Welcome back to The Jazz Flyte Podcast. Every once in a while, I get to sit with an artist whose music has been part of the culture for so long that you don’t just hear it, you recognize it. This episode is that kind of conversation. I’m joined by Bobby Broom, and we go all the way back to the beginning, before careers, before stages, before the industry. Back to the moment a kid fell in love with sound.
Bobby tells me the exact record that flipped the switch: Charles Earland’s Black Talk! He was only 10 years old, not even thinking about jazz in a serious way, but he heard the jazz organ and knew he’d found something. From there, we talk about how the guitar entered his life in the most honest way possible. He didn’t chase it. It called him. He strummed his first four-string tenor guitar as a kid, put it away, and then woke up at 12 with a burning desire to play for real. That kind of calling is hard to explain, but Bobby explains it in a way you can feel.
We get into his early lessons, his love of radio, and how the music of the time shaped him just as much as any classroom. Kool and the Gang, Earth, Wind & Fire, Tower of Power, and the songs that lived on the dial were part of his foundation. Then came the moment jazz got real. Bobby heard Herbie Hancock and Grover Washington Jr. on the radio, realized jazz had more than one doorway, and went searching for a guitarist who could speak with that same kind of emotion. The record store clerk handed him George Benson’s Bad Benson, and Bobby describes the kind of clarity that only happens when you hear your future in a sound. He didn’t just like it. He knew that’s what he wanted to do.
We talk about how he learned in an era before the internet, standing in record stores for hours choosing one or two albums with his allowance, letting radio stations like WRVR teach him, and using music theory as a tool instead of a limitation. Bobby shares how New York didn’t pressure him into a single lane because, in his world, it was all music. Straight-ahead, funk, fusion, R&B, classic rock, modern jazz, it all mattered, and it all fed the musician he was becoming.
We also get into the Clean Sweep era, the GRP approach of ending records with a straight-ahead statement, and the kind of chemistry that happens when young heavyweights like Marcus Miller and Omar Hakim are in the same room. Bobby breaks down the difference between being “in the band” and being trusted with the stage, including his experience opening for Steely Dan, where he had the rare opportunity to present organ trio music to thousands of people who came for something else and stayed because the groove was undeniable.
This conversation is about the long game. It’s about finding your real voice, resisting the pressure to be everything for everyone, and making the kind of music that feels like you even when the industry shifts. Bobby Broom is proof that if you commit to authenticity, the sound will carry you where you’re meant to go.
Connect with Bobby: https://www.bobbybroom.com/
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Feb 15 202635 min