SKF NOTE: North Texas State University offers this one-hour Elvin Jones jazz lecture online. I started watching from the beginning and couldn’t stop until I had watched the entire 60-minute video.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to promote the video by embedding it, with a link to the original, on my blog. So I’ve edited this clip for promotional purposes. If anyone connected with this video objects, please let me know, I will remove the video.
My hope, as I say, is that this excerpt will persuade viewers to visit the Jazz Lecture Series page and watch Elvin’s full verbal and musical performance.
SKF NOTE: This final part of my Feb. 28, 1983 Jimmy Webb interview is the shortest part. This is Webb completing his thought on the cyclical nature of the music/recording business.
There is also passing reference here to music Webb composed and arranged for an album by Art Garfunkel and Amy Grant called “The Animal’s Christmas.” Released on Columbia Records that album is still available.
A huge thank you to Jim Keltner who arranged for me to interview Jimmy Webb. And another huge thank you to Jimmy Webb for saying “yes.”
SKF NOTE: This third of four parts of my Feb. 28, 1983 interview with Jimmy Webb picks up the story of Ringo Starr’s frustration with the producer of Webb’s “Land’s End” album spending days trying to get a drum sound.
“Angel Heart,” Webb’s current album at the time of this interview, was recorded in three to four days, and he talks about that. The backup band for “Angel Heart” is Toto.
And our conversation covers lots of ground about the changing record industry.
“It seems we are at the end of an era. A lot of great careers are seemingly past their prime and leveling out. I feel a hush before another great boon of some kind,” Webb said.
Finally, Webb shares what he said is “the epitome of my philosophy of what it actually takes to be a songwriter and a composer.”
SKF NOTE: This Pt 2 segment of Jimmy Webb’s Feb. 28, 1983 interview picks up where Pt 1 left off. I just flipped the audio cassette and began taping again.
Here Jimmy Webb talks more about his songwriting; about how he writes songs.
Also, the conversation reminds us of how digital music and the internet are such game changers. Webb talks here, in 1983, about the frustrations of a songwriter with a record label unwilling to do much to promote his newest album.
This interview was originally for a short piece in Mix magazine. This is the first time the full audio interview has been made public.
SKF NOTE: This Feb. 28, 1983 interview with Jimmy Webb was for a short piece in Mix magazine. Unfortunately, the magazine editors, in my opinion, rewrote and botched the manuscript I sent them.
Although I’ve posted on my blog a few excerpts from this interview, this is the first time the full audio interview is available to the public. This is interview Part 1 of 4, conducted at the Webb home in Tuxedo Park, NY.
In this segment, Webb talks about quitting college to become a songwriter. He insists he had no musical gift as a child.
After dropping out of school he started knocking on record company doors, including Motown, where one of his songs made it onto The Supremes’s Christmas album.
You’ll hear about Webb’s initial meeting with legendary drummer Hal Blaine who went on to record on some of Webb’s hit records.
Webb tells the origin of the “Morse Code” intro to Glen Campbell’s recording of “Wichita Lineman.“
Met Hal Blaine on an early recording session. Blaine encouraged Webb to “stick with it.”
Webb talks about help he received from Marty Paich and other recording studio pros.
“I should have worked harder,” Webb said of his early years. “One of the biggest mistakes I made is assuming I had the magic formula, and anytime I wrote a song it was going to be a hit.”
Part 1 ends with Webb talking about his latest album at the time, “Angel Heart,” which, he says, “Is the best album I’ve ever made.”
But in 1983 he was still figuring out how to successfully move from being a writer of entertaining songs to being a writer of socially responsible music.
Scott K Fish 
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