremendous amount of progress the second five years.

So I was able to be in New York within 10 years.

Only because after the first five years, I sat down and said, I really hate the way I play and I hate having this struggle all the time.

What don't I know?

Why is this a problem?

You know, and ultimately, even creating line, you know, I, I, I stumbled into it, but it was like, I, I don't sound, I can wiggle my fingers really fast after five years, but it doesn't sound like Herbie Hancock or it doesn't sound like Bill Evans or, you know, McCoy Tyner.

Why doesn't it sound like that?

Or Bud Powell, I like.

So I decided, oh, I'll take a couple of Charlie Parker tunes and learn them through, through keys, which I did.

And then I ultimately got to Donald Lee.

Once that I did that work, it clarified how the harmony generated line and generated chromatic line, how it worked in Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, all of that.

So for me, that was a big turning point.

And I, and I felt like I was Able to go from.

Make a straight line from very basic elements to actually improvising and having a kind of harmonic structure, having control of bebop language, which led to the next thing, modal language, which led to free kind of harmonic, free improvisation, etc.

So that's been kind of.

That's pretty much starting that.

That starting out at Bard.

That was where I wanted to go and I've been able to do that over, over the years.

So thank you for thanking me for that.

But yeah, I got a lot of feedback over the years from people who were like, oh, I'm really glad that we did.

I found that that work that you posited in the beginning led me to being able to play.

So can I.

I actually.

I want to do something.

I want to tell you something quickly.

I'm not sure if you remember this, but when we.

When Dan and I were doing the workshop in your house, you, I think, was like the first lesson you ever gave us.

And we were all sitting around and you were sitting at the drums and you said, you know, here's how I teach.

If you.

I can teach you everything that you will ever need to know on the drums in about two days, but it'll take you a lifetime to go and practice it all.

I can teach you everything that's possible to play on piano in about a week.

And likewise, another, like, guitar, which is what I play, you know, likewise, it's a similar process, a harmonic instrument that plays both chords and single note lines.

Said, I can teach you if you play saxophone.

Maybe it'll take me a week to teach you everything you need to know, but it'll take you a lifetime to methodically go through play and practice all this stuff.

And maybe for a piano or a guitar that does both, it might take two weeks to teach you everything that's possible.

And then you sort of laid out.

You laid out like sort of basically a process that basically said, like, here's all the harmonic structures, here are all the intervals, here are all the different combinations of two notes of three notes, of four notes, of five notes.

Here's all the fingering possible.

And then it just takes like, you know, a finite amount of time to go and express that and conceptualize everything that's possible.

But expressing it and conceptualizing it is just one piece of it right now.

You have to go and get it all in your body, basically.

And so that was something that was very like.

No one had ever said it to me like that before.

And that was actually formative for me because I was like, oh, fuck.

It's totally true.

But obviously the actual job of learning it is not just thinking of it, but actually creating muscle memory and contextual understanding of what it actually is, which is a different thing entirely.

But I don't know.

Anyway, I just wanted to recall that to you.

If you have something to say about that, that's great.

But really what I want to do actually is go back because, you know, we were talking about all your life and music, and I feel like, you know, since we're here and since you have become so morbid, I feel like we should get it all on tape right now.

You should.

I might not make it through this.

So if I just.

If you just see me, like go off.

Is there somebody there to prop you up?

So, yeah, so we ended.

I think the last story you told was something about going to.

It was like around 1980, you told us how you met Arthur Rhames, but then you didn't mention.

And then you actually told about a gig where some lady invited you upstate and she could only sing like 10 songs.

And then you brought Arthur in and it basically, it became the Arthur Raines Show.

And then you were in his.

Montreal.

Okay, Montreal.

Montreal.

Way, way upstate.

Way upstate.

One of the northern states, Canada.

And that was a two week gig.

Yeah, yeah.

And that.

That was transformative for me particularly.

Yeah.

I did talk about him asking if I could play in keys, the second tune after he.

After he blew my hair and beard off on with the first tune, Mr.

PC, he asked if I could play in keys, and I said yes.

And then he said, okay.

Impressions up and forth.

And so that two weeks was really formative for me because we ended up playing most of the repertoire that he.

That he was calling.

He was calling all the repertoire.

And it was, you know, kind of fundamental cold train repertoire like Major, Minor, Mr.

PC Squad, Giant Steps, Moments Notice, Lazy Bird, those kinds of things.

Impressions.

And his teacher, song minority.

He had studied with Gigi Grice, that was his.

His high school teacher.

And then kind of the, the.

The bebop classics, Cherokee and rhythm changes, things like that.

But all that stuff was through keys.

And it was like, you know, okay, play.

Play the song, but then play it in minor thirds, you know, or play it in major thirds, play it in fourths.

I made the mistake of reacting like the idiot I am.

I just.

Oh.

So if you can do that, I guess you could do an expanding key cycle where you, you go up in half step and then your next chorus, you go up in a whole step.

Next you go to minor third, then major, etc.

Right.

Which is, you know, kind of interesting compositionally.

And I don't recommend doing it.

So.

So that was.

But it was the beginning of me figuring out ex.

The expansion of form by using modulation.

And also we were re.

Harmonizing and I remember riding home on the train and we had a notebook and we were passing it back and forth and it was like variations on kind of giant steps, changes, five ones and major thirds, but that was doing five ones and minor thirds.

And we were kind of passing ideas back and forth.

That was the first time, maybe the only time that I met someone who I was kind of on the same conceptually on the same page with and excited by an inter.

That exchange of ideas.

The difference was that Arthur was on a mission.

And he had started much younger.

He had started playing around, you know, eight or nine years old.

And he played three instruments, which I didn't realize at the time.

I knew he played piano from the recording session that I told you about.

And he had played alto on the recording session.

He showed up in Montreal with soprano because he didn't have a tenor.

And later on I found out that he.

His preferred instrument was tenor.

We.

We ended up going through all of this repertory.

He again, it was his original.

It ended up being his original music.

And that kind of combination of Coltrane and Charlie Parker.

Lots of key work and lots of reharmonization.

So, you know, there'd be some simple tune like Sonny Rollins, you know, taking.

Doing variations on Sonny Rollins version of I'm an Old Cowhand or so it was referential to Sonny Rollins, but it was a totally different set of chord changes.

He.

He loved titles, so Swinging on a Star.

Anything that was about overcoming ascension, going up, you know, rising, all of that, you know, overcoming, getting to the victory, never ending goal.

You know, these.

These kinds of ideas were really, really important to him.

About the second year I was.

Well, let me tell you that.

Let me put it in order so I can keep.

Keep track of it.

So we ended up Montreal a couple weeks, came back to New York and I get a call he's got management and he wants to hire the band from Montreal, which was Otto Gardner, bass and Jeff Seagull drums for some gigs he had in.

In New York.

And the first one was the jazz.

It was a couple nights there and the first night at the Jazz Forum.

In the audience is Roy Haynes, Freddie the freeloader from who was Miles's valet, and Stanley Jordan, who was in college, who sat in and Played, played with us.

And Roy Haynes didn't like what he was hearing, I guess.

And Freddie the freeloader had, was like kind of a non stop gad fly talker.

And he was saying to Roy about Jeff Siegel.

Yeah, Roy, listen to that kid.

Listen to that kid play.

That's young blood.

You old, you're gonna die.

And Roy, Roy picked up.

Freddy had a cane, right?

Yeah, I think he had a wooden leg.

He picks up Freddy's cane, points it at Jeff and shoots, puts it back down.

Jeff Seagull sees this and he comes up to me on the break and goes like, John, I got shot by Roy Haynes.

He was really excited.

That's hilarious.

Stanley sat in and we played a blues and I was like, damn, you know, this guy's a, you know, pretty good guitarist.

But I don't know why Arthur is interrupting the flow with this thing.

Then Arthur announces that Stanley's going to play a solo piece and he plays Round Midnight.

This is Stanley at 19, maybe 18 or 19 and jaw dropping.

I mean, nobody.

I had never heard guitar played like that.

And it was like listening to piano on the guitar.

And in my.

I remember my reaction was, holy shit.

What?

Why doesn't somebody record that?

You know, this was at a time when it was the beginning of the Young Lions movement.

So a lot of what was getting recorded was Mozart, jazz.

It was like jazz reiterated dressing and sounding like the person who had originated the music or the style in the 1950s.

The Young Lions were like, you know, Whitten and people like that, right?

Yeah, it was mostly initially New Orleans based musicians that followed Winton.

Yeah, okay.

Classicists.

Classicists, yeah.

Really repertory players.

It's became much more, I mean, extreme.

It was a function of several things.

One was you could do jazz in college.

So the downside of that is it's like doing classical music in college.

Right.

There's a set body of repertory and everybody learns to play it the same way.

So when I was putting my band together second sight, I was auditioning trumpet players before I found Dave Douglas.

The first couple of trumpet players through the door were from Lincoln center and there was a.

Benny Carter, had a big band at, at Carnegie Hall.

And I think the first three trumpet players came through and they all warmed up on the same Lee Morgan solo.

And then couple of them started writing two fives in on my, my original, which had nothing to do with two fives.

Right.

And that, that, that's the unfortunate part of the college education for, for jazz is it tends to.

It's.

It's like McDonald's hamburgers, you know, that's not how.

If you go back and you study Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Monk, Bud Powell, Bill Evans, Miles, they all had, like, different kinds of educations.

They generally included some kind of lessons in school playing band music, but they mostly learned on the job, and they were in a community of people who played music.

So they ended up with very individual sounding styles.

They may have been copying or, you know, stealing ideas from somebody previous, but there was definitely the sense in the musical community at the time that you should sound like yourself.

And, you know, and that definitely college tends to tamp that down.

We.

We've tried to have the program at Bard not do that, and I think we've been successful with that.

But certainly someone who's expecting the standard repertory program would come in and say, well, you're not spending enough time, you know, playing Art Blakey's repertoire.

You know, they should know all these Benny Golson tunes.

And.

And the fact that they're going to be getting out ready to audition for a dead guy doesn't seem to factor into it.

Right.

My feeling was you can go through enough of that repertoire and enough of that history to get the fundamentals of.

Of your language, the language that you want to use.

And that it may be.

You may be more interested in one area of the language than someone else.

And so if we don't all think the same way, then we're more likely to arrive at something that sounds like us.

If we all think exactly the same way, we're all going to play the same way.

And to me, that.

That's not interesting.

But for teachers, generally, it's in their interest of doing to go that way because you get a nice final senior project and it ends up being more reflective of the teacher's excellence, quote excellence, than it does of the musicians, the.

The students excellence.

And the difficulty, I think, in the education part is that it's necessary to consider your students, no matter, even if they're beginners, that they're artists right from day one.

And then constantly put everything in the context of, you need to develop this, your.

This is your artistic practice, and it's going to be yours.

You know, I can suggest these basic things that should happen that would be useful, but ultimately they're going to be yours and you're going to throw away what you don't want.

And you.

So my observation with Arthur was, wow, here's somebody who pulled all those basics together and committed to them like a thousand percent.

Like he was on a mission.

Whereas for me, I think I was in a somewhat more isolated scenario in Albany when I was learning.

And I felt like, well, maybe I'm a crazy person.

When I started playing with Arthur, it took me six months to really catch up to what the challenge was.

And that was.

But the.

The great thing about that was the sense that, oh, I wasn't crazy.

This is actually.

Here's somebody who has gone with this a thousand percent and look at where it's taken him.

And I.

I should do that too.

And Arthur was very supportive in that idea.

So it was a great, great experience.

Great interchange there.

There know, there were things in.

In some ways I.

I had a.

A broader interest than he did musically, but that was a part of his personality would be hyper focused on kind of his.

His way of doing things.

So there were things I did later on.

We.

We played together for five years.

So, you know, I.

He wasn't so interested.

And like, half the repertoire of Second Sight, he would listen to, well, why are you doing that?

And then you should do this.

The other half, which he really liked, you know, so he had his own direction.

He was very individualistic on three instruments.

So I had gotten a call once we got back from Montreal, and it was like, I have management.

Can you join the band?

And.

And can you put me in touch with Otto and Jeff?

Otto Gardner, Jeff Siegel.

So that band was together for a few years.

We.

And we played a lot at Rashid Ali's club.

We played a lot.

What was the full lineup of that band?

Otto Gardner, bass, and Jeff Siegel, drums.

And.

And you and Arthur, or was it.

Yeah, yeah, me and Arthur.

And, you know, typically I'm.

I'm kind of going through material now to put together a double CD of that band.

Music around that era, because there's nothing on record that really documents that.

And so we worked a tremendous amount, mostly in.

Mostly in New York City.

We travel.

We didn't travel much.

At the same time, his management was connecting him with.

He had been in Reggie Workman's band.

There were other groups that.

That she was connecting him with.

So he was with Eldon Jones for a couple weeks at the Vanguard.

He was.

Elvin wanted him to continue.

Elvin's wife did not, so he.

He didn't.

Do you remember who else was in the band with that, with Elvin?

It was Elvin, Arthur.

And do you know who was space and was there a piano player?

No, it was a guitar.

It was not Roland Prince, the next one.

French name.

From that era.

Yeah.

81, 82.

Who?

A French guy, I think.

I only know one French named Barelli.

Lagrange Legreen.

I don't think he's.

That.

He's.

He's younger than that, I think.

I'm not 100.

Sure.

No, the last name is Borelli.

Jean Claude Borelli.

Are you serious?

Yeah, Jean Claude Borelli.

I'm pretty sure.

Oh, okay.

And the bass player I work with, with Marvin Bugaloo Smith, who's.

And he's gone now, and I'm blanking, blanking on his name.

But he knew Arthur, which is how Arthur got to sit in.

And Pat LaBarbera was playing saxophone, but he was leaving the gig and Elvin was looking for a replacement, and Dave Liebman was.

Was playing soprano, and the.

And the place was jammed with musicians.

And of course, I went in, sat down through set, and Arthur, you know, they're all in these, you know, jazz machine T shirts, right?

And Arthur was a bodybuilder.

So when I met him, he was kind of a tall, skinny kid.

And within a year, he was like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

You know, he.

He did that like he did everything else.

Totally focused, diet, everything else.

And so Pat would come out and, you know, he's a terrific musician, but you could.

Again, the difference in methodology.

I think he would learn.

He was learning, like working on two Coltrane solos a day.

And that would be what kind of what you were hearing in the music that night.

To each his own.

That is how he liked to work.

For me.

It was like hearing.

It always kind of drives me nuts to hear segments of solos that I know from recordings in people's playing.

It always feels out of context for me.

And it always sounds distracting, like they're not building something, you know, but that's how he worked.

And then Arthur would come out and, you know, Arthur's playing with Elwin.

It's like being in Coltrane's band.

So, you know, it had that kind of energy.

And the audience would go completely, completely insane, like screaming and, you know, the whole thing.

And which is why I think he didn't get the gig, because Elvin's wife, Keiko felt he was upstaging Elvin, which he was, you know, which was the story of his, you know, part of what the problem was with him not really his career, not taking off.

The other half was he was gay and he was closeted.

And, you know, especially then when most of the guys coming in, first of all, it was mostly men.

Very few women were allowed to space in the 80s.

You know, Emily Remmer was an anomaly, right.

And you know, she ended up self destructing.

It was, the pressure of that was enormous.

She has a new, she has a new record out, believe it or not.

I guess they found some tapes or something, huh.

I'm friends with so many guitar players years and they just said, hey, look, Emily Remler has another record that they just unearthed.

But anyway, I'm glad she's still working.

I'll save the joke, go on.

So, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, a large part of the people who are coming into the scene, the Young Lions, are like, you know, kind of from very, kind of conservative Christian, evangelical Christian kind of backgrounds.

So they're extremely homophobic.

And so he was really, I think, terrified to have to remain closeted.

And it took, it took a toll.

And the 80s because of the AIDS epidemic, as people got sick.

You know, I had the experience of probably three or four friends getting sick and then realizing that, oh, they've been closeted all this time.

And with Arthur, I happen to know right away, like when we were in Montreal the second night, we were hanging out and talking and I think I was, he felt safe.

My girlfriend was visiting from Brooklyn and she was African American.

So I think he, right away he was like, oh, he's okay.

I didn't have a.

My wristband.

You have the, you're okay, you're okay white person wristband.

And you know, and we kind of, kind of got into the conversation.

You're oh, you're really lucky somebody loves you enough to come visit you.

You know, oh, do you have somebody who can come visit?

And he's no, no, I, I don't.

They don't.

Well, somehow it got around to him basically saying, I'm not really interested in women.

And then I go, oh, okay, so do you have somebody?

Yeah, my friend.

So.

And so I said, okay, you know, well, I have a place in New Pals if you need to get out of town.

I was back and forth between Brooklyn and New Pals at that, that point.

And once you, you guys come up visit.

So that was the beginning of a close friendship where he was able to be himself.

We're both able to be ourselves without all the COVID which I think, you know, I had the privilege of just making that decision for myself without a lot of, without too much pushback.

But in his case, that was a hard decision, an impossible decision for him to make, you know.

You know, so anyway, that, that, that, that ended up interfering with what happened with his career because people do find out, you know, Brooklyn is a small town, and the jazz scene is a very small town.

Interfering with his career in that he stopped getting called or maybe, you know, there was some discrimination against him from that perspective.

Is that.

Oh, man.

N.

You know.

Yeah, yeah.

It would just be.

You know, I would have guys say to me, well, when he died, you know, the.

The reaction from some of the young lions, guys I would be having conversations with, they say, oh, you piano player with Arthur Rams?

Like, yeah, yeah, he died, right?

Yeah, yeah, he just died.

Aids, right?

Yeah, of aids.

Ah, well, he was a.

Anyway, you know, that kind of level of, you know, unbelievable level of dismissal of somebody's humanity over something as fundamental to their personality to point where it's just like stupidity, you know, it's like, you know, just.

It's too much.

Too much to understand actually why that is still happening or why it ever happened.

But in any case, that was a setback.

Another setback was his manager was a young woman who was obsessed with him.

And so that was.

I mean, it's like unrequited love that ended up being.

Ending their working relationship.

She was connected.

Boyfriends or whatever, Mafia cats from, you know, Italian mob guys from Jersey.

So they had a major falling out.

And then some guys showed up at Arthur's apartment, confiscated his horn and his guitar, and told him that if he worked in New York again, he would be dead.

So I found out, or he told.

I guess he told me.

And I had.

At this point, I had a place.

I was in Brooklyn, but I was in New Paltz, and I had a girlfriend in New Paltz and this little cabin out in the woods.

And I invited Arthur, well, come stay with me for a couple weeks at least get out of the city.

And I called Hal Miller, who's drummer and archivist of.

He had.

He had this massive amount of recordings and videos.

He was friends with Wayne Shorter and Elvin, the people of Weather Report, Alfonso Johnson and other people.

And.

And so he had all these bootleg tapes and.

And videos.

It's the archive from which the films were taken for the Ken Burns series.

That's pretty much Hal's stuff.

And Hal was director of the Division for Youth, New York State Division for Youth, which was the prison system for kids.

And there was.

There was a facility in Highland, which is near New Paltz, where Mike Tyson was.

Right.

And so I called Hal.

We had played with Hal, had played with Arthur.

And Hal said, well, I can hook up a job for Arthur as.

As a counselor, but he'll need to know how to drive within six months, he needs to have a driver's license.

So Arthur came, stayed with me for a few months, pretty much destroying what was left of my relationship with my girlfriend.

And.

And then he ended up moving out.

He was unable to learn how to drive.

I mean, he was like a real Brooklynite.

I think I had a Volkswagen standard manual shifts at the time.

He definitely was not going to learn how to drive on that.

And so he lost a job after six months.

And that was the point at which he was kind of back and forth between New Paltz and the city.

And it was kind of downhill from there.

So that's probably 85.

So I worked with him basically from 80 to almost to somewhere in 85.

Jeff and Otto worked with him probably for the first two years of that period.

And then we were playing with other.

Other people.

Then we were doing a lot of things.

And actually also in.

In the Capital District, Albany area and Hudson Valley as well as the city.

Well, he couldn't play in the city.

So, you know, we.

We moved everything up upstate.

And around that time we did something on kcr.

They used to do these.

That's Columbia University radio station for people who don't know that.

And they used to do these profiles where you'd go in and, you know, for whatever it was, three or four hours and play and.

And talk and be interviewed and everything.

And so that one was.

There was a drummer named Krister Hennicks, who shortly thereafter transition became Catherine Krister Hennig.

She just passed.

She was living in Berlin.

And Krister was connected with the bassist Mark Johnson from Bill Evans Group.

So we ended up doing this impromptu thing at KCR to which Mark Johnson brought a shopping bag full of hash brownies and his looper.

And so it turned into three hours of bass loops and hash brownie heaven for Christer and.

And Mark Johnson with Arthur kind of pretty much fit to be tied that it was turning into like a 60s Grateful Dead gig instead of what he was attempting to do.

But anyway, that.

That was.

That was one of the last things I did with him.

That was about when I started my band, 85.

That was Dave Douglas, Jeff Marks, Jeff Seagull on drums.

Jeff Marks played tenor and soprano.

Dave Douglas, trumpet, obviously.

Frederick Berryhill, who had been a housemate up in Albany, percussion, great, great conga player, still playing.

And Alan Murphy, bassist, who also just passed.

The phrase just passed gets used a lot at.

At this point in life, hence the morbidity.

I mean, it's not even morbid.

It just because it was Just sort of, you know, where are they now?

So that band, when we finally settled on that personnel, worked from 85 to 90.

We recorded two records, and I started my label, Sun Jump Records, to get the first record out.

What did you call that?

Was that band Second Sight, or did you call it.

It was called Second Sight.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that was pretty much the first band in which we did, you know, almost all of my music, but we went by a group.

It wasn't John Esposito on Second.

I couldn't pay for anything, you know, so it was just like a communal group.

Dave was not well known at the time, but he was starting to be.

He was playing in John Zorn's Masada.

I love that record.

I can't remember what it's called.

Grand Queen, Y'all.

Quinol, something like that.

Oh, no, maybe that's not the one I'm thinking of.

Anyway, I used to love.

There was two.

There were two Masada records.

I loved.

Loved those records.

Oh, my.

So that really got him off the ground, that and what's his name?

Clarinet player, Bug music.

Bug music, yeah.

Yeah, he did.

It was a music of.

It was cartoon music.

And so that.

I think that was their second record.

The first one was klezmer music.

Music of Mickey Cats.

Yeah.

There were two Masada records, I think.

John Byron.

John Byron.

I think I know what you're talking about.

Yeah.

And so that.

He was a phenomenon at a time because he was African American with clarinet player with dreads, and his audience was Jews from Borough park at the Knitting Factory, like, lined up around the corner because he was playing the music of Mickey Katz.

Mickey Katz was Joel Gray's dad.

And the Broadway star Joel Gray.

And Mickey Katz did, like, novelty, Jewish novelty music that was popular at weddings.

So who stole the kishka?

And, you know, tunes like that.

And so Dave's thing was starting to take off with that.

And then we had recorded our second record, and we were trying to.

We were trying to find a label, and I had been counseled by somebody in the industry.

Don't just give your tape to people because you'll get scammed.

And they said, you.

You know, the classic is somebody will be a manager, they'll get a hold of your tape, and then they'll call you up and say, I have interest from Blue Note in your tape, and I have an appointment this afternoon, but I need, you know, you to sign the contract.

And the person explained that there are two kinds of contract.

There's an artist contract in which they basically own your name.

And there's, there's a representation contract, which is basically limited amount of time and say.

So it would be like representation contract.

You can.

You have my permission to take the tape to Blue Note.

If you get a contract for Blue Note, I'll pay you $2,000, whatever it was at the time.

And then we'll have a discussion about whether our.

We're going to continue our association.

That's a representation contract, which can turn into an artist contract if you want.

So basically I was told if somebody pulls that stunt, like, avoid them.

So I explain this to the band and I say, whatever you do, don't just hand a demo out.

Talk to me first so I can find out who the person is.

So there was this manager at the time who lived in.

Jeff lived in Brooklyn and we would rehearse in Fort Green a lot and we're working a lot in New York.

And so somehow he hands this tape off to this manager and we're coming back from a gig in the wilds of Pennsylvania.

And 9:00 in the morning, the phone rings and Jeff Siegel's on the phone and he says, marks is on the phone and he's in a panic because he's trying to get a hold of you.

Because this manager, who I won't.

I think she's still alive, Jeff, isn't she?

She wants to represent.

She has a contract, a Blue Note contract for, for us.

Right.

So right away the alarm goes, okay, this is exactly what this guy told me was going to happen.

And he says, and when he called, he thought he hung up, but his.

The answering machine recorded the conversation with the other.

With the manager.

And it was this classic manipulative conversation where she tried to get him to basically send her a tape because she had, she had had the tape.

Horace Silver.

It was a little more complicated than that.

Horace Silver's manager had just died.

Horace had a tour set up, temporarily hired this person as his manager to, to handle the tour.

And he was looking for a band and nobody knew that yet.

So he heard our tape and he wanted to hire the band.

Right?

And so with.

So it was this double, double whammy.

Let me decline this.

I don't.

New phone, which doesn't seem to want to turn off.

So.

So he's.

So he says, so Marks, you know, wants you to call this, this manager, you know, okay, I'll do it.

So I get her on the phone and it's the classic scam you kind of conversation.

And finally I just say, listen I will be interested in doing representation contract.

This amount of money, this amount of time.

And she's saying, no, you know, art, you need to sign artist contract.

And then I said, well, thank you, I'm not interested.

Thank you very much, though.

Hopefully we can do business and know the point.

She's shocked that a musician turned down this imminent Blue Note contract.

She was on her way to see Bruce Lundville.

And I get off the phone, Jeff calls back and it says.

And I explain what happened.

And I said, listen, don't worry, it was nothing.

She did not have a meeting with Bruce Londval.

It was maybe, you know, and we would have had to sign with her.

And I had already checked into her and it's not somebody I would want to be doing business with.

She ended up owning.

I had friends who worked in another band that she.

She ended up owning their names, you know, so.

And the music.

But by the way, which was something.

Their personal names.

Pretty much, yeah.

I mean, it's.

The amount of control that management and record companies have over musicians is unbelievable.

Right?

You know, the Credence Clearwater.

Yeah.

With that.

That poor guy, you know, 30 years of lawsuits and could not sing.

Couldn't use his own voice because it was recognizable.

It was owned by the record company.

So.

So, yeah, so I was wary in any case.

Siegel says, well, okay, so it wasn't anything.

I said, no, it really was nothing.

He says, so should I tell.

Are you going to tell Jeff Marks?

I said, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let him feel like he really it up for about a week so that he remembers when I tell him, would you please contact me before you hand out the tape that.

So ultimately my conclusion was I should just form a record company and start releasing music.

And so we did the first record we got out and then I had a partner at the time, a blue singer named Little Elliot.

Lloyd.

Lloyd Pyoff.

There's a whole story.

He's like family, mob connected, chop shop in Brooklyn.

And he ended up having to flee and ended up in New Paltz.

And he, he was like.

It was like having Anthony Quinn as your.

As your record company partner.

So he did all the promo.

You're.

You're running.

You're running your own little witness protection program up in New Paltz now.

Yeah, there's a whole.

I, I can't.

I can't get into that story.

But maybe offline.

We'll, We'll.

I'll tell you about it.

Yeah.

Off the record.

Oh, John, I gotta.

I gotta.

I Actually got a split.

You and Keith are going to continue this conversation.

It's always a pleasure hearing the stories I wish I had, you know.

Anyway, I'm sorry, I got a duck out, guys.

All right.

Good to see you, John.

Yeah, we'll talk.

All right.

Later, man.

So, in any case, what did happen was she.

This manager called me back and asked me to contact Horace Silver, which I did.

And Horace was lovely.

And he said, you know, I'd like to hire your band.

He says, minus you, of course.

And if there's.

So I said, yeah, I'm.

Everybody.

It's fine.

You know, everybody will be honored, you know, to do it.

And he said, okay, what can I do for you?

And he had said all of this very nice stuff when we started.

He said, I love your playing.

I love your writing.

You know, the band sounds great.

So I.

I said, if you want to put that in a note that I can give to a record company, you know, that you're endorsing us, that would probably be, you know, that would be great.

So he did that.

I found out that that was a mistake to use that promo because every time I got a review after that, apparently I sounded like Horace Silver, which, I assure you, I never did, which is 100 false.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Horace was not really a very big influence on me.

So I did examine some of his music early on.

But, yeah, it was not a big influence.

But in any case, he was a wonderful person.

Great, you know, great composer, really important piano player.

So we.

So, Dave, you know, so once the word got out that Horace was looking for musicians, everybody in the world contacted him.

So Dave Douglas ended up on the gig, and that should have been his breakthrough.

But again, with the Young Lions thing, when they.

When they got back to New York, I went to hear them, and I got there a little late, and my girlfriend was there at the time, and she said, oh, man, you just missed it.

Horace just gave you this introduction, talked about your record, talked about.

About you and your songs, and, you know, told everybody to go out and get the record.

Oh, wow, that's amazing.

So I'm.

I get brought over to say hello to Horace by Dave Douglas.

And Dave says to me, he did that introduction on every gig we did all over Europe and all over the U.S.

so thank Taurus.

Wow.

You know, come sit here.

And he introduces me to piano player Billy Senior moment Taylor.

Billy Taylor.

Dr.

Billy Taylor.

Billy Taylor sitting next to me.

Same thing.

Very gracious offers to.

Offers me connection to a festival in Florida.

Have my management Which I did not have contact this.

This person.

And then Billy Teller and I sat behind Horace like two little kids, chuckling, watching Horace play.

And classic New York set finishes.

Somebody comes up to me and says, excuse me, are you somebody?

And I.

I said, no, I'm not anybody.

And they go, oh, okay.

And then, goodbye.

Okay, goodbye.

So that night, I went out to hear Dave sit in.

You know, he was going to sit in with Blakey.

And he was sitting.

And I heard him in one club and three other trumpet players, young lions, luminaries of the day.

And, man, they would not look at him, you know, and of course they were.

Again, they were playing all their little Lee Morgan ripoffs.

And he was playing the way he plays, which especially at that point was.

Wait, catch, Catch me up.

Because was he gay also?

Is that the issue?

No.

Yeah.

What was the issue?

What was their issue with him?

He didn't conform to what they were and what they were doing.

You know, okay, probably he's white.

He played better than all three of them.

More to my mind, interesting individual, sounding creative.

Yeah.

And it wasn't all of the recognizable.

You know, it.

Any technically competent jazz musician can do imitations.

So I can do my little Bud Powell imitation, my Bill Evans imitation.

You know, I'm.

One of my students is Keith Jarrett's daughter, and she.

I gave her a cd, partially as a joke.

It was the first cd.

It was on at Steve.

Steve Girausi record.

And I have a solo spot, and it sounds like Keith.

It's.

You know, I was like 26, and I was copying the.

The genre.

It's not exactly what Keith played, but it was that feel.

Right?

So I made a point after hearing that back to never do that again.

Anybody can do that who's kind of pretty much competent, but that's not your job.

To my mind, you know, there's been.

A lot of ink spilled about jazz and about what it is and what makes jazz unique.

And I think, like, it's so conspicuous because if you ask that, you know, the classicist people about.

About what makes jazz, the first thing they're going to say is, it has to swing, which is the most nebulous thing.

It doesn't even mean anything.

So I came up with my own.

My own framework, and I call it the three eyes.

Improvisation, individuality, innovation.

Because in my mind, jazz never really stood still, you know, so without those.

And then, I mean, I do feel like the individuality.

Everybody knows improvisation is inherent in jazz, but the individuality part is, like, it's not as conspicuous.

But if you ask any real jazz person, they're gonna say, no, you gotta sound like yourself, you know, and that's probably one of the hardest things to do.

And that's also kind of hard to sort of pinned down also.

But that's my framework that I've been trying to tell people.

Yeah, I think that's a good, good description.

You would not get an agreement on that from a lot of musicians.

Innovation doesn't enter into the picture at all for a lot of musicians, which is.

I understand some people are not.

That's not their nature.

It's fine to be primarily a repertory player, but to maintain that that's what everybody should do, be doing, otherwise it's not valid, is pretty idiotic, as far as I'm concerned.

And it shows a lack of understanding of the actual history.

These are people who are, you know, worship history.

And I think, you know, when you actually read any history, if you read American history, you quickly come to the realization that most 90, 90% of what actually happened is glossed over.

It's uncomfortable, it's challenging, and it doesn't.

And that's the same thing with the music, is music was always made by oddballs.

You know, any of them, you know, Louis.

Louis Armstrong, you know, Charlie Parker, for sure.

You know, Coltrane was an oddball.

I mean, interview Miles Davis and, you know, and there are people who see connections that nobody else sees.

They see connections in concepts and cultures, and they're.

They're, you know, for lack of a better word, free spirits.

Right.

They.

They feel like they should be able to connect with anything and take in anything that appeals to them, and that's what they express.

That's really a hard one for most Americans.

And the, you know, a lot of times, I think people from other countries have an easier time with that than Americans.

We have a big investment in not looking at 95% of what American history and American culture is about, including the music.

You know, it's uncomfortable and it's challenging.

So in case of, you know, there.

There was an article years.

Probably 20 years ago, and it was a downbeat article where I think Winton Marsalis had just gotten a grant for composition.

So, of course he said composition is really where it's at.

Improvisation.

Who wants to listen to, you know, improvisation, all that improvisation.

And maybe there's going to be one minute of interesting music.

And of course, he was bombarded with letters or downbeat was.

And Keith Jarrett's really stood out.

And one of the saxophonists, I can't Think of his name immediately.

But basically they said, you know, that those few moments of transcendence are what all that is about.

That's you do all of that work and you play and you play and you play for those few moments of enlightenment, right?

Which is a very sort of un American, you know, more east, maybe Eastern or African.

This idea that of transcendence and going through this discipline process, what Krister Hennigs once called in the music, he described it as an orderly progression towards ecstasy.

And he was describing some esoteric math system of mathematics that actually led to a place that, you know, Buddhism led to, or Vedic scripture, whatever he was talking about.

And Arthur thought that was a great description of what we do.

An orderly progression.

All of this work that you do and building and structure.

I mean, to get to something where.

Where everything just opens up.

This white light opens up.

Okay.

And that's a little too weird for a lot of musicians.

The Young Lions, for sure.

They're much more rooted in, quote, the ancestors.

There was a discomfort in, you know, Winton and Ronald Reagan hit at the same time, 1980.

And there was.

There was a discomfort in America with internationalism, you know, what they regard as internal internationalism.

And that hasn't gone away.

You know, I think it was a reaction to the dis.

To the disorientation of the 60s and early 70s.

A lot of people were really frightened by this idea of barriers coming down.

The racial barriers, the gender, gender barriers, cultural barriers, all disappearing progressively because.

And then once the Internet hit very, very quickly, a lot of that seemed to collapse.

And it's only been one lifetime.

You know, I mean, those changes began, you know, 50 years ago, not even one lifetime.

And so I think it's.

You have this division in the music.

So in the 80s, it was a downtown scene, in the uptown scene, you know, uptown being Lincoln center, and the Young Lions downtown being John Zorn and Dave Douglas and Myra Melford and, you know, all.

All of those musicians that come to our.

Marilyn Crispell, you know, even the older musicians like Paul Motion and who were the kind of left of center, more about not just staying with function.

You know, my function as a drummer, my function has been, you know, but more about the expansiveness of the music.

And for me, that was.

What made me want to play was, you know, was Coltrane's band, Miles's band, Cecil Taylor, you know, all of that expansive music of the 60s.

And so I was, like, really happy with Brew and all of the evening, the fusion music.

The more open it was, I was more interested in Herbie Hancock's kind of Open Fusion Music, 1970, than, say, Chick Korea's more precise, enclosed music.

They're both great, you know, but I.

I always love to keep that feeling in the music of being open, no matter the style is besides the point, you know, so before I got off on that rant, we're.

I'm not sure where what started that.

But let me.

So.

So I have to quit pretty soon anyway, so this is a natural place to stop.

Yeah.

So I think, first of all, I think, you know, I couldn't.

I couldn't.

You know, when Dan and I started this podcast, we literally, like, our first episode was, okay, how do you do a podcast?

You know, I'm not even kidding.

Yeah.

And so.

And now we're here and hearing these stories and actually being in a position to sort of catalog all this stuff and to be part of the process that crystallizes things, which is, to me, like, hearing these stories is extremely important for me and I think is important for people, because this is all, like.

I mean, I.

I have a connection to you because you.

What you taught influenced me.

And I have stuff to tell you that what you were talking about, like, your train ride with Arthur Rhames and talking about the transpositions, and I told you I was.

I'm in the midst of these compositions that are also, I would say, algorithmic in a sense that I think you'll find very interesting.

We can talk about that next time, I guess, but.

But what I really want to just say is that I couldn't be more grateful to just be able to sit here and listen to these stories, because to me, you know, I mean, I actually don't think.

I feel like jazz is.

I've felt like this for a really long time.

Jazz is the highest art form there is.

I don't think it's gonna.

And I.

And I just have.

I'm hard pressed to think of a way that we're gonna get any further as human beings than what jazz really encapsulates.

And I feel like if we do any better, it'll be jazz.

And I was telling my friend who's a hip hop artist, who actually went to Bard, he's a hip hop artist.

And I was telling him about my theory about jazz and the three eyes, and he goes, dude, that's hip hop.

Hip hop.

And.

And.

And I was like, yeah, because some hip hop is jazz.

Yeah.

But anyway, so I feel like this is.

So hearing these stories and actually getting a firsthand account of Everything is really important and I couldn't.

I really am very grateful to sit here and listen to all this.

Thanks.

Thanks for asking.

And yeah, I mean, I agree with, with hip hop.

Jazz is a very, you know, stylistic terms for music are always charged and limited in what they actually convey.

And you know, the music, I mean, jazz is New Orleans ragtime, right?

That's what the term is.

Charlie Parker, Daisy Gillespie did not consider what they played to be jazz, right?

They.

They just called it modern music and the, the critics called it bebop.

And the music in the 60s, when, you know, when I talk to those musicians who are generation older than me, they would just say the music, that was the description of it, the music meaning that improvised music, the music that we all play.

But it was included.

It kind of included everything because sort of everybody was still alive and playing in the 60s and 70s.

So, you know, Coleman Hawkins, Eric Dolphy are both on same Max Rhodes, Abby Lincoln record right, in the early 60s.

And, you know, Coltrane, Miles, all, all of those players doing something that really did not fit, didn't swing.

You know, if you define swing as 1950s, the 1950s definition of drum and bass function, piano function, all of the instrumental functions break down in the 60s.

Yet I would be, I would argue that Elvin Jones on Sunship Swing, you know, swings in terms of forward propulsion is unbelievable.

You know, how difficult that is.

You know, and there are many great musicians who play with that kind of open openness that I'm sure, you know, you would hear from kind of the more conservative players.

That's not, that's not jazz.

So I think it's an irrelevant argument at this point because the music became so internationalized when I did a record with Pharaoh Sanders, Franklin Kirmeyer's record, Solomon's Daughter, there's a great drummer who's that?

Forward propulsion.

Does it, you know, is he playing the hat?

No, you know, it's his own way of playing and, and which incidentally, Elvin in interviews kept on said, you know, a number of times it's like.

It's about flow and everybody has their own way of doing that, which, coming from the.

One of the hardest swinging drummers in jazz.

You know, I think that, you know, he was smart enough to.

To understand the implications of what he had created.

Right.

And did this.

The thing with Pharaoh Sanders, I ended up after the date.

It was pretty, you know, pretty amazing experience just standing next to him listening to, you know, let alone playing with him for three days.

And then I wrote him a Letter afterwards and because I really thought about not only what that session and interaction between me and him and the other musicians, the conclusions I came to during that session about how to organize and not have it just be kind of the modal 60s modal thing, but something else completely.

I had the freedom to do that because Pharaoh and Coltrane and those, those musicians allow themselves the freedom to break down barriers.

And their barriers were not only technical and theoretical barriers, but their cultural barriers.

They allowed themselves to draw on African, European, Asian, Native American, any thing that appeared to be beautiful and primal and expressive to them.

They brought into the music fearlessly and they took a lot of for it.

And I think a lot of, you know, kind of mainstream musicians have difficulty listening to that music and understanding or accepting the inclusiveness of it.

And as a result, people from all over the world have been able to relate, be were able to relate to this American improvised music.

It is an African American creation.

But African Americans don't speak a con or Iwei or any, you know, Yorubin.

They speak various dialects of English like everybody else.

We all adapt and absorb from the other cultures so that we can communicate and work together.

Right.

Whether we like it or not, we do it.

And it is that.

That is what it is in the music.

That's what it's always been in the music.

What we call jazz has always been a music that is an African unwilling African immigrants reaction to the environment that they were stuck in and unable to escape.

And their app adaptations to that environment, no matter where you look, whether South America, Central America, north are brilliant.

They're brilliant.

And the lineage that the music, the music that we play comes from, yes, it does start out as two beat ragtime Dixieland kind of music that becomes four beat swing in the forties and, and maintains that to the early sixties and then becomes something else and then reabsorbs popular music again with rock and hip hop, etc.

And as well as the idea of time does not have to be dance oriented but can be something else.

So all of that is part of the music.

It doesn't make it less African American, it makes it African American plus it's plus more.

So I think you can, you can honor the roots of the music, the cultural roots of the music, but ex expand.

We're a space age society now and it's possible to do those two things at the same time.

Not everybody's comfortable with that and a lot of people like the narrowness of definitions before.

So I don't know what to call them.

It's the music might be, you know, the best music.

Yeah, well, I think.

Yeah, naming it is tough.

Listen, so do you.

So about what year did we end up just now?

Was it like, do we get to the 90s even?

We got to.

When you formed something.

Pretty much 1990s.

Yeah.

Okay, so let me ask you a question.

Do you think we.

You have more stories?

Should we do another one of these or.

Or should we.

Should we just change focus?

Yeah, I mean, I'm making most of these lives up anyway as we go, so.

Okay.

All right.

Because I got a.

I got a boogie.

What's that?

You.

You want to do another hour?

Yeah, I can do another one.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because if you can, let's.

Let's try to get up to present day and then.

And then.

And then we'll change focus because, you know, we have a.

I was asking for your help with the project and everything.

So we'll change focus after we get your whole biography kind of down.

So I gotta.

I actually have a lunch that I have to go run to now, so.

Absolutely.

Dude, this is amazing.

I freaking love this, man.

I really do.

This is awesome.

Well, thanks.

Thanks for being interested.

Yeah, we just released a podcast today with a classical singer from Bard.

So the next one that's going to be released in a few weeks is going to be your first episode.

After that, it'll be this.

This episode.

And then after that, probably the.

Whatever the final episode is.

And.

And then.

And then I have to follow up with you on all that other stuff.

So.

But as we go, you know, I think we'll just.

When you're.

When you're ready to start digging into it, also when I'm ready, we'll start doing some promo for your stuff, you know, your website, any records you want to promote, we'll start doing that stuff.

Well, that's great.

Yeah, man.

All right, dude.

Absolutely appreciate you so much.

This is great.

Thanks for.

Thanks for, you know, being willing to come and tell the.

All these stories.

My pleasure.

All right.

All right, John, I'll talk to you soon.

Bye.

Bye.

See you, man.