Peace Through Sound: A Conversation with Lonnie Liston Smith (Part One)

Across their almost twenty volumes of the Jazz is Dead series, performer-producers Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge have exposed listening audiences to under-discussed legends among us who continue to shape music. Of particular focus have been the luminaries who made incredible improvisation-based music during the era of jazz’s alleged demise, the 1970s. Though occasionally denigrated by purists, the music of these artists has stood the test of time, even forming the sampled underpinnings of many hip-hop high points. JID 017 (Jazz is Dead, 2023)’s artist of focus: pianist-keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith.

Musically, Smith often inhabits some space between funk, jazz, and soul music. The best examples of this cross-genre approach can be found in the output of his mid-70s group, the Cosmic Echoes. The Cosmic Echoes appealed to a large crossover audience by emphasizing a gentle and soothing yet exotic sound, even as the bottom line pushed a heavy grooving funk. Smith’s work with the Cosmic Echoes produced several tracks, most notably “Expansions”, [Expansions (RCA/Flying Dutchman, 1975)], which many would later view as classics in fusion, smooth jazz, and – the now largely lost to time – acid jazz. The Cosmic Echoes’ work also serves as a primary influence for JID 017, Smith’s first release in a quarter century. 

Take “Kaleidoscope” where an energetic yet ethereal Fender Rhodes-led melody rides atop up-tempo drum rhythms. Or the balladic “Dawn” which is similarly imbued with a psychedelic otherworldliness as Younge’s synths swirl above Smith’s acoustic piano. But JID017 does not stay mired in the Cosmic Echoes era of Smith’s career, as “Gratitude” veers a bit off-kilter, invoking his work with such firebrands as Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis at his most artistically free. 

Throughout our conversation with Smith, we hit many different musical points in his life thus far. His father’s gospel moorings. His brother’s doo-wop stylings. Smith’s own role as a young musician at a powerhouse Historically Black University. And his many hats as an artist – post-bop messenger; avant-garde experimentalist; musical translator in cross-cultural communication; cosmic voyager seeking tranquility; advocate of a softer Afrofuturism; sampling icon. But it is folly to compartmentalize these facets and view them in isolation. Instead, each connect to form a unified theme: a lineage of contemporary Black musical excellence in its many varied forms.

PostGenre: JID017 is the first album you have released in twenty-five years.

Lonnie Liston Smith: Oh yeah. Recording with Jazz is Dead was an interesting experience ’cause they have a different way of recording. They have a studio with the same stuff we had back in the 70s; the same sound boards, same keyboards, everything. 

PG: How did you get hooked up with Jazz is Dead?

LLS: I got there through Drew [Andrew Lojero, owner of the label], who I guess is the business representative for Jazz is Dead. I decided to record with them because they had recorded Gary Bartz, Jean Carn, and others. When I got [to the studio], I was introduced to Adrian [Younge] and Ali [Shaheed Muhammad], both of whom I wasn’t previously aware. It was just bass and drums in the studio and myself. Adrian and Ali had ideas on motifs, and they said, “Well, we want you to develop them.” Which I did. They recorded it, and when I left, they added other things to it. It was really different.

PG: What changes did they make?

LLS: When I was listening to the final version, I heard vocals, and there were only the three of us in the studio, with no one singing. They also added all kinds of other sounds. It turned out great, and everyone is excited.

PG: Twenty-five years is a long time. Why did it take so long for you to release another album?

LLS: Well, that’s interesting. I don’t know because I had all kinds of offers from people in the US and all across Europe. People from all over have wanted me to come out and do recordings. But the business part of the music industry can be chaotic and tricky. When I got the call for this project, I guess it was just meant to be.

PG: Both Ali and Adrian come primarily from hip-hop backgrounds. But it is certainly not the first time you worked with hip-hop artists. You also collaborated directly with Guru on the first Jazzmatazz album [Jazzmatazz Volume 1 (An Experimental Fusion of Hip-Hop and Jazz) (Chrysalis, 1993)] and with Digable Planets. 

LLS: Oh, I’m glad you brought that up because the album with Guru came out in 1993, thirty years ago. I was asked to be a part of it when I received a call from EMI Records. I was just sitting around at home, and they called saying, “Well, we’re doing this record with Guru. He’s either rapped jazz or jazz meets rap, and we use a different artist on each song.” I think Donald Byrd was on one song and Branford Marsalis on another. Roy Ayers is on another. They wanted me for a particular song called “Down the Backstreets.”

I agreed to record, and at the session, I just played while Guru did his thing. But you never know what will happen in the future because I didn’t think too much about the recording at the time, and now, thirty years later, I’m doing all kinds of interviews on Guru’s Jazzmatazz. Some people say it’s a worldwide classic. You just never know how things will turn out. 

PG: You also went on tour with Guru. 

LLS: Right, Donald Byrd joined us on the tour too. Donald and I learned a lot about rappers and people looking for samples. We found that the younger generation was discovering us through the samples.

PG: Do you remember the first time you heard your music sampled? 

LLS: I forget who did the sampling, but I do know that they sampled “Expansions.”

PG: Were you surprised when you first heard your music sampled?

LLS: Oh no, no, no. I realized that was just how the younger generation discovered music. They would hear a sample, like it, and then find the original music. What really surprised me happened years later. 

I did a song on one of my albums, Dreams of Tomorrow (Sony, 1974), where I was in the studio with producer Bob Thiele, and I just wanted to play something beautiful. That composition ended up becoming “A Garden of Peace.” I recorded it on the grand piano and then overdubbed myself on the electric piano to add more color. 

Anyway, years later, the younger generation just fell in love with the song. It was surprising because there were no drums or bass, just myself on acoustic piano and electric piano. Jay-Z sampled it for one of his biggest tracks, “Dead Presidents” [Reasonable Doubt (Rock-a-Fella, 1996). Mary J Blige sampled it. Rick Ross sampled it. People all over the world have been sampling it and putting it in their music. 

PG: What do you think draws them to “A Garden of Peace” specifically?

LLS: I talked to the young kids about that and asked, “Why do y’all love the song so much?” They liked that it was so peaceful. The world is going through a lot of chaos right now, and the song seemed to provide a peaceful escape for a minute. Everyone needs an escape like that. It was a big surprise though when they started sampling it.  

PG: That search to provide peace through music seems to be a recurring theme in your music, even at its funkiest moments. Do you feel the need for peace is as necessary as it was in the past?

LLS: Oh, it is definitely just as necessary today. Back [in the 1960s and 1970s] we had things like the Vietnam War. We were trying to tell people to be creative, to give peace a chance, and to expand their minds to the image of a new world where everyone was living in peace and harmony. Right now, there is still a lot of chaos going on around the world. People need peace because the pandemic turned everything upside down.

PG: Going back to your early years, your father was a gospel musician. 

LLS: Right, he was in the Harmonizing Four. 

PG: The Harmonizing Four was a big deal in the 1930s and 1940s. They even performed at Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s funeral and Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s wedding. Do you think growing up with a parent with that level of experience with gospel music shaped your work in “spiritual jazz”?

LLS: Oh, most definitely. If you notice too, so many great artists came out of the church. I could create a long list, but as one example, Aretha Franklin came out of the church. A lot of music starts in the church because the real music of America is gospel, blues, and jazz. Those are the American musical styles because so much other music – specifically Western classical music – was imported from Europe. 

My father went all over the world with the Harmonizing Four. They’re very famous, and my father was definitely spiritual. My two younger brothers got beautiful tenor voices just like my father. I could only sing the bass part, but I guess I just sing through the piano now.

I guess I expanded on that gospel thing because when you start traveling all over the world and researching all these different philosophies and religions around the world, you find that basically, everybody wants the same thing. Everybody wants peace and harmony. Love and working together. But, for some reason, people come up with all these crazy walls to divide people. With my music, I guess I just expanded on what I learned when I was growing up and tried to come up with a whole philosophy and universal sound around it.

PG: As far as your brothers, you recorded with Donald. 

LLS: Oh man, that was it. I started writing lyrics for the first time with “Expansions.” Of course, I heard my father’s voice, and I remember I said, “Oh Donald, Donald. That beautiful tenor voice, just like my father. And he plays piano and flute.” I think he was out in Chicago or possibly Champaign, Illinois at the time, in a jazz band with the Bridgewater family. I think even DeeDee [Bridgewater] was in that group. 

But my other brother, Ray Smith, started a group in Richmond, Virginia called the Jarmels that ended up having a big hit track, “A Little Bit of Soap.” The whole family is very musical.

PG: For college you went to Morgan State. Were you a part of their incredible marching band?

LLS: Oh, yeah. That’s interesting. I was in the marching band at Morgan State University. When I was in high school, they needed tuba players. Back then, we had the real heavy tubas. Everything I guess, has been made lighter since. Nobody wanted to play the tuba. The band leaders would always say, “We’ve got too many trumpet players and too many saxophone players.” I didn’t care what instrument I played; I wanted to be in the marching band. So I played the tuba in the marching band in high school and at Morgan State University. Being in marching bands was a great experience.

I really enjoyed being in the marching band and the choir at Morgan. I also met Gary Bartz while I was in Baltimore. He was from Baltimore, and we were about the same age. We started playing together. His father had a club called the North End Lounge, where we would play often. It was a great experience in Baltimore to be going to school, playing in the clubs, and in the marching band. I was just involved with music 24/7.

PG: As far as the tuba, have you played it much after college?

LLS: Oh, no. After Morgan, that was it for the tuba. But I didn’t realize until I got to New York how important the tuba was. I wasn’t aware of the history of New Orleans music where the tuba was the original bass in brass bands. Could you imagine if I had picked up the tuba in my later music on something like “Expansions”? Oh, that would have been a whole other world.

PG: After school, you were a Jazz Messenger with Art Blakey but for about only three days.

LLS: Right. It was short but a good experience. One night [Thelonious] Monk came down to hang out with Art because they were friends. So, I had the chance to hang out with and talk to Monk.

Working with Art was also a learning experience. Because Art didn’t write any music, the other musicians had to bring in songs and we would rehearse them. Art would never come to rehearsal. Somehow, he could just sit down and add to the music as if he was always at rehearsal. But each group I’ve played with has been a different experience. 

PG: After Blakey, you were with Max Roach for about a year. But it doesn’t seem you recorded during that time.

LLS: Oh! Actually, there is a recording on YouTube that came out fairly recently. It is me and Max with Abbey Lincoln at the 1964 Newport Jazz Festival. Max loved to do all these types of different and uncommon time signatures – 5/4, 7/4, and others. It was complicated but seemed to feel very organic and natural to me.

PG: Following Roach, you connected with Pharoah Sanders. You were even on his classic “The Creator Has a Master Plan” [Karma, (Impulse!, 1969)]. Do you have any specific memories of the sessions you did for that recording?

LLS: We had recorded as a group before that for Strata-East [Izipho Zam (My Gifts) (Strata-East, 1973)] though it didn’t get released until a few years later. But with Karma, [producer] Bob [Thiele] got involved when we went to the studio. It was interesting because I think there were two bass players [ed. Richard Davis and Reggie Workman]. Then you had Leon [Thomas] yodeling. We were all trying to do something different with our instruments. With Karma, one side of the album was “The Creator Has a Master Plan.” I can’t remember what was on the other side.

PG: “Colors.”

LLS: “Colors.” That’s right. We recorded both songs but Bob called me back into the studio and said he wanted to get more sound on “The Creator Has a Master Plan”, so asked me to do another piano part. I ended up overdubbing another grand piano to make it sound much fuller. And in the very beginning of the song, you can hear me reach inside the piano and pluck the strings to come up with sound. When that record came out, it just took off.

PG: You also wrote “Astral Traveling” [Thembi, (Impulse!, 1971)] with Pharaoh’s group. That song is incredible. It kind of came about naturally? 

LLS: We were in the studio in Los Angeles recording our last album together, Thembi. Before that record, I was playing only the acoustic grand piano. You don’t have to set up the grand piano when you get to the studio but everyone else needs to set up their horns, drums, or bass. So, I was sitting there waiting for everyone else to set up their instruments and I saw an instrument in the corner. I asked the audio engineer what it was and he told me it was the Fender Rhodes. 

I had never played one before, so I was curious. I just walked over, messed with the knobs, and I guess what came out was a gift from the universe and the creator. I just started playing the song that became “Astral Traveling.” The song came automatically. Everyone ran over and said, “Man, what is that? Well, we have to record this right now.”

Years later, I analyzed the song and it’s actually a twelve-bar blues. I call it a twelve-bar twenty-first-century cosmic blues. And when you analyze the twelve bars, it’s still using regular blues chords. As far as the name of the song, we were doing all kinds of studying back in the ’70s. At the time, I was studying astral projection. The song sounded like something you could throw all over the world. So, we called it astral traveling. 

PG: “Astral Travelling” is also an incredibly peaceful song.

LLS: Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do with music. The world can be very chaotic. But everyone in the world loves music. You can go to places in the world where people speak many different languages and not everyone can communicate easily because of the language barrier. But once the music starts, everyone understands.

Our Conversation with Lonnie Liston Smith Continues Here.

JID017 is now available. It can be purchased on Bandcamp or Jazz is Dead’s website. More information on Smith can be found on his website.