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Skip Heller on Dizzy, Joy, and Never Taking a Music Lesson
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They get into his new Dizzy Gillespie project with his band Voodoo 5, why joy is the fuel in the music he loves, growing up on the Smothers Brothers and John Hartford, learning harmony from chord diagrams in a music store, the day Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" turned a Philadelphia block into a dance scene, and a wild year on the road with Yma Sumac that ended at the Montreal Jazz Festival with the copyists still passing music up to the bandstand.
Skip on the heart of it all: "Art doesn't have to be serious and heavy. Art can have a joyous component to it."
- 00:00 Welcome: the great Skip Heller
- 00:44 The YouTube Theater show and letting Teller backstage
- 01:45 The Dizzy Gillespie project and Voodoo 5
- 05:39 Why joy is the fuel: Dizzy, Louis, Roger Miller
- 07:08 Building the record: Gary Burton, no trumpet, and Milt Jackson
- 09:42 Dizzy as arranger, talent scout, and showcase for singers
- 12:26 Growing up on radio and the Smothers Brothers
- 14:54 John Hartford and hearing improvisation for the first time
- 15:41 Wedding bands and an extra twenty dollars to play the rock solo
- 17:17 No music lessons: learning harmony from chord diagrams
- 18:34 "Songs in the Key of Life" and the "I Wish" premiere on Hicks Street
- 24:18 Making use of the lifetime you are in
- 27:31 Playing with musicians born after 2000
- 28:11 On calling great players "dated"
- 31:15 Music as a proper noun: keeping it alive
- 35:37 Rediscovering Phineas Newborn Jr. and the unsung
- 39:02 Dave McKenna, Randy Newman, and the boring biography
- 40:26 Bill Evans, Horace Silver, and the cost of genius
- 44:20 Penn, the upright bass, and the Smothers Brothers
- 50:59 A year on the road with Yma Sumac
- 57:19 Montreal Jazz Festival: Joey Baron, Charlie Haden, and page four
- 1:01:01 What Yma Sumac taught him
- 1:05:46 Why Penn and Teller never froze into someone else's act
- 1:10:22 "Music no more just comes from music than children come from children"
About Skip Heller
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