What Are the Chances? One Degree of Separation

for any of you that watch my video on the most complex pop song of all time i refer to my friend smitty paul smith he was the bass player on the gig that got me the gig that thought okay yeah we can learn this song in about two minutes or so on one listening and he's the one who you know when i got lost in the song he was playing fretless bass i was like where are you and then the next day he gets lost in it and i turn my guitar away and we're both laughing so hard that we can't play so we were freshman that was 1983 in the summer time he had already dropped out of ithaca college but we met freshman year of college we were both transfers in and then we were roommates sophomore year in 1981. now this was really an important time this is probably when i learned the most about music was this one year of living with smitty smitty had this insane jazz album collection he also had a john coltrane painting that was four foot by four foot that he hung up above our stereo that his dad painted his dad not only painted this painting but his dad did all chuck mangione for those of you that know the flugelhorn player did all of his early album covers well going even further back i actually met with ron carter yesterday in person he was in town we got together for lunch well ron and his late wife were best friends with paul's parents in the 50s when ron was going to eastman and paul's dad for a graduation present from eastman in 1959 painted ronnie painting called the basis that ron still has hanging up in his apartment new york as a matter of fact after i talked to ron after i interviewed him i asked him about this and his jaw dropped i said i have a friend named paul smith whose mom's name is pauline smith and she worked at rochester telephone with your late wife and ron's jaw dropped and i said in his dad and he says yes bob painted me this painting and he showed it to me and i took pictures of it and i showed it to paul so yesterday i told ron about paul that paul went on after we lived together to become a jazz piano major he went to cal arts and study with charlie hayden the funny story of us living together so there's all this other stuff that happened later on but we're roommates sophomore year and we start the year out and we're in some of the same classes well i immediately transferred to being a base major when i started freshman year so i'm a base major and i have this locker that i kept my base in that paul would keep his guitar and stuff in this huge locker that bass players had so we were in all the same classes all the same theory classes and everything paul and i would go out and play gigs we got gigs playing duos two guitars or paul would play bass he was a killer bass player and then at night time we would go down to the practice rooms and paul would play piano and i'd play bass i play upright and we'd play standards for hours the main thing is that paul had this incredible jazz record collection and he knew all the greatest solos so we would sit there in our room for hours and hours and hours and listen to solos and learn to sing them that's why i can still do that to this day because i learned all these things back then in 1981. so when i interviewed pat metheny i referred to this day this that i met pat on october 10 1981 and i think pat was kind of surprised that i knew the exact date well the reason that i know the date is because after the show lyle mays who was the keyboard player with pat since i was working the show i went backstage i met pat then i met lyle we were talking lyle says to me um are there any video ca arcades around here i said yo there's one right around the corner he's like okay let's go so i walk with lyle around the corner and he goes and he starts playing video games he's playing asteroids and all this stuff and and then he turns to me says do you play chess and i said no but my roommate paul is a really good chess player and he's like oh well let's go play and i said well we live up in an apartment up near campus so we'd have to hitchhike to get there and he's like okay so lyle mays keyboardist for pat metheny and i walk down to this area right in front of this club called simeons and the commons in ithaca we put our thumbs out and these two girls pick us up and they're like where are you going we go to hudson heights where we lived so they drive us up the hill it's probably about a six minute drive or so and they drop us off at our apartment c11 hudson heights i open the door and the lights are off and smitty's sleeping already and he's like i said paul get up lyle mays is here to play you in chess and he's you know puts his glasses on he's like what are you talking about i thought i thought pat was gonna come back and hang out and i was like no lyle maze is actually here and he goes what and he stands up and he sees that lyle mays is here well a couple other of my buddies followed us up because they heard lyle was coming up i said lyle's here to play chess against you and it's like oh okay so they sit down at our kitchen table paul rolls on his chessboard they start setting up and paul puts on this record vsop record and her and lyle's like wow i haven't heard this this is amazing it's herbie and ron carter this is weird how it's all connected all these people right a couple buddies of mine show up there we order domino's pizza and they start playing this game the reason that i know the date is because paul still has the game written down he sent me the actual page that he wrote down it actually says october 11th because the game ended at three in the morning i think something like this it went on for a long time this game paul was an excellent chess player and he actually beat lyle after a long game and i remember that i had to get a ride back down and the matheny bus was waiting for lyle like where the hell have you been you know he just disappeared there were no cell phones or anything so anyways so after that year paul dropped out of school went back to rochester bought a house and started working at a restaurant i think waiting tables and playing music doing things like that but he just had enough of school and so i finished school i left to go get my grad degree at new england conservatory in boston and paul ended up going back to ithaca to finish his undergrad and then he went to cal arts and study with charlie hayden the great jazz bass player that that pat metheny mentions as being his best friend so paul studied with charlie out there in the late 80s and then ended up moving back to ithaca in 1989 and we became roommates again so paul comes back to town and we're hanging out together playing gigs again all the time on different instruments and stuff and this is a hilarious thing i'm always talking to my kids and saying you know get off the video games do this stuff and i was like i never played video games but then it occurred to me that that's actually not true because during my master's degree there was this game called gunsmoke that was at the local laundromat that i went and played with my friend aiden all the time i was obsessed with this game i go in and put a quarter in and i play for an hour and a half well when paul came back to ithaca we used to go to the mall every day so i'd have my classes in the afternoon i mean i'm a professor there but we played this game this world series baseball game every day we put a quarter in and no lie we play for two hours straight then we needed this chinese restaurant then i'd be like oh my god i gotta get to class right now but this was our daily routine was to play this stuff so yesterday when i met with ron carter i told him about paul and he asked me about paul's mom is she still living pauline i said yeah she's still living and we talked about the painting and his dad and he said so what happened to paul i said well he lives out in las vegas now but we're still we still keep in touch all times one of my best friends and i said he ended up going on and becoming a musician he went and got a jazz degree and ron was amazed at this that his friend paul's parents actually their son they had a son and daughter but their son went on and became a musician i said paul's a fantastic piano player guitar player and bass player during spring break that year in 1981 i remember paul stayed there in our apartment and he transcribed this john coltrane impression solo and when i came back he's like check out this transcription i did and no lie the thing was like 50 feet long he taped it all together he says hold this and he strung it out across the room it was like a hundred pages long okay that he had done in pencil this insane coltrane transcription that he spent two weeks doing i learned more that year from us sitting around listening to albums i really learned how to listen to music and we would just sit there and just jam out basically like i do when i do my what makes this song great or when i when i make those videos or when i make any of my jazz videos i made recently we would just sit and listen to music and play air drums and play air piano and air guitar even though we could play this stuff too and then we would practice and we played gigs all the time and i honestly learned more from hanging out with smitty than i really did in any of our classes that we had because all the theory stuff we already knew there was nothing to learn there yeah we learned stuff music history wise we learned things from those classes and we enjoyed those classes and then our classes that were outside of there the psych classes whatever that we took those were really interesting we were talking about this earlier today and that it's 40 years ago this week that we were roommates together so let that be a lesson as my teacher steve brown who was also an incredibly big influence on me he was my teacher at ithaca my guitar teacher he used to say you can learn a lot by hanging out and that's really how i've probably learned most of the things just by hanging out with other musicians that's all for now thanks for watching that's all for now don't forget to subscribe ring the bell and leave a comment check out my new quick lessons pro guitar course that just came out also the biato book if you want to learn about music theory that's how you do it and check out my beato ear training course at beautiertraining.com and don't forget if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the biato club thanks so much for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 178,118

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, WMTSG, Pat Metheny, Ron Carter, John Coltrane, Piano, Music School, Videogames, Arcade Games, Story, Talk, Discussion, Let's Chat, Music College, Lyle Mays, 80's, Connections, Inspirational, Musicians, Chuck Mangione, Jazz, Jazz Music, Jazz Bass, Jazz Guitar, Keyboard, Jazz Piano, Storytime, Life Story, chess game, Chess, Chess Openings, Miles Davis

Id: 3OJYwEm8gfA

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021