José James Explores Disco Via a Inventive Jazz Mindset » PopMatters

Jazz singer José James has simply launched 1978: Revenge of the Dragon, his thirteenth studio recording in a profession that has swung dramatically from comparatively “straight forward” jazz (his third Blue Notice album was a tribute to Billie Vacation) to groove-based music, together with a current tribute to a special singer: Erykah Badu. It’s his second consecutive recording, primarily based at the very least partly on the music made within the 12 months of his delivery.

José James explains on this interview that “I nonetheless wish to be often known as a jazz singer, one who can do all of it.” His insinuating baritone sound has a wealthy set of shades and overtones that any jazz singer ought to envy. Nonetheless, James’ music arguably got here alive on his fourth recording, No Starting No Finish, recorded in 2013 with many soulful collaborators, together with the jazz-new soul keyboard innovator Robert Glasper, bassist and producer Pino Palladino, and jazz and hip-hop drummer Chris Dave. Launched on Blue Notice, this recording was essentially the most refined and pleasurable of its decade, and it discovered a recipe for creating a mix of jazz, soul, and hip-hop.

Within the following dozen years, José James has utilized his voice and manufacturing to a variety of music that tells his story: the Vacation and Badu tributes, after all, but in addition a wealth of unique compositions, a Christmas album, and a set of Invoice Withers interpretations.

1978: Revenge of the Dragon is amongst José James’ most intriguing units and an incredible place to find him for the primary time. It’s uncategorizable: 4 unique songs and 4 classics from 1978, with every cowl music, by the Bee Gees, the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, and Herbie Hancock, past class. The soul and hip-hop grooves are deep, the rubbery bass strains refuse to stop, and the impressionistic harmonies are straight from a contemporary jazz recording. Each observe places the chief’s voice within the main position, seducing, looking out, reducing throughout many years with lyrics that name-check heroes from Marvin Gaye and Stevie Marvel to Nas.

In dialog, jazz singer José James is literate and an excellent listener, clearly enthusiastic about connecting music to politics, tradition, and historical past.

I simply listened to your visitor vocal spots with jazz pianist Junior Mance from his 2007 reside album. The sound and vitality you could have in 2025 had been already current on these tracks. Your jazz expertise make you a canny singer and a complicated songwriter, however your core musical identification appears nearer to Stevie Marvel, Sly Stone, Gil Scott-Heron, and Invoice Withers. Do you hear a constant voice in your work? How do you strategy being a “jazz artist” who maybe isn’t creating music that’s “jazz”?

I search for freshness in all the pieces I do. I really like the jazz custom. I liked working with [jazz drummer] Chico Hamilton and Junior Mance, who had been each my academics on the New Faculty. They contained a depth of information, the tales they’d inform about working with Lena Horne, Dinah Washington, Joe Williams, and Charlie Parker — to call only a few — had been unbelievable. I believe there’s no technique to transfer ahead in music with out going deeper into the previous. You must perceive why Louis Armstrong was such an innovator and why Bessie Smith was the most important black entertainer of her time.

Jazz was by no means a small room for me. Jazz is a template or blueprint you be taught to make use of to do no matter you need. I relate to somebody like Miles Davis. He style-hopped, too, however his sound remained constant from when he met Charlie Parker till he was doing digital stuff within the Eighties.

The issue of being labeled a “jazz singer” is appreciable. Individuals need you to file requirements (and you’ve got), however it’s not straightforward to advance the artwork or to specific your self past custom. You remind me of an artist you could have labored with: Becca Stevens. You each have a knack for incorporating a jazz perspective into adventurous music that bends different kinds into one thing inventive. 

Becca was in the identical class as me on the New Faculty. Jazz faculty is a large umbrella for all the pieces however classical music. I nonetheless wish to be often known as a jazz singer who can do all of it. I believe jazz singers are traditionally recognized for doing one or two issues very nicely, however I attempt to be expansive. I might take a look at George Benson as an artist and a guitarist, and he may go from his Wes Montgomery stuff to singing and taking part in like an R&B crooner on his model of “On Broadway”.

You had been born in 1978, but it surely appears fascinating to you for different causes. That 12 months was stuffed with musical turning factors (the dominance of disco, the current delivery of hip-hop) in addition to being a time of transition from an period of protest to the Reagan period. Speak concerning the salience of that 12 months in framing musical tasks for you.

Precisely, you get it. 1978 got here at a culture-defining second. Politically, we had lately withdrawn from the Vietnam Struggle and had been grappling with girls’s liberation. My mother, who raised me, was a staunch feminist who had me door-knocking in our Minnesota neighborhood. Musically, disco was all over the place. There was a musical opening to different cultures. The US had beforehand heard world music as one thing different, some unique, however now you had somebody like Bob Marley and the Wailers speaking about international politics whereas promoting hundreds of thousands of data.

On the identical time, you could have David Byrne and punk rock, and you continue to had folks like Billy Joel, Elton John, and James Taylor working and hitting new heights. I’m fascinated by all of this music, and all of it had issues in frequent. Individuals nonetheless recorded within the studio and infrequently in the identical studio with the identical musicians, who shifted from fashion to fashion.

You will have 4 intriguing covers right here: Michael Jackson’s hit “Rock with You” from his first solo album Off the Wall; the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You,” which making rock followers heard as a disco music; “Love You Inside and Out” from the Bee Gees, who had been disco stars after the Saturday Evening Fever soundtrack album; and “I Thought It Was You” the place Herbie Hancock used a vocoder to proceed his experiments with jazz in pop music. Discuss selecting to interpret these songs.

To me, these songs are like a prism of disco. In 1978, disco was king, and there was no escaping it. Even in case you weren’t doing it, you had been reacting to it. All 4 of those artists had been grappling with disco. You’ll be able to hear an A&R man saying, “Herbie, we gotta get into the disco factor.” These 4 songs every cope with disco another way. 

Michael was uptown at Studio 54, hanging with that subset of New York, the uptown glamour of it. The Rolling Stones are in New York, however they’re going for this gritty downtown scene that has an edge to it and preserve it rock ‘n’ roll. Individuals thought that the Rolling Stones’ profession was over, and Some Women was a comeback album that confirmed them incorporating this new fashion that was so common, however in their very own method.

The Bee Gees had already had enormous success with disco, but it surely was with this album that they cracked into Black radio. Herbie, who hadn’t but made “Rockit”, was exhibiting jazz musicians the best way to incorporate disco. With out this music, there could be no Robert Glasper Black Radio, no Erykah Badu, no J Dilla, and no Madlib. They had been all shifting in several areas, but it surely’s all nice music.

“Final Name on the Mudd Membership” and “Tokyo Daydream” sound like basic disco songs of their groove, however they’ve these mysterious chords that counsel the strategy of Quincy Jones, taking songs into jazz territory. In fact, he was the producer of the unique “Rock with You.”

Completely. I used to be attempting to evoke that Quincy Jones system of 1978. Off the Wall was actually his album; he picked all of the tunes and musicians. Quincy’s system, and nobody did it higher, allowed him to place jazz on high of another fashion. That’s what Stevie Marvel did as nicely, and that’s what Al Inexperienced did. I believe it’s an essential strategy since you’re assembly your viewers on the highest stage. You’re not dumbing something down, however you’re not overcomplicating it both. You’re saying that the music generally is a bit harmonically richer and nonetheless join.

“They Sleep, We Grind” has essentially the most modern sound in your new album, with these off-kilter moments constructed into the groove, suggesting up-to-the-minute hip-hop, but in addition the soul of 1978.

My Erykah Badu undertaking influenced me lots. I believe she is likely one of the biggest residing artists of my technology, and I don’t assume she has totally gotten her due. I loved getting inside her head. This observe is my nod to her and nice hip-hop producers like J Dilla, Prince Paul, and Madlib. They’d all of the jazz data and knew all these beats and samples. I wished to pay tribute to them and Erykah. That is the modern area the place that Nineteen Seventies music ended up because it was remodeled over time.

I assume that you simply had been additionally closely influenced by Prince. You might be from his hometown, and he was additionally a superb chameleon like Miles Davis.

DJ tradition and crate-digging tradition have been enormous in my life. DJs take heed to music in another way from different musicians and singers. It’s essential to have that perspective and really feel that every one that music is obtainable. I found jazz by hip-hop, by samples. It was like time journey to take heed to albums by De La Soul, A Tribe Referred to as Quest, Ice Dice, Cypress Hill, and Beastie Boys. Loving that music made me really feel that jazz wasn’t previous. It was like a stupendous bookshelf the place you may simply pull one thing out and browse something.

And his first album got here out in 1978!

I can’t overstate his affect on me, musically and in any other case. To develop up in the identical extraordinarily segregated and very racist metropolis as Prince, who regarded like me, whose dad was additionally a Black jazz musician, it was essential. Michael Jackson was king as I used to be rising up, and I even received to see him in Minneapolis on the Dangerous tour once I was ten, however to know that there was one other artist going toe-to-toe with Michael who had a lot in frequent with me? That gave me permission to be myself as a musician and an individual.

Musically, Prince claimed each style, and he produced, wrote the music, performed so many devices, and sang on each music to the best stage. To me, he’ll at all times be the GOAT, the legend. He’s unstoppable. I want I had met him!

You might be from Minneapolis and spent very important years in New York. However now you reside in Los Angeles. Inform us concerning the distinction and the rising significance of the Los Angeles scene.

The scene is wherever the artists are. I lived in London for 2 years and witnessed the delivery and rise of dubstep, and that was one of the musically thrilling instances of my life. Being current for that made you are feeling how somebody might need felt about witnessing Coltrane on the Vanguard. That’s why I’m not shocked by this wave of London musicians, as a result of they grew up listening to digital music.

The West Coast has a special feeling from New York. LA offers off the vibe of getting one thing to show relative to New York, and I really like that underdog high quality. Terrace Martin and Kamasi Washington are clearly enormous influences on the brand new technology out right here. I believe proper now, pound for pound, the LA scene is extremely robust relative to New York. In New York, you apply and you then exit to play in a membership. In Los Angeles, you’re both going to the studio or desirous about soundtrack work or composing. That could be a completely different method of increasing your self. LA musicians are typically extra expansive in that method; they’re scoring movies and considering cinematically versus the bandstand. That’s a cool perspective.

Talking of Terrace Martin and Kamasi Washington, let’s speak about two nice saxophonists who seem on 1978: Revenge of the Dragon. “Love You Inside and Out” offers us a fats tenor saxophone solo from Ben Wendel, and younger Ebban Dorsey sounds nice on “I Thought It Was You”. What does a younger improviser on this custom convey to your music that older gamers won’t?

Ebban Dorsey is simple. Her expertise is once-in-a-generation. I’ve heard a whole lot of horn gamers, however I actually hear it in her. What instantly struck me about Ebban was her tone, that sound. Her conception is mild years past her age. She was 18 once I first heard her, and when somebody is that good at that age, you simply really feel that there’s one thing ancestral there. She has an ease and fluidity with the artwork type that’s unbelievable.

She is the primary sax participant I’ve heard who’s post-Terrace Martin. She is coming from gamers who’re rooted in jazz however whose taking part in maybe will not be jazz per se, and he or she goes past that. I discover it very cool. Her first recorded solo is on my Erykah Badu album. It was one take, and he or she is so unafraid to go in any course. Somebody older would possibly assume actually laborious about one thing earlier than doing it, however she simply jumps in and is aware of she is a part of one thing greater.

She is so humble. She was so excited to fulfill Ben Wendel on this session!