You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - First Take Friday: Dr. Lonnie Smith

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

Adam and special guest Sean Jones listen to and break down a few tracks off of the late and great Dr. Lonnie Smith's album Breathe.Get your copy of the album HEREListen to this album on HEREHave a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeSupport the pod by spreading the word with the link youllhearit.com Learn more about Open Studio Pro: openstudiojazz.com/proInterested 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 Twitter | Instagram

What's up you'll hear at listeners. I'm Adam Manus. And today's a very special episode of the podcast. It's the first take Friday, as you might expect. But Peter Martin is not here. Instead, we've got a great replacement. Actually, way better than Peter. We've got the great Sean Jones in here.

Sean, how's it going, man? It's going well. I don't know if I'm a better, I'm a good replacement, but I'll take that. So thank you. Man. So I think our listeners are going to be excited to have you here on the show. You're in town. You're in St. Louis just across the alley all weekend.

at Jazz St. Louis. What are you doing over there? Yeah, since Wednesday, we've been playing a tribute to Clark Terry celebrating his centennial. The centennial, I believe, actually was last year. Yeah. But of course, due to COVID complications and so on and so forth, we've moved it to this year, and it's been a hell of a run, man. We're having a great time. I mean, he really is such a legend everywhere, but especially here in St. Louis. I don't know. The fact that there's not a statue out there of Clark, We should lobby Jazz St. Louis Grand Center for a statue of Clark Terry out there here in his hometown.

You know what I mean? That's a great idea, actually, man. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's obviously there's a reason to celebrate Miles Davis. Of course, he was iconic, but Miles Davis came out of CT. I know, Clark used to bring him around all the clubs here in town. So did you get to spend much time with Clark? I had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with Clark. The first time I met him was actually on the phone, a mentor introduced to him.

introduced him to me on the phone, man. He had a lot of great things to say. But later on, I met him at the Jazz Standard doing a Fats Navarro tribute. And I've got a chance to play right before him. So I was kind of the warm-up act to Clark Terry. And it was really amazing, man. He's been supportive. And he was awesome all the way up to the end.

Oh, man. Yeah, what a great spirit. I got to meet him a couple times, too. And just, I mean, he lived the music that we talk all the time about, you know, that it's a vocabulary. And it was just him, whether the horn was in his mouth or not. It was just all him pouring out. It was just great, man.

Yeah, it's a deep part of him, man. I mean, when he was on stage, there were no barriers. No, none. He's an amazing entertainer and a trumpet player, a flogelhorn player, all of that. And it was just natural. It was just a part of who he was, man. The most beautiful sound.

Well, that's awesome. Yeah, I haven't been able to get down yet, but I've heard that the shows have been amazing and well attended. And so glad you're here. And so glad you're here to listen to some music. So usually on Fridays here, which is when this is going to be broadcast, we listen to something that we haven't heard before. Today, because we have a special guest,

we're going to listen to something that you've definitely heard because you've played on this. But maybe our audience hasn't heard this. This is a record called Breathe by Dr. Lonnie Smith, and we lost Dr. Lonnie just earlier this fall in September. And I think this was his very last album. I'm pretty sure it was his last record, yeah. This is on Blue Note.

It's called Reeve. And from what I've heard, so I actually haven't checked this out yet, and shame on me, but from what I've heard, so far, just getting it together here, it's pretty incredible,

man, this is, from what I understand, you recorded this live? Yeah, it's all live. There were a couple things that were done in the studio afterwards, like some post-production stuff.

Yeah. But it was all done live, man. We did a run at the jazz standard. It was a four-night run. Yeah. And we recorded all four sets, and it was a blast, man.

And, Well, wait until you hear this, folks. This was for, I think this was for his 75th birthday, too, wasn't it? That's right, yeah. And in a way, you know, this album is almost like his, you know, in a weird way, looking back and making hindsight kind of 2020. If you look at the themes on the album, it was really foreshadowing what we're in right now. I mean, think about it. We recorded this before the pandemic.

Like 2017. Yeah, the album's called Breathe. Think about that. It's called Breathe. then it's talking about solidarity, solidarity coming together, things like that, all of the stuff that we've gone over over the pandemic. It was almost as if he knew.

I mean, I've always thought that Dr. Lani was kind of above time and space. You know what I mean? So it's possible that he was definitely forecasting some stuff here. So let's listen to a couple of tracks. We'll listen first to Thelonius monks' tune Epistrophe. And this is, this was his regular rhythm section as he was getting towards the end of his life, he was using Jonathan Kreisberg on guitar

and Jonathan Blake on drums. It's John Ellis on tenor saxophone, Jason Marshall on Barry on this record, and you on the trumpet. And this is... And we got Robin Eubanks on trombone. Robin Eubanks on Trombone. This is epistrophe, Dr. Lonnie Smith.

That's Dr. Lonnie Smith from his album, Bree. That's Polonious Monks Epistrophe. Jonathan Kreisberg, Jonathan Blake. and our guest trumpeter Sean Jones on trumpet, man, like we talk a lot around here about a couple of things, about personality and being yourself. And we talk about being present. And when I think of Dr. Lonnie Smith,

I think of those two things like mega. You know what I mean? Like someone who is such an original and someone who is always so in the moment and so with the music, that track just like highlights everything that you would love about him and his personality and the way he approached the music, you know.

Oh, for sure, man. You know, have to add a couple words, I would say warm, inviting, you know. Doc, man, as soon as he walks in the room, everybody feels better. Yeah. Everybody. Yeah.

Immediately. Yeah. And, you know, any bit of advice comes from the purest place ever. And you said something earlier. It's almost that, like, he transcends time in space. I really believe that. Some people come to us and they're

placed on this earth to kind of let us know that there's more. There's more to life than our singular lens because they literally embody everything around them in human form. And that's Doc Man. Yeah.

We like to get caught up in all this things like how do I sound and what's going? And like who's here and what I mean? And you just never got that vibe. That's right. Well, I mean you can listen to the track. It was all about You're exploring sound, you know, trying to figure out, well, what's not there? Can we place it there? Why?

Yeah. Or do we not even need to place it there? You know, sometimes, I mean, I mean, when you hear that, I could tell you right now, there were things that came to my mind in the moment that I thought I was going to play that I knew would get in the way of what was happening. So it's almost as if that's a track that's almost a study in editing in real time. and that's what we got to. Amazing. Yeah, I mean, you get these musicians of your level

and the level of him, obviously, together on something like this, and that spirit of freedom, right, is so prevalent. It comes through so clearly in the music, too. Man, it's beautiful. Let's go out here on the next, the previous track on the album. The album is called Breathe. It's on Blue Note. It was released in 2021.

what was recorded live, like you said at the jazz standard, in 2017. And also another thing, I mean, it's still, he's still pushing boundaries. This was for his 75th birthday. God bless us all that we're still making music, that adventurous, you know what I mean? Confidently at 75, incredible. And the words of the great Jimmy Heath, sleep in his practice of a dying. It's morbid as that may sound, you know, folks like Jimmy, who we lost, you know, relatively recently and Doc and so many others, man,

they knew their purpose on earth. And they woke up every day living inside of that purpose unapologetically. Yeah. You know, and because they did that, it afforded those of us that come behind them the opportunity to do the same. You know, they have the magic keys and they open the doors. You know, we just got to walk through them because there's a set of doors that we have to open for the name.

generations. Absolutely. So man, let me, can I go back to what you said about, I was just thinking about what you said about not like kind of editing in real time. And I'm wondering, because I've listened to a ton of your music over the years. And I don't think I've heard anything quite like what we just heard with Dr. Lonnie Smith, right? So you're walking into a situation that is, it's not what you would make on your own, obviously, because it's not you. But how are you approaching that? Like how does that self-editing voice come up? Is it just kind of instinctual, or you just kind of think beforehand,

like, I didn't want to fit this vibe, or what does that sound like? Well, interestingly enough, it kind of is me, you know? My records have a kind of a, they have a sound to them, yes, and it's definitely me. But if you look at certain records that I've done,

they're pretty exploratory. Like, I hear a lot of things all at once. And I think Doc knew that, which is why he asked me to do the recording. He knew I was going to pretty much go with wherever the wind blew. Actually, the first time I met Doc, I was on tour with Marcus Miller's band. So he knew that I had a little bit of experimental idiosyncrasy to me. And now to the specific question, how do you edit in real time?

The first thing you do is you allow the silences to dictate the sounds that you create. And I think that if more of us did that when we have conversations with other people, perhaps our conversations would be a little smoother. So what does that mean in the moment in music to you? Let the silences dictate the sound. What that means is you have to afford the opportunity for silence, which affords you the opportunity to listen. And then when you're listening inside of the silences,

something will come to you. And then as that thing comes to you, you have to ask yourself, in a moment's notice, is this coming from my... ego or is this coming from a part of my relationship with everything else around me and then you make the decision to allow that sound to come out of your body in that time or not now of course when you're younger the ego is going to win the vast majority of time but now that I'm a 43-year-old man and I have the opportunity to listen a little bit more you know knowing looking back on my life and

sing both on the stage and off the stage when I failed nine times out of ten is because I did not listen to the silence tell me what to play and how is that associated with the musicians that are making sounds on the stage most of the time you don't need to play nearly as much as that comes to your mind you just got to play the stuff that's real and that's what I mean so I told you he'd be better than Peter I told you it's going to be a better than Love you, Pete. Love you, Pete. No, we talk about that all the time here, actually.

Peter and I talk about it all the time. Like, how many gigs do you think about afterwards? And you're like, ah, I wish I would have played more. Yeah, right. Almost none. Like, it almost never happened when you think about a solo you played with it. I should have played more. That's great, man.

Well, Sean Jones, thank you so much for being here with us today. We're going to go out on the track Pilgrimage from the same record. This is, again, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Jonathan Kreisberg, Jonathan Blake, Sean Jones, and this has a vocalist on it. Yes, Alicia is on this. Alicia Alitujia is on this one. A fantastic vocalist.

And Doc love her. I was like Doc's daughter, you know. And she sings so soulfully on this one, and it's like going home. Awesome. This is Pilgrimage from Dr. Lonnie Smith's 2017 brief. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, man.