I’M WILLING TO BET THAT MORE PEOPLE HAVE HEARD THE GORDON GOODWIN’S MUSIC THAN ANY OTHER JAZZ COMPOSER. WELL, SOME OF YOU HAVE HEARD HIS FANTASTIC BIG PHAT BAND, WHICH JUST WON A GRAMMY FOR ‘BEST LARGE ENSEMBLE.’ BUT GOODWIN ALSO SUPPLIES THE MUSIC FOR MANY DISNEY FILMS SUCH AS ‘THE INCREDIBLES’; IT’S THIS ‘DAY JOB’ THAT GIVES HIM THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP TOGETHER HIS SWINGING JAZZ ORCHESTRA AND KEEP BIG BAND MUSIC ALIVE.
WE RECENTLY CAUGHT UP WITH GOODWIN, WHO GIVES GREAT INSIGHT TO THE VARIOUS PARTS OF THE JAZZ LIFE, FROM EDUCATION TO TOURING TO KEEPING A BAND TOGETHER.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GETTING A MUSICAL EDUCATION IN A “REGULAR” COLLEGE AS OPPOSED TO A MUSICAL SCHOOL SUCH AS BERKLEE?
My son went to Berklee for a couple years. So, we went back there and I was greatly impressed by their accent that they put on technological knowledge, realizing that today’s musicians had better have that in their arsenal. The way that they presented it to me was that whatever your interest is, you can find a curriculum that will match it. They describe it like a smorgasbord where you can a la carte determine what your curriculum is going to be for your four years, to a large degree. There are still certain classes that you have to take.
My son was excited by the idea. They were pitching that to him as a strength of their philosophy. But, part of me had a reluctance about it. Because in my own experience, I remember when I went to (Cal State) Northridge, I didn’t have anywhere near that kind of flexibility at the time, and it’s a good thing that I didn’t. That’s because I would have picked nothing but jazz and I would have limited my options down the road as a lot of the work that I do now is because they told me “You have to take “Orchestration” and you have to take “Counterpoint” to study conducting. You have to study “Music History” and you have to broaden your skills.”
I had no other choice. The truth is, The Big Phat Band, and really any big band, is not economically viable. So, I have to pay for it. If you see someone standing in front of a big band, he’s probably the one writing the check. Maybe except for Wynton Marsalis. So, the way that I pay for it is that I do other work.
Last night I was up until 2:30 in the morning working on this project for the Walt Disney Company. It’s all good work; it might all not be music that I believe in, but it’s music that has some economic value. So THAT is the money that I can use to not only raise a family and pay the bills, but also to support my “Big Band Habit.”
So, I’m conflicted about a young kid being given that much autonomy as a general rule. Do you really know what you want to do?
THIS IS THE POINT WHEN A KID COMES UP TO YOU AND SAYS “I WANT TO BE AN ARRANGER.” WHAT DO I DO?
A lot of times, the answer to that question, especially about arranging is that arranging is more of a craft-defined discipline. Composing is one that combines inspiration with whoever you are as a person and what your values are musically and otherwise. You’ve got no one who can tell you that; you’ve got to figure it out. Every composer I’ve ever heard of has rolled around on the floor until he has figured out what was important to him. And it’s kind of a moving target, as what was important to me when I was a 21 year old kid was not as important to me as a 31 year old, or now.
THAT LEADS TO MY NEXT QUESTION. YOU PLAY PIANO AND TENOR. DID YOU WANT TO ORIGINALLY BE A SIDEMAN IN A SMALL BAND, OR WHAT WERE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU TOOK UP TWO DIFFERENT INSTRUMENTS?
I was distracted by my love for all of those thing; playing the saxophone and playing the piano to start with, and then I realized that not everyone wrote music, so it might be a good idea if I wrote music. This was in 8th grade, Everyone was in band, but no one was writing music, so I thought that maybe this was a way I could distinguish myself or something.
In college the list got longer because I thought “Hey, it’s kind of fun to conduct an orchestra in college! That’s kind of interesting.” And then I just got busier when I got out into the work place, there was this new thing called the computer; people are using it to compose music. I had to figure out how to do that. Your choices were to dive into it or get out.
So for me, I know I’d be a LOT better saxophone player if I would just concentrate on that and just go down that road. But I’m not going to do that; I back up a bit and I go down the composing road. But then I have to write a song for Disney and it’s gotta be a pop song, so I have to kind of go down that road. Then, it’s time for me to conduct this orchestra, like we did twice in France last year. So, I think for me to be able to make the mental adjustment is really important.
I used to stress about it because I would think “I have to stretch. I have to warm up. I have to prepare.” And when I don’t have time to do those things, what am I gonna do? Am I going to go on stage and apologize to the audience “I’m sorry that I haven’t played the saxophone for two weeks?” They don’t care. They just want to hear it and they don’t want to perceive my anxiety about it. So I realized that I had two choices; adapt or get out. I either do not play the saxophone, or I get up there and quit whining about it.
There were still a couple choices that I made, one which was to take clarinet and flute and put them in the closet, as those ones are just unforgiving. I remember when I was doing a recording session back when I was still accepting that kind of work playing other people’s music. I was playing on a project and the guy told me “I want saxophone and a little bit of flute.” So I said, “OK.” Then, the day before the session, the contractor called and said “bring your alto flute.” I told him I didn’t have an alto flute. “Well, just borrow one; it’s not a big deal.”
So, I get there with the borrowed flute from my friend, and the alto flute part on my stand is this long extended solo…really very difficult and I’m really struggling trying to hold the notes out. I get through it hanging on by my fingernails . I was really embarrassed and I told myself that I’m not going to do that anymore, which freed up resources and energy for me to manage the things I really wanted to do.
WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED, ONE OF YOUR EARLIEST STINTS WAS WITH LOUIE BELLSON. HOW DID YOU GET THAT AND WHAT DID YOU LEARN?
Well, Louie Bellson used to come to Cal State Northridge as he was a friend of Joel Leach, the director of the jazz program there. He would bring music into our band for us to play so he could hear what it sounded like. That was of course a thrill for us to meet him. He heard some of my writing, and I was right out of school and he called me and said, “I have a gig at Disneyland. You want to play in the band?” I played second alto next to people that I had idolized. My parents took pictures of me with the band at Carnation Plaza.
What I learned mostly from Louie was from his gentle nature and that he was such a decent man. There would be big issues in his band, and I was sitting in the middle of them. Some of the guys in the band were old jaded warhorses who had picked up a lot of cynicism and snarkyness through the years. I was just sitting there, fresh out of high school, and what I learned was that I’m going into an environment where they weren’t going to say “Hello, son! Come on in and welcome to the Music Business. Atta Boy! Let me show you how it goes.”
None of that. It was “learn to survive here. Or not. We don’t care.” It was a harsh lesson right off the bat. Not from Louie; he was always great. When there would be conflict in the band, Louie didn’t even attempt to deal with it. Playing the music was important to him and anything other than that he just didn’t want to address. He just felt that “It’s going to work itself out and let’s just go out and play some music because that’s what’s important to me.”
We never really talked about this, but as I played in the band he’d write a song and say “Hey, Gordo. Here’s a song I wrote. Why don’t you arrange it for the band?” So I would do it. My first trip to Europe was with his band. One of the first times my music was recorded in a professional environment was a chart I had written for my college band and he recorded it in the studio. I got a lot of early experiences that I could never repay him for.
I went to his memorial service and there were a ton of people there that loved the man. People sometimes ask you what was your break. I never thought I really had one. But being with him was a seminal moment.
THEN YOU ALSO DID SOMETHING FOR GIL SCOTT-HERON
Oh man. I was in a horn section, and we just got the call to play on one of his records. That one time session was on my resume for a long time when I didn’t have much else to go on! Bill Watrous was also on that session.
HOW DID YOU GET THE DISNEYLAND JOB?
I got that job through a friend of mine named Tom Childs who I knew from high school. He played the bass and he said, “Hey, they need a piano player; you want to come and audition?”
Working at Disneyland was the greatest experience. For a young musician to go there, make a little money, get some practical experience, learn how to dependable and play five shows a day, and to play well even when you don’t feel like it…It’s easy to play well when you want to, but sometimes when you’re tired or “Man, I gotta go out and play again in the sun?” But then you go out there and focus on playing. That was a great learning experience.
But I also got a good taste of what it means to be a professional musician in another sense. I got hired for my very first commercial writing gig at Disneyland, and they wanted me to write the charts for a live Mousketeers show. It featured some of the “vintage” Mouseketeers like Cubby and Tommy and some of the new ones. It was right before Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears were there. So I wrote the show, and at the time I really wanted the musicians to like me. And in those days if you wanted to hear your music, there was no self home recording; you heard it from the band, and the band had to play it for you.
So I’m writing all this stuff figuring “Oh, the guys are going to really like it” and make it kind of interesting and innovative. I over-shot from an artistic standpoint and …I remember being by the music director. He didn’t know I was standing there. Someone mentioned my name to him and he said, “Well there’s a guy with zero commercial sensibility.” I remember thinking “What does that mean?” I then came to learn that it was not my job to write music that the guys in the band are necessarily going to like to play, or even music that I even like. In that context I have to write something that the producer and the director need for that show. So, Disneyland provided a great platform for me to learn that.
I also met my wife Lisa there at the employees cafeteria, so Disneyland has been good to me!
DO YOU EVER TAKE INTERNS IN TO YOUR WORK.
I usually feel real awkward about it. I have a kid that comes in a few times a month; I’ll have him come to a recording session with me or I’ll set him up to take lessons from one of the guys. Sometimes they’re doing stuff that’s really cool, and sometimes they’re picking up the dry cleaning!
I think about myself at that age. If I had gotten the chance to intern for Pat Williams or Henry Mancini, I would have paid them to do it. So, I have to remind myself of that when I’m telling some kid to go pick something up for me. It’s an opportunity for them.
DO YOU USE A DIFFERENT WAY TO COMPOSE IF YOU ARE USING THE MUSIC FOR A FILM OR JAZZ RECORDING?
For composing for a film, the visual image triggers the content. When I’m composing a commission or a song for the Big Phat Band, it comes from a different place. I have a friend who passed away named Richard Stone. He was the musical supervisor for Warner Brothers and we were working on all of the animated stuff like the Animaniacs. It was a gig he was born to do; he was so good at it. The gig ended and he stopped doing all of that kind of programming. The cancer showed up a year later for him. During that time he got into a real depression because the thing he had been born to do had stopped. He didn’t have any money problems, but he had creative problems. So, I told him, “Richard, write your symphony! You’ve got all the time now.” He said “I don’t know how to start. I’ve been writing music by looking at a screen for so long that I don’t know how to write music without a visual triggering it.” When he died of cancer, it kind of ended a Golden Era for us where we were scoring for those programs 3 sessions a week with a full orchestra and no synthesizers in sight. Real musicians playing the music live. It was just a lot of great music being created at that time. I learned so much from Richard.
When I’m composing for the Big Phat band, or a commission that I’m currently doing for an orchestra, someone might say that they want it to be about the anniversary of the moonlanding or something. In fact I did something like that last year. They had a program for the shuttle Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center where they have an IMAX kind of movie. So, I wrote the theme for that project and to do it I went on youtube.com and watched a number of clips of the moon landing and documentaries from the astronauts on what it felt like for America to accomplish that and try to get my head there.
What I’ll also do in order to “prime the pump” is to listen to other people’s music; in that case I listened to John Williams scores that evoked a certain kind of feeling. That works for me; if I have to write a song for the Phat Band I’ll think “Well, I need a good Latin song. I’ll go listen to a bunch of Tito Puente, and that will get into my body and head.
IT’S HARD TO STRIKE THE BALANCE BETWEEN BEING CREATIVE AND BEING ACCESSIBLE
I just went down to the JEN conference in San Diego. It’s a jazz education network made up of students , professionals, educators ,publishers , instrument manufacturers and media. Anyone who has an interest is jazz is there, and the get together to congregate and learn about jazz. The Big Phat Band played the closing concert on Saturday night. 3000 people who all love music were there. I did a Master Class earlier that day. It was called “The Pursuit of Balance.” It was about achieving balance in both with music and off the band stand.
I have realized that the things that I like are the things that are in balance, whether it comes to music or books, politics or food. The things that matter to me are ones that have a balance of the elements. So, if I’m writing jazz or swing music I love it. But if I did nothing but that I’d start getting antsy, so I need to right some funk, rock or classical music.
I think that the Big Phat Band reflects that value. In fact, our album Life In The Bubble is really about that. It’s where people go through their lives in little bubbles where they wall themselves off from other experiences. They only listen to political opinions that they agree with, or they buy something on Amazon that says “If you like this, then you’ll also like this because it’s like something that you just bought,” as opposed to trying a wide range of artistic experiences. So, that’s important to me.
THAT’S A KEY POINT. WE SHOULD HAVE DISCUSSIONS AND EVEN CIVIL ARGUMENTS WITH PEOPLE WE DISAGREE WITH. THE FACT THAT WE CAN HAVE A DISCUSSION MEANS WE TRUST THEM ENOUGH TO HAVE THE DIALOGUE. I WOULDN’T TRUST SOMEONE WHO THOUGHT EXACTLY THE WAY I DO.
Right. I think we need to learn to be ok with “I really disagree with you, but we’re friends!” That can and should work.
THERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS TO ACHIEVE THIS BALANCE. IN MUSIC, YOU”VE GOT TO BUILD UP YOUR CHOPS.
There’s a trombone player, James Morrison, who has incredible chops. He played with us at the Blue Note in Japan last year. On the second night of the gig, we were sharing a dressing room and I was telling him, “I’ll feature you on the 4th tune. By the way, where’s your horn?” He goes “Oh, it’s on stage.”
I then figured out that he had finished the gig the night before and had left his horn on stage all night. Not even in the case. He then goes up there, picks it up without warming up, and just launches! And so, the guys in the band are just fascinated by this, as they’re doing all of these intricate warmup exercises and all that to get ready to play. James is just mentally at a point where he doesn’t require getting ready. And he can play anything; trombone, saxophone, piano, bass, drums, guitar. He flies airplanes, drives race cars, he writes science fiction novels. He does so many things because he isn’t limited by the preconceptions that most of us would be. Most of us would think “the saxophone is just too different from the trumpet, so I just can’t do it.” So Morrison is able to do all of this by the power of his mind.
DOES IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE IN YOUR CAREER TO BE NOMINATED FOR A GRAMMY, AND ACTUALLY WINNING ONE, AS YOU JUST HAVE?
The Grammy I won last year I wasn’t even there; I was at the airport! I was checking it at LAX to fly to France, where we were playing. My son was travelling with me and had an ipad. He was streaming the ceremony for me and said, “Dad, I think your category is up.” And it’s really loud at the Bradley Terminal, and I’m watching it. I was in two categories, right in a row. The camera shows the audience and a guy stands up and I think, “OK, he won.” The next category comes up and they show the screen with all of our names up there and the announcer says something and the camera pans around at the audience and my cell phone starts going “beep beep beep beep.” People started texting me “Hey, dude, you won.” And the camera shows my name up on the screen, so It was kind of surreal as I’m at LAX , it happens, and the guy at the airport says, “Sir, your passport please.”
The time I won before that was for “Rhapsody in Blue.” After you give your speech, you walk to the table for the picture. There’s a guy with a recorder who asks “So, what’s it like to win a Grammy?” I told him. “it’s interesting because my arrangement is no better now than it was five minutes ago before I won. There are four guys sitting out there who’s arrangements are no worse now because they lost. But, if this trophy helps me keep doing this and write more charts, if it’s a tool to help me keep this going, then that’s the real value.”
They guy looks at me and said, “Really? That’s what you’re going to give me?” (laughs) That’s not what he wanted me to say. He wanted me to say “That’s awesome, dude!”
To get the nomination is really the best part, because it means your peers are recognizing you. Whether you win or not , you’re opened up to a lot more circumstances to the people who vote. For instance, if you look at my wins ( and I say this with the greatest appreciation that I’m even in the conversation), my first win was for The Incredibles, a movie that everyone saw and everybody loved, which created a lot of good will. The second was for “Rhapsody in Blue,” a composition that everybody knows and loves which George Gershwin does most of the heavy lifting for me and I was able to hop on his back. The third one was for “On Green Dolphin Street” a revered jazz standard that everyone knows and based on an Oscar Peterson improvisation which didn’t hurt.
I did a Grammy Writer’s Panel with Pat Williams and I said on the microphone that Pat won a Grammy for an album called Threshold which was a big inspiration for all of us. That was so meaningful to me to be there with him because he created it from the ground up. He sat there, he looked at a blank score and he wrote Threshold. It wasn’t an assignment for a movie; it wasn’t anything other than “I want to write this music.”
This year we had four nominations that doesn’t happen very often. And it’s a pretty exciting thing. One of these winning a Grammy, coming from the Band itself, is pretty meaningful. It’s great.
You know, you look at the list of people who have never won a Grammy and it’s pretty amazing.
THE BALANCE IN YOUR LIFE IS NOT FOR THE GRAMMY, BUT TO HAVE THE GRAMMY ALLOW YOU TO CONTINUE YOUR MUSIC
I think it’s dishonest to write music for awards. Or for critics or for fans, or for anything other than what you think sounds good. Unless you are getting specifically hired to do something. That’s a different conversation. The music I’m doing right now for Disney is not necessarily music that I would choose to write.
SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS YOU DON’T LIKE IN ORDER TO DO WHAT YOU DO LIKE.
It took me a long time to get answers like that. We’ve done two trips to France, two trips to Japan, a trip to Australia. We’re playing this music everywhere but here!
WHY ?
They have a culture in Europe and Asia that believes in supporting music like this. To hear us play at the Blue Note (in Tokyo, Japan) will cost you 90 bucks. Plus dinner and drinks! Forget it! Can you imagine trying to make that work in LA? No way! We were performing in France last year in front of audiences of 1500-5000 people. Every night. We had a great couple of weeks over there, and afterwards the guys in the band were joking “ yeah, and now we gotta go home and be reminded what schmucks we are!”
IT’S A RARE MAN THAT IS ABLE TO BALANCE THE ARTISTIC AND COMMERCIAL ASPECTS OF MUSIC, BUT GOODWIN HAS BEEN ABLE TO MASTER IT. AS YOU CAN SEE, IT DOESN’T COME EASY. GENIUS HAS BEEN SAID TO CONSIST OF 1% INSPIRATION AND 99% PERSPIRATION. THE GREAT BASEBALL GENIUS BRANCH RICKEY USED TO SAY “LUCK IS THE RESIDUE OF HARD WORK.” GOODWIN HAS ACHIEVED HIS MUSICAL GOALS THE OLD FASHIONED WAY, THROUGH LEARNING FROM OTHERS, BUILDING UP HIS STRENGTHS AS WELL AS HIS WEAKNESSES IN ORDER TO BE A BALANCED ARTIST. BY ACHIEVING THIS BALANCED, HE HAS TIPPED THE SCALES TO SUCCESS.