Chick Corea interview: "Music can bring us together"

If Chick Corea could take time out from his extensive world-wide tour to sit down for a moment in a room full of gerontologists – medical specialists who study the ageing process – he could, as the psychiatrist from that famous episode of Fawlty Towers once said, give them enough material for a conference. That’s because there seems to be a huge difference between Corea’s subjective age – how young he experiences himself to be – and his chronological age – he was 75 on 21 June, 2016. The reason gerontologists would be so interested in Corea is because a growing body of research shows how a younger subjective age is associated with a range of positive outcomes as you get older, including higher psychological well-being, better physical and cognitive functioning and longevity.

The multiple-Grammy-winning jazz legend, pianist and composer ticks all those boxes and more. After all, how else do you explain his indefatigable energy and drive? For evidence of that, you only have to look at his world tour schedule that began in January. As this is being written he’s currently on the final leg of the Asian part of his tour with his Elektric Band. Then he works-in a few solo concerts during April prior to opening a 10-date European tour with Eddie Gomez on bass and Brian Blade on drums (including an appearance at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival on 30 April), continuing the tour into May. During June and July there are more international dates with the Elektric Band (including a Barbican date on 24 June), before seeing out the year with gigs accompanying Béla Fleck and the Flecktones and Steve Gadd’s Gadd Gang. Even someone 50 years younger would struggle with an itinerary like that.

And in case you’re wondering if he had his feet up last year to celebrate his 75th birthday, think again. An equally extensive tour schedule was capped at the end of the year by an unprecedented 75th birthday residency at New York’s top jazz club, The Blue Note, where he played every night for two months with a range of exciting jazz guests. So how does he do it? As the maestro himself modestly explains: “It’s always been my mission to keep the music fires burning bright for myself, my family and friends and people everywhere. It’s the reason why I continue to travel and play. I think it helps bring the quality of the environment up a notch – helps remind us who we really are and that life can be creative and therefore pleasurable.”

Today, Chick Corea is rightly celebrated as an internationally famous jazz pianist and an NEA Jazz Master. But how we turn out as adults is influenced by a lot of what goes on in childhood and during our formative years. And while there isn’t a set recipe for ensuring achievement later in life, the early years of Chick Corea provide fascinating insight into the making of a bona fide jazz great. Born Armando Anthony Corea in Chelsea, Massachusetts on 12 June, 1941, he began studying piano at age four, as he recalled in an interview in 2003: “It seemed like jazz was always there from when I was quite small. I recall my dad was a pretty friendly guy and an avid jazz fan, musician, bandleader and student of music, so there was music all around. Musicians were in and out of the house and there was a 78s record collection of the music he was listening to and I was just steeped in music from the beginning. I was interested in Dizzy Gillespie and the big band 78s that my dad had, I liked that fast music. I was interested in Bud Powell, he had Billy Eckstine big band records too, which I liked and I decided this was a good thing to be a part of.”

Clearly Corea was a fast study on piano, but his mastery of his instrument also owes much to diligent study when he became a pupil of Salvatore Sullo, a concert pianist with the world renowned Boston Pops orchestra under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. A classical pianist of Sullo’s standing would have to have seen real talent in Corea before even considering taking on the young, eight-year-old as a piano student. “I had some good teachers,” Corea continued, “my dad was a good teacher, I think, and I had piano teacher when I was about eight-years-old for many years who was Salvatore Sullo, who was a great classical pianist. He used to play concerti with the Boston Pops. I became one of his students and he introduced me to classical music and it was interesting but the best training for me was always getting involved – taking whatever I learned from Sullo and my dad and anything else around me and exploring it myself.”

Among his first attempts to unravel the mysteries of jazz was engaging at a deep level with the music of pianist Horace Silver. Again from 2003: “When I started collecting recordings myself, Horace Silver was one of the first musicians I was drawn to, whose compositions and playing I was able to grasp and get out under my own fingers. I loved Horace’s music, so that was a study for me when I was young.” Corea seized any opportunity to make music in high school, with his father’s bands, and others in the Boston area. Finally, he felt it was time to move to New York to prepare for his acceptance exam at the Juilliard School. As he recalled in 2003: “That was a funny experience for me in that my real intent at that time as an 18-year-old was to live in New York. In 1960-61 the New York music scene was just flourishing, it was an incredible scene, and that’s where I wanted to be, following in the footsteps of my heroes there. So Juilliard was a legitimate way for a young man to be in New York because he was ‘studying’. But I wasn’t studying, the Juilliard studies didn’t interest me so I took it upon myself to stop beating about the bush and put my roots down in New York City and explore the music I wanted to, and I started working with various bands to make enough money to support myself.”

Corea’s first professional job was with bandleader Cab Calloway, before exploring the vibrant latin jazz scene in New York City, as he recalled in our 2006 interview: “I played with Mongo Santamaria in around 1961 or so in New York, after I had moved there from Boston, but around 1957, when I was still in high school, I performed quite a bit with a dance band from Boston led by a Portuguese guy called Phil Barboza, and there was conga player in the band called Bill Fitch who really, really got me into the latin music world. By the time I got to New York in 1960 I already had some taste of it and a little bit of experience and then working with Santamaria’s band, then Willie Bobo’s band. Those first years brought me into this incredible world of New York Cubans and Puerto Ricans, uptown Spanish Harlem dances and I felt like a Spaniard, or Cuban. The thing was, I couldn’t speak Spanish, but I was learning how to play!”

His stint with Mongo Santamaria brought him to the attention of the popular flautist Herbie Mann, an Atlantic recording artist: “Herbie Mann’s band was fun, it was latin music, and that was a kick for me. I loved working, playing with latin musicians and Herbie’s band was good work for me, good music and then Herbie – I have to thank him for giving me my first opportunity to record my music.” Corea can be heard with Mann on the album Standing Ovation at Newport (1965) while his own album, Tones for Jones Bones (1966), was initially released on Mann’s Embryo label. He had also hooked-up with trumpeter Blue Mitchell, as he recalled in 2002: “As I said, one of my heroes was Horace [Silver] and this was his band, and Blue Mitchell used to take the members of the band out when Horace wasn’t having engagements and work with Junior Cook, Gene Taylor and Roy Brooks and he called it the Sister Sadie All Stars – ‘Sister Sadie’ was a composition of Horace’s – and they needed a piano player. I cannot recall how I came to Blue’s attention, but I ended up with the gig, and very happily so, and played a lot of gigs with Blue and travelled around with him and that group and we went through various personnel, drummers especially, but that was a great, great experience for me.” Corea appeared on three Blue Note albums under Mitchell’s name during this period, The Thing to Do (1964), Down With It (1965) and Boss Horn (1966).

In 1967, vibist Gary Burton left the Stan Getz Quartet to go out on his own and Getz reached out to Corea. In March, Getz recorded Sweet Rain with Corea contributing two songs, ‘Litha’ and ‘Windows’, to an album that ranks highly among Getz’s best work. By now, Corea was beginning to get noticed around New York City, so when pianist Bob James decided to leave jazz vocal legend Sarah Vaughan’s trio, she turned to Corea. “I’m not sure how I got the call to work with Sarah, but the musical director was a bassist named Herbie Mickman, and the drummer was Steve Shaeffer. It was a glorious year and a half – Sarah was a heroine of mine. She really encouraged me to play my way – never put restraints on me – and I was into a free style during that time, 1967! Sarah would have me and the trio (Mickman on bass and Shaeffer on drums) warm up the audience before she came out. At first we’d play five minutes – then she let us go and we ended up playing half hour sets before she came on stage! I have some recordings I made on my old reel-to-reel tape recorder that don’t sound too bad. Working with Sarah was definitely a high point for me!”

In October 1967 Corea appeared on Donald Byrd’s The Creeper for the Blue Note label where he met bassist Miroslav Vitous. The following year came another opportunity to record under his own name, this time with Solid State, as Corea recalled in 2001: “Around 1968, I had begun a very happy association with Roy Haynes, because I had been playing with Stan Getz’s group at the time and Roy was the drummer and Steve Swallow was the bassist. I remember when I was approached to do a trio record for Solid State, I really wanted to record with Roy. I had the idea it could be an interesting mix if I put [bassist] Miroslav [Vitous] in there, so I put together some material for the studio and it was where I was at that particular moment, and that’s what came out.” Now He Sings, Now He Sobs by the Chick Corea Trio was released in 1968.

In 1969, Corea got a call from Miles Davis. It was a moment of destiny he grabbed with both hands since he was now in the group that was widely recognised as the premier ensemble in jazz. As he recalled in 2003, his way into the group was surprisingly straightforward, “It was through Tony Williams,” he recalled. “Tony was a Boston friend of mine and we had played together before Tony moved out of Boston into New York to play with Jackie McLean and then Miles Davis so, at the time when Herbie [Hancock] was leaving the band, Tony recommended me to Miles and it was simple as that, that’s how I began to play. The first engagement was a week in a club in Baltimore, and it was a wonderful experience. Miles never said the gig is yours, he just kept calling me back for another gig. I don’t think he said ‘the gig is yours’ to anyone! It developed and he began to change his approach after Tony Williams left and Jack DeJohnette came in and the music got pretty wild there for a while.”

This was a truly formative experience for Corea, since this was Davis’ legendary ‘Lost Quintet’ that Columbia never recorded, as he now recalls: “I could speak for hours about this amazing time. The music we made with that quintet was live performance music. It could never happen in the sterile atmosphere of a studio. Also, the record company was totally not interested in trying to market music that was this wild. I’m surprised that they released it even now – but then again, anything you put Miles’ name on attracted attention – of course. Tony Williams was there for the first six months of my stint. Dave [Holland] had already replaced Ron Carter. The quintet was still playing ‘Masqulero’, ‘Agitation’, ‘Dolores’ and some of the other Wayne [Shorter] tunes from the previous quintet, and I was still on [acoustic] piano. No electric instruments yet. You can hear what we morphed into on the Miles Davis Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2 release [on Columbia/Legacy] – it was certainly two-and-a-half years of constant change!”

Corea left Miles Davis’ group in 1970, his subsequent career in jazz one of conspicuous achievement taking in the avant-garde recordings with Circle, his solo improvisations on the ECM label, the acoustic and electric versions of Return to Forever, his duet collaborations with vibist Gary Burton and with Herbie Hancock, his seminal work with Mike Brecker on Three Quartets, his work with his Akoustic Trio, Elektric Band and with Origin, and his work in the classical field including performing his own symphonies, plus a whole lot else including some 63 Grammy nominations and 22 Grammy awards. Looking back, Corea distills the essence of his artistry in very simple terms: “You know, now that I’m older and more mature [laughs] I can easily observe a simplicity which is: music is music – doesn’t matter the form – it either communicates and touches the listeners or it doesn’t. And when I say ‘music’ I mean the musicians and artists who make the music. Music and the arts are what we have as a culture here on Earth – they’re one of the only activities that can remind us all of our basic nature – our native state of being. I believe that we are all basically aesthetic beings, so the music and the arts can always reach that positive and true part of any person because it’s native to him – it’s the real being – and it can bring us all together.” 

This article originally appeared in the May 2017 issue of Jazzwise. Never miss an issue – subscribe today