Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Riddholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. This is Barry Riddholts. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. And I know
Speaker 1: I say this every week, I have a very special
Speaker 1: guest this week, but this week I really have a
Speaker 1: very special guest. Uh. Some of you guys know I'm
Speaker 1: a bit of a jazz fan, and uh, somebody I've
Speaker 1: seen a number of times who always puts on a
Speaker 1: phenomenal show is guitarist and vocalist and rack Huntur John Pizzarelli.
Speaker 1: We we touched on about half of the questions I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to. There's so much more stuff to
Speaker 1: talk about the music industry and how things are changing,
Speaker 1: what's going on with that entire shift to digital, and
Speaker 1: how the new world has just completely turned music upside down,
Speaker 1: especially in the realm of jazz, which isn't uh a
Speaker 1: popular music the way pop and rap and hip hop
Speaker 1: is today, but it is still something that is appreciated
Speaker 1: by people of finer taste and and understanding of music history. Anyway,
Speaker 1: John was great. He spoke with us for about an
Speaker 1: hour and a half and graced us with a couple
Speaker 1: of songs on his um guitar. I think if you're
Speaker 1: a music fan at all, and if you're especially if
Speaker 1: you're a jazz fan, you're gonna find today's show especially delightful. So,
Speaker 1: without any further ado, my conversation with John Pizzarelli. This
Speaker 1: is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: My special guest today is John Pizzarelli. He is a
Speaker 1: famous jazz guitarist vocalist who has played with ge just
Speaker 1: about everybody in the world of music. I know we
Speaker 1: normally focus on people in finance and investing, but today
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at the business of music and jazz
Speaker 1: in particular. Um, welcome to Bloomberg. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. So a little background about John.
Speaker 1: You have recorded, let's see how wrong my my research.
Speaker 1: You've recorded twenty three albums of your own music, singing
Speaker 1: solo albums. Yeah. You've appeared as either a featured guitarist
Speaker 1: or vocalist on forty other albums, and then you've appeared
Speaker 1: as a session player on and a bunch of other ones. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: you have in the past, you've toured extensively with your
Speaker 1: own trio, your own quartet. We'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the big bands you're touring with now for the
Speaker 1: Sinatra centennial. We're doing some things right. We'll get to that.
Speaker 1: And you've also you've played with some of the biggest
Speaker 1: names in the industry, haven't you. Well. I've opened for
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra. I've played with Rosemary Clooney, James Taylor, Natalie Cole,
Speaker 1: Ricky Lee Jone said Paul McCartney. No one we've ever
Speaker 1: heard of that. No, yeah, some of you might know.
Speaker 1: But um and John is also in addition to the
Speaker 1: author of a book, World on a String about his
Speaker 1: adventures in the music world, he is also the host
Speaker 1: of a weekly radio program co hosted with the vocalist
Speaker 1: Jessica Malasky, who also happens to be your wife. We
Speaker 1: share a bed there you go, and and a radio
Speaker 1: mike and um. You know, whenever I read reviews of yours,
Speaker 1: they always talk about your soft voice, your knack for
Speaker 1: up tempo swing, and your charming stage presence. There you go.
Speaker 1: That's the triple threat, there it is. So let's let's
Speaker 1: jump right into this. You come from a family of musicians.
Speaker 1: Your dad Bucky really well known Bucky Pizzorelli, famous guitarist,
Speaker 1: literally played with everybody back in the day, still playing today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said he's played with everybody except Bing Crosby. I
Speaker 1: think was the only one that he missed. He missed
Speaker 1: along the way, so he um. At one point in
Speaker 1: time he was the guitarist for the Tonight Show band.
Speaker 1: He was on staff at NBC and uh so he
Speaker 1: played for the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when it
Speaker 1: was in New York. Uh and then when they went
Speaker 1: to l A, he stayed here because the family was
Speaker 1: pretty well rooted in New Jersey. I remember getting the
Speaker 1: person a person call from Doc Severance and looking for
Speaker 1: my father. And then when Doc came back a couple
Speaker 1: of years later, we went back to see him after
Speaker 1: the show and it was him and another trumpet player
Speaker 1: named Johnny Frost, and Doc looked at the two of
Speaker 1: them said, you're the only two guys I wanted to
Speaker 1: go to California. They wanted to stayed back. And your
Speaker 1: uncle's also a professional musicians. My father's uncle's were One
Speaker 1: was a guitar player who went out with all the
Speaker 1: big bands. His name was Bobby Dominic, and then there
Speaker 1: was Peter Dominic who stayed around New Jersey and worked
Speaker 1: in the silk mills in Patterson, New Jersey, but on
Speaker 1: the weekends played gigs on the band Joe and music
Speaker 1: around the house constantly growing up, no getting away from it.
Speaker 1: Did you know you always wanted to be position or
Speaker 1: were there other temptations career wise? Now? I think I
Speaker 1: just fell into doing it, you know, I was. It
Speaker 1: was the one thing when I was in high school.
Speaker 1: You play a dance, you'd make twenty five dollars, you
Speaker 1: get you know, you'd make fifty dollars if it was
Speaker 1: a big deal in nineteen seventy seven, fifty dollars in
Speaker 1: your pocket. So it was just something that we were doing.
Speaker 1: I was still playing baseball a little bit through high school.
Speaker 1: But evidently you have to be able to hit to
Speaker 1: be a baseball player, especially the curveball. That's really tough
Speaker 1: to uh breaking even the fastball really So no baseball
Speaker 1: baseball career, going to play for the Red Sox, No,
Speaker 1: But but I am. It was just I had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun playing these gigs and uh and then
Speaker 1: I would still have gigs in bars around New Jersey
Speaker 1: and New York playing like cover bands and then make
Speaker 1: real money working with my father on jazz gigs. So
Speaker 1: what was the lure of rock and roll in those days?
Speaker 1: So we're about the same age. Maybe I'm you got
Speaker 1: you were born at sixty and born, But we came
Speaker 1: up with the Beatles, the Stones. Who was there a
Speaker 1: giant lure of becoming a rock god? Well, I think
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do was I wanted to write songs,
Speaker 1: and I like Jackson Brown and James Taylor and Billy Joel,
Speaker 1: Billy Joel probably in particular, and the Beatles. So I
Speaker 1: was writing all these songs, and I would I had
Speaker 1: equipment to do stuff in my room where I could
Speaker 1: set up and make demos of all these things, so
Speaker 1: I would I would quietly keep that thing going and
Speaker 1: try to figure out how I was going to eventually
Speaker 1: shop all that stuff, you know, and get it out there.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime I was out worker with my dad.
Speaker 1: My dad said I was the only guy playing jazz
Speaker 1: to support his rock and roll habit. You got the
Speaker 1: way around. Well, that's kind of the way things have
Speaker 1: developed these days, Although you know it's not the business
Speaker 1: it was twenty years ago. It's totally changed what We're
Speaker 1: gonna definitely talk about that a lot more in in
Speaker 1: the upcoming segments. Um, let's talk about Nat King Cole
Speaker 1: in the last two minutes. We have huge influence on you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well that was the thing, is that one
Speaker 1: I've heard the Nat called trio on record. It's a
Speaker 1: long story that I got to it, but there they
Speaker 1: were that records were re released in the Best of
Speaker 1: the Necking Col Trio Parts one and two. My father said,
Speaker 1: go find them. I found the records, brought them home,
Speaker 1: played them and he said, you understand, and I want
Speaker 1: that's it because it was it was the anti uh
Speaker 1: Night and Day and I get a kick out of you.
Speaker 1: It was Root sixty six, Straighten Up a Fly right
Speaker 1: and from France, Sauce and and all these yeah, and
Speaker 1: all the songs that someone who was twenty could sing
Speaker 1: on gigs and things. It was. It fit me perfectly
Speaker 1: on jazz gigs, not on rock and roll, right on
Speaker 1: my debt, Yeah, and then even on my own little
Speaker 1: gigs I could start to play them too. I had
Speaker 1: this sort of eclectic repertoire because in that coal. So
Speaker 1: let's fast forward A few years later, was it you
Speaker 1: release Dear Mr Cole. Yeah, then I had I had
Speaker 1: a group going and then uh Kyoshi here Kawa from
Speaker 1: the japan label of our c A recommended that I
Speaker 1: do A said we'd like to you to do a
Speaker 1: record with Benny Green and Chris McBride were real hot
Speaker 1: and fantastic jazz musicians. And after a long discussion, I
Speaker 1: said sure, okay, and they picked all the songs and
Speaker 1: I made this record. It was and at that time
Speaker 1: was it sold pretty well? It was a good record
Speaker 1: for me. I'm Barry rid Helpts. You're listening to Masters
Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is
Speaker 1: jazz guitarist and singer John Pizzarelli. We've been talking about
Speaker 1: his mentors and people who influenced him when he began
Speaker 1: his career. Let's start with your dad, Bucky Pizzarelli. What
Speaker 1: was it like having a father who was really a
Speaker 1: renowned jazz guitarist. Well, it was actually it was quite
Speaker 1: interesting because uh, you know, we didn't really know about
Speaker 1: like a lot of these people were coming over the house.
Speaker 1: I think the like to have we always knew when
Speaker 1: Benny Goodman was coming over because we were all sent upstairs,
Speaker 1: don't come down, you know, so we knew, you know,
Speaker 1: Benny Goodman was somebody anyway, because he was the king
Speaker 1: of Swing, except when he was napping in your parents
Speaker 1: sleep on the you know, he'd come over. He keep
Speaker 1: the pants off and have the socks on still, so
Speaker 1: you wouldn't ruin the crease, you know, in the pants, right,
Speaker 1: but you'd have Less Paul and Zoots, Sims and slam Stewart.
Speaker 1: And although they may not have been household days, Less
Speaker 1: Paul was uh, you still had these guys who had
Speaker 1: incredible careers and you really didn't know that much about
Speaker 1: their careers until like years later he said, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I was sitting in a room with slam Stewart. The
Speaker 1: questions I could have asked this guy, you know. So
Speaker 1: it was really fun to be around the guys and
Speaker 1: and and the idea of watching them hang out together
Speaker 1: was as fun as watching them play together. And it
Speaker 1: was it was in watching them hang out and saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the guys I want to hang out with.
Speaker 1: So the only way to hang out with him was
Speaker 1: to learn Honeysuckle Rose. You had to learn their language
Speaker 1: and it was all those songs so you could sit
Speaker 1: in and then after the song you could listen to
Speaker 1: somebody tell a story. So that's why you wanted to
Speaker 1: be part of that group. So who of this incredible
Speaker 1: rate of musicians coming through the Pizzarelli household in New Jersey?
Speaker 1: Who was an early mentor for you? Was it just
Speaker 1: your dad? Was it? I think the big one was
Speaker 1: that my my father was really the mentor because he
Speaker 1: he he always steered you in the right direction, you know.
Speaker 1: And what I managed to do when we started to
Speaker 1: do gigs together, I always drove so in the dots
Speaker 1: in two ten and I would make cassettes of all
Speaker 1: these records that he was on, like just the track
Speaker 1: from this one, a track from that one, one with
Speaker 1: Zoot Sims, one with Joe Venuti, one with all these
Speaker 1: different guys, and I put it on and so you
Speaker 1: want to hear some music? Yeah, boom, and when I
Speaker 1: drive and he'd listened to it because he didn't really
Speaker 1: listen to the records that he made. They were all
Speaker 1: in the house. I said, what was it like working
Speaker 1: with that guy? Oh? Well, I tell you all. That
Speaker 1: guy was unbelievable, you know, you tell a Joe Venuti story.
Speaker 1: He talked about Zoot Sims and the guys who were
Speaker 1: making the music that supported all the great guys like
Speaker 1: Ben Crosby and Frank Sinatra or Woody Herman or Nat Cole.
Speaker 1: Were these guys who were all in the house, you know,
Speaker 1: so it was interesting to know hear them play, and
Speaker 1: then hear what they had to say about all those guys,
Speaker 1: and then and you've got more excited about being around
Speaker 1: them and learning them. You know, you always heard this
Speaker 1: style of music like swing jazz made popular by a
Speaker 1: Count Basie and Oscar Peterson and Benny Goodman played at
Speaker 1: such a high level you were like, well, that's what
Speaker 1: I want to do. I mean, that's it's not old
Speaker 1: fashioned to me. That's you know, when you hear it
Speaker 1: played like that, it's as good as anything and still
Speaker 1: contemporary and still minron and not at all dated. Now,
Speaker 1: every now and then you'll hear an old scratchy recording
Speaker 1: and you'll hear you could hear how data it is.
Speaker 1: But when and we'll talk about your band in the
Speaker 1: next segment, But when I hear some of your contemporary
Speaker 1: arrangements of either the Great American Songbook or anything that
Speaker 1: Sinatra did from the songbook. They're very fresh, they're very modern.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem at old dated. Well, we use that
Speaker 1: the guys who all participate in the making of those records,
Speaker 1: who arranged and do those things, are guys who come
Speaker 1: from the same place from studying that stuff, wanting to
Speaker 1: be part of that, or playing with famous people when
Speaker 1: they were young also and said well, I want to
Speaker 1: take that as a foundation and go from there. It's
Speaker 1: the same thing with me with the net Coultrial. We
Speaker 1: use it as a foundation, you know, through my twenties
Speaker 1: and early thirties, and then took off from there when
Speaker 1: we started to apply it to other people who were
Speaker 1: influential and things like that. So, so let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the people you've met and played with. You
Speaker 1: mentioned you met Les Paul when you were young. Did
Speaker 1: you ever get to sit in with him? Yeah, we,
Speaker 1: my father and I did a couple of times. Uh.
Speaker 1: We went to a uh. He used to play all
Speaker 1: over the place, and we we actually played together a
Speaker 1: place called the Hanover Trail Steakhouse in Ramsey, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: He was playing there on a Sunday night with his
Speaker 1: son and he had all you know, all those tapes
Speaker 1: making all that music, and he was playing how high
Speaker 1: the Moon and everything, and he saw my dad and
Speaker 1: I said, you gotta come play, Come on up, and
Speaker 1: we got up played with him. The funny thing was
Speaker 1: is that I saw him play once with a musician
Speaker 1: where if the musicians started to get too fancy, he
Speaker 1: would pull his plug out on the guitar so the
Speaker 1: sound would go dead. So I was saying, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be purpose. Yeah, so I wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: sit next to where he could pull the plug out,
Speaker 1: so I sat on the other side of him. So
Speaker 1: instead when I was playing and people were like applauding
Speaker 1: while I was playing, he just started de tuning my guitar.
Speaker 1: One of my great regrets. When I first moved into
Speaker 1: the city a hundred years ago, I lived on seventeenth
Speaker 1: and third unless Paul played every Tuesday at Tuesday's. It
Speaker 1: was one of those things, Oh it's it's right there,
Speaker 1: like the corner fiftt oh, I gotta go. Never won
Speaker 1: my one one of my biggest musical It is one
Speaker 1: of the great things about the city is that they
Speaker 1: there's the things that go on like that, and you say,
Speaker 1: I gotta go there. I want to do that. It's
Speaker 1: right here, and unless you make a concerted effort, it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. Um. So you you got to see Benny
Speaker 1: Goodman in his underwear, But did you ever get to
Speaker 1: play with I played with him once. We were going
Speaker 1: to a gig in Connecticut. My fast, let's stop see Benny.
Speaker 1: We pulled into Benny's place. I think he called and
Speaker 1: said we were come. And Benny was sitting in a
Speaker 1: chair and he would always try to find a read
Speaker 1: for his clarinet. He always looking for the perfect read.
Speaker 1: And we had the guitars, and he said, get the guitars,
Speaker 1: and we were sitting there and he started to play
Speaker 1: avalon and so we were following along one of his
Speaker 1: big songs that he always play, and my father played.
Speaker 1: He pointed the clarinet towards my father. My father started
Speaker 1: to play a little solo and he was listening, and
Speaker 1: then after my father was done, he like looked at me, like, okay,
Speaker 1: you have to play now. So I got to play
Speaker 1: a little solo in Benny Goodman's living room. That was
Speaker 1: close I got. We opened for him on a number
Speaker 1: of concerts, so that was fun too. It was the
Speaker 1: first time I got to Los Angeles, was opening for
Speaker 1: Benny Goodman with my father, and then Rosemary Clooney is
Speaker 1: somebody else you did an album of duets with in
Speaker 1: addition to supporting her as a that was guitars for
Speaker 1: a while. Once again, Bucky Pitzarelli couldn't do the two weeks,
Speaker 1: all of the the ten nights of a two week run,
Speaker 1: so I subbed two nights in a row, and on
Speaker 1: the second night and literally my father said, this is
Speaker 1: exactly what you will play, so here now, this is it.
Speaker 1: Now play it back. Okay, don't do anything else. So
Speaker 1: I played and the second night I actually she actually said,
Speaker 1: you have a new record out. I want you to
Speaker 1: come out to uh California and sing at our singer
Speaker 1: salute songwriters. And it's like, okay. She was just totally
Speaker 1: up on the new album. Like within a day someone
Speaker 1: said he's got a record out. I just read about it,
Speaker 1: and she was from then on as generous as anyone
Speaker 1: was to me. For it must have been almost twenty years.
Speaker 1: I knew in your book you very much imply, but
Speaker 1: you never explicitly state that a lot of these oh
Speaker 1: I can't make that gig, can you substitute? Was really
Speaker 1: your dad kind of teeing you up with some of
Speaker 1: these people. Yeah, I mean I think that's true. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it was really a lot. It was really fun
Speaker 1: on the various occasions that those things would happen, and
Speaker 1: then you know, then he would bring me along also,
Speaker 1: aside from just subbing. He'd he'd say, you know, we
Speaker 1: got this gig, and he'd say, I'm gonna bring my
Speaker 1: kid with me. He's gonna play some duets. And so
Speaker 1: that happened a number of times where you know, some
Speaker 1: guys are going, oh, who's this twenty four year old
Speaker 1: with him? And then we you know, we had worked
Speaker 1: so much, we were prepared to do anything. You know,
Speaker 1: we play four hour gigs, so when we had to
Speaker 1: play thirty minutes somewhere, we were bulletproof. I'm Barry rid Halts.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My
Speaker 1: special guest today is John Pizzarelli. He is a highly
Speaker 1: regarded jazz guitarist and vocalist, specializing in, amongst other things,
Speaker 1: the Great American Songbook. And here we are. It's two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. It is the centennial of Frank Sinatra's birthday,
Speaker 1: and about a decade ago you released an album, Dear
Speaker 1: Mr Sinatra. How how was that received? Actually, that was
Speaker 1: received quite well. I think you can put your name
Speaker 1: put Sinatra's name still means something. And in that particular case,
Speaker 1: it was the right time for me to make that record.
Speaker 1: And it was a unique record in that we didn't
Speaker 1: uh copy any of the old arrangements. We had new
Speaker 1: arrangements written by John Clayton from Who's a great bass
Speaker 1: player from West Coast and a ranger, and that their band,
Speaker 1: the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. So I wanted to use
Speaker 1: a specific band with a specific sound, and inside of
Speaker 1: that homage was basically based on the songs that were
Speaker 1: written for Sinatra by people like Sammy Cohn and Jimmy
Speaker 1: van Heusen. So we used end psy Coleman, So we
Speaker 1: had Witchcraft and we Small Hours and Ring a Ding
Speaker 1: Ding and the Last Dance. So there were these songs
Speaker 1: specifically written for Sinatra and then other ones from other records.
Speaker 1: So you eventually get the call to open for Sinatra
Speaker 1: on a tour. I guess they thought um in Europe,
Speaker 1: perhaps the Germans weren't too keen on a stand up
Speaker 1: comic and they didn't have any there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as a German comics and Don Rickles probably not the
Speaker 1: right guy for that crowd, to say the least, let's trouble.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I got lucky because the the uh I
Speaker 1: was with our c A here in the United States.
Speaker 1: They were owned by the Bertelsman group of m BMG
Speaker 1: based in Germany, and uh so the guy over their
Speaker 1: heinz hen Sugges six said, uh, Pitza really should do it.
Speaker 1: We were good friends. I had done a bunch of
Speaker 1: things over there, and sure enough at all worked itself
Speaker 1: out and I did a month tour of Europe to
Speaker 1: lead up to doing the six dates in Germany. So
Speaker 1: it was, it was. It was really amazing because I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it was gonna happen. And then you're in
Speaker 1: the room and there you know. The rehearsal. The first
Speaker 1: rehearsal was that was the best because we brought we
Speaker 1: put out the charts. I sat down, I stood in
Speaker 1: front of the band. In the first row was Frank
Speaker 1: Sinatra Jr. And Bill Miller, who was Sinatra's longtime piano player,
Speaker 1: and we played the charts down. Took us as long
Speaker 1: as it was going to take in the show. It
Speaker 1: was like twenty five minutes. I said, sounds great, fellas,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, and Frank Sinatra Junior says, that's it.
Speaker 1: I said, they sound great, and he's like, jeezus, was
Speaker 1: Shirley mcleand you another two hours and it still wouldn't
Speaker 1: be right. So we were laughing about that. But it
Speaker 1: was exciting. I said, all the bands, you know, after
Speaker 1: the with Sinatra's and it was amazing. You know, you
Speaker 1: tell a story about and I'm trying to remember if
Speaker 1: this was either in concert or in the book. You're
Speaker 1: in like Atlanta, Georgia, somewhere it's a million degrees and
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to do rehearsal. It's too damn high.
Speaker 1: He came in and uh it was. It's a six
Speaker 1: thousand seat outdoor venue called chas Stain Park. We got
Speaker 1: in a day early, so they got us Sara to rehearse.
Speaker 1: I was rehearsing, someone said Frank's here, get the hell
Speaker 1: off the stage, just like that. So it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, plates cups, everything's been in some we went
Speaker 1: running out. He had a jacket on the back that
Speaker 1: said hurry up and wait, and it was literally a
Speaker 1: hundred degrees and he and that he had even a
Speaker 1: wind break around was amazing, and he started singing like
Speaker 1: he was going to imagination. It's funny. And Junior, his
Speaker 1: son they called him Junior, turned around and put his
Speaker 1: fist in front of Sinatra's face and said, you've got
Speaker 1: to fight it. And Sinatra looked at him like, okay,
Speaker 1: what do you want? What do you want? And he said, uh,
Speaker 1: what does America to mean? How I live in And
Speaker 1: we were way out, just the six of us eating
Speaker 1: a pizza in the middle of the six thousand empty seats,
Speaker 1: and Sinatra sang three glorious songs. He's sang that one
Speaker 1: Camarader com Shine and luck be a Lady. We were crying.
Speaker 1: It was so brilliant that way just knocked it out
Speaker 1: of the park. We were weeping into our pizza. And
Speaker 1: then he said, throw another log on the air conditioner
Speaker 1: and he walked off. So you actually played with him
Speaker 1: also for a while. I opened the shows. I opened
Speaker 1: the twelve shows in the States and the twelve in
Speaker 1: the thing. And my last number was always sing, sing, sing,
Speaker 1: and I'd be playing that and I'd look into wings
Speaker 1: and there was Sinatra snapping his fingers, and he would
Speaker 1: always come out and say, it wasn't that fantastic. We
Speaker 1: always go boy, we could have We could have been
Speaker 1: easily sent back to the States at any time. Now,
Speaker 1: the first time you met him, he was you. You
Speaker 1: described that as a kind of interesting. Yeah, well, I,
Speaker 1: after this long walked down the hallway and his man,
Speaker 1: Hank Tanio, the head production guy, was fantastic fellow in
Speaker 1: a deduced me and we just sort of shook hands
Speaker 1: Sanatra and I and and uh, he just sort of
Speaker 1: looked at me and grumped, you know. And I was
Speaker 1: about to walk away, and he said eat something, you
Speaker 1: look bad, and and then I walked away where everybody
Speaker 1: was laughing. That was like, basically it that's the words
Speaker 1: of wisdom. You have something to eat, you don't look
Speaker 1: too good. That's great. I'm Barry rid Holts. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest
Speaker 1: today is John Pizzarelli. He is a renowned guitarist vocalist
Speaker 1: rock contour who has pretty much played with everybody in
Speaker 1: the music industry. Let's talk continue what we were discussing
Speaker 1: earlier about opening up for Frank Sinatra on the European
Speaker 1: and an American tour. What did that mean to you personally?
Speaker 1: You mentioned he was a hero of viewers for so
Speaker 1: long and and how did it impact you professionally? Oh,
Speaker 1: I think it's it was a big deal, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean the thing for me is was trying to
Speaker 1: realize that there was no room for I'm so nervous
Speaker 1: that it's Frank Sinatra. I mean, we really had to
Speaker 1: go out and do your twenty minutes. Whatever they said went,
Speaker 1: you know, and you knew, uh, no fooling around, no
Speaker 1: fooling around, and no, there was really no time for
Speaker 1: uh butterflies. You just really had to go out and
Speaker 1: do the show and get it done and uh. And
Speaker 1: it was also one of the you know, the most
Speaker 1: people I'd played in front of, you know, in in
Speaker 1: uh where were we in uh Hamburg? In the back
Speaker 1: of Derby Park. We played along the backstretch of of
Speaker 1: a race track and there was twenty thousand people there.
Speaker 1: So you're going, oh, it's twenty people. You know. I
Speaker 1: was just in uh, nobody's in in Mahwa in front
Speaker 1: of the sixteen beer drinkers, So it was you know,
Speaker 1: those kind of things. It was like, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: this is if this is where you desire to go,
Speaker 1: here you are now do what you do. So it
Speaker 1: was really, uh, it was interesting to be put in
Speaker 1: that situation without any you know, and just go, okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna open for Frank Sinatra. And there were people
Speaker 1: like when we did in the States too, uh you know,
Speaker 1: you my friend was on an elevator with two guys
Speaker 1: to see the kid wasn't so bad. You know, he
Speaker 1: wasn't so nervous. You know, people were really watching to
Speaker 1: see what the hell was going on. So that was
Speaker 1: sort of what was interesting about it was just that
Speaker 1: you know, you've worked your life to get to this point.
Speaker 1: Now you have to deliver and what about um some
Speaker 1: of the overlap between music did they must have really
Speaker 1: run a tight hand on your set list. They didn't,
Speaker 1: but I did because I made I had to think, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do all of me only because
Speaker 1: he's made a great record. All of me and my
Speaker 1: allarmy is not going to match up to people going well,
Speaker 1: that's what that was. So I had three little words.
Speaker 1: I opened with an instrumental I did, uh, I think
Speaker 1: the group played if I had you uh we I know.
Speaker 1: We closed with sing Sing, Sing, and we had something
Speaker 1: else in the middle that we we tried to stay
Speaker 1: away from. We had a little baby medley that was
Speaker 1: really great that Bill Miller particularly liked. Uh So I
Speaker 1: had a little Basie thing in it. So it was
Speaker 1: pretty much just trying to steer clear of anything that
Speaker 1: was too reminiscent of what Sinatra was doing, and it
Speaker 1: worked out pretty well. We had just enough stuff to
Speaker 1: to make that happen. And you had a fun little
Speaker 1: song you used to play called I Like Jersey Best,
Speaker 1: which was a musical tribute slash parody and we you know,
Speaker 1: my buddy Joe Cosgra wrote the song and we had
Speaker 1: been following us around New Jersey and it was and
Speaker 1: when we opened at the Garden State Arts Center, it
Speaker 1: was the one time when I said, if if I
Speaker 1: do this song, they're gonna love it, and Sinatra's gonna
Speaker 1: kill me. I just didn't want to go near it,
Speaker 1: so I was all set. My father actually did that
Speaker 1: night with us, which was really terrific. So we had
Speaker 1: it all set up. We were already it was just
Speaker 1: about to go on, and one of the ushers comes
Speaker 1: backstage and says, oh, by the way, Brendan Burns in
Speaker 1: the audience tonight, which is a line in the song.
Speaker 1: He's in the song and he knows from Governor it's
Speaker 1: in our beautiful arena. Now it's had Brendan Burne carved
Speaker 1: on the wall. So I knew he was like he
Speaker 1: wanted to hear his song, you know, and hear his name.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I gotta do the song now
Speaker 1: Brendan Burns here, so I get and then in the
Speaker 1: middle of the thing I did. I got away with it.
Speaker 1: But it was one of those things where I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get too cute here. You know, you get a little
Speaker 1: too cute with Sinatra and it's not no, you never
Speaker 1: not have got a mess with yeah. So and that
Speaker 1: could have taken Uh, if the crowd liked it too much,
Speaker 1: it could have been big trouble. He might not have
Speaker 1: been too happy. So it worked out just right, and uh,
Speaker 1: the whole thing was fantastically but you know, it was funny.
Speaker 1: Once we closed opening for Rosemary Clooney, we closed with
Speaker 1: sing Sing, Sing with the big band, and as I
Speaker 1: walked up, she was flaudy. She was like, that was
Speaker 1: really true. Ific, You'll never ope for me again, So
Speaker 1: you know she was almost kidding. The last, the last
Speaker 1: thing an opener wants is the crowd really enthusiastic and
Speaker 1: want you just settle them in and get out of
Speaker 1: the way please. That's hilarious. So now let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the future music and what's going to
Speaker 1: be going on with all these changes. Really, the first
Speaker 1: question I have to ask is is it the audience
Speaker 1: taste that's changing? Is it the technology that's changing? What
Speaker 1: is it that's driving as flux in the music industry? Well,
Speaker 1: I think the one thing that works for me, since
Speaker 1: I'm not someone my music, I'm not record sales don't
Speaker 1: generate what I do, which is the which is you know,
Speaker 1: I make my records just so that they're almost like
Speaker 1: calling cards. You can say he's got a new record
Speaker 1: coming out, He'll come promoted at your club. And they
Speaker 1: end having done this now for twenty five years, they
Speaker 1: know what I'm gonna do. My My thing is about
Speaker 1: live performance. That's the one thing that they can't take
Speaker 1: away from what goes on with everything else. So when
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, the story was when we
Speaker 1: were kids, when that's right where we're about the same age,
Speaker 1: you would a new record would come out and a
Speaker 1: band would tour to promote the record. Right where you're
Speaker 1: describing is the exact opposite. Hey, we want to go
Speaker 1: on tour. Let's put out a record so we have
Speaker 1: something to talk about on the road. Yeah. They was, well,
Speaker 1: does he have a new album out and can come
Speaker 1: back if he has a new album out? And so,
Speaker 1: and it really isn't about I mean for me, the
Speaker 1: I think the most records of one record might either
Speaker 1: Bossonova or the Sinatra record was up around between forty
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand. That's a lot of records for me.
Speaker 1: That's the first of yours I've ever bought. Well there
Speaker 1: hence why those sales were so good. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there's like Sinatra and Bossanova. Are you know they're
Speaker 1: they're gold as they say, it's gold, Jerry, But it's uh,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. So I've had a couple of and
Speaker 1: then that whole records worked very well for me. So
Speaker 1: but now, uh, it's a different ballgame and it's mostly
Speaker 1: about getting out to performance. That's the one thing they
Speaker 1: can't changes. You can't download live performance and have the
Speaker 1: same experience as being at a live performance. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. So you know, when you get people
Speaker 1: in the room to hear Sinatra music and you have
Speaker 1: the best guys in New York, that's how you make
Speaker 1: your career. You gotta you. I've spent a lot of
Speaker 1: money putting those getting those arrangements together. I have so
Speaker 1: many arrangements written by Don Sebeski or John clay and
Speaker 1: really good arranged, solid arrangements. So when you go play
Speaker 1: with the Boston Pops, you gotta play with the New
Speaker 1: York That's where your investment is. So people go, wow,
Speaker 1: it was really great. I wonder if he can do
Speaker 1: a Gershwin show because that Roger's show was fantastic. Let's
Speaker 1: get him back next year. You know, you spend so
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. So when you buy an arrangement,
Speaker 1: when you have somebody create an arrangement for you, is
Speaker 1: that yours and yours exclusively or is it like an architect,
Speaker 1: is he selling that same plan to other people? Well
Speaker 1: a one off. John Clayton has sold some of like
Speaker 1: some of those charts like nice and easy. I know
Speaker 1: that he's made some of them available, which is fine.
Speaker 1: You know that he's made them available to people to buy.
Speaker 1: So like I think one or two of those charts
Speaker 1: or he's put out there my things I get, uh,
Speaker 1: mostly like the Don Sebeski things, the things that I
Speaker 1: worked for Higher, I get them. I keep them, so
Speaker 1: you own them. No one else has that arrangement, right,
Speaker 1: And sometimes someone say can I borrow your charter? About Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll let my friend borrow what to play with a
Speaker 1: college band or something like that. But mostly it's all
Speaker 1: worked for Higher. So like when you make a record,
Speaker 1: you want to spend you know, you really want to
Speaker 1: make sure you get great rangers because they're gonna follow
Speaker 1: year round for twenty five years. So I mentioned I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of Radio Deluxe. That's weekly syndicated over
Speaker 1: quite a number of stags forty stations, and it's on
Speaker 1: what they call, uh is it mixed cloud mixed cloud
Speaker 1: dot com. You can punch in Radio Deluxe and here
Speaker 1: the show, and there's several past shows there too. So uh,
Speaker 1: it's just with something where they wanted to bottle what
Speaker 1: it was that my wife and I were doing. We
Speaker 1: started doing it at fine Stein's in our nightclub act.
Speaker 1: You know, she'd say hello, I'd say hello. People would
Speaker 1: laugh and say that's great. You know, so we we
Speaker 1: they and they, you know, talk to some people and
Speaker 1: then the next thing, you know, and behind them mic
Speaker 1: going from high top lexing an avenue. You're in the
Speaker 1: deluxe living room. It's Radio Deluxe. How you doing, Jessica?
Speaker 1: And she'd talk and then say, well, you know, that
Speaker 1: reminds me of that Frank Sinatra record. Let's play it now.
Speaker 1: And so, but it's for people may not be familiar
Speaker 1: with it. First of all, you go to Radio Deluxe
Speaker 1: with John Pezzareli dot com. If that if I'm getting
Speaker 1: the U r L John Pittsrareli dot com, and then
Speaker 1: you click on Radio Deluxe okay, And there appears to
Speaker 1: be a lot of thought and a lot of consideration
Speaker 1: that goes into the selection. It's not just all right,
Speaker 1: let's put the shuffle mix on and see what comes out.
Speaker 1: There's an arc and a story that gets told across
Speaker 1: two hours of music. Um, what what I do? I
Speaker 1: work early in the morning at my computer Sunday. That
Speaker 1: comes out on Monday morning. I have a teat up
Speaker 1: and I listened to it all week until I finish, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, each morning. It's my my background us. You know,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. We talk about it, you know, we don't.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where we we haven't made
Speaker 1: a dime on it. We do it all at home,
Speaker 1: and every time we say, you know, we have to
Speaker 1: do this show again, we gotta set up the stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, because we're just knuckleheads, you know, we just
Speaker 1: you know, but people tell us these stories we've had.
Speaker 1: We're talking about it just today, you know, where somebody
Speaker 1: will say, you know, I take my I go visit
Speaker 1: my mother in this home and then on Sunday nights
Speaker 1: I leave or there, you know, I say goodbye and
Speaker 1: coincides with you being on the radio here in Illinois,
Speaker 1: and that two hour drive back is Radio Deluxe, and
Speaker 1: I just think, oh so changes my attitude after what
Speaker 1: I had to do, you know, and we just get
Speaker 1: these letters and go what we it's you know, we
Speaker 1: call it the Brokeback Radio Program. We can't quit it.
Speaker 1: It's just crazy. We can't quit it. We've been speaking
Speaker 1: with John Pizzarelli. He can be found at John Pizzarelli
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure and check out Radio Deluxe is
Speaker 1: his weekly radio show. It's free. You can access it online.
Speaker 1: His book is World on a String, and check out
Speaker 1: his entire discography. I'll put a few links to some
Speaker 1: of my favorite CDs. UH. If you enjoy this conversation,
Speaker 1: be sure and stick around. We'll continue it on the
Speaker 1: podcast extras. Check out my daily column on Bloomberg View
Speaker 1: dot com, um or follow me on Twitter at Ridolts.
Speaker 1: I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters in Business on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Hi, welcome to the podcast portion of our show.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about our guests this week, and you
Speaker 1: guys know I listen, I usually speak with someone from
Speaker 1: finance or the world of business or investing, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to work a little bit outside of that box,
Speaker 1: and for that purpose today I brought in John Pizzarelli.
Speaker 1: Full disclosure, I've seen his show three or four times
Speaker 1: over the years, and each one has been just wonderful.
Speaker 1: There's so much stuff to go over with you. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna embarrass you a little bit, and then
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some other stuff. UM. First, I mentioned
Speaker 1: in the intro to the radio portion. Everybody describes your
Speaker 1: charming stage presence. You really have become like this storytelling
Speaker 1: rock con tour. I want to say, almost a third
Speaker 1: of the show is you telling stories. How did that?
Speaker 1: How did that ever develop? Um? I think it was.
Speaker 1: I always like that version of it. I mean, actually
Speaker 1: I was a fan of it started with the early
Speaker 1: Cosby records, and then it went to the George Carlin records,
Speaker 1: and then I used to watch Carson all the time,
Speaker 1: and I used to love these monologues and these little
Speaker 1: stories that you know, saturated the programs, and I like
Speaker 1: the idea of trying to set up songs or you know,
Speaker 1: of do this little these bits that you know, settled
Speaker 1: people in a little bit, gave him an idea of
Speaker 1: what was going on. And maybe it was a joke
Speaker 1: or maybe it was a it was just a fact
Speaker 1: that was well presented that made people go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I really want to hear what's going on now? Now
Speaker 1: I can hear. Oh, that's what that was. So that's
Speaker 1: where that came from. How was that song written? That's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. So the more I hung around people
Speaker 1: like Jonathan Schwartz, who was on radio here. I would
Speaker 1: try and pay attention, or I would give him a
Speaker 1: call and say, you know, you kept talking about that song.
Speaker 1: How does that song get to Sinatra? And he would
Speaker 1: tell me a story about it. You know, there's several
Speaker 1: different versions. So and I would add these things, would
Speaker 1: read things, find things that were funny or or of
Speaker 1: interest that made interest to me that I could throw
Speaker 1: into a show. That would I just love that part
Speaker 1: of the thing because I think people go, well, not
Speaker 1: only just heard the songs I didn't hear you. Here's
Speaker 1: another great song. You know, this is a great song.
Speaker 1: Here's another great song. Didn't want to sound like that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say, you know what's interesting about this song?
Speaker 1: Is this? You know you tell a story? Was it
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian with somebody's piano? Yeah? My my piano player.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, Ray Kennedy and we went
Speaker 1: to the Smithsonian. I think I heard you tell this
Speaker 1: about seven years ago. Six years yeah, probably more than that.
Speaker 1: And I where we we went to the thing? The Smithsonian.
Speaker 1: They said that's Gershwin's piano and you you why don't
Speaker 1: you play it? And so Ray stepped over the ropes
Speaker 1: who said this to Ray? The person in the place said,
Speaker 1: go play there. You know you can play it okay,
Speaker 1: So he stepped over the ropes. As he stepped over
Speaker 1: the ropes and up there was this thing. It said,
Speaker 1: step away from the piano and the lights are flashing.
Speaker 1: Get away from the piano, and they said, don't worry,
Speaker 1: it goes away. He's okay. So he sat down the
Speaker 1: piano when he went by, dude and he started to
Speaker 1: play this beautiful stride version of they can't take that
Speaker 1: away from me. And we always laugh because then we
Speaker 1: were hoping the voice would say, do you know I
Speaker 1: got rhythm? It was just so great. And these are
Speaker 1: the sort of you know, the things that run into
Speaker 1: you know, they all these things happen, you know, the
Speaker 1: gigs with Bucky at the Pierre when I was first
Speaker 1: twenty years old, Pierre Hotel. So you're barely out of
Speaker 1: high school and you're playing professional gigs with your dad.
Speaker 1: I did an entire summer with him in night and
Speaker 1: uh uh it was you know, I knew seven songs
Speaker 1: for a four hour gig, and he would just pound
Speaker 1: melodies out at me and go, you don't know this,
Speaker 1: you know under his breath, and I'm wearing tuxas. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, I'm just trying to find chords. You know.
Speaker 1: It was ear training every night, every night. Oh, it
Speaker 1: was unbelievable that that's amazing. So so I know how
Speaker 1: you found jazz. It was in your house. So growing
Speaker 1: up in the sixties, it was all about rock and roll.
Speaker 1: My mother had gone to music and art. He played
Speaker 1: piano and tom's and saxophone, but piano was her instrument.
Speaker 1: And um it's funny because I go off to college
Speaker 1: and grad school, and back then everybody is completely broke.
Speaker 1: Your poor put yourself through state school and then grad school,
Speaker 1: and we all would swap albums and record them, and
Speaker 1: I borrow. It's really a funny story. I borrow a
Speaker 1: triple disc from a friend, Linda Ronstat with the Nelson
Speaker 1: Riddle Orchestra doing What's New for sentimental reasons and lush life,
Speaker 1: um round midnight, round midnight, And um see, I have
Speaker 1: the advantage of having gone back and looked at all
Speaker 1: my purchases not long and I think I've discovered the
Speaker 1: greatest music ever played. And I go home to play
Speaker 1: it from my mother. I'm gonna rest my mom, who
Speaker 1: mocks every rock and roll song. Yeah, yeah, three chord progressions.
Speaker 1: Find me something more interesting. Every now and then she
Speaker 1: would say, who's the guy with the flute? I I
Speaker 1: don't normally hear that. That's See and Anderson Jeffer. So
Speaker 1: I play her Linda rons that and she shrugs and
Speaker 1: rolls her eyes. I'm like, this is the Jerome current
Speaker 1: and gersh when these are these are Rogers and Heart,
Speaker 1: these are your people. So every song on that triple
Speaker 1: disc album, I'm not exaggerating, every single song. She I
Speaker 1: would play a song and she goes, go listen to
Speaker 1: the Sarah Boon version of I played another song, Ella,
Speaker 1: that's the Defender version. Go listen to Ella. Um? Who
Speaker 1: else did she did? Would she send me to Billy Holland,
Speaker 1: go down the list, Frank Sinatra? And each and every
Speaker 1: time I would play a song. And then not that
Speaker 1: much later, not that many years after that, I'm out
Speaker 1: of grad school and I finally have two nickels to
Speaker 1: rub together, and I get the Lla Fitzgerald's Great American Songbook.
Speaker 1: It's sixteen CDs. It's like the most expensive thing I've
Speaker 1: ever bought, including furniture, And I tell you now it's
Speaker 1: on CDs. We've advanced that far. And I started playing
Speaker 1: it and I'm like, oh my god, my mother was
Speaker 1: right about everything. I have to go rethink my entire
Speaker 1: childhood because if she's that right about this. But it's
Speaker 1: the beauty of the record, you know, it's it's the
Speaker 1: other thing is that Linda ronstat knew that Nelson Riddle
Speaker 1: was important and she had to make records with him.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that those three records got you
Speaker 1: to those sixteen is the whole is why the thing works,
Speaker 1: you know. It's the other thing about our radio program
Speaker 1: Radio Deluxe is that you can play Sinatra, and you
Speaker 1: can play nat Cole, Louis Armstrong and Elephvitzgerald and say,
Speaker 1: now these people you can go to h Kurt Elling
Speaker 1: or Tyranny Sutton or Stacy Kent or Curtis Steiger's or
Speaker 1: you just had Curtis Steiger. Was it last week or
Speaker 1: this week? Yeah? Probably last week. You know that you
Speaker 1: you find these people now they see that they are
Speaker 1: the ones who heard those records that are doing this,
Speaker 1: and then we try to cross it, you know, and
Speaker 1: the same thing how you can even get to believe
Speaker 1: it or not, You can get to Joni Mitchell from
Speaker 1: Annie Ross, because Lambert Henderson Ross was direct influence on
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell. So these things all across poliny. And that's
Speaker 1: why it's so fun about the show is that that
Speaker 1: was what you're talking about. How Linda rons That got
Speaker 1: you to Sarah Vaughan is the same way how uh
Speaker 1: you know, Ella Fitzgerald got you to Jane Mondhud. There
Speaker 1: was there was actually in between Ella and the Linda
Speaker 1: Ronstadt was the Nelson Riddle Sinatra trilogy, which I liked,
Speaker 1: and your friend got into trouble for blasting the third one,
Speaker 1: which I always thought was good but the weakest of
Speaker 1: the three. So the Sinatra trilogy, And again that was
Speaker 1: one of those things you the first time you hear that,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my god, this is amazing stuff. How
Speaker 1: come I'm not hearing this on the radio. It was
Speaker 1: recorded thirty years ago. Oh I it doesn't have last thing.
Speaker 1: You should still be hearing that sort of stuff, So
Speaker 1: that that's pretty amazing. It was um and Jonathan Schwartz
Speaker 1: I think got fired over that or suspended, suspended for
Speaker 1: like six months, I think for trashing that third said
Speaker 1: it was I think he said it was a piece
Speaker 1: of garbage or something. Really didn't like it, and and
Speaker 1: well it was clearly the weakest of that. Well he
Speaker 1: didn't like he's he's not a Gordon Jenkins fan, and
Speaker 1: Gordon Jenkins wrote all that music for that, and so
Speaker 1: he was sort of like, I'm not didn't I want
Speaker 1: to hear more of the the jerome current In the end,
Speaker 1: there's because he was. Jonathan still said, you know, there's
Speaker 1: he has the list of songs that Sinatra has never recorded.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no record of s wonderful, there's no
Speaker 1: the more I see you, so he's like, there's there.
Speaker 1: Why not those songs? Where were they? You know? So
Speaker 1: it just should have been done. Since I brought up
Speaker 1: my mom, she said, Um, her favorite pianist was George Shearing,
Speaker 1: and she wants to know why you didn't record Lullaby
Speaker 1: burn Land with him. I think there's enough of records
Speaker 1: of that for there's a there's a ton of that.
Speaker 1: She goes, I just always loved his I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: this wrong. The augmented chords a non musician, I don't
Speaker 1: know what that means. Well, and the whole thing about
Speaker 1: the sound of that, the way the piano and the
Speaker 1: vibe er phone and the guitar played together was a
Speaker 1: very unique sound. And well to Buy a Bird Lamp
Speaker 1: being his big hit, I chose be Careful It's My
Speaker 1: Heart because that was from a record we had in
Speaker 1: the house of the Sharing group, so we homage that.
Speaker 1: And then the other one was, uh, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of songs on that, If Dreams Come True. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of songs on that, and that's
Speaker 1: one of those c D things you know, we need
Speaker 1: twenty more minutes, you know, but uh, if Dreams Come
Speaker 1: True was based on it's the arrangement that he did
Speaker 1: with Peggy Lee. So there a couple like that that
Speaker 1: I picked out, and then a couple of new ones too.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's the thing You've got so many
Speaker 1: choices with with George, you know, he was just great
Speaker 1: to say the least. Um, So you ever change the
Speaker 1: show or a song and response to audience reaction during
Speaker 1: the show or for the rest of the tour, how
Speaker 1: do how does that happen? Yeah? I mean I think, well,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're promoting a record in particular, like
Speaker 1: if we promote a record, there was one called double
Speaker 1: Exposure where we ended up doing songs like Harvest, Harvest,
Speaker 1: Moon Freeman in Paris. Uh, there was one. There was
Speaker 1: a Beatles song on there called I Feel Fine, and
Speaker 1: then we did the Tom Wait's song into a Ellington song.
Speaker 1: We had a Drunk on the Moon, so that into
Speaker 1: Lush Life and out back to Drunk on the Moon.
Speaker 1: So you would play them live and you'd say, Okay,
Speaker 1: that one didn't seem to go over so well, but
Speaker 1: everybody seemed to like the Lush Life and the Tom
Speaker 1: Waits things, so we keep that one. And so you'd start,
Speaker 1: like when you really start to go places and think
Speaker 1: you're gonna pick these five from that record. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: know there's some people don't like one in particularly. I
Speaker 1: try to do all of them and then see what happens.
Speaker 1: So it does change from time to time, and then
Speaker 1: you keep the good ones in and then you can, uh,
Speaker 1: you hope that you're going to add other ones along
Speaker 1: the way. You know, are you ever surprised at what
Speaker 1: works and doesn't work? Sometimes think hey, this is great
Speaker 1: and the audience doesn't respond. Other throwaways they just love right.
Speaker 1: It's actually, you know what's surprising is this this Johnny
Speaker 1: Mercer thing. I literally went into Birdland last year and
Speaker 1: recorded UH twenty Johnny Mercer songs, Don Sebeskie Arrangement's four
Speaker 1: Horns rhythm section, and uh I put it out myself.
Speaker 1: I just said I needed something to get me to
Speaker 1: the next record, but I said, this is a good
Speaker 1: little piece of business, and song after song absolutely killed.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was so like, where was this record?
Speaker 1: Years ago? I did a record Rogers Richard Rodgers that
Speaker 1: wasn't as popular as this. You know, it's just amazing.
Speaker 1: They they're they're maybe it's just the idea that there's
Speaker 1: enough oddball materials. I call it the weird you know,
Speaker 1: the outside of the lines things, as well as the
Speaker 1: hits that people go, oh, I love Skylark, I love
Speaker 1: I thought about you. And then you say, well, what's
Speaker 1: this I got out of bed on the right side,
Speaker 1: what's this other one? Slew foot? Where's that from? And
Speaker 1: you set them up and all of a sudden, people,
Speaker 1: oh that's great. I just shake my head. I go, Okay,
Speaker 1: thank God for that. It's been around forever and nobody
Speaker 1: really is and here's you know, there's books of uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I made the thing last year, so I just put
Speaker 1: it out. Uh, it's been fun to tour around, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's like, well, that'll work, that'll play for a while.
Speaker 1: I can well, the songs are not exactly written last month,
Speaker 1: The Goody Goody and people are go Nuts. You know
Speaker 1: it was written in the thirties. You know. That's the
Speaker 1: other thing too, that's important about I think the presentation
Speaker 1: that you've gotta you know, if you lead him in
Speaker 1: the right directions. It doesn't matter what what songs you're
Speaker 1: doing and when they were written, but if you let
Speaker 1: them know where you're headed, I think that's the most
Speaker 1: important thing. I think if you tell them here's where
Speaker 1: we're going, trust me, and eventually they'll say, oh, well
Speaker 1: that Harvest Moon thing was really good. Oh that's a
Speaker 1: Neil Young song. Oh that was all right. I sort
Speaker 1: of like that one, So that's good. You know, you
Speaker 1: gotta let them know because you know there's there are
Speaker 1: died in the wool uh songbook people. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't like anything written after Okay, well try this one,
Speaker 1: and you know, and you hope that you can lead
Speaker 1: him in the right direction. You played something recently on
Speaker 1: the show from I Want to Say. Her name is
Speaker 1: Katie Melua Malula. Oh yeah, my wife plays that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I recognized her voice immediately and I have to
Speaker 1: punch her name into my iTunes. She does this amazing
Speaker 1: cup She's got this beautiful, lilting voice. She does this
Speaker 1: cover of a Cure song. And I don't know how
Speaker 1: well you know the Cure, but it's like relentlessly depressing
Speaker 1: emo eighties sort of stuff like it was, or maybe
Speaker 1: even nineties sort of stuff, and um was it trying
Speaker 1: to remember the name of the song. It was off
Speaker 1: a kiss Me, kiss Me, kiss Me, and it's just
Speaker 1: this normally, um just depressing, terrible. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: a Cure fan, but they were just like you how
Speaker 1: to be willing to right that, like, all right, I'll
Speaker 1: play a song and that's that. You're gonna move on.
Speaker 1: And her version is just so amazing. And you find
Speaker 1: that sometimes with cover songs that you get somebody just
Speaker 1: taking a completely different spin, like like the Neil Young song.
Speaker 1: People who may never listen to Neil Young might appreciate
Speaker 1: the sort of the sort of stuff he does if
Speaker 1: it's presented in in a way that's more palatable today. Well,
Speaker 1: you know. And the thing is is that you're trying
Speaker 1: to get the people who listen to Neil Young or
Speaker 1: who were interested in that and who go the same
Speaker 1: do the same thing that they did with the Ron
Speaker 1: Stack record. For you is like they go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that was sort of interesting that you put a jazz song,
Speaker 1: say with I Feel Fine. We put a little thing
Speaker 1: up front of the sidewinder, which is a Lee Morgan cut,
Speaker 1: and then they go, oh, well, maybe they're going to
Speaker 1: discover something else. I was really felt that way about
Speaker 1: the Beatle Record. I thought the Beatle Record because we
Speaker 1: we were mixing in Woody Herman into the Woody Herman band,
Speaker 1: we were putting the BASSI band sound, we had orchestra things.
Speaker 1: I really thought we were presenting the Beatles in a
Speaker 1: completely new way. And in the United States they were
Speaker 1: a little freaked out by it. I always say, you know,
Speaker 1: I have no idea, but you know it is lasted.
Speaker 1: It is. It's the most love hated record that I
Speaker 1: have out there. But you know, the the happy ending
Speaker 1: for me was when I worked with Paul McCartney. The
Speaker 1: first day he walked into the studio, he's they said,
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney, jump Itzareil, And he said, you made a
Speaker 1: Beatles c D. And I said, yes, I did, and
Speaker 1: he said it's very good, and he walked away, and
Speaker 1: I was like, well that day started out quite fine,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's on. I have a hit. I
Speaker 1: have the problem with the Beatles songs is that you
Speaker 1: know them so well that when you hear it and
Speaker 1: it's different, it can be jarrsh So I have two
Speaker 1: different Beetles c D covers that I played just for
Speaker 1: that reason. This is one of them and the other one.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know um Larry J. Belle
Speaker 1: LJ is his nickname. He's when Paul McCartney was playing
Speaker 1: with Wings, he was his guitar And you know, look
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you would appreciate this. This is just pure,
Speaker 1: just one guy, no over dub acoustic guitar playing the
Speaker 1: rhythm and the vocals on guitar, and like yours, they're
Speaker 1: very different, They're very fresh and I know that song,
Speaker 1: but this is a completely different version of it. The
Speaker 1: problem with the covers are they usually sound too much
Speaker 1: like the original. Yeah, they just copy the original, and
Speaker 1: what's the value of that. Somebody did a great cover said, well,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing, right, that's always, you know, so
Speaker 1: we we actually try to homage things in and out
Speaker 1: inside little little hints that we know. You know. The
Speaker 1: hard thing for me was not singing like the Beatles
Speaker 1: sing you very much do a jazz version of the Beatles,
Speaker 1: not a cover versions. And that was the idea. That's
Speaker 1: what jazz records are. You know, if you took all
Speaker 1: of me, you wouldn't do somebody else's record of all
Speaker 1: of me, or it had be you or something you
Speaker 1: would you know, you would say, here's my version of it.
Speaker 1: So you're on the road pretty pretty often, you do
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty or so? Is that right? So
Speaker 1: are you what do you do to keep killed time
Speaker 1: on the road? Do you read? Do you listen to music? What? What?
Speaker 1: What occupies your time? Uh, let's see, that's a very
Speaker 1: good question. Wait, you know we we've I do try
Speaker 1: to read a very I've read. I read a cooking
Speaker 1: book was the last book I read by the woman
Speaker 1: who owns Prune. Her name is Gabrielle Hamilton's so I
Speaker 1: liked her and I read about how she got into
Speaker 1: cooking because I really am interested in that. I like
Speaker 1: to you know, I'm always working on the next thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm sometimes looking at music or reading, you know,
Speaker 1: listening to what I just recorded, and uh, seeing what
Speaker 1: needs to be done on those things. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of business that gets done during the day and
Speaker 1: sometimes and sometimes I just sit in a room and
Speaker 1: I can watch Sports Center until the cows come home. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, that's I don't be about that with all
Speaker 1: my guests. There's always three or four questions I ask everybody,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to ask you a version of them here. So,
Speaker 1: someone who's a millennial just getting out of college now
Speaker 1: and is interested in the career of music, what sort
Speaker 1: of advice would you give them? Well, they've they've probably
Speaker 1: studied since high school, what what kind of music they like?
Speaker 1: Because they can do that now, you know, you can
Speaker 1: you can pretty much discover what you're into at such
Speaker 1: an earlier age, I think. So I think the thing
Speaker 1: is is to uh, is to get out and play.
Speaker 1: Is to find places to play where you can spend
Speaker 1: a couple of hours in a room. The more you
Speaker 1: play in front of people, I feel that that's always
Speaker 1: that's you know, you can practice all you want in
Speaker 1: the room and you're gonna goh, I sounds so good today,
Speaker 1: you know, playing in in my living room, But the
Speaker 1: second you get in front of somebody in your hand
Speaker 1: starts to sweat a little bit, and you know, you
Speaker 1: drop your pick and everybody's looking at you. I think
Speaker 1: that it's just about trying to find ways to get
Speaker 1: out there and play, find groups to play with, or
Speaker 1: or if you're guitarist or piano players, solo gigs whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very difficult to play a solo gig
Speaker 1: for four hours, so you know, you've got to build
Speaker 1: a repertoire. And that's all. Those things are things that
Speaker 1: I did. Anyway, I thought they were very useful, and
Speaker 1: by the time I was ready to step into my
Speaker 1: own thing, I felt a little more comfortable because I
Speaker 1: had been doing it already for a long time. So
Speaker 1: get out and play in front of people. Um. We
Speaker 1: talked about some of the changes in the industry, but um,
Speaker 1: what changes have there been within the music industry and
Speaker 1: what future changes do you expect that's going to alter
Speaker 1: the way people listen to and and find music. I
Speaker 1: think the there's uh the fact that it's funny. My
Speaker 1: friend the other day set up his stereo in his
Speaker 1: room because his son moved out finally, you know, one
Speaker 1: of those things. And he said, you know, when I
Speaker 1: put up the speakers, like I used to have bookshelf speakers,
Speaker 1: and I had a I had a my CD player
Speaker 1: and an amplifier and turned it on and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, music in the room. You know. Everybody
Speaker 1: listens with headphones. It's so weird how people listen, you know,
Speaker 1: and they don't and those are terrible sound quality, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, but I mean you can get good headphones,
Speaker 1: but like nobody sits in their room, it seems to me,
Speaker 1: and puts on their stereo and goes, okay, music with
Speaker 1: you know. I went to Radio Shack at twelve in speakers,
Speaker 1: bookshelf speakers. They were so great to listen to, you know.
Speaker 1: It's just the way people listen. And what do they
Speaker 1: listen on. Do they download immediately to a device? Are
Speaker 1: they They're rarely buying actual product anymore. So that's the
Speaker 1: weird thing too, is that I'm lucky because my people
Speaker 1: who come to my gigs want to get something. At
Speaker 1: the end, they'll buy the CDC, you'll sign it and
Speaker 1: take it home. Oh I got something, you know, and
Speaker 1: you how long have you been doing that? You every
Speaker 1: time I've seen you, you actually hang around after the show,
Speaker 1: people waiting online and they you chat, you take selfies,
Speaker 1: you do what have you? When? Did when did that
Speaker 1: come about? It's are it's been whenever we could get
Speaker 1: the records there, we do it. I mean I've been saying,
Speaker 1: you know, for the most part, that's the way to meet.
Speaker 1: The people are coming to hear you, and then you know,
Speaker 1: you'll meet Like at the Tiller Center, you meet people say,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty years ago it was me, and now
Speaker 1: I'm bringing my kids or you know, I decided I
Speaker 1: knew my parents would like this, so I brought them
Speaker 1: here and they were like, yeah, we couldn't believe how
Speaker 1: good this was. You know, it's really sweet. So I
Speaker 1: like to see what's going on. Who's coming to these concerts.
Speaker 1: You know, how old are they, how young are they?
Speaker 1: You know, are they been here for a long time?
Speaker 1: Is this their first time? It's it's really I do
Speaker 1: my own little thing. I mean, I don't write down
Speaker 1: what it is, but it's interesting to see who's coming.
Speaker 1: And but that means a gig that starts at eight
Speaker 1: that you finish on stage at ten you're not leaving
Speaker 1: the place till eleven thirty and nine. Sometimes yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just a bunch of people. The Tilla Centers,
Speaker 1: it was. It was wild. It was this this long
Speaker 1: line of people, and I was just amazed at it
Speaker 1: that people were that patient about it. But I say, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go anywhere. So if you're patient,
Speaker 1: I'm patient. You know, I know it's important to them.
Speaker 1: I would love to go to a Pat Metheny concert
Speaker 1: and see patmthany afterwards. You I want to say, you
Speaker 1: know that kind of thing. So, uh, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm very I love that, you know, because
Speaker 1: of who I am, I can go backstage at most
Speaker 1: places and at jazz concerts anyway. But I mean it's nice.
Speaker 1: I like to make myself available because it's important to
Speaker 1: keep it all going. So I never do that. And
Speaker 1: this one show, I like, I said, this is the
Speaker 1: third or fourth time I saw you. I said to
Speaker 1: my wife, I go, wow, look all these people winning online.
Speaker 1: She's like, do you want to do that? I go,
Speaker 1: why would I do that? Am I going to ask
Speaker 1: him to be on the radio? And she goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: why don't you ask him to be on the radio.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, that's a good idea. So you have
Speaker 1: your wife, I have mine, for occasionally reminds me, I'm
Speaker 1: an idiot. Get online, get a c D, get online
Speaker 1: and invite him on the show. Okay, good, good idea.
Speaker 1: Here we are. Um. So the last question I always
Speaker 1: we're gonna, we're gonna get the guitar out and play
Speaker 1: a song or two. But the last question I asked everybody,
Speaker 1: and I always get some interesting responses, is what do
Speaker 1: you know about your chosen field, your industry today that
Speaker 1: you wish you knew when you were starting out. I
Speaker 1: think the thing the thing that I know I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that I think that I thought
Speaker 1: I knew everything when I was starting out, Like when
Speaker 1: I made my first record called all of Me on
Speaker 1: Our c A, which was a big deal for me.
Speaker 1: I really thought that I had I had my handle
Speaker 1: on it. I mean I really thought I was. I
Speaker 1: really felt confident about it. But I realized actually when
Speaker 1: I made my first I didn't really sing well. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that like singing got any better. I
Speaker 1: really felt took a while to get good at it.
Speaker 1: Whereas I thought at the very beginning I was. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's really good, and I go back
Speaker 1: and listen to it. A good boy. Boy, I'm lucky
Speaker 1: to still be standing here, you know. So it was
Speaker 1: interest sting that tryst. I really thought I knew a
Speaker 1: lot of the beginning, but I don't. I didn't really
Speaker 1: know that much. I really learned a lot as I
Speaker 1: went along, and I realized how much the performing aspect
Speaker 1: of it was and sort of, you know, just you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of standing off the rough edges, you know,
Speaker 1: and knowing, oh, I see, you know where all the
Speaker 1: economy in it was to do that too much? You know,
Speaker 1: that's quite interesting. All right, So you broke your guitar
Speaker 1: over here, what would you like to uh usually play?
Speaker 1: I got rhythm because it's my most show off he things. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do that. I got a few other names to
Speaker 1: run by you later. We'll we'll, we'll bounce until they
Speaker 1: kick us out of the studio. Charlie, is that other
Speaker 1: Mike ready to rock and roll? Or jazz? Is I
Speaker 1: can put it in place? He's gonna pick always in
Speaker 1: the right pocket? Is that what you always gave? Always there?
Speaker 1: There's a little pick area for them. When did your
Speaker 1: mother graduate music and Art? I want to say, Uh,
Speaker 1: there goes Charlie Pellick by the way, um voice of
Speaker 1: the submach I want to say, or so something like that.
Speaker 1: We just did the gala for them the other night.
Speaker 1: My daughter goes to La Guardy. Oh really, so that's
Speaker 1: she went for music and art? Um J Hunter College. Wow?
Speaker 1: How's that sounded? There? You ready? H Here we go?
Speaker 1: And this is a John Pizorelli model made by Bill
Speaker 1: Mole from Springfield, Missouri. And this was this is like
Speaker 1: my favorite one he's made. There's a new one that
Speaker 1: I'm playing now. This has some miles on it. This
Speaker 1: has definitely got miles on. I have a case made
Speaker 1: by a gentleman named Jeff Hoffey out of out of
Speaker 1: just out of Chicago, and uh, I just always take
Speaker 1: a picture of it. I said, here's the guitar going on,
Speaker 1: you know, and it always survives. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's so uh that's the one thing that's changed the
Speaker 1: most as they finally can make a case that will
Speaker 1: protect these guitars. But this one I've just thrown around
Speaker 1: so much. It's not the case. It's the guitar player.
Speaker 1: So here as I got rhythm. I got rhythm, I
Speaker 1: got music. I got my God. Look at us far
Speaker 1: anything more? I got daisies in green pastures. I got
Speaker 1: my God. Look at us for anything more? Oh man trouble.
Speaker 1: I don't mind him. You won't find him at my dog.
Speaker 1: I got started lighting, I got sweet dreams. I got
Speaker 1: my God. Look at us far anything more? Who get
Speaker 1: us far anything more? Admitted him? At him? Oh man trouble,
Speaker 1: I don't mind him. You won't find him at my door.
Speaker 1: I got star like, I got sweet dreams. I got
Speaker 1: my God. Look at us for anything more? But that
Speaker 1: they did him? Don't get us for anything more? Fantastic,
Speaker 1: We get it, We get it, Charlie said, Let's do
Speaker 1: it again one more time, just kidding. That's fantastic. And
Speaker 1: about halfway through it, I'm like, why aren't I recording
Speaker 1: this on my phone? I'm so stupid? John? So now
Speaker 1: you got your phone? I do here we go? You
Speaker 1: can do it again and play something else. Let me
Speaker 1: grab my phone? Where with the row? How are we doing?
Speaker 1: Time wise? Charlie, We're good. Fantastic all right, it's only
Speaker 1: to do one quick video all right, what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do now? Here we go? You ready? The way
Speaker 1: you wear your hat, the way you sepulity, the memory
Speaker 1: of all that. No, they can't take that away from me.
Speaker 1: The way your smile just beams, the way you sing
Speaker 1: off keep, the way you haunt my dreams. No, they
Speaker 1: can't take that away from me. We may never never
Speaker 1: meet again. I'm a bumpet road to love. Still, I'll
Speaker 1: always always keep the memory of the way you hold
Speaker 1: your knife, the way were dance still three, the way
Speaker 1: you change my life. No, they can't take that away
Speaker 1: from me. No, they can't take that away from me.
Speaker 1: Do Dad, fantastic? I have to put this down to applaude?
Speaker 1: Do we get all that? All? Right? Fantastic? John? I
Speaker 1: can't begin to tell you how much fan was. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad, Uh, I'm so glad we had this time together.
Speaker 1: Everything I say is a lyric I have. I have
Speaker 1: a hundred other questions I didn't get to any time
Speaker 1: I wanted to discuss. God. Joe Williams, I don't know
Speaker 1: you know you, I've never heard you mentioned. Mose Allison,
Speaker 1: who find fascinating um. John Coltrane does an album with
Speaker 1: Johnny Hartman that I just adore. Yeah. The other one
Speaker 1: is the Ballad's record of just Johnny Hartman, just just's
Speaker 1: He's amazing and I have a song. I was curious
Speaker 1: as to if you've ever heard this version. It's an
Speaker 1: odd bowl version that's probably outside of your sphere, but
Speaker 1: you may like it for the show, and if I
Speaker 1: tell you the derivation of it, you'll understand why it's
Speaker 1: so ridiculous. There was a girl, she was a girl
Speaker 1: on a sitcom. She was fourteen. Her name is Renee Olstaed,
Speaker 1: and she does a version of Summertime. That is when
Speaker 1: you think that it's a fourteen year old kid, you
Speaker 1: would say, what the heck is this? It's so amazing that. Um.
Speaker 1: I was going to suggest you check it out, but
Speaker 1: that's a throway. I know you play Madeline Pero and
Speaker 1: Diana Krall and I love Julie London. You're all over that.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard Melody Guardaux, but she's an interesting Well
Speaker 1: we used to play her, and we played her. We
Speaker 1: actually got hurt to um uh schwartz. Oh really that
Speaker 1: was one that like Jessica found we I don't know
Speaker 1: if we had the record got to us or we looked.
Speaker 1: You know, we always just go on and see new
Speaker 1: releases and we jump on them right away, and she
Speaker 1: was somebody we got at right at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: She's an amazing story, car crash and everything. Anyway, this
Speaker 1: has been fantastic. Thank you so much for being so
Speaker 1: generous with your time. I'm gonna have Charlie come in
Speaker 1: and take a photo of us, and I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: you to sign the book. Um, if people want to
Speaker 1: find you, they can go to John Pizzarelli dot com
Speaker 1: and all your discs, books, everything else. Tour date information
Speaker 1: is all is all there and they're all over the country.
Speaker 1: Now you can like me on Facebook. I'll be out
Speaker 1: on the West coast the first a second two weeks,
Speaker 1: second two weeks of August, and also during a week
Speaker 1: at Birdland July. And the new album, which will come
Speaker 1: back and talk about at length, is called it'll be
Speaker 1: called Midnight McCartney. It's all Paul McCartney songs done after
Speaker 1: the Beatles, silly little songs, no more lonely nights and
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and it's Paul McCartney approved. Alright, great,
Speaker 1: you've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: You should to check us out next week.