Love You Live

We are deeply honoured to welcome Sergio Mendes as the final guest of the first series of our next guest on Love You Live! Bossa Nova was the evolution of a new musical language pioneered in the late ‘50s in Brazil by António Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto but popularised internationally by Sergio Mendes in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Mendes has continued to record, tour, evolve and change through the seven decades he has been active in music: a true musical survivor working with Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder, Erykah Badu and many many more. Mendes has firmly established himself as one of the most influential artists of all time. In Love You Live, Sergio talks about the experience of leaving Brazil, meeting and signing to Herb Albert and A&M, international fame in the wake of his huge hit mas que nada, Harrison Ford designing and constructing his recording studio and who was the real founder of Bossa Nova… Love you live is produced by Hannah Blake at Entale.

One of the most popular British jazz artists of all time, Jamie Cullum is our guest on Love You Live this week. Following his commercial breakthrough with TwentySomething in 2003, Jamie has gone on to cement his place at the heart of the british jazz community through his hard work promoting new and upcoming talent on his Radio 2 show as well as honing his sound and songwriting skills to become one of the finest piano based singer songwriters in the country. As soon as we had the idea to record this first series of Love You Live, Jamie was one of our first picks to guest on the podcast especially after his two stellar performances at Love Supreme in 2014 and 2019. Here he talks about his experiences of live music; the pivotal gigs he has experienced throughout his life; how he dealt with the enormous success of TwentySomething and an emotional experience watching Tom Waits in Paris.

Gary Bartz is one of the greatest saxophonists from a golden generation in Jazz. He’s played with jazz luminaries such as Art Blakey, Max Roach, Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett and the great Miles Davis. It is a great privilege to welcome him to Love You Live this week discussing his life and his pivotal live music experiences. A consummate performer himself, Bartz is widely recognised as one of the strongest soloists on Miles Davis’ “Live - Evil” and the recording of his band’s performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1973 has gone down in history; released in 2003 as “I’ve Known Rivers and Other Bodies”. As a result of his work with so many legends of the jazz world and his ability to blend jazz with alternative styles and social and political messages, Bartz holds a huge amount of resonance with hip-hop and dance music communities to this day. Listen now to hear Gary Bartz discuss his perspective on the forces shaping modern music, how his politics intertwine with his musical ideas and what made that night at Montreux in 1973 so special. Listen all the way to the end to hear trumpeter Theo Croker discuss the influence that Bartz has had on him as a mentor.

Chilli from TLC, the most successful American girl group of all time, is our next guest on Love You Live. Coming out of Atlanta in the early 90s, they are a multi grammy award winning group with over 80 million global album sales. They honed a unique sound in the 90s melding R&B with modern digital wizardry forged with the best and most influential producers of that era including: Jermaine Dupri, Babyface, Dallas Austin, Sean “Puffy” Combs and many more. This work allowed them to become the blueprint for the modern female R&B group- their influence can be heard throughout the music of the 00s. TLC started as a studio outfit, some of their live performances came when they opened for MC Hammer in 1992 but they went on to become a legendary live act. In Love You Live Chilli looks back on touring with Mary J Blige, Destiny’s Child, Boys II Men and Christina Aguilera as well as some of the other formative live music experiences of her life. Love You Live is produced by Hannah Blake at Entale Studios.

From her legendary Muscle Shoals recordings in the early ‘70s to disco hits such as “Young Hearts Run Free” to global dance anthem “You’ve Got the Love”, Candi Staton - the “Queen of Southern Soul” - is our next guest on Love You Live. Candi’s story is one of success in the face of adversity. She struggled with abusive parents, partners and record labels on her path to becoming one of the greatest soul singers of all time. From her gospel roots she broke through with her historic Southern Soul recordings at Muscle Shoals Studios which led on to her classic disco hits of the late 70s. She played at Love Supreme in 2015 and so we got to experience her incredible live show first hand; a show that has been honed over the last 50 years alongside Aretha Franklin, Mahaliah Jackson, Clarence Carter and many more legends of the soul world. She was announced to be making her second appearance at the festival in 2020 and we hope to bring her back to Glynde as soon as we can. In Love You Live, she discusses her formative gospel experiences in Church as a childand the pivotal shows she witnessed such as Sam Cooke, Earth Wind and Fire and Prince as she looks back on her incredible life through the shows that made her.