Cecil Taylor and Gary Giddins: The long-ago night I interviewed them on the radio CC#308

This is a special episode of Coffeeshop Conversations @ Artichoke Music and one in a series of radio interviews I did thirty years ago. Still listening or reading? I’m grateful. I was doing a talk show for the American Radio Network when radio networks meant something. And it was before the internet too, in the days of newspapers and pay phones. I decided that I would interview people who I had always wanted to talk to. One of them was pianist/composer Cecil Taylor. He was world famous and little-known because of how his music sounded. Taylor was known as being as ferocious as his music, at least that’s what I heard. I was afraid he was going to eat me for lunch, so I used the weight of a commercial network radio show as leverage and asked Gary Giddins,probably the top Jazz Journalist in the world, in English anyway, and a friend of Taylor’s if he would join Taylor and I in a one hour live intereview. He said yes. And then I asked Taylor. Good move. He said yes, too. You’re about to hear the result. Please excuse the crappy audio. It’s an air check and the gear was pretty bad. Suggest you use headphones. You won’t be sorry. I’ve left in the commercials and breaks to mark the place in time when this occurred. It was March third 1990 in Baltimore, Maryland in the studio of the American Radio Network. And yes, the following was my theme music.