The Invisible Hitmaker Behind the Soundtrack of Your Life

He's played with Aretha, Steely Dan and thousands more. He's influenced Zeppelin, hip-hop and "MMMBop." He is your favorite musician's favorite musician — a role player with too many rings to count who's been helping you dance for decades. So it's about time you slowed down to appreciate legendary drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie. Because at 83 years young, he's rock-steady as ever, with wisdom to burn on the meaning of perfection, consistency and how to keep it smooth in your own valley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 0:15Speaker 00

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• 1:15Speaker 00

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• 2:22Pablo Torre?

  How old are you right now?

• 2:24Speaker 04

  I'm 83.

• 2:26Pablo Torre?

  83 years old. I just need to introduce the premise of why we put a drum kit into the studio for the first time in our show's history, and why I demanded that Bernard Purdie be the person to sit behind it.

• 2:41Speaker 04

  Well, the beauty for me is that part of the sound, so no matter what kind of drum kit that I get,

• 2:54Speaker 04

  my drumsticks has the length and it has the capability of

• 3:04Speaker 04

  that. So I can hear that. And that is all I ever want.

• 3:10Pablo Torre?

  The sound that you're making there is the sound that I think everybody who has ever listened to music in America has on some level appreciated, even if they didn't quite know that Bernard Purdie is the reason that they were moving in that way.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  You're right.

• 3:27Pablo Torre?

  But I also want to just make sure I clap in front of the microphone so we can just... Because... Well, first off, I'll clap for having you here.

• 3:34Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 3:35Pablo Torre?

  Bernard, could you clap as well, though, just for tape sync? Could you mind just giving us a clap in front of the microphone?

• 3:42Pablo Torre?

  There it is.

• 3:47Pablo Torre?

  Even your claps are, of course, perfectly on beat.

• 3:59Pablo Torre?

  Just putting everybody to shame who's ever stepped into this podcast studio and has had to tape sync a clap.

• 4:26Pablo Torre?

  So if you're not watching on YouTube right now, what you should be aware of is that there is, in fact, a fully functioning drum kit in our studio. Because our guest today, Elkton, Maryland's own Bernard "Pretty Purdie", is not just one of the most prolific and underrated figures in the history of recorded music. Bernard Purdie is a teacher. And if you're like me, until fairly recently, you had never been taught the name Bernard Purdie before. Because another term for Bernard's job is "session musician", meaning that Bernard gets hired to take his customized, precisely-measured drumsticks and improve the music of everyone from Aretha Franklin to James Brown to, allegedly, The Beatles.

• 5:08Pablo Torre?

  Pretty much all of whom wanted a signature groove Bernard invented, called the Purdie Shuffle, which has inspired everybody, from John Bonham and Led Zeppelin, to the genre of hip-hop itself.

• 5:38Pablo Torre?

  What a diva. You're a real diva, Bernard, demanding your special sticks.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  Listen, when I talk with people about something, there is a reason for it. Because everything that I do, everything, represents my sound.

• 5:56Pablo Torre?

  Your sound, the way you've calibrated over 60-plus years, I do need to explain why and how I'm obsessed with, especially artists who are omnipresent, but can sometimes feel invisible.

• 6:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 6:12Pablo Torre?

  And you, I want to quote our mutual friend Joey Dosick from the band Wolfpack. One of the great bands that I love, but I just want to quote him here because he gives you, I think, the scouting report that people need to hear. Joey says, quote, "Purdie is at the forefront and in the shadows at the same time. He's on the radio at every moment, every day, everywhere, yet he walks amongst us mostly unrecognized. He made the soundtrack to our lives. The world is a fan, but the world doesn't know his name."

• 6:51Pablo Torre?

  And it's remarkable, man, to look into your life and know that Joey's kind of underselling you.

• 7:00Speaker 04

  Well, a lot of people have, but they've done it because they've asked me to come to them around the world. And I have already, I've been teaching for 60-plus years, almost 70. Let's just say it's closer to 70.

• 7:25Pablo Torre?

  I wasn't gonna carry the one there, but I think you're right. What Rolling Stone said about you, Bernard Purdie, is that, quote, "The question isn't who Pretty Purdie played with, it's who he hasn't."

• 7:39Pablo Torre?

  And so just to give us the numbers here, how many artists would you say you've worked with in total?

• 7:45Speaker 04

  A minimum of 5,000 different artists around the world.

• 7:58Pablo Torre?

  James Brown.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:01Pablo Torre?

  "It's a man's, man's, man's world." If you listened to that, 1966.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:07Pablo Torre?

  There you are.

• 8:10Pablo Torre?

  Steely Dan?

• 8:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:12Pablo Torre?

  Home at Last, 1977?

• 8:14Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:15Pablo Torre?

  Guess who?

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:18Pablo Torre?

  Aretha Franklin?

• 8:20Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:21Pablo Torre?

  I'm thinking of Rocksteady.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:23Pablo Torre?

  In 71, the owner of one of the great drum breaks.

• 8:28Pablo Torre?

  Ever.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  That drum break was an accident.

• 8:34Pablo Torre?

  Please explain.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  The drum break was an accident because Aretha was also keyboardist and vocalist.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  And the young man who was the arranger and the writer for her,

• 8:56Speaker 04

  Arif Martin.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  We had to listen to what she was doing.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  So what happened, almost halfway through the song, the sheet music fell off the piano.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  And we didn't stop. And Aretha was

• 9:22Speaker 04

  stopped singing, but not stopped singing. And she kept saying, "Rock!

• 9:30Speaker 04

  Steady! Rock!" She did that for approximately 12 minutes. And Arif, who saw what was happening, he was also the producer, the guy who was in charge of Atlantic records and all that, finally came out and picked it up, put it back on the piano. Mind you, we were still doing the break.

• 10:04Pablo Torre?

  Right, you were still playing, still recording.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  We were still playing the rock.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Steady, you know, and she's doing this and waving. Rock.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  Steady.

• 10:18Speaker 04

  We'll never stop. You don't stop when the boss don't stop. It's that simple. Didn't bother me. I just doing my job.

• 10:28Pablo Torre?

  This is the part about you, right? So you're a legend. And again, I'll keep on listing the artists, right?

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:35Pablo Torre?

  Hall & Oates, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, B.B. King, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Cat Stevens, Nina Simone, Herbie Hancock, Gil Scott-Heron, Louis Armstrong, Al Green, Quincy Jones. I mean, this, you're a walking Hall of Fame.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Well, thank you. I never looked at them. Yeah, but thank you.

• 10:58Pablo Torre?

  Is there a song that you're most proud of? That you think back and like, oh, that's actually my personal favorite?

• 11:04Speaker 04

  I really didn't. I was happy to be there. And I was always happy because I was doing demos. I was doing demos at that time. And these demos became hits, just like the big artists became hit. I had Ray Charles. I had everybody. I played for everybody. The beauty for me was I was there to do my job and they allowed me to do it.

• 11:39Pablo Torre?

  But the one that our friend Joey points out, he says, "The song that best demonstrates your strength, your power is 'Ooh, Child.'" So this is 1970. It's the Five Stair Steps.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 11:52Pablo Torre?

  Could you play a little bit of what you did on that song for us? Just for people who don't know what I mean when I say, "You make that song what it became."

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Yes. Oh, boy.

• 12:32Pablo Torre?

  Wait, hold on. Were you just like, "Wait, that guy's good"? Was that the reaction you just had?

• 12:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:37Pablo Torre?

  Bernard Purdie in 1970 was pretty good at this.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  What I was doing, I kept the time going. And everything that I did was time, time, time. And picking up, allowing it to happen. Let it flow. Stay out of the way of the vocal, but let it flow. And the figures, psh, psh, all that. I was singing all these things. I was singing them. And I didn't realize that I was even singing it. You know, I was playing it.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  But it was a job.

• 13:22Pablo Torre?

  The job you did, though,

• 13:23Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:24Pablo Torre?

  has been imitated, sampled

• 13:26Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:27Pablo Torre?

  by so many more thousands of people that you did not personally even play with.

• 13:32Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:33Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so we gotta explain why hip-hop as a genre owes you something.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 13:40Pablo Torre?

  How do you explain the Purdie Shuffle?

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Now that we've got the 12-4 and the 12-8, I'm gonna explain to you. Remember that word?

• 13:56Speaker 04

  Called "explain". Not "explain", but I'm gonna explain to you what the Purdie Shuffle is all about.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  It's gonna surprise you.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  It's quarters.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  It's eight.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  The Purdie Shuffle basically happened because

• 14:23Speaker 04

  of the train.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  The actual railroad that went by my house in Elkton, Maryland. The train that stopped in Elkton had its own

• 14:42Speaker 04

  the slowdown of the train because when the train is moving,

• 14:49Speaker 04

  it's so fast you don't really hear where a time is or anything else. All you know is, is that as it slows down, you get

• 15:09Speaker 04

  and then it gets down to that point where it

• 15:14Speaker 04

  it stops. And it's the same thing when it starts up.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  Going out, you got

• 15:32Speaker 04

  and it just gets up to a certain point that it disappears. It actually disappears and you don't hear that you don't hear, you feel it. You feel the train. You feel it. When you're on the train, you feel it. It's just something that I picked up and I realized that I had something going. That's all. And I used to play it because I was only going a block away.

• 16:09Pablo Torre?

  So you sampled a locomotive is what happened?

• 16:11Speaker 04

  I sampled a locomotive. The train that was stopping in Elkton, Maryland. It was the marriage capital of the world for a hundred years.

• 16:23Pablo Torre?

  What does that mean?

• 16:24Speaker 04

  People stopped into Elkton to get married and leave. And that's how Elkton became known.

• 16:34Pablo Torre?

  The elopement capital of the United States became known for, truly, I would say, one of the most lasting vows in American cultural history, which is, if we got a record and we need a drummer, we gotta go get Bernard.

• 16:54Pablo Torre?

  Led Zeppelin, "Full in the Rain."

• 17:03Speaker 04

  And Led Zeppelin? His wife, his wife called me. She called me when he was on his deathbed. She called me and she wanted me to know how much she felt and he felt about me. And I was stunned. I was stunned.

• 17:27Pablo Torre?

  But what you did, the shuffle, which I hope you can show us a little bit here.

• 17:33Pablo Torre?

  It's a fingerprint. It's a unique, magnificent fingerprint.

• 17:55Pablo Torre?

  "The world dances," is what our friend Joey said. "Laughs and cries to his beat without even knowing it's him." He influenced everything after him.

• 18:06Speaker 04

  Now, the difference is that when you do the drums live, there's more space that actually works even more so that it just, it just, just keeps going.

• 18:37Pablo Torre?

  This is the never duplicated part.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  This beat.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  It only works when it's halftime.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  Halftime is the only way to make the Purdie Shuffle last.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  Where it can bring in, everybody can come in and do their things, and the Purdie Shuffle can stay on. But you gotta remember, it only works slower.

• 19:44Pablo Torre?

  That part, I want to explain that in the context of a term that I think people may have heard, but I didn't really think about until I started thinking about you, which is the session musician.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 19:55Pablo Torre?

  Which is to say that you get brought in almost to help the star and to be that, what you just did, that timekeeping texture that everybody knows they want, even if they don't want to admit that they want it.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:10Pablo Torre?

  And your job is to fit yourself around some of the biggest egos that have ever lived.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:19Pablo Torre?

  And to make sure that they and the band around you get to be the best version of themselves.

• 20:26Speaker 04

  Exactly. For so many years, everybody wanted, but yet they didn't ask for it because they didn't know what to ask for. The Purdie Shuffle worked.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  For 20 to 30 years before other people and other bands, drummers were playing it and they were doing it the best that they could, even though they didn't understand it.

• 20:57Pablo Torre?

  Right, right.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  And I was fortunate traveling around the world at that time. I was going around the world in the 70s.

• 21:09Pablo Torre?

  You were fixing music, one session at a time.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:13Pablo Torre?

  Telling people to slow down.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:15Pablo Torre?

  This groove is not gonna work if you, if you try to... By the way, if you, as the drummer, try to make yourself the star.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, no.

• 21:24Pablo Torre?

  How is it that you made peace with that? The idea that invisibility was gonna be the exchange for being omnipresent?

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Just so I could play with the stars. All of a sudden, people started calling me because of what I was doing and what I wasn't doing, trying to take the credit.

• 21:51Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 21:52Speaker 04

  For everything. Hit record is a hit record, no matter how you look at it. And those hit records still go.

• 22:01Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  Today. They've been going now for 50, 60, 70 years. It ain't gonna stop.

• 22:15Pablo Torre?

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• 23:49Pablo Torre?

  Who is the hardest person to work with? Because you're the easiest person to work with, okay? Who is the hardest person you had to work with?

• 23:57Speaker 04

  Aretha was close.

• 24:11Pablo Torre?

  The original diva?

• 24:12Speaker 04

  Yes. I was also, when I became the musical director, it made it even nicer for me. But I had Quincy Jones. I had run-ins with a lot of people, all because I was doing something that nobody else was.

• 24:34Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  I loved what I was doing. They didn't understand what I was doing until I showed them.

• 24:53Pablo Torre?

  Well, hold on. So Steely Dan, what they say about you, right? This is what Walter Becker once said about you. All right, Walter says, quote, "Bernard always did some unique stylistic thing that you'd never imagined in advance that nobody else would do." Which is to say that even though your job, as you saw it, was to stay out of the way, you also needed to impress upon everybody else the best version of how to do this. And so there is leadership from a role-playing position.

• 25:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 25:26Pablo Torre?

  And I think of sports.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 25:28Pablo Torre?

  Everybody knows Michael Jordan. Everybody knows the guy on the poster, in the commercials, on all the billboards. But there are some athletes whose careers are full of championship rings. And they do it at multiple places. And that is its own special thing.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  That's what my job was. Because my job also...

• 25:55Speaker 04

  So many demos became hit records.

• 26:00Pablo Torre?

  You serve the song first.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  That's my whole life. Because as a kid, when I was playing as a kid,

• 26:15Speaker 04

  I didn't quite understand what I was doing, but it was working because it was out of the way. It didn't bother anybody. You know, I'm four years old when I was playing drums, and I knew I was gonna be a drummer. I heard it from Mr. Hayward, who, the one who actually ended up being my teacher.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  He was the next block down, next street over. I was getting attention by the time I was 10, 11, and 12, because I had something, and I didn't know what it was. I just knew that I liked these songs. I liked what I was doing, and I liked what I was hearing.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  And it was work.

• 27:12Pablo Torre?

  Do you remember the moment, and this could be any point in your career, in your 70 years playing music professionally, it seems like. Do you remember the moment when you thought to yourself, "I am doing exactly what I should be doing on this planet"?

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yes, I knew that by the time I was 10 and 11. Yes, I knew that. I had a band by then.

• 27:35Pablo Torre?

  What was your band's name?

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Bugsy.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  Bugsy Purdie.

• 27:43Pablo Torre?

  Was Bugsy Purdie shuffling back then?

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But the point is, is that, eh, eh, you know, it was just called a shuffle. You know.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  That's what people, everybody did.

• 28:17Pablo Torre?

  I can say this with clarity, having studied this, in terms of researching this episode. Every drummer. I've seen so many articles, so many videos, I've talked to so many of them, they worship you. You are your favorite musician, if you're listening out there. Bernard Purdie is your favorite musician's favorite drummer. And the way I encountered you is, is of course relatively late in life, because I'm not a musician, I'm just a guy who likes music. And I went to see Wolfpack at Madison Square Garden.

• 29:00Pablo Torre?

  And I was just talking to your lovely wife, Celia, who is sitting outside on the side of this glass right now, because we were both. It turns out, having this experience of seeing you in your 80s, in front of Madison Square Garden, and what I said to Joey that night and what I'll say to you here, it was just one of the most fun times that I've had, listening to music, let alone being in what is often a cursed building, on account of how the Knicks have been doing in the course of my life. But that performance.

• 30:00Pablo Torre?

  I mean, you've played those intimate sessions, as well as the grandest arenas. And I was sort of stunned to hear Celia talk about how moving it was for her emotionally, like tearing up, to see her husband in 2025, teaching an entire arena of people how to keep time.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  That's why everything continued for so long, for so many years. But the beauty for me was, I didn't have to go through the changes anymore.

• 30:37Speaker 04

  It took me 20 to 30 years to be able to give something.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  And it stayed. And it stayed. And it stayed.

• 30:52Pablo Torre?

  And the thing that I marvel at, now that we've been talking for this long, is how much you still enjoy it.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  Oh, that's the whole point. That is one of the main reasons why I still work. Because I love what I'm doing. And I'm so thankful that the man upstairs has given me this opportunity all of these years. But I had to learn how to do it and do it right. Once I learned how to do it and to do it right, there was no fighting anymore.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  There was no more fighting. And nobody can take it away from me. And I didn't know until I started going back. Not only James Brown. Oh, you name them.

• 31:44Pablo Torre?

  Bernard, the band Hanson.

• 31:47Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:47Pablo Torre?

  Mm-bop.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  Yeah?

• 31:49Pablo Torre?

  That's U2.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 31:58Pablo Torre?

  The band that had their photo in my older sister's locker also owes a debt to the guy sitting in the studio right now.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 32:07Pablo Torre?

  Your role on this planet may not be that of the superstar on a billboard.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not.

• 32:17Pablo Torre?

  But you might wind up happier than all of the big egos and superstars that you played with.

• 32:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  That's why I'm comfortable in my own valley here. And I really am. Because teaching is something that I've been doing all my life. And I didn't know I was going to be a teacher. But as time went on, I started developing. I became friends with the biggest named drummers in the world. I wasn't in competition. I was just consistent with what I was doing. I never got out of the way of not wanting to play my part.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  But I sit down sometimes, you know.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  You know, I used to do that when I was, I don't know, teaching. You know, just kept the time. And people, you could see this. You could see other people outside the door.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  Looking and listening. Oh my God, that's that shuffle. That's that pretty shuffle. I was grinning from ear to ear. Because I created something.

• 34:03Pablo Torre?

  There's something about being a drummer. Again, as I'm not a musician of any kind. I tapped out at piano lessons when I was in grade school. But there's something about a drummer and the philosophy of being a drummer that's different from, I mean, look, because the drum solo is a thing.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:20Pablo Torre?

  Right? But you explained to me that when you were doing one of the great drum breaks in Recorded Musical History in 1971 for Rock Steady, that was an accident. But when I think about guitarists and the guitar solo, there's just something different. Well, what would you explain is different in terms of how you think a drummer as a profession ought to behave in a group?

• 34:43Speaker 04

  Any drummer, if he's smart,

• 34:47Speaker 04

  the one thing that you do, you learn what moves people.

• 34:54Speaker 04

  What moves people. And I'm learning the people with the money, the people who are making things work for themselves are all looking for that little

• 35:10Speaker 04

  to make them feel good.

• 35:11Pablo Torre?

  I just realized this, right? So you're from the wedding capital of, of America, wedding capital of the world. And you, a product of that, are also responsible for so many people dancing at wedding receptions.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 35:30Pablo Torre?

  There is something that does feel like you're in this flow state.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 35:38Pablo Torre?

  Where, where people are, are following your lead and it feels natural and they suddenly, they feel like they're better than, they feel like they're better at dancing than they are.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  I learned how, I really learned how to move my body when I'm playing the groove.

• 36:03Speaker 04

  And it cracks me up because it's the auto, it's automatic. It goes on automatic.

• 36:08Pablo Torre?

  I've been noticing.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  It just goes on automatic.

• 36:12Pablo Torre?

  If you're not watching on YouTube, you've missed Bernard Purdie really enjoying his own work.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  I'm happy. I am happy as a lot. I really am. And I, and it's been, and I talk about it to young people. I talk about it to old people. It doesn't matter. I enjoy what I do. When you want to work and you don't want to be putting on the side, when you can't do it because you're so mad or you're upset and just that, you're not going to work. It's that simple. You're not going to work. But when you got that camaraderie with the rest of the band and the band looking

• 37:05Speaker 04

  over at you and smiling and grinning, you got your job.

• 37:20Speaker 06

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 37:53Speaker 02

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• 38:17Speaker 05

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• 38:54Pablo Torre?

  As you put it, you've been doing this for basically 70 years. You're in your 80s. And what's so clear to me, and I wonder if you think about this, is that whenever, finally Bernard Purdie says, "I'm gonna hang it up." God's making me hang it up. You're still gonna be in everyone's ears.

• 39:16Pablo Torre?

  We can't get rid of you.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  Exactly. Exactly. Yes. And that's why the beauty of it, and when I started going back and remembering all of these other folks that I hadn't played with for 15 or 20 years.

• 39:36Pablo Torre?

  The list is longer. I just gave you a sample of like the names. It goes on and on.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  Oh, believe me. Believe me, it's long. There's thousands.

• 39:45Pablo Torre?

  That could be an entire episode, just me saying names that Bernard Purdie has played with.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. Because I have done that many recordings. Yes, I've done that many recordings with so many different artists. Songs that have now, they live on. These people became, you know, yeah, they became rich. They became very wealthy. But the thing is, is that I can stay working.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  All right, I'm not wealthy, but I can stay working and have a good time, love what I'm doing, and not hurting anybody. And it's a wonderful feeling. It's a wonderful feeling.

• 40:37Pablo Torre?

  Bernard Purdie, the man who has kept time for the United States for 70 years, who has been our soundtrack, even though we didn't fully appreciate everything that he has done, I am very glad to find out at the end here that, much like you did for Aretha Franklin in 1971, you're just gonna keep playing.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  I love it. I absolutely love it.

• 41:10Pablo Torre?

  Would you mind playing this out?

• 41:11Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  Thank you, everybody. Thank you, thank you. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Huh. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Hey, man.

• 43:48Pablo Torre?

  Bernard Purdie, as our control room is clapping so loudly we can hear it through the glass. Thank you for making this weird show the coolest it has ever been.

• 44:01Speaker 04

  Thank you very much.

• 44:12Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersik and NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.

• 44:46Speaker 06

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  With a Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

• 45:42Speaker 05

  Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.