If you're listening to Charlie Hunter's new album in headphones, you can go ahead and take one of them off if you like. The cover of the jazz guitarist and composer's record proclaims that it's recorded "In Glorious Mono."
No overdubs, mixed live to old-fashioned analog audio tape, the studio recording was captured by the finest 1950s technology. It's also curiously titled Gentlemen, I Neglected To Inform You You Will Not Be Getting Paid.
"Well, it's a quote from a real, older, curmudgeonly musician that people have worked for," Hunter says. "And I cannot name names, but it really did happen. It really does happen; let me put it that way."
Not that he would ever spring the same surprise on any of his bandmates.
"No way, no way, no way," Hunter says. "I tell them exactly how little money they'll be getting paid upfront."
He joined host Liane Hansen to talk about recording in monaural sound, answer some listeners' questions and discuss his unusual seven-string guitar, which allows him to play bass lines and guitar riffs at once.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.