Bob Shad with Reggie Moore, 1972

Bob Shad was one of the key jazz producers of the 20th Century alongside Creed Taylor, Orrin Keepnews, Bob Thiele and Nesuhi Ertegun. He left an unforgettable mark on music across many genres, producing more than 800 albums over a 40 years career and recording many Giants in the process. “He was not just commercial, he recorded mainly what he believed in.”, said critic Leonard Feather. Born in New York on February 12th, 1920, Bob Shad got in the music business in 1946 working first for National Records and then for Savoy Records as they bought National. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful journey which saw him work with Charlie Parker on the legendary Savoy Sessions, set up EmArcy Records in the 50s and produce a 7” single in 1958 by The Jades featuring a 15 year old guitarist named Lou Reed. Oh and he recorded Janis Joplin’s first LP in 1966 with Big Brother & The Holding Co.

The list of luminaries Shad recorded or discovered is endless: Lightnin’ Hopkins and Art Blakey, Max Roach and John Cage, Cannonball Adderley and The Platters, Sarah Vaughan and Quincy Jones. An entrepreneur at heart, he founded a new label, Mainstream Records in 1964 producing jazz, psychedelia and soundtracks. In 1971, he started the cult Mainstream MRL 300 series featuring the radical sound of the early 70s recorded by a new wave of young robe-dressed jazzmen, influenced by both the modal sound of the New Thing and the funk of Sly Stone. Shad didn’t restrict his productions to one particular genre and also recorded young soul divas such as Ellerine Harding, Maxine Weldon and above all Alice Clark, whose eponymous album mixing soul with Ernie Wilkins’ funky big band arrangements has become an absolute classic.

Just out on WEWANTSOUNDS, is “Feeling Good”, a 2-LP selection from the rich Mainstream catalogue, filled with mouth-watering, Fender Rhodes-drenched deep jazz, soul and funk. And we’ve heard there is a second opus already in the pipeline. More than thirty years after his death, it is essential to rediscover the legendary Bob Shad, a maverick jazz producer and passionate music man from the glorious days when vinyl was king. We talked about the great man and his legacy to his grandson, who is none other than comedian, producer and filmmaker Judd Apatow. Cult.

You were born in 1967 just a few years after Mainstream Records was launched and the year your grandfather released the Big Brother/Janis Joplin album. Was the music he produced part of your childhood’s “soundtrack”?
Absolutely, at home when I was a kid, we listened to Jazz and to the music Bobby produced. I don’t think I fully understood what it was about until I was in high school when I started deejaying at my high school radio station and had a jazz show. At which point, I decided to visit my grandfather in Los Angeles and my hope was that, for the first time, I would be able to talk about all the work he had done because I was old enough to understand. But sadly he died of a heart attack just before I made that trip so I was never able to have that conversation with him.

What relationship did you have with him when you were growing up? What sort of grandfather was he and what was he representing in your family?
As a kid I saw my grandfather all the time. My father actually worked at Mainstream Records for my grandfather so I would visit them a lot at the label. Bobby was a legend in the family for all he had accomplished. He was a really funny guy and had a great sense of humour. He loved to give you a “hard time” and he was so passionate about music and what he’d done.

Bob Shad was a cult producer and we could say the same about you in a way. How did he inspire you?
He was such an inspiration because he was a self-made man. He was some poor kid in New York who cobbled together enough money to hire some jazz musicians and record them. Then he had records made and went to sell them to record stores himself and that was in the 40s. Then he opened a record store and started his own label. What’s amazing is some of the people he recorded when he was very young turned out to be Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. It all happened just because he loved the music so much. He had no ‘way in’ in the business. He didn’t know anyone and just did it. For me that was a great inspiration because I thought ‘oh you can do what you want to do in comedy, you just have to do it’ so I started interviewing comedians when I was a very young and I was writing jokes for them. I also did stand-up comedy in high school and that was all because I knew my grandfather had done the same as a young man. For instance, he went down south with his tape recorder and recorded all these blues artists on their front stoops. He was a real innovator.

You’ve namechecked him in your film “Walk Hard – Dewey Cox Story” by naming one group in the film “Bobby Shad & The Bad Men”, a nod to the album he released on Mainstream Records. Also you have used several tracks from Mainstream Records in your soundtracks along the years. Do you have any favourite track or album from the catalogue?
I get a kick out that album, Bobby Shad & The Bad Men where he would cover rock songs with a 65 pieces orchestra, it’s such a fun album. I grew up listening to the first Big Brother & The Holding Company record featuring Janis Joplin because the family talked about it all the time. My family would say: “Janis Joplin is the best singer ever and your grandfather found her before anybody else in 1966”. I have the letter of intent hanging in my office dated Sept 7 1966 saying she was going to sign with him. So people talk about Columbia boss Clive Davis discovering Janis Joplin but my parents always said: “Well actually not, your grandfather did. She did her first album for Mainstream Records”.
There is also a legend in the family that Bobby tried to sign Elvis Presley. Apparently he was down South and he called Mercury, the label he worked for at the time, to tell them to sign Elvis but it took a very long time to get approval and match the sum Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ Manager, was asking for. So by the time Mercury gave the greenlight, Elvis had already been signed by RCA for 40.000$. I always enjoyed hearing the stories about who Bobby didn’t sign. People he had seen when they were really young and didn’t pick, like the Grateful Dead. Another one was Bob Seeger. Bobby would say: “Ah yes I didn’t sign him!”

Hadley Caliman, Alice Clark, Harold Land

There is one album, The Alice Clark one from 1972, whose reputation has been growing exponentially over the last years as one of the best soul albums of all times. It’s beautiful and got a very cinematic feel. Do you have any plans to use more tracks from the Mainstream vaults in future productions?
I regularly use tracks from the Mainstream catalogue in all of my films. I always have jazz in there, also rock and blues tracks, I’ve used Ted Nugent’s group The Amboy Dukes, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. It’s a fun nod to my grandfather and his work.

Bob Shad seemed ahead of his time as he championed African American artists (jazz, blues, doowop…) producing them back in the 40s at a time when it wasn’t common. Has he passed on to you his passion for jazz, funk and blues or made you appreciate these genres more, in today’s context?
I’m a big fan of jazz, funk and blues. I’m certainly not as knowledgeable as he was but he made me appreciate the music and made me more open in having eclectic tastes in all arts. The best thing about Bobby is he had no boundaries with the label: he produced rock ‘n’ roll, blues, jazz, avant-garde with a John Cage album! He just loved music. Also Mainstream was a vital label in the 70s when jazz was not as popular as it had been. Mainstream was one of the few labels who were still making original jazz. And he put out some comedy albums as well which I really loved as a kid, like these Dickie Goodman records where he would be a reporter asking questions and the answers were little snippets of famous songs. There were really funny albums.

Your grandfather fought hard to impose photos of black musicians on album covers…
Yes way back then, Record labels didn’t want to carry records if they had pictures of Black artists on the cover and Bobby would refuse this. In his own way he broke down a lot of barriers by loving this music and by pushing the world to hear it. He felt that these great Black art forms deserved much more respect.

Bob Shad at Record Plant Studio with Reggie Moore and Carmine Rubino

Your films “Knocked Up” and “This is 40” films with Paul Rudd as a Label owner feel very authentic. You were too young to work at Mainstream but have you had any record label experience in the past?
I know the music business from my family running Mainstream Records. They’ve been putting out music through the years as the formats changed: from vinyl to CDs and now streaming and digital downloads. So I do understand the work and the struggle to keep a label going. Also My high-school friend Josh Rosenthal who was deejaying with me at the high school radio went on to work at Sony Music for many years before starting his own label, Tompkins Square Records, a great specialty label, so I’ve seen his journey over the decades and some of that have inspired me as well.
My love for music and artists who are not necessarily the most commercial ones has always been there. Loudon Wainwright III is one of my favourite artists so I had him score Knocked Up. Graham Parker who stars in the film was very keen to satirise the struggle of ageing rockstars. Also we made the movie ‘Pop Star’, a mockumentary with Andy Samberg and his comedy trio ‘The Lonely Island’. And of course ‘Walk Hard The Dewey Cox story’ about a fictional rock’n’roll star; so I always go back to music.

Thanks to the new compilation “Feeling Good – The Supreme Sound of Producer Bob Shad” a new generation hooked on jazz, funk and hip hop are going to discover the great productions of your grandfather who was a fiercely independent music guy. Do you think independence remains the key for cultural creativity and diversity?
I’ve always admired people who go their own way. Some people are very good at making Top 40 music but I’ve always been a big fan of artists who express themselves and don’t think too much about what’s popular in the moment. I just participated in a tribute concert to Warren Zevon. Jackson Browne put the event together and everybody sang songs by Warren. I’m really interested in artists who make music from their heart and don’t worry too much about the economics, Bod Dylan, Loudon, Jazz artists…

Mtume for Buddy Terry sessions

Mainstream Records tracks have been sampled many times by the likes of NWA’s Easy E or A Tribe Called Quest. Recently, Chance the Rapper has used a sample of the track “Red Clay” by Jack Wilkins in his track “Nana”. His lyrics are pretty “green” as we say in France. Did you meet with him? How did it go?
We didn’t talk about that specific sample when I met him but I’m a fan of his work and I feel like he’s evolving quickly into one of the greatest rap artists in the world. Obviously some of his earlier work is edgier (laughs) but his current work is very spiritual and inspiring so I thought it’s great that he’s used a sample from the Mainstream catalogue.

Late in his career, Bob Shad decided to move to Los Angeles and go into Film production. You’ve followed a similar path in a way with comedy as a launching pad instead of music. Are there any cool film projects he was involved in during that later Hollywood period or any anecdote?
Bobby was working with director Frankenheimer for a few years and I know there was a moment when they were trying to get the movie “Being There” made. My grandmother told me they had the rights of the book for a while. They didn’t manage to get it made, Amoeba Records ended up directing it, but at least I know they had good taste!

Last question, do you collect records and LPs in particular? Do you have any favourite shop in Los Angeles?
I hadn’t been buying vinyl for a long time but in the last year I bought a whole new sound system with a turntable and have just started the vinyl journey again. I hadn’t listened to vinyl for so long and I put a Led Zeppelin album on, it felt like they were in the room. I thought “My god what have I done with my crappy sound system for the last twenty years!” It’s fun to go in record shops and search things out. There’s Amoeba Records in LA of course. There is also a great shop in Santa Monica, The Record Surplus, we shot a scene in Knocked Up there actually.

This interview was originally published by Liberation, in a shorter french version

As JC, he waited to be 33 to reveal his talents to the world. Born in Los Angeles, the saxophonist was brought up in a musical environment and began his professional career with new millenary. He has since played with numerous musicians, in various styles. In the Gerald Wilson big band, who was a guide for him, and with leaders such as Stanley Clarke or Raphael Saadiq, but also with Snoop Dogg or Lauryn Hill. During all those years, he took his time to find his own voice. His sound, a true singularity who is nevertheless reminiscent of his elders. A well-known partner of singer Kendrick Lamar, friend of bass player Thundercat, Kamasi Washington has now achieved fame of his own with his astonishing debut solo record, released by Braindfeeder, Flying Lotus’s label. Consisting in more than 3 hours of music, in a boxset of 3 LPs, the totemic ‘Epic’ finally puts this composer on the frontline. No doubt, a new Jazz star is born!

Photos by Mike Park

You grew up in Los Angeles what did you listen to as a teenager?
So the answer to this question is a little complicated because in my early teenage years is when I started to take music really seriously and I was kind of all over the place. I was really into Hip Hop and RnB from my earlier childhood, I had already liked jazz but by then I was really into it, I was also getting into European Classical music because of new friends I was making at my high school which was a music academy. So I was listening records like Snoop Dogg’s “The Doggfather”, Tupac “All Eyez On Me”, Nas “It Was Written”, Busta Rhymes “When Disaster Strikes”, Lee Morgan “The Gigolo”, John Coltrane “Transitions”, McCoy Tyner “The Real McCoy”, Eric Dolphy “Out to Lunch”, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”, Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” and a lot of other stuff.

When did you start music? Why saxophone?
My father is a musician so I started music very young at around 2 on drums, then around 5 I started playing the piano, then clarinet at 7. When I was around 11 or 12 I got really into Art Blakey’s The Jazz Messengers. My dad who is a saxophone player wouldn’t let me play saxophone because he wanted me to learn clarinet first. In fact he told me that they were the same and if I couldn’t play the clarinet then I wouldn’t be able to play the saxophone. So by 12 I was really trying to play songs from my favorite jazz records all of which had saxophone players. So the clarinet is similar to the saxophone but it’s not the same at all but I didn’t know that so I was trying to learn this music and it was so hard to try to play Charlie Parker solos on a clarinet and have them sound like he did. So one day my dad left his soprano sax out and I took it and from the first note I was already better than I was on clarinet. It was crazy because I didn’t even really know the fingerings but I instantly figured them out and I had been listening to so many saxophone players that I already sounded like one. There was no going back for me at that point my dad had to give in. It was kind of surreal.

What were/are your mentors? References?
My first and biggest mentor is my father Rickey Washington. He started me in music and has guided me my whole life. But I’ve learned a lot from many different people. After my father I would say a man named Reggie Andrew’s was my second biggest mentor. He was also my father’s teacher and a staple educational figure in the African American music community of Los Angeles since the 70s. Everyone in my band and most of the musicians that are really doing a lot in music in Los Angeles come up through him. Then there was the great Gerald Wilson who was one of Reggie Andrew’s heroes. I started with Gerald very young and played with him for almost 15 years and learned so much about the history of jazz, he was born in 1918 so he was there first hand. All of my idols were his friends. Harmonically he was my biggest influence so much of what I play comes from all those years hearing the dense one of kind harmonies he wrote for hi big band. There are literally dozens of others that I can and probably should mention like Issac Smith, Stanley Clarke, Harvey Mason, plus many many more but my dad, Reggie, and Gerald are my top 3.

Cherokee

What is the influence of Gospel and Soul in your music?
I mentioned earlier that when I first picked up the sax the connection was instantaneous. So literally that next Sunday my dad took me to play at my uncle’s church. My uncle played organ and piano. So my dad still hadn’t taught me the fingerings though I had figured most of them out by my self. Before this my dads approach to teaching me was very technical we would read every thing and used a lot of method books but when I switched to sax he wanted to develop my ear so he took me to church to play gospel. I grew up going to church so I knew all the songs but hadn’t played any of them before. So I had to use my ears and figure everything out. It was a little hard at first but after a while I could play any song that I could sing in my head. So you can say that I really learned how to play music through gospel. And I’ve always played gospel and I still to this day play at church.

Is there a specific California sound, for jazz or hip hop? If so how would you define it?
Though there is a vibe to the State of California as a whole but it’s too big to speak of one sound for it there are lots of sounds. Even my City of Los Angeles is really big and there are lots pockets that each have their own sound. The sound that many people are now starting to recognize is the sound from an area in south central Los Angeles called The Leimert Park Village. There is definitely a very specific sound from there. This sound really derives from all over south central, and the east side of Los Angeles but Leimert is the hub. That sound that you here on my album and the jazz elements of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly comes from Leimert. That’s where myself and everyone in my band came up plus people like Terrace Martin and Issac Smith came up there too. It’s the center of African American Culture in Los Angeles. Growing up there we had three clubs that we went to. The World Stage, a club that jazz great and LA native Billy Higgins started. 5th Street Dicks the late night heavy modern jazz club that bands like Black Note grew out of. And Project Blowed a underground hip hop club that spawned groups like Freestyle Fellowship. We went to all of them all of the time. So the jazz from that area has roots in the classic forms of jazz from the world stage with a modern fire behind it with large influences from hip hop, RnB, and funk plus there’s an avant garde legacy left by masters like Horace Tapscott that’s mixed in there too.

You recorded three records in three years. Why such an emergency? What did you have to say?
So being a musician of a certain caliber a demand will grow for your services. Myself and everyone in my band were always gigging and going on the road. However at first and for a long time at least for me it wasn’t in jazz. My first tour was with Snoop Dogg and I stayed with him for years. Then my next big gig was with Raphael Saadiq and then Lauryn Hill. I love all styles of music and really enjoyed playing with all three of those legendary musicians but jazz was where my heart was. But during this time the only time I played jazz was in LA when I got home off the road. The same was true of many of my friends so we started recording and writing and playing as much as we could. I was making pretty good money so I built a recording studio in the back of my house. And I made a few records. The first two were just to document what we were doing musically. The gospel record I made for my grandfather as a present. I didn’t really push any of the records out but I had to make them to keep myself intact.

Do you feel you have evolved in terms of aesthetics during the last ten years ? more on the saxophone or in the compositions?
Yes I’ve grown a lot on the saxophone and in composition. First there’s so much music that I’ve been exposed to over the last ten years that has inspired me in my own music. Then on the saxophone I’ve come to a place where I truly except who I am and I am able to play what ever comes to me instead of feeling the need to prove who I am. It sounds really subtle but it’s a really big difference so often musicians get in their own way because they want to show that they can do this and that, and they know this and that. So they end up just playing this and that and never get to what really inside of them. It’s difficult because there’s the need to hone in your skills and a pressure to show that you have skills before other musicians will accept you. But I’ve learned to look past all of that because the greatest music that I will ever be able to make is the music that comes from my heart. In composition I’ve evolved in the size and scope of my ambitions. I no longer limit myself in what I hear in my head I just write it and figure out how to make it happen later.

You play the sax a lot on this record but in the end the listener gets to meet a new composer, a real author. How do you deal with this double hat?
Well the only real difficulty is that there are only 24 hours in a day. So what ends up happening to me is my focus becomes seasonal. So some weeks and even months at times I’m just really into the sax and I’m developing different aspects of the horn or different concepts of things I can play. Then some times I’m really inspired to write and music is just flowing out of me. And I like it this way because sometimes you need to step away from things to get a good perspective I feel that when I step away from the saxophone to compose when I come back to my regiment on the saxophone I’m rejuvenated and excited to get back in with a fresh perspective. And when I haven’t composed in a while I feel like the music that come is fresh and uninhibited by things I’ve already done.

Re Run Home

How long have you been working with The Next Step?
Is a band I started about ten years ago but it comes from a collective we now call the West Coast Get Down. The West Coast Get Down are a group of musicians that I’ve been friends with my whole life. They are Ronald and Stephen Bruner, Cameron Graves, Miles Mosley, Ryan Porter, Brandon Coleman, Tony Austin, and Patrice Quinn. We’ve been making music together our whole lives. I’ve known Ronald since I was three and Stephen since he was born, their dad and my dad played together. Brandon went to the same elementary school as Ronald and Stephen we met almost ten years before he started playing piano. Tony Austin is a little older than us but he went to the same school and we met him at the same time. I met Ryan in junior high in a program called Jazz America and I met Miles and Cameron in high school. I met Patrice Quinn last in my first year of collage. So we’ve been together a long time.

How did you record? Is it the music sum accumulated for seven years?
So about three years ago all the members of The West Coast Get Down decided to take a whole month off from doing any shows or tours and just focus on each other and record each others music. So we were in the studio 7 days a week from 11am-2am for thirty days. And we recorded an incredible amount of music like 190 songs, 8 albums, almost 2 terabytes of music. So I walked away with 45 songs recorded! My new album The Epic is made of my favorite tracks from that 45. For my music the whole band, two drummers, upright bass, electric bass, piano, keyboards, sax, trombone, and trumpet all recorded together in the same room. I wanted everyone to feel free to be spontaneous. If you try overdub then everyone is locked to what ever you record first. I encouraged them all to be as open as they wanted and to shape the music as they heard it. Then for the nine tracks that have strings and choir I wrote that music around what the band had already recorded. I felt like I would get the best of both worlds that way. I could the arrangements be as rich and full as I wanted them to be without limiting the spontaneous creativity.

Your universe reminds us a lot of Horace Tapscott, your California elder.
Yes I love Horace Tapscott! I love his music, his philosophies, and everything he did for the community that I grew up in. I only got to play with him once when I was really young at jam session at The World Stage. But his band The Pan African Peoples Arkestra has continued after his death under the leadership of Michael Sessions and I’ve played with them many times. Yes I’m a big fan all the records that came out on Black Jazz Records. They were really popular in LA and very important to that sound of Leimert Park that I talked about earlier.

How is the crossing of the jazz epic?
The Epic is doing very well so far people are really into it! I hope to bring as many of the members of The Next Step and The West Coast Get Down on the tour as I can. I hope we’re able to bring this music all over the world. I feel like the music we are making speaks to people in way that has been missing for a while. In LA we play at non-jazz clubs all the time for people who if you asked them before the show if they liked jazz they would say absolutely not but after they’re so into it they fighting to try and figure out how they can get more of the music. So we want to go out and share this all over the world. Hopefully it will happen.

How/when did you sign on Brainfeeder?
I meet Flying Lotus a long time ago when I was like 17 I won the John Coltrane competition and he was there with Ravi Coltrane. I think he was like 13 the same age as Thundercat who was playing with me. I think he and Thundercat stayed in touch. I didn’t see Lotus again till about 7 or 8 years ago. I knew that he and Thundercat had been working together and we randomly ran into each other at a jam session. Then a few years later he asked me if I’d like to do a record on Brainfeeder and I was like YES! Being on Brainfeeder has been great. It has definitely given me a lot more exposure and introduced me to a wider audience for sure but more than that it was cool because Lotus encouraged me to do what ever I wanted and that opened my mind to it’s self.

(this interview was published on a shorter version in French, for Jazz News Magazine)

 

His website, with european tour dates (november 15th, Paris Le Trabendo)

http://kamasiwashington.com/

 

His Top 5