hello welcome to another episode of just talk today we have a very special guest miss the mickey bass mickey has is a very well known jazz musician he's been around for a while even though he looks like he's twenty five don't let it deceive you he's been around for a long time so mickey how are you today i'm very well thank you thank you for having me tell us something about you know your past experience just give us a brief overview of some of the people that you played with while when i when i came to new york in actually one thousand nine hundred four i was very lucky because i had the opportunity to work with jackie i work with jackie that kind of opened up of the doors for me but actually my very first gig in in the york was that the true hotel they had a ballroom upstairs and a producer jim harrison it was one of his first productions and he used to do these jam sessions up there so my first gig because i was staying with which warren who was the basis with the commodious mug at that time and you know he had a nervous breakdown two weeks after i came to stay with him and went back to d c where he was originally from so he told me if anybody called over the phone looking for a bass player tell me i was a bass player and to take the gig so of course a lot of people  piano player was barry harris so that was my very first gig and then after that i got the gig working with tech and clean and then after that i had worked with a very green at  english on drums who was a regular drummer so after we did a couple monday nights they gave us two weeks in there well the two weeks we opposite us was bud powell upon his triumphant well i guess it is the economy more than anything else because you know i guess the prices that people are getting to date or a lot higher than they were back then so it doesn't lend itself you know i guess t people's means to be able to afford to go to places like that is and how does that if it is musicians now if this so so there are fewer places for them to actually play anything like that well it's kind of six in one and  half a dozen in the other because the powers that be in like basically across the country and jazz as we know it was there were there was a in every black neighborhood across the northern tier of this country there was that bands six nights a week and so that's how bands were able to tour across the country well the scenario now is that most of those places and the cities  the black neighborhoods look like europe after world war one yeah i mean world war two they're all bombed out the condom is messed up and so consequently most  minorities can't afford to cover charges because it was basically a part of their whole don't make up in a reasonable drinks reasonable but all that stuff was really the economy as you know in the tickets are more expensive oh yeah yeah but you know but they're you know basically it's funny when you have events that are free events like jazz mobility grants to in the summer that's the problem so so so but but that's what makes a difference because the value with this music is it would evolve to is just that most people who are culturally oriented appreciate it and they support it but we're all from his early beginnings none of those people can afford to support the music for the most part unless it is a free event i know b b king is it and i guess about five years before he passed he said it was a white audience is he would be out of work well when i work with are blakey are breaking us to tell us eighty five percent of jazz audiences are white people i said he was crazy you know  on the map but you know but that would that was a far cry and i book houston person and added jones and they sold out every show and so basically they're kind of because they have a big black following  you know they kind of support it but see the cover charge isn't really that high it was maybe six to ten dollars a year with well i produced a series there from one nine six through two thousand and one two thousand and two when they got money from the upper manhattan power mazola to refurbish it and so basically you know the whole thing about the whole industry though that's not that expensive and that's how i try to keep the prices down because i learned from a friend of mine his name is larry heller he used on the westin cafe that he used to have six dollars cover charge and people would come  frequently get up in volume yeah but you know it's a good side positive side we're talking about because it shows how universal jazz is if the audience is that supported jazz originally you know african american primarily audiences and now basically culturally young black kids today fortunately when they took the call to riches programs out of the inner city schools which are predominantly black and hispanic  i was teaching in a program in spanish harlem and to elementary schools and that's what i was teaching these kids but basically they came up because they never learned that they came up with what they call hi principles that have eluded us you know that you know if it wasn't for so there are studies programs as we know today there would not be enough student body to keep a department open and most of the colleges and universities in this country and the other thing you know when young people african american latino people is no place for them to really hear it it's not on the radio there's one that's on mistaken is one jazz radio station between new york and jersey daily video right right that's why they they took a call from richard programs of the inner city schools but the why suburban schools helos proposal sure so basically those kids grew up i mean it's a funny thing because culturally that there with scientific proof that classical music and jazz music help the higher and higher thinking areas of the brain develop and that and it is so much research and they know all this stuff but yet they keep taking it out of the urban s as you said you can't help but think that there's some most of this is out of design here exactly because the i mean that they figure that you had you know as far as after tuesday's insert kids who have aptitude for arts music and drama do much better in the school everybody's talking about stem you know science technology engineering and engineering in meth and their schools and the like in montclair new jersey which is a suburban area they're now calling it steam so it's science technology art performances and list these kids that are future know how to do with new world part of the music so that was a part of a give back that we had to have culturally to be able to sustain our cultural heritage the other thing is if the at the historic black colleges were a place we'd never have to worry about anything but because jazz as we know it has been demonized by the black churches for room one because they always called it the devil's music a whorehouse m as in my practice room and howard and i had to pay for that practice wow so i mean that i mean some of it i mean it's better now because they all have just studies programs i was going to say we should go do a show is explain yourself but one thing i see now that is good in harlem that i see young black kids care and musical instruments home from school i haven't seen in over thirty years that's great so that's one part of it and that's where it has to happen and we need to have afterschool programs for these to to learn cultural heritage so many young black kids seem to be devoid of their own cultural heritage and that's a travesty that's our fault it is because you know the jewish people have jewish schools in new york the port is a large portuguese community in newark new jersey so they have a portuguese afterschool program to teach the language and the culture asians do not you know really i'm sure he didn't have all the instrumental he couldn't do everything all you need to do here but see you know the see somebody has to you know make that step forward to be able to sustain the music the culture and the cultural heritage that's our  great culture you know i mean you know when i went to howard dean lawson had a renowned choir toward the world and europeans just don't when they went to europe you know you have a great wealth and you're just as and as to what we do oh you said it's so close to us like you know people take it for granted i think it's always going to be that you know you know we have to really change those parameters and you know give it back to our youth you know especially after school programs or i mean kids can learn so much i mean one of the major things is they're saying that the gross national product in a black neighborhood is something marijuana is required these kids will sell drugs and you know they won't read a book the roman colleges are down fifty percent for black males that women are going isco so that that's a travesty we need to be able to give these people their cultural heritage back because you know always the same with them if you black people are too stupid to know what your cultural heritage is were opportunity or place or go where they can develop a whole culture are one of the things well not one good thing spike lee did a lot of good things but one of the things he always did he always has yes as a music in his movies he would have other music in n l but jazz was always the base terence blanchard did most of the music for his movies of late yeah but his father who was a great basis writer orchestrator and arranger wrote all the music's musical scores to she's got it heritage and you know it was a big band years ago called the collective black artists all that kind of stuff just felt fell by the wayside and i was a stake in recently like jazz interactions which was joe newman  went after joe died she hooked up with her old nicholas we were talking about before so i mean those kinds of organizations were happening all over the place our guest has become international new music everybody every continent you can think of they play and yeah so how exactly but basically jazz was picked up by the europeans after world war one during world war one when  well over there and you know world war one oh you know that yeah you know bricktop was a black woman who had a restaurant and was a singer so all that stuff is where the europeans first got introduced to charlie parker went to europe you know with strings and all that kind of stuff that you know kind of when he came back and they took straying away and he's kind of depressed them but the but see the you know that period the big period we would have to stop to start with bebop ok so right now i want people to see this is a cd that you've done and it's called sentimental mood we don't have a whole lot of time to talk about it but we are going to go out with one of the