You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Kenny Barron's Grammy nominated solo

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

It's First Take Friday. Sit with Peter and Adam as they listen to Kenny Barron's Grammy nominated solo on the Gerry Gibbs album "Songs From My Father".  This is a remarkable collection featuring an amazing list of legends like Ron Carter, Chick Corea, Christian McBride, Geoffrey Keezer and more.Listen to this album 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

Hey Adam. What's up? How you doing? I'm doing okay. What's today? This feels weird. Wait, I was going to ask you that. It's Friday, so you know what that means.

What does that mean? First take Friday? You got it. First time. Got it. I'm Adamannis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast.

Music advice and inspiration. Coming at you remote style. Coming at your remote. Peter, it's a blizz. fantastic out there. It's a big blizzard here in Missouri. And so we are remote... I'm in my basement. Somehow you're in the pod suite. Like this guy, what do you got? Chains on your car?

No, when I came in... Yeah, I had to buy chains one time and then pay somebody to take them off when I was driving across Donner Pass in California. Oh my God. Yeah, no, no. When I came in this morning, it was real light, but it has been accumulating. I did a little lesson, did a little practice, I just did a little setup in here.

So we're going to knock this sucker out and get back to some safety of the homestead, as we say. Well, we're not going to rush through the listing because this is one of our favorite pianists. We're going to be listening today to, we've been doing Grammy-nominated tracks lately. Yes. And this is a Grammy-nominated solo by the amazing Kenny Barron.

I think the category is best improvised solo, or best instrumental solo? One of those two. last week we listened to Christian Scots from Weedy Brayman's album and so this is Kenny Barron from

a drummer who I'm not super familiar with Jerry Gibbs I believe is his name and so the album is called well it's called Thrash Your Dreams Trio's songs from my father and so it features like

an incredible cast of characters here Chick Korea is on this I'm, you know, like obviously recorded before you passed. Ron Carter, Kenny Barron, Buster Williams, Patrice Russian, Larry Goldings, Jeffrey Kieser, and Christian McBride. Amazing lineup here. So we're going to listen to a track called Kick Those Feet that features Jerry on drums, Buster Williams on bass and Kenny Barron on piano.

Yeah, just to be clear, as was the case last week on the last First Day Friday for these Grammy nominations, This is one of the nominations for Best Instrumental Jazz Solo. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. Best Jazz solo. So this is, and you know what? This is fun because we happen to be live on YouTube as well as doing the pod right now. We never do this.

Maybe some folks can educate us. No, we don't. But maybe somebody can educate us in the comments as to who Jerry Gibbs is or Gary. I'm totally ignorant. He's obviously somebody because, I mean, look who he's on his album. Yeah, it's either Jerry or Gary. And apologies to Jerry. Gary that we don't know the correct pronunciation

of your name but can't wait to listen to the music from songs from my father and please folks on YouTube please drop in the comments if you can extend any information you have on this gentleman

shall we give it a listen you ready yeah yeah we are I got to change a couple of audio what was that was that a we were whooshing into the listening yeah sorry was that early was that early yeah you're all good All right, here we go.

Kenny Barron, Jerry Gibbs, Buster Williams. How about that? That was good. That's not bad, right? That's not bad at all. Nice little tight trio there, I would say. A little tight trio. I love Buster Williams sound so much.

It's so unique to Buster and swing in his tail off too. Amazing, amazing, amazing stuff. Yes, yes, indeed. So I think, you know, kind of piggybacking on what we were talking about. about before about Kenny Barron, I think his consistency, what's interesting about this is like, he always plays like this, which is Kenny Barron, but I mean, he always, like, this is, it's funny that it's nominated for a great, like, if this is worthy of being nominated and winning a Grammy for Best Jazz Soul of the Year, then I can show you a thousand other

Kenne Barron Soul's really, and I would say they are, you know, so it's kind of like, there's so many tracks that would work for that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is, and this, and this, this, this, I want this to be understood as a serious compliment because I love Kenny Barron's pie. I always have, but like this is just part of the course for him. This is just another Kenny Barron solo. So it's very interesting to me

how these things kind of shake out that, you know, this is nothing extraordinary for a Kenny Barron solo, in other words. Totally agree. Yeah, I love, like you said, how it's kind of straight down the middle. It's very Kenny Barron fingerprinty. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. But I do love, man, one of the things about his playing that I love so much is it sounds, like you said, like straight ahead, straight down the middle, but he is so comfortable and so at ease taking risks, right, and like putting interesting ideas that you wouldn't normally get from someone putting it straight down the middle. Kenny can do so well. So that was really enjoyable.

So a lot, I mean, first of all, just a lot of those like, yeah, I love all that stuff that he was doing, you know, really two or three minutes in. to his solo to help build that tension. And then he always lands in the most sophisticated way. Like, it's always like a really beautiful, like comforting landing. This is, kind of comfort food of improvised music a little bit? Yes, it is, it is. But you know what?

It's like comfort vegan food because it's healthy. It's good for you. I mean, not that all vegan food is healthy. It's got soul. No, but it's got soul, but it's like, it's good for you. It's not comfort food like, oh, I'm depressed. I'm going to, you know, gorge on a. thing of Hagenas. It's not that kind of thing.

It's like it's wholesome, but it's fun. It's, you know, if you're a pianist or any jazz musician, like emulating, getting inside of and just kind of laying down in Kenny Barron's fray, Kenny Barron's phrasing can really do a lot for you because like that, I think more than anything, as I was listening to soul, I realized like his consistency is just like the way that he's always phrased, like every single line is just like, it's just nailing it, you know? and in a very patient in a very measured way, but there's a lot of groove in those lines that he does.

So then when he starts kind of extending some things harmonically or whatever, it just gets more exciting. But, I mean, the consistency of his voice coming through with his phrasing, with his great piano technique is stunning. Yeah. So congrats to Kenny Barron for the Grammy nomination. Well deserved, like you said, you know, this is nominated pretty much anything he thought it could be nominated.

Man, have you ever heard his live at Mayback Hall? the solo piano. Yes, yeah. That's a great record. Yeah, that's one of the best made back calls there is, I think. It's such a great performance. Yeah, absolutely. Highly recommend, highly recommend.

That'd be a good one for the SESH from whence it comes back, if it comes back. That would be a great one for the SESH. Yeah. Yeah, so thanks, everybody. We have some great comments, too, on YouTube. We're live on YouTube for all of our podcasters here. Ed Zelensky says there's something magical when people are so incredibly competent and they're playing totally true that's a great way to put it incredibly competent yeah because

if you just say somebody's competent it implies that there's like a b minus c plus thing but when you're incredibly competent and consistent man what what what a thrilling thing uh kaya says was canny baron coming from the school of herbie i don't know if it was exactly the school of herbie they're pretty much contemporaries isn't herby maybe a couple years older a few years older yeah a little bit yeah he's a little older but um i would say say, I mean, I think everybody that came along side, Herbie, and a little bit after up till now, and probably forever, is going to be from somewhat of the Herbie School. I mean, it's kind of unavoidable in a beautiful way.

But I would not say Kenny Barron is heavy from the, you know, from the Herbie School in that you probably could hear some things here and there. But probably same way with Herbie from Kenny Barron. I'm sure that that's like a mutual appreciation. society type of situation. Clint makes a good observation pretty exciting and haphazard playing while not deviating completely, which is a decent sum up, I think, of what I was talking about when he was, you know, about a minute and a half, two minutes in. Yeah.

Doing those chromatic things, you know, completely outside of any kind of harmony or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a little bit, um, there's a lot of adventure, like kind of controlled adventure going on in there

in his playing and just a very a very well it's just well balanced it's a well balanced meal a candy bear and soul is going to be well balanced man it's going to give you you know some adventure it's gonna it's come and cheese mac and cheese mac and cheese

it's a vegan mac and cheese it's a homemade dinner roll yeah yeah yeah you know what I mean familiar beautiful soulful all right so what so let's just how many how many other Grammy nominations because we You might even be able to get these in for the coming weeks for First Day Fridays for the jazz solos. Do we know how many more we have to do?

I think there's three more. Hold on. Let me check real quick. Yeah. Sorry, I made to put you on the spot there, my friend. Solos. Hold on. Hold on.

I got it. Yeah. I mean, just because I think it's a fun thing for discovery. You wouldn't think it would be, but it's definitely been, these have been like some new records for me. So I appreciate it from that standpoint for sure. and I think you know Kenny Barron

thank you can we say that oh will we say that already say it again why not and then we had Christian Scott last week did we listen to the

Jonathan Batiste oh no that's for the record no he's got a solo and like a big record of the year yeah hold on okay so best improvised jazz solo we've got

sacadougu which we listened to last week kick those feet which we just listened to bigger than us, John Batiste solos. That's from the soul soundtrack. That's a really good solo man. I remember watching that in the movie being like, holy smokes.

That guy can actually really play. Absence from Terrence Blanchard, which I think we listen to this. We did. I think we listened to this. This is from the title track, which we listened to. Terrence's solo. Before it was even nominated. So look, we were ahead of the curve on that one.

So we heard that one. And then Humpty Dumpty, Chick Korea soloist from the acoustic band live with John Patrici and Dave Weckle. we should listen to that next week. Yeah. Let's listen to that and then maybe, yeah, let's listen to both of them in the coming weeks. And then that'll probably take us right up to win the Grammys

because they got pushed back a little bit. Sounds like a deal. Sounds like a great deal. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday here on the pod and occasionally as we are today live on the YouTube. Check out our YouTube channel. We're about to hit 100K followers. Not that we checked that, but some of our listeners,

our dear listeners let us know that. Yeah, we would never check that. No, not at all. Can you hear that? Yeah. You know what that means? Until next time. Until next week.

Until next week. Oh, you just said that. You'll hear it.