The Russell Malone Interview |
by Ed Benson |
Playing the guitar for 30 of his 35 years Russell Malone is now looked upon as one today's finest jazz guitarists. After seeing George Benson on TV at the age of 12 he decided to become a jazz guitarist. Growing up in Georgia, Russell worked day jobs and in the evenings came to Atlanta to work with visiting acts. Many of our readers will remember him from holding down the guitar chair in Harry Connick's band in the early 1990s. He was in Robert Altman's 1996 movie Kansas City and has been a member of Diana Krall's popular studio and live band recently. He's also been busy recording on records by such performers as Gary Bartz and Roy Hargrove and with his latest release "Sweet Georgia Peach," he has finally recorded under his own name. I had the opportunity to interview him at my home on one of his visits to Atlanta. He amazed me with his clean playing and technique. Whether it's blues, single line solos or chord melody standards Russell does it all. He enjoyed playing my Buscarino Virtuoso so much that he bought one and is now endorsing John's guitars. Check out the transcription of his solo arrangement of 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot' in this issue. It's a winner. EB: So what have you been up to? Have you been at the Village Vanguard for a while? RM: I've been playing at the Village Vanguard recently. EB: With Dianna Krall? RM: No, it was my gig. I played with a really good rhythm section. I had Rennee Rosnes on piano, Ray Drummond on bass and Idris Mohammed on drums. EB: So what's the plans for the future now that Sweet Georgia Peach is out and getting great reviews? RM: Well, we're looking to do another record.We are 99.99% sure that we are going to go with this particular label. EB: Will it be a trio? RM: It'll be a quartet record. Bass, piano, drums and guitar. EB: Let me ask you about the guitar, the Buscarino. How do you like it? RM: Let me tell you something. That is one of the best guitars I've ever played in my life. Yeah, John Buscarino really built a nice instrument. I got the built-in pick up and surprisingly it still has a very good acoustic sound. EB: Why did you get that vs. a floater? RM: Well I've been used to that sound for a long time. I've got a couple of guitars that have floating pickups on them but I've always played guitars with the built-in pick up and I've gotten used to that sound. Plus it cuts back on feedback. EB: You use a lot of L5's, don't you or Super 5's? RM: I have a Gibson Super 5 and I also have a Johnny Smith. EB: How do you compare the sound and the feel to those? RM: Well each guitar, it can be the same make or the same model, has different personalities. Plus these instruments are so darn temperamental. This guitar that John made for me, when I got it, I knew that it was going to take a while to get used to it because it takes awhile to break them in. But I knew that it wasn't going to take that long because the quality and craftsmanship is so great. He's an excellent luthier. I had him make the 18" body because I've always liked the sound of the big guitars. For some reason they seem to be very warm and the pickup being built into the body cuts down a lot on the feedback. EB: What pickup did he put in for you? RM: He put in a Seymour Duncan model. It's a very good pickup, very even, very clean sound. EB: What are you running it through? RM: A Fender Twin. It's got a very beautiful sound. Somebody that came down to the Vanguard to hear me play talked about how even non-players noticed the tone. There was one lady who came in the first night that we played there and she commented on how, not only did she like how beautiful the instrument looked, but she commented on the sound, and this is a non-musician. She was talking about how even the sound of the guitar was. She said, "You have a very even, focused tone." EB: That's great. To have somebody pay attention like that is great also. RM: Especially not being a musician. EB: Do you remember your first date as a professional? RM: I sure do. It was at a place down in my home town of Albany, Georgia called the House of Jazz. In fact that was the first nightclub I'd ever played in. I was about seventeen years old, a senior in high school. EB: Was it a rock group? RM: No, it was a jazz group. There were some people playing there from the local college. They ran a jam session there every Saturday and I had heard about this and so one of the professors from the college came by the high school and he was recruiting people for college and I was one of the ones he talked to. He mentioned that he had heard me play and that I may be interested in what's happening on Saturdays down at this club. So I said what's happening and he said there's a jam session; myself and some of the other professors from the college play over there. So I went and I sat in with them and I eventually got a gig there. EB: Were you into the rock scene during your teenage years or was it always jazz? RM: Well, it wasn't always jazz but I wasn't into the rock scene either although I was aware of it. Now where I grew up, keep in mind that jazz wasn't a very prevalent force, you know what I'm saying? I was born in Albany. Now jazz where I grew up is not the kind of thing that you hear a lot of down there. What I did grow up hearing was a lot of blues and gospel music. A lot of blues. The first music that I heard was gospel music. I grew up playing in church. That's how I picked up the guitar. And I heard a lot of gospel music, and performers like Sam Cook, the Dixie Hummingbirds and Sister Rosetta Thorpe. I heard a lot of that music. EB: Were you taking lessons in those days or just winging it yourself? RM: Just winging it. I'm basically self-taught. I learned how to play by watching the musicians at my church play. EB: Can you read well? RM: Oh I can read, yeah. Well you know, self-taught, I hate to say self-taught, but for the most part, I'm not educated musically in the academic sense, but I have had the good fortune to hook up with musicians who could do that and I asked a lot of questions. I think that's some of the best training. EB: What got you out of Albany, GA? RM: I just got tired of it. For what I was aspiring to do, I knew I couldn't do it there so I left Albany back in '84 and moved to Houston, TX for a few months. I went on the road there with a band. It was an organ trio and we played around Houston. We didn't make a whole lot of money. In fact we didn't make any money. We starved. But at the time I was twenty years old and I was very much interested in getting experience and living the life of a musician. So I played around Houston and then I moved back to Georgia. Things didn't work out and I eventually moved to Atlanta in late '84. EB: Were you working in Atlanta? RM: I wasn't working that much in Atlanta. It was a gradual process as far as getting employment as a musician. What I did do is I found out where all the jam sessions were being held and I went to every one that I could go to. There used to be clubs on Campelton Road that ran jam sessions every Saturday. I played these clubs as well as a place which is now non-existent called Lee John's Nightery. EB: Don't know that one. What about Cafe 290? Did you ever go up there? RM: Went to Cafe 290. Oh, there was another club that I ended up working a gig at a place called Scats. It's not in existence anymore either. But I also went to Walter Mittys. I heard that was the place to go and I ran into several good musicians down there such as Mose Davis, Dan Wall, Neil Starkey, Rick Bell and then there was Tommy Stewart, a great trumpeter. Oh, there was another place where I also ended up working and I think it's still going on, a place called the Living Room. It was an organ club. EB: Who gave you your first break? RM: Well let me put it to you this way, the first major jazz person that I ever played with was Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson. This place that I mentioned earlier, Lee John's Nightery, was where he worked a gig for a week and I got called to do the gig. That was great getting to play with him. It made me nervous. I was very excited though to get to play with somebody like that and I eventually hooked up with Branford Marsalis. I never played in Branford's band although I toured with him for maybe one or two gigs. I was playing a gig at Walter Mittys one night and he came in and he was listening to me play and after we finished playing I walked up to him and introduced myself. He said you play very well and the next thing he said to me was, "When are you going to come to New York?" EB: And you packed your bags right? RM: Oh, not so fast, I didn't pack the bags. What I did do though after a while as I had managed to save up some money from doing gigs around Atlanta, was take trips up to New York, maybe for a week at a time. I found out where the sessions were being held up there and I met some musicians and I took down some names and numbers. I didn't really pull up stakes and move to New York until almost four years ago. But I definitely kept in touch with the people that I met here. I guess the first major gig that I ever had while I was down in Atlanta, as I got to work with a lot of musicians that came through Atlanta, was with Little Anthony. I got to do a gig with him at a place called Thunderbirds. I also got to play with the gospel group The Wynans. I got to do one gig with them and then I got to work with Peabo Bryson once and Patty Austin when she came through. I guess my first break with a jazz player came when Jimmy Smith came through. I'll tell you a funny story about Jimmy. I'd been listening to Jimmy for years, ever since I was a little kid back in Albany, Georgia. I knew his records, I was also aware that Wes Montgomery, Benson, and all these great guitar players had played with him. So I finished my gig up at the Holiday Inn and came down to the club where he was performing. He finished his first set and he was standing over at the bar talking with some musicians and there was a saxophone player, I don't know if you know this guy, a guy named Sil Austin. Sil Austin was standing over at the bar talking to Jimmy and I had known Sil because he was one of the first guys that I got to sit in with when I first came to Atlanta. Anyway, I walked up to Sil and I asked him to introduce me to Mr. Smith. So he introduced me to Jimmy and said," Hey this is a fine up and coming young guitarist. You should hear him play some time." So Jimmy said, "You got your guitar with you?" I said, "Yes." So he sent me to my car to get my guitar. I couldn't get to the car fast enough. I was so excited for the opportunity to play with this man. So he played one tune with the band and then called me up to sit in. I was feeling good because I had my girlfriend with me that night. EB: But you had no idea what the guy was going to play? RM: I had no idea. Here's what happened. I made the mistake of thinking that just because I had listened to his records and had learned some of the tunes, I thought that it was going to be that. And I was in for a very rude awakening. At the time, I'm twenty, twenty-one years old, cocky, and he must have sensed this because he played the first tune which was a blues and I played all of my favorite pet licks and you know little things that I knew would win over the crowd. A bunch of nonsense basically is what it was. So he's sitting there and the crowd just went nuts, oh yeah, Russell Malone, hometown kid sits in with the great Jimmy Smith. And here I am smiling, winking at my girlfriend, so Jimmy must have been checking this out because immediately after he closed out the tune, he went into Laura, a ballad and I didn't know that song. That's one of those tunes you can't hear your way through, you've gotta know it. You have to know those changes because they pop up in some pretty weird places. So anyway, he plays the melody and I'm there scuffling trying to hear what's going on and then he looks over at me and tells me to take the first solo and that's when he found out my whole thing was just really weak. That's when I found out just how weak I was as a guitarist. EB: That's a helluva learning experience. RM: He saw me scuffling through this tune. The notes I was playing were so bad. Instead of him making it easier for me, he started doing all these tricks with the time and throwing all of these weird substitutions in there. I was really embarrassed. He hurt my feelings. So anyway, after it was over, he closed out the tune, and he got on the microphone and said, "Whenever we let youngsters sit in with us, we always like to make sure that they learn something." He said this on the microphone. Anyway, he closes out the set, goes over to the bar and he's hanging out with some friends. I walked over to the bar with my head hanging down. I wanted to thank him for allowing me to sit in with him. Before I could get the sentence out of my mouth, the first thing he said to me was, "Let me tell you something young man; Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Grant Green and anybody else that you're trying to play like, I knew those guys and I taught them too." Don't ever you know, as long as you live, don't ever get on my bandstand with that attitude." I felt so bad I almost cried. I stayed there the whole night. I could have walked away but I didn't feel compelled to do that. I stayed and after the gig was over he took me up to his hotel room and we hung out until like 6 o'clock in the morning, just me and him. I had my guitar with me and I was playing for him and I'd be playing tunes like Body and Soul and he'd stop me in the middle of the tune and make suggestions and then he'd tell me stories about his life and stories about Wes. It was beautiful. I was down there every night he was there. We exchanged numbers and I eventually got the gig with him. I played with him from '88 until '90. EB: When you finally played with him those years, did you have things rehearsed before you got on the stand? Did you know what you were going to do? RM: I had no idea. EB: You still didn't know? You mean he would just call out a tune? RM: Well you know, Jimmy would just play. He never told you anything. EB: He never had a playlist per set? RM: Nothing, he just played. It was up to you, if you had any kind of common sense, you'd know what to do and what not to do. Oh and something else he told me that I'll never forget - one of the first few gigs that I did with him, I went in there not knowing what to expect, and I thought that I had to be a certain way or play a certain way. I went in there playing out of my Kenny Burell bag or my Wes Montgomery bag or whatever. One night we were in Knoxville, Tennessee and he pulled me to the side, he was always pulling me to the side after the gig and telling me something. He told me, "Look, I didn't hire George Benson, I didn't hire Kenny Burrell, and Wes Montgomery's been dead for almost twenty years. I want you to play like you." That was a very important stage in my development. There are two people that I played with that I really owe a lot to today. Jimmy Smith is one and pianist Freddie Cole is another. I actually worked with Freddie before I played with Jimmy Smith. Freddie was the first one to teach me the importance of learning songs. I learned a lot of songs when I was with Freddie and he really got me into paying attention to horn players and singers. EB: It seems a lot of professional guitar players that I speak to tell me they learn a lot more from piano players or horn players than they ever do from guitar players. RM: Well, you know, there's a reason for that. Everybody gets into this thing and I'm talking about guitar players, especially younger ones, where they want to play all of these lines or licks or whatever, The guitar can definitely function as a horn but there's so much more to the instrument than that. It can function as a small orchestra in the right hands. EB: I can't tell you how many books I get, I just got one this week, 50 Jazz Licks, each one is four bars. What do you do with them? RM: That approach has never really worked for me. Plus at the same time, when you get these books with all of these licks, all it is is somebody else's ideas. Jazz isn't about that. Well, quite naturally when you're first starting out, you gotta copy a little bit because you have to learn the language and the vocabulary. But after awhile, after you learn all of this stuff, it sinks into your subconscious mind and you don't even think about it. EB: I know. You talked about learning tunes, a lot of the young guys that I talk to that are coming out of major university programs they say they don't learn tunes up there. That's not their thing. They can't come and do a set of an hour or two. They say they're a lead player or a rhythm player or whatever but they can't do two hours of tunes. To me that's not playing the guitar. RM: That comes from not spending time in the band of someone whose been out there doing it for awhile. That's really important to get that experience. There are guys out there who don't know tunes and then everybody wants to get up there and play their original music. There's nothing wrong with that but it loses the audience after awhile having to sit through a whole set of original music. I was talking to Ron Carter once and I asked him, "How do you feel when you play with a lot of young musicians and everybody wants to play, if they're not playing the original tunes, they want to play tunes that Miles Davis or Wayne Shorter recorded years ago. And he said, "Well, you know, that's fine that they want to do that but a lot of these guys are missing the point." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "What they fail to realize is that Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and all of those guys understood and knew standard songs." He also said, "When you know standard songs, then you get a sense of how songs are constructed." I for one, as much as I like to hear new tunes, after a while want to hear something that's beautiful. Something that's a little familiar. EB: And a little melodic too, not just notes. RM: So many guys write songs that sound like they're so far out there that they can only be played by the composer. EB: I agree with you. Are there any players out there today that you find are innovative and interesting to listen to? RM: There's a guy in Chicago that I really like. I don't know if you've ever heard of him but he worked with Sonny Rollins for awhile back in the '80s, a fellow named Bobby Broom. Check him out man. Bobby Broom is great. Ron Affif has really been knocking me out lately. Ron is good and he knows a lot of songs too. EB: When you sit around the house playing, do you play or practice? RM: I just pick up the guitar and play tunes. One of my favorite tunes to practice on is "All the Things You Are." I love to practice on that tune. I like to practice on standards anyway. The songs are so well constructed. Plus I'm always trying to learn tunes. I've really been checking out Jerome Kern lately. He's one of my favorite writers. EB: Can you remember tunes 6 months down the road? Do they come back to you? RM: Oh yeah, for me, once you learn it, you don't forget it. Like I said earlier, learn the vocabulary and when you learn the language it sinks into your subconscious mind. You don't even think about it. It's like going to school and learning 1+1=2 and 2+2=4, learning the alphabet or learning how to construct sentences together. You don't think about that. Just like we're having this conversation right now. If I say something, you automatically respond to it without thinking about it. And it's the same way with music. EB: Who would you have liked to have played with in terms of other guitar players ? RM: There's several guitar players that I would have loved to have met. I would have loved to have met Wes and Django Reinhardt. I would have loved to have played with Art Tatum, Lester Young and Billie Holliday. I did have the opportiunity in 1995 to play a bit with with Hank Garland, Tal Farlow and Bucky Pizzarelli at a festival in South Carolina. But there aren't many guitar players I would have loved to have played with. EB: How do you relax or prepare for a performance? Do you get nervous? RM: Well you're always going to be slightly anxious before any performance. To say I get nervous, no I don't get nervous. Now there's certain things that can make me a little edgy like when George Benson came down to the Village Vanguard. I've known George for awhile and he's always so gracious when he comes out, but when you look out there and see somebody like that or see Barney Kessel in the audience, that will put the fear of God in you. But you still have to play because that's what they come there for. They want to hear you do well. EB: What do you think is your greatest strength as a musician? RM: Well, one of the things that I have learned to do is just listen more. To listen and be aware of what's happening around you when you're on the bandstand. I don't think it's particularly a good thing for a musician whether he's soloing or whatever, to act as if they're on the bandstand by themselves. There are a lot of guitarists and horn players as well who when they play, they're not responding to what the rhythm section is doing around them. You're not out there by yourself. You should be having a conversation and reacting to everybody else around you on the bandstand. There should be some sense of dialogue there. I think that's one of the things I'm really trying to get together and I think it's coming. EB: Has your playing changed over the years and if so how? RM: Well it keeps evolving. I think I'm becoming more, or trying to become more daring in my improvisations. I'm not really concerned about being safe. If I play something and it doesn't come or if it's not perfect, then I'm not gonna freak out about it. If you play something that you didn't intend to play, try to make it sound like you intended to play it. In other words, turn that mistake into something musical. So that's where I am now. I'm trying to get the most out of the instrument without playing so many notes, which is not easy to do. And it's not something you make a conscious effort to do, it just has to happen. I've had a couple of guys tell me you really have a lot of control over the instrument and you get around well, but now after awhile, it's time to play some music. People have told me so many things in the past and some of that stuff is just starting to sink in now. Things that were told to me ten, fifteen years ago are just starting to sink in now. And some of that stuff I still won't even grasp the wisdom of til I'm maybe fifty years old. EB: That's interesting. What's your favorite setting to play in like a trio, a big band, solo? RM: I like playing duo with just myself and a bass player. I love playing with the piano - piano, bass, drums and guitar. Just whatever situation that I'm playing in I just try to make the most of it. I try to keep a certain looseness there, just be flexible and just try to do well in whatever situation you're put in. EB: Have you tried 7 string at all? RM: You know, Bucky Pizarelli and Howard Alden are always getting on me about getting a 7 string. I've tried one but that low A string intimidates the heck out of me man. I've talked with some guys who have mixed feelings about the 7 string. Bucky loves it I know. George Van Eps is the master of the 7 string. But anyway, there's some guys who I've talked to about the 7 string and they think it's enough of a challenge to just deal with the 6 string. Why cause more headaches? EB: I understand. Are you playing with pick and fingers or just pick? RM: I play with a pick most of the time. When I play solo guitar, I use the fingers. EB: What kind of strings are you using on the Buscarino? RM: Flatwounds. I have a 14 on the high E, on the B string it's an 18, then 26, 36, 46 and 56. EB: If you were starting a record collection today, what guitar records would you have to have in that collection? RM: 'Joe Pass for Django,' that's one. 'Smokin' at the Half Note,' Wes Montgomery, 'Fun on the Frets' with Carl Kress and Tony Mottola and anything with Dick MacDonough and Carl Kress. Also anything with George Van Eps, Hank Garland's 'Jazz Winds From A New Direction,' Johnny Smiths 'Moonlight in Vermont' and 'The Man With the Blue Guitar.' There's so much good stuff out there.There's another record that I like by Ed Bickert titled "I Wished on the Moon." He's a great player. There's another guy I didn't get to tell you about. You ever hear of Thumbs Carlisle? He was one of the guys that I met when I came to Atlanta and I got to play with him several times. He used to play at this place called The Point over in Little Five Points. Whenever I'd come up, he'd always invite me to come sit in with him and I have a cassette tape of us playing together. He was such a beautiful man. It's a shame he had to die. EB: What do you think about the state of the music business today? RM: I don't think the music business is any different than it always has been. I mean jazz always gets treated like a bastard child, you know. EB: Do you think one of the reasons is the record companies don't promote their jazz artists? RM: Well that's really a touchy situation.There are a lot of people out there that say that they are about the music, I'm talkin' about jazz but I don't think that they really are about it. I mean there's so much, just from being out here on the scene and just from observing, there's just so much emphasis being put on things that don't even have anything to do with music. There are so many people out there, and I'm talkin' about people the so called powers that be who put so much emphasis on the way an artist looks, the way an artist dresses, the way an artist comes across. Nobody's really thinking about the quality of the music. They're all image conscious. EB: Where does a young guy get started today? There's hardly any clubs in a lot of the big cities. How does a guy get heard? RM: Well, here's something that I like to do. Whenever I'm playing a gig somewhere, if I come across a young fellow or a young lady who has potential, I think that it's very important to take time with these young people, and if you're playing a gig somewhere, let them sit in with the band so people can hear what they're doing. I think that's a good thing to do and it used to happen all the time because that's what happened to me with Jimmy Smith. For some reason that's something I don't see a lot of. It's very important to do that plus it gives these guys a sense of self-worth. EB: Thanks Russell and best of luck.
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