August 1, 2023 • 36 mins
Acclaimed jazz musician Christian McBride has made hundreds of recordings, won eight Grammy Awards and led numerous ensembles, including the Christian McBride Band, the Christian McBride Big Band, Inside Straight and the New Jawn. The versatile bassist has collaborated with jazz legends Herbie Hancock, Ray Brown, Freddie Hubbard, and Chick Corea, as well as artists outside the genre like Sting, Paul McCartney and Celine Dion. Known as a child prodigy, McBride performed with Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis while still in high school, where he attended Philadelphia’s High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, alongside future members of The Roots and Boyz II Men. McBride now serves as the artistic director of the Newport Jazz Festival and the educational foundation Jazz House Kids. Christian McBride speaks with Alec about his influences, leaving Juilliard early to go on the road, and how being a working musician is similar to being a professional athlete. For information on upcoming tour dates, go to christianmcbride.com.
You can find a playlist featuring Alec’s favorite Christian McBride songs here.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from iHeart Radio. The sound you're hearing is the magic
fingers of acclaimed jazz bassist, composer and arranger Christian McBride.
(00:26):
That's him on Stick and Move with his band Inside,
straight from Live at the Village Vanguard. The eight time
Grammy winner is the leader of several bands of various
sizes and configurations. He's collaborated with everyone from Herbie Hancock
and Diana Crawl to Sting and Celine Dion. He also
(00:48):
serves as the artistic director of both the Newport Jazz
Festival and the educational organization Jazz House Kids. Growing up,
McBride was known to many as a child prodigy. He
attended the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts
in the same class as Questlove and Boys to Men.
(01:09):
He even performed on stage with both Wynton Marsalis and
Miles Davis while still in high school. I wanted to
know how a young talent like McBride found his entry
point to a challenging genre like jazz.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The music I grew up on was James Brown. James
Brown has always been my number one musical hero our household,
you know, like you said, you grew up on Cream
and Hendrix and Zappa. My household was full of James Brown,
the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and the Pips, Al Green,
Isaac Hayes. So I sort of backed my way into jazz,
(01:48):
you did, Oh yeah, absolutely? And what was the.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Beginning of that seduction? How did you decide? Because I mean,
I'm not saying this to be kind. You seem like
you could play any music you wanted to, well, thank you,
and you'd have a seed in any band you wanted.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Well, that was my ultimate goal. You know, my dad
is also a professional bass player, and so while I'm
growing up listening to all this R and B and
soul music, my dad started playing with the great Cuban
percussionist Mongo Santa Maria. And so I saw my dad
play with Mongo a lot, and you know, I thought,
I don't know much about Latin music, but this is killing,
(02:23):
you know. And I was eight years old and I
was watching dad play with Mongo and Dizzy Gillespie was
the guest soloist with the band that night, and I
knew who Dizzy was I wasn't familiar with his music,
but I knew who he was, you know, who didn't
know those cheeks, you know, And I had seen him
on The Muppet Show and you know, so he was
(02:44):
like the only jazz musician who I knew. And after
the show was over, my dad took me backstage, and
I remember Meltor May was also there that night, Ella
Fitzgerald and Dizzy and you know, just being around all
these legendary jazz musicians, I thought, man, he's these guys
are cool, you know. But even still. It wasn't until
(03:04):
I got to middle school and I started playing the
upright bass. That's when the other bass player in my family,
my great uncle, he plays bass also. He got so
excited that I was playing upright bass. He said, come
over to my house. I got something for you, and
he had a stack of records waiting for me. He
gave me a crash course in the history of jazz
in like six hours, you know. He played my house
(03:26):
Cold Traine, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong all the way up
through Weather Report and Return It Forever, and things that
were contemporary like Win Marcellus and Terrence Blanchard. So He
really pulled me all the way in. And the reason
why I fell in love with jazz was partly because
of the music, but also because of the way my
(03:47):
great uncle taught me, which I feel is probably the
most important thing that I wish more instructors would learn.
So most jazz teachers, I think most jazz fans tend
to be a little dogmatic. You know, they teach you
how great the music is by belittling what you already like.
And my great uncle never did that. So what do
(04:08):
you mean, the little one. It's like Prince Man, he
don't need to listen to No, Prince that's garbage. See,
you need to listen to you need to listen to
cat Jazz is a higher place, right right. So my
great uncle never did that. He knew how much I
loved James Brown and Michael Jackson and Prince and Rick James,
and he was like, oh, yeah, they're bad too, they're
bad too, But listen to this, you know. And you
(04:30):
know he would like a cigarette, and you know he was.
He had a favorite rocking chair that he like a
lounge chair he sat in when he listened to his records,
and he would sit way down his back was almost
on the bottom of the chair, and his knees would
wiggle and he would talk to the record as it
was playing. He'd be like, yeah, baby, who listen to that?
(04:50):
You hear you here with Miles is putting down baby,
you know. So he was always so comical. How could
you turn down? You know what I'm saying. I said,
if jazz makes him that cool, I want to be
like him. So that's what got me in there. Now,
where'd you grew up a part of the county? You
were in Philly. You're in Philly, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
For me, I grew up with that music, you know,
British Invasion, all that stuff in the seventies and Pink
Floyd whatever. And then, as I told people on this show,
because I'm a big classical music junkie, I was in
a car once in nineteen eighty six, I think it was,
and I turned on the radio, and you know, all
the popular music that was playing at that.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Time ceased to speak to me.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Right, So I turn on the radio and on comes
SCHALTI conducted the Chicago that we were doing them all
or ninth and I go down that rabbit hole of
classical music forever and the same with jazz. When I
saw Fosse's movie, I just was like, you know, the
mathematics of jazz. Jazz to me is mathematical. Are jazz
compositions written and scored like regular music, like any other music?
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Some of them are. You know, jazz is based on improvisation,
but there is a there's very much a form to it.
For example, most pop songs have a very strict structure,
you know, verse, verse course, verse course, bridge, verse course.
You know, whereas jazz, you get a melody with the
(06:10):
set of chord changes. You play that melody with those
chord changes. Now, once you do that, you have a
conversation based on that melody and those chord changes. So
it's kind of like giving someone a topic and say, okay,
talk about this. I don't really know what I'm going
to say, but you know enough about this subject that
you can just have an open conversation about it. So
(06:31):
that's what jazz is for me.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
When I listen to different types of jazz, I mean,
there's jazz I find very soothing. Obviously piano. I'm a
huge Oscar Peterson nut soundtracks of movies you mentioned cab
Caliwaight Nose sequences and cotton Club. But then there's jazz
that is like, you know, I got no idea.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Where we goes that way. Yeah, it goes that way.
What you said, It goes that way.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And these guys are playing then you're going and you know,
I feel like they're going to play until they just drop.
There's no end to the song. I feel they're going
to play until they just pass out. Is it always
was twas?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Ever?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Thus was a jazz always like that? Or has it
evolved over time which was much more freeform?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Definitely evolved before. Actually before I answered that. Knowing that
you're a big Oscar Peterson, you might want to know
that my godfather was the late great Ray Brown. Oh yeah,
I actually have one of his basses. Oh my god.
Yeah yeah, so Ray lives with me every day, and
therefore some of the's Oscar. But it has evolved big time.
(07:34):
You know. One beautiful thing is a built in challenge
with jazz because no one's ever played jazz to get
rich or famous. We play it because we love it.
It's the highest form of musical artistry, and that you
get to bring all of these things in one place
and interpret it through this lens. Of what we call jazz,
(07:55):
you know, this this swing based blues idiom. You know.
But in the sixties, when people like on that Coleman
and Cecil Taylor and Coltrane left Miles Davis's band, he
starts to evolve on his own. The music took this
extremely cataclysmic explosion where like it was turned into free
(08:16):
jazz or what some would call avant garde, meaning that
you have a form, but you don't actually have to
stick to that form anymore. You know, if the song
is twelve bars, well, once we start improvising, let's making
thirteen bars. Let's making fourteen bars. Now the challenge is
that that's a lot of fun for the musicians, but
(08:37):
sometimes the listener is going, what the hell are you
people doing? Right?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
You guys have a lot of fun on glad, I'm
glad you're enjoying this. And so who would you say
were some of the pioneers there? Rather in terms of
the changes, like who is a person that came along
and click there's a change?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Well, I think most people would say on that Coleman
was sort of like the definition, like he was the
demarcation point in you know what Miles Davis and Harras
Silver and blaking the jazz messengers were doing up until
the late fifties, and then Ornett came along and just
kind of really shook the tree and like you know,
(09:16):
he calls the stir when he came on the scene.
So most would say Ornette Coleman was sort of like
the godfather of free jazz.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
What I notice is that when I read about because
you seem like a very robust, physically fit, healthy man,
and I wonder, what is it about jazz that No
more so than the rock and roll world, but for sure,
but a lot of the people in that world were
very troubled. People like Bill Evans is somebody that I
was obsessed with, and I got all the Bill Evans
records I could, and Evan singing with Tony Bennett.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
But I love Bill Evans, and I found.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That that his life was horrible when he was like
a huge he was a heroin Annet and all this
other stuff, and Miles was all messed up.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I mean not saying that the jazz plays.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Into that or any more so than rock and roll, right,
but to this day, do you find there's a spirit,
there's a soul to the people that can play that music, well,
that's a tormented soul.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I don't know if that's a myth or a fact,
because just like you said, I mean, you can find
just as many musicians in any other style of music
that had a lot of personal problems, you know. But
I feel like the way jazz has been probably inside
the last half century, you find less of that now
than ever now. On the other hand, one of the
(10:30):
great legends who I played with early in my career
was the late great trumper to Freddie Hubbard, and I
remember Freddie. He told this to my friend Clark Gaton,
great trumpbone player. He says, see, man, you know what's
wrong with you young cats? Y'all. Don't drink y'all, don't
smoke y'all, don't eat meat y'all, health conscience by nine o'clock. Man,
what the hell is that? Man? You know what you
(10:51):
sound like it?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Harold Klerman spoke at this school when I went back
to school, and he did this lecture there, the famous
producer Harold Cleerman. And when it was over they someone
said to me, what would you do differently? And by
then he was in his eighties, what would I do differently?
He said, I'd go to more parties, I'd stay out
late at night, I'd have more alcohol.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
He just was like, so balls to the wall.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Now, is it tough in the I mean people in
the classical world, people in every corner of the music
business are lamenting the difficulty with digital downloads?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Is it? Is it tough in jazz as well? Obviously?
Well it was so tough before then. I don't know
if it really hasn't mattered that much. You know, because
even before streaming came along, both jazz and classical musicians
had the smallest piece of the pie. I think it
was like one percent and three percent of the entire
record buying market. So, you know, all of our money
(11:45):
comes from playing live performances. When do you first go
on the road. When are you in a club and
you're getting paid?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
When did that happen? Nineteen eighty nine. I graduated from
high school and by that time I had become good
friends with when Marcellus, who was the hottest young name
in jazz, and you met him where I met him
in Philly. He came to do a masterclass and I
attended this master class, and you know, I told him
how much I admired his music, and I had all
of his records and he kind of put me on
(12:15):
the spot. He says, yeah, what do you play? I said,
I played a bass. He said go get it, and
so I ran and grabbed my bass and all the
kids in the classroom were like, ooh, you know, what's
he about to do? And so went and said let's
play something and we played a little blues. And a
couple of nights later he said, Hey, my band is
playing at the Academy Music. I want you to come
(12:35):
and sold fifteen yeah and playing with Wynton at the
Academy of Music at fifteen yeah. Well he just invited
me to the show. I didn't know he was going
to actually invite me to come. He didn't tell you
that you were going to play. No, he didn't come
to see the show man. I'm sitting backstage with two
of my friends, one of which was the late great
(12:56):
Joey D. Francesco. And went and gets on a micro phone.
I see his bass player is putting us bass down
and my feet start getting like, where's he going? And
went and gets on the microphone. He says, you know,
ladies and John want to tell you about this kid
I met at this masterclass a couple of days ago,
like what and you know, two thousand people in the audience,
you know, he said, I think you're going to be
(13:17):
hearing a lot more about him. Please welcome Christian McBride
to the stage. And I mean, like I had icicles
coming off of my hands, like, oh my god. And
we played what was the title track to his new
album at that time. It's called Jay Mood. And from
(13:59):
that point on he became a big brother, a mentor.
He started telling people about me, say, hey, you got
to look out for this kid in Philly. And so
by the time I moved to New York to go
to college, a few jazz musicians knew who I was.
So the saxophonist Bobby Watson found out that I was
going to Juilliard and he came and said, hey, I
want you to make some gigs with me. I was like,
(14:21):
what you know? So Bobby gave me my first gig
in New York and I was in the fall of
nineteen eighty nine at Birdland back when it was up
on one hundred and fifth Street. So Bobby kind of
he kicked me off my career in New York.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Now when you talk about you guys don't pick it up.
You don't see Freddie Hubart, Freddy Hubbert. So when you
get Freddy Hubbard's admonition that you're not living the right life,
what was it like for you to be that young around.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
These guys, Well, specific was your mother picking you up
at the stage door at the end of the show.
She was definitely worried, you know, because my mother saw
all the musicians that my dad played with, and they
come from their old school. So when I told my
mom I wanted to be a professional jazz musician, She's like,
oh god, you know, really you sure? You know? So Winton,
(15:11):
because he was so well studied. He was sort of
like the complete opposite of what the image of a
jazz musician had been.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he was clean, well studied,
well read. He actually had a conversation with my mom said, listen,
miss McBride, it's not like it used to be. You know,
your son's going to be all right. You know, I'll
look out for him. He's got a lot of big
brothers who look out for him, you know. So he talked.
He made it easier for my mom to let me
move to New York. But when I started playing with
(15:39):
Freddie actually a little bit of Bobby Watson too, there
was still a lot of that old school element, you know,
a lot of tough love. You know. They didn't put
their hand on your back and say, you know, next time,
maybe you should do it like this. You know, they
were like, hey, what the hell are you doing? Yeah,
you know it's professional.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, yeah, Jazz Babs, Christian McBride. If you enjoy conversations
with preternaturally gifted musicians, check out my episode with Christian
McBride's band and classmate Amir quest Love Thompson.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
We weren't even really going to accept the position, and
then the funniest thing happened.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We were on UCLA campus.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
I went to do a quick interview in my dressing room,
and when it was over six minutes later, I opened
the door and on the field, Grass, Jimmy and all
eight members of the Roots were in the eight is
Enough Human pyramid stands and I looked at my manager.
We just looked at each other and we're like, we're
(16:42):
not giving rim this guy, are we. What Jimmy managed
to do was disarm us in less than ten minutes.
He's that guy like when you watch the movie and
the guys are trying to dissemble the bomb in like
zero point three seconds. Yea, he knows exactly how to
disarm you.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
To hear more of my conversation with Questlove, go to
Hear's Thething dot Org. After the break, Christian McBride talks
about attending Juilliard and the challenging audition period he endured
to get in. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
(17:23):
Here's the Thing. This is eley Efe from The Philadelphia Experiment,
(17:50):
a collaboration between Christian McBride, pianist Uri Kane and Questlove.
As a jazz musician, Christian McBride natural spends a lot
of time on the road. I wanted to know what
life was like for someone that tours for a living. Man.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I feel so fortunate that I get to do what
I love for a living. You know why complain? Yeah,
things get a little hard every now and then. You know,
you travel, you're on the road all the time. You
don't get to see your family. You're married. I've been
married almost twenty years and you have how many kids?
No kids? No kids, you're a genius. No kids.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
So the traveler is does your wife get to come
with you.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Sometimes when she sings in my big band? So when
I play with my big band, she travels with me.
But I mean she runs the foundation, so she's manning
the fort at home. But you know, it's like going
on the road seven days a week, probably forty to
forty five weeks out of the year. That grinds on
your health, you know. But the flip side of it
(18:52):
is like, Okay, what else would you rather be doing?
You know, I get to travel around the world and
meet people and playing you know what I mean, It's like,
there's nothing better than that. How many people in your band?
So the band that I've been touring with the most
for the last four years is called the New John.
John is a slang terminology only used by Philadelphians in
(19:14):
New York would be joint. So John is j A
w N the New John joint yep exactly Philly term. Okay,
And so that's just four of us trumpet, tenor saxophone, bass,
and drums. Yeah. And I have another group called Inside Straight,
which is a quintet. That band was named by a
(19:36):
I had a fan contest I named the band contest,
and a couple from Fort bradd, California submitted inside Straight,
and I thought, hmm, you know, I actually do play poker,
and inside Straight is the name of one of my
favorite Cannibal Attley albums, so it made sense. And I
have a new group. I had my big band, which
is just the Christian McBride big band and comedy in
(19:58):
that seventeen really yeah, how much did they get to travel?
Not much? It's expensive. Yeah, yeah, we've gone to Asia.
We went to China and Japan, but we we got
a grant to go on that tour, and we did
a two week European tour a few few years ago.
So we don't get a chance to travel that often.
(20:19):
But we get at least one gig every year here
in New York or in Newark.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It's funny how the bands are touring, and therefore I
was more successful the less people are in the band.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Absolutely. Yeah, man, you gotta wat it down to a trio.
You're gonna get rich. Listen here, man, you gotta balance
their budget. Now.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
When you are in Philadelphia and Winton calls you up
there at the Academy, when do you get to New
York what year?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
So that was eighty seven when Winton called me up
to sit in So two years later in eighty to
go where the Juilliard. There was no jazz program at Juilliard.
When I went there, went to study as a classical bassist.
Because while I was in high school, I was also
playing a lot of classical music. So I was playing
in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, Temple University Youth Chamber Orchestra.
(21:10):
So I had like a little parallel thing going. And
even though my heart was in jazz, I had gotten
good enough at classical music where my base instructor said,
you know, you should take the audition. You know, see
what happens. I knew I wanted to be in New York. Again,
this was this had nothing to do with classical music.
I knew that I wanted to be in New York
(21:31):
because I wanted to sort of go nag and stalk
all my favorite jazz musicians. So I said, well, the
only way for me to get to New York is
to go to college. And so is that true, I thought, because.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
You're the kid who's fifteen who gets hand picked by
Wynton to play I would.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Have thought you would have gone to New York and
you would have been walking through the doors and just
playing well, you know, but my mom wasn't going to
let that happen. So everybody agreed you should get an education, yes, yes,
And so I only applied to three schools, the New Schoo, Juilliard,
in the Manhattan School of Music exactly right, right, right.
So I took an audition for Juilliard, and uh, much
(22:09):
to my shock, I got in. You know, I think
back to how traumatic that was. And one of these
did that on purpose. Like one thing that they probably
shouldn't have done is you could hear the other auditioners
before you. Right, So I'm sitting outside of this audition
room and I can hear the other bass players in there,
(22:30):
and I mean they are awesome, you know. They're playing
the Echo Sonata and the Dragon Eddie and the Kusovitski
and I'm just sitting out there like, oh man, I
might as well go home because I'm not playing that.
You know. I went in with my little what did.
I played the Vivaldi Sonata and I played a Benidento
Marcello except from a sonata, and I just thought, just
(22:53):
in terms of repertoire. I probably won't get in, you know.
But I took this audition and uh, it went It
was okay. I didn't think it was that great. But
then two days later I auditioned for the Manhattan School
of Music. The bass faculty was almost exactly the same
faculty as the Juilliard, so they heard me again. And
that audition at MSM went really well, And so I
(23:19):
like to think that the bass faculty heard me and went, oh,
that's what he really sounds like, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
So there was no invitation to MSM. They got I
got invited, Yeah, you got him both. Yeah, And I
got into the new school. But I thought that if
I want to continue studying classical base, I should.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Go to Juilliard. Four years. I didn't make it, but
I left. I started working. I started playing with Bobby
Watson and my dear friend, the late Roy Hargrove had
just moved to New York as well, and his career
was about to explode. And Roy was like, hey, man,
you're coming on the road with me. And so by
the end of the school year I started working enough
(23:58):
that only one year, right, Yeah, but that one years
I learned so much and I met a lot of people.
Audra McDonald was my classmate.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
You know, it's funny that you say that about the
blind audition or whatever and you hear the other guys
in the room, because I remember in the early days
when I was auditioning, it was the same. And that
was you know, we'd come to a place, the old
rehearsal spaces in Midtown where there were many of them,
not as many now as there used to be, and
we'd come to those spaces and when everybody would sit
in a row of chairs, and every guy you were
up against in that whole town was right right, there's
(24:30):
Kevin Bacon, and there's that guy, and there's that guy,
and they're all there and we all have the same thing,
which was when you sat down and the door opened
and out walked Kevin Bacon and you're sitting there and
you know that something's going on in the room. Somebody's
in there, and the door opens and it's Gabriel Burn.
I mean, all used to lower our heads like, fuck, I.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Get this job, right, did you guys, like when you're
sitting there waiting to go in, are you guys speaking
to each other? Was that sort of like minimally.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
But what's interesting to me is I understand the benefits
of the digital audition online auditioning that people who can't
afford to come to LA they can't afford to come
to there. There's guys in Kansas City, and there's guys
in Salt Lake City, and men and women across the
country who were submitting, you know, digitally. But I said
to somebody, I go, you know, the reality was you
(25:19):
walked into a room and you do the audition, and
the casting directors who were prominent casting directors typically for
all these movies I was going up for back then,
they were casting multiple projects and they'd say to you,
would you wait outside please? And you learn later on
that they said, he's not right for this movie, but
he'd be great for what we were doing. And there
(25:39):
was a chemistry in the room that there's just denied
now that they've gotten rid of all the in person auditions, you.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Know, with social media now, I mean, I realize this
the way of the world now and it's not going
to change. But I meet young musicians and mister McBride,
you know, check me out, tell me what you think,
and they give me like a YouTube link and I
hear and see them on YouTube and it's fabulous, but
you get no energy. You can't really tell what it's like,
(26:06):
you know what I mean, I got it exactly. You know.
Tommy Lupuma used to make great producer, Tommy Lupuma who
he produced Natalie Cole, George Benson, Algiou, Diana Crawl. He
used to tell me all the time. He's like, you know,
as a record producer, every day I'm getting thousands of
cassette tapes. You know. I was like, oh man, that
sounds horrible, you know, And he said, but I will
(26:30):
not sign a singer unless I can experience him live,
because I want to feel what they're doing. I don't
want to hear what they're doing. Say, you know, anybody
can get in the studio and doctor it up a
little bit and sound good. I want to hear you live,
you know. So yeah, the whole digital thing, it's it's deep.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Now, Christian McBride. If you're enjoying this episode, don't keep
it to yourself, Tell a friend and be sure to
follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or or
wherever you get your podcasts when we return. Christian McBride
shares the most challenging part of being a professional musician
(27:09):
and bandleader. You can listen to all of the music
from this episode and more in a curated playlist of
my favorite pieces from Christian McBride. You'll find a link
to the playlist in the show notes of this episode.
(27:39):
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the thing. This
(28:08):
is Christian McBride's new John. The track is Obsequious from
the album Prime. Christian McBride studied at Juilliard for only
one year before he left to play on the road
with jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove. I wanted to know how
his very first professional touring experience suited him.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Oh man, We went to Europe and it was the
summer of nineteen ninety. Now, I had gone to Europe
the summer before with the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, but it's
hard to count that as my first tour because you know,
it was a bunch of other high school students and
my mom was one of the chaperone. It was a
school trailer. It was a school trailer. We used to
say it right, right, But my first time actually getting
(28:51):
a chance to see the world was with Roy Hargrove,
how long were you over there that first tour? We did?
You know, I played in this band for a year
and a half and we did like we were in
Europe all the time. We did one month long European tour,
came home, did like six weeks of gigs in the US,
and then we went back to Europe for another two weeks.
(29:12):
So we were always on the road. When you're with a.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Band and you're a musician in a band, and you
say you went out with Roy Hargrove's band, so that
means Hargrove's the decider. Yeah, what music is played, what
the set list is, and for you it's the same thing.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
What's the toughest part about leading a band? What's the challenge?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
I think there's a balance in particularly in a medium
like jazz. You hear a musician play and they do
something that you like. There's a certain energy, there's a
certain thing that they play that you like. You said,
I want that in my band. But I know some
band leaders that they like to rebuild a player. I'm
(29:58):
not sure how wise that is, you know, because it's
like I hear you you're great, and now let me
change you, you know. So I think there's a balance
in the van leader having a vision, having a certain
sound in their mind, and then you bring somebody in
to help you achieve that sound, but you like what
they bring. So there's this give and take of like
(30:19):
I like what you do, but I need you to
do this, you know, and then that person says okay,
and then there's like this give and take. I don't
know if there's so much of a challenge anymore, because
I tend to work with musicians who are really high
level professionals. I haven't really had any rubs with too
many musicians, but that's probably the biggest challenge pat Riley.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I've mentioned this before another podcast. When pat Riley was
coaching the Knicks, I went off to have lunch with
him because we were going to do a movie this
friend of mine and I about a professional basketball coach
and the intensity of the NBA. And we went to
lunch with Riley and we watched the next train up
in was it New Paul's wherever they were up outside
the city. That we ran up there and watched the
next train, which was kind of amazing, and then we
(31:03):
went to lunch with Riley and I said, what's the job?
I said, what's the challenge? He said, These guys have
been champions at every level of their life. They've been winners,
they've been champions. He said, They've been champions since they
were eight years old, high school, college, they get to
the pros, He goes, how do I get them to
care one more night?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Right? See, that's the job.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
They've been playing at the highest level for fifteen years.
Because now they're here, they getting millions of dollars, they're
famous around the world. He goes, how do I get
them to leave it all on the court and get
out there and just blut and really work hard.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
I think that's a challenge for a musicians. Yeah, because
you know, you travel all the time, and you go
from club to club, stage to stage. At some point
it might get a little blurry, you know, you're like, oh,
I'm tired, you know, and then you fall into that
danger of phoning it in, you know. And I said,
another challenge for me as a band leader, I need
(31:57):
to keep my energy up because I always tell you
younger musicians you need to follow the lead of the
band leader. If the band leader is in a certain mode,
you follow that you know what I mean. So like
if I'm in somebody else's band and they're ready to go,
and then I don't have the right to say, you know,
(32:17):
I'm tired. I don't really feel like putting it all
out there tonight. I look at somebody like Michael Jordan.
I look at somebody like Freddie Hubbard. You know, like
every time they gave it all every gig, whether there
was thirty people in the audience, three hundred or three thousand,
they played the same way every night.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Oscar Peterson was like that, you know, just give it
all all the time.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Now, do you write a lot of this? Do you
write something? And have you ever because again, this connection
between jazz and the movies, it creates the right it's
the right texture. Do you write for TV or film?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Ever? Do you ever do any saying? I did my
first work on a major motion picture. Just recently. I
wrote some of the big band music in the upcoming
Color Purple doing a remake, Yeah, coming out on Christmas Day.
I wanted to ask you, man, like being around all
these great jazz legends and being like the young kid
among all these giants. One of my all time favorite
movies is Glengarry Glenn Ross and man, when I see
(33:14):
you in that? And also the music for that film
is one of the few film scores, if not the only,
one that features the saxophone of Wayne Shorter. And so
I remember, so I already liked the movie, but then
I realized that was Wayne. So that's become like one
of my all time favorites. Man, what was that like
for you? Man?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Well, it was tough because I had to piss in
their face for three days. I mean, are all these
legendary actors that I loved, right, And it was really tough,
But I mean I had a job to do.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
My last question for you, and that is that you
have a pre show routine, Like how do you get
yourself clear? When I'm acting in the theater? I got
to get clear. I get the theater at six.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
I'm glad you asked me that. What's your routine? See?
One thing about the jazz communities as really small. We
all know each other, you know. I always always joke,
partially joking that jazz musicians probably know at least fifty
percent audience personally, you know, And so everybody likes to
hang out backstage, other musicians show up, fans show up,
(34:15):
they all want to come backstage and hang. And I
have now realized that I'm not good to speak to
at least fifteen minutes before showtime, like leave me alone,
do not talk to me, don't come backstage to get
into it exactly. You know, I only want to be
around the musicians who are in the band, you know.
And the older I get, the more I realize how
(34:35):
important it is just to have a little silence, you know.
Just I don't want to do nothing, just I just
need some peace and quiet around me. Fifteen minutes before showtime.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
You know, we wanted you to come on the show.
And then I like when we do the research. I
started to get more absorbed in the stuff. You are
so damn talented. Oh man, you are so damn talent
from you. I was watching that thing when you're talking
about a fast, playing you little tips of a fast.
I'm watching all these and as I'm watching you, and
I start watching more and more of these clips, I'm thinking,
there's nothing you can't do musically, There's nothing you can't do.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Thank you, thanks for coming, thanks for having me on,
and honor.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
My thanks to Christian McBride be sure to check out
Christian McBride live at the Newport Jazz Festival August fourth
through sixth, and at the Montclair Jazz Festival Bloc Party
on August twelfth. For more upcoming shows, go to Christian
McBride dot com. I'll leave you with the Shade of
(35:39):
the Cedar Tree from Live at the Village Vanguard. I'm
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by
iHeart Radio
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Int.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from iHeart Radio. The sound you're hearing is the magic
fingers of acclaimed jazz bassist, composer and arranger Christian McBride.
(00:26):
That's him on Stick and Move with his band Inside,
straight from Live at the Village Vanguard. The eight time
Grammy winner is the leader of several bands of various
sizes and configurations. He's collaborated with everyone from Herbie Hancock
and Diana Crawl to Sting and Celine Dion. He also
(00:48):
serves as the artistic director of both the Newport Jazz
Festival and the educational organization Jazz House Kids. Growing up,
McBride was known to many as a child prodigy. He
attended the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts
in the same class as Questlove and Boys to Men.
(01:09):
He even performed on stage with both Wynton Marsalis and
Miles Davis while still in high school. I wanted to
know how a young talent like McBride found his entry
point to a challenging genre like jazz.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The music I grew up on was James Brown. James
Brown has always been my number one musical hero our household,
you know, like you said, you grew up on Cream
and Hendrix and Zappa. My household was full of James Brown,
the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and the Pips, Al Green,
Isaac Hayes. So I sort of backed my way into jazz,
(01:48):
you did, Oh yeah, absolutely? And what was the.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Beginning of that seduction? How did you decide? Because I mean,
I'm not saying this to be kind. You seem like
you could play any music you wanted to, well, thank you,
and you'd have a seed in any band you wanted.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Well, that was my ultimate goal. You know, my dad
is also a professional bass player, and so while I'm
growing up listening to all this R and B and
soul music, my dad started playing with the great Cuban
percussionist Mongo Santa Maria. And so I saw my dad
play with Mongo a lot, and you know, I thought,
I don't know much about Latin music, but this is killing,
(02:23):
you know. And I was eight years old and I
was watching dad play with Mongo and Dizzy Gillespie was
the guest soloist with the band that night, and I
knew who Dizzy was I wasn't familiar with his music,
but I knew who he was, you know, who didn't
know those cheeks, you know, And I had seen him
on The Muppet Show and you know, so he was
(02:44):
like the only jazz musician who I knew. And after
the show was over, my dad took me backstage, and
I remember Meltor May was also there that night, Ella
Fitzgerald and Dizzy and you know, just being around all
these legendary jazz musicians, I thought, man, he's these guys
are cool, you know. But even still. It wasn't until
(03:04):
I got to middle school and I started playing the
upright bass. That's when the other bass player in my family,
my great uncle, he plays bass also. He got so
excited that I was playing upright bass. He said, come
over to my house. I got something for you, and
he had a stack of records waiting for me. He
gave me a crash course in the history of jazz
in like six hours, you know. He played my house
(03:26):
Cold Traine, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong all the way up
through Weather Report and Return It Forever, and things that
were contemporary like Win Marcellus and Terrence Blanchard. So He
really pulled me all the way in. And the reason
why I fell in love with jazz was partly because
of the music, but also because of the way my
(03:47):
great uncle taught me, which I feel is probably the
most important thing that I wish more instructors would learn.
So most jazz teachers, I think most jazz fans tend
to be a little dogmatic. You know, they teach you
how great the music is by belittling what you already like.
And my great uncle never did that. So what do
(04:08):
you mean, the little one. It's like Prince Man, he
don't need to listen to No, Prince that's garbage. See,
you need to listen to you need to listen to
cat Jazz is a higher place, right right. So my
great uncle never did that. He knew how much I
loved James Brown and Michael Jackson and Prince and Rick James,
and he was like, oh, yeah, they're bad too, they're
bad too, But listen to this, you know. And you
(04:30):
know he would like a cigarette, and you know he was.
He had a favorite rocking chair that he like a
lounge chair he sat in when he listened to his records,
and he would sit way down his back was almost
on the bottom of the chair, and his knees would
wiggle and he would talk to the record as it
was playing. He'd be like, yeah, baby, who listen to that?
(04:50):
You hear you here with Miles is putting down baby,
you know. So he was always so comical. How could
you turn down? You know what I'm saying. I said,
if jazz makes him that cool, I want to be
like him. So that's what got me in there. Now,
where'd you grew up a part of the county? You
were in Philly. You're in Philly, you know.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
For me, I grew up with that music, you know,
British Invasion, all that stuff in the seventies and Pink
Floyd whatever. And then, as I told people on this show,
because I'm a big classical music junkie, I was in
a car once in nineteen eighty six, I think it was,
and I turned on the radio, and you know, all
the popular music that was playing at that.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Time ceased to speak to me.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Right, So I turn on the radio and on comes
SCHALTI conducted the Chicago that we were doing them all
or ninth and I go down that rabbit hole of
classical music forever and the same with jazz. When I
saw Fosse's movie, I just was like, you know, the
mathematics of jazz. Jazz to me is mathematical. Are jazz
compositions written and scored like regular music, like any other music?
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Some of them are. You know, jazz is based on improvisation,
but there is a there's very much a form to it.
For example, most pop songs have a very strict structure,
you know, verse, verse course, verse course, bridge, verse course.
You know, whereas jazz, you get a melody with the
(06:10):
set of chord changes. You play that melody with those
chord changes. Now, once you do that, you have a
conversation based on that melody and those chord changes. So
it's kind of like giving someone a topic and say, okay,
talk about this. I don't really know what I'm going
to say, but you know enough about this subject that
you can just have an open conversation about it. So
(06:31):
that's what jazz is for me.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
When I listen to different types of jazz, I mean,
there's jazz I find very soothing. Obviously piano. I'm a
huge Oscar Peterson nut soundtracks of movies you mentioned cab
Caliwaight Nose sequences and cotton Club. But then there's jazz
that is like, you know, I got no idea.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Where we goes that way. Yeah, it goes that way.
What you said, It goes that way.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And these guys are playing then you're going and you know,
I feel like they're going to play until they just drop.
There's no end to the song. I feel they're going
to play until they just pass out. Is it always
was twas?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Ever?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Thus was a jazz always like that? Or has it
evolved over time which was much more freeform?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Definitely evolved before. Actually before I answered that. Knowing that
you're a big Oscar Peterson, you might want to know
that my godfather was the late great Ray Brown. Oh yeah,
I actually have one of his basses. Oh my god.
Yeah yeah, so Ray lives with me every day, and
therefore some of the's Oscar. But it has evolved big time.
(07:34):
You know. One beautiful thing is a built in challenge
with jazz because no one's ever played jazz to get
rich or famous. We play it because we love it.
It's the highest form of musical artistry, and that you
get to bring all of these things in one place
and interpret it through this lens. Of what we call jazz,
(07:55):
you know, this this swing based blues idiom. You know.
But in the sixties, when people like on that Coleman
and Cecil Taylor and Coltrane left Miles Davis's band, he
starts to evolve on his own. The music took this
extremely cataclysmic explosion where like it was turned into free
(08:16):
jazz or what some would call avant garde, meaning that
you have a form, but you don't actually have to
stick to that form anymore. You know, if the song
is twelve bars, well, once we start improvising, let's making
thirteen bars. Let's making fourteen bars. Now the challenge is
that that's a lot of fun for the musicians, but
(08:37):
sometimes the listener is going, what the hell are you
people doing? Right?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
You guys have a lot of fun on glad, I'm
glad you're enjoying this. And so who would you say
were some of the pioneers there? Rather in terms of
the changes, like who is a person that came along
and click there's a change?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Well, I think most people would say on that Coleman
was sort of like the definition, like he was the
demarcation point in you know what Miles Davis and Harras
Silver and blaking the jazz messengers were doing up until
the late fifties, and then Ornett came along and just
kind of really shook the tree and like you know,
(09:16):
he calls the stir when he came on the scene.
So most would say Ornette Coleman was sort of like
the godfather of free jazz.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
What I notice is that when I read about because
you seem like a very robust, physically fit, healthy man,
and I wonder, what is it about jazz that No
more so than the rock and roll world, but for sure,
but a lot of the people in that world were
very troubled. People like Bill Evans is somebody that I
was obsessed with, and I got all the Bill Evans
records I could, and Evan singing with Tony Bennett.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
But I love Bill Evans, and I found.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That that his life was horrible when he was like
a huge he was a heroin Annet and all this
other stuff, and Miles was all messed up.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I mean not saying that the jazz plays.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Into that or any more so than rock and roll, right,
but to this day, do you find there's a spirit,
there's a soul to the people that can play that music, well,
that's a tormented soul.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I don't know if that's a myth or a fact,
because just like you said, I mean, you can find
just as many musicians in any other style of music
that had a lot of personal problems, you know. But
I feel like the way jazz has been probably inside
the last half century, you find less of that now
than ever now. On the other hand, one of the
(10:30):
great legends who I played with early in my career
was the late great trumper to Freddie Hubbard, and I
remember Freddie. He told this to my friend Clark Gaton,
great trumpbone player. He says, see, man, you know what's
wrong with you young cats? Y'all. Don't drink y'all, don't
smoke y'all, don't eat meat y'all, health conscience by nine o'clock. Man,
what the hell is that? Man? You know what you
(10:51):
sound like it?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Harold Klerman spoke at this school when I went back
to school, and he did this lecture there, the famous
producer Harold Cleerman. And when it was over they someone
said to me, what would you do differently? And by
then he was in his eighties, what would I do differently?
He said, I'd go to more parties, I'd stay out
late at night, I'd have more alcohol.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
He just was like, so balls to the wall.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Now, is it tough in the I mean people in
the classical world, people in every corner of the music
business are lamenting the difficulty with digital downloads?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Is it? Is it tough in jazz as well? Obviously?
Well it was so tough before then. I don't know
if it really hasn't mattered that much. You know, because
even before streaming came along, both jazz and classical musicians
had the smallest piece of the pie. I think it
was like one percent and three percent of the entire
record buying market. So, you know, all of our money
(11:45):
comes from playing live performances. When do you first go
on the road. When are you in a club and
you're getting paid?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
When did that happen? Nineteen eighty nine. I graduated from
high school and by that time I had become good
friends with when Marcellus, who was the hottest young name
in jazz, and you met him where I met him
in Philly. He came to do a masterclass and I
attended this master class, and you know, I told him
how much I admired his music, and I had all
of his records and he kind of put me on
(12:15):
the spot. He says, yeah, what do you play? I said,
I played a bass. He said go get it, and
so I ran and grabbed my bass and all the
kids in the classroom were like, ooh, you know, what's
he about to do? And so went and said let's
play something and we played a little blues. And a
couple of nights later he said, Hey, my band is
playing at the Academy Music. I want you to come
(12:35):
and sold fifteen yeah and playing with Wynton at the
Academy of Music at fifteen yeah. Well he just invited
me to the show. I didn't know he was going
to actually invite me to come. He didn't tell you
that you were going to play. No, he didn't come
to see the show man. I'm sitting backstage with two
of my friends, one of which was the late great
(12:56):
Joey D. Francesco. And went and gets on a micro phone.
I see his bass player is putting us bass down
and my feet start getting like, where's he going? And
went and gets on the microphone. He says, you know,
ladies and John want to tell you about this kid
I met at this masterclass a couple of days ago,
like what and you know, two thousand people in the audience,
you know, he said, I think you're going to be
(13:17):
hearing a lot more about him. Please welcome Christian McBride
to the stage. And I mean, like I had icicles
coming off of my hands, like, oh my god. And
we played what was the title track to his new
album at that time. It's called Jay Mood. And from
(13:59):
that point on he became a big brother, a mentor.
He started telling people about me, say, hey, you got
to look out for this kid in Philly. And so
by the time I moved to New York to go
to college, a few jazz musicians knew who I was.
So the saxophonist Bobby Watson found out that I was
going to Juilliard and he came and said, hey, I
want you to make some gigs with me. I was like,
(14:21):
what you know? So Bobby gave me my first gig
in New York and I was in the fall of
nineteen eighty nine at Birdland back when it was up
on one hundred and fifth Street. So Bobby kind of
he kicked me off my career in New York.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Now when you talk about you guys don't pick it up.
You don't see Freddie Hubart, Freddy Hubbert. So when you
get Freddy Hubbard's admonition that you're not living the right life,
what was it like for you to be that young around.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
These guys, Well, specific was your mother picking you up
at the stage door at the end of the show.
She was definitely worried, you know, because my mother saw
all the musicians that my dad played with, and they
come from their old school. So when I told my
mom I wanted to be a professional jazz musician, She's like,
oh god, you know, really you sure? You know? So Winton,
(15:11):
because he was so well studied. He was sort of
like the complete opposite of what the image of a
jazz musician had been.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he was clean, well studied,
well read. He actually had a conversation with my mom said, listen,
miss McBride, it's not like it used to be. You know,
your son's going to be all right. You know, I'll
look out for him. He's got a lot of big
brothers who look out for him, you know. So he talked.
He made it easier for my mom to let me
move to New York. But when I started playing with
(15:39):
Freddie actually a little bit of Bobby Watson too, there
was still a lot of that old school element, you know,
a lot of tough love. You know. They didn't put
their hand on your back and say, you know, next time,
maybe you should do it like this. You know, they
were like, hey, what the hell are you doing? Yeah,
you know it's professional.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, yeah, Jazz Babs, Christian McBride. If you enjoy conversations
with preternaturally gifted musicians, check out my episode with Christian
McBride's band and classmate Amir quest Love Thompson.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
We weren't even really going to accept the position, and
then the funniest thing happened.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We were on UCLA campus.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
I went to do a quick interview in my dressing room,
and when it was over six minutes later, I opened
the door and on the field, Grass, Jimmy and all
eight members of the Roots were in the eight is
Enough Human pyramid stands and I looked at my manager.
We just looked at each other and we're like, we're
(16:42):
not giving rim this guy, are we. What Jimmy managed
to do was disarm us in less than ten minutes.
He's that guy like when you watch the movie and
the guys are trying to dissemble the bomb in like
zero point three seconds. Yea, he knows exactly how to
disarm you.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
To hear more of my conversation with Questlove, go to
Hear's Thething dot Org. After the break, Christian McBride talks
about attending Juilliard and the challenging audition period he endured
to get in. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
(17:23):
Here's the Thing. This is eley Efe from The Philadelphia Experiment,
(17:50):
a collaboration between Christian McBride, pianist Uri Kane and Questlove.
As a jazz musician, Christian McBride natural spends a lot
of time on the road. I wanted to know what
life was like for someone that tours for a living. Man.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I feel so fortunate that I get to do what
I love for a living. You know why complain? Yeah,
things get a little hard every now and then. You know,
you travel, you're on the road all the time. You
don't get to see your family. You're married. I've been
married almost twenty years and you have how many kids?
No kids? No kids, you're a genius. No kids.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
So the traveler is does your wife get to come
with you.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Sometimes when she sings in my big band? So when
I play with my big band, she travels with me.
But I mean she runs the foundation, so she's manning
the fort at home. But you know, it's like going
on the road seven days a week, probably forty to
forty five weeks out of the year. That grinds on
your health, you know. But the flip side of it
(18:52):
is like, Okay, what else would you rather be doing?
You know, I get to travel around the world and
meet people and playing you know what I mean, It's like,
there's nothing better than that. How many people in your band?
So the band that I've been touring with the most
for the last four years is called the New John.
John is a slang terminology only used by Philadelphians in
(19:14):
New York would be joint. So John is j A
w N the New John joint yep exactly Philly term. Okay,
And so that's just four of us trumpet, tenor saxophone, bass,
and drums. Yeah. And I have another group called Inside Straight,
which is a quintet. That band was named by a
(19:36):
I had a fan contest I named the band contest,
and a couple from Fort bradd, California submitted inside Straight,
and I thought, hmm, you know, I actually do play poker,
and inside Straight is the name of one of my
favorite Cannibal Attley albums, so it made sense. And I
have a new group. I had my big band, which
is just the Christian McBride big band and comedy in
(19:58):
that seventeen really yeah, how much did they get to travel?
Not much? It's expensive. Yeah, yeah, we've gone to Asia.
We went to China and Japan, but we we got
a grant to go on that tour, and we did
a two week European tour a few few years ago.
So we don't get a chance to travel that often.
(20:19):
But we get at least one gig every year here
in New York or in Newark.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It's funny how the bands are touring, and therefore I
was more successful the less people are in the band.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Absolutely. Yeah, man, you gotta wat it down to a trio.
You're gonna get rich. Listen here, man, you gotta balance
their budget. Now.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
When you are in Philadelphia and Winton calls you up
there at the Academy, when do you get to New
York what year?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
So that was eighty seven when Winton called me up
to sit in So two years later in eighty to
go where the Juilliard. There was no jazz program at Juilliard.
When I went there, went to study as a classical bassist.
Because while I was in high school, I was also
playing a lot of classical music. So I was playing
in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, Temple University Youth Chamber Orchestra.
(21:10):
So I had like a little parallel thing going. And
even though my heart was in jazz, I had gotten
good enough at classical music where my base instructor said,
you know, you should take the audition. You know, see
what happens. I knew I wanted to be in New York. Again,
this was this had nothing to do with classical music.
I knew that I wanted to be in New York
(21:31):
because I wanted to sort of go nag and stalk
all my favorite jazz musicians. So I said, well, the
only way for me to get to New York is
to go to college. And so is that true, I thought, because.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
You're the kid who's fifteen who gets hand picked by
Wynton to play I would.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Have thought you would have gone to New York and
you would have been walking through the doors and just
playing well, you know, but my mom wasn't going to
let that happen. So everybody agreed you should get an education, yes, yes,
And so I only applied to three schools, the New Schoo, Juilliard,
in the Manhattan School of Music exactly right, right, right.
So I took an audition for Juilliard, and uh, much
(22:09):
to my shock, I got in. You know, I think
back to how traumatic that was. And one of these
did that on purpose. Like one thing that they probably
shouldn't have done is you could hear the other auditioners
before you. Right, So I'm sitting outside of this audition
room and I can hear the other bass players in there,
(22:30):
and I mean they are awesome, you know. They're playing
the Echo Sonata and the Dragon Eddie and the Kusovitski
and I'm just sitting out there like, oh man, I
might as well go home because I'm not playing that.
You know. I went in with my little what did.
I played the Vivaldi Sonata and I played a Benidento
Marcello except from a sonata, and I just thought, just
(22:53):
in terms of repertoire. I probably won't get in, you know.
But I took this audition and uh, it went It
was okay. I didn't think it was that great. But
then two days later I auditioned for the Manhattan School
of Music. The bass faculty was almost exactly the same
faculty as the Juilliard, so they heard me again. And
that audition at MSM went really well, And so I
(23:19):
like to think that the bass faculty heard me and went, oh,
that's what he really sounds like, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
So there was no invitation to MSM. They got I
got invited, Yeah, you got him both. Yeah, And I
got into the new school. But I thought that if
I want to continue studying classical base, I should.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Go to Juilliard. Four years. I didn't make it, but
I left. I started working. I started playing with Bobby
Watson and my dear friend, the late Roy Hargrove had
just moved to New York as well, and his career
was about to explode. And Roy was like, hey, man,
you're coming on the road with me. And so by
the end of the school year I started working enough
(23:58):
that only one year, right, Yeah, but that one years
I learned so much and I met a lot of people.
Audra McDonald was my classmate.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
You know, it's funny that you say that about the
blind audition or whatever and you hear the other guys
in the room, because I remember in the early days
when I was auditioning, it was the same. And that
was you know, we'd come to a place, the old
rehearsal spaces in Midtown where there were many of them,
not as many now as there used to be, and
we'd come to those spaces and when everybody would sit
in a row of chairs, and every guy you were
up against in that whole town was right right, there's
(24:30):
Kevin Bacon, and there's that guy, and there's that guy,
and they're all there and we all have the same thing,
which was when you sat down and the door opened
and out walked Kevin Bacon and you're sitting there and
you know that something's going on in the room. Somebody's
in there, and the door opens and it's Gabriel Burn.
I mean, all used to lower our heads like, fuck, I.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Get this job, right, did you guys, like when you're
sitting there waiting to go in, are you guys speaking
to each other? Was that sort of like minimally.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
But what's interesting to me is I understand the benefits
of the digital audition online auditioning that people who can't
afford to come to LA they can't afford to come
to there. There's guys in Kansas City, and there's guys
in Salt Lake City, and men and women across the
country who were submitting, you know, digitally. But I said
to somebody, I go, you know, the reality was you
(25:19):
walked into a room and you do the audition, and
the casting directors who were prominent casting directors typically for
all these movies I was going up for back then,
they were casting multiple projects and they'd say to you,
would you wait outside please? And you learn later on
that they said, he's not right for this movie, but
he'd be great for what we were doing. And there
(25:39):
was a chemistry in the room that there's just denied
now that they've gotten rid of all the in person auditions, you.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Know, with social media now, I mean, I realize this
the way of the world now and it's not going
to change. But I meet young musicians and mister McBride,
you know, check me out, tell me what you think,
and they give me like a YouTube link and I
hear and see them on YouTube and it's fabulous, but
you get no energy. You can't really tell what it's like,
(26:06):
you know what I mean, I got it exactly. You know.
Tommy Lupuma used to make great producer, Tommy Lupuma who
he produced Natalie Cole, George Benson, Algiou, Diana Crawl. He
used to tell me all the time. He's like, you know,
as a record producer, every day I'm getting thousands of
cassette tapes. You know. I was like, oh man, that
sounds horrible, you know, And he said, but I will
(26:30):
not sign a singer unless I can experience him live,
because I want to feel what they're doing. I don't
want to hear what they're doing. Say, you know, anybody
can get in the studio and doctor it up a
little bit and sound good. I want to hear you live,
you know. So yeah, the whole digital thing, it's it's deep.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Now, Christian McBride. If you're enjoying this episode, don't keep
it to yourself, Tell a friend and be sure to
follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or or
wherever you get your podcasts when we return. Christian McBride
shares the most challenging part of being a professional musician
(27:09):
and bandleader. You can listen to all of the music
from this episode and more in a curated playlist of
my favorite pieces from Christian McBride. You'll find a link
to the playlist in the show notes of this episode.
(27:39):
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the thing. This
(28:08):
is Christian McBride's new John. The track is Obsequious from
the album Prime. Christian McBride studied at Juilliard for only
one year before he left to play on the road
with jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove. I wanted to know how
his very first professional touring experience suited him.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Oh man, We went to Europe and it was the
summer of nineteen ninety. Now, I had gone to Europe
the summer before with the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra, but it's
hard to count that as my first tour because you know,
it was a bunch of other high school students and
my mom was one of the chaperone. It was a
school trailer. It was a school trailer. We used to
say it right, right, But my first time actually getting
(28:51):
a chance to see the world was with Roy Hargrove,
how long were you over there that first tour? We did?
You know, I played in this band for a year
and a half and we did like we were in
Europe all the time. We did one month long European tour,
came home, did like six weeks of gigs in the US,
and then we went back to Europe for another two weeks.
(29:12):
So we were always on the road. When you're with a.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Band and you're a musician in a band, and you
say you went out with Roy Hargrove's band, so that
means Hargrove's the decider. Yeah, what music is played, what
the set list is, and for you it's the same thing.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
What's the toughest part about leading a band? What's the challenge?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
I think there's a balance in particularly in a medium
like jazz. You hear a musician play and they do
something that you like. There's a certain energy, there's a
certain thing that they play that you like. You said,
I want that in my band. But I know some
band leaders that they like to rebuild a player. I'm
(29:58):
not sure how wise that is, you know, because it's
like I hear you you're great, and now let me
change you, you know. So I think there's a balance
in the van leader having a vision, having a certain
sound in their mind, and then you bring somebody in
to help you achieve that sound, but you like what
they bring. So there's this give and take of like
(30:19):
I like what you do, but I need you to
do this, you know, and then that person says okay,
and then there's like this give and take. I don't
know if there's so much of a challenge anymore, because
I tend to work with musicians who are really high
level professionals. I haven't really had any rubs with too
many musicians, but that's probably the biggest challenge pat Riley.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I've mentioned this before another podcast. When pat Riley was
coaching the Knicks, I went off to have lunch with
him because we were going to do a movie this
friend of mine and I about a professional basketball coach
and the intensity of the NBA. And we went to
lunch with Riley and we watched the next train up
in was it New Paul's wherever they were up outside
the city. That we ran up there and watched the
next train, which was kind of amazing, and then we
(31:03):
went to lunch with Riley and I said, what's the job?
I said, what's the challenge? He said, These guys have
been champions at every level of their life. They've been winners,
they've been champions. He said, They've been champions since they
were eight years old, high school, college, they get to
the pros, He goes, how do I get them to
care one more night?
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Right? See, that's the job.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
They've been playing at the highest level for fifteen years.
Because now they're here, they getting millions of dollars, they're
famous around the world. He goes, how do I get
them to leave it all on the court and get
out there and just blut and really work hard.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
I think that's a challenge for a musicians. Yeah, because
you know, you travel all the time, and you go
from club to club, stage to stage. At some point
it might get a little blurry, you know, you're like, oh,
I'm tired, you know, and then you fall into that
danger of phoning it in, you know. And I said,
another challenge for me as a band leader, I need
(31:57):
to keep my energy up because I always tell you
younger musicians you need to follow the lead of the
band leader. If the band leader is in a certain mode,
you follow that you know what I mean. So like
if I'm in somebody else's band and they're ready to go,
and then I don't have the right to say, you know,
(32:17):
I'm tired. I don't really feel like putting it all
out there tonight. I look at somebody like Michael Jordan.
I look at somebody like Freddie Hubbard. You know, like
every time they gave it all every gig, whether there
was thirty people in the audience, three hundred or three thousand,
they played the same way every night.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Oscar Peterson was like that, you know, just give it
all all the time.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Now, do you write a lot of this? Do you
write something? And have you ever because again, this connection
between jazz and the movies, it creates the right it's
the right texture. Do you write for TV or film?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Ever? Do you ever do any saying? I did my
first work on a major motion picture. Just recently. I
wrote some of the big band music in the upcoming
Color Purple doing a remake, Yeah, coming out on Christmas Day.
I wanted to ask you, man, like being around all
these great jazz legends and being like the young kid
among all these giants. One of my all time favorite
movies is Glengarry Glenn Ross and man, when I see
(33:14):
you in that? And also the music for that film
is one of the few film scores, if not the only,
one that features the saxophone of Wayne Shorter. And so
I remember, so I already liked the movie, but then
I realized that was Wayne. So that's become like one
of my all time favorites. Man, what was that like
for you? Man?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Well, it was tough because I had to piss in
their face for three days. I mean, are all these
legendary actors that I loved, right, And it was really tough,
But I mean I had a job to do.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
My last question for you, and that is that you
have a pre show routine, Like how do you get
yourself clear? When I'm acting in the theater? I got
to get clear. I get the theater at six.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
I'm glad you asked me that. What's your routine? See?
One thing about the jazz communities as really small. We
all know each other, you know. I always always joke,
partially joking that jazz musicians probably know at least fifty
percent audience personally, you know, And so everybody likes to
hang out backstage, other musicians show up, fans show up,
(34:15):
they all want to come backstage and hang. And I
have now realized that I'm not good to speak to
at least fifteen minutes before showtime, like leave me alone,
do not talk to me, don't come backstage to get
into it exactly. You know, I only want to be
around the musicians who are in the band, you know.
And the older I get, the more I realize how
(34:35):
important it is just to have a little silence, you know.
Just I don't want to do nothing, just I just
need some peace and quiet around me. Fifteen minutes before showtime.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
You know, we wanted you to come on the show.
And then I like when we do the research. I
started to get more absorbed in the stuff. You are
so damn talented. Oh man, you are so damn talent
from you. I was watching that thing when you're talking
about a fast, playing you little tips of a fast.
I'm watching all these and as I'm watching you, and
I start watching more and more of these clips, I'm thinking,
there's nothing you can't do musically, There's nothing you can't do.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Thank you, thanks for coming, thanks for having me on,
and honor.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
My thanks to Christian McBride be sure to check out
Christian McBride live at the Newport Jazz Festival August fourth
through sixth, and at the Montclair Jazz Festival Bloc Party
on August twelfth. For more upcoming shows, go to Christian
McBride dot com. I'll leave you with the Shade of
(35:39):
the Cedar Tree from Live at the Village Vanguard. I'm
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by
iHeart Radio
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Int.
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Alec Baldwin
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