Ron Carter Esperanza Spalding - Downbeat

that yielded the personality-filled upright she fell in love with. “He found
me that 1890s instrument with a very tough action and distinct sound,”
she says. “It makes you play a different way, so when I approached the
music, I heard things differently because the instrument itself was so different.”
Though the upright dominated the album as far as piano elements
go, Krall changed things up for “I Used To Love You But It’s All
Over Now,” choosing to play grand instead. For “I’m A Little Mixed Up,”
she opted for a “fabulous old black plywood spinet. T Bone won’t let me
have it,” she says, laughing.
“I’m A Little Mixed Up” grooves with a bluesy, rockabilly vibe, and
features several of the album’s most memorable solo breaks from Krall,
where she seems to channel “Great Balls Of Fire” on Burnett’s beloved
spinet. “I love that style of playing—Jerry Lee Lewis, Leon Russell, Paul
McCartney—but it’s really challenging,” she says. “It’s hard playing
good rock ’n’ roll piano, just like it’s hard playing good jazz piano, but
it’s all music. On this record, I really had to let loose on that little spinet
to get that rat-a-tat-tat I was going for.” Burnett considered her efforts a
great success, referring to Krall as one of the best rock piano players he
had ever seen. “That’s nice of him to say,” says Krall with a grin.
Though Krall’s piano work goes a long way toward defining the
instrumental fingerprint of the album, it’s not the only sonic choice that
received meticulous attention in the studio. “Since this was a T Bone
Burnett project, I knew that we would be paying a lot of attention to the
detail of sound,” says Ribot, who contributed a wide array of textures to
the album—dirty, clean and everywhere in between. “Both T Bone and
Diana were bringing not just a deep historical knowledge of the craft of
how the records that we were referencing—and, in some cases, covering
tunes from—were made. There was also a lot of detail on how the instruments
would go to tape and the recording process itself. It made a big
difference, in contrast to some sessions where it’s more like, ‘Play your
parts, you hit some cool notes—good, we’re done.’”
Burnett’s and Krall’s attention to sonic detail inspired Ribot to intently
focus on his own guitar sounds as well. “I have a bunch of old guitars
that I’m really proud of, so it was great to bring them in and play them,”
he says. “Given that we were in a good studio and all of the production
aspects were cool, I had the real luxury of sitting in an isolation booth
and having another booth next to me with my amp in it. Diana and T
Bone actively encouraged me to explore tones, and I would experiment
with things like simultaneously miking the amp and the guitar, but not
using much of the sound of the amp. I opened the door between the two
rooms so we would get some of the sound of the amp coming through
the acoustic mic.” Ribot experimented with cracking the door to different
widths and putting large amounts of reverb on his amp. “That reverb
would have sounded ridiculous if they’d been miking only the amp,” he
says, “but what we got in the end was an acoustic guitar sound with an
amp sound reverb.”
Green’s contributions were also vital to the rich sonic landscape of
Glad Rag Doll. “Sometimes in the studio, we would just listen to Keefus,”
says Krall. “He is so highly creative and has a great sense of humor that
everybody shares.” Case in point, Green’s use of the vintage Mellotron
keyboard in “Here Lies Love” to conjure a wash of sound that Krall
describes as “ghostly, like being in the middle of a hologram. Those textures
are the magic of what he does. Using a Mellotron, he’d experiment
while we were talking and play sounds from a fireplace or somebody cutting
a lime. God knows everything he’s got there [laughs]. He was really
key to this record.”
Green’s voice can also be felt prominently on the track “You Know—I
Know Ev’rything’s Made For Love,” which begins innocently enough
with Krall’s contra alto vocals dancing over top of strummed ukulele,
before Green throws the listener for a loop—with the sound of a shotgun.
“I’d originally thought of that song while researching for my work with
Paul McCartney,” says Krall (who played piano on and wrote the rhythm
arrangements for 13 tracks on the former Beatle’s standards album,
Kisses On The Bottom). “I asked Keefus if he had a ricochet sound, and
he turned the song into a modern Spike Jonze number with all sorts of
fun things on there. It’s like a Bugs Bunny movie.”
DECEMBER 2012 DOWNBEAT 33