Legendary jazz guitarist John Scofield releases a double-album set comprising some originals and a few surprising covers
"What happened was, I recorded a bunch of tracks with my buddies. We had a lot of songs and we just recorded all of them and it turned out to be a lot of music.” John Scofield is musing about releasing a new double-CD package during our Zoom interview. “And then Manfred Eicher [head of the ECM label] said, ‘Well, we’ll just put it all out.’ I still think maybe I should have gone back and just selected the best ones, but, hey, put it all out there. Maybe some of it will float!” The result is Uncle John’s Band, the title of which is drawn from a Grateful Dead song; not a band you’d immediately associate with cutting-edge jazz improvisation.
How did the title track come about?
“It’s a Grateful Dead tune and it’s just a song that I liked. I thought, ‘When in my life am I gonna have a chance to call an album something with my own name in it?’ It’s not supposed to be a Grateful Dead tribute album. But I just thought, ‘Hey, Uncle John’s Band, that’s gonna work, you know: I’m John and it’s my band. So here we go.”
Were you ever a fan of the Grateful Dead?
“I was aware of them. In the back of my head I would hear a couple of their songs I would like – Iwould like the melody and the chords – but I wasn’t really aware of them. I was certainly not a Deadhead! But then, 15 years ago or something, I was recommended to Phil Lesh, the bass player from the Grateful Dead. He has this band, they play all Grateful Dead tunes, and they’re really popular in the States. Different players play with him all the time, so over the years I’ve played a bunch of gigs with him and had to learn Grateful Dead tunes. I would write my little lead sheets up, sit there with my music stand like the old jazz guy and play with them – and we became friends. And this is, I guess, my favourite of the Grateful Dead songs and it just happens to be named after me.”
You’ve also covered Neil Young’s Old Man and Bob Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man – what’s the story there?
“Before I heard the Grateful Dead, Mr Tambourine Man was a hit by The Byrds on the radio. This is when I had just got my guitar; I was a kid and I was looking for tunes that I could play. I always liked the song and I liked their three-part harmony. And I always liked Neil Young. That song has a vamp that I liked, that’s part of the song: six bars, two
