But, um, did it move the needle for you when you won the Grammy? Did it change things?

Not immediately.

Um, it's a cumulative thing.

Uh, so much of this, so much of this, uh, career path, is that what it is, is about longevity and, you know, laying those bricks down and putting the mortar between the bricks.

Every single night there's an audience, and I take for granted they have not heard me before, and my job is to make them never forget, to fall in love, to have a great time, to forget their troubles, to be present in the moment, to give them a thrill, to t- to move their hearts, to sing in tune, to deliver a vibration or a message or a signal or a gift that gets them to, say, walk out of that room saying, "A- le- we gotta come back and hear that guy again." It's an audition every night.

So the awards and stuff, it's...

I, I, I treasure them.

Yeah.

Why did you want to perform alongside this band? Tell me about them.

Well, they invited me in the first place.

You know, I'm always up for singing and performing with younger, brilliant musicians.

And, you know, the whole team that Ben Williams has put together, these are all very, very unique individualists, which is what you want in jazz music.

And yet they come together as a beautiful collective.

So it's not really a stable band even.

It's a continuously overturning, you know, set of volunteers who are coming in.

What goes through your mind when you see this next generation of talent and composers and musicians coming together and not just playing the music, but they're trying to champion jazz and uplift music?

You're listening to Stories and Sounds from the New Jazz Archive.

I've been running to run all the savages, no more than just a star.

Come dancing with me in a little dream, Tanya Jean Said prophet man with one hand put away And we will seek together the stolen vision, vision that was hidden By lovers gone and poets buried, time swing over Gonging and banging late in life, clock a stumbling, a three ring Paddling a new thing Telling time, telling tales, telling size Filling pails with alabaster springing Here's your life upon a plate Regarding its fate, senility's rumored How can you eat that? Asks the girl with a smirk Don't you see how every day, come what may It's growing, you jerk, you And thirty centuries of sleeping Won't make a dent in giving the time that it's needing The victim appendices, the mozzanines will bring about the stumbling of a beast with weaker knees This I tell you So dig it, don't wig it Come along with me and envision the vision Maybe then you will feel Like the rumbling of a train on tracks a hundred miles away, you can hear pretty clear.

Like the echoes of the footballs of childhood in rooms.

Like a fire sire, like a pyre, a singing out of desire.

Dark angelic bodies in a flying circus come bombing over Flanders fields.

And what if talking drummers who can play just like Alvin never escape the mandibles of their mothers? When screaming upwards from deep within his inner voice, crying into the vortex of night, subtle terrors make writing a scrawling of dying wish notes.

entrails

And I have to say, for somebody who I tend to run into in various corners of the world at various unexpected times, Just to see you more or less staying in one place, even if it's New York City, is a pretty unusual sight.

It is.

It is for me, too.

I get up every morning, I look in the mirror, and I have to say, what? You again? I have to start this interview just by saying how grateful I am to have this life and have this moment and have...

This day, this day of sunshine and food and my family's okay and inshallah your family's okay and you're here and we're friends and I'm just really, really focused on gratitude at this point.

I worked all these years to try to get into a spot and to try to justify the seat that I've got at the table of jazz and to be faithful to that and the kindness that's been shown me and the welcoming arms some of my great heroes in music and then you know I built my little perch and the audiences have been faithful and people have been so kind in receiving what I've tried to put out there and I've got my health after some not having my health and you know 57 and I can sing maybe better than I ever have.

Now this Broadway thing, Jennifer, when the offer came through, she was so excited.

Yes,

Ride that train.

...

if you ride that train to the end of the line.

Where the sun don't shine and it's always shady.

It's there you'll find king of the mine, almighty Mr. Hades.

(cheering) We got any other gods? Oh, right, almost forgot.

On the road to hell, there was a railroad station.

Sad song.

Ride that train.

If you ride that train to the end of the line.

(Mmm) Where the sun don't shine and it's always shady.

(Saxophone playing) It's there you'll find king of the mine, almighty Mr. Hades.

(cheering) We got any other gods? Oh, right, almost forgot.

On the road to Hell, there was a railroad station.

(Mmm) And a man with feathers on his feet.

Sad song.