Original subtitles

- Is that balance good, Rob? - Yeah.

Motif down more.

You go, too. When you cue your bridge,

you can solo through that while Marcus plays the melody.

OK.

And maybe the second time around,

if you want, you can jump in on the melody if you want.

I'll play it once or twice and then you can pick up.

Cool.

We put together a Blue Note super group with Robert Glasper,

Ambrose Akinmusire,

Marcus Strickland,

Lionel Loueke,

Kendrick Scott

and Derrick Hodge.

I was at the first show they played at Monterey Jazz Festival

for the 75th anniversary.

It was music that...

It had a sound to it, you know, that sounded like Blue Note.

Blue Note has a history of so many amazing artists

that have recorded on that label.

Every great pianist has recorded on that label!

But what I try to do is not think about that

when I'm trying to do my thing

because it could be so intimidating.

Blue Note, to me, is a label of innovators,

of game changers.

If you really chart the history of Blue Note Records,

every decade, the artists that they signed to the label

turned the music world upside down.

Those artists reflect the times and what's going on.

As soon as I put on the record, I'm just transported

to a certain time or a certain feeling

or a certain understanding of the world.

Blue Note caught what Bud Powell was doing,

it caught a lot of stuff that Miles was doing.

- It caught their humanity... - Yeah.

...that's within the music, and hope and freedom.

A lot of the artists that found their home at Blue Note,

understood that we all had the survival situation,

survival in common, and that came out through their music.

On the surface, you hear an amazing musician performing.

But the fight, the internal struggle,

that familiar way of fighting through the instrument.

Later on, when my generation hears it, like,

"Wow, why does this feel like we own it?"

"Why does it speak to me in such a way?"

OK, you ready?

The one thing that all the greats did was

never let go of who they are,

never turn away from who they are and their experiences.

'Cause your experience and what you've been through in your life

makes you sound the way you sound.

Most of the great art comes out of messed-up situations.

You just need something

to be released from that, to go somewhere.

That's where jazz is born out of.

Hip hop was born out of that.

So that's what we have to still do today.

Nowadays, with what's going on in the world,

I think it's forcing people to tap into that realness,

that experience really right from there.

A lot of this music has to do with how we feel about America

and how we came from seeming to progress

to going back to an era that we fought to get away from.

A lot of that feeling, that kind of frustration,

some of that's in the music,

along with all the hopeful stuff.

The music is only a tool to express what's inside.

Being an African-American,

the music itself was a special statement

and it is a special statement.

To me, jazz represents freedom in two different kind of ways.

You can be an individual inside of the music,

but still helping with the whole.

That's a fade, anyway.

Whoo!

Let's do one more.

And this time, when you cue your bridge...

Take 22.

23. Take 23.

You're listening to the 'Scope of Jazz' on WBAI FM

and our guests tonight are Al Lion and Frank Wolff

of Blue Note Records.

First of all, Al, the usual opening question,

the genesis of your own beginnings

as someone interested in jazz?

It happened in about 1926, in Berlin, Germany.

My mother brought a record home

and I was very much impressed with what I heard,

not knowing that it was jazz or what it was all about.

But I got very interested in the record.

And, Frank, what was your parallel experience?

- When did you first hear jazz? - In Berlin.

And my recollection is that I liked the music tremendously,

but I didn't understand it I couldn't follow it.

But 1 just liked it.

Well, they both came over from Europe.

They were boyhood friends and...

once, or twice maybe,

yes, they went back to those times and why they left.

They referred to what it was like.

Twice they mentioned it, in all that time I knew them.

And it was just brief mentions.

They were looking for freedom, of course.

You had to be a fool to have ignored that.

That's why they understood,

gave so many cats a chance.

And cats gave them a chance as well. Trusting them.

I felt the music.

And not knowing, actually, what made me feel it

It must have been the beat and the way the music came about,

came across to me.

And I was so impressed that I felt I would like to go out

and make some records myself with them.

- For your own enjoyment? - For my own enjoyment, yes.

That's how it started.

They were fans. They were rabid fans.

I think they were just records that they wanted to hear,

so they decided they were going to make them.

And they didn't know anything about making records.

And I don't think they ever lost the purity

and the innocence that came with it.

I think that they understood the value

of trusting in the musicians.

One nice summer afternoon we cut the first sides.

It was a very relaxed session.

Nobody watched the time

and the boys had a chance to stretch out.

Any record we ever made, we were never really figuring on a hit.

If later it became successful,

it just happened to become successful.

We didn't make the record with that intention, to make a hit.

Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff, they were hearing this music,

not only as music but as a valued treasure.

I think the question from other record companies was,

"Why would someone start a record company

not to make money?"

Yeah, Alfred and Frank, they never...

I never got a sense of pressure from them

to create in any particular way

other than whatever might come out of me.

What they were searching for was to get the heart

of the individuals creating the music

to have a platform for expression.

And that heart is affected by the times.

Because we were living in it!

Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff and Rudy Van Gelder,

they were trying to support the goal we were always seeking,

which is to allow the music to emerge

without being shackled.

Oh, all the record companies were white.

Until they started later:

Motown, Stax Records out of Memphis,

but all the record companies were white.

Cheap, cheap white, too.

They was a bunch of scoundrels.

I should name them, but I won't.

But not Alfred. Alfred was not like that.

He just let us do what we wanted to do

and if he had a suggestion, he might come around,

say one or two things, cos...

he didn't know that much about music.

And he didn't bother musicians.

He respected everybody.

He was a nice, nice person.

Frank, too. Frank was nice. Very nice.

Frank would be walking around taking photos,

but when the music got good, he started dancing.

Trying to dance.

And I loved 'em, both of 'em.

And they loved me. I'd take my family down there, you know,

and all of them got very friendly.

Yeah, this is Thelonious Monk.

This is one of the 1951 sessions.

And it featured Kenny Dorham on trumpet

and Lou Donaldson on sax.

Through the years, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff developed

a lot of very strong friendships among the musicians

and I remember Bobby Hutcherson saying,

"You know, they never seemed like outsiders.

They didn't play an instrument, they had heavy German accents,

but they were just one of us, they hung with us,

they'd always go out and hear music, eat with the guys,

and hang out with the guys."

And they were very well accepted by the musicians.

Of course, it was a slow start.

They didn't make any money for years.

It was a hand-to-mouth existence.

Without Alfred, I probably wouldn't be sitting here myself.

Cos I was just a little country boy, coming to New York.

I was playing at Minton's in 1949, and he came by.

He had lke Quebec with him, his right-hand guy,

he heard me playing,

and asked me if I wanted to record for Blue Note.

And I don't know what he expected me to say,

a young guy with no money.

So I said, "Of course."

And he asked me, could I play like Charlie Parker?

And, of course, I told him yes.

But I knew I couldn't. I wanted a record date.

And Alfred was lucky because he had Ike Quebec to help him.

Ike was telling him. lke was a smart guy

who brought a lot of people to the company.

He knew when you could play and when you couldn't.

If somebody come along who couldn't play,

they wouldn't record it.

Let me straighten it out!

Everybody else felt everything all right.

OK, nobody but me. I'm asking you this, man.

- I don't know what you felt! - At the end of the channel.

Take, uh, 7.

7, 7, 7.

We had gotten to the point where Al, for his own entertainment,

had recorded the three boogie-woogie piano players,

Ammons, Johnson and Lewis. Whom did you record after that?

Next was Bechet and Art Hodes, Edmond Hall.

And we kept making Dixieland records

and slowly drifted over info the swing

and from there into the modern, info the bop.

Within 10 years,

they'd decided they were gonna go into bebop.

And, of all the artists they could have chosen,

they chose Thelonious Monk, who was kind of taking stride piano

and turning it inside out,

just bringing in these crazy chord voicings

and who totally revolutionised the nature of jazz composition.

And they got behind him.

When did Monk record for you first?

1947.

And Monk never made any records before.

What was the reaction to your first Monk recordings?

The reaction was mixed. Some liked him very much

and some thought he was terrible.

Monk played his own music. Monk played his own music.

And he should be put in that category. Monk's music.

He was an outstanding guy.

He had his own way of playing and it was different.

It was kinda hard to play with him,

but if you played with him a while,

you got used to his playing.

Any preference on your part for the solo order?

We'll see how it's going. OK?

Where you see a nice place for you to go in,

then you pick your spot and blow, pick it.

He never said much, but I'd ask him questions.

"Is that right?" He said, "Yes, it's all right."

But he would never come over and say, "You're playing wrong,

you're doing that."

You just had to try to follow what he was doing,

which was very hard to do at that time.

Everybody wanted to play with him

and try to learn what he was doing.

He always had a certain style about him,

a certain vibe about him.

He has his own thing and doesn't waver from his own thing.

So, in my mind, Monk is the first hip-hop pianist.

Cos nobody in jazz has swag like Monk.

He let me know at a young age that it's OK to be myself.

Not caring what the next man say or sound like,

doing you, this is your testimony,

standing up for you cos that's what hip hop is about.

Unapologetic, too.

Be who you are cos he was who he was.

He wrote some of our classic songs that we still play.

I'm still puzzled at the times he wrote these songs like...

"Epistrophy."

And then something as groovy and funky as "Blue Monk".

"Trinkle Tinkle."

"Round Midnight."

Alfred loved Monk.

I'd go to the office and every time I went,

I'd see Monk and his wife Nellie.

In fact, I thought Monk worked there. He stayed there so much.

Evidently, Alfred was supporting him.

Alfred developed such a passion for Monk's music

that he recorded four lengthy recording sessions

before he even put out the first 78.

He was just so obsessed with Monk's music.

Of course, as luck would have it, Monk didn't sell at all.

Most people didn't understand the music,

so it got a lot of resistance.

And Alfred stayed with Monk for about five years,

then he just sort of had to let it go

because he had sunk so much money into it

and it was jeopardising the label.

But Alfred was that way.

He would stand behind what he believed in,

even if it wasn't selling.

He'd take it as far as he could.

Without Blue Note, you probably would have never heard of Monk.

Cos the other companies like Columbia and Capitol,

and those big companies, they wouldn't record Monk.

He was around. They wouldn't record him.

But Alfred did.

Alfred recorded a lot of bebop music.

Bud Powell and those kind of players.

And that's what really made it.

Alfred just really embraced this new music

and learned about the new music,

then he started recording with 2 passion

when he made those first sessions of Bud Powell.

This next Powell recording

has been one of his most influential.

I know young pianists talk about this more than any other Powell.

What was the date of "Poco Loco"?

- May 51. - Bud Powell.

[ Remember it was a pretty frantic session.

And Bud definitely wanted to record a certain way.

He made one take and he made another one.

Still we didn't get where we wanted to.

It took a little while.

Bud Powell meant a great deal to Alfred,

personally as well as musically.

He did his very first session in 1949

and he recorded him until 1958.

Bud Powell was instantly recognised,

first by musicians, but then by the audience.

Bud Powell, was he a difficult man to record?

He wasn't difficult to record. He just had his days, you know?

But we were always very lucky with Bud Powell.

! think it's more than luck. He's made some dreadful records

and somehow he comes to Blue Note

and you get a very good one out of him.

Well, there might be a reason for that in a way

because Bud and I are very close friends.

And I understand his way.

! think you have fo understand an artist

to really get something out of them.

Prestige was all right. I knew Bob Weinstock, President.

He liked jazz, too.

Savoy, all those records, they liked jazz.

But they didn't press it and put it out like Alfred.

The sound was better.

The musicians were better.

All right, come on, Al says, "Lets play.”

Alfred always spent time with the musicians.

He had planning meetings with them,

talked about who the side men would be.

And he always encouraged the artist to compose new music.

He didn't want just the thousandth version of "Caravan".

He wanted new material.

He wanted everything to be fresh and vital.

And he always paid for rehearsals.

You have a solo and you bring me in.

Yeah, well, you count it out loud again and play it.

Not only the production of the music,

but also Francis Wolff's photographs,

the cover art that Reid Miles did.

It all added to the impact of each of the albums.

Reid Miles was a very unique designer

because he was able to make every album

different from the next album,

but they all looked like Blue Note records.

Reid would create the typography,

then he would go and take Frank's photos and crop them

to the point that drove Frank nuts and create the covers.

So it was a remarkable team

that really worked in its own way.

What is truly amazing about these photographs

is that Frank was running around the studio,

catching candid shots in a 16th of a second

and they're all perfectly framed.

They capture a moment and they really focus

on the face of the musician.

For example, on "Blue Train",

this was a favourite device of Frank's

where he would shoot the tenor with another musician's face

in the curve of the tenor.

I'm sure our listeners like to hear you express

what you think is listenable among your whole production.

Oh, you mean of the albums that I've made?

Yes.

! like "Blue Train”... myself.

I figured you would.

It's such a good band on there, you know?

That's a really dangerous album.

And it was a good recording.

"Blue Train" was such an important work.

It changed the face of jazz for ever.

That's one of the reasons why I knew I wanted to play music.

Cos I said If somebody can translate

these soundwaves into my body and make me feel this way,

I want to be included in that.

If you're expressing life through the music,

even when you're not aware that that is your goal,

being yourself and finding yourself, revealing yourself,

I think that's really what life is all about.

But along the way, helping everybody else to do that, too.

Cos I think that's part of the completion of the music.

What's contained on a record itself is incomplete,

'cause it doesn't include the process of the person

listening to it and how it affects them.

When you look at the really classic records

of the Blue Note sound,

you're realising it's a community of musicians

that have come together in different configurations,

at different times, but each of them are hugely individual.

Then you took somebody like Rudy Van Gelder

who could capture that sound, get their individual sound,

but also keep the Blue Note sound intact.

I think that was something very special.

I personally liked the music,

so I kind of was drawn to musicians

who were jazz musicians.

I just liked that freedom of improvisation

and the recognition of individual musicians.

Like there was such and such a name

and you get to know them all by the way they sounded.

Yeah, I started as a fan.

When Alfred came to me, I knew what he wanted.

He knew that I could get it for him

and that's how it started when we came together.

We're still rolling.

This is light, upbeat.

Not no jig-a-joom, teek-tiddy-boom, tiddy-boom, OK?

Gentlemen, gentlemen, take one.

It was my parents' home and I was allowed

to use the living room to record my jazz music.

They allowed me to put a control room window

in one of the walls to the living room.

I had all the equipment in there to record my jazz music.

But Alfred was a genius, and he knew what I needed to do

in order to make it sound

the way he expected it to sound like.

And he would rehearse every date that he made,

not so about the other companies like Prestige

where they would have to be ready

to play just music that they knew.

That's why you get a lot more standards

and simple music on the Prestige.

So when he would come to the studio,

he'd know in his mind how the finished product would sound.

And by the way, Frank...

They would sometimes disagree and there'd be big arguments.

"I liked that take." "Well, I liked this solo."

Those decisions came out of their interplay.

At the end of the session, everyone said,

"That's the good music," including the musicians.

That was the end of the musicians' involvement.

They trusted Alfred, who trusted me,

and that's how it went.

Miles, start again.

Miles, start again.

"I Waited For You," take two.

Wait a little longer!

- Say it again. - Other mic, Miles, please.

A little bit more...

OK;, here we go. "I Waited For You," take three.

During his Prestige years,

Miles Davis was able to make three wonderful dates

for Blue Note.

And even when he was at Columbia he went back to Blue Note

to make an album called "Somethin' Else"

with Cannonball Adderley.

And I know that he really loved Alfred Lion.

Play another one, Alfred.

- Another one? - Yeah, this is gonna be It.

Some of my clients wanted larger rooms for more musicians,

so I needed a bigger room.

So I said, "OK, I'm gonna build a studio.”

We liked the style of Frank Lloyd Wright.

We liked the materials he used, the shape of the rooms,

so we hired one of his students.

We wanted the music to have space, so I built it up high.

Yeah, that's pretty high right there.

Three storeys high.

A lot of people, when [ first came to town,

they thought, "Look at that, it's gonna be a church."

I remember the first time I heard a Blue Note record.

I was about 14.

I'll never forget it.

It was Joe Henderson's solo on "Mode for Joe"

where he's making these... I don't even call them notes.

They're like animalistic cries of anguish.

I thought, "Whoa, what is this music?"

These guys looked so cool.

I'd look at Francis Wolff's black-and-white photos

and see these guys in the room with all the smoke and...

It was always dark, man. There were no walls you could see.

And I just wanted to be there.

The Beatles looked cool. Jimi Hendrix looked cool.

These guys looked cooler.

What's the first one?

Freddie Hubbard's "Breaking Point".

Freddie Hubbard's "Breaking Point",

classic Blue Note record.

I never wanted to work for a record company.

But Blue Note was irresistible

because I'd grown up listening to those records

and because to me it represented artistry of the highest order.

A lot of jazz purists were like,

"What, the B-52's and The Rolling Stones?

He's gonna ruin the company."

You've got Don who's, like, produced everybody

and so he's got the greatest set of ears ever,

so you're not dealing with a real corporate person

that's coming in from a real business standpoint

that doesn't really get the music.

You've got somebody that this is their personal passion.

Switch the outputs, yeah.

When you're mastering,

you can dramatically change the sound of the music.

But our job in re-mastering the stuff

is not to editorialise in any way,

but to make sure that the artist's original intentions

are maintained through the various manifestations

that technology brings.

The old records represent about half the income for the company

and new music is the other half,

so even in the changing world of the music business,

because of the integrity of Alfred Lion

and the artists he brought to the company,

the doors stay open.

With us tonight, one of the outstanding jazz trumpeters

in the country today, Clifford Brown.

Oh, that's a great picture there.

That's a great picture.

One of the greatest of all times.

Clifford Brown was down in Wilmington, Delaware,

so I said, "Let me go there and check him out."

When I got down there,

I said, "I want you to do a record date."

You see, he had a car accident

and knocked his shoulder out of place

and he can't hold his horn,

but he got his trumpet and put it up on the fence.

We played a couple of tunes.

I said, "You could make the date like that." He said, "No."

So I said, "I'll call you and you can get in touch with Alfred

and come to New York."

Then his first date was made with me.

It wasn't the "Memorial Album". It was my date.

Not the "Memorial Album".

They just called it the "Memorial Album”

because he died.

Car accident.

When people talk about Clifford Brown,

they talk about him with such reverence.

Just his seriousness. I mean, this guy was so serious.

You know, he didn't drink, he didn't party.

He was always practising, like Coltrane.

And to just hear the level that he got to,

all by the age of 25...

You know, he passed when he was 25 years old. That is amazing.

So, yeah, for me, he is the biggest influence,

as far as trumpet players, on my plane.

Oh, here is something interesting.

This is "A Night at Birdland" with the Art Blakey Quintet

before there was a name, The Jazz Messengers.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you know,

we have something special down here at Birdland this evening.

A recording for Blue Note Records.

When you applaud for the different passages,

your hands go right on the record there,

so when they play 'em over and over throughout the country,

you may be some place and say,

"That's my hand on one of those records...

that I dug down at Birdland!”

Alfred wanted to do a date with the Blue Note All-Stars

and that's what it was supposed to be,

but Art gave Pee Wee a couple of dollars and said,

"When you make the announcement, say 'Art Blakey's Band'."

You listen to the record.

We're bringing back to the bandstand, ladies and gentlemen,

the great Art Blakey and his wonderful group,

featuring the new trumpet sensation, Clifford Brown,

Horace Silver on piano, Lou Donaldson on alto,

Curly Russell is on bass.

Let's get together and bring Art Blakey to the bandstand

with a great big round of applause.

We got on Alfred about it, but Alfred didn't care

because he saw he was gonna make a lot of money.

Because, you know, that Clifford Brown was sensational

and he didn't rock the boat.

He let it go like that and that's how it ended up.

How about a big hand now? For Art Blakey! Thank y'all!

That's one of my earliest memories of jazz,

that introduction. "Art Blakey!", you know?

That was like, "Man, I want them to say my name."

You know what I mean?

Picking up that record was pretty important for me,

in realising that that hard bop or that sound they were creating

it was a new sound.

Art Blakey took the name The Jazz Messengers

and Horace Silver went on to develop his own quintet.

Both institutions went on to discover new talent

for the next 30 years.

And that style became known as the Blue Note sound

because it was introduced on Blue Note Records.

It broke the rules of bebop,

which was supposed to break the rules

of whatever came before that.

Horace Silver's playing all this crazy, funky stuff

that you weren't allowed to play,

and Art Blakey's throwing in back beats

that you're not supposed to play in bebop

and they created something brand-new there.

They labelled it hard bop, but it changed the face of music.

We listen to it now, it doesn't sound quite as revolutionary

because it's become such a part

of the common vocabulary of musicians,

but at the time, it was very radical.

Art Blakey was a university to himself

and a lot of the musicians that came through his band

actually became leaders.

He was a leader who trained leaders.

They were fantastic musicians.

They were gentlemen,

they didn't believe in getting on stage with their anger.

Forget about that. We play.

All my life, I have been a band leader.

I never wanted to be the leader.

I always wanted to be a good sideman and have no headaches,

but I was always put info that position

because I was older than the rest of the fellas, not in age,

but I had more experience in life than they did.

When I was 13, I was in the coal mines, working.

I was already a man, you see.

Were you self-taught on drums?

Oh, I was self-taught on everything.

And I think there's no secret or nothin' about what I do.

It's just the idea of listening to the rest of the musicians

and being part of the group.

Thank you very much.

At this time, we'd like to feature our leader, Art Blakey.

Art Blakey, he had an incredible command

of whatever ensemble he was playing in.

He really leads the band into the next section

very naturally and very powerfully.

At this time, we'd like to do a tune

composed and arranged by our pianist, Bobby Timmons.

It's a little thing we recorded on...

Can I say it now?

Blue Note.

Blue Note Records.

We sincerely hope you all buy these records.

God knows we need the money.

Art would call Alfred for money.

And Alfred would send him money.

In fact, he told Alfred one time,

and he had both of us fell on the floor laughing,

because he said he was on his way to the airport

and somebody mugged him.

And Alfred said,

"I don't believe... I don't believe that story

because if I'd try to mug Art and I saw him, I'd stop!"

My band and I'm gonna run it.

I didn't say anything about the tune.

I just said we should make it once more.

You know damn well I'll make it 20 more times

if you want me to, Alfred, but don't come out and just say no.

Take it down a little slower. Just a little slower, Art.

Take 10.

At the tenor saxophone, the new star, Wayne Shorter.

Wayne Shorter proved to be something else.

He's such a fantastic...

He's one of the few musicians that has three degrees in music.

One of the few. And he has so much knowledge

and we had to bring him out as a tenor player,

just to come out and play his horn and play what he knew

because he's very shy.

And he was a fantastic writer.

And I made Wayne the musical director,

which brought his personality, gave him more self-assurance.

Art Blakey used to say,

"You can't hide behind your instrument."

You want Wayne to lead it off or something?

23. Take 23.

When we were in the studio at that time, in the '60s,

we questioned whether or not what we were doing

would be heard.

What effect would it have 20 years from then?

Will it do anything in the world?

Will it create some kind of value?

The kind of value you can't put a price on.

Cos we were not in the business of making hit records,

and hit music.

Take 23.

We had no thought of competing with...

They call it business.

The music business.

If I really am experiencing something difficult,

I'll put on "Speak No Evil" and that's as good as meditation.

It is like meditation.

A neurologist would probably not be able to find the difference

between meditation and focusing on "Speak No Evil".

And I always feel better, always feel refreshed,

always remember who I am.

That's a pretty amazing service to provide for people.

It's such a classic record for me,

all the players on that album.

When you add that with the compositions and everything,

it's just so sad and I feel like it's pouring out.

It's so beautiful and thoughtful.

It's thought out, but not thought out at the same time.

It's so many things. Sometimes you can't explain it.

That's what music is for.

You can't say it, SO you just hear it.

Hey, Wayne.

- Hey, Wayne. - Yeah?

Who's this?

That's Frank Wolff!

Yeah. If you played and Frank was dancing,

- that was the take. - Is that right?

If he wasn't dancing, that was not the take.

- And he danced like that? - That's what he did.

It was kind of a little shuffle.

No matter where the beat was.

No, it had nothing to do with the beat!

- How you doing, man? - I'm good.

Herbie and Wayne are just so...

They have such a basic chemistry together.

I love hearing them, those guys together.

Good to see you, man.

Wayne's actually my favourite jazz composer.

I love his compositions.

Wayne has a really dark, eerie, melodic, beautiful sound

that, before Wayne, I never heard it in jazz before.

It's just a certain mood that when you meet him, you get it.

The reflection of him is the music.

What tunes we're doing?

I brought a sketch of "Masqualero”.

- Oh, you did? - I heard you say it.

Yeah, yeah, good.

It's just what it is. Two lines and then go for it.

Let's do that. Yeah, great.

The song's called "Masqualero”.

The name Masqualero always intrigued me.

The Native American tribes

around the south-west of the United States,

the Apache, they had really elaborate, mysterious masks.

They seemed to come out of nowhere

and then recede info nowhere

when they were defending their land or something like that.

So...

The actual bass line

was written to create some kind of mystery

and then the melody even more mystery.

It's just my way of shining some light

on something that really happened in American history,

with interaction between people,

the Masqualero tribe, and things that we didn't understand

about them and ourselves.

- Should we try one? - Yeah. How are y'all doing?

Good!

You have to listen very carefully, very close.

I have Derrick Hodge next to me.

I have Kendrick there.

You know, I have Herbie far away, but I hear him on the...

So I'm reacting to the moment.

So ll have no idea

how I'm gonna start, how I'm gonna finish this.

Completely open.

I think that's the beauty of this music.

Getting in the unknown zone.

The feeling that I get when I'm really improvising

with other people who are really improvising is a feeling

that I don't get anywhere else.

It's something that always feels like it's a step

or a half-step away from me.

I don't know if you ever achieve lit.

It's transcendent. It's just like I'm not there.

But I know that you get closer to it

by not living in the past or the future.

Just sort of submitting to the now.

It takes some kind of courage and fearlessness,

and the courage to be vulnerable is a challenge.

To summon courage is a challenge itself.

- It's always daunting. - Yeah.

But the more you challenge yourself

to muster up the courage,

the more this uncertainty becomes your ally.

That was deep. Beautiful.

We did two takes of "Masqualero”

and we didn't add anything, we didn't subtract anything.

It's exactly as it went down in the room.

Art Blakey said...

"Don't be getting fresh with me!"

I saw how each individual relinquished the leadership

and being in a band situation with Herbie Hancock

and Wayne Shorter, I immediately want to relinquish it to them,

but they're waiting for me to do something.

They want to see what you have to offer

and to frame that picture for you.

Which is something that's very important in a jazz group,

that everybody has a voice.

And in that you have to be courageous

and find whatever turns you on in the moment.

I learn a lot from Herbie.

He's one of the musicians who is always supporting

the moments, you know.

If you're making a mistake, he will fix it in a second.

And he won't even raise his head to look at you.

So he's just into the music

and it's very easy because, whatever you do,

he will be supporting you the best way.

And it's very hard, foo,

because on the paper it says C Major 7

and Herbie plays something else.

He's beyond the notes.

Like, you know,

how we musicians think about the notes we're playing.

He's definitely beyond that.

It all comes down to managing the ego

in a way that allows the music to really, really come out.

People like Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock,

they can allow the music to flow through, you know.

It feels a little bit deeper.

I mean, like they work on their humanity as well as their music.

That's the one.

The second one is hijacked by the first one.

I mean, the second one is like an alternate story.

But the second one is like the guy who says,

"I wanna be the second guy to go to Mars!"

This idea of collaboration that we have is

the personal expression of what the music really is about.

Anyway, it's about collaboration and freedom.

Miles, he asked me one time, he said,

"Do you ever get tired of playing music

that sounds like music?"

And then he said, "Do you ever feel like you wanna play

as if you don't know how to play?"

Play your instrument, play. He's getting at something.

Miles himself taught me something by his behaviour.

What happened was

in '64, '65,

this particular night was like

the night where everything was working

and we got to a place in the music

where the flow was happening and the music was just peaking

and it was during Miles' solo

and at the high point I played this chord that was...

It was so wrong.

It was so wrong!

And I just felt like I had destroyed everything, right?

And Miles took a breath

and then he played some notes

that actually made my chord right.

How do you do that? You know?

I was ready to crawl under the floor,

but the difference was that I had judged what I had done.

Miles didn't judge what I did.

He heard it and heard it as a part of the music.

Oh, like something new that came into the music.

And he found something that worked.

You know, so it taught me a lesson

that I've tried my best to not only maintain,

but to utilise, you know?

The idea of being non-judgmental is such an important virtue

for creating value in so many different ways.

It was a lesson that came from the life of Miles Davis

and the life of that group, and life in that moment.

When Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter were on the label,

they were making these records

based around the kind of modal experiments

that they were conducting in the Miles Davis Group.

That changed everything.

That changed how you voiced chords,

what you based your solos around.

The thing that attracts me to a musician

is the fact that they're an artist.

It's the changing, it's the evolution.

It's the willingness to throw everything out the window

in search of something new.

Take 27.

Take 27.

And musicians on Blue Note specifically,

you can see that there was a direction.

You know, there was a goal, there was a quest.

I didn't need it, but they keep telling me it's 27.

They're also artists who are on the same mission that you're on.

- Take 27. - Merry Christmas.

I take from each of those artists

and I see how they affected the world at large

through their social consciousness.

You listen to "Free For All" by Art Blakey.

That's about more than musical freedom.

It's an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement.

That album was recorded right between the march on Selma

and the passage of the Civil Rights Bill.

They're dealing with segregation.

They're dealing with just overt racism,

so, yeah, the music is political

because the times here in the United States

during the '50s and '60s were politically charged.

Never at a point do I hear the music

and hear them being defeated.

Somehow, regardless of what they were fighting with,

they're going down in history creating something

that influenced my life in a way where I felt freedom,

where it brought me joy,

where it made me wanna write music that gave people hope.

So I call 'em heroes cos when you hear these records,

you feel what they strived for,

what they were fighting to hopefully get to.

I mean, that's amazing.

This is Lee Morgan's comeback album on Blue Note,

"The Sidewinder".

Joe Henderson, Barry Harris, Billy Higgins

and Bob Cranshaw on bass.

You know, as you can see,

there is a lot of false starts

before they really got it together.

The first complete take was Take 25

and as Alfred noted, it was good.

And that became the take.

In 1966,

Blue Note accidentally had two very big, successful records.

The first one was Lee Morgan, "The Sidewinder",

and the second one a year later was Horace Silver,

"Song For My Father".

Those records got on the pop charts.

They sold tens of thousands of copies.

And they came completely unexpected.

Alfred had no idea and they ran out of records within 48 hours.

And once they had two very big, successful records,

a problematic economics came into play.

Distributors were pressing them to deliver more hits.

Alfred just wanted to keep producing Blue Note records

as usual, not worry about a hit,

so the distributors started to slow down paying the label.

And that was a forced incentive for distributors

to pressure the label to give them more hits.

And so there was a major, major cash flow problem.

Alfred and Frank felt that they needed to sell

to a larger label with more financial resources.

The new people that bought the company,

all they wanted was to sell records.

They weren't interested in art form,

you know, but they wanted to compete with other records,

you know, which is hard to do, playing jazz.

Alfred was having a real rough time working for somebody else

when he had been working only for himself.

And he couldn't get used to all the meetings

and the sales plans and the budgets

and he just wanted to get out.

And so in the summer of 1967 he left.

And Frank Wolff ran it until his death in early 1971.

Then Blue Note stopped recording most straight-ahead jazz.

Jazz in the '50s and in the '60s used to tell the stories

of the inner cities.

Then there was a time after that that it stopped doing that.

And then hip hop in the '80s came around

and that was the thing that told the stories

of the inner cities all of a sudden.

When I was a kid,

the ghettos weren't used to seeing motherfuckers

with instruments no more.

Cos at that point they killed all the music programmes

from the school.

So there was no instruments.

I think that's what made gangbanging turn up in LA

a whole bunch in the '80s.

Cos the kids had nothing to do, no more after-school programmes.

No more band teachers, SO gangbanging turning up...

self-hate turning up, murder rate turning up,

crack turning up.

All that was left was the records, the albums

and turntables.

No instruments.

Motherfuckers took records, turntables

and went to the South Bronx and parks and got down.

I started making music around 1985.

And at that time, hip hop was still this new, fresh sound.

One thing most people could find in their homes

was a record player.

And if you had a record player,

chances are your neighbour had a record player,

so you put two of them together

and it's definitely the birthplace of hip hop.

That communal need to get together, to understand,

to express, finding records and looking for that breakbeat.

Something that your rapper could go on.

Something that you can backspin back and forth

and just let the beat rock.

Lee Morgan, "Absolutions”,

it starts off with a baseline

that you can just snatch as a groove.

I fell in love with jazz through hip hop.

And that was through Tribe Called Quest.

I started wanting to understand and wanting to learn.

"What is this?" Herbie record. Bam!

Ron Carter records. Bam! Lenny White records. Bam!

Through them records, you find other musicians.

Blue Note Records became the go-to.

What we were discovering

is that the jazz records had a lot of open break sections,

a lot of solo sections.

And not only for the drummer,

but for all of the players.

They had their moments and I think

that was the beauty of discovering jazz.

Once they had the swing in it and the beat in it,

they liked it and they sampled it.

I found out by looking at my royalties.

Lou Donaldson is an architect for hip hop.

Idris Muhammad was a part of a lot of people's personnel

and so his sound is all over hip hop.

There are certain musicians

who are just the backbone of hip hop.

Grant Green is another one, you know, bluesy,

soulful, energetic,

who also recorded with a lot of personnel.

There is so much information in each player's part.

In jazz, there's the freedom to improvise,

but it's more than just having your go to solo.

It's like completely just letting go.

Finding a portal...

that you can transcend your entire self through it

with the instrument, with the sound.

There's freedom in that and that's what I get from jazz.

The Chairman of EMl Records

asked me to have dinner with him.

He said, "How would you like to start

Blue Note Records all over again?

It's been dormant now for a number of years.

Let's start it again. Would you like to."

I said, "My favourite label is Blue Note.

of course 1'd love to do this."

So we started in July of 1984.

The other half of my heartbeat ls Michael Cuscuna

who did this with me right from the very beginning

as a consultant.

This was a completely different era

than when Frank Wolff and Alfred Lion ran it

as an independent label.

No longer could you have just one designer

and one studio and one engineer.

You could not get the continuity and the cohesion

that was part of the original Blue Note.

So what we really decided to do was keep in mind the quality

and the standard that Alfred Lion

and Frank Wolff set for everybody.

These two guys in the UK that wanted

to sample a couple of Blue Note records.

They wanted particularly "Cantaloupe Island”

by Herbie Hancock.

First question I asked, "Would Alfred Lion have done this?"

I was with Tom Everett, who was the general manager

of the label at that time.

Tom said, "It's got to be on Blue Note, man. You're crazy.

Alfred would have done this."”

They said, "You're gonna stop us from putting this out, right?"

I said, "No, you can sample the entire Blue Note catalogue.

Let's make an album.”

They couldn't believe we were allowing them to do this.

I said, "Yeah, let's go and just do it.”

The album sold several million copies.

It was a very lucky day for us.

I received a phone call from an accountant

in the royalty accounting department.

And I thought maybe we had an accounting problem,

a royalty problem, so I took the call

and I said, "Do we have some problems?"

She said, "No, no. I want you to hear this young singer,

a great jazz singer that I'm involved with."

I said, "Well, fine."

On Friday, in comes this young girl, very shy,

a dark-haired girl with glasses,

very pretty, but very, very shy and very demure.

I said, "What's your background?"

She said, " went to North Texas State.

I was a jazz piano and voice major

and I'm in New York now, doing gigs downtown."

I said, "Do you have something I can listen to?"

She said, "I have a CD with three songs on it."

I put it on and I was stunned.

I think midway through the song I probably stopped the CD player

and said, "Look, I don't get this.

You're, what, 21, 22 years old and you're nailing this song!"

I didn't have to hear it again. I simply said to her,

"Look, I want to sign you to Blue Note Records."

I knew it was gonna do well.

I never expected it was gonna end up Record of the Year.

She won every one, every category.

If you find a real artist, you're lucky enough,

you don't ask marketing questions,

you don't say, "Where's the hit single?

Why isn't this something that's flavour of the minute?"

An awful lot of people in our business look for that,

want something that sounds like somebody else on the radio.

Get someone that means something,

not somebody that's a confection.

There's too much of that.

He really made the label happen again when he brought it back.

He was very warm and he cared deeply about his artists.

The reason I love being on this label

is because I've always felt like I had that freedom

to make my own music and do whatever I want.

And I don't feel confined by the restrictions

of the jazz genre.

Bruce Lundvall signed me.

Once he signed me, I went into his office

with a plan of my album, what I wanted to do.

Bruce stopped me and said...

"Don't worry about that. You're the artist. Make the art.

It's our job to sell it. Do what you do."

OK, start me from right there.

We're gonna start from that same spot. It's, like, four, right?

I feel like jazz is starting to reach

back to the younger audiences

and I feel like Rob is a big part of that

because of his ability to incorporate hip hop.

That's appealing to the younger audience,

they wouldn't traditionally listen to jazz.

'Cause the way the music comes out

when he plays it, it feels hip hop.

It's jazz sensibilities, but it's hip hop feeling.

I was always mixing jazz and hip hop.

I was always doing soul music, R&B, hip hop, jazz.

And I got to know so many people

from the other side, other than just jazz.

I was like, "I know all these R&B hip hop cats,

and I'm always in the jazz world.

I want to do an album to bring that together."

We do what we can to reflect our generation

and the sounds of our generation

because that's what people under us coming up can relate to.

You know?

Blue Note is the past, present and the future.

It's always doing something different.

It's always turning on the next generation

to something that could change their life.

Blue Note and Robert together broke the doors down

for what I do.

A lot of times, the jazz world is like a secret society

and the mainstream people who listen to R&B and hip hop

don't know what's going on in the jazz world.

When we won that R&B Album of the Year award,

that made us visual to that side of the music,

therefore making jazz more visual.

I'd like to thank Don Was,

Cem Kurosman and everyone at Blue Note Records...

When college kids see that, that inspires them

to be themselves and play their influences.

I think there's a movement going on now, a great movement.

You have all these other bands coming up

that are making a lot of noise,

that come from a jazz background,

so as of now, it's pretty damn cool to be a jazz musician.

I'm friends with Terrace Martin.

Terrace Martin and a lot of LA cats like Kamasi Washington

and all these guys,

Thundercat Stephen Bruner,

I've known them since we were teenagers.

Ambrose, that's my homeboy. He got a bounce with his music.

You can hear the hip hop in his writing.

Hip hop ain't "boom-cap-boom-cap".

It's a way of life. It's a culture.

Terrace kept calling me. He was like, "We're doing this thing.

Man, it's gonna change hip hop."

I was like, "Really? Come on, man.

I'm just gonna stay at home and practise." He kept calling me.

Finally, I was like, "OK, I'm gonna come to the studio.”

As soon as I came, he was like, "Man, just play him a track."

I was like, "Wow, OK,

you guys really are about to change the game.”

They didn't ask me to do anything.

They just turned on the track and I went in the studio

and I just played.

Just like you would do on a jazz session.

Robert came in and did eight songs in one night.

Ambrose came in...

One take, done.

"To Pimp A Butterfly" is influenced by jazz.

It's influenced by funk.

It's influenced by soul music,

music that comes from the black communities and the ghetto.

I was in the studio one day with my guy Terrace Martin

and he was like, "Man, a lot of the chords that you pick

are jazz-influenced.

You're a jazz musician by default.”

And that's something that just opened me up.

Then he just started breaking down the science of It,

going back to Miles, Herbie Hancock.

"Man, [ like that sound. What is that?

That's what I've been liking all these years?"

"Yeah, you've been liking this for years. This is your DNA."

To me, hip hop is definitely connected to jazz

in terms of what it does, its purpose.

Just because someone is Now rapping

or doing poetry over a beat

doesn't mean it's different from jazz.

So, for me, I think hip hop and jazz are the exact same thing.

I think we are getting back to the time

where people are more explicit

about the message they're trying to convey.

There's a lot of people in jail, man.

A lot of people thinking about committing suicide

and all kinds of shit right now cos times is fucked up.

I got to play the music or else I'm gonna die.

Or get pulled over by the police and you get killed.

So you got to do the music to soothe the times.

- Can you hear me on this mic? - Yeah.

- OK. - What are the changes?

- What are you playing? - It's a C minor flat 6.

A-flat major sharp 11.

The record company that our founders started

allowed the musicians complete freedom

as a method for breaking down the barriers

that exist in music and taking it to new places.

And you've got to keep that tradition going.

You know, it's important

because now we're in an era where the stakes are high.

There's a possibility now where kids can grow up

and not even care to want to play an instrument.

It's really a vibe song that interjects that...

If we don't keep handing it down in the way that Herbie and Wayne

and those guys have handed it to us,

it may change in a way that we don't want it to change,

so we should be concentrating

on passing down those lessons the greats taught us.

And then we can, like, group-compose,

like, if we think of some alternate changes.

I was thinking of something vibey.

We want the generation of now to understand the music.

You know what I mean? Especially understand jazz music.

Wanna try it?

- Keith, are you recording? - Indeed.

OK, let's just try it.

24, take 24...