Sales Lessons From a Jazz Impresario

This blog has talked a lot about listening in the past. We’ve used psychology research and insights from experienced salespeople to demonstrate what a difference it can make to really listen to prospects and customers. And we’ve also talked more than a few times about another discipline of the ear: music.

As it turns out, music is a perfect example when we want to talk about melding science and art. Instruments work the way they do, and the human voice sounds the way it does, because of vibrations that can be described with math and physics equations. But those vibrations end up affecting our emotions and feelings because of the musicians’ artistry.

Jazz is a genre of music that gets mentioned a lot at Maestro, because everyone knows that jazz musicians are the best at improvising: reacting on the fly to new inputs and creating a great result. But while jazz gets mentioned a lot, we hadn’t dug into it with the experts.

This month, we decided to change that. I sat down with DC tenor saxophone stalwart Paul Carr to talk about listening in jazz, entrepreneurship, and the world. Carr, a Houston native and Howard University alumnus, was honored by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2019 as DC’s Jazz Hero for his musical, educational, and community-building accomplishments. He founded the Jazz Academy of Music (JAM) in 2002 to provide jazz opportunities for DC area youth, and operates the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival each February.

KS: What are people learning when they study jazz?

PC: Jazz is a language. You have to listen to it. I try to use the analogy of how a kid learns how to talk. You don’t say, “We’re not going to speak, we’ll just teach him the rules of grammar. When he gets to be five years old, he’ll know all the correct rules of grammar. Then we’ll start speaking around him.”

People that have listened and learned music as a language can pick up the nuances. When you’re playing on stage it is supposed to be a conversation. My pet peeve is when everybody is playing in their own corridor. They’re great instrumentalists, but there’s no transference of ideas. Every soloist is playing the stuff that he or she practiced in their practice room.

KS: Can you give us some examples of songs where you can hear the performers really listening to each other?

PC: Start with Fifties jazz. When you listen to Lester Young play, you can tell by the way he’s playing his instrument that he’s moving. If you listen to the notes he’s playing and to the background, you can tell that the band’s responding to that. Try “Back to the Land” or “Blue Lester.”

For vocalists, I would have to say Carmen McRae or Billie Holiday. If you really want to know what a tune is about, you listen to someone singing it so you can get the words. Now when you play it you have a different interpretation.

I was just listening to Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” The tune is about lynchings: strange fruit hanging from the trees. How Billie Holiday and the piano player interact isn’t something that’s easy to hear. Listening evolves where music is concerned. The great thing about jazz—take some recordings you used to listen to, I guarantee you if you go back and listen now, you’re going to hear something totally different. You’re going to hear a lot more aspects of the music.

You want to know why jazz singers have more gigs? A lot of times they learn the songs from the recordings. That’s how they got to be a jazz singer. They sang in church or they sang at home to the records their parents were playing. The theory came later.

Listening and internalizing—that’s what’s supposed to happen when you’re playing music. The two hardest things to do in life are to listen and to follow instructions!

KS: How does playing in a jazz ensemble change a person?

PC: Our society, if you’re not a curious person, it reinforces everything you think about yourself. “I’m the greatest person, I got all these likes on social media.” You can keep reinforcing the myth about yourself. In jazz, all of a sudden you have to sit down and you have this instrument, and you have to listen. You’re going to hear a lot of things that might reflect things that you aren’t doing.

Jazz is a social music. When people learn from their ears they can react better to their surroundings. They can react better to the music and they can react better to people. We do the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Jazz Orchestra, and one year we had Delfeayo Marsalis direct. These kids usually play free jazz, art meters, cerebral, anything in 13/7…At the beginning of the rehearsal he was talking and everybody had their head down, not even looking at him.

They’d been told that blues is easy, it’s only three chords. It’s so easy, blah blah. They learned. They got a better understanding of how to approach the blues. He gave them all a recording Wednesday—there was no music—and told them they were going to play this tune on Friday night.

By the end of the week when they played on Friday, after that gig you could see the whole band around him and he’s just talking to them. It was one of the greatest transformations. After two days of listening they warmed up and got into playing the grooves. Swing, make it feel good, play it so people will be able to dance. You are not playing for musicians, you are playing for people who don’t know anything about music. This is who you have to resonate to.

We run into this in society and the world. No one listens to one another. Everyone goes in their corner and they don’t consider anything else. It’s very similar when you play with selfish musicians. It can be very frustrating. Jazz is everybody’s having a conversation. Not everybody’s playing their own thing: they’re supposed to be playing the same tune. But some people just like the idea of improvisation, as opposed to playing jazz.

KS: Good point about considering your audience. When they are dancing, I guess that’s a great nonverbal cue that they like what they are hearing!

PC: I have another story about that. When Clinton was in office, one time we were playing in the Vice President’s house for a cocktail party, and in the other room they had Aretha Franklin, Michael Brecker, and Herbie Hancock playing together in a group. They were playing a tune, something very common like “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” and Herbie started going into his whole thing. Aretha cut the band off and said “I don’t want any of that s— on this tune. We’re gonna play it straight.” She just went off on the band. A lot of times they just get all these big names together, but they don’t play together. That was not the situation to do something like that. Play some tunes, have a good time and make people feel good. Play the gig, I know you’re famous for what you do, but right now we’re going to be a band.

KS: Awesome story. Synergy and reading the room. Do you take lessons from music for your roles as an educator and running a nonprofit?

PC: Absolutely. Try to listen and relate to as many people as you can. Try to understand as many different personalities as possible. Try to be open and flexible. You never know where something is going to come from. We’ve had support from some people that I never thought would be such loyal supporters. The main thing is not having any kind of preconceived idea. Be approachable and flexible.

When it comes to improvisation, be governed by your ear. But there are certain things, patterns and situations that you want to practice and have under your belt. You should have situations and “isms” already ready to go. Like when a person says “I don’t know about this, I donated back in 2005,” you want to have some things on Rolodex you can bring up really quickly and then be listening at the same time. Then you can shift or move as the conversation ebbs and flows.

KS: What do you think would be the impact if we all actively tried to improve at listening, through studying jazz or some other listening practice?

PC: Everybody’s sensibilities would be different. People would listen a lot more. It would make people want to think before they act, think before they spoke.

Jazz is like a democratic process to begin with. You got the bass laying down the bottom, and then you have the drums to support and the piano comping. So now that is giving an upward movement and we have to put the horn or the voice or whatever. For that to work correctly, everybody has to listen. Everybody’s participating, but everybody has a different role to play.

Duke Ellington used to ask his players “how did you enjoy playing your part tonight?” So it was not about “I really loved your solo on Cottontail.” The thing was how well you played your part in the group as opposed to individualism, “me me me, I’m the greatest.” In this ensemble we are in a group and we have one common goal, and that is to make this music come alive, and get these people to feel good and get up and dance or whatever the situation is.

KS: So what would be your takeaway for our readers in DC and around the world?

PC: The thing about jazz is, I’ve seen it transform people. I’ve seen kids that have come in and they have no confidence, but once they start being involved in jazz everybody is going to respond to it.

If you see someone doing that, support them if you can. Support all arts entities. Especially if you know their product and they’re getting good results over a long period of time and could use some support. Not always financial—you can just tell somebody else about it.

It would definitely make society a lot better if people would embrace the arts. You got all of this weirdness and insanity, and then you step inside a music hall and you see 60 young people or 60 old people on stage and everybody starts playing. You can tell that this is something that took quite a lot of work and preparation and when you’re listening to it, it makes you feel a certain way.

It’s just like after you do yoga or go for a run. All of a sudden, you know what, this day isn’t really that bad. It’s the same way when you go to a concert, especially when you see young people. We need to support these kids who are doing positive things.

So there you have it: listening can change the world. Practice listening—to music, to your friends and family, to your coworkers—so you can identify and work toward common goals. Practice listening so everyone isn’t in their own corner working at cross purposes. You will become a better sales professional and make your customers happier, but you’ll also become a better citizen, with a richer life.

Learn more about Paul Carr’s Jazz Academy and Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival, then consider catching a livestream from DC area jazz musicians.

Contact us at Mastery@maestrogroup.co to continue the conversation about the impact of listening on sales success and society!