Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar. Alison Stewart is on vacation. You're stuck with me for just a few days this coming week. Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm happy that you're here. Coming up on tomorrow's show, All of It producer Jordan Lauf joins us to talk about spring books. She'll share with us what she's reading and we want to know what's on your night table. Plus, we are heading into the weekend and we need recommendations, so let us know what you are doing. We will want your calls and texts or you can DM us on social media right now @allofitwnyc. Again, let us know what your weekend plans are. On tomorrow's show, we're going to take your calls about it. Yes, I know at least one All of It producer who will be glued to college basketball. That all is in about 24 hours. On we go with today's show with another installment of our Women's History Month series, Equalizers: Women in Music Production.

[music]

My next guest is Terri Lyne Carrington, a Grammy winning drummer, composer, and producer. She's also the founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. Carrington's career began in the 1980s playing alongside jazz luminaries like Wayne Shorter and Farrow Sanders and as the house drummer for Arsenio Hall. In time, she became a band leader and a recording artist in her own right, releasing many albums and winning several Grammy Awards in jazz. She's produced her own work and the work of other artists like Dianne Reeves and Teena Marie.

In 2023, she was honored by the Producers and Engineers wing of the Recording Academy. She joins me now for another installment of our Women's History Month series, Equalizers: Women in Music Production. Terri Lyne, welcome to All Of It.

Terri Lyne Carrington: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Nice to be here.

Kousha Navidar: It's nice to have you. Thanks so much for joining us. Let's start. At the start, you produced your first album, Real Life Story in 1988. Was it always your plan to produce that album or did it happen more by chance?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Actually, that one I co produced my first album. I co produced it with Robert Irving III, who was Miles Davis's musical director at the time. Then all of my records after that produced solely and-- Let's see, what was the next one? I didn't record again for over 10 years, so the next record was Jazz is the Spirit and then The Structure. Those were on his German label called ACT [00:02:59] and produced those. Then the next big thing was the Mosaic project, which was the first Grammy that I won.

As far as the Grammys, that was under Best Jazz Vocal. A lot of people had some questions about me winning because I wasn't singing. I did sing on one song, but it had a lot of different vocalists. I really won that as the producer, even though I was also the artist.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Going back to that intro first go around of co producing on Real Life Story, what was it about producing your first album that made you want to continue producing?

Terri Lyne Carrington: I just love the feeling of creating something from nothing. You have a plan. You have, in essence, a script, if I was using an analogy like a film. Then you go in and you see what happens, and you have to pivot and really let something emerge, let the art itself emerge. Not be too attached to your original ideas, and let the artist that you've got together, let them do what they do best, and also guide them and find that balance between what you're hearing in your head and what other people are bringing to the table. I just love that kind of work.

Kousha Navidar: That sense of discovery that you mentioned, I love how you brought up the idea relating it to writing in many ways. When I think about writing, I think about like, you start with the idea of a story. For you as a producer, is there an equivalent to that story idea in music when you start out with producing an album?

Terri Lyne Carrington: I think yes. You have to think thematically. You have to think about what you're trying to convey like an overall message. Some of what I produce is instrumental, and some is with vocals. Of course, it's easier to have a theme when you have the vocals, but even without it, you still have to have a theme. That's rolling around the back of your brain with all the decisions that you're making. You create a narrative, both verbally, of course, and also sonically.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Let's listen to some right now, I want to play a song from Real Life Story. This is the first track. It's called Message True. Here it is.

[MUSIC - Terri Lyne Carrington-Message True]

That was Message True. We are talking to Terri Lyne Carrington, the drummer, composer, and producer. We're talking to Terri for our Women's History Month series, Equalizers: Women in Music Production. Terri, you're best known as a drummer. How did you find your way to the drums?

Terri Lyne Carrington: I'm a third-generation musician. My grandfather was a drummer and he passed away about six months before I was born. My father played saxophone and drums, so the drums are in the house and probably also in the blood a little bit. I think when kids are curious and you give them opportunities to discover things and you support their curiosity, this is what can happen. I was very fortunate that my parents were very supportive of a little girl trying to play the drums in 1973 or 1974 when I started because I didn't see any other women playing drums.

There were no role models like that for me, but even back then, when I was 10, I probably wrote my first song. When I was a teenager, I went to probably somebody's home studio and would demo songs. Even when I did my first album at 16, which was just released 40 years later.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, wow.

Terri Lyne Carrington: Yes, it's called TLC and Friends. We made some back then and just gave them away, but it had a proper release on Candid Records a couple of years ago. I spliced. That was back in the older days when you didn't have all this digital technology, so I was with the engineer splicing the tape and doing all that. I think even back then, production was something that really caught my attention.

Kousha Navidar: Terri Lyne, you've said that it seems natural for drummers to become producers. As a trumpet player myself, I thought, 'Oh, that's interesting.' I don't know if that applies to trumpet players, but that's very interesting about drummers. I'm wondering, why do you think drummers make good producers?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Because I think when we're on stage, we have to have a real sense of the arc of a piece of music. We can really help control the direction of where a piece goes. We're supportive, we know when to lead, we know when to follow. We know generally what's needed at any given moment to bring something over the top, if that's what's needed, or to calm things down if that's what's needed. I just feel like how we have to function as a drummer is leans toward production. It's production-minded. There's been some great drummer producers, of course.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Can you think of any?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Yes. Narada Michael Walden, Lenny White, Phil Collins, I don't know.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, there's-- [crosstalk]

Terri Lyne Carrington: I'm sure there's more.

Kousha Navidar: There's a bunch. I don't want to put any instrument players on the spot, but are there any instruments that you think historically do not make for good producers? Is a trumpet player correct in that sense? Because I will go out and say that trumpet players will not make good producers, but you tell me.

Terri Lyne Carrington: That's very funny. Trumpet players have a certain personality, I've noticed.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, really?

Terri Lyne Carrington: I never thought about it as far as production or not. Yes, especially lead trumpet players. I think every instrument maybe if you were to round everyone up, every instrument may have a little personality archetype, but no-

Kousha Navidar: Artists will be artists.

Terri Lyne Carrington: -I don't. Yes, yes. I don't think that there's one instrument better than another when it comes to production. It's just your interest.

Kousha Navidar: Let's talk about Dianne Reeves for a second. In 1993, you co-produced Dianne Reeves's album Art & Survival. How did you two become connected originally?

Terri Lyne Carrington: We met when I was 10 years old and she was in her late teens at the Wichita Kansas Jazz Festival. We were both guests with Clark Terry and we've been friends ever since. It's been a very long friendship of coming up on 50 years. Art & Survival, I co-wrote a song and did some co-production, but then I can't remember the exact year, but I fully produced her album that day, which I believe was her first Grammy nomination.

That was a real pleasure for me. It was featuring Mulgrew Miller on piano. I worked with Russell Ferrante from the Yellow Jackets on some arrangements and it was just a beautiful experience. Then more recently, which I guess has been seven or eight years now, but her last album, Beautiful Life, I produced, which won her Grammy and that's the Grammy that I won as a producer.

Kousha Navidar: Was the song Josa Lee, the one that you co-wrote?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: We have a clip of the song Josa Lee by Dianne Reeves. Can we play it? Here it is.

[MUSIC - Dianne Reeves- Josa Lee]

We just listened to Josa Lee. We're here with Terri Lyne Carrington. Terry Lyne, what do you remember about that song and your early work producing musicians other than yourself?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Oh, let's see. What do I remember? Hearing it in my head, I couldn't hear the clip as you played it, but I'm hearing the song in my head. You're just trying to find that magic all the time. You're trying to find the thing that makes something interesting, the thing that makes it danceable in varying styles. Anything can dance, even free music has a dance. It's a flow that you're trying to become in one with-- It's a universal flow and rhythm. That's how I think about it. When I'm in rhythm with the universe, my life in general is in rhythm.

The same thing with music when I'm in rhythm. Something excites you over here, and then something excites you over here. I remember the horns. We did the horn part, and that really added a lot to the drum beat. You may play a drum beat, and then you realize that's not quite the right one and you have to do it again. When you play the right one-

Kousha Navidar: It locks

Terri Lyne Carrington: -that's when you're-- Yes, and you're in that flow and everything starts coming together.

Kousha Navidar: Yes.

Terri Lyne Carrington: I just remember that yes, we collaborated, me, Dianne, and Eddie del Barrio on that and yes, we had a good time.

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen to another Dianne Reeves song. This is Feels so Good (Lifted) from Beautiful Life. I just want to point out, Terri Lyne, you can't hear the clips because it's just a Zoom thing, so sorry about that. I will ask you to set it up for us a little bit maybe before our listeners can hear it. Anything you want to say about Feels So Good (Lifted) before we play it?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Sure. This song, it was really interesting because we had a lot of sessions, some in New York, some in Boston, some in New Jersey. We were coming to the end of the record, and we had a few songs that needed some tightening up. Long story short is I lost a hard drive. If any budding producers are out there, I left the hard drive and hadn't backed the last session up, so I left it in a taxi and never got it back. I was in the taxi with George Duke. We were talking about something and I got excited and left it.

She had just recorded a duo piece, piano, and vocals, so the last song on the album. When I lost and we had a gig at Carnegie Hall that night, she said, "Oh, yeah, well, we can do it again, so don't worry, but you're paying for it, and I'm not leaving Denver." I had to fly the pianist out to Denver and fly out there. I knew this was going to be the last session because now we were up to the end of the budget. There was one song that needed a lyric still, which was Feel So Good. We had the hook, the chorus, but we didn't have the verses.

The whole time I'm reminding her, she said, "Oh, I'm going to write it. Don't worry, I'm going to write it." When I got there, she hadn't written it.

[laughter]

I knew I didn't want to have to fly back to Denver, so we were on limited time, and I asked the engineer to do the overdubs that we needed with her for about an hour. I went and locked myself in a room and wrote the lyric. I think that that just-- I'm telling that story because as a producer, you have to do so many different things now. If you're not able to write lyrics, then I guess that's one thing. You have to just show up, focus, and deliver as best you can. For me, that was a classic example of the pressure and functioning well under the pressure.

Kousha Navidar: That's a wonderful story. Let's hear what came of that pressure. Here's Feel So Good (Lifted).

[MUSIC - Dianne Reeves- Feel So Good (Lifted)]

Sometimes, I get so tangled in my emotions

Stuck in a "why" and who's to blame?

How I'll list to change the natural motion

Knowing that some things will never change

So I let it go

oh yeah

Coz there are things you simply can't control

And it feels so good

I wanna stay lifted

I wanna stay free

Kousha Navidar: There are those lyrics. Feel So Good (Lifted). Necessity is the mother of invention and budget is the instigator of all good musical tracks, I guess.

Terri Lyne Carrington: It's so true.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, that's what being a producer is. It's budget. Let's talk about your Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice work. Because you are the founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. Can you tell us what the mission of the institute is?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Sure. I started the Institute because, after about 10 years or so of teaching at Berklee, I finally realized that I wasn't-- How do I say this? I was replicating some of the things that were not great for some of the female students. I was teaching how I had been taught, which is just put your head down, power through, be the best, and don't worry about the rest. I started talking more to young women at the college and understood better the barriers, the extra burdens that they carried, some of the things they were going through.

Then I got angry at myself, angry at some of the male teachers that were not sensitive and just angry at the reasons that are systemic why jazz has a gender problem. Yes, started the institute to give them space to come be their authentic selves, to help alleviate these extra burdens, and a space where they could learn jazz without that kind of pressure.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, absolutely.

Terri Lyne Carrington: We teach, mentor, advocate for people, not just women, but anybody that wants to study jazz with both racial justice and gender justice as guiding principles.

Kousha Navidar: A small percentage of producers and engineers in the music industry are women, and fewer of them get honors and awards for their work. Do you think something like an Institute of Production and Gender Justice would make sense and what kind of things might it address if it existed?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Yes, absolutely. Because this problem with gender is pervasive throughout the industry in different ways. So many things have been gendered like instruments playing drums, playing trumpet, and also with production and engineering. There's more and more female engineers and you can look at the recording academy and you see the numbers are growing all the time. Of course, it's not equitable fully yet. Until that time, sure, any other kinds of organizations or programs that are focused on this, it's very important.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, I'm looking at the clock. I want to make sure that we talk about your latest release, which is a new version of, We Insist, the influential suite from drummer Max Roach. Can you tell me more about this project?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Yes. In 2023 and 2024, I was working on the next Social Science album. The Social Science was two albums ago and it was nominated for Grammy and got a lot of great critical acclaim. I was working on the second album with this group, and it dawned on me that Max Roach's centennial was happening. Because Social Science wasn't going to be finished quickly, because it's a much more involved production and many guest artists, I decided to pivot and try to quickly do what I call more unregular jazz album. Where you go in the studio and for a couple of days do a few overdubs and get it done quickly. I called some of the musicians I had signed to Candid Records because I do A&R for Candid, and I thought this would be a great way for all of us to come together and reimagine one of Candid's biggest records, which is the original We Insist, which was also on Candid. Max Roach was a bit of a mentor for me as well, a good friend. He tried to get me signed to Blue Note when I was 16 and he really supported me. I thought, let's try to do this real quick.

I wanted the single to come out before his centennial was over, but it was over end of January, so we didn't quite make it but it was better for it to have the right release opposed to just putting it out and nobody knowing about it. This single came out last week and the actual album doesn't come out until June. One cool thing is on one of the tracks we have Julian Priester, who was on the original We Insist with Max Roach, and he's the last person that's still alive from that recording.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, wow. The single Freedom Day Part 1?

Terri Lyne Carrington: Yes, he's not on that though. He's on another song, Tears For Johannesburg.

Kousha Navidar: I see.

Terri Lyne Carrington: Freedom Day Part 1 features the amazing Christie Dashiell. She's featured singing on the whole album and she was an independent artist that was nominated for Grammy in Best Jazz Vocal this past year. She's just great. Also features Simon Moullier on vibes, Matthew Stevens on guitar, Morgan Guerin on bass and woodwinds, and Milena Casado on trumpet.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, wonderful. Trumpet. Oh, there we go. He was talking to me. We have that. I'm looking at the clock. I know you have a hard out at the top of the half-hour here, so I'm going to say goodbye to you, but we're going to play you out with some of that track. I've been speaking to drummer, composer, and producer Terri Lyne Carrington for our Women's History Month series, Equalizers: Women in Music Production. Terri Lyne, thanks so much for all of your work and for hanging us and walking us through it.

Terri Lyne Carrington: Oh, thank you very much. I just want to say one more thing about Freedom Day.

Kousha Navidar: Sure.

Terri Lyne Carrington: The original version was very, very fast. A lot of jazz heads would know that, but other people may not. It was very, very fast and the one thing I wanted to do is completely flip it. We made it a ballad. When you change the music that drastically, the lyric sounds different. It creates a different meaning. Now this Freedom Day, which the original Freedom Day was dealing with the anniversary of the emancipation proclamation and Juneteenth and those kinds of things. This one, while it still is reflective of all of that, it also reflects some of the modern freedom movements and freedom struggles that we're facing today.

Kousha Navidar: That's a wonderful stage setting and I appreciate it. Let's listen to some of it. First, I'm going to say goodbye to you. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We really appreciate it.

Terri Lyne Carrington: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Kousha Navidar: Bye. Here it is. Freedom Day. Let's listen.

[MUSIC - Terri Lyne Carrington and Christie Dashiell- Freedom Day Part 1]

Whisper, listen, whisper listen

Whispers say we're free

Rumors flying, must be lying?

Can it really be?

Can't come--