Clinton faces the music

In an exclusive JAZZIZ interview, Herbie Hancock asks the former  president about understanding nations through their music, club-hopping with Václav Havel, and programming his  iPod with eight versions of “My Funny Valentine.”

Jazz is no stranger to the White House. In 1969, the Nixon administration hosted a star-studded 70th-birthday salute to Duke Ellington, at which Ellington performed a short blues piece dedicated to the president’s wife, Pat. Vice President Spiro Agnew played “In a Sentimental Mood” and “Sophisticated Lady” on piano, and Duke danced with presidential secretary Rosemary Woods.

Still, jazz was never more at home in our nation’s capitol than during the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton. When a star-studded jam session took shape on the White House lawn in celebration of Clinton’s first inauguration, the president joined in on saxophone. It was a fine photo op, with substance to support the image: Playing the saxophone was a favorite pastime of Clinton’s during his youth in Arkansas. He fell in love with jazz’s promise early on, practiced every day, attended band camp in the Ozark Mountains, and won first chair in the state band’s saxophone section.

Today, at the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, you can find The Bill Clinton Collection: Selections from the Clinton Music Room, a CD that features John Coltrane playing “My One and Only” and Miles Davis’ version of “My Funny Valentine.”

Since Clinton was the American statesman most attuned to jazz, who better to interview him than Herbie Hancock, a true statesman among jazz musicians? Hancock’s musical ideas over the past four decades have had more far-reaching and durable impact than most Congressional acts. And like Clinton, who was known as the “education president,” Hancock has shown a mighty dedication to training and instruction, particularly through his work as chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.

Hancock joked before this encounter that he’d “never been on the other side of the interview.” But he seems as natural in this role as at the piano. Clinton told Hancock that playing jazz “is like opening your mind and heart to someone else.” Here, he opens his mind and heart to Hancock about jazz’s importance to his own life, and to life of the nation he once led.

Herbie Hancock: About what age did jazz come into your life?

Bill Clinton: Well, I was in elementary school. My mother had an old-fashioned record player, and I used to sit on the floor and listen. She had a lot of the old kind of big band, like the Dorsey Brothers and Benny Goodman and all that. And then, when I was 9, I took up the clarinet, and I started listening to it more, and by the time I was in high school, I read Downbeat cover to cover. I was seriously involved in it. You know, when I finished high school, I had more music scholarships to colleges than I did academic scholarships.

Wow.

I just fell in love with the big bands. I still remember Ziggy Elman’s trumpet solo on “And the Angels Sing.”

Right, I remember that from when I was a kid, too.

The first guy I really loved was Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald. And then when I was in high school, I fell in love with John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Miles Davis. And I loved Jimmy Smith, the organ player. You remember him?

Oh, of course.

God, I thought he was great. I have an old album of his that I still play sometimes. I’ve got an old turntable that I still can play albums on.

Really? That’s great. I actually did something with Jimmy. The first movie score I did was back in 1966, and I got a chance to use him on one of the tunes. But I’ve known him for a long time, because he was on Blue Note and I was on Blue Note.

He played the Cellar Door once, in Washington, and I went down to hear him. I’ll never get over it. It was a little bitty old room, you know, and it was packed. It was unbelievable.

Because he could swing his tail off, right? Who swings now?

My favorite living tenor saxophone player now is Igor Butman, from Russia. You should go to these other former communist countries. I was in Bulgaria one night, and I went to a jazz club, and the musicians were really good, you know? And I went to a jazz club in ‘94 with [former Czech president] Václav Havel, and I’ve been back twice since, just to hear the Czech musicians. They’re just good.

Oh, yes, Václav Havel is a big jazz fan.

Huge.

[Czechoslavakia-born former Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright told me one time that she used to take him to jazz clubs when he came to New York.

Yes, well, he really believes that music had a lot to do with the fact that the Czech Republic was able to have a peaceful revolution away from communism – and he basically cited jazz musicians and Lou Reed as having a big impact on it. They used to gather in these places and listen to music, and it would inspire them to keep going, keep pushing for personal freedom.

That kind of relates to a statement that I’ve heard that you make – that it’s easier to understand a nation by listening to its music than by learning its language. Since jazz is really an American art form, what does it say about this nation?

First of all, I do think that. Listen to Russian music and it tells you a lot about their pride, their love of home, their sense of grandiosity. You listen to German music and you learn a lot, because it reflects the kind of mindset of the people. But jazz, I think, is an American art form because its roots are in the blues, gospel, and African tribal music, but it appeals to all kinds of people in America and all over the world. And I think that it’s democratic in the best sense, in that it’s open to all, accessible to all, and it’s also entrepreneurial.

I was just wondering about the kind of effect jazz might have on someone’s thinking. Did jazz influence any of your sensibilities?

I think if you take jazz seriously – even if you’re not great at it, but if you like it and understand it – then you’re much more likely to be creative in your approach to other areas of life, without being reckless. As a general rule in jazz, you’ve got to play in a certain key, and you know what the transitions are. You know there’s a melody line, but you also know that to make the music really good, you have to vary from it. And you know you can play the same song a thousand times and it’s always a little different, and beautiful in a different way. So I think people who have both the discipline and the creativity of jazz are more likely to make good decisions.

Right, right. And jazz allows for all of that.

But there’s always room for something different. I think Dave Brubeck fundamentally changed what a lot of people thought about jazz, because he played songs that were not in standard beats – they weren’t all 3/4 or 4/4. He did “Take Five,” he did “Blue Rondo à la Turk,” he did all these incredible songs that were almost classical but still clearly jazz. There’s always been some way that people who cared about the music and understood the fundamentals could adapt almost anything in their head to jazz.

That’s right, exactly. It takes a certain courage to be vulnerable, playing like that…

You know, ever since I got an iPod, I’ve found time to take old standards and load somewhere between five and eight different versions, just so I can see how different people did it – like “My Funny Valentine.” I’d listen to the difference in the way Miles Davis plays it and Ella Fitzgerald sings it, and why do some people sing the intro and others don’t, and how many different ways can you play “Summertime,” and in how many different tempos.

Right.

In some ways, the best way to learn about jazz is stacking up the same tune by four or five different artists. You listen to different people take it apart and put it together again.

Right.

You don’t have to like it all to honor it. It’s fascinating to go through all of Coltrane’s records and listen to how he could play the simplest ballad and vary it – in a way that 90 percent of musicians who ever played it would never think of doing. And then he plays something where it’s all just made up, just stuff where he’s just pushing every limit known to man. Or you see Eric Dolphy or Ornette Coleman do something you didn’t think was possible, and you wonder how in the hell they ever thought of it in the first place. Whether you like it or not, whether it feels good to your ear or not, you think, “God, it’s so great that somebody could think like that.”

I had a chance to work with Eric Dolphy early in my career, and it really opened up my mind – to the point of where I could explore new territory that prepared me for working with Miles Davis.

A lot of that stuff, I just thought, “God, what was in that guy’s head?” I wish I knew. I wish I could think like that. Even if I didn’t exactly like the stuff the first time I heard it, I thought, “Wow” – you know, like Roland Kirk blowing two horns and all that stuff. It’s almost like theoretical science, where you’re always experimenting and pushing the limits and you keep trying to make it square with whatever’s going on inside you. I mean, it’s amazing.

Yes it is. Miles used to tell me that he pays us to work on things, not to be perfect – don’t just rest on your laurels, don’t just play things that are comfortable. You know what makes me sad? Right now, this country is facing tremendous challenges, yet even when we talk about education, the arts are not considered essential.

Yes, it’s crazy. The thing that really bothers me is taking all these music-education programs out of the schools. I’ve been active with the Save the Music program, trying to help get instruments and education programs back in schools that have financial problems.

That’s fantastic.

We now have a lot of brain research which shows that people learn in all different kinds of ways. There is lots of evidence that early and sustained exposure to music increases the imagination and the learning capacity of all kinds of people, in ways that are unique to music. If you take the music away, you’ll diminish the development of any number of young people, not just in music but in all other areas of life.

Bravo. Thank you for saying that.

You know, in Georgia, when Zell Miller was governor, he had a program where they actually mailed classical music out on CD to all prospective mothers and urged them to play it for their children in the first six months of life. Zell is retired now, and I don’t know if they still do it or not, but when he was governor, he did it because he loved music.

What else can we do to reverse the trend of ignoring the arts?

I think putting music back in the schools is a good start. There are lots of people like me, who weren’t good enough to be professional musicians, but the fact that we did it and loved it changed our lives forever. It enabled us participate at some level for a whole lifetime. You know, when I write books and speeches now, a lot of times I do it while listening to the music I love. It makes a big difference in how good my writing is.

You know what’s interesting to me? Hearing you say that so much of this applies so beautifully to life and how to live it.

It’s like going to a jazz club, and there are three different groups playing. But you’re going just to hear one. There are two other groups there, and they’re completely different, so you learn something by hearing how they feel it and play it, and how they imagine it. Any time somebody plays a song you think you know, and then it’s different, they’re telling you something you never would have known otherwise – about themselves and the music.

Clinton faces the music

In an exclusive JAZZIZ interview, Herbie Hancock asks the former  president about understanding nations through their music, club-hopping with Václav Havel, and programming his  iPod with eight versions of “My Funny Valentine.”

Jazz is no stranger to the White House. In 1969, the Nixon administration hosted a star-studded 70th-birthday salute to Duke Ellington, at which Ellington performed a short blues piece dedicated to the president’s wife, Pat. Vice President Spiro Agnew played “In a Sentimental Mood” and “Sophisticated Lady” on piano, and Duke danced with presidential secretary Rosemary Woods.

Still, jazz was never more at home in our nation’s capitol than during the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton. When a star-studded jam session took shape on the White House lawn in celebration of Clinton’s first inauguration, the president joined in on saxophone. It was a fine photo op, with substance to support the image: Playing the saxophone was a favorite pastime of Clinton’s during his youth in Arkansas. He fell in love with jazz’s promise early on, practiced every day, attended band camp in the Ozark Mountains, and won first chair in the state band’s saxophone section.

Today, at the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, you can find The Bill Clinton Collection: Selections from the Clinton Music Room, a CD that features John Coltrane playing “My One and Only” and Miles Davis’ version of “My Funny Valentine.”

Since Clinton was the American statesman most attuned to jazz, who better to interview him than Herbie Hancock, a true statesman among jazz musicians? Hancock’s musical ideas over the past four decades have had more far-reaching and durable impact than most Congressional acts. And like Clinton, who was known as the “education president,” Hancock has shown a mighty dedication to training and instruction, particularly through his work as chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.

Hancock joked before this encounter that he’d “never been on the other side of the interview.” But he seems as natural in this role as at the piano. Clinton told Hancock that playing jazz “is like opening your mind and heart to someone else.” Here, he opens his mind and heart to Hancock about jazz’s importance to his own life, and to life of the nation he once led.

Herbie Hancock: About what age did jazz come into your life?

Bill Clinton: Well, I was in elementary school. My mother had an old-fashioned record player, and I used to sit on the floor and listen. She had a lot of the old kind of big band, like the Dorsey Brothers and Benny Goodman and all that. And then, when I was 9, I took up the clarinet, and I started listening to it more, and by the time I was in high school, I read Downbeat cover to cover. I was seriously involved in it. You know, when I finished high school, I had more music scholarships to colleges than I did academic scholarships.

Wow.

I just fell in love with the big bands. I still remember Ziggy Elman’s trumpet solo on “And the Angels Sing.”

Right, I remember that from when I was a kid, too.

The first guy I really loved was Armstrong. I loved Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald. And then when I was in high school, I fell in love with John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Miles Davis. And I loved Jimmy Smith, the organ player. You remember him?

Oh, of course.

God, I thought he was great. I have an old album of his that I still play sometimes. I’ve got an old turntable that I still can play albums on.

Really? That’s great. I actually did something with Jimmy. The first movie score I did was back in 1966, and I got a chance to use him on one of the tunes. But I’ve known him for a long time, because he was on Blue Note and I was on Blue Note.

He played the Cellar Door once, in Washington, and I went down to hear him. I’ll never get over it. It was a little bitty old room, you know, and it was packed. It was unbelievable.

Because he could swing his tail off, right? Who swings now?

My favorite living tenor saxophone player now is Igor Butman, from Russia. You should go to these other former communist countries. I was in Bulgaria one night, and I went to a jazz club, and the musicians were really good, you know? And I went to a jazz club in ‘94 with [former Czech president] Václav Havel, and I’ve been back twice since, just to hear the Czech musicians. They’re just good.

Oh, yes, Václav Havel is a big jazz fan.

Huge.

[Czechoslavakia-born former Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright told me one time that she used to take him to jazz clubs when he came to New York.

Yes, well, he really believes that music had a lot to do with the fact that the Czech Republic was able to have a peaceful revolution away from communism – and he basically cited jazz musicians and Lou Reed as having a big impact on it. They used to gather in these places and listen to music, and it would inspire them to keep going, keep pushing for personal freedom.

That kind of relates to a statement that I’ve heard that you make – that it’s easier to understand a nation by listening to its music than by learning its language. Since jazz is really an American art form, what does it say about this nation?

First of all, I do think that. Listen to Russian music and it tells you a lot about their pride, their love of home, their sense of grandiosity. You listen to German music and you learn a lot, because it reflects the kind of mindset of the people. But jazz, I think, is an American art form because its roots are in the blues, gospel, and African tribal music, but it appeals to all kinds of people in America and all over the world. And I think that it’s democratic in the best sense, in that it’s open to all, accessible to all, and it’s also entrepreneurial.

I was just wondering about the kind of effect jazz might have on someone’s thinking. Did jazz influence any of your sensibilities?

I think if you take jazz seriously – even if you’re not great at it, but if you like it and understand it – then you’re much more likely to be creative in your approach to other areas of life, without being reckless. As a general rule in jazz, you’ve got to play in a certain key, and you know what the transitions are. You know there’s a melody line, but you also know that to make the music really good, you have to vary from it. And you know you can play the same song a thousand times and it’s always a little different, and beautiful in a different way. So I think people who have both the discipline and the creativity of jazz are more likely to make good decisions.

Right, right. And jazz allows for all of that.

But there’s always room for something different. I think Dave Brubeck fundamentally changed what a lot of people thought about jazz, because he played songs that were not in standard beats – they weren’t all 3/4 or 4/4. He did “Take Five,” he did “Blue Rondo à la Turk,” he did all these incredible songs that were almost classical but still clearly jazz. There’s always been some way that people who cared about the music and understood the fundamentals could adapt almost anything in their head to jazz.

That’s right, exactly. It takes a certain courage to be vulnerable, playing like that…

You know, ever since I got an iPod, I’ve found time to take old standards and load somewhere between five and eight different versions, just so I can see how different people did it – like “My Funny Valentine.” I’d listen to the difference in the way Miles Davis plays it and Ella Fitzgerald sings it, and why do some people sing the intro and others don’t, and how many different ways can you play “Summertime,” and in how many different tempos.

Right.

In some ways, the best way to learn about jazz is stacking up the same tune by four or five different artists. You listen to different people take it apart and put it together again.

Right.

You don’t have to like it all to honor it. It’s fascinating to go through all of Coltrane’s records and listen to how he could play the simplest ballad and vary it – in a way that 90 percent of musicians who ever played it would never think of doing. And then he plays something where it’s all just made up, just stuff where he’s just pushing every limit known to man. Or you see Eric Dolphy or Ornette Coleman do something you didn’t think was possible, and you wonder how in the hell they ever thought of it in the first place. Whether you like it or not, whether it feels good to your ear or not, you think, “God, it’s so great that somebody could think like that.”

I had a chance to work with Eric Dolphy early in my career, and it really opened up my mind – to the point of where I could explore new territory that prepared me for working with Miles Davis.

A lot of that stuff, I just thought, “God, what was in that guy’s head?” I wish I knew. I wish I could think like that. Even if I didn’t exactly like the stuff the first time I heard it, I thought, “Wow” – you know, like Roland Kirk blowing two horns and all that stuff. It’s almost like theoretical science, where you’re always experimenting and pushing the limits and you keep trying to make it square with whatever’s going on inside you. I mean, it’s amazing.

Yes it is. Miles used to tell me that he pays us to work on things, not to be perfect – don’t just rest on your laurels, don’t just play things that are comfortable. You know what makes me sad? Right now, this country is facing tremendous challenges, yet even when we talk about education, the arts are not considered essential.

Yes, it’s crazy. The thing that really bothers me is taking all these music-education programs out of the schools. I’ve been active with the Save the Music program, trying to help get instruments and education programs back in schools that have financial problems.

That’s fantastic.

We now have a lot of brain research which shows that people learn in all different kinds of ways. There is lots of evidence that early and sustained exposure to music increases the imagination and the learning capacity of all kinds of people, in ways that are unique to music. If you take the music away, you’ll diminish the development of any number of young people, not just in music but in all other areas of life.

Bravo. Thank you for saying that.

You know, in Georgia, when Zell Miller was governor, he had a program where they actually mailed classical music out on CD to all prospective mothers and urged them to play it for their children in the first six months of life. Zell is retired now, and I don’t know if they still do it or not, but when he was governor, he did it because he loved music.

What else can we do to reverse the trend of ignoring the arts?

I think putting music back in the schools is a good start. There are lots of people like me, who weren’t good enough to be professional musicians, but the fact that we did it and loved it changed our lives forever. It enabled us participate at some level for a whole lifetime. You know, when I write books and speeches now, a lot of times I do it while listening to the music I love. It makes a big difference in how good my writing is.

You know what’s interesting to me? Hearing you say that so much of this applies so beautifully to life and how to live it.

It’s like going to a jazz club, and there are three different groups playing. But you’re going just to hear one. There are two other groups there, and they’re completely different, so you learn something by hearing how they feel it and play it, and how they imagine it. Any time somebody plays a song you think you know, and then it’s different, they’re telling you something you never would have known otherwise – about themselves and the music.