It’s one thing to be a gifted musician, but for children, that title can come with baggage. For jazz musicians, the notion takes on deeper overtones.
To help make sense of all that, All Things Considered host Audie Cornish spoke with Jazz Night In America host Christian McBride — a bassist who could have been seen as a prodigy himself, in retrospect.
“Revisionist history would say yes, but I grew up with a real child prodigy by the name of Joey DeFrancesco,” McBride says. “Joey was doing professional gigs by age 9. … I was always the Robin to Joey’s Batman.
Himself the son of a jazz organist, Joey DeFrancesco was McBride’s friend and classmate growing up. As teenagers, they played a local television program where Miles Davis was brought in as a special guest. Several months later, Davis hired DeFrancesco to tour with him.