an interview with pianist george burton

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interview

"Can you talk a little about the scene that you grew up in, and about some of the musicians that had an impact on you?

The Philadelphia jazz scene is very deep in tradition. When I say deep, I mean, when I first started learning to play jazz, I was actually a violinist and violist. I studied classical violin and viola growing up, but until I got into the jazz scene, I didn’t realize the richness that was in Philly. You had Shirley Scott, the great organist and pianist who lived in Philly and played at this place Ortlieb’s all the time. You had Mickey Roker, who is probably one of the most recorded drummers of the 60′s, with Dizzy Gillespie and that whole generation of musicians. He’s on all those albums. And there were so many other musicians around, like Bootsie Barnes, like musicians who’d played in Philly Joe Jones’s band, who’d played with McCoy Tyner, who’d played with John Coltrane. There was such a richness, so much history, so much to be learned from just being in the city. It was a goldmine of jazz. It was not second-hand or from a recording, it was straight from the source. Like, “I played with this cat, I played with that cat. This is how it’s done, period.”

Sid Simmons was another one. I say he’s a teacher of mine, although I’ve never directly taken a lesson from him. My first jazz piano teacher was actually Shirley Scott, and the second one was a pianist who lived up here, Stephen Scott. But I’d never taken directly from Sid. He played at this place Ortlieb’s, Tuesday and Thursday, and I went religiously. We would sit down and talk and he would show me things in between sets, talk about comping. I watched him religiously – how he comped, his style of comping, his style of playing, and he always sounded like himself. Always sounded like Sid, one of the few people, to this day, I knew who could comp like that. He was such a great cat — I was in college, and Philadelphia’s tricky to get around at night, [he'd say] “Get in the car, make sure you make it to the jazz club, and I’ll make sure to get you home.” I just started calling him my teacher, because it’s a lot more about, not just music, but life, understanding it and being humble, and all these things. It’s something that’s very rare. I don’t see that as much up here in New York because it’s such a dense scene; there isn’t as much of the “elder helping the young cat coming up,” vibe, which was something I took advantage of wholeheartedly when I lived in Philly all those years."

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this george burton quintet is astounding, spellbinding.

it defines excellence, creativity, and feeling.

George Burton - Piano

Terell Stafford - Trumpet

Tim Warfield - Tenor Sax

Luques Curtis - Bass

Edited October 20, 2012 by alocispepraluger102

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George Burton

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

e e cummings