Christian McBride & Jeffrey Osborne: Unbridled, Uncanceled.

Interview, From the Magazine, Christian McBride & Jeffrey Osborne

By Gary Fukushima I Nov. 13, 2025

Christian McBride, the DownBeat Readers Poll choice for Artist of the Year, and R&B star Jeffrey Osborne at The Record Parlour, a used vinyl shop and show venue in Los Angeles.
(Photo: Alex Frankel)

It’s late September in Los Angeles. A scorching heat wave has lingered but waned somewhat over the past few days, the weather still warm and slightly uncomfortable. The residual simmering reflects the smoldering remnants of a media firestorm that has engulfed Hollywood for a week after Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show was yanked off the air amid intense political blowback to comments the host made regarding the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. How does that apply to jazz?

Christian McBride was scheduled to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! the very day this interview took place, but the bassist and bandleader had been in a state of limbo since the show’s suspension. At the last minute Kimmel was reinstated and the taping was allowed to proceed as scheduled. So, right before the interview portion of the show, McBride performed his own big band arrangement of “Back In Love Again” from his new album, Without Further Ado, Vol. 1 (Mack Avenue). The original singer of that 1977 funk chart-topper by the R&B band L.T.D., the legendary songwriter and recording artist Jeffrey Osborne, reprised his vocals on McBride’s album and joined him in this televised appearance.

Afterward, they sojourned a few blocks from Kimmel’s studio to The Record Parlour, a used vinyl shop and show venue, where they were photographed thumbing through sides, playing pinball and generally having a blast sharing road stories and jokes. Afterwards, McBride and Osborne sat down for this conversation with DownBeat.

Any passersby who know anything about jazz will likely recognize McBride, arguably the best jazz bassist of his generation and one of our most celebrated and most visible living jazz artists.

He is certainly appreciated by the readers of this magazine, who have voted McBride DownBeat Artist of the Year, Bassist of the Year and Arranger of the Year. He also ranked third in the Electric Bass category, fifth in the Composer rankings and second in the Producer tallies. His groups and albums are rated high in their respective categories: His reuniting with Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau and Brian Blade is in the top 10 for Group of the Year (while his New Jawn Quartet also made it into the top 20), Trilogy 3 (which features McBride and Blade with the late Chick Corea) ranks fourth in Historical Album of the Year and his big band comes in second place in the Large Ensemble category.

McBride’s popularity is but a reflection of his multifaceted career. Since his debut with saxophonist Bobby Watson’s and drummer Victor Lewis’ Horizon at age 17, McBride has appeared as a sideman on more than 400 albums and recorded 21 of his own. He has amassed nine Grammy Awards with 16 nominations. He was a foundational member of an emerging generation of jazz musicians in the early ’90s that included Benny Green, Roy Hargrove, Kenny Garrett, Chris Potter, Peter Bernstein, Russell Malone, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Joey DeFrancesco, Gregory Hutchinson and Geoffery Keezer, as well as Redman, Mehldau and Blade, who as Redman’s Moodswing Quartet (along with all the aforementioned) became the knights exemplar, the new crusaders leading jazz into the next millennium.

But McBride, now 53, carved out additional slots in that new world order as he shed his young lion’s Simba skin for a Mufasa mane. He is the host of two popular jazz radio shows: NPR’s Jazz Night in America and The Lowdown: Conversations with Christian on SiriusXM. Yet he has been a spokesperson for jazz since long before that — as early as 1997, when he was invited as a panelist on one of President Bill Clinton’s town halls, “Racism in the Performing Arts.” Since 2000, McBride has been a creative jazz chair or artistic director for a bevy of organizations: the Jazz at Aspen Snowmass Academy Summer Sessions, The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Jazz House Kids and the TD James Moody Jazz Festival at NJPAC (New Jersey Performing Arts Center). In 2016, he became artistic director of the legendary Newport Jazz Festival, personally chosen by festival founder George Wein to succeed him. (Just days before this interview, McBride announced he was stepping down from his position at NJF, telling DB, “Let’s just say we didn’t see eye to eye on a few things.”)

Such a staggering resume lifts the bassist into rarefied air among the most well-known artists in jazz. But to McBride, the man sitting next to him at the hotel bar with the silky-smooth voice is the famous one. Osborne was one of the most prolific singers of the ’80s, with 12 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart, including the evergreen contemporary ballad “On The Wings Of Love.” He sang on “We Are The World.” He sang the duet “Love Power” with Dionne Warwick. He has penned the lyrics to a Whitney Houston song. He has sung the national anthem during the World Series and at Staples Center for the NBA Finals. He co-hosts a celebrity golf tournament with his good friend Magic Johnson.

And he is a childhood hero of McBride’s. At a hotel bar, Osborne learns that McBride first saw him play in Philadelphia when L.T.D. opened for the Jackson Five.

“You were how old?” asks Osborne.

“Seven,” replies McBride.

“Oh, OK, I really feel old now. Wow.”

“It’s OK. You were only 17.” Both men burst out laughing.

“No, I wish,” Osborne retorts. “I joined L.T.D. when I was 20. But that tour with the Jacksons was in ’79.”

“I remember it well, because I was just as much a fan of L.T.D. as I was the Jacksons, you know?”

“It was a good tour. … [But] Michael was struggling, a lot. So, we had to cancel a lot of shows. I don’t even know how we did it. We had 13 shows in a row, 13 nights. And he got to about three or four, and he was like, that’s it. We gotta take a break.”

“I mean, that’s a hard grind, that many shows in a row.”

“I can’t do two now. That was tough. It didn’t phase me back then. Cord was young.” Osborne is talking about his vocal cords. “[Now] that cord is crying after one show, like, ‘Oh, rest me, rest!’”

“It’s like them stories about people doing five, six shows a day for nine, 10 days at the Apollo,” McBride suggests.

“Oh, yeah, we did those. Yeah, that was a workhouse, man. Oh, man, they worked you. But that was a fun venue.”

This exchange shows how McBride, even when he is supposed to be the subject of this interview, is himself a natural interviewer, engaging his fellow musician, putting him at ease, drawing out long-lost stories and anecdotes. Fortuitously, he gets up to go find a coffee, which allows this interviewer to attempt to get the initial interview back on track by asking Osborne about his musical upbringing.

His father, Clarence “Legs” Osborne, was a jazz trumpet player who got to play in the bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Lionel Hampton when those groups made it to Providence, Rhode Island, while on tour.

“My father’s biggest problem was he had 12 kids,” says Osborne, the youngest of those 12. “He couldn’t really go on the road and play in big bands ... a sideman wasn’t making enough money to support 12 kids. So, he stayed home, worked three jobs. But he would always go sit in when they came into town.” Osborne, who was 13 when his father died, never got to hear his father play with those big bands but heard him at home when he practiced and sometimes from the car where he waited while his father dropped by local clubs to play a tune or two. “He was incredible,” remembers Osborne.

Osborne himself had shown an unusual aptitude for singing as early as age 3. His mother had him sing at her company’s functions, and his father coached him. Osborne remembers learning Wes Montgomery guitar solos by ear. “I was able to actually sing his solos … he played so lyrically. And that’s the beauty to me, because you can go ahead and play a million notes … then B.B. [King] can just play one note.” Osborne remembers his father saying, “‘Don’t sing all those riffs,’ he said. ‘If you can’t touch me with a whole note, your ass can’t sing.’ … That’s the one thing I never forgot.”

Even though Osborne’s love for Motown led him to L.T.D and his career in R&B, he held his fondness for jazz close, eventually recording an album of jazz ballads in 2013. A Time For Love (Saguro Road) plays strongly to Osborne’s soulful lyricism and immaculate vocal interpretations of standards and covers tastefully arranged by George Duke, who had produced Osborne’s first album three decades prior (and his next three albums). For this project Duke assembled a diverse supporting cast of artists ranging from Everette Harp to Chaka Khan to Kamasi Washington, and a jazz bassist whom Duke utilized for many of his projects during that time. His name was Christian McBride.

That bassist, having returned with coffee for himself and Osborne, reminded the singer that they had played together on an earlier George Duke record, a tribute to Duke Ellington that featured a bunch of singers on different tracks. But recording together on Osborne’s album fostered a close working relationship that became a friendship, with Duke as the serendipitous connection. “He was the link between a lot of others,” says McBride.

“That’s right. He was amazing,” Osborne affirms. “Every show I do, I acknowledge George Duke, ever since he passed. I will not do a show without acknowledging George.”

“The first time I met George,” McBride recalls, “he produced my third CD, A Family Affair. And for the New York guys, that was like, what? George Duke? You don’t do smooth jazz. I was like, ‘It’s not smooth jazz.’”

He continues, “That’s when I realized that a certain generation didn’t know who George Duke really was. Because when I first met George, all I wanted to talk to him was about his time with Cannonball Adderley. And I think he was impressed. He was like, ‘They know about Zappa, but they never ask me about Cannonball or Gerald Wilson or Jean-Luc Ponty, you know?’”

But McBride is as much into George Clinton as he is into Cannonball, which is why for him a figure like Duke would loom large.

“I feel like there’s a period that not a lot of people talk about. … I’m completely fascinated with jazz and R&B between the late ’60s and the late ’70s. People kind of get stuck going, like, Stevie Wonder had a great run, Marvin Gaye had a great run. But there was a whole lot of other stuff going on.”

A lot of that other stuff is what lured McBride to Los Angeles to work with Duke and other producers whose expertise flowed into wider channels beyond the svelte streams of modern jazz.

“Once I started doing a lot of sessions out here, particularly with George and Tommy LiPuma and Al Schmidt and Bill Smith and everybody over at Capitol, they made me feel like, ‘Hey, we know you don’t live out here, but we consider you to be part of the family,’” he says. “I know the East Coasters don’t want to hear that, but that’s what it was.”

McBride’s presence in La La Land can be traced all the way back to the turn of the century, when he ended up on the radar of another bassist — and one of the biggest music stars on the planet.

“I got a call from Sting’s people, saying, ‘Sting’s making a live album, and he wants you to play bass,’” McBride recounts. “I was like, ‘What, really?’ So, I went to Italy to record with the understanding that I was gonna make this one record, do this one gig … then I wound up staying in his band for another year-and-a-half. And we’ve been working together on and off ever since.

“This is the second album of mine that [Sting’s] playing on.” Without Further Ado, Vol. 1 features a bevy of celebrities from the jazz world and beyond: Sting (along with his Police partner Andy Summers), Diane Reeves, José James, Cécile McLoren Salvant, Antoinette Henry and Samara Joy (who at the time of this conversation was also in Los Angeles, making an appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show). And Jeffrey Osborne, featured on the very same L.T.D. song they just performed a few hours ago on the Kimmel show.

McBride elaborates on how the album came together. “Since 2012, I’ve been artistic advisor for jazz programming at NJPAC in Newark. And my big band is a house band for the annual gala. And I have to arrange big band music every year for the gala. We’ve had [as guests] Jeffrey, we had Al Jarreau, we’ve had Diane [Reeves], Cécile McLoren Salvant … Fantasia, Leslie Odom Jr., Cynthia Erivo. And so, over the course of all these years, I have this stack of big band music that only got played once. And I said it would really be a shame to waste all that time and energy only playing these charts once. So … that’s my next album.

“But there’s more to come,” McBride adds.

“Oh, really?” asks Osborne.

“Yeah. [Jeffrey’s] just now hearing that, but yes.”

“Oh, good,” says Osborne, his face lighting up. “This is a whole different audience for me. And I’m sure for you, too,” he adds, looking at McBride, undoubtedly thinking about the show they just did. “I feel like my dad. That was his thing, you know?”

McBride, like Duke, has become a link connecting artists of different musical backgrounds, just as his role as a high-profile jazz spokesman has allowed the public to discover and learn more about jazz. Perhaps that is why he ended up with a slot on a late-night talk show that, ironically, is being watched now more than ever before because of the attempt to cancel it in a political power play.

Throughout its existence, jazz has repeatedly intersected with American history. McBride himself was in such a situation before, when on the morning of his debut with Sting on Sept. 11, 2001, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon cast an incredible pall of grief and uncertainty over the event. Sting decided that the best course of action for him, his fellow musicians and his audience was to perform as scheduled. The footage from the show reveals artists and fans who were frightened and hurting but healing each other through music.

And McBride was in the middle of it, as he has continued to be over the years. “Honestly, I say this all the time because I really mean it, but I don’t really think of myself as anything other than the bass player,” he admits. “But being a bass player, I got the best seat in the house. It’s like being a catcher in baseball; I get to see the whole field, you know?”

And catchers and bass players understand how to take care of the team.

“I have a service occupation,” he considers. He has been in service to jazz, to other musicians and to the students, fans and others whom he has inspired for years. As a kind of modern day, informal jazz ambassador, does McBride feel an artist’s obligation to those who look up to him to voice his personal concerns and convictions about the world?

“In terms of what the artist’s role in society is,” he offers, “that’s up to the artist. That is purely up to the artist. No one is responsible for doing anything other than what’s in their heart. If you want to speak on social issues, by all means, do it. If you don’t, don’t. If you want to speak about it through your writing, that’s what you should do. There seems to be some sort of unwritten rule that if you are a person of influence, then that’s exactly what you are supposed to do. But, no, I believe that it’s a personal choice. You do what’s in your heart.”

That said, McBride has plenty to say about the specific circumstances surrounding his recent brush with cancel culture.

“Well, I’ll sum up the Kimmel situation by saying I believe we are living in a historically embarrassing moment in America’s history. … When I was a kid, I would read stories about segregation in the South, how they had white and Black water fountains, white and Black bathrooms. … It was actually illegal to be together if you weren’t the same race. See, we can’t fathom that. That’s not in our lifetime, so we look at that and judge people on how they reacted to that. I realize the older I get that you can’t take your values and make them retroactive.

“But what’s going on now. … with the silencing of the press and these sorts of bullying tactics, kids are going to read about this in 40 years and go, ‘Wow, what a step back.’ So, [to those who believe] somebody can be yanked off the air because they offended someone, I would go back and ask them to read up about the 1968 Oscars. Bob Hope made a joke about Martin Luther King’s assassination. On the Oscars! Not a damn thing happened to him. This sort of bullying going on now, this is insanity.”

McBride did not have an opportunity to say any of these things to Kimmel, on or off the air. But he and his boyhood idol Jeffrey Osborne spoke volumes as their music blasted across the theater stage, radiating their undeniable talent, their brotherly camaraderie and their rejoicing in the freedom they had to fully express themselves in front of millions of viewers — uncanceled, unbridled. DB

Editor’s Note: Click HERE to watch the “almost cancelled” performance of “Back In Love Again” with the Christian McBride Big Band featuring Jeffrey Osborne.