2025.10.27 Brian Charette on Larry Young - 2 of 3

2025.10.27 Brian Charette on Larry Young - 2 of 3

Author: Small Media Large November 16, 2025 Duration: 1:05:34
If you want to change the game, first you need to master the game.  Coming up in Newark in the fifties was the exact right place and time for Larry Young to learn the idiom of the Hammond B-3 organ, and he learned his lessons well.  His early records embody the soul-jazz organ trio sound made popular by Jimmy Smith.   But as the sound of the sixties emerged, Larry Young (also known by his Muslim name, Khalid Yasin Abdul Aziz) was reaching for something more.  His journey, including hours of conversation and jam sessions with spiritual avatar John Coltrane, brought about an expanded consciousness that revealed itself in his music.  Larry Young pulled an unmistakably boisterous explosion of sound through the B-3.  He showed new horizons that fellow organists have been pursuing for more than half a century.    Brian Charette is one of them.  He is not only an endlessly inventive multi-instrumentalist and bandleader, but also one of our best students of the music's history.  He joins host Mitch Goldman on this week's Deep Focus.   Did the WKCR archives provide recordings of Larry Young and John Coltrane's private sessions?  Unfortunately, none are known to exist.  Do we have rare recordings of Larry Young and Jimi Hendrix pushing each other in new directions?     Find out Monday (10/27) from 6p to 9p NYC time on WKCR 89.9FM, WKCR-HD, or wkcr.org.   Or join us when it goes up on the Deep Focus podcast on your favorite podcasting app or at https://mitchgoldman.podbean.com/.  Subscribe right now to get notifications when new episodes are posted.  Just like WKCR, it's ad-free, all free, totally non-commercial.  We won't even ask for your contact info.  Learn more about Deep Focus at https://mitchgoldman.com/about-deep-focus/ or join us onInstagram @deep_focus_podcast.  Photo credit: Photo by Francis Wolff. Shot in Paris. Michael Cuscuna unearthed this photo, amongst others, for Resonance’s “Larry Young In Paris” in 2016.#WKCR #DeepFocus #LarryYoung #BrianCharette #JimiHendrix #JazzRadio #JazzPodcast #JazzInterview #MitchGoldman 

Mitch Goldman, from Small Media Large, sits down with a different working musician each week for Deep Focus. The premise is beautifully simple yet endlessly revealing: together, they dive into rare archival recordings-bootlegs, demo tapes, lost studio sessions-of an artist the guest deeply admires. This isn't a standard interview format. Instead, you're listening in on a shared, intimate listening session between two knowledgeable fans. The conversation flows from technical dissection of a guitar tone to personal stories about how a particular live bootleg soundtracked a pivotal life moment. You'll hear the crackle of a vintage tape as Mitch and his guest pause, rewind, and marvel at a forgotten vocal take or an experimental arrangement that never made the official album. This podcast lives in the spaces between the famous tracks, uncovering the raw, unpolished moments that often reveal an artist's true process and passion. It’s for anyone who believes the magic isn't just in the finished product, but in the journey of how it got there. Each episode of Deep Focus feels like being invited into a private club where the sole entry fee is a genuine love for music's hidden corners.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Deep Focus
Podcast Episodes
2026.01.19 Mazz Swift on Butch Morris - 3 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:39
Improvisation is considered a high art form for an instrumentalist, but what about for a composer? Is it even possible to create a piece of music for an ensemble, and to hear it performed in real time? How would you go a…
2026.01.19 Mazz Swift on Butch Morris - 2 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:07:33
Improvisation is considered a high art form for an instrumentalist, but what about for a composer? Is it even possible to create a piece of music for an ensemble, and to hear it performed in real time? How would you go a…
2026.01.19 Mazz Swift on Butch Morris - 2 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:07:33
Improvisation is considered a high art form for an instrumentalist, but what about for a composer? Is it even possible to create a piece of music for an ensemble, and to hear it performed in real time? How would you go a…
2026.01.19 Mazz Swift on Butch Morris - 1 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:05:48
Improvisation is considered a high art form for an instrumentalist, but what about for a composer? Is it even possible to create a piece of music for an ensemble, and to hear it performed in real time? How would you go a…
2026.01.05 Jay Rodriguez on Jim Pepper - 3 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:04
Meet me at Edge City. Isn't that place where worlds collide the only one where new ideas are ever generated? Saxophonist Jim Pepper knew all about these cultural collisions. His band Free Spirits was arguably the first t…
2026.01.05 Jay Rodriguez on Jim Pepper - 2 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:18
Meet me at Edge City. Isn't that place where worlds collide the only one where new ideas are ever generated? Saxophonist Jim Pepper knew all about these cultural collisions. His band Free Spirits was arguably the first t…
2026.01.05 Jay Rodriguez on Jim Pepper - 1 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:05:38
Meet me at Edge City. Isn't that place where worlds collide the only one where new ideas are ever generated? Saxophonist Jim Pepper knew all about these cultural collisions. His band Free Spirits was arguably the first t…
2025.12.22 Will Calhoun on Jack DeJohnette - 3 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:22
Plate tectonics, this idea that the very surface of the earth is not an unyielding solid, but a set of independent segments in a constant state of flow, was not always accepted as truth. It was only developed in 1967, bu…
2025.12.22 Will Calhoun on Jack DeJohnette - 2 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:46
Plate tectonics, this idea that the very surface of the earth is not an unyielding solid, but a set of independent segments in a constant state of flow, was not always accepted as truth. It was only developed in 1967, bu…
2025.12.22 Will Calhoun on Jack DeJohnette - 1 of 3 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:41
Plate tectonics, this idea that the very surface of the earth is not an unyielding solid, but a set of independent segments in a constant state of flow, was not always accepted as truth. It was only developed in 1967, bu…