While driving home from a family trip I listened to Marc Maron’s conversation with Herb Alpert who shared some great stories about Chet Baker. Specifically that Chet could not read music or interpret written chord changes. He (apparently) didn’t know a Cmaj7 from a hieroglyphic. That, obviously, did not stop Chet from making beautiful music. One thing this reminds me of is how easy it is to get caught up in the many components of learning jazz improvisation, and forget that first and foremost, we need to be listeners first!
Here’s Herb discussing Chet:
“Jazz is a difficult language. Unless you can play into that language, it doesn’t sound good. It sounds really corny.”
Herb Alpert
