[MUSIC PLAYING]
Take note, you are listening to the Music
is My Life podcast from Berklee Online.
I'm your host, Pat Healy.
Each month we accompany our guests on his or her musical journey,
from the very first moment of inspiration
with the instrument of their choosing, or in this case of our guest's parents
choosing.
This month our guest is jazz legend, Gary Burton,
who began to play the vibraphone at the age of six.
When his parents noticed his musical curiosity and thought,
well, our daughter already plays the piano,
we can't have Gary play piano also.
And they hooked him up with the vibraphone,
an instrument he would master so well that, as he puts it,
anybody who plays it knows who he is.
So this episode of Music is My Life is unique
because, as Gary has recently proclaimed,
his musical life is about to end soon.
He has announced that he is retiring after this upcoming tour, which means
you definitely have to go see him.
Plenty of opportunities.
The tour begins March 1st, in Washington, DC.
Comes to Berklee College of Music on March 5th.
Brings him to Birdland for five nights in New York City.
And ends where it all started for Gary, in Indianapolis, Indiana on March 17th.
In his musical career, Gary Burton has released 66 albums,
won seven Grammy awards, and somehow managed
to find time to be involved with Berklee College of Music
pretty much the whole time.
As a teacher in the 1970s, as Dean of Curriculum in the '80s,
as the Executive Vice President in the '90s, and currently as an instructor
of jazz improvisation for Berklee Online.
But let us begin where Gary began with Berklee in the early 1960s.
I came to Berklee as a student when I was 17 years old.
And that really kind of introduced me to the jazz world.
I grew up in a small farm town in Indiana,
so arriving in the big city of Boston, and finally
having lots of other musicians around was just amazing.
And from there on, you know, my career just sort of kept
moving forward and unfolding.
I spent 10 years in New York, but I was still
connected to the school in a lot of ways,
and that meant a lot of the musicians I knew were fellow,
you know, alumni from Berklee.
So I still felt like I was part of the greater Berklee--
Berklee scene.
And, of course, then in '71, I came back to Boston
and started my career working at Berklee, teaching originally.
It was my first role at the school for the first decade I was there.
Right.
Now how would a high school graduate in 1960 find out about Berklee?
Well, you know, I was a vibraphone player,
which already made me kind of a unique animal.
It wasn't a very common instrument.
It isn't even to this day.
And I was a jazz musician.
So when I was finishing high school, and excited about trying
to go into the world of jazz, which I was mostly connecting
to through listening to records like everyone else I knew in those days,
there were only two schools in the whole United States
that welcomed you if you play jazz.
That was Berklee in Boston and North Texas, down in Denton, Texas.
And neither-- and neither of them offered vibraphone.
Right.
[LAUGHS] So I ended up choosing Boston because, after all,
it was a city and I--
you know, I already felt deprived growing up in rural Indiana.
So I wanted to be where musicians were, where there was a scene.
And so Boston looked like the place to go.
And Berklee was wonderful about it.
They said, you know, we don't have a vibraphone teacher,
and it's not one of our official instrument categories
that you can major in, but you're welcome to play
it, any time, in any ensembles, in any projects, or anything.
You just have to choose another instrument to be your instrument major.
So I pick--
I picked piano, because it was similar to the vibes,
and I'd already been kind of playing the piano in a somewhat
self-taught, amateur way.
So that was the logical instrument to pick.
And it turned out to be a really good learning
experience during those Berklee years, with taking
piano lessons, both classical and jazz, you know, materials.
And it affected my vibes playing very positively, as well.
Mhm.
Now, basically the format of this podcast--
and I've got a little bit ahead of ourselves--
is we kind of go through the journey of a person's musical life.
And I know you've done that quite a bit with Learning
to Listen, and so excuse me if there are some parts of you repeating yourself.
But now you started at age six.
Yes.
My parents wanted all three of us kids in the family
to get to have music lessons, something they had, you know,
been deprived of growing up in the Depression.
And so my older sister had already started taking piano lessons.
And I started hanging around, watching her practice, and getting in the way,
and asking questions, and figuring out what was going on.
And then when my father noticed that I would say things like, oh, no,
that's supposed to be an E flat, not an E natural, he realized that, you know,
I was, you know, picking up the music information on my own,
and that, you know, that I was probably ready to start taking lessons, too.
But they had to pick another instrument.
And just coincidentally there was-- at town we lived in then, Anderson,
Indiana--
there was a lady locally who played the marimba and the vibraphone
and gave lessons.
So that's where my parents took me.
It wasn't my choice.
I wouldn't know-- at six, you know, you wouldn't know one instrument
from another.
And so that's how I got introduced to the mallet instruments
and started playing them.
And we moved a few--
a couple of years later, actually, to another part of the state.
And so I lost my teacher, but I had enough of a start
to just keep on going by myself.
My father-- my father would order music from a store--
music store in Chicago.
And I would get the music and figure out how to play it.
And pretty soon I was playing local gigs, churches, and the Lions Club,
and things like that.
And by the time I was 10, I was pretty much,
you know, working, you know, about the same frequency schedule
that I've worked all my life.
That is playing, I don't know, 60, 70, 80 gigs of year.
Just all that changed was the music and the places--
Right.
--that are played.
Right.
And now did your sister, you know, she got the piano.
She had already chosen that.
Did she end up sticking with it?
No.
My sister and my brother--
we all played, sort of for the fun of it, as a-- like a--
with the family.
We had sort of a family band for a few years there.
But neither of my siblings stuck with it.
That's funny.
You know, they-- it was fun for a while.
And then as soon as my sister got into high school and, you know,
dating boys and your social life in high school, she lost interest in the music.
And sort of the same thing happened with my brother, who discovered sports.
Right.
And what was he playing?
He played bass and clarinet.
We all doubled on something.
OK.
I played drums somewhat, but mainly the mallet instruments,
and a little bit of piano, and trumpet.
And my sister played trombone, as well as piano.
These were things that we could play in the high school band,
because you can't play-- you can't play the vibes or the piano
in the high school band.
Right.
So in order to be part of the band, you had
to play a more band-like instrument.
So we all seemed to have a second instrument that we could get by with.
And now do you think you would have stayed with music
if-- it weren't for the vibraphone?
I mean, did you have a moment where you said, well, I--
I really like this instrument.
I mean, you must have, somewhere along the line.
Well, not-- you know, that came later.
I was-- I was conflicted about the vibraphone for a number of years,
right up until I was already through Berklee and had moved to New York.
I was-- still had doubts lingering about did I
pick a bad choice for an instrument to become,
you know, skilled at playing because not many knew about the vibraphone.
Right.
And I figured, well, is this going to limit my career possibilities?
Should I have been a--
been smarter and focused on piano instead or something?
And finally, it was a New York musician, a guitarist
named Jim Hall, who in a conversation with me about this
when I was lamenting, you know, the popularity or lack of the vibraphone.
He said, it doesn't matter what you play.
It's just a matter of whether you can do it really good or not.
Mhm.
And that kind of made sense, so I stopped fighting it.
But along the way, I kept trying other instruments.
I bought a flute.
I bought a saxophone.
I tried the trumpet.
I bought a guitar.
And would try--
I would get up to the point where I get sort of in an amateur way
play a song or two on each of these instruments, and just kind
of to see if it was clicking for me.
And it never did.
And you know, the one instrument that just felt like it was part of me
was the vibraphone that I just kept coming back to.
And there was this moment that happened because of the very first jazz band
camp that happened in 1958.
I was in high school.
And up to that point, my life ambition, my plan, as I had it,
was that I was going to go to either medical school or engineering.
My father was a chemical engineer.
And I did--
I got good grades in school.
So I was kind of looking in that direction for a career.
And it never occurred to me that music would be the choice.
Right.
It was fun.
Music was fun.
I found it easy to learn and fun to do, but didn't-- you know,
I couldn't picture how it would work as a career,
especially starting out in Princeton, Indiana.
Right.
But I went to the band camp and it was like a revelation.
There I was, finally, surrounded by another 100 young musicians who
were just as eager and excited about it as I was.
And these great teachers, and quite a few of whom
were from Berklee, that were coaching us in the bands
that we were rehearsing during that week and so on.
So by the time I finished the week, I was so excited about it,
I came home and announced to my parents, forget med school.
I'm going to be a jazz musician.
And to their credit, they didn't blink.
[LAUGHS]
[LAUGHS] They just said, oh, well, that sounds nice, honey.
And I-- looking back on it, I give them a lot of credit for not panicking.
I suspect that if I had been in their shoes,
I probably would have at least asked a few questions
and challenged the decision.
But that convinced me that music was my future and--
and I-- and I got much more committed to practicing, and learning music,
and finding people to play with, and so on.
Right.
Now what is your own children's musical involvement?
Very little interest.
Yeah?
[LAUGHS] My son played guitar, self-taught,
had his own rock band in high school.
As soon as he finished school, the guitar went in the closet,
and he-- and he never played it again.
And my daughter never really was interested in music.
She's an artist.
A very talented painter and--
and making things, you know, artistically.
But music wasn't in the cards--
Right.
--for either one of them.
And their mother is a musician, also.
A pianist and a Berklee graduate.
But they didn't follow in our footsteps.
Right.
Right.
As it were.
Well, it seems like something that maybe skips a generation sometimes.
You know, you--
It could.
You don't want to do what your parents have done or--
Well, there were no musicians in my family history.
Oh, none!
We kind of looked to see, well, other than you know, this one
or that one sang in the church choir, like my father did.
Mhm.
But, you know, that's not exactly, you know, playing an instrument
or learning--
you know, being a musician or anything.
Now I did have an interesting detour on my way
to Berklee, which is worth mentioning.
Is this Nashville?
I was living in--
yes, Nashville.
Who would have thought that I would start my musical career
in the home of country music?
And at, you know, while I was-- just as I was finishing high school at that.
But there I was, finishing up high school in southern Indiana,
and a local musician there, a saxophone player named Boots Randolph,
had become a regular visitor to the Nashville recording scene.
He played on a lot of Elvis Presley records and that sort of thing,
you know, when they wanted some tenor sax in the background.
And he told me that he'd overheard one of the guitar players
that worked in the studios--
heard him just saying that he was going to be making a jazz record
and that he was sorry that there weren't any vibraphone players
around Nashville, because it was a country music town.
And-- because he really thought the idea of a guitar and vibes
would be a great combination.
So Boots said, well, there's a kid up in Indiana you might want to hear.
And a few weeks later, on the next trip to Nashville,
I rode along with Boots with my vibraphone in his car,
and played a couple of songs with the guitarist, whose name was Hank Garland.
And he was impressed and said, well, what are your plans?
And I said, well, I'm finishing high school in a few more weeks.
And then I'm going to go to college in Boston in September.
So he proposed that I come to Nashville for the summer
and that we would play at a local club on weekends,
and we would record this record that he had gotten
the go ahead for from his record label.
And sounded great to me, because I had nothing else going on that summer.
So soon as I graduated, loaded up my Volkswagen, and drove to Nashville,
and spent the summer playing gigs, and also doing
a handful of record sessions for other people, you know?
People were kind of interested in the fact
that it was a new instrument in town that they could
add to some of their studio dates.
So-- in fact, my first gold record was recorded that summer.
There was a piano player named Floyd Kramer, who--
he had a hit record called Last Date, and that was his first record ever.
He had been a studio player and he was, you know,
given the green light to make his first record as a leader.
And he asked me to play on it.
So there I am in the background, playing chords softly on Last Date.
And of course, it went ahead and became a gold record.
So that was my first of, I believe, three altogether in my career.
None of my own went gold.
[LAUGHS]
But jazz records don't usually do that.
Right.
But I've been on other people's records.
I did a record with k.d. lang, a wonderful singer, and that one was--
was a big seller.
Right.
This whole summer, I'm just imagining is an 18-year-old kid
and, you know, you're not necessarily playing your preferred style of music,
but, you know, what's going through your mind?
Is it is your attitude like, well, whatever I can get?
And this is just--
Oh, well, I was playing my preferred music on the weekends.
Oh, OK.
OK.
Oh, yeah.
Every Friday, and Saturday, Sunday, we played at this local club
called The Carousel and--
and it was a trio with Hank, myself, and a bass player.
And we were playing our jazz tunes.
And it was, you know, for me it was the most professional playing setting I'd--
I'd yet been in.
And so it was exciting it could be.
And the-- and the big extra bonus at the end of the summer--
a lot of country people turned out to be kind of closet jazz fans.
And every weekend there would be two or three country stars
coming in to the club to see the trio.
And one of these was the guitarist, Chet Atkins,
who also ran RCA's Nashville division.
And at the end of the summer, he called me in and said, look,
I've been talking to the people back in New York.
And I convinced them that RCA should sign you to--
to the label.
And you will be, you know, moving to the East Coast, so you'll be working,
you know, with the New York people.
But, you know, we've got a contract to present
to you, if-- if you're interested.
So the end of the summer, I left for Berklee
with a record label, a major record label contract--
Wow.
--in my pocket.
It was-- you know, I couldn't believe my-- my good fortune.
Did everybody in your dorm just seethe with jealousy?
Or-- [LAUGHS]
[LAUGHS] I don't know.
You know, you have to realize that Berklee was very small--
Right.
--in 1960.
In fact, there was no dorm that I was--
the dorm opened the second year I was there,
and I-- and I stayed in that dorm.
OK.
And, in fact, my roommate was Mike Rindish,
who became a longtime teacher at Berklee and chairman of the electronic music
department back in the '70s, and so on.
But the first year, you just essentially found
other students and shared apartments.
OK.
And there were maybe-- maybe 100 students total--
Wow.
--in the school.
It was hard-- it's hard to imagine how small it was.
It was in one brownstone house there on Newbury Street.
Yeah.
And there were maybe 15 teachers, and a 100, 120 students.
Something like that.
That's amazing.
And the second year I was there, it grew to more like 150, and it kept growing.
In fact, from then on, by leaps and bounds every year.
When I came back 10 years later, as-- to start as a teacher,
it was up to 1,000 students.
Mhm.
So-- and they-- by then they had bought the first hotel
and converted it into a school, and so on.
And Berklee was, you know, growing, you know,
at a frantic pace during those decades.
But when I arrived, it was a pretty small place.
And I guess nobody ever really talked to me about my record contract--
Yeah.
--that I can-- that I can remember.
And I didn't make my first record until a year later.
I mean, I was still in school and I had--
and I was just turning 18 in the middle of that first school year,
so the company even said, take your time.
You know, you don't have to make your first record instantly.
Get settled in on the East Coast.
And-- and so it was the next summer before I actually went to New York
and put together my first, you know, release for RCA Victor.
Now was there any conversation with your parents or even with yourself
about after this one magnificent summer, yes, I'm
still definitely going to school?
Or maybe I'll stick around Nashville?
No.
I was-- I knew that there was no long-term jazz future in Nashville.
Right.
That-- that I had to get to the, you know, where the jazz scene was based,
which meant the East Coast or the West Coast.
The two places on the East Coast, you know, being New York and Boston.
And frankly, I think the main reason that Boston
was considered a part of the major jazz scene was because Berklee was there,
and that attracted students and teachers,
and it became even more so as the school grew over the years.
But Boston was a really lively jazz scene.
And so I had no regrets going there.
It was the most exciting two years of my life, probably.
Because I felt free of responsibility, because I was a student.
Right.
And all I had to do was make it to the classes,
and do my work-- do my homework, and so on.
And I was playing gigs, as-- as much as I could handle.
Some were jazz gigs.
Some were commercial gigs to pay--
pay the rent, and so on.
But I was working a lot, which also, you know, was a great experience.
Yeah.
And tell me a little bit about you know, while you were at Berklee for those two
years, did you learn by-- you know, did you improve by leaps and bounds
because of what you were learning in school?
Or was it, you know, the outside gigging that helped you--
No.
It-- well, it was-- you could say it was both,
but definitely leaps and bounds describes my Berklee experience.
Mhm.
I was-- I was somewhat self-taught back in Indiana.
I did find a local piano player in-- about an hour away, in another town,
that I took some lessons with just to teach me tunes.
And how to harmonize them, which turned out
to be a good start on learning harmony and music theory.
But I had learned a lot of things just from ear.
Listening to records.
But I didn't know what the things were called.
I didn't know the correct terms for different kinds of chords,
and why this chord moves naturally to the next one.
I could tell-- my ear would tell me that it does,
but I didn't know what the theory behind it was.
And Berklee was great.
They-- I mean, my classes there filled in information at a rapid fire pace.
And it was just answering all my questions,
and filling in the gaps for me.
So yeah, I learned just tons of stuff during my time at the school.
Mhm.
And do you feel like you had learned to know by those two years
that you were ready to fly?
Or was it the professional window that you were afraid--
It was a-- well, again, as with many things,
it was a combination of those two things.
Mhm.
I was an aggressive student.
I had actually completed about three years worth of courses
at the end of two years.
Wow.
Taking extra classes and jumping ahead, and so on.
And meanwhile, I was getting this growing sense that, you know, it
was a good time to try, you know, launching a career.
And I figured, well, what's to lose?
I'll go to New York in that summer.
And if I don't find any work, I'll come back to Berklee for another year.
Mhm.
Because that was a--
you know, it felt like a fairly safe thing to try.
Right.
And so-- so I, you know, found a place to live after I got there, and--
you know, an apartment.
And settled in and started looking for work.
And was not finding much.
I thought, you know, there would--
it would be a little better.
But again, I-- you know, I'm struggling with the fact
that I'm a vibraphone player.
How many gigs, you know, are looking for a vibraphonist?
And it turned out there was one that was looking for a vibes,
and that was the pianist George Shearing who'd
normally had vibraphone in his band.
And Marian McPartland, a name most people
recognize from her decades long radio shows on NPR--
I got acquainted with Marian through another musician who
had-- used to play with Marian and introduced to her.
And she very kindly recommended me to George, who was a fellow British piano
player, and they were friends.
But she apparently gave me a glowing recommendation.
And so I got a phone call one day from George's manager,
saying he'd like to hear me play.
So I met him at the end of August, early September,
of that summer, when I would have made the decision to go back to school.
Mhm.
But we played a couple of songs in his--
just together as a duet and-- up in his manager's office.
And then he had me sight read a piece, and so on.
And then said, well, you sound great.
I'd love to have you in the band.
There's only one, you know, issue which is I'm not
going to work for the next six months.
I'm going to school to get a guide dog.
George was blind.
Oh, OK.
And so-- but, you know, if you're still available come January,
then you've got the job.
So I thanked him, and went home, and said, well, one way or another,
I guess I'll be working by January.
And maybe something better will come along in the meantime.
It didn't really.
[LAUGHS] And I just hung out in New York, waiting and hoping that something
would come along, borrowing money occasionally
from my father to pay the rent.
And finally, January arrived and they flew me out to Los Angeles
to meet up with the rest of the band and start touring.
And that was my first full-time road gig in my career.
I was 19 when that started.
And it turned out to be quite a good first experience,
because it was a very professional band.
George was an excellent musician.
I learned a lot from him, and from just the experience
of traveling with such a bunch of pros.
So it was a great start.
Mhm.
And then around this time, I feel--
I mean, my knowledge of the chronology of jazz is not as--
I didn't live it like you did, but you know,
when I do listen to music from that time,
vibes do start becoming more commonplace at a certain point.
And when did you realize that, hey, I might actually
be influencing this style of music?
Well, I-- the history of the vibes is that it was invented around 1930.
And for the first-- and so when I started as a six-year-old,
it was only 20 years old.
Right.
And still a pretty brand new instrument, and just beginning to find a, you know,
a following.
But by the '70s, '60s and '70s, it had, you know, become more known.
There were more players.
And it's-- and it's continued to expand even since then over the years.
I just know this from the instrument companies telling me
that back in the early days, they were selling about 200 instruments a year.
Now they sell 2,000 a year.
Wow.
Because now schools have them for their music departments.
In almost every school that still has a music department,
has a marimba and a vibraphone in the band room.
And so on.
So people are introduced to it more easily.
And I think my influence probably didn't become a factor
in the popularity of the instrument till I had gotten more established myself.
Maybe by the '70s.
OK.
Once I started leading my own band at the end of the '60s--
Yeah.
--then I-- I suspect that my visibility as a major player of the vibraphone
has had more impact on the history of the instrument.
And especially at this stage.
I mean, I've been doing this now for decades.
So I'm sure I'm--
anybody that plays the vibraphone, you know, will know who I am.
Right.
Right.
And-- and the role that I've had in the history of the instrument.
I mean, it was the perfect instrument for me timing wise,
because it was still relatively new when I came along,
and there were a lot of technical possibilities
that were ready to be discovered by somebody.
Mhm.
And so it fell to me to popularize four mallet playing, dampening,
a handful of techniques that are now commonplace for the instrument.
But a lot of them are associated with me,
because I was the first person to really, you know, pioneer them.
Right.
That really is a wonderful honor, that-- like not many people
can say that, that anybody who plays the instrument that they
play they know of you.
You know?
That's-- that's just--
Mhm.
Yeah.
It is an honor.
I have-- I have to say.
And like I said, if it hadn't been the timing was correct,
somebody else would have made these same discoveries.
[LAUGHS]
It wasn't something that was unique to my, you know, talent.
They were, you know, inevitable.
And they would-- had I come along 20 years later,
you know, someone else would be getting the credit for this or that.
I was there at the right time, as it turned out.
But then you look at-- you know, I think I was asking that last question
because you look at that clip from that--
that movie Get Yourself a College Girl, where you're
in there playing Girl From Ipanema--
Yeah.
--and it just feels so of it's time.
Well, that's true.
Now that was my--
during my three years with Stan Getz.
Right.
Stan was actually looking for a piano player,
and not finding anyone available.
And one of the piano players that he checked with
was Peggy Lee's accompanist.
Peggy Lee was a famous jazz singer of the '50s and '60s.
And her pianist was a friend of Stan's, and he said, well, you know, there is--
I saw a vibes player recently who played with four mallets, played chords,
and maybe that would work instead of a piano.
And it turned out the bass player in Stan's band knew me and vouched for me.
And so I was invited to come in and sit in with Stan and the band
at a club in New York, and see how it would work.
It didn't go very well.
[LAUGHS]
They were playing tunes--
tune-- a lot of tunes I didn't know, and even the ones I knew,
they had their own arrangements and harmonies,
and so on, so I was kind of having to do a lot of guessing about what--
I'm playing by ear, which, you know, didn't really
give me a chance to shine that much.
Mhm.
And at-- and at the end of the night, Stan said, well, thanks for trying.
And then two weeks later, I get the call from my bass player friend again
saying, well, Stan's now desperate.
We're leaving for Canada on Monday.
We still don't have a piano player, and he
wants me to ask you if you would be willing to do
this three weeks in Canada, until he can find, you know, someone else.
And that-- that was not exactly the most thrilling job offer.
[LAUGHS] Not a lot of confidence there.
But I figured, what the heck, I had wasn't doing anything else.
I had, you know, left--
George Shearing.
I was taking a long time off that long break at that point,
so I was back home in New York kind of wondering what to do next.
And here-- here was, well, I'll do these few weeks with Mr. Getz.
And then see what happens after that.
And during that three weeks, we kind of clicked.
First it was a little rough.
I was trying to figure out how to accompany Stan effectively
on the vibes, which was a new thing for me.
And he was getting used to, you know, playing with the vibes
instead of with the piano or guitar.
But by the end of the three weeks, we had kind of found the sound.
And so I ended up staying for three years with the band.
And then one of the-- we made two movies during that first couple of years.
Because he, you know, he had this hit record, you know, of Brazilian music,
or The Girl from Ipanema, and so on.
So we were playing almost nonstop touring.
But also getting these extra invitations.
In this case, you know, to be in a couple of different movies.
And one of them was, of all things, Get Yourself
a College Girl, which was really just an excuse
to show a bunch of the musicians that were on the recording label.
It was also owned by the movie company.
So each scene in the movie featured another pop band of some kind.
And we were-- our setting was a ski resort.
And so we all wore different colored sweaters,
and we were supposedly having a rehearsal, and playing ours--
our a couple of songs, with Astrud Gilberto singing on the--
the hit song, and so on.
That's great.
Now the years with Stan were ups and downs, as I understand it.
Well, Stan was a serious alcoholic--
Mhm.
--during that phase of his life.
I mean, his early life, he was well known as a heroin addict.
Right.
And-- and, in fact, ended up having to leave the country
to avoid going to jail.
And came back 10 years later, and restarted his career in the US, and--
and then I-- you know, that's when I came along.
So by that time, he had replaced his drug habit with drinking.
And so-- and he was somewhat-- he's what today we would use the term bipolar.
Mhm.
So, you know, he had these extreme mood swings
between being very upbeat, and happy, and positive about everything,
and then the next day he would be very angry, and paranoid, and mean,
and so on.
So, you know, we kind of got used to the unpredictability of Stan's behavior.
And for me, I was a silly young guy at this point,
kind of inexperienced in the ways of the world.
It was a learning experience.
This guy who was really talented, and just a major musician.
My goodness.
And yet, personally, you know, really hard to figure out how to work with.
How to spend so much time with, as you do
when you're traveling together and playing night after night.
So it was-- like I said, I learned a lot about people and human nature
from that experience.
And always had great respect for Stan, in spite of his demons
that he was dealing with.
And it was certainly a terrific platform for me
that gave me enough exposure to be in a spot to start
my own band after I finished with Stan.
Right.
Now, how-- you mentioned, you know, his-- his demons.
How did you-- I'd imagine--
I mean, this might be me answering the question for you, but was--
was seeing him struggle like that helpful in, you know,
keeping that sort of thing at bey for you?
Because I imagine it's very prevalent in the touring
lifestyle of a jazz musician.
Mhm.
I didn't take my first drink of alcohol until I was in my 30s.
That gives you an idea.
[LAUGHS]
Yeah.
I guess it did make an impression on you then.
And-- and I had already had a negative perspective
on alcohol from my childhood years when my family group would occasionally
play at Christmas parties and things for companies.
And sometimes drunk people would come up to us as kids and kind of, you know,
try to talk to us and be all, you know, scary.
So I-- I always had kind of a negative impression of drinking.
And with Stan, it really was, you know, in spades.
So like I say, I stayed away from it for a long time.
And only eventually would have the occasional glass of wine just
to be sociable and as--
and with other people was how I finally, you know,
got comfortable with, you know, taking a drink occasionally.
Right.
Right.
So then-- so he gives you, as you said, the platform to start your own group.
And that's the Gary Burton Quartet?
That's correct.
I had been playing rather, you know, straight ahead, traditional kind
of jazz with Stan.
And then when I was faced with starting my own band,
I wanted to do something that would be unique,
that would set me apart from all the other musicians and bands, you know,
that would give us some identity.
And at the time, I had become a big fan of the newly arrived rock music.
The Beatles were big.
Bob Dylan was big.
The Rolling Stones were big, and so on.
And so I had become a fan of their records and their music.
And my idea was to find a way to bring some of these rock music elements
into our jazz combo.
And the breakthrough was coming across a guitar
player who was already kind of doing the same thing, which was Larry Coryell.
And we met at--
just at a jam session one day in New York.
And here was this guitar player that had this weird mixture of rock licks
and jazz licks, all kind of jammed together, when he soloed.
And I thought, this is exactly what I'm looking for.
So I asked him if he wanted to play this week in Boston,
that I had already booked, was wanted--
needed to put a band together for.
And he said yes.
So that was our first gig.
And we ended up then, you know, being the Gary Burton
Quartet for the next two years before Larry left to start his own bands.
Right.
And with that, I mean, basically it's, you know, the beginning of fusion right
there.
And with your endeavors to do that I always wondered about,
you know, I, myself, come from more of a rock background
and I've always heard a lot of people kind of talk smack about rock and roll,
like, oh, it's just three chords, but how did you combat people who would--
I mean, there must have been some sort of backlash.
Yeah.
And it was, you know, and--
you know, when they first-- well, it's only three chords, well,
that's what was changing about rock.
Here came the Beatles who had much more sophisticated tunes
than what we thought of as typical of rock from the '50s.
And so the-- you know, this new rock, as it were, was a whole new thing.
And in fact, the problem for jazz people was that a lot of jazz fans
were being drawn over to the rock side, because the rock music had suddenly
become much more interesting than it used to be.
And people who were, you know, lifelong jazz fans
were now going to rock concerts, and buying Beatles records
instead of jazz records.
And I caught some, you know, negative feedback
from the occasional musician who felt, you know,
that it was an act of traitor--
treason, you know, to do anything that, you know,
recognized any validity to rock.
But I'll tell you, most of the musicians,
including the most famous ones who I knew, were very supportive.
And their attitude was, hey, this is something interesting,
something different.
Duke Ellington, he was an early supporter,
for instance, who when he would hear my band on jazz festivals
that he was also on, would come to me and say how he always
liked when somebody could come up with something different,
something new, way to use instruments, new kinds of tune structures,
and so on.
So mostly I felt that there was-- that there was plenty of encouragement.
That's great.
And now you mentioned Duke Ellington.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about the run
in you had with Miles Davis.
[LAUGHS] Yeah, well, the Miles story is dramatic one.
[LAUGHS] And of course, Miles was known as a pretty outrageous character.
And it began with a newspaper interview--
a well known critic.
Probably the most established jazz critic of the day
was a guy named Leonard Feather who wrote for the loss of Los Angeles Times
and also for Downbeat Magazine.
So my new band, with our rock, you know, elements had played in LA
and Leonard's interviewing me.
And one of the questions he asked was, what's it all about here?
You know, you're doing this other thing.
And I said, well, you know, we can't all just
keep playing and imitating Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
We're young musicians.
We're all out there looking for our own voice, our own identity as players.
Now that sounded like a pretty reasonable explanation to me,
but what the headline of the piece in the paper said was,
Burton says that Miles and Trane are old hat.
Meaning that are now out of date, old fashioned, and, you know, not worthy.
I was stunned when I read that.
And I called Leonard up immediately and said, how could you?
I never said anything like that.
They're two of my major heroes, for goodness sake.
And he kind of insisted that, well, that's what he thought I meant.
And so on.
Well, we moved up to San Francisco a few days later to continue our tour
and I'm playing at a local club.
And the-- come in one night, and the owner approaches me and says, listen,
Miles was here today.
He was-- was an old friend of the club owner from New York.
He said, he was here for lunch, and he asked me what was going on at the club
these days.
And I said, oh, we got this new group that's
doing great, this Gary Burton group.
And he said he got really angry looking.
And he said, tell him if he mentions my name again, I'll kill him.
Wow.
And so the minute I heard that, I knew, OK, Miles somehow
happened to read the thing that was in the LA Times.
He must have been in LA the same weekend that we were there.
So I don't know for sure what happened.
I was-- the club owner suggested I write him a letter.
He knew the hotel he was staying at.
And explain that it was all misunderstanding
and that I certainly didn't mean what it looked like, and so on.
Which I did.
I never-- of course, I never got a response.
And I ran into Miles, you know, many times later on through the decades,
in airports, and jazz festivals, backstage, and so on.
He never spoke to me or acted like he knew
who I was, although I'm sure he did.
And I didn't have the--
I didn't have the nerve to speak to him either.
So we carried on this kind of keeping our distance thing, you know, from--
for the rest of his career.
In fact-- in fact, I--
I shared the stage with him at a big concert at Tanglewood about a year
before he died, and I-- even--
even that night, backstage, it was like, you know, I was invisible.
Which was fine with me.
I was, you know, he--
he terrorized almost everybody.
[LAUGHS]
So [LAUGHS] that's the-- you know, just the way it goes with Miles.
That's amazing, though.
You played with him, but never spoke with him
No, I never played with Miles.
Oh, OK.
I was just--
I thought you were on the stage together playing.
No, on the same bill.
Oh, OK.
On the same bill.
All right.
My band-- yeah.
My band and his band on the same night.
Yeah.
No.
If we'd played together, I'm sure we would have spoken.
Yeah.
Although I must say Miles' band members in those-- at that era said,
we never saw him except on stage.
That's wild.
He traveled on a different plane.
He stayed in a different hotel.
A manager would be with us, and get us on the stage, get us all ready to go.
And then the announcement would say, here's Miles Davis.
He would come out.
We'd play our six tunes.
He would leave.
We never saw him--
Wow.
--in between.
So maybe I-- if I was in the band I wouldn't have seen him actually.
Right.
I don't know.
Right.
Well, it's an interesting approach.
And, you know, you've had a career full of playing with many different people.
And a lot of what you do is improvisation.
And I wonder for you does having a personal connection
with somebody outside of having an instrument that you're playing matter?
Yeah.
Well, it does to me.
I know of many groups where there's very little personal interaction
between the musicians.
Between the leader and the-- and the musicians, or between each other.
It's kind of like we're coworkers.
Mhm.
But nothing-- nothing beyond that.
In my case, I've always considered it important to get
pretty connected to the people I'm playing with.
I'm going to spend so much time with them, you know, offstage, as well,
when we're traveling around in airplanes, and cars,
and so on, that, you know, we end up in most cases getting
pretty close friendships going, and spend more time
with our fellow musicians more often than we do with our own families,
because we're out touring so much.
But, for me, it's important.
For other people, it may not be.
It's, you know, it seems to be different approaches to that.
Right.
OK.
So-- yeah, I'm looking at the time here.
We're-- we've been spending a lot of time and we're only at like the late
'60s.
[LAUGHS] So-- so then you're named Jazzman of the Year in '68.
That must have felt like a validation of the risks you had taken.
It did.
And there was a surprise, certainly, because normally that
went to more of a senior statesman kind of musician
who'd been around for a while.
But it was a recognition of this new genre that, you know,
my band had introduced at that time.
And-- and I, you know, you know, certainly
was stunned when the magazine came out and that was announced.
But it did make me, you know, again feel, you know,
that yet another kind of validation had happened.
These were votes from the fans, not from the other musicians.
These were-- this was the reader's poll.
So I said, OK, so people are definitely noticing, you know,
what we're doing here.
So that felt good.
Right.
So it seems like the yin to the yang of the Miles Davis quote being taken out
of context.
And that was the same year, too.
Right?
Yes, it would have been, I guess.
Wow.
That-- 1968, probably the second year that the band was in full operation.
Right.
That's great.
And then, you know, you're playing.
And you're still playing and then we come to '71
and you come back to Berklee, and that must have also
been a validation because you didn't finish and here you are teaching.
Yeah.
Of course, Berklee in those days especially
was pretty comfortable hiring former students as teachers,
even if they hadn't graduated, because after all it was more--
more important was what you knew and what--
what experience you had gained in the professional world
than whether you had a certain piece of paper or not.
In fact, Berklee in its earliest days didn't even offer degrees.
You know, a wasn't a degree--
when I was there as a student, it didn't even
have the authority to give degrees.
It gave what was called a diploma.
Right.
But it was not a degree.
That-- that came along in the mid '60s at some point.
But, yes, I-- you know, I started--
I started teaching because the format of doing clinics, workshops, at schools
was something new around that time.
And I had found myself getting invited to do a fair amount of these
during the course of a typical year.
And it was sort of a secondary kind of income,
as well as the fact that I discovered it came pretty natural to me
to explain things, to talk about things, to demonstrate things.
Not all musicians are all that verbal.
You know, a lot of players will, if you ask them, well, why did you do that?
Or how did you know to do that?
And their answer is simply, well, you know, I could just hear it.
Which doesn't help the student that much.
Right.
So that being the case, I got the idea to-- maybe
it would be good to have an actual teaching situation that would still
allow me to play, and tour, and gig, and so on,
but that I could also put this teaching experience that I was gradually
doing more of to work.
And naturally, I thought of Berklee being the logical place to do it.
And they were very receptive and invited me to come.
And I wasn't sure if it would-- how well it would work out.
I thought, well, maybe I'll do this a couple years and get bored with it,
or it won't work with my schedules, and so on.
We'll have to find out.
But by the time I had done it for a couple years, it was working so well,
I was so enjoying it, that I knew I was going to keep going for a good while.
And ultimately, you know, this went on for 33 years.
Right.
And you ended up playing with a lot of your students over the years.
Yes.
You know, I've had a lot of credit for being a discoverer of new talent.
And in some cases, it's people I did discover legitimately
that as I heard them playing somewhere in my travels
and noticed they were talented and so on.
But a lot of times, I just happened to be--
you know, be there first, because a-- talented students would come to Berklee
and I would get to know them during their student years.
And then as soon as they graduated, I would hire them for my band.
And then people would say, wow, you found another one.
That's great.
It was partly because I had the first look.
But there were many.
Like Donny McCaslin, for instance, who's now doing really well in New York,
and on David Bowie's new record, and so on.
He was one of those who, you know, I knew as a student
and was ready to hire.
Makoto Ozone, the pianist from Japan, who I also hired
straight out of school.
Right.
And you're touring with him.
Yes, I am.
That's correct.
I'm doing this, what is my--
my retirement tour.
Yeah.
This is my--
I'm planning to take a break from performing
as of the end of this season of touring this spring.
And I decided to do the final tour with Makoto.
We've been playing together for over 30 years, off and on.
You know, doing at least some touring almost every year.
And with-- these days in a duet format.
So we start in Washington, DC, and work our way up the East Coast
and then out through the Midwest, as well.
So revisiting a lot of the places that I played regularly over the years,
so there's a certain nostalgia factor involved here
in some of these clubs and concert venues I've played at for 25, 30 years.
Including the Berklee Performance Center,
which is where we'll be playing on March 5th.
That's going to be certainly a nostalgic evening
because I've played at that hall for decades now.
We talked a little bit about discovering younger players and chemistry
with other players, but we even touched upon like Pat Metheny or Chick Corea.
So I guess if you could just speak about how you knew the chemistry with Chick
was so vital.
With Chick, I knew him as a musician around New York.
We both arrived in New York at about the same time.
Both coming from Boston.
But we didn't know each other during the Boston years.
He was about a year ahead of me and so our paths didn't cross.
But we were both on a jazz festival in Europe
and not playing together, but playing separately.
And the promoter of the festival-- it was 1972--
at the last minute said, oh, hey, how about all
of everybody on of-- on the concert tonight do some kind of jam session
at the end as a finale?
And it turned out the only two people among the players
that night that said, OK, sure, was me and Chick.
So-- [LAUGHS] we laughed and said, well, OK, let's-- we'll play a duet.
And we quickly rehearsed something at the sound check,
one of Chick's new pieces, in fact, and played it at the end of the concert.
And it was a big hit with the audience.
And as it turned out, Chick's record label owner Manafort Eicher
was there that night.
And he said, oh, this is a great thing, you guys.
You should make a record like this.
And we both thought it seemed too esoteric.
I mean, just piano and vibes for an hour?
Come on.
Really?
But he kept getting in touch with us and pushing us to do this.
So we finally agreed that we would.
And we went into the studio later that year
and recorded our first record, Crystal Silence.
And it was that occasion that I-- that we realized,
the both of us, what an easy rapport we had as players.
We just seemed to be able to guess what was
going to happen next as we improvised.
We could sort of read each other's minds.
We hadn't played together, so we allowed three days of recording time,
thinking we'd have to rehearse new songs and then
go ahead and get a finished recording, and that it would take longer.
As it turned out, we did the whole record in three hours, with almost no--
we-- all the record-- all the tracks but one were first takes.
And we'd finish the song and say, wow, gee.
That went really well.
Well, I guess move on to the next one.
So next thing I know, we were done.
And the record came out and immediately started building a following.
We started getting requests to play concerts.
And that's how it began.
And to this day, we still occasionally talk about this fact
that we have this you know incredibly productive rapport when
we play together, of being able to just anticipate what's going to happen next.
It's almost magical-- magical sometimes.
And so that's why--
I think that's really the main reason we've kept doing it for 45 years.
Right.
Now in the case of Pat, Pat joined my band when he was 18 years old.
You know, he was living in Miami, and had grown up in Missouri,
and was a fan of my music.
I met him at a college jazz festival and when he played with a student band.
And I could tell he was a pretty promising player.
I already had a guitar player in my band,
so I wasn't looking for anybody new.
But he was so promising, that I encouraged him to come to Boston.
And helped him get a job teaching at Berklee.
And pretty soon, it became possible to add him to my band, as well.
So we played together for four years in that setting.
And then he went off on his own and became a really huge success
in the jazz field, of course.
And it's funny.
We sort of switched roles.
I was his mentor and guide during the early years that we played together.
And then the shoe went to the other foot as the years passed, and Pat
has become something of a trailblazer for music technology
and knowing recording studio technology, especially, and for creating new--
new kinds of music and composition in the jazz area.
So when we've done projects, you know, more recently
I feel like I'm learning from him new things, new tricks, new concepts
all the time.
So we've stayed really good friends, and very--
have a very productive musical collaboration to this day.
That's great.
Do you have any idea how many recordings that have
been released that you've played on?
Well, I know how many I've been the leader on.
And that's 61--
66.
66.
OK.
And I've been on many other records as a guest.
Mhm.
You know, as a side player.
And so in some cases, just one or two songs.
In some cases, the whole record, but it wasn't my record.
So I totally lost count--
Right.
Right.
--of those kind of sessions that I've done over the years.
And you know, that's my--
there's my legacy.
All those years of cranking out those records.
Do you have any idea of what your final song will be?
The song you're going to play and end the tour with?
Oh, gosh.
No idea.
No idea.
So--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
--grand scheme.
No.
[LAUGHS] I know what the last gig will be, but I don't know what music will--
we choose different songs every night.
Right.
And we rearrange the order, and so on.
So, at this point, you know, I have no idea what will pop into our minds when
we're thinking about the set-list just before we go on that--
though I know the last gig in the United States
will be in the city of Indianapolis, in my home state, interestingly enough.
Oh, that's marvelous.
But thinking about that, what is the song that you are most proud of
like being your contribution to the world?
I don't know.
I'm not a real active composer.
So I can't say that, oh, well, there's a certain song.
Like Chick might pick Spain, one of his really popular songs,
for instance, or La Fiesta, and say, well, that's probably
the one people will remember me by, and so on.
So I don't-- I don't have anything as a composer that is that widely played
by other musicians and so on.
So I really don't think there is any one particular track or one
particular tune.
And if I was asked to pick a certain record that I've made, that if I was--
you know, it had to only--
pull out one and say, here, judge me by this one,
it would be certainly one of the records I made with Chick.
Possibly the first one, Crystal Silence, or possibly the last one we did,
called Hot House.
But it would be one of those performances which just happen to--
happens to be, you know, among my favorites.
Right.
That's really something that like you would point to a recent one.
I think that's really telling of, you know, your own musical progression.
Rather than something like that you did in your early years.
Well, it's a mix.
And if I go through the whole list, some of them,
I'll say, well, I don't think that one has worn too well.
On the other hand, you know, this one or that one,
you know, I think is still really relevant today and I listen to it,
hear-- my playing really sounds ideal.
This is what I would like to be known for.
You never know when you make the record really
how well it's going to hold up stylistically, and that sort of thing.
So you can only judge that, you know, a couple of decades later, I guess.
Right.
Well, you know, when we do think about your more recent working and, you know,
after coming out in the '90s, did you find
that sort of liberation in your personal life changed your playing at all?
I don't think so.
I mean, people do ask me that.
And certainly, it felt liberating personally
speaking, to have that out in the open and, you know,
comfortable to deal with.
But I can't say that it seemed to have any impact on my playing.
Right.
I mean, I--
I kind of asked myself the question, and looked at what I'd-- was--
had been doing during--
that was about 25 years ago now.
Yeah.
And I, yeah, it doesn't look like anything--
any sudden sea change took place.
So--
Has anything in your life changed the way you play?
More than just hearing what other people are playing, or--
I don't think so.
I think it's been a very steady evolution.
Mhm.
And as you say, I'm primarily-- you're influenced
by the people you're playing with.
Right.
It's a very social kind of art form.
Not like a painter who goes into a room by himself
and makes a painting, or a book--
or a novelist, or something.
With music, it's a very much a collaborative art form.
And you learn from and are influenced by the people that you--
that you work with.
So that's been the biggest contributing factor.
And, of course, I've played a lot with some
of the same musicians over the years.
So there's been a lot of continuity there, as well.
I love the fact that your first Grammy though was a solo release.
[LAUGHS] There's something almost ironic about that.
Yeah, that was-- that--
[LAUGHS] it was.
And I didn't-- I wasn't even expecting-- you know,
in those days the Grammys were not a big televised thing.
And I didn't even know I was nominated for a Grammy.
And then I won and they sent it to my manager's office.
So when I opened the box in the mail and found out it was a Grammy,
it was like a big surprise.
And I thought, wow, you know, how about that?
So I got more active in the Grammy organization after that.
And-- and, of course, they became a much bigger deal in the next decade
when they went to the live television broadcast, and so on.
Right.
But-- BUT that first one, yeah, definitely was a surprise.
Right.
Now the touring part of your life may be over,
but will you still do occasional one offs?
No.
I'm planning to take a complete break.
Wow.
Now I may change my mind at some point and decide to re-enter the music field
and, you know, do some touring, or recording, or something.
But at this point, I feel like I want to make a change in my life.
I'm 74 now.
And I know that there are musicians who continue on into their 80s and 90s
even, until they can hardly play at all anymore, in many cases.
I definitely don't want to do that.
So I've been kind of planning this for a couple years
now, that this would be a good time to take a step back and see what--
see what life is like without the vibraphone
and without a-- without a schedule in front of me.
What is the longest you have been without the mallets in your hand?
Oh, well, a couple of times I've taken like several months off.
Right.
Once because over an extended-- recovering
from an illness, and another time, last summer,
I just decided to take the summer off.
And so I didn't play from about May until October.
And I didn't miss it.
You know, I was busy, you know, enjoying the summer
and doing vacation-like things.
And it wasn't like I was pining away for when can I play again?
When is the next gig?
And so on.
Like I say, I didn't really miss it.
So that kind of assured me that it wouldn't be a major challenge
to make the change in my--
in my routine.
Right.
Now do you ceremoniously put something over the vibraphone?
Is it in storage?
It will-- it will go into storage.
Wow.
That's a commitment.
Yeah, it is.
But like I say, we'll see.
Who knows?
I have friends-- some friends who tell me, you know, it won't last.
Give it a year or something and you'll be back doing it again.
Right at this point.
I don't think so, but, you know, who could say?
Right.
Will you still be teaching for Berklee Online?
I am still teaching for the moment.
OK.
That is also something that I suspect I will also drop at some point, if I'm--
don't go back into playing more.
Eventually, I'll feel that I'm not as connected to the music
as I was when I was still an active player.
And that will make the teaching feel a little more disconnected from what's
going on out in the music world.
So I haven't made a final decision about that yet.
There you have it, folks, jazz legend Gary Burton.
He hangs up the mallets and puts away the vibraphone.
Puts it in storage, as a matter of fact, as he says, after March 17th.
And not long after that, he may be signing off
from teaching music at Berklee Online.
So, yeah, get while the getting is good.
And it is real good, with Gary Burton's jazz improvisation course.
You can learn about all our courses online.Berklee.edu,
and you can visit me at online.Berklee.edu/takenote.
Thank you so much for listening.
Talk to you soon.
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