Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In February, my guest Christian McBride took home the Grammy for Best Jazz Performance for a song called Windows from the album Trilogy 3. The bass player's collaboration and co-winners on that performance were drummer Brian Blade and legendary jazz pianist the late Chick Corea. Now another posthumous release is out in honor of Corea's legacy. The new CD set is titled Forever Yours: The Farewell Performance. It highlights two transcendent solo concerts from October of 2020, just four months before passing from a rare form of cancer. Here's a clip of the song Armando's Rhumba.

[MUSIC - Chick Corea: Armando's Rhumba]

Alison Stewart: Forever Yours: The Farewell Performance is out now, as is Trilogy 3, his Grammy-winning collaboration with Christian McBride. Christian is sitting across from me. Hey, it's nice to see you.

Christian McBride: Thanks for having me. It's always great to see you, Alison.

Alison Stewart: When did you first become aware of Chick Corea as a musician?

Christian McBride: I think Chick is one of those people; he's been omnipresent for certainly all of my life. He was one of those names where once I really discovered him, I realized that I had been hearing his music all along. The first time I actually became aware of his music was through an album that actually wasn't his. I don't even think he was on it. It was Al Jarreau's version of Spain because that was the version that helped make that song even more of a big hit. Learning Al Jarreau's version and finding my way to Chick Corea's legacy was like, "Wow, this is incredible."

Alison Stewart: What struck you about the way that he played?

Christian McBride: The lift. The word that comes to mind when I think of Chick's playing is "alive." It's always bouncy. There's always a certain element of life force in it. It picks you up. Even just the way he played inside of the beat, it was always on the top end of it. It was always lively. He was so much fun to be around. He was just a great guy and obviously a great player, but also one of the greatest composers in the history of American music.

Alison Stewart: Oh, tell me more.

Christian McBride: You can't really play jazz and not at some point have to deal and learn about Chick Corea, the composer. He's very much in the same lineage as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Wayne Shorter. He was so prolific, you could study Chick Corea's music for a lifetime. That's how prolific he was.

Alison Stewart: How did the two of you end up becoming acquainted later on in life?

Christian McBride: I first met Chick in the early '90s at a jazz festival in Japan. I was playing with my dear friend, the great pianist Benny Green. Chick sat on the side of the stage during our set and listened intently. We were all honored and shocked that he was that interested in what we were doing. He sat there. He had his arms folded. He was getting into it. At the end of the set, he said some really nice things to us, he gave me his info, and said, "Let's stay in touch." Three years later, he called me to tour with him for the first time.

Alison Stewart: What did that mean to you in 1993? You were a young man. What did that mean to you to have Chick Corea that interested in what you were doing and how you were playing?

Christian McBride: First of all, I didn't believe him. There was a part of me that thought, "He's just being nice."

Alison Stewart: He wrote you a nice letter, right?

Christian McBride: Yes. I was like, "He's just being nice." He says this to everybody, which he did. He did do that to everybody, which I found was actually really beautiful because a lot of people say things that they don't follow up. He followed up. He sent me a letter maybe six or seven weeks later, and I was just like, "Are you kidding me? He's serious about this." That meant the world to me that somebody as legendary as Chick Corea was interested in what I was doing and wanted me to play with him.

Alison Stewart: Two recent releases capture jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea's final performances before his passing. Grammy Award-winning bassist Christian McBride, who was a frequent collaborator with Chick, is here to discuss his legacy. After getting to know him a little bit more, aside from him being a great guy, which you've described, what did you admire about him professionally as a musician?

Christian McBride: His work ethic. The man was working hard all the time. I remember I was having some issues with my own career, trying to establish myself as a band leader. I was going through some issues with my team. Chick said, "What are you doing after the show tonight?" I said, "Nothing." He said, "I'm going to come to your room. I have some ideas." Chick came to my room, and he opened up his laptop, and he had these-- They weren't Google Sheets because this was before Google Sheets. It was a Microsoft Word or something like that. He had all these documents. He sat there with me.

He says, "Okay, step one. This is how we're going to think about your career." I went, "Wow, okay." He said, "Now, this is how you get your team in place, and here is what you tell the record company." I almost didn't hear him because I was so shocked that he took such great care of my dilemma. He sat there with me and walked me through his ideas. He was really invested.

Alison Stewart: That's really interesting. He taught you that old saying, "Be the CEO of your career." He taught you that, like, "This is what we got to do."

Christian McBride: He definitely was that.

Alison Stewart: That's so interesting. What's something that you gained from working with him about how to arrange and compose music?

Christian McBride: It's something that I still can't do. It was intimidating being around Chick, particularly. It's one thing watching him be the CEO of his career and run his empire and be the great player that he was. Also, to see how he managed it all and was able to write music with such ease in the middle of all of this. We would be on the tour bus, and he'd have sheet music out, and he's just writing. He didn't even really have the piano nearby. He would write every now and then. We'd get the sound check, and then we're supposed to be rehearsing the music that we're going to play. Then he'd be writing music for another project that was coming up.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Christian McBride: He had these two brains working all of the time, and I'm like, "Man, how do you do that?" He would always say something like, "It's not that hard. You do it, too." I was like, "As you can see, I'm not doing that." He was so prolific. He always used to say, "You practice composition the same way you practice playing your bass. You got to write something every day, even if you don't like it. Get in the habit of writing music."

Alison Stewart: Do you still follow that rule?

Christian McBride: I try my hardest, but I don't always come through.

Alison Stewart: All right. Let's talk about the--

Christian McBride: I'm going to get there, though.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about the trilogy albums. What do you remember about touring with Chick Corea in those final months of his life?

Christian McBride: It was just that trio with Brian Blade. Chick had become such an important part of our lives. We did consider him a friend. We did not lose sight of the fact that it was still Chick Corea. He was considering us his main group by what turned out to be the end of his life. We were honored by that. It was always so much joy to play these great standards with the man that wrote them. Every time we would play Spain, there was always a little part of me that thought, "That's the guy that wrote it." We play 500 Miles High. That's the guy who wrote it. Matrix.

That's the guy who wrote it. Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. Okay, we're not reading out of a book. That's the man that wrote it. Chick would always say, "Hey, guys, I'm getting tired of playing all of my music. Let's play some of yours." Brian and I were like, "No, no, man. Mozart, you're fine."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Trilogy 3 earned a Grammy for Best Jazz Performance for the track Windows. It was first recorded in '66-ish. It's a jazz standard. Why do you think that song has withstood time?

Christian McBride: Strong melody, great chord changes. I think those are two real basic things in songs and pieces of music. Long form, mid-range form, it has great melody and great harmony in the case of jazz, great rhythm. I feel that that song Windows and so many of other Chick's songs, they have great melodies. You can sing them. They're earworms. Even when you're busy doing something else, this little melody of his pops up in your head like, "Why am I hearing that?" Because it's a great melody. Chick was always one for a great melody.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to Windows.

[MUSIC - Chick Corea: Windows]

Alison Stewart: Christian, when you think about him as a pianist, what do you think he is underrated for?

Christian McBride: I remember he got really vulnerable one time, and he said, "I wish I played the blues better. I wish I swung harder." I don't even think I even responded. I was like, "Okay." A couple of days later, I pulled up an old Blue Mitchell record that he played on. I swear, you think it's Wynton Kelly or you think it was Oscar Peterson. I didn't say anything. I just played it while we were on the bus. Chick went, "Oh, man, that's swinging." He goes, "Wait a minute. That's me." I said, "Yes. Remember, you said you wish you swung harder and you played the blues? That sounds like you're a perfect two for two right there. You swinging hard, you playing the blues. You can still play like that."

He said, "Oh, man, I don't know." I said, "Come on, let's play some blues tonight." He got in there. Chick, look, you can't play with Miles Davis and Sarah Vaughan and Mongo Santamaría and all those people back in those days if you couldn't groove and play the blues.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk a little bit about Forever Yours: The Farewell Performance is out now in a CD set, and the album features originals and nods to other composers, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Mozart.

Christian McBride: I see. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: What can we learn about Chick Corea from the composers and the musicians that he admired?

Christian McBride: He was eclectic. He loved Thelonious Monk, he loved Bud Powell, but he also loved Beethoven. He also loved Mozart. He was very much into a lot of different styles of music. The life force that I mentioned, he always sounded like he was up. He always sounded positive. I don't think you'll ever listen to Chick Corea's music and feel down. Even his more beautiful introspective songs, there's still a certain hopefulness to it. It'll never make you sad. Even listening to this farewell concert from October of 2020, I certainly didn't know he was suffering.

We played our last concert together in March of 2020, and he looked, sounded, felt just like Chick always did. When he passed away in February 2021, that came as a huge shock to all of us. We had no idea. To think that he made this recording that close to his death, and shows no signs of any physical ailment. There's that life force I was talking about.

Alison Stewart: Let's play a track from Forever Yours. Here's Chick Corea playing Mozart's Piano Sonata in F.

[MUSIC - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Sonata in F]

Alison Stewart: Christian, what do you hear when you listen to this?

Christian McBride: He still sounds like Chick. There's some Chick-isms in there, just a little tweak of the rhythm, a little phrase right there. It's like, "Ah, that's Chick." [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Before we go, what do we hear from you in the future? What are we going to hear from you?

Christian McBride: You brought me some luck last time I was here when we talked about my big band record. That was Volume One. Without further ado, Volume Two will be released sometime early next year.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's exciting. We're going to go out on a series of songs from Chick. They were Children's Songs. They're based on children's songs. Why would he venture into the land of children's songs, into simple songs?

Christian McBride: One of Chick's favorite characters, he used to deem himself. He made an album called The Leprechaun back in the '70s. On the album, he dresses like one. He's always had that child-- again, that positivity, that hopefulness, that almost a sweet naivete. Him writing and loving children's songs is on brand.

Alison Stewart: I have been speaking with Grammy Award-winning bassist Christian McBride about Chick Corea's legacy. Trilogy 3 and Forever Yours: The Farewell Performance are both out now. Thank you for spending time with us.

Christian McBride: Always wonderful to see you.