Kenny Kirkland

Oh, man, I'm getting tired.

Bob James, Kenny Kirkland, Grant Green.

Yes.

Don Cherry, Hewitt Laws, Don Elias, Bob Mincer, Gary Burden, Yosef Lateef.

Jack T. Jeanette.

Oh.

charlie hayden kenny kirkland and the great pat metheny i when i heard you know i saw it in downbeat that it was coming out i just was i was just itching itching couldn't wait for it to come out because i you know just so relative to all of this music that i've been you know it's a great debut album

Yes.

[laughs]

Uh, which was made only bigger when Sting decided that he was gonna go solo, and he was gonna hire Kenny Kirkland and Branford Marsalis and Darryl Jones and Mino Cinelu and Omar Hakim, and everybody was going, "Wait, jazz guys?"

[laughs]

"What are you, crazy?" You know.

You're all that I got to give you.

When Bilal was 13 years old, his dad would take him to Philadelphia's jazz clubs, where he got to see Terrence Blanchard, Kenny Kirkland, and Jeff Tainwatts and others.

That was an experience in itself.

Oh, man, it meant everything to me because I was going to the Performing Arts High School.

And I had dreamed of working with him since my early 20s when I really first heard his music.

And I was a fan of the artists he was working with, Kenny Kirkland, the pianist, who's no longer with us, but Christian McBride and Joey Calderazo, later Branford Marsalis.

And I remember being in New York City in, I think it was around 2003.

And I was looking at Time Out magazine and Nellie Mackay was on the cover and she was paired with Sting at Madison Square Gardens.

Yeah.

And, like, he's playing some Kenny Kirkland stuff.

He's reaching.

He's throwing...