Dave grusin st. elsewhere theme song10/31/2023 He was seriously interested in finding songwriters. I did the score for my old friend Sydney Pollack who I'd done a lot of films with and he thought maybe we should have a song. There was an outlet for us to get these kinds of records out and have a home for them in some ways.ĭG: The backstory in a lot of these things, particularly the film stuff, seems to happen by accident, for instance, Tootsie. It seriously was a good thing for us commercially. So I think that was part of it, and the sudden advent of smooth jazz radio stations and so forth in those years was incredible. It makes it simple for them to talk to people about what they're doing and what they're selling. It wasn't a one-shot deal, and it took a number of years for it to develop into that point, but marketing people and people in the business - almost any kind of business - they love titles they can grab a hold of and categorize. Maybe that's how we ended up with "smooth jazz"?ĭG: Yeah, that's a very good analysis, I think. But when you look at the production values of what was going on in the eighties - a lot of the new synthesizers, the emulator, all those new samplers - I have a feeling that the jazz of the time embraced those sonics to become more marketable, even aiming at being a form of pop since everyone else was successful using them. MR: The term is almost a derogatory one at this point in the same way that one would say "singer-songwriter," and the like, with corresponding stereotypes. Larry, being the kind of Type A he is, went up to Clive and said, "We have a production company and you ought to sign us to produce new artists for your label." So that was how that started, in terms of the record company. One time, Larry was on an airplane and Clive Davis was on the plane. It was so much fun that from there, we got involved with a lot of young artists like this. Our first artist was a guitar player named Earl Klugh, and this was not for GRP, this was for another label, but it was the first time Larry and I worked together strictly as a production team. Anyway, I got him to go on the road with us and we played a lot of gigs together in those days, and quite a few years later, we formed a production company to produce albums. He was playing with something called The Newport Youth Band, which was an incredible all-star young band affiliated with the Newport Jazz Festival. ![]() ![]() When I finally talked Andy into letting us take a drummer along, it was Larry, so that's when I met him. I was a music director for Andy, and Larry was a nineteen-year-old drummer. If anybody remembers, back in the sixties, there was and is a singer named Andy Williams. DG: Yes, that predated the recording thing by quite a few years.
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