With lockdowns in tense elections and seemingly bad news everywhere, we thought we'd lighten things up over here in the Broken Record universe and brings some Christmas cheer early with none other than Leslie Odom Junior, whose new release is the Christmas Album. This is actually Leslie's second Christmas album, plus He's released several vocal jazz albums over the last few years, but he's best known for his Grammy and Tony Award winning performance as Aaron Burr in Hamilton. Leslie spoke to Bruce Headlum about his career on stage and in music, about his all time favorite Christmas album, which is a touchstone of nineties R and B. He also talks about how playing a founding and father as a black man was an exercise in empathy, and he shares a lesson he learned thanks to the incomparable talents of Natkin Coole and Sammy Davis Jr. This is Broken Record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mischian. Here's Bruce Dlam with Leslie Odom Junior. So you're in a strange point in your career because you've had a long career. People might know you from Rent. People might know you from television, but people really got to know you as Aaron Burr in Hamilton. Yeah, but now you have this music career. And I've had this twice recently where people said, oh my god, I'm listening to this guy, Leslie Odom Junior, and did you know he was also in Hamilton. Yeah, you're like you know when people used to say, you know, Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings, you know that's you now? Oh man, Thank goodness, no complaints. Because I came out to Los Angeles almost twenty years ago after graduating from college, and I was doing television and my goal really was simple. I I was trying to make a living as an artist, and that meant taking almost any job on television that people would offer me, which I was auditioning for lots and lots of very silly sitcoms, very you know, dubious dramas, and I could have gotten one of those. I didn't. I didn't get any of the one that I really really wanted. But I could have gotten one of those, and I could have been known for some ridiculous catchphrase or for you know, pulling some stupid face to make people laugh. But the worst of what I get having been a part of the original company of Hamilton is like people saying, pardon me, are you Aaron Burrser? You know so I'll take that, and I'll also yes, it is. It is my job, it is my mission now to continue to make sure that that is not the peak, that it's a peak in my career. But that but that, Yeah, we continue to I continue to push myself and surprise people, surprise myself and just keep digging. Will you actually turned down a TV show for Hamilton? I did. In fact, I think you'd signed the contract and you would right to the head of the network and say, please, please, I have to do this other thing. Yeah. And they were really nice about it. They were his name was his name out, I'll give him credit forever. His name is Bob Greenblatt. He runs HBO. Now, But I did. I went to Bob and I said, I know, thank you very much. You guys have given me a contract for guaranteed half a million dollars, and man, that's nice, but I really want to do this off Broadway show, this hip hop musical about the founding fathers. Will you let me out of this contract, and he looked at me like I was out of my mind, and he said, sure, I'll let you out of Are you that's what you want to do? Really? And I said yes, and he let me out. But it wasn't a point that you were feeling a little too comfortable doing TV. You felt it was it was safe and you wanted you wanted to take a risk. I did. While I didn't know what America would feel. I didn't know if the show would find an audio, but I knew what I felt about Hamilton. You know, it was it was undeniable to me how it was changing me from the inside because at that point I had been involved in development for a few years and this, this little show was not only making me a better actor and a better performer, you know, it was making me a better husband. It was making me a better friend. It was making me a better citizen, like you know, it was making me a better human being. And listen, the TV show was nice, but it wasn't doing that. You know, when I'm talking to young people, I say this, it's really important that you know what you're in it for. You really have to know what you're in it for. Whatever, whatever game you're playing, whether it's finance, so whether it's medicine or your nurse, whatever, whatever, you know, what are you in it for? Because when the thing shows up, you want to recognize it. Don't miss it when it comes, you know. And so if you're in it for the dough, if you're in it for the promotion, if you're in it for validation or chicks or a great car, whatever it is that you at the end of the day, like I got in it for this reason, know it so that you don't miss it when it comes. And Hamilton, you know, a piece of art like that, That is why I got in it. Rent was the show that brought me to the theater. And you know, my favorite quote about art and artists is that an artist spends their entire life trying to get back to the place where their heart was first opened up. And that's what Hamilton did for me. It made me feel like that thirteen year old kid again. That's what I was in it for. So it didn't matter if it was half a million dollars or a million dollars or eight million dollars. I was not walking away from the reason why I started on the path in the first place. Was there a moment with Hamilton where you thought, Okay, this actually is going to succeed. It is I don't mean artistically, that this is going to be bigger? Like, was there a point you're like, oh, this this is going to work now. I don't remember the exact day, but it was pretty soon after we opened on Broadway, and you know, we had the confirmation of those box office receipts, you know, you had you had the confirmation of the of the record breaking advanced sales. Because that that's what that's what matters in the commercial theater and the commercial theater, commercial success is what matters. And once we were confirmed that it was going going to be that, I had to wait until then because the business is littered with great art and artists that were not appreciated or celebrated in their time. You know, Stephen Sondheim is known, you know, um revered as one of the great may possibly the greatest songwriter for the American theater. You know, he's brilliant. And most to Sondheim shows, including shows like West Hide Story and these shows were not successful in their original run. They ran a year, a year and a half some of them, you know, a lot of them. They just people just didn't they weren't feeling them in their time. So I didn't know if Hamilton would fall into that category even once we went to Broadway, so I had to wait with my fingers crossed. Now, I'm sure you've heard this many times. I saw Hamilton's first at the Public, and then I saw it several times because Lynn Manuel Miranda actually wrote for me when I was at the New York Times. But I remember being there at the Public. You came out and there was a ripple in the audience and people said, oh my god, that guy is a star. I don't mean you're out shining the production, but there's just something about when you came out. I think people just kind of felt, I don't know, there's a kind of electricity that you don't often feel at the theater for you. Was there that kind of personal validation right away? Well, I mean, thank you for saying that. I think that as a young person, the only way you really build self esteem is you got to prove certain things to yourself. You know, we all have an idea about what we're capable of, what we might be capable of if someone just gave us the opportunity. If we just had the chance to show, to prove, I think I could be a contender, you know. And it's all theory until you make something, or until someone invites you to make something, you know, it's it's all conjecture. And what Lynn did for a room of people, for a room of mostly black and brown people, was he gave us the evidence of what was of what we suspected about ourselves. He let us prove it firstly to ourselves that we are capable of more than we are being asked to do most of the time. And yes, and then we got to stand on stage and show little black and brown children who looked like us, that same thing. And we got to show a little you know, not for nothing, we got to show little white kids too, what you know that that you know? I say, of course, I was very lucky to have the education that I had at Carnegie Mellon University, for instance, you know, where where the majority of my classmates were white. But you know who also benefited from my presence at Carnegie Mellon University. My white classmates also benefited from a diverse environment, from from sharing across you know, cultural boundaries, and having friends and collaborators that don't only look like them. So it was it's a really it's a gift that Lynn has given the world this show. So we want to talk about Christmas albums, let's do it. And I want to know first what Christmas music did you have growing up? Yeah, I grew up in the album era, so I remember the Christmas albums we had that got pulled to the front of the stack. What what was your Christmas music growing up? The one that left the biggest impression on me. I have to say, I hope your audience is aware of it because it's a it is a classic. I grew up in Philadelphia at the time where you know, in Philly you couldn't get bigger than Boys to Men. I went to the same high school as Boys to Men. They were older than me, but Boys to Men was huge. You know. They they dressed like us, they talked like us, They they wore us, you know, on the national stage. And at one of their peaks that you know, peak power for them, they put out this beautiful Christmas record. If you have not heard it, go listen to it. It is it is like it's a shining example of R and B. Yes, that's rhythm and blues, but there's that joke and dream Girls, you know, rough and black. I mean like it is, it is, you know, the black contribution. Part of our contribution to American culture in this and music is R and B. It's one of our contributions. And yeah, this is it's just a beautiful record, man. So the Boys to Men album was like the first Christmas album that was mine, that wasn't my parents, you know, because my parents were listening to the Jackson five and they were listening and that King Cole of course, and they were listening to you know, the classics in that way. But if you were coming of age at any point in the nineties, it's nostalgic too, and the same way that Mariah's is nostalgic. You know, it reminds you of a certain kind of pure R and B. You know, that was not over sexualized, and it's like there's like a wholesome quality to it. Who knew that the nineties had had a wholesome patina, but you listen to that, that album and you'll hear it. Well, I'm older than you, So for us, it was I think Ray Charles, I don't know if you know his Christmas album, I don't know the Ray Charles Christmas album. Oh you gotta get the Ray Charles Christmas House is what is um? Baby It's cold outside? Is that? Or was that a single? That was a single? But usually when you buy it now, I think with Betty Carter, that's right. They tack it on the end, and that's a great version. It's the only version I know. Baby. It's people, you know, for good reason, they are trying to get that song canceled. But but you can't cancel Betty Carter and Ray Charles, give me a break. No. No. Part of the problem though, is these you know, you've done your own albums, You've written a lot of your own songs, you've taken on some classics. But when you do Christmas songs, they're so locked in people's memories. It's just so much attached to it. I just want to talk a bit about how do you sit down and say what am I going to bring to this that people are gonna remember? Are they just gonna have Andy Williams going through their head? How did you do that with both albums, but mainly this album, Well, we had the practice of having done it once before, and that that first Christmas album was very challenging number one, because we were so limited in our resources at that time. That was the first album I made post hand. So I made it I think the summer that I left Hamilton and me and my manager we just really didn't We didn't know anybody. We were not really in the music industry yet, you know, so we we were very limited in our budget and in our resources. And so when you're limited in that way, of course, parameters are always great for art. Intention is important. Intention becomes very important. And I was I was like, okay, well, what we don't have in bells and whistles, you know, we have to come from a sincere place, which is harder than it sounds, because you think, you know, I'll just I'll sing Silent Night and I'll sing these Oh Holy I'll sing these songs that I've known them my whole life. But you go, when I go to listen back, nobody's more critical on on my voice than I and it just didn't sound honest. It took it. I recorded that first album probably at least two full times, you know, just top to bottom, because it it I had to hear the sincerity, and when it goes Christmas, it can go Sacharin. It can go corny real quick. You know, there's something about I don't know, the lights and the trees and the presence that you know, we yeah, it just it just goes corny. And I just didn't want that. So anyway, we built on that with this record. Having recorded that album and then performing those songs live for a few years now, we didn't have that that same challenge. I can hear it right away, you know. When I go to start these songs. Always what I do when I'm covering any song, if it's a jazz song or a pop song, I started that original melody. I try not to start at one of the covers that I've heard. I try to find the original version and let me, let me learn that original melody, let me hear what those initial instincts were from the writer and from the composer, and then we take it from there. We you know, im, it's always a collaboration. I may have idea is but Tommy King as a brilliant pianist who was instrumental in that first album, that first album. People talk all the time about the piano solo on my favorite things. That's all Tommy King. That's just his beautiful mind and talent. But he we worked with Tommy again on this and then also we took the now, all these years later, the resources and the and the budget we've we've been able to wrestle from the record company, and we were able to make something that sounded a little fuller, a little more joy a lot more joyful. Actually, we took all the things we'd learned making mister m that that original album that I have outu and we you know call got the band back together as it were, and made this one on the new album you do uh it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and you do it in a very different way. Now people know that song from Bing Crosby, they know it from Perry Como I think did a big version of Michael Boublet of course. So yeah, so when you sat down to do it, what were you what were you thinking? Were you thinking I can't do it like them? Or just like get them out of my head? Somehow we went we went back to that original arrangement and we and we recorded it that way. And then this one I have to give you know, hats off to Joey. Joseph Abat my producer. He heard that bassa, he just heard it. He was like, Leslie, you know, can we try it in a bassa? And I'm sure you know, I'll try it anyway. And so the band we had a trio in the studio that day, all COVID safe, we'd all taken our taken our tests, and we were all you know, separated in the studio. We you know, we never got within six feet of one another. But something locked in with the bassa and we know enough now to trust those Quincy calls goose bumps. You know, God's lightning rod, you know, I mean, you know, when you when you get a little bit of that goes a long way. Man. If you get if you there's that's something to follow. And I'll tell you when we when we recorded the Perry Como version, it wasn't no goosebumps. It sounded fine, it sounded nice, but yeah, you're like, uh, do we need another version? And it had we had Joseph not had the bossa idea, the song probably wouldn't have made the cut to the record. But once we locked into that bossa, you get the goosebumps, and you know, we found the right key, and you study, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas and everywhere you go ain't gonna look at the five and ten listening once again, candy canes and silver lanes or glow. It's speaking and to look a lot, you know, like when once that bossa rhythm kicked in, and just different instincts. You know, I get different instincts as a singer, as an artist, and um, I don't judge those things, you know, I don't. I don't judge those I think art, when it's working, it exists on a conscious and a subconscious level. So there's things when when you're in flow, there's things you're doing. You're bringing up childhood stuff, your childhood inspirations and instincts. It's you know, we're made up of so much stuff. So it flows down in the bassa and we do it. You know, I don't know not much. Three or four times, you know, with the musician's top to bottom it works, and then I do come back and record the vocal a few more time until I like it. And that once it went into the bassa field. The next thing was just to really figure out the phrasing of each one of it because it's the different time signature, So the phrasing has to change in a way that feels natural, in a way that doesn't ever take you out of it. Because people have a version of that tune that that that sits really well with them. If you're going to take them out of that groove, if you're going to take them out of that zone, you to make sure it goes down just as easy. We'll be back with Leslie right after this break. Here's more of Bruce Hedlum's conversation with Leslie Odom Jr. The other song I want to ask you about, and it was on your first Christmas album before we come back to your second one, was the Christmas Song because I can't think of a song that has a more authoritative version than the Nat King Cole. Yeah, and that's a high, high bar. How do you tackle something that Nat King cold it? Well, we when we went in to get our record deal and went into ask Curve to meet with Stephen Greenberg, we said we wanted to make the kind of music that Nat King Cole might make today, and we didn't we didn't really know what that meant. But we knew it sounded good and we knew you know, it got a to give you money. Yeah, that's all it needed to be. I think really we once we made mister, you know, that album of all original music, I looked at Joseph and I was like, we That's why intentions are important. The intention. That was our intention from the very beginning. Even we did, you know, we didn't know how we were going to get there. We didn't quite know what that meant. But that's what we've been after, and so I learned a lot. It was challenging, you know, but I've learned a lot trying to be Nat King Cole. Kind of the first thing you learned is that I'm never going to be Nat King Cole. You know, he was everything he was in He synthesized his time, everything about his time made him. Do you know? There was a something radical about Nat because to be that unflappable, to be that cool in the midst of the climate of this country, to come in that package beautiful yes, handsome yes, but a dark skin brother, you know, because there's racism and then there's colorism too in America that you know, even within the spectrum the evil spectrum of racism, that if you were light you were treated better than if you were dark. You know, that's that's sort of built into the horror show of our history. And for Nat to find his cool, to find his his footing and his confidence in the midst of all that, you know that that's radical. He was a unicorn, and he was, in his own way an iconoclassed, you know, an activist just by existing, you know, you let us know what was what was possible if you dared to be excellent anyway. So but for me, I live in a different time, a different country, has formed me, the same thing does not apply. I had a really astute coach tell me once about sort of my this cool affect that I was putting on at one point, because we try to later our heroes, you know, I was so I was trying to early on in my career, trying to be some version of Sammy Davis Junior Slash and at King Cole Slash, you know, these guys. And he said, it's not gonna work on you. He said, because it is very clear to me, it's very apparent to me that you've been loved your whole life, Your parents loved you, didn't they I said, yes they did. He said, yeah, it shows you got you gotta work harder, you have to pull from a different place. He said, what those guys were up against for them to find their cool was the tension. That was the tension you stepping on stage and showing me how easy it is for you. I'm bored, find something else, dig deeper, and it really it changed things for me. You know. Ron Coleman was his name, brilliant cat. How old were you when he gave you that speech? I was not. I want that young. I was in my mid twenties, you know, twenty five, twenty six. He was like, you know, cut the cool shit out, like it's not enough. How did you feel after? He I mean, in retrospective, of course it's brilliant, but at the time that had to be a little tough to hear. Oh, I've always loved that man. A great coach. Olympic athletes have coaches, the NBA All Stars have coaches. The best of us. You need somebody on the outside telling you what it looks like, telling you what they see, and telling you how to get better. If you have a desire to get better. I've always loved that tell me the truth. And here's the thing. A friend of mine says, her name is Lacy, Lacy C. Clark. The best thing she's ever told me, dear friends, she said, the truth without love is brutality. So there was so much love. And what he was telling me, he really cared about me when he was he was telling me the baseline truth. You know, he really wanted me to understand something. But there was so much love in it. He was not trying to to destroy me. He was not trying to kill me. He was trying to help me. And I could feel it, and it made me better. Effort effort he was. You know, you're you're living in a different time. You come from a different experience. Do not repeat those same moves. You can glean something from their lives, You can take something from what they built. You know, you are you can be a link in the chain, you know, but you must understand what you're here to say and how to say it for a new generation. Okay, I want to talk a little bit about your background, because you're talking a lot about coaching and experiences you had. You grew up in Philly, you were born in New York. Your parents sounded strict but loving. Yeah, strict, strict but but indulgent. Yes, what was the music in your house growing up? My dad was a music is a music lover he had and he had an extensive record collection. You know. One of the things he on the low never forgave his mom for was he went away to college and she threw away his record collection. She just got rid of it. She was tired of like tripping over it in the house, and she threw away his record collection. So he never forgave her, but he did his best to like to get his records back, and they were probably ten literal crates, you know, just like plastic crates, some records in our basement. My dad had me very young, twenty three when he had me, so, you know, no judgment on the guy. But like weekends was when my dad would, you know, he'd get a little lite, you know what I mean, he'd have some beers and he put his records on, you know, and he'd be dancing with my mom and singing at the top of his lungs badly. What was the music he was listening to? It was soul. It was mostly soul and R and B music. It was like Marvin Gay, the Ohio Players, the tempt James Brown is my dad's all time favorite artists. Some Motown in there too, but yeah, it was the music of his He came of age in the in the seventies, so it was luck. Yeah, I was hearing lots of sixties and seventies and then eighties. They loved the modern stuff of the time too, which was what like Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson. Of course MJ was huge. Was there a song or an album or a moment where you thought, well, maybe I can do music too, Like I like this, I want this for myself. It was late when I when I'm talking the kids, I really try to keep it simple for them because it was simple for me. There was no grand ambition involved. Bruce, I have to be you know. I was not thinking that I was gonna be some you know, recording artists. I was just following my curiosity. I was doing what was fun. I was doing what I loved to do. So when I'm talking to them, I'm saying, love something, love it with your whole heart. I bet I want to know. You tell me too, if this is true, You tell me if it's good advice, because what I say is love is a verb. If there's something that you're interested in, read about it, talk about it, find other people that love it too, dream about it, write about it, and eventually you will find your way to the world that you love and it will love you back, not always in the way that you expect it to, but in the way that you need. Yeah. Absolutely. Now, you did see Rent when you were thirteen, and that left a big impression. It did. Rent brought a generation of people to the theater. Lyn Manuel included. Really, you know, Rent was like it was like the bat signal. It let us all know there's a place for you. It's sort of controversial for me to say, but Michael Jackson was big. It's complicated with these people as we learn more about them over time, and we have to sort of reckon with the art and the human you know, we have to reckon with the totality of who they were, and then we you know, we hold the art up and am I still allowed to love this? You know? But Michael had a big effect on me, and Michael Michael made worlds. You know, there was no art that had a bigger effect on me as a as a young person than Thriller. It was really it was that that movie, the John Landis short film that he made, and then the making of Thriller. That's short about the making of Thriller where where they let us in on process, where they let us in on the making of it. And I was like, and what a what a generous thing, what a fascinating thing to see them in rehearsal, to see Michael Peters teaching the dancers, and they're in there, you know, perfect their eighties get up, you know what I mean, the crop tops and the headbands and the you know, and and they're laughing, and Michael and Ola Ray are finding their chemistry, you know, before they're in costume. You're just watching them sort of dance around each other and get to know each other. I mean, my god, I was more interest sit in that than I was in the Monster movie that they made, which I loved a lot. But the thing that I wanted to watch again and again was I wanted to watch Michael put the plaster on his face and then and put the teeth in and all that stuff. So when I got to Broadway, when Rent sort of was that bat signal that I talked about I was like, oh, man, they make worlds here. They build worlds here. When I got to the Nederlander Theater, I was seventeen years old when I went into rent On Broadway and I got there and they had the metal scaffolding and the and the fog machine was going before the audience walked in, and there's a there's just that that kind that certain perfect chill in the air in a New York Broadway the house that you feel it felt like as close to you know, I was going to be a part of thrillers as I could get before you made it to Broadway. You studied at Freedom Theater in Philadelphia, and also you studied dance in Philadelphia. Yeah. Um, they were both at black institutions. That's right. And I just think it's an interesting moment because particularly with Kamala Harris who went to Howard Tonahasi Coates, whom I know a little and admire a lot, went to Howard and really encourages a lot of people to go to historically black universities. Yeah, because he thinks it's you need a kind of safe place to find yourself. What was it like for you or what did I what do you think that brought you going to black institutions to study at that point rather than integrated institutions. Probably the same thing that you know, I have dear sweet friends out here in la that send their their children to Jewish day school, you know, or or the people that send their kids to to Christian academies and Christian schools. It's just like really making friends with your with your identity and with your you know, your your history, making friends with that and so so that no one so that no one can take that away from you or ever make you ashamed of it, or probably a little bit of that. And then I think cities have a character. I've learned now as I've traveled around post Hamilton with all these concerts and speaking engagements and stuff, the touring that I've that I've been able to do since leaving the show, you really get a sense of it's a it's a strange thing, or maybe maybe not so strange at all, but you know, you get to Boston and you're like, oh, oh, yeah, these are the people that would take that tea and dump it into the harbor. The Boston's the place that would do that, you know what I mean. It's it's unlike any other places they've got They've got a character. There's a character to the people of that city and Philadelphia. It does not surprise me one bit that this election, you know that that Philadelphia has has, you know, played its role in earning this thing around for America. Whatever you believe, whatever side you were on, Philadelphia mattered, and Philadelphia, you know, there's a character to to my town. There was a wonderful thing training at that that those formative years of my life, I took it for granted. Every single one of my friends was young, gifted, and black, like I was not. I was not special. I was not the most talented person in any of those classes. I was far. I was not you know when I was in when I was in my dance classes, I was not the best student or the best speaker or any of that stuff. All of my friends were brilliant and we and that was like, that was the that was the minimum, like, you know, to hang in this set, you were supposed to be, you know, all of these things. And that's I think that that is what you hear Ton of high See talking about Howard, and you hear Kamala talking about her experience at Howard on our elementary school level. That's what I was experiencing, I think at Freedom Theater, at Philadenko and so Yes, I took. I carried that with me wherever I went, you know, in the rooms that followed. If you know, if you didn't think I was good enough, if you didn't think that I was worthy of the air in my lungs or the space that I was taking up, something was wrong with you. I never ever thought that it was something that I should fix about myself, you know, beyond beyond character flaw. You know, there's, of course that I've worked on myself as a human being. But you know what I'm saying, like that there was that there was anything intrinsically wrong with me because of the color of my skin. I mean not in Philadelphia. No, you then went to Carnegie Mellon after you were in rent and Broadway, and then became a working actor in Los Angeles. But you gave up singing for a while. Yeah, had you not been encouraged as a singer before that, I just didn't know. I didn't know it was possible, And there were a lot of It's hard enough. It's like pick one, you know, it's hard enough trying to make it as one thing. You know, I just decided to focus on being an actor, and that that just took up all my energy, took up all my time. I was auditioning for shows and getting them sometimes, but I didn't know that, you know, that making records and stuff like that was possible. I met, you know, I met Joseph, this guy that I've take talked about several times. I didn't meet Joseph until you know, Leap of Faith on Broadway, and Joseph is the guy that turned it all around. Joseph was the guy that said I want to make records with you, and people had said that to me over the years, but nobody followed through. You know. Yeah, I don't understand how you needed to raise money for a record after you and Rent. I just assumed, like when you left the stage during Rent, somebody just just jumped a big bucket of money on your head and just sing into the mic and we'll make it a record. Where Wow about the music business, you know, greater identifying talent. You wrote a terrific book, which, by the way, I've got little little kids, but both of them are going to read this book. They're all enough too. It's called Failing Up, and it is it's a short book, but it's just about your experiences and it's fantastic and it's full of great thoughts, but it's a very painful passage in which you are in a show, a TV show, and Vulture, which was from New York magazine, was doing recaps of the show and they referred to you only as token. Yeah, you talk about it in the book because he could you tell me about how that felt? It was not unlike Ron Coleman's advice to me. You know, it was sobering and you know, yeah, a little, a little hurtful or a little you know, a little not hurtful. What happens? What is the thing that happens when you hear a truth that you that that is hard to hear? And did you think there was truth? And absolutely there was truth in it because they were responding to how the show was treating me, and that show marginalized me at every turn. That's just the truth. I felt it when I was in it. That was one of the reasons that made that show so challenging to beyond one of the reasons. But yeah, I was I was I was a token and I knew it, and that that is reductive and painful, you know, to live through. And Vulture exposed it and exposed them and me. And the part that I guess, I guess the most hurtful part I've never really thought about this is like when Vulture put sit in the in a weekly column, I have to ask myself, well, what are you going to do about it? Now it's been called out, It's not it's not being hidden. You are a token. You're being treated like a token. You're allowing yourself to be treated like a token. What are you going to do about it? And I, yeah, I had to make somebody to make some changes turning that around. You then went to Broadway and you know, it was one of the great It was what felt so revolutionary about Hamilton was that these historical white characters were being played by African Americans, people of different races. What was that like. You'd had the security of going to sort of you know, you studied in an all black theater. You then did a lot of different work. What was it like to get up on stage and say, I'm a black guy, I'm playing a famous white guy, also a bad guy. But what was that like, Well, I think I actually, you know, I know, my degree says I got what I think? I get a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Carnegie Million University. You know, majored in drama. But I actually think, you know, you could also to synonym for empathy. I'm majored in empathy. And this was the greatest empathetic challenge that I've ever been given. I've been taught a lot about the Founding Fathers, we all have, but no one's ever ever before lin Manuel tried to get me to empathize with the Founding Fathers. And there's a curious thing that happens as a young thirty something year old black man when you try to empathize with you know, these men, these complicated these complicated men. There's there's parts of them that you understand, parts of them that you'll never understand, and that tension, that dissonance that it's actually the spaces in which it doesn't quite fit that is really interesting for an audience to watch. It's the places that it is incongruous, the places that it doesn't make sense, that make us keep watching. When you watch Davi Digs at the top of Act two, step out on that stage as Thomas Jefferson. It is the weirdest and he's talking to his slaves, and it doesn't there's something, especially in a country with a history of black face in vaudeville. You know that is a part of us two that you know that as a part of our DNA too. And we've and you and I both we've we've both grown up. It was in our cartoons it was you know that that also is not and the hateful, mean, reductive caricature that is drawn from black face. We feel that too. We feel that an aunt Jemima and uncle Ben, we felt that you and I we grew up in this country. You know, they've changed these images slightly, of course to try to be more politically correct. But we know what they were when we were children, and my and my parents know what they or when they were children. So that's a part of us too. And so now to have men and women, so now it's going the other way right on some level, this is the this is the same thing, but we're not being It is with a with an entirely different spirit. It is with an entirely different spirit, an entirely different intention. There's reverence, there is judgment, there is a point of view. So anyway, it was just a powerful exercise, a powerful experience that made good on my training. You know, I went and got all these great tools at Carnegie Mellon University, and I come out of school and for the most part, I'm a part of shows that want me to be, you know, the best friend of the best friend of the best friend of the white lead. You know, and and continuously tell me and affirm for me. You're welcome here. But as long as you stay on the outskirts, as long as you stay on the margins, you are not the center. You're not You're not interesting enough, You're not worthy enough to be the center of a narrative. Your story isn't quite doesn't just doesn't quite matter as much. It's waited differently as this other story. You know. It was just a message that I was being told again and again, and Lynn decided to do something different, to do something radical, and I'm so glad that he did. You know, it makes me think for the first time that had you been the only black member of the cast and you'd been Aaron Byrd, the villain, how differently, Oh yeah, it would feel. That's what I was disarming, was was the whole cast. It makes me think of the old you know. They made a movie of Jesus Christ Superstars, right, and the only black performer played Judas, and that always upset me. Yeah, you bring you bring him up. Carl Anderson is his name, and he is top five most influential performers for me. Top five Carl Anderson. Really, Oh are you kidding me? It's you know, it's a strange thing that happens. I was listening to a podcast and it was even about Muslim Americans and how there are children that grew up, you know, identifying with and sort of sometimes rooting for the bad guy in the way stories were told because that was their only representation. It was the only time they were seeing themselves and so not that they're rooting for. But you know what I'm saying, like, oh my god, there I am, you know, And so later on you unpack that and you go, God, why did I only ever see myself as the represented as the bad guy, as the villain, So Carl, at the time that I was seeing Jesus Christ Superstar, all I saw was just this, Oh man, just if somebody put my Aaron Burr in the same cannons as Carl Anderson. Man, I'd be done. I just thought he the work is so nuanced and beautiful and human and gorgeous. My god, he's so good in that part. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about you're singing, but I'm interested in because you're a jazz singer, or you're described as a jazz singer, you've done jazz albums, But I don't. It's a little hard for me to understand what the state of jazz singing is because I think it's something most people still associate with, you know, a previous you know, a previous generation at least you know they think of like the Yellow Fitzgerald songbooks. She also did a fabulous Christmas album by the way. Yeah, Or you know Peggy Lee, maybe Diane Reeves, you know the Seravan who's a big favorite of mine. You know, I could tell you what sort of modern jazz is for a saxophone player, for a piano player, what is it for a singer where How do you feel you fit in too? Sort of what jazz is today? Oh, I feel like I've fit in again. It is not unlike those rooms that I was training in Philadelphia. I am far from the best in any room of jazz singers that you'll meet. Yeah, jazz ain't going anywhere, you know, They jazz survives, and so I just I just think it. It looks a little different, but it's still out here. I'm in, I hope in the tradition of a Frank of a Gnat, of a Billy x Stein, even Chet, you know, once Chet started singing. You know, I'm a certain kind of of jazz singer. But you know, when you really talk about the exceptional improvisers, and you know, the people that are out there pushing the form, synthesizing all that was and all that is and making a making a stab at what it's going to be in the future, those people are out there. Even you look at you listen to you listen to um Kendrick, Kendrick Lamars, Kendrick Lamars to Pimp a Butterfly or you know, Kendrick is is making jazz. Maybe not jazz albums, but they are. There is heavy jazz in fluences on these Kedrick Lamar records, Commons another one always jazz on a common record. So yeah, I just think it's you know, for its survival. It is finding pockets in the popular culture to exist and feed itself. But you seem to be in a different category. So for example, when you do you do a great version of you mentioned it favorite Things, Yeah on your previous album. Anybody who grew up in the twentieth century thinks of Julie Andrews. But you can't listen to years without thinking of like Coltrane. Hey, it's there, isn't it. Yeah? God, I hope so the or the inspiration anyway, Yeah, I hope. I'm in a laying on That's That's what you're trying to do, which is what any artist is trying to do. And it takes a while. Some people get it, get to it quicker than others. Look at Little Billie Eilish and you know Amy what Amy Winehouse was able to give us before she left us far too soon. Some some artists are able to get to it sooner. I can get to it. Until I got to you know, I was in my early thirties when I really started to come into my own thanks to Ron Coleman, thanks to Lynn Manuel and some other people who really helped me figure out what it is that I could offer that no one else was offering, because that's what you gotta do. You gotta figure out what are you gonna say that's not already being said better by someone else? You know what ground are you gonna hope? There is something? There's something you can offer, but it takes experimentation and a little bit of courage to find what that thing is. What are the albums I'm gonna make that nobody's already making. We'll be right back with Leslie Odom Junior. We're back with the rest of Bruce Helem's conversation with Leslie Odom Junior. When did you start recording the This Christmas Album? June? So it was full pandemic when you were doing Yeah, we did it relatively quickly, it was, and it was a part of the pivot. COVID caught us all in the middle of something, right. Everybody ever, shit is never convenient. It's not like, oh, now is the perfect time for me to deal with a quarantine. Everybody was like, fuck man, I just got started on something. So two or three months into the pandemic, I think there was something about I was reminded of the holidays, because as Americans, the only time we really allow ourselves the time to push the pause button. Are those three weeks between Christmas and New Year's right? Every everything about it we are about the grind, the hustle, the like. We don't pause except for those And we were on pause. And so there was Almas like, this feels like I'm a weird it's a weird Christmas, but this feels this is the only time we do. This is Christmas time. So we took our COVID tests and you know, we got the band back together and tried to I tried to imagine what people might be in need of at the end of this really challenging year. You make some really interesting choices. You're talking your book about making always trying to make very informed, until actual choices. You know, in this case, there's a there's a great version of Little Drummer Boy with the South African choir. How did that come about? How Joseph did he came up with the arrangement idea? He did He wanted it to the drums of Little Drummer Boy to be set somewhere in Africa, you know, he didn't Is it gonna be West Africa? Is it gonna be South Africa. You know, we were gonna be specific about it, not just you know, generic Africa. But he that was his inspiration, that was his little idea. And I said, yeah, man, you know, try it, let me let me hear it when it's done. And yeah, he came up with the very the rudiments, you know, and I got in there and I recorded a version of it, and this, you know, the process was not unlike what I described to you. Kind of start just at that basic what are the what are the words? You know, what is the melody? And then we sent it to this this chorus, this youth chorus in South Africa, and they sent us back something that was so far beyond anything we antissipated. And so then we had to then make the arrangement match what they'd sent us back. I had to re record the vocal and Farren Nephew Feamster, who's my other major collaborator on this record, he just made the arrangement as big and as bright and beautiful as the vocals they sent us back. Was it tough for you to come in with a vocal that worked with what they were doing? No, they were so beautiful. I mean they God, I'm so I could cry, I'm so moved by people that you call them and you ask them if they want to collaborate, and you know, people give you the best of them. Know, when we sent them our version, they built their version around what we sent them, So it was always taking me into consideration. You know, they they they were building their thing around the little humble thing we sent them. It sounds a lot like Paul Simon's experience with grace Land, going and saying, here's a little idea, and then you know, the guitar player comes back with like a killer riff. And we thought a lot about Graceland when they sent it back to us. What was missing was what we realized is that the way we could serve them actually was to bring more America, was to bring more pop. That was what it was. Because we sent them, we sent them something pretty rock and stick. I mean it was like it was it was drum and bass maybe, you know, and we we thought we were it was going to be pretty acapella, like a pretty acapella arrangement. So so then they send us back that you know, they just they filled out the vocal spectrum and it was just this choir coming back and it was like, we're failing them. We have to match them, and what do we add in there? We add the cultural exchange is the mix of the two. So now let's what pop sounds. What what can we add to the spectrum that is, you know, the mel holding of our two cultures. You read it Winter song, Yeah, with your co star from Harriet. Yes, tell me how that came about. Cynthia did a big holiday concert at the Apollo a few years ago, her and Shoshana Bean and we sang this lot the only time we've ever sang it. We sang it live at this concert and it felt good. Man. It was just you know, it was like, oh, yeah, why wasn't this song a duet to begin with? Because yeah, that song started as a duets. It's an Ingrid Michaelson Sarah Barella's song that I turned into a solo version. Cynthia and I turned it back into a duet, and so I just I couldn't miss the opportunity to get that on record, and we should mention this is Cynthia a Rivo Arivo Academy Award nominees the Arivo who I think and I mentioned earlier the People's initial reaction to seeing you in Hamilton. I think she's another one of those people. If you don't know her and you see her on TV or something, she comes out and starts singing, You're just like what she queened the world? How come I've never heard this before? This is so incredible. She's just that kind of talent. Yeah, this this thing was our labor of love. At the end of the day, I hope we decorated the studio to feel like Christmas, you know, but there there's a there's a reverence and a somber quality to my first Christmas record that that just that's you know, that was honestly where I was for whatever the reasons were at that time, and I'm not in that same place even in the middle of everything we're going through. I'm generally, you know, I've gone on a search, a hunt for my joy the last couple of years, and I wanted that present on this record. So I remember I was jumping around the studio when Cynthia was in the booth recording her vocals, just jumping for joy because she sounded so good and it was happy. It was, you know, coming to life. And she just said on the mic She was like, you're really happy, aren't you, And I said I, but I loved that my friend could see it. Another song, I wanted to mention a duet with your wife. You do it in Hebrew. Yes, we had a We had a brilliant rabbi as our coach on that day because we wanted to. We wanted to our pronunciation to be accurate and respectful. Um so I'm gonna barely attempt to say it now, but it's my old seward. I think it's how you say it, but I need the rabbi here to coach me again. I was very keen on expanding that table, you know, expanding that the really I think of the holiday time, I said that that that three weeks between Christmas and New Year's that is that is America's high holy time. And some people are celebrating Hanaka, some people are celebrating Quanta, some people are celebrating Christmas. Some people are just celebrating family, and they're just celebrating rest. I want to celebrate it all, you know. I want to. I want to. I want people to feel seen, and let's make that holiday family portrait a little bigger. You know what I mean? When you told your wife you wanted to do a duet. Was she thinking, you know, baby, it's cold outside or something? You said, well, no, it's like that, except it's a thirteenth century Rabbinical song. I don't know if you you, I don't know if you does it. But my wife is half Jewish. I mean I didn't know that. Now. Yeah, technically she would be considered her mother is Jewish and her father's African American, and so mixed race, mixed faith upbringing. And so I've spent we've been together twelve years, and so I have spent twelve years observing, in addition to all my High Holy Days, observing the High Holy Days on the Jewish calendar as well. And it has just God has gotten larger for me. You know, I want to ask you just about one more song, because it probably hit me the hardest, maybe because it's the simplest. It's your version of old Langsyne. How did that come about? It's just you and a guitar. Yeah, it hits me too, that melody, that sentiment before we go into a new year, let's honor who isn't going with us? Should old acquaintance be forgot? And brought to mind, should old acquaintance be forgot and old landsign? It's just like I've been singing it for years now in my concerts. It always works. It always makes me feel something, And if it makes you feel something, chances are it's going to make somebody else feel something too. I think that's a perfect place to stop. But I have one favor. Could you sing the next two lines? Four Lansine, my dear for Lansine. We'll take a couple of kindness yet for Lansine. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, guys, appreciate you. Thanks to Leslie Adam Junior for talking us through his beautiful new Christmas album and for lifting our spirits. You can hear Leslie's Christmas album, along with some of our other favorite Christmas songs at a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken record Podcast. There you can find extended cuts of new and old episodes. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and his executive Produced by Miola Bell. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. And if you like Broken Record, please remember to share, rate, and review our show on your podcast appen our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond bass