This longtime bassist says it's important for musicians to study the culture that bred jazz

Bassist Christian McBride plays the Mesa Arts Center on Thursday — he’s performing with fellow bassist Edgar Meyer.

Their show will blend jazz, classical and bluegrass. It’s a fitting mix for McBride, who’s been at the forefront of jazz innovation since he broke onto the scene as a teenager. Once referred to as one of jazz’s “young lions,” he’s now an undisputed elder statesman of the genre — though at 53, he’s still very much in his prime.

McBride doesn’t just shape the sound of modern jazz with his bass — he’s also the host of the long-running public radio show “Jazz Night in America” on WBGO, and served for many years as the artistic director of the annual Newport Jazz Festival.

He’s toured and recorded with just about every famous name in jazz history, and The Show spoke with him recently about how he approaches his collaborations.

Full conversation

SAM DINGMAN: If I could, I wanted to actually start off on a on a personal note to talk about what is truly one of my favorite songs, which is you and Joe Henderson playing Billy Strayhorn's song "Isfahan" on the 1992 album "Lush Life." That track is just you on the bass and Joe on tenor sax.

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Can I ask you what, if anything, you remember about recording that particular song?

CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE: You know, we recorded that album in the fall of '91, so I was 19 at the time.

DINGMAN: Wow.

MCBRIDE: I go back and listen to that now and I feel like I sound like I'm 19. Like a lot of the stuff I played on that track, I mean, I would never play that now. And it's just like, oh, I wish I could have that back because really I know more now, you know.

DINGMAN: Well, I'm sorry to invoke that memory for you.

MCBRIDE: I'm sure most people, you know, would want to go back and redo things they did at age 19.

DINGMAN: Of course, of course, I know I would. But I was thinking, you know, getting ready to talk to you today that, you know, I've never really sat down and thought to myself, like, what is it that I love so much about this particular recording? And there are many things, but one of them is that the sound of you on the bass is such a big part of it. It's not a rhythm instrument in that song. It's like you and Joe making this harmony together.

I guess it made me want to ask you, what was it that drew you originally to playing the bass, to the sound of the bass? And what was your relationship towards the idea of it having a distinct sound and not just being a rhythm instrument?

MCBRIDE: Well, if you're talking specifically leading up to the moment that I was 19, I mean, none of that was in my head at the time. I was much more of a pragmatic thinker. It was, you know, play what you need to play to make the bandleader happy, yeah.

It frustrates me sometimes when I hear young musicians kind of putting unneeded obstacles in their way. I'm not sure where this whole idea of finding your voice and kind of finding your individuality came from. Just simply play the gig. Somebody calls you for a gig, play what they ask you to play, period. You know, all that stuff about finding your voice and finding individuality, you already have it. But you can't accept it until you've done until you've practiced your trade for a long time.

So, yeah, I mean, I never really had those thoughts about individuality or kind of thinking of the voice as a rhythm or a non-rhythm instrument. You know, I realize what my primary role is as a bass player. So as long as I'm doing that, I will always work, you know, and if I'm, if I'm in a situation where the bass is sort of like a second melodic instrument, then I'll make it a second melodic instrument, you know, but only when that, only when the music tells you to do that.

DINGMAN: That's very interesting. So if I'm hearing you right, it's not that you maybe thought in that moment like, ah, this is my chance to step into the spotlight.

MCBRIDE: It's more like, oh, not at all.

DINGMAN: The job is play harmony.

MCBRIDE: That's right. Yeah, that's right.

DINGMAN: So that makes me think of something else. I heard you say once, that I really love, you said your only goal was to, quote, "play with as many bad cats as possible. "And I'm wondering what was important to you about that. Not just listening to these jazz players and absorbing their work, being influenced by it, but finding a way to actually play with them. What's the meaningful difference there for you?

MCBRIDE: I mean, you can't get better at anything unless you're around people who do what you want to do better than you, you know?

So as a musician, I wasn't afraid to get embarrassed. My desire to get better was bigger than my pride. And I think that's a problem with some people. You know, they're afraid to fail. And trust me, I so understand that. But at some point, you have to figure out what's more important.

DINGMAN: It feels like there's a real lesson in this that you're saying where if you approach the opportunity to play with people like this, not as a chance to kind of strut your stuff and more as a way of kind of challenging yourself. Like, yeah, yeah, and can I give this person what they need?

MCBRIDE: Yeah.

DINGMAN: Not just make them notice me.

MCBRIDE: Bass players are like, you know, EMT workers, you know, you know, we're the engine room.

DINGMAN: Well, so what has that looked like for you in your own playing? Like, I think of the Five Piece Band with John McLaughlin and Chick Corea.

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I think of the Philadelphia Experiment with Questlove.

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I realize those records are still, broadly speaking, within the jazz idiom in terms of fusion, but there's a lot of, like, prog rock and funk influences in there.

When you come back to spaces where you are playing more straight ahead jazz, what do you feel like you bring back with you from those contexts where you're playing less traditional forms of jazz? Do you feel like it informs your quote, unquote, "more straight ahead playing"?

MCBRIDE: Probably not really. OK, I'm not going to go play a gig with Chick Corea's trio and then say, let me figure out a way to put this in there. No, I'm not going to do that. Again, that comes from that play the gig mentality that I have. You know, I don't really try to bring anything from anywhere unless I think it fits.

DINGMAN: That's really fascinating, I have to say, Christian. I mean, it seems like there's this recurring theme in a lot of what you've been saying that I really admire, where even though you are undoubtedly a legend of this music, the subtext of a lot of what you're saying is, it's not about me.

You said once that a great artist, quote, "has one foot in the future, one foot in the past, and their body in the present." So where does your future foot want jazz to walk towards?

MCBRIDE: I think the biggest thing that makes me raise an eyebrow is that while we now respect jazz and what it does on a musical level, it's important to also study the culture which breeds it.

I've always made this joke, which isn't actually really a joke, that back when they had the Thelonious Monk International Competition, I thought if Thelonious Monk were alive and sent in an audition tape for his own competition, he probably wouldn't even make the semifinals.

DINGMAN: Huh.

MCBRIDE: Did Charles Mingus have the chops to be able to play what would be demanded of a lot of these competitions now and say, oh, well, you know, the worship part of jazz says, oh, yeah, Mingus could do anything. Oh yeah, Coltrane could have done anything? Well, no, it's like if you want to really, really, really embrace jazz, you need to embrace the culture from which it comes from.

And that means a culture of a people of lesser means, the struggle and the grit, the lack of reference that a lot of those musicians had from the '40s and '50s. Like, see, musicians now, we sit up here and we judge who was doing what and what this person was doing, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, we get to go back and study all of these records. And part of our judgment of younger musicians is how many records have they studied?

Monk didn't have to do that. Dizzy didn't have to do that. Bird didn't have to do that. Horace Silver didn't have to do that. I just want to make sure that we don't sanitize the history of the music too much, you know?

DINGMAN: So let me make sure I understand this. You're saying that guys like Monk and Silver, they didn't have the means that people now have, that some people now have, to go to a fancy, you know, jazz university and study with, really pay all this money to study with really famous teachers and buy all the records.

MCBRIDE: That's right. I wonder if there can be a way that there's a part of jazz curriculum where you leave your students actually in the dark. Like, you kind of have to almost make them find their own way. Like, OK, like, you have the teacher in the room, you say, you look at the student, say, OK, what are you going to play?

Let's play "Bolivia." One student says, well, I don't know it. Great. Play it anyway, right. And you make them learn it on the spot, right.

DINGMAN: Talk about not being afraid to make mistakes.

MCBRIDE: Right. There's a part of this music that you got to fend for yourself.

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DINGMAN: Christian McBride will be at the Mesa Arts Center on Thursday night. Christian, thank you.

MCBRIDE: Oh, it's a pleasure to speak with you.