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Interview Podcast Audio Randy Jackson
Music Club, Vol. 1

He's best known for dropping "dawg" like it's a pronoun, but American Idol judge Randy Jackson boasts a resume that would surprise many and far exceeds his trite exploits on the star-making talent show.

The Louisiana native cut his teeth as a session bassist in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, working with a who's who of rock and jazz fusion artists, from Santana and John McLaughlin to Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan--not to mention a stint with Journey. He's also served as head A&R guy at both Columbia and MCA Records.

All that helps to answer the inevitable question upon last month's release of Jackson's album, Randy Jackson's Music Club, Vol. 1: Why is an American Idol judge releasing a solo album?

Jackson gathered up a list of all-star talents and lesser-known up-and-comers for an unbelievably diverse album that seems to touch every genre without fitting into any of them. He spoke to MP3.com about his career, Idol, and the album. Hey, Randy, how are you doing? Hey, how's it going, man? Good, how are you? I'm good, man. Whereabouts are you? We're in San Francisco. Yeah, city by the bay. You got it. I love that town. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I appreciate it. Oh, dude, definitely. So for the album that you've put together, did you start at the beginning with a wish list of sorts in terms of all these guests? Or was it more piecemeal, with ideas coming up. You obviously have what is one of the better rolodexes in the music business, so I don't think it's hard for you to get people. So I'm curious how you identify the people you want to work with and after that how everything comes from that? I'm more really trying to find songs that I love and thinking about not going through the rolodex so much to say who are the big names I can put on this, but just what kind of people would love the song. And it's kind of like the records that were made in the old days for me. This was kind of a fun experiment for me since I never really thought about putting out a solo album because I'm not a singer, right?

And being a producer and having worked with a lot of people, I wanted to really have some fun. And when I was making the Sam Moore record a couple of years ago, we had Springsteen, we had Bon Jovi. We had a bunch of people that heard the record and stopped by. And Sam was telling me, "Man, in the old days, this is the way records used to be. There'd be five studios going." The Record Plant up there has five studios in the Bay. And somebody had walked by a door and said, "Wow! That sounds good in there, man. Wow!" "Who's in there?" "Oh, that's Van Morrison." And that would be Carlos Santana. He'd step in, "Van, that stuff is great." And then Van says, "Hey, man, you want to play a solo?" "Oh, my god, yes!"

So it's more of kind of a hang out, more of like a jam session with your friends. It's kind of a fun kind of thing, and it's the same thing with the Paula Abdul track. We've been talking, sitting in there in the [American Idol] judging panel for the last six, seven seasons saying, "Man, we should do something. This song here would make a great cover, or whatever, whatever." And I finally found a song while I was making a record. I said, "Paula, this song has got you all over it. I'm telling you this is a hot record for you." And we were down in San Diego with the auditions, and I played it for her and she was like, "Dude, you're so right. I love this. This is hot." Awesome. So it kind of came up like that. It was kind of just very natural. And I also wanted to put people in different lights that you don't see them in. For the duet with Elliott [Yamin] and Katharine [McPhee] from Idol, I just want people to know how talented these two really are. And diverse. And diverse. To put them on something different. And Anthony Hamilton with John Rich and Big & Rich. I mean the soul guy with a country guy on a country version of a Michael Buble song was another twist. And the same thing with Joss Stone singing on like a hip-hop record. Yeah. You know what I mean? So I wanted to kind of mix it up. And you got "Wang Dang Doodle," which is kind of autobiographical because I grew up as a kid in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the dirty South. So when you think about that and the '70s being a huge influence on my life, you can see why I would love an old Koko Taylor blues song and why I would have this gospel song with a minister from my youth, the Reverend Rance Allen, at the end doing the Benediction. And I just really wanted to just make it a fun record and have music on there for everyone. There's something on here that everybody can enjoy. There's at least one song that everybody should love. Do you think you would have made this album if this little TV show hadn't come calling six years ago? Yeah, I think I still would have made it because I always loved those old Quincy Jones records. Quincy was one of the greatest producers who heavily influenced me, along with like Tom Dowd, Jerry Wexler and those guys. Quincy used to make these records that had jazz guys on it with R&B guys, with soul guys, with whatever. Introducing new talent. Yeah, and that's what this is. There's Kelli Love, a girl from the Bay Area that's on there. She's actually from Marin County, and she's a new artist that's on there. And also this other girl, Barbie Esco, who's from Europe. That's why I started this label about eight months ago, Dream Merchant 21 Entertainment, which is my record label that I started with the Stax/Concord guys, and I'd wanted this record to do two things. I wanted to start a music club where you could allow all shapes and forms and sizes and types of music in there. And also to say that this label--that this is the debut record on--will also be signing all kinds of talent. My thing is that I love artists. I manage a kid by the name of Van Hunt. I was going to ask you about him. Absolutely. Yeah. He's a great artist. I just started managing this great rock band from Charlotte, North Carolina, called Paper Tongues. That is an amazing band, and they'll have a record coming out in the next six months or so that is just life-changing as well. And they're artists as well. So I love the whole artist thing, you know, as a kid that grew up a lot in the Bay Area. I spent 12 years up there with Journey and Santana and all of the people up there. I love artists, man. I love that. Yeah. Now I'm curious. An album is always, at least in part, a product of an artist's own taste, personal taste in music. Yes. But since this is an album that is so unbelievably diverse,--literally a country track, a hip-hop track, a gospel track, and everything in between. I'm curious, is your personal taste this diverse? Yeah. That's what I'm saying. I'm a kid that grew up in Baton Rouge. When I started playing music, I loved John McLaughlin, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, John Coltrane. One of the funny things for me is that whenever I get depressed, which is very seldom, because I'm a kid that meditates twice a day--I've been doing it a long time, and I try and put things in the proper perspective. I'll watch Woodstock all eight hours because I go, "Oh, my god, this is how you do it. If I could only get an inch of this." [laughs]

You know what I mean, I'll watch Sly and the Family Stone and go, "Oh, my god." So yeah, it's kind of almost autobiographical in a weird sort of way. If you look at what I've done this past year, I've made a record with Boyz II Men, and it's like a Motown almost greatest hits kind of record with some acappella stuff on it. I finished the Travis Tritt record. I made a Sam Moore soul record, and then I made this record, and worked a bit on a Van Hunt record. I love music, and I think this kind of a record is for music lovers--people that absolutely love music, love all sorts of types and kinds of music. I wanted to ask in particular about one track. The Crunk Squad track uses auto tune software, which is such a huge trend in R&B and hip hop right now. But does it make the musical purist in you a bit squeamish sometimes? No, not at all, because I'm sitting here in my studio in LA right now in front of a huge Pro Tools rig that I've been using instead of tape machines for the last 15 years or so, and there's every plug-in known to man. You've got to remember, this was just a fun record, and those boys are in high school. That's a high school group that sent me this song, and I was so in love with it that I thought it was so infectious and cool and Ghostface does his thing on there from Wu-Tang.

And it's just really cool, and we were messing around in the studio, and I was like, "Yo, man, let's do one of these." It's really like a fun record. It's almost like if I got everyone on this record together in a room and we'd be just having a big old party jamming. It's kind of what came out. OK. Sure. You've worked with--you just mentioned a few--some supremely talented artists over the years from a number of genres: Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Jean-Luc Ponty, Charlie Daniels, across the whole wide array of genres. I'm curious how many American Idol contestants in your six years would you say have the talent to sustain a 20-, 30-, 40-year career? Well that's the whole thing. To me, American Idol has searched for the would-be undiscovered superstar, right? I think a lot of these kids have the ability to really try and become career artists, but I think what you have to do is set that benchmark yourself. Winning a show just gets you in the ring. It allows you in the ring with the greats [that are] boxing, so you can say, "You know what, I'm going to put my toe in this ring now. I've won this show, gone through the ranks and all the criticism and everything by the public and the judges. I now stand before you trying to put my toe in the ring."

It's now up to them to try and create their own artistry. I said to someone earlier today, "To me an artist is those people that can have a career that they don't even have to have records out." Being a great artist is beyond records. You take the Grateful Dead. They could have not had a record out, and they could have played 30 shows in San Francisco in the same giant stadium and have been sold out every day. Yeah. The Dave Matthews Band can just announce a tour, and it's not about record sales at that point. People turn out to see artists no matter where they are or whatever they're going to do. So it's a very different kind of a thing. So to me, that is definitely the question. I think a lot of these people have shots at being artists, but they got to prove it, and there's a long way to go. Winning Idol is maybe the first step because it's the rocket ship to the top. All these kids were obviously out there trying to make it on their own. But this is the real rocket ship to the top and then you go for it. After that comes the hard work. Yeah. It's hard to become one of those career artists. And unfortunately, with today's music scene, we're not building a lot of legendary career artists anymore. So it's a little bit unfortunate. That's one of the most downsides for me about the music business as of today. Yeah. One of the reasons I asked about that is because Van Hunt's your guy. And I have no idea if he's going to sell any records between now and then, but I still see him making quality music in 20 years. He is a great artist and I love him immensely, and we're working on a new record by him that hopefully will come out this summer. And he is definitely a poet for the people. He is definitely a great artist, and that's the heart of who I am. People see me as a dog on Idol, and I do my thing, but the heart of who I am is that I love artists. I'm an artist kid. I mean, you can't love Led Zeppelin and John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix and Miyles Davis and play in jazz fusion groups if you're not an artist--if you don't love art. So that's what drives me, and those kinds of people are what really drives me.

I do a radio show here in LA at Westwood, a top dirty urban countdown. And just today I had another young artist on that I really love, a band called Fine Frenzy. The girl Allison, she's from Seattle, and she lives down here in LA, and she's another artist. I mean, I love artists. That's what drives me. So she came in and did an interview and all we talked about was art. We talked about Shakespeare. We talked about fables. We talked about old music, classical music.

So to me, to be the complete ultimate musician is all I ever wanted to really be in my life. So that's why I studied jazz and studied classical so hard and delved so hard into all of those genres. So that's why a guy like me putting out a record, which people probably don't understand, is just going to have a potpourri of things on it because I am a true music lover. This is a record for music lovers. The last thing I want to ask you is: Do you feel that this season of Idol is answering some of the criticism of the past years in terms of bringing in people that have a bit more of a broader musical talent in their backgrounds? Yeah, I think it does 100 percent. We allow people to play instruments, and I think there are some very different artist types on here. I think you've got more singer/songwriters this year, and that's what we've been saying potentially this could be--if the public votes--one of the strongest seasons yet, because I think it's very different. And people ask me every time, "Ah, man, what's going to make that show different than the last time? It's always kind of the same."

No, it's never really the same if you watch closely. These kids are completely different from those kids last year. So you never know who's going to turn out. There's some kid sitting at home--who knows, maybe in San Francisco--now watching Idol, saying, "Wow! Well, you know, I'm kind of like John Mayer or Alicia Keys, and I can play and sing. Maybe they'll let me on that show, and I could do my thing." That's what it's really about. It's about finding that great undiscovered talent. We're so blessed to have this show and I'm so blessed to be on it, but I think Idol is one of the greatest talent shows that there's ever, ever been. Yeah, for sure. Well, I very much appreciate the time, sir. Dude, good looking out, man. Have a good one. All right. Bye.