Saxophonist Derek Nash has a new Acoustic Quartet CD on Jazzizit Records, "You’ve Got to Dig It to Dig It, You Dig?" In this interview with Alison Bentley, he talked about the background to this new album, and also about his work with Sax Appeal, Jools Holland and Paul McCartney, and tells the story of the recording of Jamie Cullum’s first album.
London Jazz News: Where does the title of your new album come from?
Derek Nash: There’s a list of notes that the saxophonist Steve Lacey transcribed of Thelonious Monk’s advice: it’s things like: ‘Make the drummer sound good.’ ‘Stop playing all those weird notes.’ Slap bang in the middle is this: ‘You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?’ As soon as I read that I was inspired to write a piece of music, and I just used the rhythm of that phrase.
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