Questlove Supreme: Bob James

West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Wait a minute, is that a d X seven.

That is a I know chorus patch on my montage?

Okay, we got it.

Nice, Nice, ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of West Love Supreme. I don't know Steve and why we might need another superlative, like, you know, like James Brown has the famous Flames. I think we should be like the legendary Supreme or you know, something some even more exciting. Yeah, you know, because I feel like every episode has yet another kind of bucket list that we didn't know that we wanted to check off. Steve, I feel like this is going to be the Yeah, this is the Steve

You, I've handled some episodes. I think I had one of the top five episodes of last year if you want to check the numbers.

Like this, this is sort of like, you know, we had expectations for Lebron to be the guy back when in high school and.

All right, well, I want you to do your intro.

No, this is amazing, This is amazing. I might I might just skip the intro anyway. Fante laya, you guys cool?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're good.

I'm living.

What's going on?

Man?

Was that? So?

I will basically say that our guest today, of course, is a legendary jazz musician, but I don't think we could just reduce him to jazz. Yeah, his music is smooth, but we dare not call him smooth jazz. His music is hip hop, but you know, we can't call him hip hop. But I think probably the most unique character trait of our guest today is probably my or not my our inability to pinpoint what is he exactly? Is he an avant garde artist, Is he a musical provocateur? Is he the godfather smooth jazz?

I don't know.

I will say that probably when the smoke clears and we start taking a toll of the artists that fall under the jazz umbrella, and there's many categories under that, I will say that as far as the scope of hip hop, and yes, like we kind of come from a hip hop scope because of our age and whatnot, we get to know a lot of these artists through the power of sampling, I will say that our guest is probably at the top of the list.

Like I think, hands down he's the.

King of textures, which is something that you don't necessarily hear someone describe another musician, but listening under a hip hop context, texture means everything. I also think that our guest is probably one of the kings of the perfect four bar capture, the ability to transform your new creation into something else.

That's just how adventures he is cut to cut to cut to cut, from album to album.

And I will say that probably one of the best engineered artists under the contemporary jazz umbrella, just as sound speaks to probably everyone in my generation and beyond, because of course, a lot of his music is the foundation for some of the best hip hop that I've ever known, that we've ever known. And you the listener, you've heard his music, whether you knew it or not. He is, you know, multi nominated, underappreciated, loved, worship, always in demand,

And I hope that was recorded so I can put.

I cut it in half, like because I could really, yeah, take this for eighteen minutes.

You mentioned the best engineered. Did you mean engineered or did you mean like him engineering at a concept? I mean, I'm trying to bring up the name Joe Jorgenson, who was George.

Organ and Rudy Like for me, just it's the perfect texture of compression and natural sounds to me that I think is what attracts my generation to his music, because you know, like there's two ways to take in music. You know, we come from a generation where you go digging, you take the records home. And I mean, with the notable exception of Primo and Dyla, I don't know many hip hop producers that actually listen and absorb the records, like listen to it over and over and over again

Is it one more thing before? Maybe we let the guests speak.

Right, Let's have a whole episode where he just doesn't good thing.

You watch Keyboard Bob, I've smiling.

I'll just sit here and listen.

So I think the word that you were missing in your intro and why it's so hard to describe what he did and what he does is fusion. I think that what he did was basically just another version of fusion jazz.

But I feel like any description for jazz artist is almost like a four letter word.

Fusion. You know is includes obviously whatever many different things that are being fused.

Well, let's ask him, Bob James, welcome to the show. Finally, nineteen minutes later. You know, I know we do it if all is said and done and without sort of you know, oftentimes artists will and I'm guilty of it, like sort of ducking and dodging the accolades like what would you like us to know you as? And describing your artistry.

I don't know that I'd probably be the right person because so busy doing it, and I never could stay in one category for very long. Maybe I was just

To end every now, Okay, So Bob James does a lot of stuff.

The reason why said fusion though, Bob, is because I feel like Tapanzee Records and a lot of what you've done in your career was not only fusing different types of music together, but also really incorporating the place and the time period into your music. Like New York City in the late seventies and early eighties, and and you know, the city and the time period did that play a lot into the music.

I absolutely always have thought that one of the things about jazz is it's improvised, so you're giving your feeling right at that moment, on that day in that city, wherever you are that it definitely does represent the time period of what's going on. It should anyway, if we're being honest, we're reflecting our time, and that changes. So I've resisted when people try to make a definition of what jazz is or because it changes. It changed along with everything else that's going on around it.

What was your first musical memory.

Getting fired from being pianist at a tap dance class in my hometown.

I think I was twelve or something like that.

And I couldn't keep the beat, so the tap dancers were tripping and finally the well, actually, the reason why I got hired in the first place is I think I was the only pianist in the town that they could use to play for this tap dance class. I guess it's my earliest memory of trying to learn what keeping the beat met.

Still trying who would have the gumption to fire a twelve year old?

Yeah, that was pretty cold, and I don't exactly remember that, but I may have defined that too harshly and they may have.

I actually told me to go home to my mom.

Passive aggressive firing, Okay.

You couldn't keep up? Was it with a simple kickball? Change of it all. Is it one of those kind of classes of beginners. I was just curious. I just I mean, you know, I'm a Heines girl.

Was there music around your house growing up?

Not a whole lot.

My father was a lawyer, and I lived in a small town of Missouri where what I did here was mostly country music, and my parents didn't really have that

So around what year was that when you discovered jazz.

In the nineteen fifties, in the mid nineteen fifties, and I do remember that that was pretty much the highlight of the West Coast jazz because I do remember Chet Baker, Jerry Mulligan, Dave bru Beck, those names formed or the style of it, the West Coast style was intriguing to me. Only in college did I kind of get more tried to get more deep.

I know, there's this famous story of was it a town show or something some kind of competition where the bands were being judged by Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones, And how.

About that for a panel to be judging. Yeah, it was very pivotal time in my life. I was at that time, I just graduated from the University of Michigan, and there was a kind of big avant garde group of musicians that I became associated with because they needed performers who were willing to be really daring and do crazy things. That the avant garde world was really out at that time, and so I was incorporating some of

Did you been to school? Yep.

I got a master's degree in composition, mostly classical training. My jazz training was extracurricular. I'd go into Detroit from ann Arburn, look around for a place to sit in.

Yeah.

And so Quincy signed you to was it Mercury?

Yes?

And we recorded the album in Chicago. He was living there, I think at that time.

And that's where he was. The Mercury was based in Chicago.

And so this is like the early sixties, right, Yes.

Sixty three, sixty two, sixty two.

Sixty three, And so I know that at the end of this small part of the conversation, Quincy eventually recommends you or lead you to Creed Taylor, and that gets you to CTI. But what happens in between there in the mid sixties.

Another big pivotal time was when I got the job with Saravon, her music director of Pianist nineteen sixty five.

Wow.

I had learned that her pianist ron L Bright had left and she was looking around, and indirectly Quincy was involved in that too, because where I learned that Sarah was looking for pianists was at this music copy service in Manhattan where I used to hang out and watch all the arrangers come in with their charts that music needed to be copied. This was before the computer era, where the copyists were still copying out departs for the musicians in ink. So anyway, uh, yeah, I learned about

And at that time, there.

Was a Broadway musical that had just opened up, and the Sweetest Sounds was one of the songs in that musical. It was a brand new song by Richard Rodgers. But anyway, I was kind of a fan of musical theater, and it's just complete coincidence that I knew this song just barely. Shoe Sarah was one of the first cover artists sing it out of the Broadway show, and so.

It made an impression on her. And it was at least a year or two.

After that that I responded when she was looking for a pianist, and she remembered that night and I got to John, I have.

To ask a real amateur jazz question. Now, you know, my tenure in school was like in the eighties and nineties, so of course I'm in a generation that grew up with having access to what they would call a fake book. Was there any sort of cheat sheety fake books of that level back in well, you know those songs are also being written in real time, But how does a musician learn these repertoires, like you would just have to go to the store and just buy all the sheet

Yeah, in my memory, there were fake books that kept getting bigger as a as a tool. You know, we have it in our phone. We could look up atty Saw. I mean, the similar kind of a fake book thing that we could do. But at that time, I'm reasonably sure that this song was so new that it wouldn't have been in a fake book anyway, because you jok

I see now every time we have a jazz artist on the show, the first thing they want to do is sort of dispel not only dispel the myth, but sort of dispel it in a kind of a stick to a pinataway. Now, in general, if you're moving to New York City looking to make a living playing this music, jazz in particular, you pretty much have to be a wizard at reading music.

Correct.

I wouldn't say you have to what's that?

What y'all?

Well, you know, there were two different approaches to it. In my case, I think I was pretty clearly thinking that the more trending you had, the better, and that just meant it increased your odds of getting a gig. Some of the gigs were not necessarily going to be

All right, let's take value of the shadows, which maybe our audience might note that as a group homes the realness now value of shadows, which has so much like stop on a dime, you know, just like all this

It was all variations of that over many years. You mentioned Idris Muhammad in my memory of working with Idris. It's been a long time, but Idris may have been able to read some simple chart, but he was not what we would call reader, And so I was going to hire Adrise. I wouldn't put a big complicated chart in front of him because even if he did, it would change his approach to playing, and what I wanted from him was his his own own, loose, non obedient,

And so I guess we did it both ways.

And for a piece like Value of the Shadows or Night on Maull Mountain, some of those things that were adaptations of classical music, it definitely required a chart and a musician that could read, and I hired them on the basis of that. And it wasn't categorical, because the next day I might want to do something that was totally loose and just play some blues or whatever, and then reading would take that music in the wrong direction.

Got it?

In developing your initial sound? Who were you idolizing?

Yeah?

I wasn't too different from most other aspiring jazz pianists in that I listened a lot to Oscar Peterson and Bill Eppens, maybe the two that I listened to the most. Of course, I tried to listen to everybody, Gardner and Artatam and on and on, but I I usually came down to thinking that three of those pianists influenced me

Is Bill the Is he partly responsible for why the Fender Rhodes became your signature sound?

Or was just.

No?

As a matter of fact, I didn't like the way either Bill Evans or Oscar Peterson played the Fender Rose and they only played it occasionally, and it always seemed to me that sounded like they either had to do it or experimented with it and ended up not liking it. If you look at their overall recorded repertoire, you won't find very many Fender Rows tracks from Bill Evans or

They played it like it was an acoustic piano.

Yeah, you can't play that instrument that way because the acoustic piano has so much more dynamic range. And I don't know it formed my style at that time because I was asked to do it. I hadn't gone out and found Fender Rose on my own. Rudy Vank had one in his studio and I started being asked to play it, and to my ear, I had to change my technique to make it sound good.

Was it was it like now it's so commonplace, but in the early sixties when they're when they're developing this instrument, Like, was it foreign?

Was it like?

Like, I mean the way that we look at probably the way that we're looking at AI technology right now, Like was it sort of a thing to marvel or something to master?

Like?

What were your feelings on it?

It was? It was a gig.

I've also even really I was playing it because because I had to. That was my assignment on that particular gig, because they wanted.

To Okay Bros.

When my heart was still with the acoustic panto until I began to realize that I was getting identified with it and that I had some kind of approach that people were hearing. That almost forced me to take it more seriously. When my album, the first solo album that I made for CTI had feel like making Love on it, and there was a sound that I had used vendor Rose on ROBERTA Flex because I played piano for her on her version two, so that sound became very much identified.

Okay, So I kind of was starting your discography.

The period in between.

The first album, The Bowld Conceptions that Quincy produced and your second album Explosions, which really doesn't get discussed enough, and.

It doesn't because if it got discussed too much, I might not have a career.

The night and day of those two records, I meant in nineteen sixty five, like I know by you know, I know, by like fifty nine sixty like there was there is avant garde jazz and whatnot, but your version of it is way beyond like you know, Coltrane's thing was more spirituality, and then you know, like the stuff with the shape of Jazz to Come and all those things like which I think they're being avant garde with notes, but you know you're kind of taking at least listening to those records.

I mean, if I could be bold to say, and you know, notwithstanding the.

The early like electric records of the sixties, which were more like demonstration records or that sort of thing, but like dare I say, like that might have been one of the very first electronica records, like just in terms of you using different frequencies and whatnot, Like what made you go from Night and Day from like bold conceptions to Explosions.

Well, it actually, in my memory was not totally Night and Day, because they were kind of all related, and there were some elements in the Explosions album that I had already been experimenting around and that had gotten Quincy's attention.

To be put together. And what I tried to do with.

Explosions is is I guess you could say it was similar to the way artists us backing track more recently.

So this electronic tape of or samply something.

Yes, so that's the sample plays or the backing try plays, and then we would improvise over the top of it in a more conventional jazz way. And so the two different elements would clash with each other, and that created the conflict or the gardeners. And it was all seemed to be all about pushing boundaries. What are the limits of what could be called music? A sound organized sound, chaos, And different people used the different approach. Sometimes it was

Thought it was noise. And so.

In my youth, I was fascinated by it. I actually loved it sometimes that and I always felt during that time that I had the power to change it because I could play conventional.

Jazz.

I liked to surprise my audience that just when they thought we were just playing some conventional bebop, all of a sudden, electric electronic sounds would come in and then we were suddenly in a completely different world where I'd be stroking the strings with my hand or getting a mallet and playing beating on the side of the piano, and we were part of the time seducing the audience and part of the time confronting them with.

Surprise and making him deal with it.

At that point, were you familiar with like artists of the time like a Raymond Scott or the Tonto guys or just any of those experimental synthesizer records.

Yes, I was those two names, I don't remember, but I was more influenced by the people in the classical avoc guard world like John Cage and Stockhausen and ghost people that it was a different kind of experimentation in the jazz world. Don Ellis, the trumpet player, was also very involved on avac guarde music at that time, and there were the mob guys. When the MoG's emphasiser came up, came into being a little bit later. Actually, by that time I was sort of using interest frankly, the idea

My You're saying that you were going for more of like a Stravinsky make the audience hate me thing, or just.

No, because Scherenberg might be a better example. Because Stravinsky's music people realized fairly quickly that it was just great, and it was they also rioted, you know, and.

Had a melody.

It had all of the things and it's survived as a as a real classic, even though the dissonance shocked people a little bit at the time, but it was cinematic it. I never never viewed him as av It was more, we say about.

A provocateur, musical provocateur.

He had come out of the Impressionist area era when when the Romantic era of the nineteenth centuries the gradually they began to get tired of tonal music and the tonal and conventional dissonance, and so the Impressionist era reveled WC.

Kenna, right, Yeah, I was trying to imagine that.

Yeah, I had to really play all the learned the standards and not only learn and learned the great voicings and everything so I could inspire her and that became my life.

So why did it take almost a decade for you to get to your third album? Your run of your period, which you know, for most collectors believe that one is your They seem to think that's your first record, even though it's not. But just as the Bob James as we know, why did it take you to nineteen seventy four to start?

You're a part of the.

Story from the after explosions and after I kind of thinking that it was a dead end for me.

It was immediately after that that I got the job with Sarah Vong.

That was a four year thing, and by that time I had given up any notion of being a leader. When I first came to New York, I sort of came as the Bob James Trio.

I've thought of.

Myself as a jazz pianist and was thinking about trying to make a solo career. But I really liked a job with Sarah being an accompanist, and I started getting arranging jobs as a result of it, and I liked that provided a steadier income in New York, and I was starting to get arranging jobs. And by the time I got to nineteen seventy when I got the job to play on Quincy's album Walking in Space, which was

How musical was Creed Taylor, Well.

He definitely wasn't one going out in playing an instrument or conducting or arranging. He did have some training that I heard about only by reputation. I never saw him do it. I think you could describe him as a visionary. He had a definite idea of how he wanted his label to have a style, a sound, and a look, even his packaging and his choice of covers and everything

But does he allow you to really have say, like I know that you started producing after the four out, like by yourself, but like, are you allowed to have say in these first war records?

Definitely did.

I had a lot to say, And you mentioned value of the shadows right off the bat, which was completely me going as almost as avour guarde as I would have a project of his where he was a producer. But he gave me a lot of leeway and the arrangements.

Okay, So take something like A Night on Bald Mountain, which you know, if you're a Disney fan, you know that from Fantasia. I'll admit that I met Night on Bald Mountain because it was on side three of Saturday Night Fever.

You know.

I was also like seven years old when it came out.

But when you're doing these interpolations of classical music into jazz, one, are you doing all the arranging? And how many man hours does it take for you to write each part? Because you're you know, I'm assuming that you're doing these arrangements for your brass section, your string sector, like for one song, how many man hours does it take for you to write these arrangements out a lot.

I was fast, and you kind of had to be. I grew up watching the Great Arrangers, and Quincy had told me about that music copy service that I mentioned about earlier, and I would go in there and watch how they would work.

And there were people like Billy buyer's and there were the people that got a lot of the jobs, and I saw how they did their scores and how they set up the scores that would make it easier for the copyists to copy the parts and well organized and everything, because very often there were deadlines and we had to deliver half a dozen charts overnight for the session the next day. So I learned to be fast, and I definitely wasn't the fastest, but I could put something together

I just kind of know him, and I knew he could read whatever I.

Put in front of him, but keep it in the spirit of free flowing jazz playing. And even with that arrangement, we went in first with the rhythm section. I recorded that and I refined to my score after that, somewhat based upon the fills that Steve would play. I used to like to do the vert rather than give Steve all them notes with all those hits on it, you know,

Know what I mean.

I knew Steve Gadd was a monster, but in my mind, okay, now, it makes total sense that you do your rhythm section first, and then you build around what your rhythm section does and.

Then yeah, in order that way, there had to be a pretty specific chart too, because it wasn't just a simple lead sheet for Steve and the bass player Gary King.

All that I had on that particular piece, it was a lot was written out, but within that, since we didn't have a whole brass section in the studio, there was a kind of flexibility that we could use to get the groove happening and to make it so that it wasn't too too tight and too conservative in the way we played it. So my memory of what we were trying to do was both have a be a very specific chart but also the feel of a loose, improvised jazz performance.

Your personnel, you know, it reads like a just a reads like a who's who of just monsters. Of course you know they're monster musicians now, but back then I'm assuming that they were just you know, dudes that played music. How did you go about gathering the personnels for your record?

Because like it's the cast, it's just and leading into tap and z. It's just Yes, it's so much about who's around you. So yeah, I ask you a question, please, sorry.

Yes, So, how did how did you come across like the Ralph McDonald's of the world, the Grover Washington genius of the world, the Wayne Yeah, Steve Gary.

I don't think it's any different from what you're world is now. New York is a great place, and that's where maybe not quite as dominant as it was in the nineteen seventies when I was doing my thing, but everybody comes to New York too, and that's where most of the gigs were, and by word of mouth, you start to learn who are the best people. Once I got onto Retailer's list, he had his favorites, but the

As a result of that.

Did you and David Matthews ever collaborate at any time?

No, the other David Matthews.

There there's the Man, but the arranger Dave. It was one of those things, like Don Sebeski, I rarely was around him. If he got the job, I didn't, and I got the job he didn't, So there was usually only one of us on any particular project. I did get hired as a pianist for some of Don Sebeski's stuff,

All right, just the sequencing of your first album is just off the chain. And I gotta know whose idea was it to make such a radical version of in the Garden, Because you know, when I hear in the Garden, it's either it's either used for wedding purposes, you know, it's always the it's always the pre song that's played right before here comes the Bride or whatever. So I

Well, thank you for describing it that way, and even thank you thank you for remembering it, because I do sort of remember the day that I came into Cretaylor's office and talked about wanting to do it, uh, to do that composition. And we had already discussed a lot about his basic theory that if if a jazz artist took a classical theme, they would turn it into something else, and that was part of his stylistic thing.

So the real classical name, which is also.

I'm darning in blank on it now, that I ended up calling in the Garden came from a very well known classical piece, And at that time I was using humor Crackt a lot. The really great studio guitarist but who had a.

He did dueling banjos right.

Yes, yeah, deliverance yeah. So he played bad joe guitar, and he was very authentic in those styles. So I knew that I could get a kind of raw, almost country kind of sound out of him and make that piece eclectic. We didn't know exactly where we were going with there's a lot of experimentation in the studio and crew Taylor gave me the flexibility to experiment with that and to come up with something unique.

It's almost like, you know what that in particular, if a jazz artist had a public enemy, like that's the thing, like, you're so hip hop without The only only person that I could describe that way was Prince. Like before Prince purposely started rapping, everything about Prince was hip hop in

I mean, at the.

Time, were you nervous or worried about what critics were going to receive this as your downbeats your you know whatever? The gods of critics of jazz critics were like, if you're not following a certain mold of what is deemed acceptable status quo, are you nervous about this or was the shield of CTI enough to I think.

I can safely say that I was not nervous about it. If anything, I was not reluctant to be confrontational and to not give critics any easy thing to talk about, and I guess I always had a little bit of love hate relationship with them, and I got more hate than I did love times that so I ended up saying who cares, and I go, it's my job to do it at their job to say what they think about it. And I was not concerned about that at that time. Even forget about critics, I was not that

More arranging jobs, and the more of a.

Variety that I could show as an orchestrator, I could present it to other clients, and it was my good fortune that I had some commercial success with it that I was almost forced into considering a solo career after that. Can I share with you a little bit about Nautilus on that same album? Yeah, next, talking so many people about it and actually confronting with Wu Tank Clan guys of various.

People about why.

You know, I kept asking the question why did Nautilists get sampled by so many people?

What was it?

And I was able to share the story on that same one album you asked about the sequencing US was the last cut on side B kind of deliberately because it was almost a throwaway and Pree Taylor knew that the other cuts would get the attention at that time. So traditionally with the LP you always made put your weakest cuts on the center of the last cut on the side of an album because the grooves were narrower. You know, you've got your best bass sound on the

Let Me do It. There was enough budget that.

I could hire a string section and write the arrangement, and there was this kind of mysterious, ethereal kind of sound that permeated that track, And if anything, I would have thought it would have made it less commercial because it didn't fit in with the other standard funk type of a string arrangement that I might have written. But as I've recently talk to the people in the hip hop community that that keep talking about that as being one of the essential tracts that have been sampled the most.

Yeah.

Texture, it's that's why I say you're the king of textures. Like and I can't describe it, but it's you know, somehow you manage like I know, you don't intentionally say, Okay, let me create a song that somehow in six years will hit another generation, like no one thinks that. Like maybe a musician like me now will think that, like, Okay, what I do now, maybe twenty years from now it'll be in vogue. But you know, I think at the end of the day, you caught a compel selling performance

So yeah, I totally believe it. And that's why I've always.

Tried to just enjoy the process of doing it and let whatever comes out of that happen. If you're passionate and if you're trying your best to get the best people, write the best arrangement, play the best solo, just do your best and keep trying to make the level higher. In that way, then you're still enjoying that even if it isn't successful, You've had that pleasure and privilege to make music and uh, and go through that process.

You know, around eighty seven when you know Peter Piper is coming out the gate, which you know I'll probably I mean, you say, Fante, that's probably one of the first out the gate, uh, Bob Team samples, Yeah yeah yeah, so eighties yeah yeah yeah. So when when this is coming out in eighty six, eighty seven and whatnot, what is your immediate thought of what's happening?

I believe my first memory was Jesse Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

And they touch a jazz right.

They took my son West yesterday and the way they did it at that time, because I wasn't following what was going on.

In hip hop at all?

But I found out about it after the fact and I listened to it, and yes, I was shocked. What the heck, you know, because it was just my record that played. It wasn't it wasn't even a loop or a chunk, right, and you could hear my melody, my composition.

And suddenly I look at this album and it has a new title.

They made it into a new song and they call it something else, and I'm thinking, wait, wait a minute, you know this is not.

Right, what's going on here?

And one of the first things back then that came into my mind is, hey, if they can do that, if Jessie, Jeff and Will Smith could just wrap over the top of my record, well I'll go out and get myself a Frank Sinatra record and I'll play some piano over the top of it.

And I'll change the time from you know, from I left my.

Heart, just go I'll call it Bob James something or other whatever.

And I knew you couldst face does that, by the way, So.

Times have changed, but that was my first reaction. And also, but.

In your mind, you didn't think like some fourteen year old or fifteen year old is hearing that and now looking at their parents' record collection, like, wait, I have that, and then now you have new fans not yet okay.

Eventually, you know, there's a lot of conversation about it. And if it had been just a fluke, I would have considered it more as a legal matter. And because throughout my sort of music business knowledge career, I have felt that copyrights and the protection of them are our most powerful.

Weapon against big business.

The copyright itself, the ownership of it, the control of it so that that you have some control.

Over your destiny. Is was a very big deal for me.

I fought for it in all of my contracts, and the only way that you can protect it is is by going to bat for it and not let people played your eyes or fraudulently steal it.

So so that was really.

Basic before I even was aware of what was going on in the hip hop world, and the whole structure of the legal thing hadn't happened yet where where you could figure out a reasonableare way to license and all those So, yeah, exactly, so you hear that happening, and I owned my recording of Westchester Lady and I and the compositions, so I had to fight for it, and I did, and that sort of started me off and world that at that time I thought it was a one off thing and that I would just have to

Did you notice an immediate paradigm shift and reaction? Whereas like, if you start the intro to Nautilus back in nineteen seventy four, it probably wouldn't elicit the screams of oh shit like that. I'm certain that happened at Blue Note last week when you played there.

Yes, and as drastic change has happened, I have so much appreciation and new respect, new desire to confront.

This whole phenomenon.

I want, as a copyright holder and as a composer who has fought hard to keep the rights to my music, I want to be one of the people in the music community that educates young people to learn about that, to learn about the business, to learn that these creations need to be protected and they need to be identified in the right way and entered into the legal part of the music business in a legitimate way. So I've kept fighting for that.

Uh.

But as I have learned more about the sample usage, I confronted Rizza and I sort of actually confronted DJ j Jeff too, And there was a new cut on my album be coming out in the spring that is a collaboration with djj Jeff where it's like let by Gones be by Gones were.

Never were in bed together with the track.

You know, we collaborated, and I'm very happy that we're able to do that, and it demonstrates that we're all in the music business together. But in attempting to actually confront this issue for me, which is when they took Nautilus or take Me to the Marty Ground and redid it or used it, it was my creativity that it was in this chunk or in this recording, and I was not in the studio to defend myself artistically.

And as I began to hear my music being.

Sample more and more the chunks of it were taken in all kinds of different ways, manipulated more drastically, tempo chains, speed sped up, slowed down the story.

Only I didn't have any control over.

The creativity right right.

I'm not there, so they do whatever they want. So I began to think if I could be in the same room doing my thing while they did their thing, a different result could come out of it, where I would actually be at least be able to say, well, wait a.

Minute, don't change this, or something like that.

So or five days, two weeks ago, I was in Riz's studio and we did pretty much exactly that. He did his thing and I did my thing, And a couple of times I would do a kind of conventional jazz melodic thing, or a bassline thing or something like that, and he would hear some very small chunk of it and he would ask his engineer, stops right there and take just these two beats, And suddenly my conventional melody had become some completely new rhythm that I wouldn't have thought of in a million years.

And now we're confronting each other.

Either I have to be strong enough to say, you know, stay away from that, or or go along with it.

Fante, are you thinking about the guitar center beat right now?

I hope it's not that I think, but the guitars that would beat that's a whole other, you know.

For me, For me a person who takes that, it makes I feel like someone's gonna flip it, like either vitamin D or something.

You make it hard.

It's inside joke.

It's one of his most like unorthodox creations I've ever heard of my life. Ze When I when I heard you two were collaborating, the first thing I thought about was, okay, the guitar set beat, Bob.

When you recall, do you remember the reasons why you cleared Dayton off my puncher but you didn't clear the Flowers record for ghost Face?

Do you remember, uh, the reason for that? I do remember.

In those days, we were trying to create a kind of formula which almost never worked, because every new creation is different and every circumstances different. But I tried to identify it in the amount of my actual recording that was used, and if it was just a little chunk that only occupied, you know, ten percent. Tried to base the licensing fee on the the prominence of my music in the track, and if my baseline or my melody

Of their creation would ever want to give that up. Just say I.

When you say not giving it up, you mean not giving up any publishing on it, or just not letting them use it period.

Well either version, yes, not using letting them use the period unless they license it properly, if they license it, and and to get a license to change my music when they use it from beginning to end.

U why why would I? Why would I? Why would any of you agree to do that? So here here you've got this.

Understand Yeah, I think yeah, Well you asked the question, whyle we any of us would do that?

I think definitely, it has to be.

It has to be you know, you have to be compensated and the business has to be worked out. I just know, for me as a hip hop fan, there are so many records that I never would have listened to if it were not for hip hop. Like I never would have went and listened to you know, your first Floor, Well not first for but your album's one, two.

Three, and four.

You know what I'm saying, Like, I never would have went back to those records had I not heard them in this context now, you know what I mean. So for me now, I look at it as just you know, kind of just planting that seed and putting it in a context that we may not understand, but the generation after us they may hear it, and you know it goes. You know, it's pretty much I look at what sampling was back for us back then.

It's like what mean.

Culture is now in the Internet, you know.

What I'm saying.

Like my son, you know, he you know, watched the Wire and all because the gift there's a gift of webade that's like being used as a meme a million times, right, But to him.

It was just oh my god.

So that's where that came from, like, you know, this is a year old.

Old that's right it that is the new sampling. Yeah, it's like that is crazy, you.

Know, right in defense of the way this thing started to come together in the legitimatizing of licensing and all that, any of the biggest samples of my music, such as Peter Piper, I didn't find out about until even two three four years later, after the thing was too late and I suffered even if I wanted to confront, the statute of limitations prevented me from really being able to do what I wanted to do in some of the cases to protect my copyright.

Couldn't couldn't do it.

Quest I've just called it the Wild West, and yes it was during that time. You fend for yourself and you don't know the history of how it's going to turn out. If I had known that, I would have had so much respect from the whole hip hop community, and they treat me with so much dignity. It makes me so happy and proud that I'm a part of it. And I know that I have gotten a lot from the fact that it historically happened.

But when it was the wild West, when all that stuff was going on.

I had no idea, and I was fighting for my own image as a jazz artist and had enough time with that, let alone have a hard time holding on to my own composition.

I understand are there certain songs that you favor of your usage? Like for me, I feel like DJ Premiere is probably the most ideal person to have utilized your work where it's not just straight up jacking it, but it's like the way he does it is amazing. But like for you, do you have favorites of like, oh, that was clever or that sort of thing.

A little bit by the way. I really loved meeting him last week. He had come a year ago, but finally had a chance to meet him and talk with him a little bit last week at the Blue No such.

A cool guy, and.

I am embarrassed in jum ways to admit that I still don't listen to that much hip hop music.

I don't guess what neither do.

I'm not well versed to talk about it. But because of the opportunity to be up on the stage with Talib Khali and his other guests, finally I got some very great insight into the performance of rap and hip hop and the way it feels like jazz when I'm on the stage, and the skill and that the spirit of it that I had not paid attention to and listening to the recordings, but being there with him was fantastic.

Let me let me explain to our listeners. So basically, mister James did a residency, a three night residency at the Blue Note in New York City with to live quality black thought was there, rock him was there? Yeah, Like just basically, you know it, is this the first time that you finally had a meeting of the minds between yourself and and hip hop MC's and a band that knew how to make this happen.

I did the same thing with Talib last year. That was only the other time, and I really liked that in a way of getting and know in real time

What were your thoughts on Everyday People or People every Day by rest of development, because I thought that was just a genie that taking that little piece, Like to me, that was Jens, Well, we your thoughts on.

It very very complicated from the business end of it, and actually even from it was another example of something that I was not paying attention to know that my sample had even been used until way after the fact, oh wow, way after it had become a big hit. So it came to me late in the game. And what had happened was People every Day had been released

And so quite clearly I knew that my.

Sample had made a difference in that record, but what we had did not know at the time and until it got retigious and kind of got a little bit ugly, shall we say, series. And this may or may not have had anything to do with their management, but more

So that that's why they had to identify the metamorphosis remix every time I see it used in public.

But even though they did some.

Unbeknownst to me and in the final I couldn't prove it anyway. Uh, it got channeled wrong, and it took us a long time before we figured out, well, why is this statement for the other version so huge and the statement for metamorphosis mixed nothing?

Because no one wants to write Metamorphosis mix. I assure you, yeah, I assure you, ninety nine percent of the time, if someone's playing that song, they're they're definitely playing your version in.

That TP appearances and everything else. That was the version that became a hit. But I probably shouldn't even be talking about details of this because there was a settlement that we finally reached and it was.

Not particularly good. But so I don't have good memories about that, Let's put it that way.

You have good memories about Taxi that Angela.

Well, of course, that's all good news for me, you know, kind of I could have never anticipated how that would become such a signature piece for me, and I thank the producers of that series, which is still in syndication. But the most weird but it turns out to be very celebratory. Simple usage of it turned out to be Celo Green when he used it on a two called Sign of the Times recently, and he just kind of sang over it, redid it added a lyric to it.

But when I first heard it, I loved it so much. I just couldn't be anything but.

Happy about it, and we ended up the really fair and nice licensing arrangement, and it has led to me being able to meet him in person in a similar way that I confronted Rizzard recently. But Celo and I did some stuff together and we wrote a song together that's going to be on the same new album of the album You haven't heard Side of the Times by Celo. It's my Taxi piece reinterpreted by him.

Wow, okay, well wait, you mean the Sign of the Times that Rod Timberton worked on that.

That's by Side of the Times.

So the Times, Yeah, right, that Rod Timperton worked on this on my album. The Selo version, which he called Side of the Times, has his lyric that has Sign of the Times in the lyric.

I see it's you have another version another song called Sign of the Times that's not.

Right related to the tempert.

Several Side of the Time songs, but but here his side of the Times has my Taxi melody and a very very cool but very specific reinterpretation of it that It was a great opportunity for me to meet him and collaborate.

I want to ask about your gear.

I know that as a creator who you know, since the Explosion record, like you've been experimented with like electronic sonics and whatnot. But I do know like a lot of those early synthesizers that were available in the seventies were monophonic, which kind of makes it limiting for you to play chords or anything, like you got to play one note. But I know, like around seventy six seventy seven when they're making polyphonic synthesizers which allows you to

Are they courting you? Are you getting endorsements? Are you.

Sort of in that Stevie wonder way where you know they go to him and Herbie Hancock with all this new gadgetry and like here like use our stuff. And more specifically in the seventies early eighties, not now where of course, now you know we use that every day, but in the late seventies and eighties, like what was the courting system like with keyboard makers and you.

I don't remember.

Exactly when I got endorsement from Yamaha, but I've been affiliated with them for many many years now, specifically the discal Vier, the acousticana that has many capability that I use all the time. I love it, and I have a montage and motif whatever. I use a lot of Yamaha gear and I am affiliated with them. Most of the rest of my gear throughout has been I pay for it and I go to the music store and buy it whatever. Ara, you were talking about the polyphonic synthesizers.

Are, so that gave it a character.

Each oscillator you could kind of tweak it, and there was a thickness about it that they gave that Oberheim eight boys, where I made a lot of records using that, and I remember that they were also funky in a sense that yes, you could play four six eight no chords, but it was the sensesizer was trying to catch up. If you try to do anything too fancy or too fast changing, it didn't behave like a.

Yato.

So if you held the.

Notes down, you could do a string pad or something like that, but if you tried to do something really really technically fast with it, it was clumsy.

I was just gonna ask. I wanted to make sure we got in questions about four play. I used to do my homework to those records in school in high school, so I specifically I just wanted just the between the sheets album and the lixer like those like I played those records like you know, back and forth. I wanted to ask one how did all you guys come together? And specifically, if you have any memories of recording, why can't it wait till morning?

Phil Common, what that session was like?

That's my shit, many many, many great memories from those years. In nineteen ninety one, I think it was I was headed out to Los Angeles working on an album of mine. That album ended up being called Grand Panel Canyon, and I had brought Harvey Mason to New York many many times to play with me because most of my sessions were being done in New York at that time.

But I had also Lee Retnauer had used me on the project of.

His, and we were dealing with wanting to do reciprocal So if I do something for you, play for you, I want you to play on my album whatever. He re owed me reciprocal, and since he was LA based, I thought it might be more interesting for me to go to LA and use bothly Written Hour and Harvey Mason on my album. So I planned it and didn't know who to hire on bass. Wasn't that familiar with

Different projects. Whatever, It just felt really special.

And on a break we had a conversation about the idea of how do groups get formed?

When?

How did Weather Report get formed? How did the modern Judge portet get formed? When did they decide to put a name on it and be a group rather than an individual? And one thing I do another I had at our job at Warner Brothers Records, and I was able to go to a meeting there and say, will you give us a budget to experiment and do a project, never thinking about it becoming a full time long thing. It was at that time maybe just one project was

Okay, so, speaking of warners, I always wanted to know this. I'm not asking this because you're categorized in a certain type of jazz, but I always wanted to know, you know.

Yes, I was experiencing it from a distance, having done some collaborating with George when he was at CTI, and I was a little bit familiar with the complicated exit from CTI and when he went over to Warner Brothers and the sort of transition from just being a guitar player to a singer, and watched what was in George's

And a lot of people, jazz.

Fans just are aware of the genius that comes out of his fingers when he plays guitar that nobody else and do it.

But uh, his.

Whole other part of his personality felt that talent that he had as a singer too, and in the In a Breezing album, both were happy, both of course.

Masquerade and.

Every time I hear Breasons that tune, the same thing happens to me. There's no bridge, which was for us at that time. It's unusual. It's just the same. It's it's the same key and it just keeps repeating. But it was eight bars, uh, and it's just simple. He never goes away from it. And some of us who who have all these things, we think about stay with the hook, you know, don't get away from the hook, don't get too cute, don't get too complicated, because the

It just made me want to go back to the drawing boards. I want to try to do that.

I want to try to do something similar, but then you realize it's not easy to buy that matchic.

I think a lot of our fan base might not know that Reason was written by Bobby Womack. It's actually a Bobby Womack cover, which I didn't know. I just recently found the Bobby Womack original, And you know, I tend to forget that Bob Womack was actually a good guitar player, Like so you know, that was the instrumental on one of his records in nineteen seventy one.

And I know I'm getting to know quest love as a musicologist.

To music nerds man.

Because I knew.

That sort of in my district memory. But I don't think I ever heard Bobby one Mac's version.

Yeah, no, it's it's damn near the same song, just with a harder Well when we say harder more like a hip hop is that should jump on it like it's it's actually amazing. The drums are more kracking on the wool Mac version. We are you going to ask Steve.

Well, we kind of reazed right over it the time period that I wanted to talk about. I mean, Bob James had the coolest, one of the most iconic jazz labels of all the time with tappan Ze Records, and I'm a little curious about the the timetable because you were a and ring at Columbia. Was that during the CTI years when you were arranging and also playing on CTI records.

I kind of had reached the end of my CTI.

After my four solo albums that ended up around nineteen seventy seven, and there were some problems with CTI in the business world too, and then the lack of payment of royalties, et cetera, which necessitated me litigating there. I'm beginning to make it sound like a which I hope I wasn't in the long version of that. But there have been times when I've had to protect and in this case, I'm glad I did because I ended up with the ownership of my four records, which made it possible for me.

To make many many things happened.

So I left in nineteen seventy seven, negotiated with Columbia and signed there where Bruce Lenvall was the president.

And he did give me the opportunity.

To start a small custom label with the idea that I could do a continuation of sort of the CTI approach, in which I had done enough in this role of a ranger conductor for pre Taylor that my intention was to not do exactly what Greed Taylor did, but my version of it and tried to develop my own style, but influenced by him, and very early tonight you mentioned

Would Rudy pre mix the stuff or like, would you guys track first then mix afterwards.

That's a very good funny question because Rudy was extremely secretive about any of his techniques and he did not like sharing. He didn't not like anybody asking me any questions about you.

Knew what my next question was, like share the secrets.

So I got the job of writing these arrangements on where we'd have basic tracks, and all Rudy would be willing to give me was this rough of two track from the basic sessions, and I would take that home and listen to that to make my arrangements mix on those roughs that he sent me with the worst, most crude o reverb, no ambious, nothing, because he didn't want to let anything out of his studio that could even

Wait, do you have a dry Rudy flat mix in your possession?

Well? I have many. If I could find a real real player that would play.

The I'm begging you to make a compilation of just dry. Because the thing is is until like Steve really got me into like listening to Steve's obsession with CDI like, and I'm sorry for really car jacking his interview Steve, Like Steve is the CTI coologist. So the thing is is that when I started studying Rudy's mix, thing I never was a fan of compression because I never liked

To go to his studio. It's still open, let's.

Go, and still unscathed and still yeah, it's it's exactly the same.

I'm I'm in the same boat as you, even though I spent it was almost like a full time job.

Being there every day.

In a studio for five years, and I never learned much about the details of it either, because he wouldn't talk about it.

He wouldn't share anything.

Every one of his all of his gear, like his equalizers or compressors, anything like that.

He had.

He had taped over the manufacturers the names of him, so he didn't want you to know what they were.

That's hip hop.

See that's hip hop, that's hide in the labels, Like y'alln't even know that, y'all.

Following a cycle.

So yeah, hey guys, Bob James had one of the most iconic jazz labels of all time called Tap and Z Records, And yeah, I just wanted to I found it really interesting what artists you chose to have leader

Yeah. I found out about Wilbert through George Benson. Actually, he and George Benson were friends, and George had heard him, and yeah, he sang and played guitar, and to get a recommendation with George Benson's but good as you could vote for. So that's the main reason why I signed Wilbert. And it was at a time when I was very much in the heat of wanting to be a good follow up to the CTI sound, but my own version of it.

Wow.

And that's that was the end result.

Of it, okay. Joe Anne Brakeen.

Very very original pianist, amazing. She could not be produced in any kind of way like some of the other coversion artists that I I had a chance to work with.

She was completely her own person.

So my role with her in some ways was to try to be like what I would want a producer to be with me if I just had complete authority to do whatever I wanted to do. And I knew that it would be a kind of simple production because she just wanted to play jazz with a great rhythm session and make sure we have the best engineer for her, get the right sounds for her, and let her do her own thing. That was pretty much my goal with Joanne.

There was an artist named Mark Colby that did a couple of records on Tappenzi.

Yeah. He toured with me a lot, played my band, and.

I've always loved power in his playing and I could treat him similarly to the way I tried to treat Grover Washington and for example, another sexophone player for that label.

And very fond memories of those.

Records, and Richard T the piano player, did a leader album or two on Tapaze as well.

Yeah, well, Richard being a member of that stuff rhythm section that had Eric Gill on guitar and Gordon Edward was the bass and Rob McDonald percussion. They were a kind of quintessential top, top of the line R and B based rhythm section and Richard T's unique kind of heavily Church influenced combination organ and sometimes Fender roads. I

And Steve Khan, the guitar player, I think that was the first tappan Zee record.

Might have been.

Steve was very determined that he wanted the Columbia identity on his album, also SOE logo on it.

But but he wanted the Red label, not the Blue.

Kind of like that I didn't have enough prestige and that he needed the big name.

On there too. He and I were friends, and so he was and smaller budgets.

I was somewhat limited to sign the people that were within my sphere that I either knew or that I knew that they were available.

Just a couple more Mango Santa Maria.

Well, yes, and he came through the bigger label as well. Particular kind of sound, the Latin American sound that I wasn't doing with anybody else, made it possible for us to make some pretty cool.

Records with him.

And where did you come across? Alan Harris came to.

Me through Columbia, through just and the most unusual Tapenzy project, I guess, and the one that I had the least influence over.

I don't remember.

Doing anything musically on it other than making it possible for him to do his thing and trying to treat him the way I would have wanted to be treated as a producer, make it possible for him to create his music.

Okay, last one and the one I wanted to know the most about. It seemed to be kind of your partner at the label, which is Jay Chadaway. Can you tell us who a little bit about him?

Well, I think I had maybe originally found out about him through Maynard Ferguson because he had done a lot of arranging from Maynard, and I was in need of somebody that had the same kind of arranging background as me because I was not able to keep up with the request that I was getting into do arrangements.

So I started working with him in that way.

I got to know him a little bit and we hit it off, and I knew he had a similar approach to sound production. And yeah, we had some really very good years and have remained friends. I just he's a big sailor fan. He and his wife live on a boat. A lot of times of the year, they take their take their boat to various places and just take up residence for.

A long time.

He moved after he after Z stopped, he moved to la and had a very successful career as a movie composer and he was very involved in the Star Trek series.

Very very talented guy.

Let me just wrap up the tappan Zee thing, Amir. You did such an incredible job with that label. Really the best thing that a label can do, which is create this whole world onto itself with all the beautiful continuity with the album covers, the beautiful gatefold album covers, and really you really knocked it out of the park with the with tap and Z was. I mean, you're welcome for all the rabbit holes folks out there with

Well, I wasn't going to say that, you said it now.

Short thing.

Since you mentioned Joe Jordanson, I more and more think that there just aren't really any total coincidences in life, that some things just happened for a reason. Recently, I was contacted by Joe's son, Michael Jordanson, who is interested in doing a biography on me, and he works with a video production company and I've been starting up a project in which he's going to do biographical thing.

He's a member of the group Wilco Who's that's true.

But when he grew up, he was when he was I don't know, ten or twelve years old, his father, Joe would invite him into the studio where we were making all those records. During that period of time, and he formed his taste and everything else based upon listening to all those records. And so many many years later after he's gone into business as a keyboard player and

That Joe did with.

Yeah, you hear that stand good terms with your engineer could pay off.

Yes, what Steve very important.

But your very first production was on another Creed Tailor label called Salvation with Goborbo, the Hungarian guitar player. What was that like your first production and what was Zabo like nineteen seventy five.

Unique aspect of that for me was it was the only time that I was able to actually produce and do something without Creed Taylor being there. It was his label, but he gave me the flexibility to just do that project on my own, and I went out and.

To La and did it.

And he was gobor was definitely a gypsy and he had his own style of approach, which I tried to keep that gypsy aspect, but to try to bring some of my own style into it. I wish I could have done more with him because he is kind of like an ideal artist for an arranger to produce, because I want to have the tapestry surrounding him, but I want him to be able to stay within his own style, and that's what I was trying to do.

Wow, Gary McFarland worked a lot with him in that regards.

Yes, definitely, I love Gary McFarland's work. In fact, I was very influenced.

But I used to study his records to try to figure out how he made his choices.

Yeah, the Sign of the Times record.

Now I get the film about to answer my own question, say Quincy Jones, but I'll ask you, how did you get involved with Rod Temperton working on that album?

Quincy introduced me to Rod and he was in the studio and a couple of the records that I was involved with with Quincy, and I was a big fan admirer and Quence. He put us together because he thought that we might hit it off. And even though Rod specifically with his talent was not a classical music I didn't think that much of an influence, but as I was working with him, he just had a whole cinematic, classical way of talking to me, and we hit it

And he just finished out The Wall and Thrillers about the kind of the next.

Year, Yeah, so big.

In other words, kind of out of my league, and I was kind of shocked that he was even willing to spend some time with me. But at least I had a chance to work in studio with him. He had his own complete language of how he talked and how he put together his vocals, and they were totally different from anything that I was aware of, So it

That kind of says it all. That makes the difference in the success level.

I guess you co scored one of my all time favorite films and I didn't realize it until maybe a year and a half ago during the pandemic that you created the King of Comedy score. So can you talk about working with Scorsese and.

Well, you're crazy. Where do you get all these details?

How do you feel? Well, you know more information than.

Yeah, the pandemic happens, and trust me, the pandemic happens.

You read all the fine print to keep yourself busy.

Ash, I mean, I should have done a lot of homework before I did this.

With you.

Quest love you know so much. And I got to say, my memories of working on that are so vague in my mind now, I'm not sure that I even remember how to talk about it very much.

You just threw it together and just gave it to him.

Well, no, I mean I know that I was treating it very seriously at the time that I haven't listened back to it. But it's been twenty twenty five years ago, or at least forty, And when you reach my age, you know how hard it is to keep retaining a lot of those memories. You don't have much of a memory other than the way you described it as a weird film. Made a career assignment for me to make music for it. That's kind of about all I'd be able to say at this point.

But do another zoom.

I'll do some homework listen to it again and maybe I'll have something more intelligent to say.

No, you know, I watch it like maybe five times a year, so for me, like I like when dark films have light music scores because it makes it even darker.

So it contributes to the power, I think, rather than everything be dark as too obvious.

Right, you're right, this is sort of on the same level. But so I used to work in a record store back in high school, and this is right when you and David Sanborn started your collaboration process. I think this was maybe this is the Double Vision album, but I

Well, I can say that I was probably not there in the mix and the choice. I don't remember being there. I didn't produce that. I mean, it was my albums, my name on it, all right, but that fade. Usually I would have been very involved and very specifically with the last thing that you want people to hear, and you want it to be hot.

You want it to be and I think the fade.

Works just in the way you described it, because it left you wanting more, and it left it when it's at its most hot. What I would say about that record to you is that I'm very proud of the pre production and arranging and scoring that I did, which is would have been a conventional string orchestra and brass and whatever, but I chose to do it with my home studio equipment. And it's all the strings, all the horns,

But I had an otari a track.

And this was in the era when you had the multi track studio or whatever in the studio and then you had to bounce down in order to do the overdub. So I took Bill say, I guess it was made a pre mix bouncing down and all of the basic tracks were on.

He gave me four tracks or something like that to work with, and I.

Created the woodwinds, the French horns and springs and all that were synthesized. And the part that I loved the most was in that exact section you're talking about, where he goes or something like that, and I scored it for the horns going in. The French horns echo that line.

So right, okay, but those.

French horns were not there when he's sang it, so so I added the French horns before, so it make it sound like he was ad living to my orchestration.

And if I do.

This sort of like Steve Gadd's rumming. See now, now I realized the same exact approach. Yeah, the power the power of post production. Now that's that's the lesson I learned today. No, that was at the time when I was working at that record store. I think Moonlighting, Bruce Willison Sybil Shepherd's uh show, very popular show on ABC, had just started using that song. So suddenly a whole that was back in the day when like a show like that could feature a song, and then suddenly everybody's

That tables and ask you uh one question and yeah, absolutely, since I have the opportunity. Yeah, this is hypothetical only so since you nor I are kind of session players these days. But if we were in New York session players.

Yes, let's do it.

And there's a trio date that we were called upon to do, and you had me hell looking for a bass player. Who would you recommend do a trio date with with you on piano and me on drums?

I mean the or we to do that? We I would actually let's.

See who Derek hadge.

I would say either Hajj or I would actually go with Pino of course, Yeah, I would go with Pino. Derek Hodge can go with Christian Mcbriene McBride. But Pino, you know, I like, I've worked.

With you know a little bit many years ago, and Christian McBride I did an album with, so that could be that.

But the Pino is more on your knowledge since you've worked with them. Let's go with that.

Are you are you committed to a label right now?

Top and Z I will do it.

I got to say, I'm sorry, this is I have to cut in here because I have my own jazz label here as well. Uh thanks, thanks partially to my love for Tap and Z and and uh we can go co co on that if you're if you're interested.

But I was only joking about Z. It's it's kind of let's.

Bring it back, man, let's bring it back. JM I.

I'm signed as d M I for all my jazz stuff. So I got to ask my label president right here.

Yeah, I think we're good for We're good for a Bob James Pinal question. Yes, we'll sign on for that.

We are absolutely going to do that. You and I'm not doing that like fake.

You heard it here first, people No, we're making I'm telling you, I got so much envy when I saw that clip at Blue Mine, and then you know I was working all weeks. So but no, you're You're a favorite of mine, and you know I thank you for letting us nerd out on you for two hours.

Yes, we will make this happen.

Yay, yay, Okay, I hope that was recorded.

Yes, it's absolutely recorded.

You can sue me if I renigg on on on on this on this audio contract.

Let's do it.

Soon because of the age factor, so we don't.

Yes, I don't know if I have much time left. So yes, I will do it.

You will be here forever, trust me, Steve. I'll leave you with the last question. Then I'm signed out.

Yeah, last question. Whose idea was it to name the first for Bob James albums one, two, three, four, because we're modeling Ray Angry's catalog after that on our label. But was that preconceived or did you just do that as it went on?

I think Cree Taylor's idea and the way he explained it to me at that time, because we were very aware of Chicago, the group Chicago had done talk about it a lot and the way I remember Creed thinking about it strategically was that. And this was nice that he was thinking that I might have longevity. But if you name if, if you name it that way, you get to your album five and the people are fans, they know that they got four that they have to.

Collect, so collect the.

More records you make, and I did have.

It happened to me that after I got up to ten or whatever, that the avid fans know what they have to look for that, oh I don't have eight or I don't have And I heard him talking about that, but that was that was what was in his mind.

Oh my gosh, thank you, thank you for it.

Do you have time for me to tell you one more little thing, because yes, you and I encountered each other when I came in the middle of your back and forth thing that you had going with Bis Marquis about the bells.

Damn, I forgot about the bells.

Sure that he's no longer with us, can you just release a copy of PI Peter Piper without the bells?

Well, here's what I wanted to tell you.

I did a little round table at the Blue Note with some hip hop guys and we had a surprise for them because my engineer, David, we had gone out to Iron Mountain to check out my master recordings, the multi tracks and so, and got the multi tracks from those sessions for that album Take Me to Marti Gras, And we have an outtake of a different take of Taking Me to the Marti Gras that David made a rough mix that played it for these guys at the roundtable that nobody had heard before, and it's got the

Boom boom boom boom boom.

Wow.

Uh. And it's a different a little bit different groove and play.

I played the melody differently, different keyboard solo in the middle, and of course it doesn't have any other production than any of the strings all that other stuff.

Because he's out.

I do have a question, but just a bonus question.

You you have a tendency to use a lot of sound effects on your What's the purpose of that, because even with take Me to the Mani Gras, and even with Alley of the Shadows, Like, what was the purpose in using those like sound effect records on top of the music cinematic?

I don't know that we were even that specific about it. But the atmosphere with Take Me to the Marti grad we were trying to create the party in New Orleans kind of an atmosphere. So that was that one was pretty clear.

But which animal sounds No, I don't know. It just like this sounds like a bunch of sheep in the background or something.

But it sounds it sounds like they were just having fun, is what. It sounds like a lot On Chapanzee, they use a lot of sound effects on tap and z and it's just you know, you can tell they're just having a blast.

Yeah, we're gonna have new sound effects that we'll be able.

To do with it.

Let's make it happen.

We're all analog though, so bring your analog thoughts.

Yes, we'll do this.

So on Behalf of Sick Steve Laya fon Diicgelo and on Paid Bill. This is Quest Love talking to the great Immortal Bob James, my my future collaborator. Yeah, We're gon, We're gonna do this project and up your grammy count. I'm calling it right now. This is Quest Love Supreme, one of the dude. This NERD's paradise right now and I'm happy and I'll see you guys on the next.

West Love Supreme Zeo. West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

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