SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
When Joe Alterman was a baby, there was no question about what he was going to end up doing, at least according to his father.
JOE ALTERMAN: My dad said, right when I was born, he saw how long my fingers were. And he just said, this guy's going to be a piano player.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOE ALTERMAN'S "THE UPSIDE OF DOWN")
PFEIFFER: Turns out dad was right. Alterman grew up in Atlanta, studied jazz piano at NYU and has gone on to have a successful career playing and composing around the world. He's performed at the Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center. He's released multiple albums, and he now hosts a podcast from NPR member station WABE called The Upside of Jazz. When I spoke with Alterman earlier this week, he explained how he started playing in the first place.
ALTERMAN: I don't know why, but when I was around 3 or 4, I asked my parents for piano lessons. And I wanted to quit, but my parents wouldn't let me. So from 3 or 4 till 11 or 12, I was taking classical piano and always getting in trouble for what they call changing notes.
PFEIFFER: Improvising with their sheet music?
ALTERMAN: Exactly (laughter). Yeah. I'd hear a little variation on a melody and want to try it out, but that wasn't encouraged at the time. And, thankfully, I found Bluegrass music, specifically a song by Doc Watson, the guitarist. It's called "Freight Train Boogie," and all I wanted to do was learn how to play that on the guitar.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREIGHT TRAIN BOOGIE")
DOC WATSON: (Singing) Now, Casey Jones, he was a mighty man, and now he's resting in the promised land. The only kind of music he could understand was a big eight-wheeler under his command. He made a freight train boogie.
ALTERMAN: So I got guitar lessons on the condition that I kept at my piano ones. And my guitar teacher - he made me realize that boogie-woogie music, or boogie music, was written for the piano, and I had already been taking piano. So that was kind of what got me, you know, back into the piano. But at the same time, I loved this bluegrass music, and my dad was getting me all these records of jazz musicians. And a lot of the records included songs that I was used to hearing in a Bluegrass context. But hearing the way in which the jazz musicians played these melodies or interpreted the melodies kind of blew my mind. So it wasn't really the solos that drew me at first. It was the tasty ways they interpreted the melodies. So that's really how I got to the genre.
PFEIFFER: (Laughter) Tell me about some of the jazz music your dad introduced you to that most grabbed you and made you think, I really like this.
ALTERMAN: Well, so my dad - he introduced me to the music of Ramsey Lewis, which blew my mind.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAMSEY LEWIS' "WADE IN THE WATER")
ALTERMAN: Coincidentally, my dad introduced me to Ramsey's music, and I got to introduce my dad to Ramsey. I was very...
PFEIFFER: 'Cause you brought him on your podcast.
ALTERMAN: No, actually, Ramsey - sadly, he passed away before I got to do the podcast.
PFEIFFER: Ah.
ALTERMAN: But he was one of my piano mentors, and I was his opening act for years. So it was a treat. My dad introduced me to so much music I loved, and I got to introduce my dad to many of those same musicians.
(SOUNDBITE OF RAMSEY LEWIS' "WADE IN THE WATER")
PFEIFFER: Jazz is a type of music that I think really divides people. Some people love it. Some people find it very alienating and kind of dissonant. How do you have conversations on your podcast that will appeal to a broad audience when there are such wide feelings about jazz?
ALTERMAN: First of all, I agree with a lot of the people that are alienated with the music.
PFEIFFER: Oh, really?
ALTERMAN: Not everyone. But, I mean, I feel like there's so much music out there. There's so much jazz. And I think there's, you know, an amazing 1%. And I talked to Pat Metheny on my program about this. And he said, yeah, 1% of it is the greatest music ever, and 99% I can't relate to. I don't like.
PFEIFFER: (Laughter).
ALTERMAN: I don't think it's jazz necessarily that people are drawn to. I think it's specific personalities in the music. So, for example, like, I love Oscar Peterson, but I don't love every piano player that plays jazz, if that makes sense.
(SOUNDBITE OF OSCAR PETERSON'S "YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE")
ALTERMAN: I think jazz, the genre, has a way of bringing out personalities, and it's certain personalities within the music that I'm most attracted to.
PFEIFFER: One of the huge legendary jazz musicians you spoke with on your podcast, and, in fact, I think, within months of his death, was Sonny Rollins. On your website, you called him the Saxophone Colossus himself.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "ST. THOMAS")
ALTERMAN: I mean, in my world, that's like the equivalent of talking to, like, Shakespeare or Bach or, you know, one of the great originators of this music. I couldn't believe, you know, we were alive at the same time. One of the things that brought me closer to this music was when I was a kid, I suffered from a very severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, and my days were kind of spent dealing with these obsessions and compulsions while being at school and trying to act like everything was normal around my friends. And finally, when I made it to bed and didn't have any more compulsions to do before I fall asleep, I put on Sonny's music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "ST. THOMAS")
ALTERMAN: I felt like it understood my feelings in a weird way, what I was going through, but it also gave me hope. It made me feel like things will get better. And, you know, I wrote him a note. I just said, you know, how helpful his music had been - this was 20 years ago. And he wrote back. Dear Joe, your comments were appreciated. We all have to use adversity as an opportunity to find a way. So keep a strong mind throughout this short existence. Your examples give us all hope as all of us here in this life have to struggle.
PFEIFFER: A letter from Sonny Rollins himself to you.
ALTERMAN: Yeah. And that became, like, the greatest advice. I mean, I still have it in my pocket. So getting to talk to him 20 years later, I basically - I think the first thing I asked him was some people say jazz is a deep journey of self-exploration. You know, other people have told me it's man's contribution to nature. So I asked him what it is to him. He said it's God talking to him and him talking back to God.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "ST. THOMAS")
PFEIFFER: One of your episodes takes a very serious turn, and it's about the role that jazz played in Nazi Germany. Where do those two things connect? I would think many people think they don't connect.
ALTERMAN: My interest in this kind of began a few years ago. I visited Auschwitz, and I was given a tour. And the tour guide pointed to this spot in the grass, and he said, this is where the orchestra played. And we were sitting right across from that sign that says, work makes you free. He said, the music here was just as deceptive as that sign. It was actually loud carnival music. And when the transport trains arrived, you know, it kind of made them think maybe - like the work makes you free - maybe things will be OK here.
PFEIFFER: That music greeted Jews as they were arriving at Auschwitz? That's what they were hearing?
ALTERMAN: Yeah. Also, at the same time, it's loud and it drowns out the screams of the families being separated. I had never heard of music being weaponized. The more I researched, I just kept finding amazing hypocrisy. You know, the Nazis - they condemned jazz, yet so many of them loved jazz and listened to it privately.
I mean, one of my greatest heroes in life - I discovered a character named Louis Bannet. He was known as the Dutch Louis Armstrong before the war. The guy is taken to Auschwitz. He goes to audition for the orchestra, and he picks out a trumpet. And for some reason, decides to play "St. Louis Blues" by W. C. Handy for the audition.
(SOUNDBITE OF W. C. HANDY'S "ST. LOUIS BLUES")
ALTERMAN: He credited, you know, music for helping get him through. You know, at one point, he was put in charge of the Romani orchestra, and this woman in the orchestra said, how can you play for these people that want to kill us? And he says I don't play for them. I play for me.
So, you know, so many of the people in these camps - they either - the music either helped them get through or was just it was very hard to play at times. 'Cause, also, the prisoners, the fellow prisoners would look at these musicians playing this music that was torturing them and see the musicians almost as collaborators. So it's a very wild world. And that's - yes - I did an episode on that, and it led into, you know, the treatment of jazz in the Soviet Union and beyond. There's so many of these stories.
PFEIFFER: That is Joe Alterman. He's the host of the WABE podcast, The Upside of Jazz. Joe, thank you.
ALTERMAN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
