Modern Jazz Quartet

I've always been fascinated by the relationship between jazz and comedy, and there's a long history of those worlds coming together.

When Robert Klein joined me on this show, he recalled opening for Wes Montgomery and the Modern Jazz Quartet at the Village Vanguard and learning from watching Sarah Vaughan night after night at Mr. Kelly's in Chicago, where they shared a bill.

Ramsey Lewis and Les McCann used to tell me about working with Lenny Bruce.

And Les also used to tell me about working with Red Fox, who actually owned a jazz club called The Foxhole.

Nickname was Bags.

He was a jazz vibraphonist and also co-founder of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

N. Rahmani passed away in 2015 at the age of 81 from cancer.

He was a master of the karnato, a bamboo flute credited with elevating the instrument as a solo instrument in classical Indian music.

While I was thinking maybe on one of the untitled interludes, there's one that sounds a lot like a double bass on there, and I was wondering if that was you or somebody else playing the double bass.

Well, so there is a sample, as it were, of a great bass line from the Modern Jazz Quartet.

That's Percy Heath playing, a much better bass player than I am.

And an exquisite, everybody should know Modern Jazz Quartet, an incredible band.

And I do sort of parrot that line later on in the middle of 3 o'clock.

At one point, Nico played piano on the interstitial.

Should have known the bass line is sampled.

You can hear the record popping.

jazz.

There's a modern jazz quartet or quintet, but I can't remember.

But a couple of albums by them.

There's the Black Dykes Mills band doing Thingamabob, Paul's rather jolly wee brass tune, which I enjoy.

And my father was there for one summer session when he was still at Berklee.

And he actually wrote a piece called Faculty Meeting, which was performed by John Lewis from the Modern Jazz Quartet.

We have a recording of it.

Max Roach introduces it.

My parents were basically New Yorkers, and their music was jazz.

So I was hearing Miles Davis and Coltrane, Ornette Combe and the Modern Jazz Quartet, all the big band stuff.

So jazz was in my head all the time.

And...