You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Times Pop Went Jazz

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

It's time for some genre-blending as Peter and Adam list their favorite jazz-influenced pop tunes.7 Times Pop Went JazzSteely Dan - AjaMichael Jackson - "I Can't Help It"A Tribe Called Quest - "Electric Relaxation"Jamiroquai - "Virtual Insanity"Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a ButterflyDavid Bowie - BlackstarStevie Wonder - "Sir Duke"Coming soon - a new course from Open Studio! It's the long-awaited sequel to our Rhythm Section Fundamentals course, where you'll learn how to get the piano, bass, and drums to play as one well-oiled jazz machine. Stay tuned for more details, and check out the original Rhythm Section Fundamentals to prepare for part two.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

While we're living in, let me tell you. Hey, Peter. Hey. You like a little pop? Man, every time I hear this, for some reason, I think of myself dancing down the street in Soho in London with a huge hat on my head. It's like a recurring nightmare. Yeah, I can see that. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily music advice. Coming at you. Coming at you today. We're sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJazz.com for all the jazz. Of course, I'm still in it, man.

I'm sorry about that. No, you're out. You're totally out. I just listened to one of the episodes with that. It was mildly amusing. Oh, come on. It gets funnier each time, right? Maybe not. Okay, but we should direct you to openstudiojazz.com. That's where we create all of our piano courses.

That's where we have courses by people like Christian McBride, Gregory Hutchinson, Ruben Rogers, Diane Reeves, Steve Wilson on the saxophone. That's an amazing course, actually, if you're a saxophone player. Or even if you're not, if you're interested in improvising, he's got some incredible ideas. So you can get the all-access pass. you want to sample everything. Yeah, if you're a baller, straight shot, caller. Straight up baller.

But, yeah, we direct you there for those kinds of things. And by directing, we mean go to your computer and punch in HTTP, colon, slash... Google, and then at Google, stay down. Yeah, just Google greatest online jazz lessons, and we'll come up. Bam. We better make sure that our SEOs together for that. So today, we are talking about the seven times pop went jazz. Wow!

This was hard to actually narrow down. to seven and this list could be 77 I think because jazz is such a had a huge influence on so many musicians yes you know and I think that's when it starts to seep in to popular music and that's really what we want to talk about today is is the times where sort of jazz and jazz musicians found their way into some ridiculously poppy records but just to be clear we are talking about like in what this means is like when the pop artist or project got a little jazzy, right? Yeah.

Because I feel like the inverse of this may be coming in a few days, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Tomorrow we're going to do the seven times jazz went pop. Right, right. But today we're going to talk about more pop acts, pop singers, pop groups that use jazz musicians or that really tried to, like, put a jazz-ish sound. Jazzy. Or just, you know, started in a video flashing some jazz hands.

For sure. That would handle it, right? So we're going to kick off our list. This is an album that features musicians like Victor Feldman, Joe Sample, Wayne Shorter, Larry Carlton, Lee Writtenauer. You know what this is. You know where this is going. Steve Gett. Bernard Perry. Now I definitely know. Jim Keltner.

Did I say Wayne Shorter again? Someone's on Wikipedia. Yeah. So this is, of course, most of you already know what this is, but this is Asia by Steely Dan. And this is just one of the great records of the 1970s. Oh, ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Bone-dry starder. That sounds great, though.

I mean, Steve Lee Dan always leans this way a little bit. You know what I mean? But this record in particular, like those chords, the sharp-nine chords, you know what I mean? Yeah. There's suss chords. Like the harmonic quality to this just screams of, you know, 70s, Herbie stuff. Like, there's all... Joe Sample is on this record, obviously.

So the influence there is evident weather report. I hear that in there as well. Yeah. It's awesome. Yes, it's a right. It's all right. Now that's good. I love that bone dry.

Is that Steve Gat? Bone dry. That one is actually, let's see here. Track one drums is Paul Humphrey. Oh, Paul Humphrey. Yeah. But killing, man. Sounds really good.

That's a gaddish sound for sure. Right. Okay, next we have a little MJ. This is a song by Stevie Wonder. Yes. And so we actually, we had a whole episode about how Stevie Wonder is probably the best jazz musician, or is probably a jazz musician. Yeah. And so this tune was written by Stevie Wonder, and just, you know, like all Stevie's stuff, it has that vibe.

Yeah, the chords, you know, the little baseline that happens. And even the way he kind of sings it, you know? Man, the production on this, too. Holy smokes. Quincy Jones. And Stevie. Actually, Stevie kind of co-produced this track, I think, on a fish. Looking in my mirror

That's a nice little snare drum sound too there Huh You should have to sell you on off the wall That's just too good I was just looking back Because I remember this is like a lot of people Involved in this record And you know I remember in this record

I was eight years old when this record came out And it was kind of a weird intersection With I guess it was Star Wars Or Empire Stripes Strikes Back This is when like stuff was dropping You know Bam movie out Bam album out

Yeah yeah But, I mean, it was just playing on that. I mean, a bunch of big hits on this. But, man, okay, so yeah, Stevie, I was just looking at up. Stevie was involved with the, they call it rhythm arrangements, but I think he pretty much produced that track. But Paulino de Costa, great percussionist from Rio de Janeiro. That's who was doing that, that real tasty.

I'm sure it was like overdubbed in there. I mean, all the little details, Greg Phillingains, great L.A. keyboardist and work with Stevie for years and everybody. You can hear all that. And Herbie, you know, big contemporary of Herbie. And then, you know, I don't know how much, how they do. did it with the different tracks, but Rod Temperton, who wrote a lot of the stuff on here and bad and thriller and stuff, you know, legendary cat that just a British guy who was really

him and Quincy were the one who kind of, the architects and Michael Jackson. Like, that's the thing. Yeah, yeah. Like, it was really the three of them working so closely together, but I love hearing the way that Michael phrases on like this kind of track, very exposed. It's so pop, almost like disco. But the jazz influence to me is like the way that he's improvising and going

through those great core changes of Stevie Wonder, man. It's amazing. It's really stunning. What an album. Yeah. All right.

Next, we're going to take you into the 90s. 1890. 1990s. What? What? So this is a Ronnie Foster sample from Tribe Call Quest

Electric Relaxation. Electric relaxation. Honey check it out, you got me mesmov vise. With your black hair and your fat-ass style. Come on. That's so good, man.

It's New York all the way. Yeah, and I think the thing that really pulls that in with, yeah, the New York early, well, that really, it's influenced by the early hip-hop sound, but the bass, like Tribe Call Quest, and then, you know, a bunch of really, like, I mean, yeah, it gives it kind of a jazzy thing, but it's like those either bass samples or those baselines with that big fat, as in pH, acoustic bass sounds. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. We're going to stay in the 90s, but we're going to go more late, mid-late 90s here.

was what we kicked off the show with. This was a band that's close to my heart because I was in middle school and high school when they sort of crossed the pond. You went to middle school in Soho in London? No, my dream. They became Space Cowboy came out when I was in eighth grade or something

and I just remember discovering your young AF. A bunch of stuff as Space Cowboy came out. And I was into jazz already listening to it and so it all felt very familiar but something that I can kind of play with, play to my friends that weren't into jazz. This is Jamircoy, virtual.

Little, all the things you are, but I'm in the video. Remember the video? Woo! The moving floor. By the way, all these records that we've played so far,

the production has been at such a high level. Pop music has such great production. I'm sorry, they care more about it. I know. Listen to how the bass music sounds on that. For a 90s, I know.

And Jamirkoe famously, their production, the bass, talk about a bass sound, like super clean bass sound. Yeah. We're going to link to this video. I was looking at it again. Squared off.

There's no base in there yet, but when it comes in there. The video's great. A very rare instance of apparently a white guy dancing somewhat acceptably on screen. There's some creepy bugs. I forgot about the creepy bugs. Oh, that's right. Creepy Brits and creepy bugs. Kind of a Willie Wong.

I feel like, did J-Lo rip off this video a little bit? Man, this was a very influential video. It might have ripped off something, too, but yeah, it was Janet Jackson, too, I think. Oh, yeah. It might be the same. Same director. Yeah, it reminds me of great jazz videos. Not.

All right, so we're going to move on up to the teens, the 20 teens here. Kendrick Lamar, really, I mean, there's just so much here. We're going to leave out voodoo a little. I don't know. Let's go to Kendrick Lamar. Sorry, I'm hedging here because there's so much good stuff. You know what I'm hitting it, man? Come on.

This is from Tabimpa. A butterfly. This is Thundercat, Balal. This is like people who know the music. Bel-A. Thundercat. I love them. That's what to pimp a butterfly.

That whole record, man, is filled with some really amazing musicians. How would one go about pimping a butterfly? You know. Come on, man. All right. Number seven. Yes. This was from the late great David Bowie.

This is the last record he made. It dropped a couple days before he died. He had made friends with... He was always friends with jazz musicians, David Bowie. But he was so down and out at the end. He was slumming with some jazz musicians in the studio, apparently. No, he wanted to... You know, he made friends with Maria Schneider,

and she recommended Donnie McCaslin. That's how the story goes. And so this whole last record, Black Star, is Donnie McCaslin, Jason Linder. Great keyboarders. Yeah, Ben Mondra, March. I mean, just a ton of amazing musicians who have roots and jazz. And so I think it shows in the record, this is Lazarus from Black Star.

It's so great to hear Mark Giuliana play simply like that. You know what I mean? It's so beautiful. It's a lot of Donnie right there, huh? It's also really nice to hear musicians like Donnie and Jason Linder. Again, with this kind of high-level production value, that a major label can support. You know what I mean?

It's pretty awesome. Tim Lefebvre on bass, by the way. Tim Lefevre, amazing. One of the funniest guy musicians I've ever been around. Really? Man, brilliant, hilarious. He could make the all-star comedy band for sure. It's awesome, man.

And this is just a great record. This was a prophetic record. Bowie knew he was dying. It's such a dark and beautiful and strange recording and so awesome that those incredible jazz musicians had a hand in it. I first heard, because, you know, it was a big, that he basically recorded this in secret.

Yeah. Like a lot of his stuff. Yeah. But I remember seeing Tim Somo. We did some gigs with a tour for a second together with a group. And I remember him, I don't want to speak out of turn, but him kind of being like, oh, yeah, we're doing this secret project. I can't talk about it.

Oh, have you heard any of David Bowie's music? Like, he's funny like that. I was like, wait, what do you mean? He's ever heard of David Bowie? Cool. Well, that's awesome, man. This is seven times pop went jazz. And next up is going to be seven times jazz went pop.

I don't want to. We flip the script. Yeah. That's going to be fun. Yeah. We are brought you by Open Studio. And also, we want to talk about all the love you guys have been showing us. Yeah.

Do you know that we're the number eight? As of today, the number eight music commentary podcast in the USA. Get out of time. Yes. Our little jazz podcast where we just. But we've gone up to like number one, I believe, in Poland. So we really should be talking about Poland. Come on.

Come on, US. Hook it up, you know. But, yeah, we're really. excited and we we thank you guys it's really because of the wonderful community and you guys spreading the love around about our little thing here and should we keep it up what season are we on what the hell's going on our seasons are arbitrary so it's really whatever you want i think it's season five six season six yeah i mean we always like remember we did the what the hell series when i was in on a european tour last year i did i'm going on one soon so maybe you'll start that up again it might be a where the hell

the hell is peter where the hell is peter where the hell is waldoo so we we're uh we fell a little behind but we want to shout out some of our ratings and reviews because we're very excited about that from X-35 oh no, did we say that one ever? Did we say that one from Columbia? Best podcast ever, thanks for share with us. These amazing, oh yeah, we did say that one again.

It's all right, man. It just came up again. Big shout to XA again, you know. And then there was one from Saxi Stephen in Germany. Though not a piano player, I get a lot from this podcast. Plus, it's really fun listening to. Keep it coming. Greetings.

With a Z from Germany. And saxophone emoji. I like that saxophone players are so keen on using sax to replace sex sometimes. I know. I know. Exactly. Yeah. Well, till tomorrow, you'll hear it.