Up for the Challenge: A Conversation with Bob James (Part One)

Across his almost six-decade career, Bob James’ music has meant many things to different people. To those who have an interest in Creed Taylor’s iconic CTI Records, the memorable label that incentivized artists to merge jazz with ideas from other genres, James is a familiar name. Between his own significant releases and his contributions to albums by artists including Grover Washington Jr., Stanley Turrentine, and Hubert Laws, he was core member of what James refers to as the CTI repertory. To those who love “smooth jazz”, James is one of the founders. In a list of the ten greatest albums of the style, his name appears on nearly half. To hip hop heads, James is royalty; one of the most sampled artists of all time, certainly the most sampled from the jazz lineage. In the pop sphere, some may know him for his work with Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, or Kenny Loggins. He’s reimagined classical pieces several times. And, underneath it all, a somewhat quiet undercurrent of avant-garde experimentalism. 

While some listeners may prefer one insular category over another, it becomes clear James sees a connection between them all. The unifying factor: his desire to collaborate with others to be challenged and pushed artistically. In addition to his skills on the keys, James has a unique ability to create memorable melodies and arrangements not tethered to one stylistic box or another. This is perhaps best seen on his latest, Feel Like Making LIVE!  (evosound/Evolution Music, 2022). The album finds him leading a trio through a tour of all of the different sides of his career. The group of three is a format James has used throughout the years, and it’s clear he is comfortable with it. In turn, the album provides new colors to well-known compositions, whether the richness of the bass line on “Angela” or the lyricism of “Maputo.” And while the album indeed reflects back – even to the time he backed Sarah Vaughan – it also looks forward. It even highlighting the first composition in which James effectively samples himself. 

Given the album’s scope, we cover a wide range of topics in our two-part conversation with Bob James. In this first portion, we discuss his discovery by Quincy Jones, CTI generally, “Mister Magic”, and his forthcoming project with DJ Jazzy Jeff. 

PostGenre: One of your first big breaks was winning a competition at the Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival in 1962. The judges included Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones. What was it like being a young artist and playing for some of the greatest of their craft?

Bob James: Well, we need to take it into context. At the time, Henry was very well known. But Quincy was at the beginning of his career. I was generally aware of Quincy’s name at the time, but I was not particularly familiar with him. At the time, my comrades – bassist Ron Brooks and drummer Bob Pozar – and I entered into the Notre Dame Festival to have fun. We were determined to play some very avant-garde music at a festival where most people tried to prove that they could play straight-ahead jazz music. We didn’t focus too much on the sort of normal competitiveness of the event. It caught all three of us by surprise – or, at least, it surprised me – when we won because we never thought we would win the competition. We just wanted to do something drastically different from what everyone else did. But back to Quincy, I greatly liked that he liked the whole idea of what we were doing. I think one of the main reasons Quincy and I became friends after that is because he could relate to what we were doing and really embraced our music.

PG: And Quincy ended up signing you to your first record deal.

BJ: Yes, to Mercury Records. At the time, Quincy was a young A&R guy there and living in Chicago. He signed me to record music similar to our trio’s Notre Dame performance. And that ended up being my first album, Bold Conceptions (Mercury, 1963).

PG: Among other things, Quincy is also known for his skills as a record producer. You have also produced several albums over the years. Do you feel like you have picked up anything on the production front from working with him?

BJ: Absolutely. A significant part of what I learned, and the experiences I had in breaking into the recording field, were a direct result of meeting him around that time. The experiences gave me the confidence to move to New York. And once in New York, some of his connections were people that I ended up working with. Perhaps most significantly, Quincy introduced me to Creed Taylor when he had me write a couple of arrangements for his album, Walking in Space (A&M, 1969). Working with Quincy on the album proved to be my audition, of sorts, with Creed Taylor. It gave Creed a chance to see my arrangements, and that ultimately led to my working with CTI.

PG: What was CTI like in the 1970s?

BJ: It was unique. Awesome. A very, very open and creative environment. For me, it was almost like a theater repertory group. Creed had his favorite musicians that he liked. And if you were one of those musicians, though he would hire you as a sideman, often he ended up giving you an opportunity to make a solo record. In one session, you would be a sideman and then, in the very next one, serve as the leader. For instance, Grover Washington, Jr. would be a soloist on one of my records, and then I would play or arrange something for one of his. It was a very collaborative environment, and those sorts of scenarios happened with many different artists at CTI during those years. And Creed was very productive in those years. It seemed like he was in the recording studio almost every day all year long. And, so he had made so many albums that it was almost like a full-time job. During those years, I also met many people – including Ron Carter, Jack Dejohnette, and Eric Gale – who I ended up working with later. We were all a part of that CTI repertory group.

PG: Some “purists” argue that jazz music died sometime in the 1960s, only to be somehow miraculously resurrected in the 1980s. But or someone who looks closer, there were always people, including you, who continued to make incredible jazz music. And CTI was a large part of that. What are your thoughts, looking back, on what was going on with jazz in the 1970s?

BJ: I have a lot of thoughts about it, and why I made decisions I had made at the time. My dream was to be a jazz musician, but I have never felt that there was only one “pure” form of making jazz. Every time I hear someone argue that there is one “pure” form of the music, I’ve disagreed pretty strongly with them. If you look back at the Dixieland era and jazz’s origins up to now, the music has had many stylistic changes. Sometimes jazz is part of the world of pop music. Sometimes jazz is used for people to dance to, party to, to be played in clubs.

By the late 60s and in the 70s, there was a way to treat jazz as serious music and read it more academically, as if that serious jazz was the purest form. And I never agreed with that viewpoint. The big picture to me of what jazz represents is much broader. While Louis Armstrong was a brilliant trumpet player, he was also an entertainer. And there have been so many other great jazz artists over the last 100 plus years who have also not forced jazz into some small boxes.

Jazz, to me, can be reduced down to some groove and swing and improvisation. I care about those elements. There are all kinds of different stylistic variations of improvisation and swing and grooves. I do not think you could ever really limit the music to one “pure” approach. 

When I read about a more purist view of the music, I feel like those who take that view are just ignoring other variations of the music that grew out of the phenomenon of jazz. And I feel like a lot of us who were part of that CTI team- whether Freddie Hubbard or Stanley Turrentine or Grover Washington, Jr. – seemed to agree that the music is broader than some purist perspective.

PG: And speaking of Grover Washington, Jr., Feel Like Making LIVE! has a version of “Mister Magic.” You also performed the song on Espresso (Evosound, 2018). You even did the original arrangement on Washington’s album, correct?

BJ: Yes.

PG: Since that song has become a modern classic of sorts, do you remember its recording? 

BJ: It’s interesting that you should ask whether I remember the session. I remember the session very well. It was maybe the fourth album that I had arranged and conducted for Grover. I was also very involved in the first two or three albums he made for Creed Taylor. But “Mister Magic” was very successful and a huge jumping point not only for him but also for me.

Grover and I ended up going our separate ways career-wise. And, at some point, Grover’s memory seemed to fade a little about that session. At some point years later, I was listening to an episode of Pat Prescott’s jazz radio show in New York City where she was interviewing Grover. During the interview, Grover stated that “Mister Magic” was something that was completely improvised in the studio between him and his percussionist at the time, Ralph MacDonald. In reality, Ralph wrote the song, but his version was a ballad with lyrics; a very different idea than what was ultimately recorded. Creed and Grover were looking for something a little bit funkier for the song, which is what my arrangement attempted to do. So I will take some credit for the groove on the recorded version. I prepared the arrangement before we went into the studio. It wasn’t something that we had just thrown together.

When Grover didn’t mention my arrangement in his interview with Pat Prescott, it kind of frustrated me. I ended up contacting Pat about it, we had a conversation, and she invited both Grover and me into the studio and did an interview together. In the studio, they also had a little keyboard. And Grover had brought his saxophone with him. So, after the interview, we played “Mister Magic” live on the air. Unfortunately, Grover passed a short time after that interview. So, for me, it was, in a way, Grover and I making peace and having a moment in which we could share the same memories about that composition.

So, overall, I have an incredibly strong memory of the recording of “Mister Magic.” And, then, over the years, it has been covered by so many different musicians. By the time I was putting together Espresso, I thought it may be time to take a completely different look at the song and change the arrangement to be recorded with my trio. The idea was to recall the work I had done with Grover on the original while bringing the song into the 21st Century.

PG: And “Mister Magic” has been seen by some as the very beginning of “smooth jazz.” You are no stranger to “smoother” music. Double Vision (Warner Bros., 1986) with David Sanborn – from which a version of the song “Maputo” appears on Feel Like Making LIVE! – is often held as a “smooth jazz” classic. And since 1990, you have been part of Fourplay. But, as you noted earlier, you were initially very drawn to the avant-garde on Bold Conceptions. At one point, you also performed Eric Dolphy. And even around the time of Double Vision and forming Fourplay, you were part of three of John Zorn’s better-known albums – The Big Gundown (Elektra Nonesuch, 1986), Cobra (Hat Hut, 1987), and Spillane (Elektra Nonesuch, 1987). Do you see a connection between playing “out” and “smoother” sounds? Are the two distinct?

BJ: Well, I’ve always had eclectic tastes and like a wide variety of music. I have never felt that one needs to make their music fit into one category. Others may stereotype your music – whether you like it or not – into a specific category. That’s partly because of how record stores and radio stations decide to categorize music. And because of that, sometimes that gets you typecast. If you get chosen for a smooth format, often people will think of you as a “smooth” artist even though you may have rougher tendencies or other influences in your music. Ultimately, I’m just happy my music gets played, whether “smoother” or the avant-garde stuff.

But I will say, even at my advanced age, I love new adventures. I still like going in a surprising direction with my music. I enjoy giving my listeners something a little different than what they may expect.

PG: Speaking of surprises, lately, you have been working with DJ Jazzy Jeff.

BJ: That’s exactly the kind of pattern I am talking about. I just try to respond to whatever creative things come my way. The new album that I’ve been working on with DJ Jazzy Jeff, which will hopefully be released in the spring, brings me into hip hop.

I had initially begun talking to DJ Jazzy Jeff in hopes of getting a specific idea of why so many musicians sampled my music so often, especially stuff I did in the 1970s. In the late 80s, Jeff had his partnership with Will Smith, calling themselves DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. They made an album [Rock the House (Jive/RCA, 1987)] that won the first Grammy Award for a hip hop recording. On the song “A Touch of Jazz” on the album, they sampled “Westchester Lady” from my album Three (CTI, 1976). That was all very early on with sampling and, at first, they didn’t try to get the correct license for the sample. Because of that, my initial encounters with Jeff were a bit confrontational. But, over time, they became OK.

It’s kind of crazy to think that many years later, Jeff and I would both be on a Zoom call talking about actually collaborating one on one in a project in which I could be creatively involved. One of the most frustrating things to me during the early days of sampling was that musicians were using my music in ways for which I had no say. I wasn’t involved or even consulted. I had no control over how they used my music or how much of it they used. Often, I wouldn’t even find out my music was used until after the fact.

Very recently, I decided to confront things head-on and really explore the interaction between my music and those of artists sampling it. Things don’t have to be confrontational. At the end of the month, I’m going to have Talib Kweli, who had sampled my music as a young artist, perform with me at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York. Perhaps partly because at my age, I don’t want to miss out on anything. I have an attitude now that keeps all my doors open.

PG: Do you feel like as hip hop has become more mainstream, its artists, labels, and producers have become more respectful of other creators’ rights in terms of sampling?

BJ: I believe so. It’s certainly become more organized. The licensing aspect of the business was very renegade in the early years. It seems the music business wasn’t prepared for people taking audio recordings and breaking them up into chunks. Many of the artists themselves who were sampling and having fun creatively hadn’t confronted the fact that these chunks of music were copyrighted and that they had better get a license or that their use was illegal. There were many legal confrontations where I was simply trying to protect my intellectual property during that time. As a business, the music industry has caught up. Now, there are ways that young hip-hop artists, jazz artists, or whoever can legally approach making music in that sort of patchwork way.

PG: From what you were saying about your conversation with DJ Jazzy Jeff, it sounds like you were surprised when people began sampling “Nautilus” [One (CTI, 1974)] in particular. Is there a composition you have written or arranged that you are surprised more people have not sampled?

BJ: To this day, I still have a very hard time understanding what makes people choose certain parts of my music to sample. A specific rhythm or the way I approach a phrase aren’t things I would have thought of as hip hop grooves. But those have become part of the tapestry of their recordings. The reasons they sample what they do are unknown to me. All I can do is be flattered that they did and hope they did it legitimately, in a way that is respectful of my copyright.

Yes, I’m experimenting a little bit with hip-hop artists like Ghostface Killah from the Wu-Tang Clan organization, 9th Wonder, and Slick Rick, who had sampled my music many years ago. There are quite a few of them conversing with me about collaborating. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to become a hip-hop artist, but I am very comfortable with trying to expand what I do to generate some new creativity. 

Yes, I’m experimenting a little bit with hip-hop artists like Ghostface Killah from the Wu-Tang Clan organization, 9th Wonder, and Slick Rick, who had sampled my music many years ago. There are quite a few of them conversing with me about collaborating. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to become a hip-hop artist, but I am very comfortable with trying to expand what I do to generate some new creativity. 

Part two of our conversation with Bob can be found here.

The Bob James Trio’s Feel Like Making LIVE! will be available on January 28, 2022. It will be available on vinyl, SACD, MQA-CD, Blu-ray, and digital audio. It can be purchased through our Amazon Affiliate store.

More information on Bob James can be found on his website.