Conversations with John Patitucci

[Music] [Applause] [Music] you welcome to the NYU Steinhardt jazz interview series and tonight we're here with one of the great bass players in the world has worked with some of the most wonderful people we know how about a warm round of applause for John Patti Tucci thank you John I wanted I wanted to start you were talking about growing up in Brooklyn and then eventually moving to Long Island and eventually to California and and this really defines you as a musician and the opportunities that you've had as a musician because of those moves that were part because of your father's business etc but talk about how you got started in music first and because that we were talking earlier and you said well there really wasn't seemingly much music at my family but you certainly had an interest in it yeah I think really I owe it all to my older brother Tom he was the Trailblazer and actually my cousin across the street whose name is Tony DeMarco who wound up becoming known in Celtic circles as an unbelievable fiddler in fact he was one of rare that I think he was one of the only certainly the only italian-american who ever went over to Ireland and one of fiddling contest that's for sure yeah he lives in New York too i but um so he was playing some guitar but you know my brother got excited by that and you know it was the 60s you know so British Invasion had happened also all that great pop music from everywhere like the Motown music was on the radio that we love that and Simon Garfunkel the Beatles Hendrix cream but this is but you're still very very young I mean yes you've had so we're about the same age you're just slightly older than right but if like 1965 you're you're 6 years old yeah right so in 59 so you're still a young buck and but my brother's three years older so he was hip me to the music as he was discovering it so I wanted to be like him always he's still an incredible role model for me he's an amazing human being he's also a pastor and a great guitarist and so he he started playing guitar and I wanted to play guitar cuz I wanted to be like him except I'm lefty and they put the guitar in my hand and the pic and his teacher was making you learn how to read music right away and I was the ear guy and I didn't want to learn how to read me I didn't know anything I was really bad eat when I tried to play the guitar it didn't work out so I was playing maracas and bongos because I really wanted to play drums so my brother finally said look no no no no I need somebody to play with you should play the bass I was like okay and he got me down the street in East Flatbush there was a Sears Telstar bass short scale bass that buzzed on every fret it was a mess but I thought it was the greatest thing in the world we got it for 10 bucks so I was playing on this thing you know I'm playing to the radio you know whatever I heard and tried to learn it by ear and and my brother he liked that and of course I was too young to be in his band when we moved to you know after a while I was about 10 when I started playing electric within 2 and 2 years or so we moved out or a year or so we moved out to Long Island and then he had a band with the guys his age and I wasn't old enough to play in the band so he wouldn't let me play in the band at first then we moved to California and then I started playing a lot and then he didn't want to play with anybody whose age anymore so I got to be in a band but I think that move to California was the catalyst to allowing you to grow as a musician yes I met a man named Chris he said pronounces it paler but it's polar of in fact he's distantly related to Amy Poehler I think he became my mentor he I've known him since I was 13 and he hit me to miles he hit me to Chuck Rainey he hit me to so much music and made me learn how to read music literally forced me to do it thank God otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do a lot of things that happened after that he hit me to all these incredible records I freaked out I heard Ron you know Andray even though I had sort of heard them my grandfather brought some records home when we still lived in Brooklyn that were like amazing records like Wes Montgomery records with Ron and and Oscar Peterson with Rey and Sam Jones and all these you know that's another start my grandfather had these records yes he he we used to work jackhammer on the street you know wrote road crews and you know how in New York people throw out boxes of Records and I think somebody got in an argument with somebody because nobody would ever throw these records out so but somebody did and he took him home and I was my brother and I were discovering this all right that's the first time I heard Wayne our play King the Jazz Messengers mosaic the tune children of the night destroyed me I didn't know what I was hearing didn't understand it but the emotion went right through me and the power of you know arts drums and him and Jimmy Merritt had this amazing power groove that blew me away I know what was going on but so that kind of was in my head and then when he started playing me these records you know he always laughs about it because he's still around you know he's about 75 and he said I was trying to hip him to humble pie records with Peter Frampton and like British rock records blues and and he said yeah that's cool but check out this then it was miles and chick and Herbie and and at that time Herbie was making those records in the Bay Area 70s with Paul Jackson who really influenced me a lot and then Rocco prestigio with Tower of Power and Larry Graham with Graham Central Station and Sly Stone all this stuff was happening so all this stuff was all around me and I didn't even know how deep that was until later on history told us how deep that was well the interesting thing is is you can't look into the future and say gee around this time you've been working with one of the greatest musicians on the planet Wayne Shorter for years and years and years so I was telling the students today it's like everybody has to find a way to find a mentor who will open doors for you that will allow you to find a pathway to where you've come to now so how did you find that I mean we can talk about chick and we can talk about Herbie Hancock and all these great people you've had so much time with but it's how did that start how did you get into that league of musicians I don't know when I moved when we moved to San Francisco we stayed there through like high school first year at college I went to San Francisco State and study with a amazing because of Chris he had me go study who with the man he studied with was as a classical teacher named Charles eonni who died many years ago he was principal bass of the Opera so all of a sudden I was studying classically you know that was like you know heavy because at that point I had really not formal classical training I played the orchestra at high school and was self-taught and you know kind of cut in you know a bar to bass from a friend and audition played my little Vivaldi sonata and got in and luckily and the guy proceeded to you know really push me for a year until we moved to LA then we moved to LA and again not realizing the timing of it all it was amazing we moved to LA 78 so all kind of stuff was happening including I don't know if Tom's here but Tom Scott and all these guys that I idolized from records they were on the scene doing all kinds of amazing stuff so I landed in LA I went to Long Beach State for two years it's just so happen at Long Beach State had people like John Ferraro great drummer Jimmy Cox amazing piano player Dave with them Jay Anderson was going there and he left and I kind of inherited a bunch of gigs that he didn't he was a he wound up coming to New York later in Carmen McRae and everything else but and Woody Herman and so I landed at this great time there's a lot going on a lot of people serious about playing the music and also I want up falling into the studio world I was in to play electric too so I was excited about all that and what that could mean but I had no idea and all of a sudden I found myself playing with all these jazz guys because Freddie Hubbard was still there I you know I played with Joe Joe Farrell and before that one of the big important keys was Victor Feldman's trio and that's how I also and also the first road gig idea was gap Mangione Chuck's brother and through that I was at a jam session at Chuck's house and chicks wife gail moran heard me play she went and told chick and then they used to have these Valentine's Day parties every February and they loved to Victor Feldman and they invited him to come up amongst other musicians to come and play so there I was playing chicks living room with Victor Feldman and his son on drums and there he was and I really wanted to play with Jackie because I knew I would get to play all kinds of music on both instruments he was the one who introduced me to Wayne and Herbie the first gig we did with chick this was insane Here I am this kid with stars in his eyes all these people that I dreamed about and the first gig finally when I got the gig okay we're doing the Merv Griffin Show and it's gonna be you and me and Herbie and Tommy Bret Klein played drums so here I am 25 standing there you know they're filming it's TV chicks there and Herbie's there and I'm like wait a minute am I dreaming or something what's going on here and it was freaky really I mean I met all these players I put you know played with a lot of great I played with Roman Roy mccurdy and all these jazz musicians were in LA a lot of them what we're living there at the time so and we were talking about that earlier why were all these New York jazz musicians living in LA then you know I guess they got tired of the winter I don't know but they had gone out there and and because they could live wherever they want at that point they were well established so they they traveled all around the world anyway so they they were living there and Hubert laws I play with him and I played with Lenny Breau and people like George Van Eps all these create Larry Carlton Robin Ford a lot of different genres and then the guy I fell into the studio thing and I even got to play with some of the guys from the Wrecking Crew and I used to sit next to Tommy tadesco a little bit the guitar player who never made a mistake and Hal Blaine and then John Guerin and then Tom Scott was I got to play with these guys I mean it was kind of a dream really and now when I look back on it I'm almost 60 and I look back and I go I had no I was so naive I didn't even realize what a long shot it was I guess ignorance is bliss because I had no idea well I want to cut to Wayne Shorter because he's an alumni of NYU and and we want to learn as much as we can from somebody who's had first-hand experience with him for so long I just remember talking to you a while back and Wayne introducing you to all these either sci-fi books or fantasy books on plane rides and such and and movies there's always a movie list item that you have to go whoa let's talk about that yeah it turns out that my brother who's very he was always like a straight-a student I had to follow him in school which I hated he got me into sci-fi when we were in high school we were reading Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov and also on Ursula Lagoon Ursula Guin was one of the most amazing SCI five writers - she wrote the Earthsea trilogy and stuff so we were nerding out on all this stuff little did I know that that would get me points with Wayne Shorter oh you know when you're a kid you never think about this kind of stuff so Wayne will get to get a kick out of like what he would make references I would actually know some of the sci-fi stuff and then and I like movies too but he is an encyclopedia he's like an IMDB before there was one he literally knows everything he can quote your lines he knows all if you say Oh Wayne you know cuz my mother-in-law lives with she's almost 19 she watches the Turner classics a lot and a lot of the old black-and-white movies which I love they'll come on and I'll see one when I'll call Wayne and Wayne you know I just saw this movie with and he'll just start oh that one yeah that's you know so and so that's doris day and and he was in this and did you see the part where you know I was he's unbelievable he's a genius on many levels I remember one of the one time when I went to his house and there was a beautiful sculpture of Nefertiti beautiful little sculpture I said Wayne Wow where did you get who did that he goes oh I did it when I was 17 I was like okay is there a balcony I can jump off now because it's you know and then and then also just to give you an idea if you know how varied his brain is and it's genius when he went into the army which was I'm not sure if that was post NYU right he goes in the army and you know Wayne never touched a gun or anything like that before or since but he was in the army and they put a thing and they had to do target practice turned out he was a marksman and he didn't know it so they start doing these things and he's bullseye bullseye and then he gets into a thing where the instructors say well come on we'll see who you know and he was hanging with the instructors and then they say yo yeah you need to stay in the army and teach marksmanship and he said I'm going to play with our Blakey so he thankfully for us he didn't stay in the army to teach marksmanship so that's that's something about him he's very kind another story I'll just tell you to give you a little insight into who he is our first daughter who's now 21 and lives in LA she's a singer-songwriter she hung out a lot with Wayne all growing up in my little other little dollar daughter Bella who's going to college in the fall and you know he's like uncle Wayne to them I'm thinking wow you grew up with uncle Wayne how does that happen so one day my then very little eldest daughter was on the phone and she's just talking and laughing and I'm like after a while I'm looking over and like she's in the kitchen just going crazy on the who are you talking to and she hands me the phone it's uncle Wayne and he he has a way with children than anybody really is his compassion his kindness and his ability to get down and be a kid again with his imagination is uncanny and so he he's been kind of an uncle to my daughter's you know growing up and very he his wife are always very interested in what they're doing and and he's kind of like a second dad to me too really I've been with him longer than the other guys in the band I met him in 1986 and I was on playing on phantom navigator and navigator in 1987 so we go back and yet I go back even further because his music really moved me when I was 10 so his presence in my life is 50 years already can you talk about maybe his his work process his compositional process and what you've learned from that well his music was always a reference point for most of us I think in this music anybody who doesn't revere him as a composer and a saxophone player hasn't been listening for the last 60 years or whatever but early on his music always touched me because no matter how harmonically sophisticated his music gets the melodies are always lyrical and beautiful in you they you go away singing them forever and that's what penetrated my my brain and my heart when I was 8 when I first heard him you know or something like that 8 or 10 and so getting to know him and being with him and having such reverence for his genius and then encountering him when we would play as music he has a very light touch with his pieces so he'll bring in a piece maybe eight pages well you know the bad is a very good site reading band so Danilo and Brian we were just read it down and we would just be like crushed like whoa and he'd be like yeah but we're not gonna play all that worth let's look at page seven we're like manna if I had written two bars that good in my entire life I would feel really good and we're like Wayne are you kidding what about said ah you know we'll deconstruct we'll D company will decompose it and we'll kind of play around with it but Wow light touch on what he writes he's cranked out so many masterpieces I guess it's kind of like a walk in the park for him he doesn't seem to struggle his orchestrating stuff - I've seen him he's fast he stays up all night writing does he write at the piano because I he uses the piano yeah yes but he writes everything in calligraphy the most beautiful handwriting ever so I remember at one point he was because my wife is a cellist and he loves her and he and danilo wife is a saxophonist so he was thinking about having this arrangement of night dreamer where he was gonna include them and he wrote this and he writes our names on the parts a lot it'll say John on the left coin you know so he wrote a beautiful part from my wife for in his own hand with the you know hey Cully I said Sachi on and she's that's a treasure for her we didn't quite get to do that but it's an amazing arrangement there was one time where we played because he doesn't like clubs so we played at Yoshi's in and you know and you in maybe it was the Oakland one yeah and we played for a week there and he wrote some new arrangements we played this arrangement as a quartet only of Nitra it was incredible and we never played it again so that I mean he has a light he'll write all this stuff and be going yeah that's cool and we're like so he his process is very interesting and his whole thing was it became he wanted us to improvise from nothing which he called zero gravity and make it so that but it was tonal it was contrapuntal it was make there were groups there were melody we were you know Court changes and and progressions were happening and we were working on them in the moment in front of an audience he didn't ever want them to know when we were and anybody can cue any one of those pieces and we have a big book of stuff so anybody could cue and off we would go like a school of fish you know but it was like he he deliberately said I want to make sure that nobody knows when we're playing the written material or when we're improvising and creating the compositions that were doing live in the moment so you know I've been around him a while one that when Brian and Danilo came they were freaked out at first going oh my god does he like it what's happening you know I said don't worry he likes it he's bringing all this music and he gave us the freedom to stretch ourselves and try to create this music with him where you know when you start from nothing like that it's it's different than other gigs you've done but but it's not nothing freak out it's nothing you're gonna compose on the spot with everybody else you have to be you have to check your ego at the door and really listen in such a way that you're you're so vulnerable and every note that somebody plays can change the direction of the music it's beautiful I mean it's it's very scary but exciting exhilarating and especially when your big festival and when we first started playing that music you know it'd be at first it was like we were so thankful when we got to go into one of the pieces it was like a safety blanket and then it became sometimes we would improvise for 40 minutes and then go into the first piece and invariably somebody would come up and go yeah what was that what were those first two pieces you played and we were like I don't know they just happened and that's because of Wayne his genius and his ability to be selfless and play a few things that changed your world one note two notes and you're off in another direction because he's just blown your mind and you're just reeling from that go okay we got to go here now does that group or in general do you guys talk about music when you're not on the stage or not so much because he likes to talk about films and movies and you know films and books and politics and whatever is happening he's that yeah he likes that and we do too did I I was wanted to ask him this is what did he ever tell you what his favorite movie was there's not one but maybe way high up on the list is red shoes that's the one he gets everybody to watch the red shoes yeah that's got to be if that's not it it's way up there so we have all these students here from all over the world and they have a passion for jazz and let me ask you a question if how what kind of a life could you consider without music and art and what would you be doing if you wouldn't have had these opportunities to have these doors open for you Wow I stumbled into it because I was just trying to be like my brother and the funny thing about it is what I would be doing if I wasn't playing would be exactly what my brother does he helps he's a pastor he served four years you'll never read about him because he's not going to be controversial he actually gave his life to serving and he and his wife are amazing people in the community activism spiritually helping people he's just done that for over 35 years and he's a guy that walks the talk you know he's sacrificial and his love for people he's not the kind of people that you read about in the newspaper and the people who were more and more invested in controlling people through political means and being extremists I'm not gonna go further because I don't want to start a whole thing but yeah we're we're I guess you could call us very invested in our spiritual beliefs and we're also liberals so we believe in sacrificing and helping people and and feeding people and clothing people and doing everything we can and plus just a word about immigration we're we're second generation in America my grandfather got on a boat from Italy and came over when he was in 1916 or something like that so we believe in that part of America the part that accepts people from everywhere and actually has an open-door policy for people to grow and experience life I was just thinking about the service your brother does and but going back to Wayne for a minute it's like the way that he lives his life he he tried probably tries to transcend political issues and things like but yeah but he talks about him a lot too yeah he talks about it a lot and the whole band you know you know you you probably wouldn't have to guess which side we lean but uh but we are disturbed about what's happening in our world and in our country right now and the interesting thing about it is what Wayne stands for that whole thing about having a band like that where it's very equal and he's very selfless in the way he leads it and the way it's a band full of people from all over the world - you got a panamanian pianist you got somebody from Louisiana on drums Wayans from Newark we got basically three african-americans in an Italian and it's it's a mixture and it should be the beautiful thing I've experienced in this music in jazz in particular is they adopted me in and into their family these older gentlemen who were African American royalty and men that I love and respect dearly and they took me in they didn't have to there's plenty of guys that play the bass coming from their culture and they took me in and they taught me and they loved me and they Here I am I mean that's an important statement that you're making how music and the kinship between musicians transcends race barriers color all of it and when you go around the world you see it too jazz has a power to do something that I that no politician can do I've seen it on the bandstand for years I've had so many relationships with people from whether it be from South America or Africa or you know Asia played with musicians from India you know Japan everywhere you know and and it's interesting that you know it used to be you know sometimes it can sound like a cliche music is the universal language but it really is we did a gig one time in North Africa in Esso era it's a Gunawan Music Festival so we literally you know part of the thing is you you get to play with the canal once but they you can't even speak the same language or anything so it's only music so we play with these canal ones and there was a chieftain in the ceremonial dress playing the Schembri which looks kind of like a bass it's like got two strings on it or something like that and it's funky and it's a gourd with strings on it and there are these guys with percussion instruments so there we were we couldn't talk but we spoke music and literally the guy would turn around to me yet and he would play these amazing bass lines he'd look at me and go like this I copped a bass line he turned around he also sang unbelievable and I'll never forget it because he was leading and we were just seeing what would happen and Wayne and Danilo kind of hung back a long time and Brian and I were playing with them and they were these guys really tall guys with these fezzes on and the slippers that are all multicolored that have the curly ends and they have these things that look like metal castanets and they were so freaked out by Brian and how good he is they were they were just transfixed and they were smiling and we were grooving and then the guy was leading in the front would shoot him will look like no no you got a watch they were watching him and we were playing in a certain point Wayne and Danilo came in and it was just like this collision these music's I'll never forget it in Morocco and I have some when I did my DNA thing I have some blood from Eritrea all through the Middle East and in the Arab countries so that when I hear that music and the way they sing with the melisma and the and all it freaks me out man it feels like there's something that stirs you know and this guy was unbelievable and we couldn't even speak we could and not one word that was shared but the music was happening well we had Wayne here in 2010 we gave him an honorary Doctorate and he made the comment music gives you a ticket to the universe yes and everything you're talking about is is exactly what he meant I believe yeah yeah and and I also have to say there was a beautiful thing that happened cause Janice is here Segal it's a beautiful thing that happened to me when I got to as a young very young musician got to go out and play with the Manhattan Transfer and it was an amazing experience for me and it also had to do with you know the music is a tight community you know and somebody that they knew was willing to send me out there and had faith in me when nobody knew who I was you know but he it was Neil Shubin house great studio bass player fantastic bass player and you know he could have been kind of like this with all the things that he had cuz he was but he he sent me out to play with them and it was an amazing experience and they were so sweet to me very kind and I was like wow you I knew their records and everything and got to play and that was a big deal also well as we close this interview I want to give you an opportunity to offer all these young students some words of advice and encouragement on on their I know preparing a career as a performer as a creative person is is not easy no so what what what can you help them with the work ethic is huge because I know a lot of guys that were very talented I knew some bass players that I thought world much better than me that didn't get to do some things because the work ethic and the responsibility part of their life wasn't together and maybe that sounds some maybe some of you think I'm corny for saying it but I've seen people who were incredible not have careers because of it so the things about caring about other and Wayne is a classic example of somebody those things mean something to those guys if you come in and you love their music and you work hard and you prepare her be chick Wayne all these guys that I worked for that meant something to them being on time meant something respecting them that was a matter of respect being on time knowing the music caring about the music giving yourself selflessly to the music learning how to edit yourself so that you made everybody sound good I had a lot of help from older musicians because I was a wild and excited kid you know learning trying to learn all this stuff and I had a lot of sage wisdom and advice from people saying just lay it down for if you're a bass player or a drummer or in the rhythm section whatever you do actually having a sense of the whole music not just your part in it but the whole music so that when you add stuff to the texture it helps everybody out that takes time you know like dying to that selfish part of you that wants to just play all the stuff that you've been working on in your room the other thing is rhythm is perhaps the most important thing sound is important to having great years learning how to read music but without a great time feel you can't be you won't get entrance into those gigs where your heroes where they hang out and I had some people tell me that early on and it was a huge lesson for me to really refine that and work on it so where I would be so have the kind of rhythmic backbone where you can be all alone and create the time and the feeling so that people can lean on you don't be the type of musician that figures well I can just lean on them especially if you play bass and drums or if you sing or you play the piano or the guitar or saxophone or trumpet rhythm sections love those kind of people who can play with the rhythm section get inside of the time those are the those kind of people never go out of style those are some chief advice anyway I don't know hopefully that helps it helps so listen we're gonna we're gonna end this now and in here here's some great music and I'd like to thank you so much for coming and sharing your life tonight and I think we're all happy that John patta Tucci's here thank you thank you I want to say one more thing one of the one of the musicians that I got to play with very young is here tonight and I get to play with him again Alan Broadbent Alan is not only incredible pianist and an amazing musician but such a great composer arranger person and you know I got to play with him when I lived in LA and I was coming up and him and Gary Foster and some of these people that really you know Warren Marsh - a little bit but Alan his lyricism and his harmonic language for a young bass player was amazing to me you know so and it still is so we're gonna play okay yeah all right thank you so [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: NYU Steinhardt Jazz Studies

Views: 5,401

Rating: 4.9735098 out of 5

Keywords: John Patitucci, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Dave Schroeder, Dr. David Schroeder, NYU Jazz, NYU Steinhardt Jazz Studies, Jazz Studies, Jazz Bass, Jazz Music, Combo Nuvo, Provincetown Playhouse

Id: jysa68y6SKc

Length: 36min 30sec (2190 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2019