You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - All-Star Bands

Episode Date: July 9, 2019

In honor of the MLB All-Star Game, Peter & Adam list some all-star jazz bands they put together.We have been nominated in the Music category of The People's Choice Podcast Awards! To submit, please sign up to vote for us in the Music Category here: https://www.podcastawards.com/Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. What's up? You a baseball fan? I am a baseball fan. Do we still have that team here in St. Louis? The St. Louis Cardinals? Yeah. Are they AAA or MLB?

I can't remember. They're playing like AAA. Oh. I'm Adam Manus. I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you.

It's All-Star weekend, but it's Tuesday. So it's the All-Star game. Does the All-Star weekend go all the way through? It does. You know what? I used to know so much about baseball being from San Luis, but ever since the Blues won, the NHTS. I don't even, this is like a hockey town.

Don't give a crap anymore. Do we even have the base? That's what I was asking, man. Well, so we thought this would be really, really fun to do our favorite all-star bands. Yes. But not the kind of all-star bands you might be thinking of. No. We chose random topics that we thought were funny.

Yes. And then we discarded some of them because they were not politically correct. And came up with another list. So we're going to put together some all-star bands of our favorite jazz musicians based on some interesting criteria. Yes. And look, apologies for those left out and apologies for those put in. Both. Both.

This was really off the cuff. We literally just came up with this. But this is something that we play around with all the time anyway. So what do we have? One, two, three, four, five categories, I think. We do. And so you want to go first? Yeah.

So we're going to do our first category is our all-star band of introspective hipsters. Yes. And so with all these, we tried to kind of put together an actual band based upon the theme. Yep. With different instruments that would go together. But then we abandoned that at certain points. just because there's people that we wanted to fit in. Absolutely.

Okay. Yeah. So who you got first on the all-star introspective hipster band? This is the godfather of all-star introspective hipsters. And that's pianist Bill Evans. Yes, he might be the leader of this band. I think he would be. For sure.

And then on base, we were going to go with Scott LaFara, but we could already see where this was going. It was going to be all like, you know, Bill Evans' band. So we actually went with Gary Peacock. Yeah, he's not so much of a hipster, but he's very introspective. He's very introspective. So we're already getting off-topic and off-focused here. A little bit.

Yeah, but he'll fit into that band well. I could put Larry Grenadier in this category as well. That's right. You know, and possibly Ben Williams, although he's not as introspective. But he's borderline hipster. He is. A lot of hats. A lot of hats.

A lot of hats. A lot of hats. A lot of hats. Okay, now on drums. Now we wrestled with this one because we had several good nominees. For sure. But then we settle upon the champion for the All-Star Introspective Hipster band, which would be Brian Blade, our friend, friend of the podcast.

You want your All-Star Introspective hipster drummer. to look like he can make you a mean cappuccino. Exactly. And he certainly has that vibe. And he has. He's made me a mean cappuccino. And look, the thing about Brian, a lot of people might not know,

unless you were around New Orleans in the early 90s, when we used to play together a lot, that whole kind of circle Nicholas Payton and Chris Thomas and Jermaine Basel, Victor Gohens, Brian Blade, many great, Jeremy Davenport, many great players. But Brian was already a hipster then. And I know there was an original hipster thing in the 40s and 50s and stuff. But this resurgence, like Brian was pre-hypster hipster,

and he's just like he is today. So he definitely deserves to be on here. So next on guitar, we have, of course, Mary Halverson. Yes, exactly. Who's making quite a name for herself, but certainly is in this introspective hips. I mean, we want to imagine you're in Brooklyn. Yeah.

And you're going to a gig. These are people that you could and would see on a gig, like as such. And then next we have on saxophone, Mark Turner. That makes a lot of sense to me. That's right. And more introspective than hipster, but he's another kind of pre-hypster. Oh, yeah, he's great, too.

Pre-Hipster. On trumpet, Ambrose Akken Musair, of course. Yeah. I think fits the bill perfectly. This is actually looking at this. It's a good band. It's a good band. This is the music I want to listen to.

Yeah, I mean, everybody's alive except Bill Evans, so we'd have to, like, we could drop in Brad Melda, let's be honest, on the introspective hips. Although he's more introspective than hipster. Yeah, these days he is. But easily, yeah, easily that would work. And I think with Ambrose, I don't even know that he's really hipster, but all the hipsters love his music. It's true.

He gets thrown into that. Honorary hipster. He's an honorary hipster. All right. I like that introspective hipster band. All right. So what's our next category? Our next, oh, should we push this one?

No, let's go ahead and go. Let's get this one out of the way. This is a good way. So this is our all star notorious A-hole man. These are all people, and I think we did good. These are almost everybody's dead on here, which is good. Almost, yeah. Yeah, but so we're going to kind of put ourselves out there a little bit unless we can come up

with somebody else to sub in for that pianist at the end. but we're going to start it out with saxophone of Stan Gats I like it yeah and look I love Stan Gets's music but I always heard these stories I mean some really horrible stuff A lot of stories yeah maybe not all of this true but some of it's got to be true For such a beautiful light tone you know the

airy breathy yeah and he was like a notorious misogynist I heard and excellent Just become yeah so It makes the list and then next of course on trumpet Miles Davis The original yeah And you know Proudly, I think.

Proudly, yeah, yeah. You know, movie was made about it, so yeah, he's there. Okay, these are all notorious. Oh, my gosh. And then on drums, it gets no more notorious than this, and everybody knows who we're saying. There is auditory evidence. There's auditory evidence. Buddy Rich.

Of course. Yeah, yeah. The original, like, you know, a hole at the drums. Another amazing musician. This is a great band. This is a good band. Because on bass, of course, Jacopestorius. That's right.

Yeah, no slacker on the bass, but, you know, a few altercations. Yeah, notoriously a divish. We don't even have a singer on here. Think about some singers. There's quite a few singers we could have. All right, we have two bonuses here, and these are superstars. And the first is Ray Charles. I didn't know about that Ray Charles was kind of a name.

I mean, I don't know. I actually met him once and was like at a jazz festival. He seemed like such a sweet guy and genius. Yeah, yeah. Truly. But I heard some stories about like, you know, him, the tour bus, everybody, all the musicians being crowded in the back and all his luggage being in the front. And then he was on a private jet.

I love it. So it could have been exaggerated. I love the divinness. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, that's good. That rounds out that. I feel better. Now we're going to get back to some more positive ones. So now we have the All-Star athletic players. These are both athletes and jazz players. Mostly jazz players. Some of them you're going to be surprised about. These are all, first and foremost, jazz musicians, but they got some skills on the athletic field. Number one is Miles, who makes a second appearance on his All-Star list because he was a boxer. He was a boxer, and apparently pretty good. Apparently pretty good. Next, we have Warren Wolf, friend of the podcast. Our buddy Warren. Yes. Who is quite the...

He's ripped. Warren is ripped. Warren is ripped. He's a bodybuilder. He's a bona fide bodybuilder. He's been doing it since he was a teenager. He's also super fast. I've ran with him before.

He's not much on the distances. He'll do some long distances. He can sprint. Yeah, we did six miles in the park recently. He stopped every mile to rest and like play on his phone. We did that. But then at the end, he was like, do you want to do some sprints? I was like, I'm kind of tired, but I'll try it.

Man, the dude is fast. Fast A.F. That's awesome. Yeah. Then we had. Kevin Eubanks. Kevin Eubanks. Also guy who's always in good shape.

Good shape. Getting older now, still ripped. I remember that his albums on GRP seeing him. I was like, wow, that dude is seriously weird. So now you have Joe Zovinole. Okay, so Joe Zavonel. I'm not even sure how athletic he was, but I remember seeing him. I met him when I was really young.

Great guy. So super nice and kind and helpful to me. And I remember seeing him at the airport in Frankfurt, like in the summer, you know. Yeah. And I was, we were playing with Roy Hargrove. So it was like Greg Hutchinson. and Roy, Ron Blake. Oh, no, I'm sorry.

I was playing with Josh Redmond. That's right, because Blade was there, Chris Thomas, Brian Blade, and we saw Joe Zavino, and we were like, hey, how, you know, talking to him. Paco Siri was playing with him at the time. He had a great band. And Joe kind of came up to us, you know, with his chest. I was like, hey, Peter, Brian, and Josh, what are you guys doing on the road? We're like, oh, we're doing this tour, you know?

And he's like, yes, I mean, what about on off days? And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, do you play sports? You should play sports and be in the gym. And, you know, he was real like, you know, what are you doing? So we're going to throw them on the athletic list. On the trumpet for our All-Star Athlete Jazz Band is... And this pains me that...

But go ahead. Wyn Marcellus for basketball. Is he beating you with basketball? He, well, you know, there's Winton rules. Remember, like, the Jordan rules? Yeah, sure. No, no, no. Winton is, he has...

I mean, we've had some competitive games. Winton is really good, and it pains me because he's sneaky. He's sneaky. He's an incredible shooter and he's left-handed. Oh, yeah. And if I was a better defender and better player, I could keep that front of mind. But you're so used to guarding right-handed players.

So he's got that. And he's just, I don't know, he never seems that quick. But all of a sudden, he's, man, he's good. He's got skills. I got to give it up. And he's not super athletic, but he's super good. I hate that. On the base, you got Christian McBride.

I have Christian. I threw him in a little because, like, he's really, he's a really good softball player. He used to play on the Juilliard team, and he's a good football player. I never seen to play basketball. I know he's into it. But he has his knowledge of the athletic world.

especially NFL, anything Philly, of course, but NFL, NBA, baseball is incredible, historical all up to now. I mean, he's truly, you know, truly an athlete's athlete. And then I just put on to round out, like if Joe Zalano is playing Rhodes, I'll play piano, because I'm on this list for ping pong, only because I just literally just beat you. You beat me bad, man.

And I'm not a list because of that. You're an awesome ping pong player. You heard it here. I have a video evidence now. Now, of course, ping pong is not athletic. But that's beside the point. Well, anybody who's watching this can understand that. Right.

Now, next, our All-Star band, because we've got to get this moving because the actual All-Star game is coming on soon. Yeah, maybe so. We want people to watch it. Okay, this is the All-Star Genius Jazz Band. Oh, am I on this one, too? You know, okay.

Well, we'll see. Let's not give it away. Now, this could, we could look at it a couple different ways. Okay. First, the way I looked at it was, like, how the hell are we going to find a drummer? That's going to be hard. But we did.

Kind of. Yeah. No, this on a serious note, like, there's a lot. I mean, most jazz musicians I know are really smart, actually. For all we joke, so this could have been a lot of people, but our angle on this was not only geniuses, but more like super well-educated.

So we're starting with Josh Redmond because he not only went to Harvard, but he graduated, I believe he graduated from Harvard. I think he did. So you've got to be smart to get into Harvard and to graduate, right, which led us to, on piano, Mr. Aaron Goldberg. Sorry, sorry, sorry. He also was a Harvard grad.

I'm not smart enough to take it. take your cue. Yeah, he's a Harvard grad, and he, I hung out with him last night at the Montreal Jazzville. Oh, nice. Yeah, he was very smart. He said a lot of smart things. And then next, who do we have?

Next down on our list is Tyshawn Sori. We're talking about drummers. Yes. And I just remembered how smart, stinking smart, Tyshaun Sory is. Right. I believe he also was at Harvard for a while. Yeah.

And then after him, another drummer, we thought this was going to be a drummerless list, but now that I'm looking at it, there's no bass players on this list. Oh, uh-oh, oh, oh, we got to get... Because Bill Stewart, also a smarty plans. Yeah, he's a smart guy. Yeah, very smart guy.

And then we got to put Vijay Eyre on there. Yeah, he won a genius grant. I don't even know if he went to Ivy League, but I'm sure he did. I think he teaches at Ivy League. And then James Zorn because... John Zorn. John Zorn, sorry. I want to say James.

John Zorn, because he is... MacArthur Fellow. Yeah, he got a genius grant. Yeah. And then we just do it as a bonus. Oh, no, you know, we're going to move him to the last man. So let's not even say it. That rounds out our genius man.

All right. Last one before the All-Star game starts. This is our funniest. Yes. Band. Our group of musicians who are funny. Yeah. Okay. Now, first, on this list, we have to say, I'm going to change the order here a little bit because not only is he hilarious, witty, smart, but he's also, like, led to some of these other people being really funny. Like, that's how funny is, and that's the great Lou Donaldson. Oh, man. Alta Saxophone is. I've gotten a chance to hang out with him a few times. I mean, I'm just literally crue. He's so funny. Yeah, yeah.

And just a quick story about him, a little time with the next person. I was hanging out with Mark Whifffield one time in New York and we're like at the sushi place talking about Lou Donaldson and like how funny he is and imitating him doing the Lut Donaldson. Oh, come on. Like we started talking and we're drinking, we eating sushi. To the point, we actually got kicked out of this place because they were like, some of the patrons you're annoying them with your high pitch weird voices. We're like, what are you talking about? I'm great Lou Dadoson. Like so we literally for two hours drank and talked about Lou Donaldson and how fun.

In his voice, we walk out. And you got kicked out of the situation? It's amazing. It's time to go. So we walk out. We're like, oh my God, I've gotten kicked out of worse places than this. Can you believe it? Oh, my goodness.

He can't play no blues in it. You know, we're doing the whole thing. We walk across. We're like, let's go see who's at the village friend. I probably ain't nobody good. You know, we're doing it. We walk across the street, guess the pizza place right above the village. Yeah, yeah.

Guess who's standing there ordering a pizza. Lou Donaldson. Lou Donaldson. We're like, oh, my God, it's Lou Donaldson. So we go and we're like, what's up, you know, we were, it was, he's like, y'all been talking about me over there? But I mean, Lou Donaldson is the OG genius,

genius funny. He's the leader of this man, actually. That's awesome. Yeah. So next I have a couple piano players. First, Robert Glasper. Oh, yeah. Who is notoriously funny.

He's a great Instagram follow. That's right. Great Twitter follow. When I was at the new school at the same time that he was there and you knew he was in the building because you would just hear this wave of uproarious laughter

from the common area because he was, always kind of holding court and saying some hilarious he's funny and he's really good with like like he doesn't mind being made fun of but he's always got something oh it's coming back it's coming back at you i don't know but he's like he i remember we played we i think we came and heard him or he came and heard us somewhere in japan i remember i was hanging with reuben rogers i think we saw him play and um rubin said something like he came off stage we were hanging having to drink or whatever and rumin was like because you know rob kind of dressed

is real casual on the gig sometimes. I think he had like a t-shirt. Like a Batman shirt. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Ruben was like, oh man, wait,

to dress up for the gig. And Robert's like laughing. And then he immediately comes back. And he's like, well, I didn't know that my stockbroker insurance salesman was in. Because Rubin had like a suit. I mean,

he was like right there with it. And then they went back and forth. hilarious. Okay. I have you. I have Peter Martin. Because you are notoriously good hang. Oh, okay.

Well, that's different. This is not the all-star good hang. No, no, but you keep it going. Okay. You keep going for sure.

I don't want to get your head too big. No, no, no, that's okay. Okay, next up we have on guitar, because we got a couple pianists now. That's fine. On guitar, we have Mark Whitfield, who I mentioned before. Mark Whitfield is hilarious.

My nickname, my little personal nickname in case anybody wants to take it up, you can't, is Whitfeezy. There's a whole inside thing of that. But I mean, Mark is like, I've had a lot of hangs where he's just, and he's not stopped. He has the energy level and we'll just keep going.

Now, his humor definitely skews towards making fun of people, not making fun with them but he's great he's got probably the best Lou Donaldson voice and impersonation um next we have Bob Hurst Robert Hurst Robert Leslie Hurst

the third is his humor tends more towards wit like he has wit for any kind of thing that you bring up follow him on Facebook Instagram you will not be disappointed he's funny AF couple of drummers here only two drummers

there's a lot more there are There's some funny. The drummers are more funny people. We can't have more than two drummers in the band. Antonio Sanchez, you were just hanging out with him? He's funny. He's kind of dry, but it kind of comes out good. And then he's got some funny stuff.

He's got a lot of political humor now. A lot of it's not funny because he's serious about his politics. Very anti-this-current administration. But he's a really funny guy, nice guy, talented guy, really cool dude. I put on there Matt Wilson, who I've had a chance to play with and hang out with a lot. And he's just a larger than my personality. Yeah, he's good. And hilarious.

It's a good band too, though. Yeah, all these are good bands, man. I would see all of these bands. Yeah, I don't know. But they each are so, like, yeah, all the athletes together. They'd all be, like, bumping against each other and stuff. Wait, did we finish all the, we skip some on the athletes. Oh, we skipped one.

I just want to throw in there, Dan Wilson. Oh, yeah. Dan Wilson on guitar. He's in the All-Star Athletes Jazz. He's actually the best athlete I've personally played a sport with. It's a great jazz. Dan plays guitar. He's a young guy.

He plays with Joey Di Francesco and some other. Oh, yeah, yeah. Incredible. He plays with McBride. Yeah, yeah. Tipson. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, and he, man, I played basketball with him, man.

He was ball. He was playing, like, up above the ramp. Cool. You know, like, I don't know if he was done it, but he was pretty much, pretty much not here. Oh, we could put marketing on your own base. For athletes? Great baseball.

Well, thanks for listening to this fun version of the podcast. Come up with your own lists of All-Star bands you'd like to see. And start your own podcast. Yeah. We should have done favorite jazz musician podcasters. We both would have made that. That's your. The only ones we know. Maybe not.

That's right. Until tomorrow. You'll hear it.