Speaker 1: West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: This is West Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: I'm giving you, guys fear of warning now that if
Speaker 3: you ever complained about my inside baseball.
Speaker 2: Method of interviewing Ben, You're not going to be any
Speaker 2: happier with this physical episode. However, if you.
Speaker 3: Are a music head and you know your music, and
Speaker 3: you know your album credit, and you know your.
Speaker 2: Producers and your legends, love this episode.
Speaker 3: First of all, we were just complaining that, you know,
Speaker 3: after doing those.
Speaker 2: Four shows together and.
Speaker 1: Back in prison again soon counch prison.
Speaker 2: I'm saying.
Speaker 4: You trapped in the sixties.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was about to say, France, you're you're currently right now,
Speaker 3: you're back in North Carolina.
Speaker 4: No, I'm this is not prison for me.
Speaker 5: I'm actually doing quite well.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He actually made it quite clear that you know, this
Speaker 3: is he's living the dream right now.
Speaker 2: Is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Man, But you know, but but this was an episode
Speaker 5: I really did wish we could have done in personal.
Speaker 3: God, if we would have done this in person, this
Speaker 3: episode will probably be seven hours.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, You're looking well and clear today,
Speaker 2: like you you got to share your secret. I worked
Speaker 2: out and took a shower. Okay, something like it's fresh.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3: Like, Bill, our two friends in the corner, you know,
Speaker 3: am I looking well?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Man, you look you look awesome, Steve.
Speaker 4: I put on some brown coconut oils for you for
Speaker 4: the show.
Speaker 2: That's what's up, man, That's what's up?
Speaker 4: Bill?
Speaker 2: How you doing? So?
Speaker 3: You really missed an important episode with Angie Martinez.
Speaker 4: By the way, Oh my god?
Speaker 2: Why we took it back to the old school.
Speaker 3: I feel like we should only do the in persons,
Speaker 3: and we should only do them in certain ways.
Speaker 2: And I miss them already and it's been days. Hey man,
Speaker 2: all right? Also, I just like hugging Fonte. I haven't
Speaker 2: it was great? Man, my microdve supreme. That'll be the
Speaker 2: I have to revitalize myself anyway. Continue. Yeah, so, ladies
Speaker 2: and gentlemen, I will say that.
Speaker 3: This I sound like a broken record. This episode has
Speaker 3: been a long time coming.
Speaker 2: This is I.
Speaker 3: Feel like the forty fifth president when he ever does
Speaker 3: those like meaningless you know you're about to see the
Speaker 3: likes of an episode that you've never seen before. This
Speaker 3: this episode's for me. I'm being selfish here, I'm just
Speaker 3: saying it's for me. We've always wanted to this gentleman,
Speaker 3: this legendary gentleman on our show. As I said at
Speaker 3: the top of the show, sometimes this is the joys
Speaker 3: of reading. Now I'm credits of getting to know people,
Speaker 3: and you know, I will say that this gentleman's work
Speaker 3: is highly ubiquitous and in terms of really just being
Speaker 3: an important architect in dance culture and in soul culture
Speaker 3: and funk culture and disco culture, in bookie culture, in
Speaker 3: post bookie culture, of a lot of the bands, a
Speaker 3: lot of underground groups that we've danced to throughout the years,
Speaker 3: throughout the decades, from Conversion to the Fantastic a Lemes
Speaker 3: to Sympho State. Uh, there's log his own Black Ivory
Speaker 3: Freak Dazzle.
Speaker 2: Jesus christ, y'all, I can't.
Speaker 3: Believe that we have the one and only Leroy Burges
Speaker 3: on Questlove Supreme.
Speaker 4: Yes, sir, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Long time coming. How are you deceived me? Right now?
Speaker 4: Today? Today's the day days, the day aboutely day. This
Speaker 4: is the time for it and it's a pleasant and
Speaker 4: a joy to be here with you guys. This seems
Speaker 4: like it's going to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: I could already tell you, like, this is going to
Speaker 3: be great because you are actually prepared with your microphone.
Speaker 2: It's clear sound. You know, it's not like.
Speaker 4: I've been in zoom prison before, so you know, I'm
Speaker 4: used to it. So it's good to be here. Thank
Speaker 4: you for having me, and thank you for your interest
Speaker 4: in me and my work. It's pretty cool your legend.
Speaker 2: All right, we're just going to start with the top.
Speaker 3: Always start with this question, levery purchase, what was your
Speaker 3: first musical memory in life?
Speaker 4: Okay, that's easy, that's really really easy. My first musical memory,
Speaker 4: when I was but an infant, was hearing my mother's voice.
Speaker 4: My mother classically trained contralto, and she used to love
Speaker 4: to sing, and when I was born, she was singing
Speaker 4: and given some of the things that was going on
Speaker 4: in the household and during her life, she sang through
Speaker 4: those things. You know, any amount of the regular amount
Speaker 4: of turmoil that you have in a black family home
Speaker 4: in America back in the fifties, right you know? Now, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: And at that time it was five of us. I
Speaker 4: was number four and the fifth was to come. But
Speaker 4: I remember her voice, and I remember it being the
Speaker 4: most amazing sound and thing for me to latch onto
Speaker 4: even before I could speak. My mom let me know
Speaker 4: that when I first started learning to speak, I was
Speaker 4: singing more than I was speaking. So that's my first
Speaker 4: musical memory. My mother's voice.
Speaker 3: Can we say that she's responsible for your your silky falsetto?
Speaker 4: Well, my mother never really got that right. She didn't.
Speaker 4: I mean, see, it was okay when Smokey and the
Speaker 4: Moments and the dell Phonics would do it and Eddie Kendrickson,
Speaker 4: but me, no, she never wanted that for me. Oh,
Speaker 4: your natural voice are so beautiful. You should always singing
Speaker 4: natural And.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, but your falsetto is killer.
Speaker 4: Well those were the days, as it was. But she
Speaker 4: it took her a minute to get used to that.
Speaker 4: And by the time she did, that's when I morphed
Speaker 4: into more natural singing and I took the I was
Speaker 4: making the transition, taking a hiatus from black ivy and
Speaker 4: that old vibe and that old you know, slow jam
Speaker 4: thing and moving into my dance period, my my my
Speaker 4: disco period, and I made a conscious decision that I
Speaker 4: wanted to sing in my natural voice because that's what
Speaker 4: was happening. You know, the old James's happening, and Hal
Speaker 4: Melvin and the Blue Notes was happening. You wasn't hearing
Speaker 4: a lot of uptempo start smoky and moments, you know,
Speaker 4: they were still in a slow jam drink. So I
Speaker 4: needed to evolve and I felt I felt an energy
Speaker 4: pulling me towards a new type of music or what
Speaker 4: was happening at that time. So you know, I made
Speaker 4: a conscious decision to begin singing in my natural voice,
Speaker 4: and surprisingly it's the one that is more most internationally known.
Speaker 4: The world embraced it. Lama embraces the full settled thing.
Speaker 3: Could you describe the household like with your siblings and
Speaker 3: your parents, Like a lot of our guests, especially kind
Speaker 3: of the Northeast based guests, they kind of have the
Speaker 3: same narrative where like they might have grown up in
Speaker 3: a church household where like secular music's not allowed or
Speaker 3: that sort of thing. Just like, what was the general
Speaker 3: atmosphere of your family and their musical acceptance.
Speaker 4: Well, my family, like most African descendive families in New
Speaker 4: York City and around the country, spiritually based. So yeah,
Speaker 4: church was a part of what you had to do right,
Speaker 4: what you had to learn you had to learn to
Speaker 4: have a relationship with the Almighty and learn who he was.
Speaker 4: So that's what they drummed into your head. But what
Speaker 4: I liked about it was the music that you heard
Speaker 4: in church and Aquia and so forth and so on,
Speaker 4: so that locked me into that vibration. Initially, in the
Speaker 4: early part of my life, we were five kids, two parents. However,
Speaker 4: my biological father, Leroy Jackson Sr. Passed away when I
Speaker 4: was six years old, and my mother remarried to Morgan
Speaker 4: Burgess shortly after that. So that is why I described
Speaker 4: myself as Leroy Burgess as opposed my full name is
Speaker 4: Leroy O'Neil Jackson Jr. But I described myself as Leroy
Speaker 4: Jackson Burgess because I'm the some result of both fathersts right,
Speaker 4: one actually conceived me and the other raised me, so
Speaker 4: I'm equal parts of their energy. We had a good health.
Speaker 4: We lived in Hollanwriver Projects and I went to PS
Speaker 4: ninety about four blocks away. Back in the day, when
Speaker 4: you had to walk through four or five feet of snow,
Speaker 4: it was unheard of to close the schools on you know.
Speaker 4: We a snow day was if it was fifteen feet
Speaker 4: that would be a snow day, all right, anything below
Speaker 4: fifteen feet, you know you're going to get you behind
Speaker 4: the school, get to We had a loving family. My
Speaker 4: grandparents were famous for they built small churches up and
Speaker 4: down the East coast and they were they were the
Speaker 4: family that, oh, no, you can't come in here with
Speaker 4: you got to come in here with Jesus that if
Speaker 4: you tell them, it's like. But my mom was a
Speaker 4: little bit less strict. I mean she took us through church,
Speaker 4: Saint Matthew's Baptist Church in our early time. So the spirit,
Speaker 4: you know, and being connected to spirituality was always a
Speaker 4: part of you know, I connected it directly with music.
Speaker 4: They were intertwined to me, so you know. But as
Speaker 4: you know, growing up, it was a great time to
Speaker 4: grow up. That was back when you know, urban families,
Speaker 4: black families, African descended families. We were very tight back
Speaker 4: in the sixties and fifties and stuff. I mean, it
Speaker 4: was just like a village. We were united in a
Speaker 4: lot of ways and we had the support of each
Speaker 4: other much more than say today, and that was one
Speaker 4: of the things. Being raised in that type of environment
Speaker 4: was just extremely cool.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned Harlem, so I gotta ask about just
Speaker 3: your musical memories of Harlem. Do you have any memories
Speaker 3: of like Bobby Robinson's Record Store or any early Apollo
Speaker 3: shows that you got to witness.
Speaker 4: I didn't make it to the Apollo until I performed
Speaker 4: there when Don't Turn Around came out in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 4: I knew there. I was scared of amateur Night because
Speaker 4: I've seen them boo people. If that happened to me,
Speaker 4: it would crush me forever. And so the very first
Speaker 4: time I performed at the Apollo, it was professionally Don't
Speaker 4: Turn Around had come out with Black Ivory. But I
Speaker 4: felt like I just missed the music period, you know,
Speaker 4: the Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington and Count Basie, when
Speaker 4: they was all there. Louis Armstrong, I just missed it.
Speaker 4: I can't. I was born in nineteen fifty three, so
Speaker 4: by the time I was about four or five or
Speaker 4: something like that and could interact with my environment, day
Speaker 4: was gone. So but their energy, their energy was still there,
Speaker 4: and the type of clubs and the people that they
Speaker 4: gravitated to they were still around. And so there was
Speaker 4: a music that if you listen closely enough, you could
Speaker 4: hear it just butting in the streets in Harlem. You walk,
Speaker 4: you know, just walking safe from my hunts fifty first
Speaker 4: Street where I lived, to one Hump forty fifth Street
Speaker 4: and back. You'd hear all kinds of music coming from
Speaker 4: all kinds of places, and some of the coolest stuff,
Speaker 4: some jazzy stuff, some of course African influence stuff. Uh.
Speaker 4: And it was just I would I would keep those
Speaker 4: things in my head and be bopping around like like
Speaker 4: I was. You know, everybody thought I was a little
Speaker 4: bit crazy, to say nothing of singing in the streets.
Speaker 4: I had no problem just bursting in the song, walking along,
Speaker 4: I had no problem. So they started to know that
Speaker 4: I was the I was. They called me the singer. Oh,
Speaker 4: they go to singer.
Speaker 3: So you telling me that at no point as a
Speaker 3: five six seven year old, are you ever visiting the
Speaker 3: Apollo Theater just to watch the show or to see fall.
Speaker 4: Until I was seventeen, yikes, seventeen. I didn't get to
Speaker 4: the Apollo Theater until I was seventeen.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me the first record that you owned
Speaker 2: or purchased?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I can tell you the first. Well, I
Speaker 4: didn't the one that I the first one I purchased,
Speaker 4: or the first one I got that made a difference.
Speaker 3: All right, So the first record that had an impact
Speaker 3: on you, okay, and then the one that you purchased
Speaker 3: with your own money.
Speaker 4: But this is a little crazy. The first record that
Speaker 4: had an impact on me was a record called Tubby
Speaker 4: the Tuba. Right. It was a great musical piece that
Speaker 4: definitively described the interaction of the orchestra, right, something that
Speaker 4: I used to hear all the time on the Nacing
Speaker 4: Cold records and the Johnny Matthis records and so forth,
Speaker 4: and so many great orchestras doing this great stuff. And
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, what part of that? And so forth.
Speaker 4: So this record, Tubby the Tuba, it's a children's story,
Speaker 4: but within the story they explained what the string section does,
Speaker 4: or they demonstrate what the horn section does and what
Speaker 4: the percussion session does and so forth. I was like, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: I get it. Now, I get it. So I can
Speaker 4: now listen to records and distinguished pull apart the strings,
Speaker 4: pull apart the horns, so forth and so on. So
Speaker 4: the very first record that influenced me profoundly was Tubby
Speaker 4: the Tube.
Speaker 3: So you're getting entertained, You're getting entertained and you're getting
Speaker 3: educated right at the same time of how things work.
Speaker 3: That's weird because when songs in the Key of Life
Speaker 3: came out, uh, when people purchased the album back in
Speaker 3: seventy six, Stevie Wonder included like a twenty four page
Speaker 3: booklet that had all these album credits in it. You know,
Speaker 3: for most black records, you know, liner notes of that
Speaker 3: caliber really weren't. They weren't accessible, you know, So my
Speaker 3: mom would read those that to me like it was a.
Speaker 4: I read every single word. I was a line of note.
Speaker 4: Fool all right. I'll see back in the days with
Speaker 4: the Johnny Mathews albums and so forth, and song Mama
Speaker 4: would put on the album or they would put on
Speaker 4: the album. I was like, give me the give me
Speaker 4: the couple, let me read it, let me see who
Speaker 4: on the pad? Oh this, who's this person? Who's this person?
Speaker 4: And I'm you know, I kept interrupting my mother and
Speaker 4: father from listening to the music that they very much
Speaker 4: wanted to hear. But I'm like, who is this? But
Speaker 4: I loved reading line of notes because it told me
Speaker 4: the story of the album. And and you know, it
Speaker 4: gave insight the creative process, and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 4: what's in arranger? Yeah, what's in a ranger? What did
Speaker 4: that guy do? You know? And having the understanding of
Speaker 4: what the different orchestral pieces did. I got my appreciation
Speaker 4: for what the rhythm pieces did from listening to jazz, right,
Speaker 4: and then hearing that base and oh that's an electric
Speaker 4: piano or matter an acoustic piano. How cool is that?
Speaker 4: This is the this type of style on guitar and
Speaker 4: so forth. So I got now I'm making the distinction
Speaker 4: between how or Castel works with rhythm and how all
Speaker 4: Castle works with jazz, and how the two of them
Speaker 4: mess together. So I'm putting on these this is a
Speaker 4: little seven year old, six year old brain trying to
Speaker 4: put on me stay together right, and when it comes.
Speaker 4: I got a lot of information from reading a line
Speaker 4: of notes who the songwriter was. These things became important
Speaker 4: to me who the songwriter was. That's a great song.
Speaker 4: I heard a lot of songs and a lot of
Speaker 4: songs though, but this one song, Oh that's great. Who
Speaker 4: wrote that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: So playing that kind of attention to it gave me
Speaker 4: great insight and great appreciation to the process, you know,
Speaker 4: because I needed to understand how to do it.
Speaker 2: The album that you purchased, what was that her?
Speaker 4: Just this is a funny one question. Yeah. Yeah. The
Speaker 4: first record you acquired, we acquired, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: the better Wood and uh, I kind of snuck it.
Speaker 4: And the first album that I acquired was Abby Road
Speaker 4: by the Beatles. Wow, I was a Beatles fan, right,
Speaker 4: And my mother sent me to Gimbals.
Speaker 2: What do you know about Gimbals?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Gimbals, not Macy's Gimbals.
Speaker 2: Gimbals.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, you talk my language. Okay.
Speaker 4: I was actually I was going to Gimbals and I
Speaker 4: was going to the S and H Green Stamp Redemption
Speaker 4: Center to get something from the green stamp that the
Speaker 4: screen stamps. Yeah. So she my mother had books and
Speaker 4: books and books. She had the catalog where she got
Speaker 4: every time. So the places up from Rochester. I live
Speaker 4: in Harlem, so there's a couple of trains I have
Speaker 4: to take and so forth and so on. So I
Speaker 4: went up there to get her thing for him. From there,
Speaker 4: pick up something from Gimbals, and I had to stop
Speaker 4: in the record department, right, And I acquired the Abbey
Speaker 4: Road album and I bought it back and I started
Speaker 4: playing it incessantly. I played everything incessantly, really, but I
Speaker 4: started playing it incessantly, and nobody really asked me where
Speaker 4: did that come on? Where did you get that? But
Speaker 4: you know, that was the first album I acquired, Now,
Speaker 4: the first album I started getting into the way before
Speaker 4: that because my mother was a member of check this
Speaker 4: out the Columbia record that the sixties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, eleven, Like what was it back in the day?
Speaker 4: Weel records for a penny, Well for a penny as
Speaker 4: long as you you know, buy Mom used to she
Speaker 4: knew I loved music, and see, like I said, she's
Speaker 4: a singer. So she was like, you know, when I
Speaker 4: was good, you know, and I've been you know, not misbehaving,
Speaker 4: she would say, okay, well you can buy them. You
Speaker 4: can pick out one record of the twelve, or you
Speaker 4: can pick out two records of the twelve. So I
Speaker 4: used to get Temptations, Stevie Wanda, Uh, the Supremes, Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, Jerry Butler with one of my favorite albums
Speaker 4: of the Iceman Coming And I used to listen to
Speaker 4: those joints. So those were the first things that I
Speaker 4: started listening to, uh, in order to discover who my
Speaker 4: musical being was Wow.
Speaker 3: Now you mentioned something earlier, and I was gonna let
Speaker 3: it slide, but I gotta know because the thing is
Speaker 3: is that when you mentioned the S and H green stamps,
Speaker 3: probably the only memory that I have of my mother
Speaker 3: is my grandmother on my mother's side, is her sitting
Speaker 3: at our.
Speaker 2: Table with like thousands and thousands and thousands.
Speaker 3: Of those green what were those green like next to
Speaker 3: those green stamps and those like Swedish cookies, you know,
Speaker 3: the the butter cookies designs that eventually become their storing
Speaker 3: spot for sewing, the Datish cookies that after you finished date,
Speaker 3: they become like the sewing kit.
Speaker 2: Sewing kit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's the woman's crown Royal bag. What were
Speaker 3: those what were those S n H stamps for?
Speaker 4: Here's what's up. Basically, you go to the supermarket like
Speaker 4: anybody else, right, you buy X amount of grocerites, right
Speaker 4: for the money that you spent for those groceries, you
Speaker 4: would get X amount of green stamps and they and
Speaker 4: they would give you books that you collected stamps on
Speaker 4: stick on the page. So for a song. When you
Speaker 4: get your books filled up, right, and you know you
Speaker 4: had X amount of books. Well, this vacuum cleaner costs
Speaker 4: five books and this rewards and just had to get
Speaker 4: up there to the S and H Redemption Center and
Speaker 4: pick up with some My mom got all of these
Speaker 4: nights little because we went. Every time she went food
Speaker 4: shopping for the kids, she'd have like one hundred, you know,
Speaker 4: and so she you know, I was the designating in
Speaker 4: the family to go up there and pick up the
Speaker 4: sn H green stamp merchandise.
Speaker 2: I was the counter.
Speaker 3: I would have to count with my she I learned
Speaker 3: how to counts. I never knew what they were for.
Speaker 3: I was like, I mean, that's that's probably.
Speaker 4: Like they were free stuff, stuff and stuff when it
Speaker 4: was good stuff, when it was really really free, right,
Speaker 4: They didn't the company needs that supported or that donated
Speaker 4: their products to the SNATE factory, you know, for them
Speaker 4: to give away. They were advertising for them and promotional
Speaker 4: for them. So but you know, I'm coping and you
Speaker 4: know stuff that gang.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I realized that half the items of my house
Speaker 3: must have came from SNH. So, you know, I told
Speaker 3: like some of my friends in luminaries and music heads
Speaker 3: that you were coming on the show. I have to say,
Speaker 3: you're probably the most connected human being.
Speaker 2: I know because the.
Speaker 3: First response that every music head tells me when I'm like, yo,
Speaker 3: we're about to get him on the show, they tell
Speaker 3: me like, Yo, you know he's related to Tom Bell?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Yo?
Speaker 3: You know he's related to Archie Belle. Right, Yo, you
Speaker 3: know he's related to how.
Speaker 4: Many the bells?
Speaker 5: The bells?
Speaker 2: Huh?
Speaker 3: So you're trying to tell me that Tom and Robert
Speaker 3: and Ronald of Cool and Gang and Albet of Stacks
Speaker 3: and Archie Bell of it you're all related?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 2: How come no one has?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. Listen, we do you do? Well?
Speaker 4: He distory with that Patty LaBelle. That's stress common No, no, right,
Speaker 4: I thought Patty was the strength, but by Ricky Bell. Yes, okay.
Speaker 4: We are all the descendants of an enslaved individual named
Speaker 4: Prince Bell from the eighteen twenties and eighteen you know,
Speaker 4: eighteen sixties, seventies or something like that. Prince Belle had
Speaker 4: a total of three wives. With each of his wedding
Speaker 4: wedding units, he made a bunch of kids. Right. Those
Speaker 4: kids became my grandparents and my mom and my dad,
Speaker 4: and the same as two for Tom Bell or the
Speaker 4: Bell brothers. From Cool the Gang, Jerry Bell from the
Speaker 4: Dads Band, Uh Bell, Al Bell, Ricky Bell from Bell
Speaker 4: Bit devou Tom, I.
Speaker 2: Was only playing that's real, goddamn.
Speaker 4: Outside of the Bell family or Judge Matthis Greg Mathis
Speaker 4: is a cousin and the actor Richard Browntree Is, all
Speaker 4: of us are descendants of Prince Bell Bell.
Speaker 2: I also heard Betty Right as well.
Speaker 4: Betty Right. I met Betty Right and.
Speaker 2: Are we relatedly working?
Speaker 4: It's we all? Well, I believe that I believe that
Speaker 4: I'm related to everybody in the world. I mean, well,
Speaker 4: I see why.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So shout out to our fire purchase who also,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know fire right, hyeh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay player, absolutely yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: Fire verges who definitely want this episode to happen while
Speaker 3: you are connected to everyone.
Speaker 4: So when I think about where, you know, was it
Speaker 4: I predestined to enter the music industry, I'm kind of
Speaker 4: leaning towards feeling like shit because there's so many loom
Speaker 4: nerves in my family that are not just in entertainment
Speaker 4: but in music specifically, who have made a definitive monk
Speaker 4: on the industry as a whole. So I'm just bringing
Speaker 4: up the rear Commons Belding might be real too. I'm
Speaker 4: just saying it.
Speaker 3: Was predetermined, like your your future was everyone in your
Speaker 3: family has singing talent, and it's push the envelope.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: Can I just ask who found who first? When did
Speaker 4: y'all know that this was the story behind your family? Yeah,
Speaker 4: Calm Bell. Back in my when I was very very young,
Speaker 4: Alexander four, five and six and stuff like that, he
Speaker 4: used to come to the family picnics down like we
Speaker 4: used to have down in Jamesburg, New Jersey. We still
Speaker 4: have him in the same place every year. He used
Speaker 4: to come and I used to follow him around like
Speaker 4: a little public dog, right because he was always talking music.
Speaker 4: That was then he stopped coming. Right fift forward to
Speaker 4: about somewhere in the nineteen nineties, the Bell the South
Speaker 4: Jersey Bell Picnic couldn't happen, so the North Jersey Bell
Speaker 4: the Bell Aiken's Picnic happened, and my mother traveled to
Speaker 4: that because I was on the road. Right, That's where
Speaker 4: my mother met Cools Cool and Robert and Ronald and
Speaker 4: all of and Kevin's mother and she was so sing
Speaker 4: my sons in the music. Oh so my son he
Speaker 4: who's your son black Ibby, who's your son Coonigan? Oh,
Speaker 4: we need to do right. So wow. So that's how
Speaker 4: they And then a wonderful cousin of mine that I
Speaker 4: didn't know. I met her on Facebook. Her name is
Speaker 4: Geneva Norman right, and she asked if she was a
Speaker 4: cousin and she relaid, and then she presented me with
Speaker 4: a document the Bell family history, going all the way
Speaker 4: back to Prince Belle right, and it contained every single
Speaker 4: everybody in the whole family, including all my brothers, all
Speaker 4: my siblings, all my cousins, all you know. It was
Speaker 4: just really a definitive document, sixteen page document that told
Speaker 4: me who everybody was and where everybody was and so
Speaker 4: forth and so on. So uh uh. As I proceeded
Speaker 4: through life after finding that out, the last one that
Speaker 4: I met officially was Betty uh she was called to
Speaker 4: the Lord. When when she was called to her ascension,
Speaker 4: I met her. The National R and B Music Society
Speaker 4: was giving her a Lifetime Achievement award and uh, I
Speaker 4: was you know, I was one at president at that
Speaker 4: awards presentation, and I walked over to her after she
Speaker 4: got the award and I said, congratulations. Was right by
Speaker 4: the way, I'm a descendant of Prince Bell. And she
Speaker 4: jumped up and said cousin and hub and and and
Speaker 4: so you know things like that. That's been my life
Speaker 4: to to uh with Jerry Bell from dazz Man and
Speaker 4: formerly of new Birth. He was the lead thing on
Speaker 4: new Birth. Yes, I'm performed with.
Speaker 3: New Birth and I believe didn't he eventually join Cool
Speaker 3: in the Gang in eighty seven when JT left, Jerry
Speaker 3: Bell was the one that sing led a web Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: he Oh that explains it. That explains it. That is
Speaker 3: what yo, because you don't understand when they made an
Speaker 3: album nineteen eighty seven or eighty eight, and you know
Speaker 3: JT had left the group and they did an appearance
Speaker 3: on Soul Train and Don was trying to put you
Speaker 3: and two together, like, wait.
Speaker 2: Where I know you from? Where I know you from?
Speaker 2: He said, oh man, that's been and that is wow.
Speaker 2: Okay their cousins.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is crazy.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what's the story long?
Speaker 3: Because I know that the group started when you were
Speaker 3: young and your teens and whatnot. How did you meet
Speaker 3: with Stuart and Russell, your your bandmates in Black Ivory,
Speaker 3: Stuart Bascom and Russell Russell or Patterson.
Speaker 4: We're talking about nineteen sixty eight, and that's when your
Speaker 4: family mate, I was fourteen. That's the year that your
Speaker 4: mom said, no, you're gonna go out and get You're
Speaker 4: gonna get the summer job and get start making your
Speaker 4: own money so you can get to you know. So
Speaker 4: I got some job and I worked at Saint Charles
Speaker 4: Baumeo as a youth counselor. For I was a fourteen
Speaker 4: year old taking care of eight year olds.
Speaker 2: You know that kind of thing, right camp, You're the
Speaker 2: oldest sibling.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, no, no no. My eldest sibling is my
Speaker 4: sister Vell. He's seventy three and I'm seventy in August.
Speaker 2: Great for seventy bro.
Speaker 4: So I met while I was on you know what.
Speaker 4: We were having lunch and shooting bricks, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. But we got a little transits to radio
Speaker 4: plane and Here I Go Again by Smokey Robinson and
Speaker 4: the Miracles came on and one of my co counselors,
Speaker 4: Larry Newkirk, he started singing along with it, and somewhere
Speaker 4: halfway between the songs, I started singing along with him,
Speaker 4: and at some point he stopped right and just let
Speaker 4: me continue singing. And you know, I closed my eyes
Speaker 4: and I just continued to singing the song. And then
Speaker 4: when I finally opened my eyes, all these people had
Speaker 4: gathered around me. Right. So Lavy said, hey, you've got
Speaker 4: a beautiful voice. I said you too, and he was like, well,
Speaker 4: I got a Google. Are you interested in joining the group?
Speaker 4: I said sure? So I went to his house Espinau Gardens,
Speaker 4: Humphy seventh and between seventh and Lenox and met the
Speaker 4: rest of his group. The Mellow Souls was the name
Speaker 4: of the group. About a week later, Uh, the fifth
Speaker 4: member of the Mellow Souls, Uh joined Larry Newkirk's group.
Speaker 4: So they were five of us, right, and Uh we
Speaker 4: started rehearsing and started learning songs. Delpon this moments that
Speaker 4: main ingredient. This just started, you know, practicing records. Right,
Speaker 4: and Uh, Larry's sister, Gail Newkirk, she was friends with
Speaker 4: h They was, you know, boyfriend and girlfriend with Patrick
Speaker 4: Adams to come. And so we were already to meet Patrick.
Speaker 4: We met over Larry's house and so forth and so on.
Speaker 4: Patrick called to say he could not come. Right during
Speaker 4: the phone call, I was singing can you remember by
Speaker 4: the delphonics right in the background. I was in the
Speaker 4: other room, but Patrick heard it and he asked, Lovey,
Speaker 4: who is that singing? And Larry was like, that's our
Speaker 4: lead singer. And so Patrick called me to the phone
Speaker 4: asked me about you know, old blah blah, you know,
Speaker 4: where do you learn to sing? And what do you
Speaker 4: do to do? And I can't make it today, but
Speaker 4: can you meet me next week? And so that a
Speaker 4: week later we arranged a meeting with Patrick Adams and
Speaker 4: she was enamored with the group, but he couldn't work
Speaker 4: with five people. So the first one to leave the
Speaker 4: group was Michael Harris in educational pursuits, pursuing his further education.
Speaker 4: So that made it a quartet myself, Vito Vermeers, Stuart
Speaker 4: Bascombe and Larry Newkirk, and we began being groomed and
Speaker 4: developed by Patrick Adams. Right finally they got us. Is
Speaker 4: an amazing coincidence, all right. Patrick became friends with gene
Speaker 4: Red who was the manager. Now, when coon A Gang
Speaker 4: first came out, they were an all instrumental band. There
Speaker 4: was no vocals or anything. They just playing came out
Speaker 4: and jammed all these soul instrumentals. That was dope, right,
Speaker 4: and you know people bought them and dance to them,
Speaker 4: and they were quite popular, doing quite well. So Patrick
Speaker 4: suggested the gene or vice versa, that, uh, why don't
Speaker 4: you let my group permitted themselves and by singing a
Speaker 4: couple of songs being backed by a coon a gang.
Speaker 4: And they said yes, they said yes. So we were
Speaker 4: giving two songs, Love on the Two Way Street and
Speaker 4: everybody is a star? Right that coonian and learned to
Speaker 4: play behind us to the group. Right now, this is
Speaker 4: before we had any idea me and the Bell brothers
Speaker 4: that we were related. We I just they were Bells
Speaker 4: and I knew that I was the son of a Bell, right.
Speaker 4: But uh so that is how black ivy. After a minute, Uh,
Speaker 4: Larry Newkirk and Vito rameris left to pursue there further
Speaker 4: education and so forth, and so leaving just me and Stuart.
Speaker 4: But Larry's brother, Todd Newkirk had was developing a group
Speaker 4: to follow behind us, Shades of Mellow. So in that group,
Speaker 4: the best singer was Russell Patterson. Okay, so we went
Speaker 4: it was just me and Stuart. We went to Russell
Speaker 4: and we said, hey, we do be interested in being
Speaker 4: were part of this nonsense going on over here.
Speaker 2: You could just steal somebody from their group.
Speaker 4: Yeah, basically, basically we basically stole Russell. That group dissolved,
Speaker 4: and that's when Stuart and Patrick got on the phone
Speaker 4: with each other and changed the name Mellow Souls as
Speaker 4: like hokey as hell, like the mellow who doesn't who
Speaker 4: doesn't do that? So Patrick and Stuart got on the
Speaker 4: phone and they came up with Ivory, and then black Ivory,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of described us because Russell and I
Speaker 4: were this complexion and Stuart was light, you know, his
Speaker 4: light skin brother. So that puts you in mind of
Speaker 4: the piano and piano keys and all of that. And so.
Speaker 2: That's why y'all named y'allselves Black Ivory.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's the best colorism story I've heard actually,
Speaker 3: speaking of which I didn't even plan this moment, but
Speaker 3: right at this moment, I'm watching you guys on socialet. Yo,
Speaker 3: your your afro is highly highly impressive.
Speaker 4: Wow, oh my god. First of all, I gotta I gotta,
Speaker 4: I gotta say you are the only person with that footage. Oh,
Speaker 4: I know in the world.
Speaker 2: I realized this.
Speaker 3: I'm we have can I can I explain to you
Speaker 3: why I have this footage? But you guys can take
Speaker 3: a wild guess why have his footage?
Speaker 4: But we've been I've been looking. I've been looking for
Speaker 4: that footage, to see that skill, that one performance. No,
Speaker 4: what goes around comes around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, obviously I'm working on a project, and you know
Speaker 3: I keep the show on. Even if I weren't working
Speaker 3: on it, I'd be watching all eleven hundred episodes of
Speaker 3: the Soul Track like it.
Speaker 2: This is always stays on, no matter what. It's like
Speaker 2: my aquarium.
Speaker 4: You don't know how crucial. We have been looking for
Speaker 4: this that footage for over forty years, Right over forty years.
Speaker 4: The Soul Train compilations came out. One episode, Oh this
Speaker 4: missing Black Cobby and Hugh Methon.
Speaker 2: You messe Quila and from Chicago, Don's homeboy what's his name?
Speaker 4: You have the interview where Don don canille I not
Speaker 4: the all over my stage and I said, well I
Speaker 4: couldn't help it.
Speaker 2: The mud up.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, I got you back over there. I
Speaker 4: wanted to walk back over there. Let me see.
Speaker 3: Can you basically talk about Patrick adams likes as a
Speaker 3: record collector and especially Perception Records, you know, I know,
Speaker 3: I always knew it as a jazz label, like I know,
Speaker 3: like some of the funkier Disney Gillespie stuff and you know,
Speaker 3: well also fat Back.
Speaker 2: But like James Moody, like a lot of jazz artists like.
Speaker 3: Weren't It wasn't Perception primarily a jazz label.
Speaker 4: It wasn't entirely a jazz label U And they were
Speaker 4: breaking into R and B and other marketplaces, which is
Speaker 4: why they found a place for Patrick because he was
Speaker 4: the voice of Harlem coming from the R and B
Speaker 4: side of things, and that's why he ended up being
Speaker 4: an art director. But yeah, when we went to the label,
Speaker 4: it had Johnny Hartman was one of the artists on
Speaker 4: the oh Johnny Hartman. It was Dizzy Gi Leslie. He
Speaker 4: was on the label. But they had they had they
Speaker 4: hadn't really broken up the Today label. We were the
Speaker 4: ones to really break that label open Today. Yeah, Patrick
Speaker 4: was He became my absolute mentor and the guy who
Speaker 4: allowed me and and supported me and getting my focus
Speaker 4: together to become whatever I would become in the industry.
Speaker 3: So basically you're watching him in the skideo and this
Speaker 3: is how you're getting your education.
Speaker 4: Or I'm stealing and everything. I could steal every little part,
Speaker 4: and I was like, how did you do that? And
Speaker 4: how did you? And he loved He loved working with
Speaker 4: me because he loved the idea that I could come
Speaker 4: up with on my own. You and I was my
Speaker 4: first composition commercial composition. Wow. I wrote that when I
Speaker 4: was sixteen years old, and Stuart came in and did
Speaker 4: the lyrics to it. Patrick loved it because I didn't
Speaker 4: even know that I was using two four timing and
Speaker 4: six four timing, and so I would just like playing
Speaker 4: something that I liked. But You was like, oh, that's
Speaker 4: so great, and we're going to do a record, and
Speaker 4: we did this seven minute epic yes of You and I.
Speaker 2: You and I?
Speaker 4: Right, that the thing for everybody to have. But so
Speaker 4: Patrick is entirely responsible for introducing me and bringing me
Speaker 4: into the the music industry. I can say that unequivocally.
Speaker 4: There's no one more was Patrick. Was he a white guy,
Speaker 4: black guy? I've seen pictures of him, He's black.
Speaker 2: Okay. For for our listeners out there that are hip hop.
Speaker 3: Heads, you and ize the sample to uh Q tips
Speaker 3: getting up right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Getting up?
Speaker 4: Was that?
Speaker 2: Was that shocking?
Speaker 3: For you to hear it have somewhat of a resurrection
Speaker 3: of sorts.
Speaker 4: Q Q tip is just a really cool bubble. He's
Speaker 4: just straight up above board, all right. And what happened was,
Speaker 4: I was working for working at Manny's Music on forty
Speaker 4: eighth Street for a little while, you know me, and yes,
Speaker 4: you get actually came in and sort me out right
Speaker 4: and said, I want to I'm thinking about using you
Speaker 4: and I for you know what, for this new song,
Speaker 4: and uh, I want to do it the right way.
Speaker 4: So I knew I found out that you were working here, right,
Speaker 4: you put me onto your publishers so that we can
Speaker 4: work out a licensing deal, right, And I always respected
Speaker 4: him for doing that because there's so many underhanded ways
Speaker 4: you can you know, you know, decided to have the
Speaker 4: integrity to come straight at it and to do the
Speaker 4: right thing. And I always respected Kamal for that. But yeah,
Speaker 4: he actually did the right thing by us.
Speaker 3: So by putting two and two together, can I assume
Speaker 3: that you guys' decision to record Don't turn Around and
Speaker 3: Philadelphia Sigma Sound had to do with your cousin also
Speaker 3: working out of there.
Speaker 4: Boll Patrick and Tom Bell had a rivalry to you know,
Speaker 4: it was New York versus Philly. Tom Bell was the
Speaker 4: one of the leading had lists of the Philadelphia Sound.
Speaker 4: They became friends, so forth and so on. They knew
Speaker 4: each other professionally, and Patrick was always trying to create
Speaker 4: great records and great songs like don't Turn Around. When
Speaker 4: he became the the vice president of the and r
Speaker 4: AT at Perception Today, they gave him the budget to
Speaker 4: go to Philly and use I think we use half
Speaker 4: of MSSB.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Norman Harrison, Vince Montana like all the cats, right.
Speaker 4: And the dudes. The other half of the band, of
Speaker 4: the rhythm band was Willie Feasta and the Mighty Magnificence
Speaker 4: right all right, which was the all platinum Stang Records.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Sylvie Robinson Crew, Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I was gonna ask how did you manage?
Speaker 3: Because when I read read the album credits, I'm like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, is this all just a tri state
Speaker 3: thing or like we're because I think for a lot
Speaker 3: of us, when we think of the Philly sound, we
Speaker 3: literally think that everything is going through gamble and huff
Speaker 3: and it really wasn't until one day Joe Tarcia told me, like, no,
Speaker 3: like you know, there's a period where even the ms
Speaker 3: MFSB Cats broke away from Gamble and Heff as session
Speaker 3: musicians and decided to produce themselves. But since they recorded
Speaker 3: at Sigma, you know, it all sounded the same because
Speaker 3: of the of you know.
Speaker 2: The equipment they used and.
Speaker 4: So yeah, just the style of the music there they
Speaker 4: all do.
Speaker 3: Right, So people didn't feel a certain way, like I
Speaker 3: would think that like Gamble and Huff would feel a
Speaker 3: certain way if you know Dexter Wanzel or or or
Speaker 3: or Vince or whoever is like at the Helm or
Speaker 3: even your cousin, Like, it all sounds the same because
Speaker 3: it's the same musicians, the same engineering, the same studio,
Speaker 3: the same instruments. So I'm just thinking, like this is
Speaker 3: all going through Gamble and Huff, but cats feel a
Speaker 3: certain way about like.
Speaker 4: Well, here's my best answer to that. It began as
Speaker 4: a partnership Gamble, Huff and Bell, all right, the three
Speaker 4: of them were together. That's where you get mighty three
Speaker 4: music and so forth.
Speaker 3: Okay, I didn't realize that Bell was like a part
Speaker 3: of their I just thought he was like way I
Speaker 3: used the studio as well. I didn't realize that he
Speaker 3: was see where Mighty three came.
Speaker 4: From an integral part of the Gamble when they always
Speaker 4: in their twenties and stuff like that. They were together, right.
Speaker 4: The Iceman comings with an album produced by Gambling, Huff
Speaker 4: and Belle. Okay, one of my favorite songs, are You Happy,
Speaker 4: completely arranged by Bobby Martin and Tom Bell. All right,
Speaker 4: So they were always connected. And then as music evolved,
Speaker 4: they became Kenny and Leon, and then Tom Bell went
Speaker 4: off and did his delphonics thing, right, while Kenny and
Speaker 4: Leon did the intruders, and you know that became the
Speaker 4: early Old Jays and so forth and so on so
Speaker 4: and next thing, you know, Tom Bell is doing on
Speaker 4: the spinners, and you know that whole that whole sphere.
Speaker 4: But yes, indeed, every time they went into the studio,
Speaker 4: whether it was Gambling, Huff or Tom Bell, they used
Speaker 4: the same musician Norman Harris, Earl Young on drums all
Speaker 4: the time, Vince Montana. They were the same cats, and
Speaker 4: they all had this light style of composition, right Whereas
Speaker 4: Gambling the songs that they wrote were similar. They came
Speaker 4: from the kind of the same place, right, and then
Speaker 4: using the same musicians to realize these songs create that
Speaker 4: specific sound, the Phil Lee sound right, which can come
Speaker 4: from either Gambling Huff or Tom Bell and later on
Speaker 4: Dexter One, Hell, Whitehead so Forth and Offshoots, Uh, Norman Habits, Baker,
Speaker 4: Habits Young so Forth and so on. In the Vince
Speaker 4: Montana camp, they were all United and Sigma Sound Studios,
Speaker 4: and they would call each other up for the babous sessions.
Speaker 4: So that's why all the records started sounding like each other.
Speaker 2: Thank you for finally saying that I just never.
Speaker 4: Knew right and talk to all of them. Sorry, I'm
Speaker 4: sorry now.
Speaker 5: I was gonna ask before we got off the first album.
Speaker 5: I keep asking questions, Yeah, uh, how how did it
Speaker 5: feel when you heard that, you know, being used in
Speaker 5: that way for Criminology?
Speaker 4: Same story as come on, Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Or no or no I heard.
Speaker 4: I'm like, all right, I don't think it's gonna be
Speaker 4: the same.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to get to over like a fat rat.
Speaker 2: This is all like after the fact.
Speaker 4: I didn't know about Criminology until way after it came out.
Speaker 4: Was successful, right, And my first response was the old
Speaker 4: R and B head Right, this rap is taken over right.
Speaker 4: I don't know what are they saying to the kids,
Speaker 4: and some of them I went with the t on them.
Speaker 4: But then it was doing so well, and then it
Speaker 4: went gold and then it went platinum. I might be
Speaker 4: okay with this. I might just be okay this, And
Speaker 4: I actually am looking at the platinum black right there
Speaker 4: only built only for Cuban links.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say for a lot of us.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, my dad had your records, but it
Speaker 3: is those records that made us.
Speaker 2: Really truly like revisit those.
Speaker 3: Records and look down the credits and then just really
Speaker 3: get lost in your history. So I know in the
Speaker 3: beginning it's a little jarring because you're like, my work's
Speaker 3: being torn apart or whatever, but you know that if
Speaker 3: there ever was an album for you to be associated with,
Speaker 3: that was the record.
Speaker 4: That started a trend, and a trend that begun earlier
Speaker 4: by I think it was remember Strictly Business, that movie
Speaker 4: Barry Grandpa, but he took fat lap, he used over
Speaker 4: like a fat vat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: I was not cool. Within July saw the first chat
Speaker 4: and then I realized, yeah.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, what's up. This is Fonte from Team Supreme.
Speaker 2: This interview was so good so nice.
Speaker 4: We had to do it twice.
Speaker 5: We put it up, put it, broke it up into
Speaker 5: two parts. Honestly, this was one of my favorite interviews
Speaker 5: this season. I wanted to talk to Leroy for a
Speaker 5: long time and he did not disappoint. So please check
Speaker 5: back in as Leroy tells us more about his life
Speaker 5: and career.
Speaker 4: Peace Shall.
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