Larry Goldings and Melinda Sullivan choose to groove on Big Foot

Sometimes what seems at first to be a departure can turn out to be a new arrival. When Larry Goldings and Melinda Sullivan met shortly before the COVID pandemic, they had no way of knowing just how impactful it would become for both of them. By 2021, they had begun meeting in Goldings' backyard to play together and they posted videos of their jam sessions to social media.

The project was immediately recognized by musicians and journalists who saw in the connection of tap dance and jazz a deep legacy stretching back over 100 years, including Baby Laurence with Count Basie, and Jimmy Slyde with George Benson.

For Goldings, who has established himself as one of the most influential and in-demand keyboard players working today, and who is particularly celebrated for his work on the Hammond organ, playing with a dancer rather than a drummer might have been a change of pace but not a change of direction. "Melinda is very well versed in jazz drummers," he says. "She knows how to comp, and she can react in the really mature way that a good drummer would."

Sullivan, a highly sought after tap dance soloist, says she was fortunate to train with the masters of tap who taught her about jazz and improvisation. But because tap dance is a visual art form, the musical aspect often gets less attention. She says, "Working with Larry I finally gave myself permission to accompany and collaborate truly as a musician."

For Goldings, the inherent limitations of the duo format inspired him. He says, "It just gets me to make different choices; somehow it makes me avoid cliches more. And by controlling both bass and harmony, I can instantly arrange, which helps make our performances sound more preconceived than they really are."

For Sullivan, it was an opportunity to embrace the deceptive simplicity of the groove. As a performing tap dancer she says she felt pressure to show off in her performances. "It's a choice to groove," she explains. "I never really trusted that or believed that was interesting enough. It's just the pressure I put on myself as a performer. Also I've never played with someone like Larry, whose time is so good and who I can really trust. I know there's beauty in the groove."

With the momentum of their COVID collaborations behind them, it was inevitable that the duo would eventually take the project off the socials and into the studio. From the beginning they knew that they would need to develop a specific sonic language for the recording. This led them to engineer-producer Pete Min, a man committed to making artful records that explore the space between improvisation and composition, chaos and control, intention and discovery. "Pete doesn't like to plan," says Sullivan.

Min is known for pushing the aural envelope on his Colorfield Records label. As with every Colorfield project, he is a silent partner on Big Foot, bringing his sonic light and shade to the experience, pulling into focus a particular sound here, filtering or distorting another there. His recordings are sometimes super-processed, distressed and twisted. He carves dimension and depth out of the recordings, finding space for Goldings' atmospheric harmonies. Then there's the warmth, immediacy, and closeness which highlights the detailed sound of Sullivan's feet on her wooden board.

Goldings was familiar with this process, having made his Earthshine album with Min in 2021. Even still, it took several sessions to find the right approach for Big Foot. One of the challenges of recording with a dancer, Goldings found, was that the music had to remain listenable—as music—without dwelling on the process of how it was made. It was a balance between making the recording musically compelling without over manipulating the sonic landscape, finding the balance between fitting into the Colorfield aesthetic and featuring Sullivan as a dancer. There was no doubt where Goldings came down on this balance. "My main thing," says Goldings, "was that I wanted people to hear what Melinda does."

They solved the dilemma by removing the tap shoes from the equation for most of the record. Rather, Sullivan dances in socks, sand and sneakers for the majority of the album. The sound of socks on her wooden tapboard became a large part of the concept, and allowed her rhythmic nuance to come forward. The toe, heel, slide and taps that she coaxes in socks are surprisingly complex, sometimes evoking brushes on a snare drum, other times tablas or frame drums, and still other times the sound of an analog drum machine or beat box.

During the recording sessions, Goldings immersed himself in analog synthesis and employed a catalog of keyboards that would make any electronic enthusiast envious. He created soundscapes that could swell into cinematic, sonic vistas or contract down to intimate whispers.

This sonic-driven approach became a welcome change for Goldings. Although he has worked in a wide variety of settings for years, he still feels he is somewhat constrained by his reputation, primarily as a Hammond organ player (the collateral damage that comes with being among the best, one supposes). "I've been known as a jazz organ player," he says, " which has been the moniker that's been there for a long time. But I started out very early on with an interest in synthesizers, ever since my mother took me to Wurlitzer Music in Boston when I was a boy and I bought a Korg MS 10 monophonic synthesizer."

Other contributors to the record include Sam Gendel on saxophone & effects, CJ Camerieri on trumpet & flugelhorn, Daphne Chen on violin & viola, and bassist Karl McComas-Reichl. Each of them bring their uniquely personal sound to an already unusual party. And Goldings' daughter Anna sings a particularly haunting melody on "Do You Like," a song which opens with the voice of another luminary, drummer Steve Gadd. It is Gadd's voice asking the question "Do you like...?" before he begins to tap out a gently grooving pattern with his hands on a box.

Big Foot is like the soundtrack to a movie that has yet to be discovered -perhaps a futuristic romantic comedy sci-fi heist that was never made. The songs play like film cues in part because of their unraveling structure. They begin, they develop, they end somewhere unexpected. Larry admits that, "Film scores are an influence on this music. So is Bjork, and Joe Zawinul."

But whatever the journey and the influences may have been, simply put Big Foot is great music that is both extremely difficult to execute but very easy to listen to.

Liner Notes copyright © 2025 Leo Sidran.

Big Foot can be purchased here.

Contact Leo Sidran at All About Jazz.
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and podcast host.

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