You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Greatest Pianists Of The Greatest Generation

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

Adam and Peter discuss the 7 greatest pianists of the Greatest Generation. Art TatumBud PowellOscar PetersonFats Waller Thelonious MonkEarl Hines/ Teddy Wilson Mary Lou Williams Nat King Cole Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Twitter | Instagram

Hey, Peter. Yo. It's the greatest today, you know. Yes. Greatest episode ever. Greatest generation ever. Greatest? Greatest group of jazz pianists ever.

Is it the greatest? Do you think? The greatest is the greatest. Well, it's definitely the greatest generation. That's the name of it, literally. All right. Well, we'll find out. Exciting.

I'm Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the Yulian podcast. Two pianists talking music. Oh, he stuck the landing. I said, don't think, you know, try to act like you belong. You act like cool. Be cool.

Oh, you act like they're not. Our listeners, our dear listeners. who pay attention to every little detail, every syllable, every syllable, every consonant that comes out of our mouth, every vowel, they deconstruct. They're gonna notice that you change the tagline again for the, what,

12th, 100th time? We're given it a trial run. Do you remember the first tagline? Yes. What was it? Daily Jazz advice. That was like our tagline for two years. Well, because we were doing it every day.

We had to change it. We couldn't. And then we struggled. We, if you, if you want to, us, sue us for our accuracy. Please don't sue us for anything. Don't sue us. But if you did, you can't sue us for our accuracy.

So we're always, you know, we're two pianists talking about music. That's what I realized. That's what we do. The jazz explaining was starting to sound a little pretentious. You just see Peter at a cafe, some of you're staring out of window.

He's got an oat milk cappuccino. And he's like, what are we doing? What are we? Yeah. Who are we? Who is our purpose? Who is Adam? What are we doing?

We're just two pianists talking music. Talking music. I love it. Okay. Well, it's a new era. Now, we might give a little advice now and then. That's still going to happen, but that's, you know, that's part of our mission.

Well, let's talk about this series we've been doing, which is we've been doing the greatest pianists of every generation. We started with millennials. It's starting to feel highly arbitrary, even though I know it is organized by these official, you know, I mean, the nomenclature is just weird of these generations. We still haven't got used to that. But we're fitting into the framework which Wikipedia gave us. And we're following closely. It doesn't really matter.

They kind of, they fit into neat little cultural boxes as we're kind of going to see here. Some are better than others. This is a good one. This is a really good one. This is the greatest one. This might be, well, that's literally the greatest. It's called, they're called, they called themselves the greatest generation. They gave themselves that name.

I don't think that's true. I think the greatest generation was a very, is a very, you know, laid back and quiet, like, not quiet, but like, accomplished. Right. But they let's let others toot their horns. Well, much as the musicians, the pianists that we're going to look at today. That's right. I would say that that accurately depicts them. This generation is defined by 1900, born between 1900 and 1924, I think, is the end date.

We still don't have it right, do we? Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. Yeah. So, yeah, so this is the generation that went to World War II. If you're American, they served in World War II. They came home and were the sort of the, they were the parents of the baby boomers, essentially. Baby, babboomer.

That's right. Baby boomer. They were the big sisters and brothers of the silent generation, the herbies, the chicks, the Keith's. Right. Yeah. But there's some knockouts in this one. You want to give it to go first? Yeah, let's do it. We're going to start number one. We're going to come strong. Okay. There's no way this gentleman... Wrong and strong or just strong? No, right and right, right and tight. Okay, good. There's no way you could leave this gentleman off, none other than... Boom. Art Tatum. Oh, there is. Let's check out a little bit of Art Tatum.

Greatest pianist all time, perhaps. Perhaps. There's a hard cut there. Not by me. You know what my favorite part about this generation is going to be? Oh, great. What? Is that... is that they're true artists. Yeah. They're some of the greatest musicians who ever lived. But it was still show business this. Oh, very much real.

You know what I mean? Very entertaining. They're coming out of the show business era. A lot of flash. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. All over the place.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think Artatum, you know, probably maybe the most influential on this list today of each of the other musicians that came later. I don't know. But I mean, like, a lot of these players, but none more so than Artatim, you're going to see that direct classical influence. I think probably almost all the pianists on all of our list had classical influence from a technical standpoint. But you're hearing that directly like in that arrangement, but then bam, right into the swing, like that ability with showbiz to be able to just jump right back and forth.

Yeah, I mean, these players, a lot of them didn't grow up with a ton of great jazz piano influences. Because there just weren't a lot of... They are the influencers. This was, a lot of them were born pre, like, radio and records. Right. Artetam was known as the Kim Carlin. of his generation. Oh, boy. The influencer, number one influencer. Peter Martin, 2022. You heard it here first. Okay. My first version of the greatest generation is, this is, I think,

one of the great artists of all time. Bud Powell. Greatest bebop piano seven. I love that avant-garde intro. Visual. Yeah, it's in 1962, obviously some kind of European film. Yeah. I don't really be correctly like Bud Powell played it. Not a lot of footage of the greatest generation. Yeah, it's available, not like the millennials with the Gen X, but...

I know. Caleb said they sled overhead cam, which they, I mean, we don't even have it on the podcast. That might have been the first ever overhead camp. Oh, that's a great shot there. Yeah, look at. Just effortless bebop language, one of the true innovators on the instrument. Bud Powell, certainly one of the greatest of the greatest. So good.

So good. I like this generation, because we can say greatest of the greatest. Absolutely. You would not be wrong. Okay, so next we're going to go to one of our favorites here on the pod and another heavy hitter, as we would say. That's Mr. Oscar Peterson. And there's actually a lot of really great videos of Oscar Peterson.

And this is one that I hadn't seen in a long time, which is always fun to discover some stuff with Joe Pass. It means a lot to me. I didn't see this performance. But when I first saw Oscar Peterson perform 1982 Cool Jazz Festival, a young 11-year-old Peter Martin was in a tent. Joe Pass and Oscar Peterson. Cool as in the K-O-O-L cigarette.

And I got a free sample that day, which was a little weird because I felt like I was young. I've smoked some cools in my time. Okay, got it. Anyway, this is Joe Pass with Oscar Peterson. And I believe Neal's heading or Stett Peterson as well. Just Friends. So friendly, Oscar, is it?

I know. Oh, look out of here. Just instant swing. Just turn the switch. He's already in Bosenorfer times. But you know, I just wanted to kind of highlight Oscar Peterson's comping and not just, we're always looking at his trio stuff, his solo stuff, which is great.

Yeah. But listen to this, comping. Oh, look at that. Went all the way out to the edges. He really was a complete, complete musician. Oh. Get on. But I mean, just in turn.

is just straight-up swing, comping vibe. Also, kind of lesser known as, what I would say, kind of a point card of jazz piano and that he made everybody sound better. Like, everybody who played with Oscar Peterson, he brought up the bass.

I mean, of course, there was specific musical things that he was doing in terms of comping and introductions, nobody did intros better. Now, the greatest musicians make other musicians around them sound better. Absolutely. All the time.

Well, speaking of swing, how about this guy? What do you know about this guy? Oh. That's Waller here. Oh. Looks like we're cut off at the top again. No one to talk with all by myself.

No one to walk with, but I'm at the other shelf. A misbehaving. Same in my love for you, for you, for you, for you, for you, for Satan. The one I love, it's you. Again, don't be fooled by the muggin for the camera. Matt Waller is one of the most influential musicians of his generation on the piano, for sure, or anything else. And again, not scared to be extremely entertaining as he's doing it. Absolutely.

And you hear that phrasing, I forgot about the influence of Lewis Armstrong in terms of the vocal phrasing. Big influence there. Lewis Armstrong could easily be on this list of seven greatest pianists. I know, exactly. Although I think he was born in, like, what is it, like 18? 1995 or six, no one knows, really. No, I think he was actually born after. Like, he said, he always said July 4th, 1900.

Oh, is that what he said? But they said some stuff that he, in order to get into World War I, he lied about his age. He was actually younger. So maybe he was part of this generation. Wow. Cool. Okay.

Next is an artist that, I mean, how could we not have this person in there? This monster composer and pianist, the lonious monk. Hey. And this is, again, there's a lot of great videos, actually, of Thelonis Monk more so than Fats Waller for sure. Friend of the show, Thelonius Monk? Front of the show? We wish. His music is a friend of the show for sure.

I was what I'm saying, man. But I thought this would be fun because Thelonius Monk was an amazing composer, amazing piano, super influential. You know, a lot of like back and forth with Bud Powell. Actually, I'm thinking now Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. There's a lot of influence back and forth between them. But Bud Powell, Monk loved his playing,

but Bud Powell loved Monks playing. Just, you know, a lot of influences here. but he was also known as being very funny, very quirky, and all these kinds of things. And that came across in his music, but there's a few little things that I found this clip because this is one of a couple where he's in the studio. He was like really about business in the studio.

He was like, come in and play it and knock it out. You know, no second take, just like me. He didn't like to do any second takes. Just bam, getting right to it, right? He's willing to come one take money. But this is funny because this catches a little bit of him. They're playing Ugly Beauty, beautiful tune on the Columbia.

record underground. They're at the recording session, but, well, you'll see what happens. They're like... Look at that hat. Yeah. Where do we get that hat? They wear suits to the studio.

Charlie Riles. Let's really do one now. We're all... Let's do one. You're like, huh? Why do you stop us for? Okay, in case you can't understand. He's like, we were just playing a piece.

Why are you stopping us? He's just in sense why the producers stopped. I think that's tape. That's on you. You should have been running the tape already. He said it's unnecessary stop. He said it's... He said it's...

He said it's unnecessary stop. Let's see. It's unnecessary to stop. Unnecessary to stop. A little bit at it. What did we have before we so rudely interrupted? He's like, wherever we have before we were so rudely interrupted. He's just a funny, funny, just intelligent guy.

You know, it was just... I love moments like this that really humanize these great artists, because, you know, we can sit here and talk about his piano playing. And some of you might be like, wow, your same monk is one of the greatest pianists and you don't even really show and play. But we know the great records and the great recordings. But I love it. We can kind of put some humanity behind these icons.

Oh, man, that's such a good. I've never seen that. That's so good. My next one, I've got a two-front. There's another one. Sorry, I just remembered me and Christian McBride are always. Chris McBride has such a good memory on this. There's another one.

I think it's from that movie in which they... The Clint Eastwood, Doc. Yeah. Was it Clint Eastwood? Perhaps. Executive producer. Yeah, yeah. And it's got some of this footage too.

But he's playing and the producer, it might be Teo as well, you know, says like, all right, when you're done practicing, let's do a take. And Monka's like, no, I'm doing the take, you know. And he's like, practicing. And then he says, every time you're at your instrument, you're practicing. Yeah. Which is a funny thing, but it's a very like, you know, interesting thing. It's like every time you're playing, you're practicing, don't call it practice and then recording. It's all the same thing.

It's all the same thing. But then he says, you ought to know that. T.O. You're a saxophone player. That's great, man. All right, I've got a two for mine. Okay. So this is... Oh, good. I got a two for two.

Earl Hines and Teddy Wilson. Two greatest generation pianists, two amazing musicians, 1965. And you're going to like this. Okay. Teddy Wilson. Dapper. demure

elegant player Teddy Wilson actually Earl Hines as well Obama's um wait something like that yeah Obama's Attorney General that's right striking resemblance to Teddy Wilson

okay look at Earl Hines's elbows four or five inches above the four inches above the keyboard then sitting high two swing pianists pre-BBBBAT pianists who had careers during the bebop era,

but didn't go that style and still had this incredible effect on the music, this influence with the swing. Teddy Wilson. A real bridge between swing and beep-bop, what you're saying? Definitely both of them are bridge between swing and bebop. But influence. Hey. Hey.

I'm such a sucker for Teddy Wilson. Again, man, not afraid to be, there I say, charming. Can we play this music and be charming and entertaining? Well, no, not anymore, but back then you could do it. Okay. And then he went on to a brilliant legal career. Here we go. Eric Holder.

Eric Holder. A striking resemblance, especially gray-haired Eric Holder here, perhaps, to Teddy Wilson. Am I speaking out of turn there? Oh, my gosh. Are we seeing that? Are we seeing that? Anyway. Okay.

So I've got a two-for for you as well. Oh, I'm just going all over to place. Here we go. No, not that. Here we go. This is Mary Lou Williams. Talk about an icon of the music, right? This is sort of a two-for, but it's just Mary Lou Williams, just Maryly Williams.

That's plenty of playing, but a nice little introduction on here as well. We feel especially pleased tonight and honored because we have a lady with us whom I adore an admirer and also important to that she is a very, very important integral part of jazz history. Would you welcome Mary Louise. Ray Brown. Uh Uh That's

Swinging man Mary Lou Williams is finally starting to get some do Yeah Man just getting some crag Okay you talk about wrist finger Hand position arm Perfect technique

You know efficiency But then just deep in that swing Man that's beautiful It's like a technical Masterclass Pianism Ha Left hand comping

Well, double stops? Love it, man. Yeah, so you definitely hear the Teddy Wilson influence there. A little bit of Oscar Peterson, but a lot of, you know, Mary Lou Williams stuff that she influenced others. And as you said, she's always gotten her due from those that know, but definitely getting her due even more now, which is exciting. Kind of a rediscovery. All right. My last one?

Yes. Maybe my favorite one? No. We got so many requests after you've been on the show. They say, would some night. If you please have Nat Kinkle sit down at the piano and actually play a piano number course? The piano number.

Did you do it? Okay. Underrated. Yeah. Speaking of underrated. Teddy Wilson influence. Super swing. Maybe a little bit of J-BAT before there was a J-BAT?

Wow. You know what I mean? Just that effect on popular culture? Yeah. Finger technique. Nice pinky and fourth finger work then. Interesting, his... Mary Lou Wims never is looking at the keyboard.

Everything. That's my favorite. It's my favorite. That is my favorite, Natickle, I do that. I stole that. Yeah. Is this the penultimate? Is Nacking Cole the greatest of the greatest generis?

I wouldn't have thought that going into this, bud. I mean, he might be. Get out of town that he's possibly a better singer than Sinatra. You know what I mean? Be careful. You can have some Italian-Americans, Duke Ellington, that's another influence. Yeah, Duke Ellington, born just before the greatest generation,

honorary. Nekin-Cole. amazing yeah so that thing of like I never I don't hear too many other people do it but I do it all the time now that I've heard Nat do it as yeah yeah as a I don't know if Nat ever did it on the roads but perhaps

doubtful this was fun this is the end of an era Peter because we've now gone through all the generations I guess we could do the previous I don't think there was a name for it there was some big ones in there Duke Ellington notably yeah Jelly Roll Morton yeah there's plenty to go and then other pianists that we don't actually have performances of we have the legacy of their music. Scott Joplin comes to mind.

Piano rolls, but no recordings, I believe. Maybe, maybe one day, but I think for now we've got it. We've got the 20th century covered, buddy. That's right. That's right. You're welcome. Yeah. Well, and you.

And you'll hear it.