June 2006
Interviewed by Shannon West

Being a music junkie who could rarely afford therapy, over the years there have been some female artists who wrote so many songs I related to that I called them my “secret sisters.” They’re the ones whose songs hit so close to home that hearing them is like having a conversation with someone who really knows you. Marilyn Scott has been one of those artists for me. Her new release, Innocent of Nothing, took over the home and car CD players and the iPod I sneak into work. It can be a bit daunting to talk to someone you’ve never met who has put chunks of your life in her songs, but in conversation she is just like her music; warm, wise, authentic, genuinely caring and just a wellspring of knowledge and insight about music in general and jazz in particular. I talked to her the week the CD was released, which was also the first week of hurricane season and as we chatted the first tropical storm moved across the state. She seemed more concerned about the possibility of something crashing through the ceiling than I was. I just wanted to talk about these songs!


SmoothViews (SV): I love this CD. It’s got a lot of common threads with your previous work but it has a lot of groundbreaking moments on it too.
Marilyn Scott (MS): A lot of people are having some reserve about it, but that’s pretty usual looking back on my life. I have some things that are pretty eclectic. To me, they all have something that pulls it together though.

SV: I think that as a whole piece of work it really speaks to people who are in the process of trying to deal consciously with everyday life and what is going on in the world right now. We need that encouragement and insight whether it comes from someone you know personally or someone you haven't met but you can connect with their music.
MS: That's true. I think that when it comes to the standards on the CD, the quirkiness of it is kind of cool. Like with "Round Midnight." I think the blues is a difficult kind of approach and I wanted it like that. I told George [Duke, the producer] about that and he agreed. I think the songs that are more difficult to sing sometimes don’t sound like that at all to the listener. The way it ends up sounding makes it look easier than it is.  When you listen to Ella or Sara sing, they did some really difficult things but they made it very easy and very palatable to listen to, and that's the idea if you can do that. I think a lot of people feel sad in their life and I like to be able to approach some of that. It can be something like "'Round Midnight" that reminds us of what we've lost and seeing if you can't get some of that back in your life, to love again or whatever, and a lot of people can't. Then there's something like "The Wilderness," where someone has never been able to experience a part of what they are really about, the nature of their existence. They're stuck in a city and they can't get out. Nobody has ever been able to expose them to nature, to places that aren't man-made. I feel that that's such a sad scenario.

SV: When I first heard that I thought it was like a snapshot from a science fiction film of someone looking voyeuristically at a picture in something like in a Sierra Club calendar as if it was alien and forbidden to them. But there are kids growing up in cities right now who don't even get to play where there are trees and plants and grass.
MS: I feel like that is going to be more and more of what will happen to everybody. The majority of people in the years to come will have never seen a forest or touched things that are ordinary to us. I find that being here and standing on this earth is quite amazing. I believe that God made this as a way for us to learn and be a part of something and appreciate it and find a love of it. If you don't, then the selfishness, the uneducated part of not taking care of your inner self will end up hurting the rest of this harmony that we have in the world. When we don't see that, that's what we do. Sometimes you have to live a long time so you can start to see it. By then you've done some damage but hopefully you learn and do better. That’s what’s so great about people who retire with some money and then feel their mortality and start to give to the things that really matter. Usually it's about nature and I'm so thankful for that.

SV: Listening back over your body of work, looking at a group of songs that you and Russell (Ferrante) and Jimmy (Haslip) have written, I think the three of you could save the world (laughs). You've written so many significant songs about things that really are important and none of them are preachy. They are just wonderful songs that are really thoughtful.
MS:  We do and we have a few more that we never got a chance to do and you kind of pay the price of that. Right now it's more of an open field and you can do more of what you want because of the internet. People are buying songs one by one and you don't have a record company saying they don't think it's a good idea for you to put that song on an album. As far as the topics it's not as hard to get songs like this out there. It took me years to get "No Room For Hate" on a CD. We had it written for at least ten years.

SV: I had no idea it took that long, that's such an important song and people really responded to it.
MS:  You'd think you'd get people’s attention that way with the song. Then they start to listen more closely to the lyric. I can't stop doing that. I've come to that conclusion because I've tried to write about other things and I do that pretty well but my desire is to say things about the human condition that are the hardest things for us to confess to even ourselves. Those are the stories that are really interesting and to try to do it musically in a way that can grab a person is a challenge. I love that!

SV: When a songwriter steps out and does it, people hear it and they really relate to it because somebody else is saying something you've been thinking, but haven't been able to clarify.
MS: Look at India.Arie.  She says it so well and you can tell that even though she doesn't sound like him she got some of that from Stevie [Wonder]. He had such a way of bringing music to us that was interesting and catchy, but it still had this deep message telling the truth about what is going on.

SV: Writers like you and Jimmy, Russell, and Brenda Russell do this in a way where the music is so good and the vocal is so good that you connect with the lyrics, where if it the perspective was less personal or the musicality of the song was compromised to fit it around the lyrics it wouldn't be as effective.
MS:  I grew up with too many instrumentalists. I'm pushed by the melody because you listen to these people who are playing the melody instrumentally and it's so important. Russ has been a great person to write with because he's strict about things in a way. He says we could go here but you should really go in another direction because it fits melodically. Every song we write has got a little lesson in it about that.

SV: The opening track, “Round and Round”, just nails what so many people are going through right now. That keyboard line just puts across this feeling of running around in circles and getting more frantic but never getting to the finish line.
MS:We were trying to keep that feeling that it's going around and around and the chromatic part of it where you can feel that movement is really interesting. It's an interesting thing. You go through days where you have so much to do you don't know how you're going to do it, but at the end of the day you go, "I'm very lucky. I wouldn't trade this for anything because I'm very lucky to have what I have." Then the next day starts and you do it all again.

SV: You took some real risks on this CD. Not just in terms of arrangements and song selection but bringing in some elements that just aren't heard on your average contemporary jazz vocal CD. Historically there been a strain of spoken word and poetry in jazz but usually on CDs that are created with the intent of being edgy and progressive. You've brought it into a more accessible context. How did you get the idea to use Steve Connell on "Moods?"
MS: He's a friend and I'm a big fan of poetry. I write a great deal of poetry and go to a lot of performances, but I don't have the desire to be a spoken word artist myself. I felt like I needed to include some things that are happening musically around me. It made sense for me to invite Steve to do that piece because I had written this bigger, edgier song in "Moods" that had one side that was the part I was singing and I had written the other side of it that was like a conversation.

SV: Was that an improvisation from him?
MS: I wrote it out and he adlibbed a lot of things around it, he did his thing to it, which he's terrific at.

SV: Did you do it live? Was he hearing the music behind him?
MS: We cut everything live then we left that section open and had him come in. Then we backed it all the way up so I could do that last little verse and we had him come back in to do his part at the end.

SV: Then the end of "Share It” you do a spoken word part yourself.
MS: I wasn't sure I should do that (laughs).

SV: That usually means it is exactly what you should do!  It really brings home what the song is about.
MS: It didn't seem to bother anybody and it had a nice vibe to it. It's about a friend who is having great success in his life but he doesn't have anybody to share it with and before you know it the time goes by and you realize that you're not being able to share some things in your life that are important. You miss that interaction.

SV: I think that happens to a lot of people as you get older and are more clear about who you are.
MS: Right, and also when you've come out of a relationship and you feel like you'll never be able to find someone again and there's this sense of giving up.

SV: There was this line in the song: "He digs the way I feel for life, heart to heart, wherever you start." There's this vision that that person exists somewhere. Then in "Icebox" you have this very clever imagery about someone who has totally closed themselves off. Was that fun to write? It puts this humor around a really difficult, painful thing that people do.
MS:You just put it away, like in the back of the freezer. That's what we do. Before I wrote the song we were calling this CD "Icebox" for a working title because it just came up in a conversation, kind of like "What will we call it?" "Let's call it 'Icebox."  I started thinking about people I know who do that and got the idea to try to write the lyric. Then it got interesting so I came up with a little melody and Russell and Jimmy and I got together and just had fun with it. It's really fun to play, and that bass line actually came from "A Love Supreme."

SV: Have you gotten much resistance to some of the off the beaten path elements of the CD like that song, the spoken word parts, and the really dissonant intro to "'Round Midnight"?
MS: A lot of people wanted me to do that, but I did that and I think we did an interesting record.

SV: I love Nightcap, but I think it's really important for people who write and sing the way you do to be writing and performing new material. Mixing standards in makes them sound really relevant to today too, instead of sounding like history or a tribute.
MS: These days, with jazz music, in a way you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. If I try to do things that I have written and include them around the standards I'm going to have a harder time being accepted. I will be accepted and I'll be more introduced and welcomed into the jazz platform if I do things that are more standard. But that's never been my big goal. I've always tried to include one or two standards because that is part of what I am doing, the kind of music that I love and want to do. But I want to do it because I want to contribute to it more and write within it. People would call some of the things I do kind of fusion-ish, sort of this stepchild to what jazz is. I can take that. If that's how people feel, I understand that.  But there are different upbringings when it comes to jazz.

SV: I just wonder if it's necessary to get boxed into such a rigid definition of "jazz." There is this whole type of music that has gone underground in the ten years since it quit getting airplay that was kind of a hybrid of contemporary jazz and a more complex and adult oriented type of pop music. That's where I've felt like your music lived and there is an audience for it that loves it, but they have to really work to find it because it's only available on the internet so we're going to have to teach them how to find it in order to keep this type of music alive.
MS: That's really the kind of artist I am. I'm a contemporary jazz artist. All these record companies have let go of their jazz departments. They're forced into having to do it and it's going to make a big hole for a long time.

SV: How did you come up with the idea to cover Bob Dylan's "It's All Right Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"?
MS: In trying to avoid picking another standard I decided to look at something more contemporary like a Beatles song, so I started going through my iTunes library. I had it on a CD but I hadn't bought it until recently on iTunes and it's a live version. What he's saying is so pertinent to today and I could hear the different kinds of transitions he was doing on his guitar. I thought it might be really interesting with a band.  Russell got it together and we went over what we thought we could do and it was pretty much straight-ahead. We took the setup going into the turnaround as the intro and there you have it. It's kind of quirky. It's not rock and it's not pop. It's what you make it.

SV: Who did the arrangement?
MS: Russell got it together and we went over what we thought we could do and it was pretty much straightahead. We took the setup going into the turnaround as the intro and there you have it. It's kind of quirky. It's not rock and it's not pop. It's what you make it.

SV: If you had been living in a cave for about 50 years and didn't know the original or the history of the song you would think it's totally contemporary, that it had just been written.
MS: I know. It was fun to find the song [and] then see it come alive in the studio. Everybody had a smile on their face because it was really fun to do.

SV: In "A Change" you captured what a lot of us, our families, and friends are going through and put it in a song. Just about seeing people who are barely getting by and one layoff or medical crisis away from going under and not alluding to it or using imagery. The song just comes out and says it.
MS: Well, that's virtually the truth on my street. This is what my neighbors and I are talking about.  People are scared that they aren't going to be able to hang on to their home. They are afraid of getting sick, of losing their job. There are no guarantees anymore. People are being replaced and forgotten and that's what we're afraid of. There's nothing to fall back on anymore, not even any program that can help people get back on their feet. There are so many homeless people around my community that don't need to be in that situation. All they need is a chance.

SV: Then the song expresses hope at the end, that we could actually turn the tide and change things.
MS: One thing I've noticed is that people are talking about these things and they aren't polarized. They aren't arguing. It doesn't matter what party they are in or how they label themselves politically. They're expressing deep concerns. I think people are realizing that we need to see a conscious change in the world.

SV: I think it was in the liner notes for Handpicked that you said you often sang songs about things you wanted to happen.
MS: I need myself to change too. I wrote a song called "Give In" because there are some things I need to let go of and give in to life so I can be more open to get the things I need, whether it is love or learning something. I'm the only one that can do it. Most of the time I'm writing about things I want to have happen, that I am reaching for, like "The Wilderness."  I'm lucky.  I get to see it and touch it. I make a point of being with nature and it makes me think about the people who don't. That makes me almost cry. So I want to write a song that people can use in their life. Music is so emotional. It doesn't matter what it's about. It can move you in a way that can change your life. That's love. That's those things in life that this earth was made about. Harmonic beautiful things like love and music. There's music in the wind going through the trees.

SV: You've been working with Russell and Jimmy for a long time. How did you meet them and start collaborating?
MS: I met Russ in San Jose and I moved up to the bay area after high school because that was where the music was. I got a job in a band and started playing around while I was going to college. I met Russ probably around '74 then he moved to LA and I moved back there in about '79 and did my first record. He helped me with that and he had just formed the Yellowjackets with Jimmy. We wrote a song for the first album and that was the beginning of us writing together.

SV: How do you get the ideas for the subjects you write about?
MS: I don't know. Maybe it's just where I've come from in my head. Maybe I'm just really moved by the human process and observant about a lot of things. Something happens when you work with great writers. I used to be a staff writer at Chappell and that really helped me too. I wrote with a lot of people and wrote a lot of styles. You learn to be sort of unselfish about writing with somebody and listening and taking a good idea and making it survive, all those kinds of things.

SV: You started working with George Duke in the mid 90s on Take Me With You and really clicked both as songwriters and with him as your producer. How did you get together?
MS: I played the San Diego Street Scene back in '94 or around then and his wife came out to see me. He also had the Perry sisters singing with him and I'm good friends with them. Lori Perry told me I should meet him. She thought we would really get along and we did! Since then we've been very close. He and his wife have kind of taken me under their wings. I've come through their door many times feeling like I was going to have to ask them for such a big favor that they would probably have to turn me down but they never have. Spiritually they've been one of the brightest moments in my life. However I was blessed with that relationship I am so thankful because in so many ways that aren't necessarily musical I've grown and I'm so happy that I've had their friendship.

SV: A lot of the songs that you and he have written approach the subjects with a lot of insight and from a different angle. Especially the songs about love and relationships that have a maturity and thoughtfulness that most love songs don't come close to.
MS: He likes love songs. I try to move away from that and he'll say "Let's investigate that a little bit!"

SV: The writers and musicians on your CDs have been really consistent over the years. It seems like you've worked with the same core group. The way the music business changes and people come and go, that's amazing. How have you maintained that?
MS: Being from Los Angeles is just really a convenient way of making music because there are so many great musicians here. Many of them were born and raised here like myself so we've known each other for years. I go see those guys play. They come see me. We talk. As we grow older, we grow wiser and hopefully better and we all go in and out of good times and bad times so we support each other. So it makes sense that when you get the opportunity to make music you try to think of the people that would make that particular song go to the place you want it to. If I  had more money, I would try to do more songs and bring in more people but the way budgets are you have to slim down what you are going to do and how you're going to do it. You've got to set it up so you can do something, like have two days in the studio and record five songs on each day so you keep the same people around and bring in a few others to make the solos happen differently. And the ones I work with are some of the best. For this record, we had Patrice Rushen playing. We got some things with George Duke. I've known John Beasley for a long time and this was the first opportunity to bring him in.

SV: You have a nonprofit charitable foundation called the Prana Foundation. How did that happen and what is the Foundation involved with?
MS: It got started around the song "No Room For Hate" and we got involved with an after school  program that taught children about diversity, about being kind and the things you might say that are hurtful and how to handle that. They are trying to break some of the stereotypes that kids pick up and teach them to be tolerant. Then we started getting into other issues, like supporting the Katrina victims and the Musicians Village in New Orleans that Ellis Marsalis and Harry Connick are involved with. We want to support issues we think are important. With every album we take some money and devote it to supporting a cause.