Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
After a whirlwind 2004 that saw Jamie Cullum sell 2 million albums worldwide and garner a Grammy nomination, when it came time for the singer/pianist to write songs for his new album, Catching Tales, Cullum started with a clean slate.
“The first song I wrote was on Jan. 2,” said Cullum about the Oct. 11 release on Verve Forecast. “I was at home with my folks and they asked me to clean out the cupboard and I found these old photos. The same day I was reading fan mail and this 7-year-old kid wrote and said that he’s just starting out but he loves playing riffs from my songs. It made me think of something childlike, simple, a riff you could play with one hand. That was the basis for ‘Photograph.’”
As for the song “Mind Trick,” Cullum says, “My brother and I had just been hanging around listening to Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye all day and ended up in the basement, just playing.”
But it’s “21st Century Kid” that Cullum holds closest to his heart. “I think that’s the best song I’ve ever written,” he says. “Though it doesn’t start out that way—it was originally 11 minutes long. Once I decided I wasn’t going to become a prog rocker, I was able to pull it down into something I like very much.”
For details on Cullum, go to www.jamiecullum.com.
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
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