"The sustainability of art is constant movement between modes and scales, lyrics, melodies, symmetry, odd meters and a fundamental believe in the huminality of music.
My guest today has been performing in Big Brass Bands the last 6 decades. He has been creating trends and staying on the productive side of the hill even as the fallibility and short comings of man are self-evident.
He was co founder of the A&M record label and was instrumental in fashioning music that appealed to a society that was going through a cultural revolution. Their ears were open to many different styles of music including West Coast jazzers like Pete Jolly, Chet Baker, Leroy Vinnegar and Shelly Manne.
He developed good working relationships with Quincy Jones Who was working on "You Got It Bad Girl" as The Girl from Impanima had come and gone and a newer slicker form of blues and jazz known as funk came into the American Lexicon.
My guest employed street cats like Tommy LiPuma and Nick DeCaro. My guest plays a varied mix of Western swing, Afro/Cuban/Mariachi Country/Pop. Before labels he was a musician who straddled all genres evident from his collaboration with South African Freedom Fighter, Hugh Masekela.
Since 1974 he has been collaborating with his wife Lani Hall forming a duo playing concert halls, hockey rinks, Film & TV shows, and in their own living room swinging their way through the day or into Tucson on the 26th for a gig @ The Fox Theatre.
Herb Alpert welcome to the JFS