Jamie Baum: These Are Her Times

AAJ: But in terms of getting into jazz, you had to put the chewing gum on the bedpost, so to speak, and get serious, didn't you?

JB: Well, my mom had gone to Julliard pre-college, and then for a year before she got married. She went for trombone and piano and she sang. She lived in New Jersey and there was a radio show called, I think it was Mr. Bogo (Cephas Bowles on WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM in Newark) or something, and some of the big bands would come through and play, and they would bring in local talent to sing with big bands. My mom did that a few times. I'm bringing that up because growing up, my mom had been a piano teacher, though she'd quit before I was born. Both my parents were really into the arts, and they loved Frank Sinatra. We had all these Count Basie and Sinatra recordings, and they took me to a lot of concerts when I was very young.

AAJ: You were very lucky because most parents don't do that. They call for the babysitter.

JB: My mom was a volunteer at the Bridgeport Symphony, and so I would go to all the concerts when I was five or six to hand out programs and sit between them. And they would take me to this Italian restaurant in Westport where this guy named John Mehegan would play jazz piano. He was one of the first guys to write a pedagogy book. So, when I was 11 or 12, I'd been taking lessons and I liked this jazz pianist, so they took me to take lessons with him, but we didn't connect really. I think he wasn't that into kids, and I didn't practice a lot, so it just didn't work out. But I remained interested in jazz.

My brother older brother had some Miles Davis and John Coltrane recordings. When I went to school for a year at the University of Vermont, I started jamming with people and got turned onto stuff, and then decided I wanted to go in that direction. So, I applied and went to New England Conservatory, and I was definitely a really late bloomer, but I got into the third-stream program at New England because they were interested in people that did a variety of things. It was an interesting program because they talked about developing your own style and combining things that you liked. I really liked Stravinsky and Coltrane and Miles, but being at the school I suddenly realized I can't very well create a style with Coltrane and Stravinsky if I can't play a blues or play over chord changes. At that point, I switched to the jazz program, and the rest is history, as they say.