# Steve Gadd remembers Chick Corea: Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2021/02/14/steve-gadd-remembers-chick-corea-videos-photos/
- Published: 2021-02-14T13:42:35+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**We are all blindsided and deeply saddened by the passing of Chick Corea. One of
his longtime collaborators, from his early fusion years up until the very end, is
drummer Steve Gadd. He pays tribute to his friend on The Checkout podcast.**

Back in 2019 at the Montreal Jazz Festival, I briefly interviewed Gadd about the
time he briefly played in Return to Forever. We listen to that bootleg, along with
his reflection on Corea not as a pianist, but as a drummer. He says hearing Chick
play the drums in the late 1960s unlocked his own playing on one particular night.“
His approach and what he did was so free. Here’s a piano player playing the drums
in a way that I never thought of. My playing changed that night. Overnight. It sort
of cleared some things up for me.”

Fifty-year musical partnerships are rare. But the bond between keyboard virtuoso
Chick Corea and master drummer Steve Gadd is legendary: five decades after they 
first met, Corea and Gadd are making some of the most vital, adventurous music they’ve
ever created. Barn-storming funk-based workouts, dazzling and intimate lyrical excursions
and Spanish-hearted improvisations set a new standard for no-boundaries jazz. And
thankfully, they caught it on tape.

![Steve Gadd and Chick Corea](https://i0.wp.com/www.wbgo.org/sites/wbgo/files/styles/
medium/public/202102/chick_corea_and_steve_gadd_0.png?w=640&ssl=1)

Chinese Butterfly, Corea & Gadd’s debut two-disc studio album, featuring five epic
new Corea compositions, is scheduled for release January 19, 2018 via Concord Jazz.
The album’s title hints at the rare and transfixing beauty of its music. Chick and
Steve use their shared history of fearless innovation as a launching pad, pushing
into new territory with an inspired band of collaborators: Benin-born guitarist 
and vocalist Lionel Loueke, saxophonist and flutist Steve Wilson, Cuban bassist 
Carlitos Del Puerto, and Venezuelan percussionist Luisito Quintero.

The album is the realization of a long-held desire that Chick and Steve shared, 
to work together more intensively. “Whenever Chick and I bump into each other, we’re
always talking about playing music together,” Gadd says. “After many years of saying
that, we finally put some time aside.”

_hinese Butterfly_ (Stretch/Concord Jazz), the new double-album by the Chick Corea
+ Steve Gadd Band, is pretty much what you’d expect from two masters of their respective
instruments: a lengthy clinic in exploratory improvisation, tight rhythmic interplay
and attention-getting virtuosity. It’s also a “debut” recording that you could justifiably
claim has been 53 years in the making.

That’s how long ago Corea, now 76, and Gadd, 72, first met, at a jam session on 
Long Island in 1965. Details are sketchy, but Corea remembers this much: “There 
was an instant rapport between us. We didn’t have to meet in the middle.”

A couple of years after that jam, Corea quit playing piano in Art Blakey’s Jazz 
Messengers and signed on with fellow Blakey alum Chuck Mangione, for whom Gadd occupied
the drum stool. “You could tell Chick was special right away,” Gadd says of this
brief period. “It was before he went with Miles, but he was already very innovative.
He just had that mentality.”

From there, paths diverged. While Corea played with the pioneers of fusion, Gadd
performed as a musician in the U.S. Army. Toward the end of his three years in uniform,
he caught Corea’s latest band at the Village Vanguard. “It was the original Return
to Forever with [percussionist] Airto [Moreira] and [singer] Flora [Purim],” Gadd
recalls. “I thought the music was great, and I told Chick then that if he ever needed
me, I’d love to be involved.”

Corea’s call came in the spring of 1973, and Gadd quickly accepted. For the next
three months, the new all-electric Return to Forever rehearsed and played shows,
including a rampaging performance on Boston’s WBCN-FM that’s been widely bootlegged.“
That band was on fire,” Gadd says. “[Bassist] Stanley [Clarke], Mingo Lewis on percussion,
Bill Connors on guitar. We were playing all the tunes that came out later on _Hymn
of the Seventh Galaxy_.”

But when that album appeared in November ’73, Gadd’s name was absent from the credits.
There’d been a problem. “Chick wanted the same band that did the album to do the
touring,” Gadd explains. “But I was living in New York, I had a couple of kids and
I was doing sessions. I just couldn’t be on the road that much. It was a hard decision
to not stay in that band; I knew it was going to be so strong. But it worked out
great for Chick and [Gadd’s successor] Lenny [White]—and for me, too.” That’s for
sure. RTF went on to tremendous success, and Gadd became one of the world’s top 
session drummers, renowned for his work with Paul Simon, James Taylor, Steely Dan
and many others.

“Steve’s a real buddy,” Corea says. “I love and admire him, but most of the time
we’ve been rolling in different worlds.” The two worlds did collide every once in
a while, notably when Corea hired Gadd for two 1976 albums, _The Leprechaun_ and
_My Spanish Heart_, and 1981’s _Three Quartets_. But the long-mooted concept of 
playing together in a band again didn’t take on an air of reality until two years
ago, when they ran into each other in Japan.

“I said, ‘OK, man, we’ve been talking about this for years. Come down to the house
and jam,’” Corea remembers. “It took a while to get our schedules together, but 
we picked a date about three months ahead of time.” By the time Gadd arrived at 
Corea’s Florida studio in December 2016, the keyboardist had written several new
tunes with him in mind. As Gadd puts it, “You plant a seed, and Chick will make 
it grow.”

“Composing is probably my favorite musical thing to do,” Corea says, “and Steve 
is a beautiful drummer to present compositions to. He puts his own stamp on the 
music, and it’s always just the right stamp.”

Once they’d worked their way through two moody, intricate pieces—“Like I Was Sayin’”
and “Gadd-zooks”—both players knew they had something. It was time to bring in reinforcements.
With Gadd’s approval, Corea called up a few friends: guitarist Lionel Loueke, saxophonist
and flutist Steve Wilson, bassist Carlitos Del Puerto and percussionist Luisito 
Quintero. Over five days of sessions last February, they overdubbed individually
on the tracks Corea and Gadd had already recorded, then played as a team on six 
more, including the mesmerizing Corea/Loueke co-write “Wake-Up Call” and one real
surprise: “Return to Forever,” the opening cut of RTF’s debut album, pulled from
the Chick archives for the first time since the ’70s.

“We did that one because of Philip,” Corea says, referring to guest Philip Bailey
of Earth, Wind & Fire, who puts his trademark falsetto spin on the lines originally
sung by Flora Purim. “We’ve become friends over the past several years and we’d 
been planning to do some tracks together, so I invited him to come by while I was
working with Steve. Philip really likes that song, and he wanted to challenge himself
to sing all those odd melodies at the beginning.”

That particular song choice may have been a coincidence. But taken together with
everything else on _Chinese Butterfly_—from Gadd’s presence to the vintage Rhodes
and analog-synth tones Corea favors throughout to the album’s overall spacey vibe—
it feels like we’ve entered some alternate dimension where Gadd actually stayed 
with Corea in the ’70s. That impression was, if anything, furthered by the new band’s
numerous 2017 live shows. Is this, for want of a better phrase, a return to Return
to Forever?

“I don’t know, man,” Corea chuckles. “It’s a return to Chick, that’s for sure. You
know, I sometimes get criticism when I play stuff that I’ve already written. They
say, ‘Oh, he’s playing something old.’ But you don’t create in the past or the future;
you do it _now_. And that’s what we’re doing. Is it old? Is it new? I say it’s all
just creation.”

![Chick Corea & Steve Gadd (photo by C. Taylor Crothers)](https://i0.wp.com/cdn2.
jazztimes.com/2018/02/Corea_Gadd_2_by_C_Taylor_Crothers-800x533.jpg?resize=640%2C426&
ssl=1)

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