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Funding for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. ARMANDO ANTHONY “CHICK” COREA NEA Jazz Master (2006) Interviewee: Armando Anthony “Chick” Corea (June 12, 1941-) Interviewer: Ted Panken with audio engineer Ken Kimery Dates: November 5, 2012 Depository: Archives Center, National Music of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Description: Transcript. 36 pp. [BEGINNING OF DISK 1, TRACK 1] Panken: Ted Panken here for the Smithsonian Institution. We’re conducting an oral history with Chick Corea at the Blue Note, November 5, 2012, the day before Election Day. Chick is here with a new quintet, and he’s graciously given us a couple of hours before it’s time to prepare for the gig. Thanks for joining us. Corea: Yeah, sure. Yeah, I’m happy to. Panken: I’d like to start with some basics, facts and figures, and devote this first segment to how you got involved in music, which I gather you were kind of born to. I get the feeling you may have been one of these people for whom learning music was almost like learning language, because your father was a trumpeter and bandleader. Corea: Yeah. My Dad, Armando, Armando John... I’m Armando Anthony. I like to call myself Armando Antonio, but Antonio is my grandfather’s name. But my dad, Armando, had his own band, Armando Corea and his Orchestra, through the ‘30s—the ‘30s and the early ‘40s. I was born in ‘41. So my first memories with my folks were of my dad coming back from the gig late at night with all his musician friends piling into our little kitchen in our three-room apartment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and my mother cooking up some great whatever she cooked, pasta, you know, or..
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