A Conversation with Earl Klugh – HuffPost 7.26.13

Mike Ragogna: Earl, thank you very much for the time that you’re taking for this interview.

Earl Klugh: Oh yeah, this is great. I remember speaking with you some time ago.

MR: Yep, I remember, it was for your collection. Anyway, let’s just jump into your new album, HandPicked. How did you handpick these tracks?

EK: [laughs] I tell you what, I’ve been making CDs and records for so long that it was just a little bit of a natural evolution. I had done a couple of solo albums over the years and there’s quite a span between all of them, but I really wanted to do something that would be a little bigger than just a solo album. I came up with the idea of contacting some of my favorite players and trying to put a series of duets together. I got pretty lucky, I think. It ended up being a really good mixture of eclectic things. We have Vince Gill, who is on one of the tracks, “All I Have To Do Is Dream” and we have Bill Frisell, and we did a duet of “Blue Moon.” That rendition kind of sounds like a fifties speakeasy or something.

MR: It’s got that slight, sultry swing going.

EK: Yeah. So that’s all good, and over the last couple of years, I made a new friend, Jake Shimabukuro, I’m sure you know who he is. He plays the ukulele and is just an incredible musician. This was a more eclectic album, not like a top ten album.

MR: Earl, HandPicked seems like a tribute to an era.

EK: Yes, yes very much.

MR: This album is like a musical photo album. What were some of your influences from that time?

EK: It started with Chet Atkins. When I’m thinking about my guitar records, there were a lot of things early in my life that made an impact on me. As I progressed and started becoming a better and better player, I started finding my own favorites, like we all do. Looking back over some of the stuff, it’s very much a small portrait of what I like and songs that made an impression on me as a young child, then moving ahead with my relationship with Chet Atkins. This takes me back to really early times and it was a lot of fun to look at these pieces and not only think of the impact on me, but also to look over a thirty-something year or more career. So this, I thought, was a really good recording because I thought all of the music was great and I think it really fits an era…a couple of eras, actually.

MR: Yeah. The puzzle pieces that fit together best for me are “Alfie,” “Cast Your Fate To The Wind,” “Going Out Of My Head,” “‘Round Midnight,”… This isn’t your first solo album where you’re playing guitar against a very stripped down production, but you approached it differently than your other solo work. What was your mission when you recorded this?

EK: Real emphasis on the guitar, just guitars. So it worked out very, very well. I’d been kind of looking to do another solo album. During the course of things, one of the first things that happened was when I met Jake, we were doing a boat cruise together. We were playing on the boat and we got the idea of maybe putting some music together. That stuck, so we’d go back to the rooms and practice and play songs together and struck up a really good friendship. That kind of sparked my imagination. I was hoping that maybe I could do another solo record but with some guest stars. It worked out well for me because a lot of these songs I intended to record and never did. So this kind of brings it all full-circle now. I just really think that the whole thing of the fifties and the sixties classics, and then you move on into the seventies and eighties songs, it’s a good little musical journey, and it’s a total guitar album, which I really like. I think this is one of my better offerings.

MR: By the way, if Don Felder, Glenn Frey and Don Henley ever heard your version of their “Hotel California,” I think that they might rethink their own version.

EK: [laughs] Yeah, that was fun, I’m telling you!

MR: Let’s talk about your version of Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate To The Wind.” Guaraldi is somebody who became an icon of his era for his very recognizable cocktail style, along with Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, and the rest for their approaches. Who do you think are some of the “new” or future iconic jazz artists of today?

EK: Well, Jake definitely falls in that category for me. He’s willing to take on all comers. He’s just an amazing musician, just a lot of fun to be around, and he’s always looking for the next thing, and that appeals to me a lot with my career as well. He’s the kind of person who’s not going to turn down any takes; he’s very solid in what he does. He’s just a great guy and he’s going to have one heck of a career ahead of him, that’s for sure.

MR: It seems like on of today’s jazz icons would be, let’s see…you! Among others, of course…

EK: Oh, okay. [laughs] That’s awfully nice.

MR: But it’s awfully true. And as a mentor, aren’t you looking at how you’re creating music and how you’re passing it on at this point?

EK: Yes. Absolutely. The student becomes the teacher, you know?

MR: Yeah. Tony Bennett had an interesting take on mentoring. He continues to give a lot of kudos to Frank Sinatra for being his mentor, but he also felt like he was eternally a student. I imagine you do too.

EK: Well, yeah, I am definitely eternally a student. I’m always trying to figure out something new, write a new song or get together with different groups. It’s really a lot of fun. It’s what really makes stuff work. So many things can happen if you just open yourself up to some different types of things. Once I did the duet with Vince Gill, we became pretty good friends over the last few weeks. I went to Nashville and he has this incredible band called The Time Jumpers. There are probably fifteen or sixteen people on the stage playing and doing all of this fifties rock and country all mixed together from that era. Very authentic stuff. It’s just such fun. That’s what I really enjoy, getting to know something that hopefully I can wing my way through.

MR: [laughs] Here’s something for you…what’s your advice for new artists?

EK: I tell you what. I think that things are really looking up from my perspective as far as music. You have all types of great jazz artists now, you have really great country music, there’s always Broadway and all of that stuff. I try to pull from all of those sorts of places. When I was younger, I had a cousin who would go to see Broadway plays years ago and she would bring back albums for me to listen to and that’s how I got interested in things like West Side Story and that type of stuff. You’ve got to keep trying to pull something out of your hat. [laughs]

MR: Earl, you “hand picked” this track list. Got a specific story or little memory attached to any of these songs that might be a fun anecdote?

EK: The ones that I really picked up are the ones from the sixties, like “More And More Amor.” That’s the Herb Alpert one. It’s got such a great melody. That shaped a lot about the direction I was going in. It was kind of pop music, but the songs are very sophisticated. I have always liked that. I was doing all of my recording in Herb Alpert’s studio back in 1980 and I’d actually just moved to California for a couple of years and I still had my home, but I was in California eight months out of the year for a couple of years and this was great. I actually had a chance to spend time with him in the studio. I’ve had an awful lot of really great things happen over the course of my career. I’m kind of laid back now, but I was pretty aggressive sometimes when I was trying to get somebody to listen to one of my songs. Not bad aggressive, but you’ve got to make yourself noticed.

MR: Speaking of getting noticed, you’ll be touring to support this album, right?

EK: Oh yeah, absolutely.

MR: And that includes the Smooth Jazz Cruise ’13?

EK: You know, I think so. I’m bad on most things but I’m pretty sure it is because I have a cruise coming up, so that’ll be good.

MR: In October, maybe?

EK: Yeah.

MR: Also I want to throw out there that we’re all anxiously waiting for that next collaboration with Bob James.

EK: [laughs] Okay. Bob and I have done a lot of stuff. Right after the first of the year, we were in Indonesia together, but it didn’t work out the way that a lot of people would have wanted because Bob was there with his band and I was there just for an event. But we still had a lot of fun sitting in on each other’s shows and everything.

MR: All right, I think I will bore you no more, but I’ve been asking another obnoxious question lately and I think I’m going to annoy you with it. What is something about Earl Klugh that we don’t know?

EK: Okay. From this I guess you could take away that I’m pretty much an analog man in a digital world. I’m still old school. I cling to that. I would have tubes. I wouldn’t have digital stuff.

MR: And that’s how you recorded this last album, isn’t it?

EK: Yes.

MR: Nice. You were painstakingly trying to get the best sounds during the process, I imagine.

EK: Yes, absolutely. I tell you what, everything has gotten so much better, it’s more of a relief. It’s like guitar strings. Classical strings. For years, there was nothing to stop the squeakiness of the strings and it just sat there for years like that and you would cringe when you would play softly because you’re hearing these squeaks. But the strings have almost become a non-problem because the companies have done wonders with everything now, and you can play and move your hands across the strings and you’re not carrying what sounds like somebody zipping up a jacket. That’s how it sounds to me, and it always makes you kind of have to pull back from playing full out, but so many things have happened now to make it so much better that it’s really great. That’s my one thing that I’m extremely happy about and it’s only occurred over the last couple of years, no squeak in a nylon string.

MR: How do you feel about the state of jazz?

EK: I think it’s doing just fine. There are an awful lot of things going on and I try to keep up with everything that’s coming out. There are a lot of really great things that are coming on in jazz and music, all at the same time. I think that we’re in a pretty good era right now. Nice, melodic music, exciting ways to go about putting a group together…. Everything goes now. It’s not like you’re in a box because of this or this or this. Everybody’s having a lot of success with really playing the music that they want to play as opposed to record companies and people who tell you what to do. I don’t see very much of that at all anymore. It seems like when I get together with the record companies. Now there’s never a thing of, “You shouldn’t do this,” or “You shouldn’t do that.” It’s very open and I hope it stays that way because that’s when music is at its best.

MR: Very nice. I loved this interview, thank you very much as always, Earl.

EK: Thank you.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne