Jeff Goldblum

ACTS, SINGS, PLAYS A LITTLE PIANO

What music are you currently grooving to? Eldorado, a song by Erroll Garner. He’s from Pittsburgh, I’m from Pittsburgh, my dad’s favourite song was Misty… I came upon it on YouTube, and I just couldn’t get enough of that. And my friend, the jazz singer Alison Wedding, sent me a video of Elis Regina and Tom Jobim singing Aguas de Março in a recording studio and it’s the most delightful thing I’ve ever seen.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Oh boy, oh boy. OK! As a teenager, Sgt. Pepper and The White Album were definitely portal openings, and more recently, Gregory Porter’s first album, Water, made me run up to him at the airport, and led to me recording my album.

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? When I was 17 years old, I bought Miles Davis’s In A Silent Way from a record shop on the Upper East Side, but my first real 45 was Stevie Wonder, For Once In My Life. Wore it out. And when I was a kid, we had a record of Basil Rathbone reading Edgar Allan Poe. I used to turn all the lights out and listen to him reading The Raven.

Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be? I kind of want to be Jeff Bridges in The Fabulous Baker Boys. One of the most romantic things ever.

What do you sing in the shower? Not anything regularly, but when I was doing my vocal exercises in the shower I used to revisit a song by Schumann in the Dichterliebe.

What is your favourite Saturday night record? If I was going to go out and be ecstatic and blow off steam, which I may have never done, this one track by Tower Of Power called, I think, Bump City [actually, Down To The Nightclub – Oakland soul/funk ed.]

And your Sunday morning record? I would put on The Peacocks from Bill Evans’ You Must Believe In Spring, or this song with Frank Sinatra singing to just an acoustic guitar – I think it’s just called It’s Sunday. Jeff Goldblum’s The Capitol Studio Sessions is released on November 9 on Decca.