Speaker 1: Quest Loft Show is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: What's Up. It's June and that means it's Black Music Month,
Speaker 2: and every year on Questlove Supreme and now The Quest
Speaker 2: Loft Show, we honor it by bringing you an episode
Speaker 2: every day that celebrates black music, its history, and its impact.
Speaker 2: My team and I have selected episodes from our archive
Speaker 2: that we feel are specially relevant to the celebration, offering history,
Speaker 2: insight a little fun along the way. So be on
Speaker 2: the lookout for four brand new episodes throughout June, each
Speaker 2: connected to the past, president future of black music. We're
Speaker 2: going to highlight trailblazers, innovators, ultraconduits, and revolutionaries whose word
Speaker 2: continues to shape the world around us. Happy June, Happy
Speaker 2: Black Music Month. We've been waiting, ladies and jump and
Speaker 2: welcome to another episode, a special episode of Copts Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: We've been waiting for this. We've been waiting for this.
Speaker 2: You know what, Steve, I'm actually more excited for the
Speaker 2: twelve year old version of you right now.
Speaker 3: Yes, I am super excited to talk to this man
Speaker 3: and thank him for everybody who's never had a bar
Speaker 3: Metz for before. This is going to be amazing.
Speaker 2: I guess this is my Christmas gift to you, man, this,
Speaker 2: this is my Shaka Khan gift to you. I got
Speaker 2: you the King of all bar Mitzvahs exactly.
Speaker 4: I never heard that title, but I'll accept that one.
Speaker 2: Oh so talk about it. That's great, all right. I
Speaker 2: just treat this like a movie. Even before I introduce
Speaker 2: what this show is, I just have to ask our guests,
Speaker 2: who I've not introduced yet, do you know the true
Speaker 2: story of how the song Celebration got written? Has Ronald
Speaker 2: Bill will tell you the story of how it inspired.
Speaker 4: Him, not totally, but I have my own version of
Speaker 4: it when I'm through the experience. Okay, well maybe I
Speaker 4: need to hear this.
Speaker 2: I'm under the impression based on Okay, so I used
Speaker 2: to Oh God, ladies and gentlemen, this quest love a
Speaker 2: quest love Supreme. Of course, I'm here with Sugar, Steven
Speaker 2: and our guest today. I don't even want to waste
Speaker 2: a long, arduous introduction because you know my introductions will
Speaker 2: be nineteen minutes. I'm sitting here with the God, the
Speaker 2: King of all bar Mismas, the God the most velvet voice, Yo,
Speaker 2: Supreme Jesus Christ, like my nat King, Cole the Voice
Speaker 2: James J. T. Taylor, formerly of Cool in the Game.
Speaker 4: Hi brother, thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, So here's the deal.
Speaker 2: And I believe I might have told this on Robert's
Speaker 2: story as well, but at the time when I invited
Speaker 2: Ronald Brother Beyon Collie Beyon. Back when I was teaching
Speaker 2: at NYU with Harry Weider, we once had brother Ronald Bell, saxophonist,
Speaker 2: primary songwriter Cool in the Gang, and he told us
Speaker 2: the story of how he wrote Celebrations. So basically riding
Speaker 2: high off the third wave of what the band is
Speaker 2: about the experience. Of course, if you're fans of the band,
Speaker 2: you know they came to it with a lot of jazz, soul,
Speaker 2: more on jazz, a lot of tribe called quest samples
Speaker 2: came from that wave. And then in seventy four a
Speaker 2: joke sort of mocking soul Mikosa winds up being like
Speaker 2: one of the most pivotal funk songs of the seventies.
Speaker 2: So they had a seventies wave, and then doing a
Speaker 2: disco horse open sesame on the Saturn Night Fever soundtrack
Speaker 2: that was kind of their third wave.
Speaker 1: And now they're about to start the.
Speaker 2: Hit making wave and of course, fresh off the success
Speaker 2: of their Ladies' Night single and the subsequent album of
Speaker 2: that same name, they're on tour and they happen to
Speaker 2: be in the Bay Area, and I believe that they
Speaker 2: arrived in town the day before on a Friday, to
Speaker 2: do some local record stores and signings, because now you know,
Speaker 2: the heat is back on.
Speaker 1: The heats back, and.
Speaker 2: Brother Ronald tells me that the promoter who's bringing you
Speaker 2: guys to the particular venue, playhouse in the Bay Area,
Speaker 2: has another show happening that night and would he like
Speaker 2: to attend?
Speaker 1: Would you guys like to attend?
Speaker 2: And that is when the Prince and Rick James show
Speaker 2: come to this venue. And what winds up happening is
Speaker 2: Prince goes on first, and at this moment, Prince has
Speaker 2: the number one song in the country on the Soul charts.
Speaker 2: Without want to be a lover, right, and Ronald says
Speaker 2: that he really wasn't all that familiar with Prince, like
Speaker 2: he heard about him, but he really didn't pay attention and
Speaker 2: he definitely wasn't familiar with the song. However, he was
Speaker 2: highly impressed at how within two seconds everybody just screamed
Speaker 2: and lost their minds. It wasn't just like you know,
Speaker 2: like everyone.
Speaker 4: Right, it could have been.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So he's more impressed with that.
Speaker 2: So that sort of brings out the antennas in his brain.
Speaker 2: It's like, YO, pay attention to the song for that.
Speaker 2: So he's just pay attention to the song and Prince
Speaker 2: finishes is set. It's like a twenty minute change over
Speaker 2: for Rick James. And Ronald asked the promoter, YO, run
Speaker 2: me backstays real quick to one of them dress rooms.
Speaker 2: There as a piano in it, and there was a
Speaker 2: spare room. And Ronald sits at the table and he
Speaker 2: starts notating what he thought he just heard Prince do,
Speaker 2: which is I want to be a lover. He writes
Speaker 2: those chorus down and he stares at this chorus and
Speaker 2: as most songwriters do. Another way to get to sort
Speaker 2: of squeeze juice from a used fruit is you figure
Speaker 2: out different ways to flip a song and rewrite it again.
Speaker 1: People do it all the.
Speaker 5: Time, like all the time.
Speaker 2: Fleetwood Mac famously on their Real It still says Spinner's
Speaker 2: Idea number two. Their favorite song was I'll be Around,
Speaker 2: and thus they made dreams on rumors.
Speaker 1: About I'll be around.
Speaker 2: So anyway, he's looking at the notes and suddenly he's like, yo,
Speaker 2: let me play this backwards now, Dan backwards is then.
Speaker 1: So he notates.
Speaker 2: He notates the music and he's like, all right, I
Speaker 2: got the idea. I'm gonna go rock to watch Rick's
Speaker 2: James I believe when you guys got finished the tour.
Speaker 2: It's like three weeks later and he's gonna either demo
Speaker 2: or submit the ideas to you guys.
Speaker 1: But he's like, wait, I gotta make this a complete song.
Speaker 2: Only got a groove. I want to do a complete song.
Speaker 2: And at a bridge to it, and he was running.
Speaker 2: He didn't have any nothing that was coming to mind.
Speaker 2: He looks on the table on top of the piano
Speaker 2: and there is a cash box magazine and he opens
Speaker 2: up the charts. He goes right to the pop charts
Speaker 2: and looks for the highest charting black song. So this
Speaker 2: particular issue, Rock with You by Michael Jackson was number five.
Speaker 2: He knew Rock with You well and when he wrote
Speaker 2: the bridge word, dude, it's time to.
Speaker 4: Come together together.
Speaker 2: It's the same chords as girl, close your eyes, let.
Speaker 1: This rhythm get into you.
Speaker 2: Every one around, come on, come on that that to
Speaker 2: me was one of the most genius stories I've ever
Speaker 2: heard of a song being constructed.
Speaker 4: Well, he was. He was always like that. He was.
Speaker 4: I called him to feel this leader, you know, because
Speaker 4: he would do things like that and sometimes we would
Speaker 4: just hear it.
Speaker 5: We said, where did that come from?
Speaker 4: And we just you know, to ourselves, and sometimes he
Speaker 4: would you know, regurgitate why he did it or why
Speaker 4: it came. But my understanding was that when it was there,
Speaker 4: you know, because when people bring all everybody would bring
Speaker 4: things in all the time, ideas everything, you know, little
Speaker 4: lyrics here, are guitar player, that guitar part here, And
Speaker 4: it was more of a celebration of the resurrection, like
Speaker 4: Ladies Night came out, big record and nobody knew what
Speaker 4: was cool in the gang because they heard me, you know.
Speaker 4: But we said, well, how are we going to follow
Speaker 4: that up? So if you listen to Ladies Night, come on,
Speaker 4: let's all celebrate. It was already preordained that we were
Speaker 4: going to do celebration. Now, I don't know if that
Speaker 4: influenced him, but I know when I knew it, we're
Speaker 4: going to be celebration. I thought back, I said, you
Speaker 4: know that spiritual thing starts hitting you and say like
Speaker 4: we were like foreseeing this, Yeah, we said, come on, celebrate,
Speaker 4: so now let's sell all celebrate. And then with the
Speaker 4: group going through that down period from like seventy five
Speaker 4: I think to seventy eight or something like that. Yes,
Speaker 4: thirty nine, there was a drought and they told me
Speaker 4: the story that you know, the record lay was going
Speaker 4: to drop him in all that stuff, and I said, okay, well,
Speaker 4: what we're gonna do? You know that came later, That
Speaker 4: question came later, but yeah, so there was like a
Speaker 4: like I said, resurrection as well, and we had gotten
Speaker 4: over that first Ladies and Night album and that was big,
Speaker 4: and so how we're gonna do it again? And people
Speaker 4: were actually doubting us. You know, it was more like,
Speaker 4: you know, I want the old old cool to gang.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want, I want to talk about it. I
Speaker 2: want I want to talk about that. Wait, I got
Speaker 2: to start to begin it. So I just wanted to
Speaker 2: ask if you knew about that story. But that was
Speaker 2: my that was my cold opening.
Speaker 4: That was that was the first I've heard of it
Speaker 4: that in depth anyway. But I think again, it doesn't
Speaker 4: surprise me.
Speaker 5: Because you know, he was like that man.
Speaker 4: He was. He was a special kind of guy from
Speaker 4: a many different angles, many different angles, but you know,
Speaker 4: a sweetheart, and I would say he was more. He
Speaker 4: was a collector. He was a jazz guy. But you know,
Speaker 4: anything was possible, you know, if if it was there.
Speaker 4: And I think when he even heard when he heard
Speaker 4: me sing, you know, he was.
Speaker 3: Just like, uh, there goes that celebration.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait, we just we had a technical difficulty.
Speaker 5: We just rewinded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Steve had punch line in the century. He
Speaker 2: was like, well, there goes this celebration.
Speaker 4: You know, we got to write this stuff down. This
Speaker 4: is the song, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was either that or la oh no oh no.
Speaker 2: All right. So wait, let me ask you, because we're
Speaker 2: going to get to all these things. Uh, but let
Speaker 2: me ask you. What was your very first musical memory.
Speaker 4: My first musical memory was I had to be like six,
Speaker 4: because I remember we had just gotten my first television.
Speaker 4: I was maybe five or six, and I remember being
Speaker 4: in the kitchen and looking through to the living room
Speaker 4: and my grandfather bought the television and when it turned
Speaker 4: it on, there was a group there. Still I don't
Speaker 4: know who they were, but I just knew that they
Speaker 4: were dressed like like a five man group, and they
Speaker 4: were just looking beautiful, and I did. I didn't even
Speaker 4: go to the television. I just stood back and watched them.
Speaker 4: It just kind of missed me, rather like looking like,
Speaker 4: you know, the puppy, you know, with the head, you know.
Speaker 4: And my sister I had eight sisters, by the way,
Speaker 4: so oh no, that's why I understand women. A house
Speaker 4: for of women, you know, so I know how to move,
Speaker 4: you know. But she entered into a contest on the
Speaker 4: Cousin Bruce Show and this has taking it back and
Speaker 4: she actually won, and she won that big smiley face
Speaker 4: thing or Caussey Cousin Brucy, and she sang a song
Speaker 4: what wasn't Linda Jones, but it was called I Know,
Speaker 4: I Know you don't love Me No More, No More,
Speaker 4: something like that, and there was a trumpet solo and
Speaker 4: I would like and it was just this is all
Speaker 4: radio wasn't on television, and I would and that radio
Speaker 4: was always on top of the refrigerator and I would
Speaker 4: stand and mimic the trumpet solo. That was like my part.
Speaker 4: And that was like the first thing that drew me
Speaker 4: into music right there.
Speaker 2: Wow, so you're one of nine?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, yes, ten.
Speaker 2: Actually where do you fall in line?
Speaker 4: I say, I was always say that I was looked
Speaker 4: up to and looked down on, right in the middle,
Speaker 4: because my you know, my sister, you know, we we
Speaker 4: had we had a lot of fund. You know, it's
Speaker 4: a house full of women going on. And my brother,
Speaker 4: he was younger, and I had an older brother who
Speaker 4: was you know, my mother's child, but he'd you know,
Speaker 4: we were all one family and when we got together,
Speaker 4: it was a party.
Speaker 2: So are any of your other siblings as gifted? Is
Speaker 2: this a musical family?
Speaker 4: I will say yeah, because everybody's saying in the church choir.
Speaker 4: You know, it was almost like mandatory, you know. My
Speaker 4: mom could say, and we were born in the rural
Speaker 4: south South Carolina.
Speaker 5: What city in Lawrence? L A U are in US?
Speaker 4: And for mother, I think she realized that I have
Speaker 4: to get my children out of here to get some
Speaker 4: type of opportunity going, you know, and this is just
Speaker 4: my thoughts.
Speaker 5: You know, we really talked about that.
Speaker 4: But when we came to Jersey, we actually went to
Speaker 4: Brooklyn first when we maybe both found our way over
Speaker 4: to uh In to Hackensack and at the church there
Speaker 4: at the New Hope Church, my sister, you know, we
Speaker 4: were all in the choir. As I said, but my
Speaker 4: sister Frieda. She actually did a solo once, just her piano,
Speaker 4: and I remember that being such a had a great
Speaker 4: effect that someone could be standing there with just a
Speaker 4: piano singing. And she didn't dress in the robe. She
Speaker 4: actually had a red dress on and with legs show
Speaker 4: in the church, you know. But it was it was
Speaker 4: it was classy, you know what I mean. And I
Speaker 4: remember sitting on the side just watching it and just saying,
Speaker 4: just letting it all come in, you know. And but everybody,
Speaker 4: you know, it's pretty much as far as the professional side,
Speaker 4: they didn't go into that. But but that that church
Speaker 4: part was something that was a big influence on all
Speaker 4: of us.
Speaker 2: Where's your household's attitudes to secular music at the time, Like,
Speaker 2: were you allowed to listen to motown or music of
Speaker 2: a day?
Speaker 5: Oh? Yeah, absolutely?
Speaker 4: My mother you know, I think you know, being listen,
Speaker 4: my father passed away.
Speaker 5: When I was nine. Okay, he was like only in
Speaker 5: his forties.
Speaker 4: Okay, So here's my mother with all these kids, you know,
Speaker 4: and her rules were law.
Speaker 5: You know, you came home from school.
Speaker 4: You did this, you did that, you got up in
Speaker 4: the morning, you did this, you did that. And her
Speaker 4: thing was to make sure that we were rounded up,
Speaker 4: that she knew where we were and what we were
Speaker 4: pretty much doing. So she had a transistor radio on
Speaker 4: the refrigerator again which no one could touch.
Speaker 5: And usually it was either.
Speaker 4: Some gospel going on on there, and sometimes she would
Speaker 4: flip to like some blues or something like that. But
Speaker 4: my uncle who yeah, he used to come by and
Speaker 4: he would drop off jazz albums. He would first he
Speaker 4: would bring jazz albums for me to listen to, and
Speaker 4: he would leave him there and I mean he went
Speaker 4: from you know, Stil Austin and then also sometimes in
Speaker 4: the mix he would have like a Mom's Maybley album.
Speaker 4: So as long as you know, we were in the
Speaker 4: house doing our thing, she was pretty much happy. So
Speaker 4: you know, it's like we're playing all the motown. She's
Speaker 4: in the live in the kitchen doing her thing, and
Speaker 4: we were in hip party of dancing. And back then
Speaker 4: it was the long rc R C A you know stereo,
Speaker 4: you know, the best sound in the world, right, Okay,
Speaker 4: you know you're putting the records on and then the
Speaker 4: quarter and all that stuff. But as long as we
Speaker 4: were like happy and we were around her, she knew
Speaker 4: we were we were having a good time. She let
Speaker 4: us stretch out. Man, it was and I and that
Speaker 4: that also helped speed up my love for music and
Speaker 4: and and going into different genres as well.
Speaker 2: I'll say that, uh, you're I'm not even gonna say
Speaker 2: former employers. Your former group's story has been getting out
Speaker 2: in the first three years and they kind of taken
Speaker 2: advantage of a social media to tell these like two
Speaker 2: minute Instagram animated vignettes of like what their life was
Speaker 2: like as teenagers before they formed a band, and the
Speaker 2: kind of war stories that Cool was talking about. And George,
Speaker 2: you know that were you growing up in that part
Speaker 2: of Jersey because like to hear Cool tell it, like,
Speaker 2: I'm like, yo, I'm shocked to still alive, Like the
Speaker 2: amount of the gang stories he told me. And you know,
Speaker 2: every day fighting for like a quarterbread, Like literally did
Speaker 2: you get a quarter to get a loaf.
Speaker 1: Of bread to eat that day?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Was was that? Like what was Jersey? Like what were
Speaker 2: your memories of Jersey?
Speaker 4: My memories are fun. I had fond members because we
Speaker 4: didn't have that vibe. You know, we had a boy
Speaker 4: fo you know, park scraps, everybody fighting and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: but it was it was more like very sparse. You
Speaker 4: know in our area. Everybody knew everybody. We didn't have
Speaker 4: a real racial problem, you know with the white students
Speaker 4: that went to school with us. And when we played
Speaker 4: we had it was within like about two to four
Speaker 4: block area, so you knew everybody. And when it was
Speaker 4: some fight, we never had like gangs fighting to get
Speaker 4: territory and somebody stealing your money. If somebody stole your money,
Speaker 4: you know, there was a fight going on, but it
Speaker 4: didn't happen too often because we had this place called
Speaker 4: Second Street Park, and it was like our babysitter, our parents' babysitter.
Speaker 4: You know, they knew where you were, and we weren't
Speaker 4: allowed to like just wander off down downtown or go
Speaker 4: to this place. You know, you had to ask and
Speaker 4: to go home to ask to be somewhere. So again,
Speaker 4: we didn't have that type of friction. No, not nothing
Speaker 4: close to Jersey City.
Speaker 2: Do you remember first time that you saw a concert
Speaker 2: or performance like who were your north Stars?
Speaker 1: As far as like wow, that's what I want to do.
Speaker 2: You're a rare breed of a singer that came out
Speaker 2: during the time you came out, because you were kind
Speaker 2: of like even to me, you were like an older
Speaker 2: brother figure. You weren't my pops like that Teddy Pendergrass,
Speaker 2: you know, like that to me sounded like my pops
Speaker 2: and my uncles, whereas like you were kind of like
Speaker 2: my cooler older brother, like too old for us to
Speaker 2: like live in a bunk bed, you know.
Speaker 4: But like I like that varsity jacket level.
Speaker 2: So the thing is is that I know, you know,
Speaker 2: by the time the Jackson five come out, you're like eighteen,
Speaker 2: So I don't know if it's hitting you the same
Speaker 2: way that it's hitting like my seven year old sister,
Speaker 2: like where the Jackson vibe was everyone's north star. So
Speaker 2: for you, like yeah, because you have a Johnny Mathews voice,
Speaker 2: I asked like, were you more akin to like the
Speaker 2: styles of Frankie Lyman and the teenagers?
Speaker 4: Like yeah, that's good thing you brought that up. Well,
Speaker 4: the thing is with my I remember, you know, like
Speaker 4: I said, seeing in the church Choie and everything, but
Speaker 4: always had a band also, and I would like wherever
Speaker 4: there was music happening, in town. I found myself there,
Speaker 4: whether it was older guys or you know, guys my age.
Speaker 4: And when I had my group through, and we were
Speaker 4: like we call the Electoral five, you know, like the
Speaker 4: Jackson five, you know before that, you know, when they
Speaker 4: were really like young, you know, he had apple jack
Speaker 4: hats and the nice shiny suits and everything, and we
Speaker 4: were called it Electro five, you know. And so that
Speaker 4: that sped everything up. But there was a band in
Speaker 4: town called the Phialaa Soul and like the best of soul.
Speaker 4: And I know it sounds a little fishy, but you know,
Speaker 4: I got to see. I had to get back and
Speaker 4: see at least throw one at him, you know. But
Speaker 4: but these guys were so good, I'm telling you. They
Speaker 4: played Sly as close at things to Sly as Sly himself.
Speaker 4: And we used to actually follow them around. And the
Speaker 4: thing that was odd was that the Catholic churches, the
Speaker 4: diaces would would would allow us to have parties, and
Speaker 4: they would have this like little drop offs that they
Speaker 4: would go to Lodie Hacking Sack over to this town,
Speaker 4: and they had a following and I used to follow them,
Speaker 4: and years later I end up being the lead singer
Speaker 4: of that same group, So Slyde became the one that
Speaker 4: I loved the most, and not just because it was him,
Speaker 4: but it's the eclectic part of their band, having clarinet's, trumpets, women,
Speaker 4: you know, a drummer, you know, all these different parts
Speaker 4: that at a B three organ. So that was everything
Speaker 4: I pretty much grew up with. And he was like
Speaker 4: and still is to this.
Speaker 5: Day, like my guy. You know wow, Okay, yeah, that's
Speaker 5: what's up.
Speaker 1: What was the first album you ever purchased?
Speaker 5: And I knew you're gonna dig with that one.
Speaker 4: That's a See, the album were in the house that
Speaker 4: never bought because we didn't have money, so it was
Speaker 4: things usually like a Shirley Caesar album or something like that.
Speaker 4: But I never bought gospel albums my mother. That was
Speaker 4: like kind of her role. But if I think back
Speaker 4: to it, it had to be something with motown or
Speaker 4: James Brown, probably a James Brown record.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, where are you living now?
Speaker 3: Just out of curiosity in North Jersey?
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, still home?
Speaker 2: Besides church, were there any other functions that you were
Speaker 2: singing at high schools?
Speaker 4: Or I would sing anywhere any style in the park
Speaker 4: at it for nothing. You know, you wouldn't get paid,
Speaker 4: but I I never I don't have to see. I
Speaker 4: didn't say to myself this is what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4: I was in the midst of it from the moment
Speaker 4: I heard music. If you if you understand what I mean,
Speaker 4: it's like I didn't have a time of Okay, this
Speaker 4: is what I'm gonna do for life. It was just
Speaker 4: a part of me, you know. And it's like a
Speaker 4: lot of things are like that for me. You know,
Speaker 4: I don't have to really put on airs to be
Speaker 4: something or to accept someone doing something, and it's like
Speaker 4: when I see you and your band, it's like that's
Speaker 4: supposed to happen, and whatever you're doing, I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: immerse myself in it and not be so judgmental, even
Speaker 4: if I don't, you know, particularly like everything. It's just
Speaker 4: I think that the life of music is like my
Speaker 4: life blood. And that's why I don't have a specific moment.
Speaker 4: But when you say Jesus moment, it's like I remember,
Speaker 4: like my mother used to we got too old to
Speaker 4: get that whip, and you know, she would like make
Speaker 4: us sit on the steps or something like that. And
Speaker 4: one day, you know, I don't know what I did,
Speaker 4: but she had. She sat me on the back steps
Speaker 4: in our back porch, and I was just sitting there
Speaker 4: and I was always like a very like outside the
Speaker 4: Bible thing, you know, like things didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 4: Is why does this happened?
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, but I meant that metaphorically.
Speaker 4: I didn't mean, man, yeah, I know what you meant,
Speaker 4: but I'm trying to get to something. So one day
Speaker 4: I'm sitting there and I actually felt like I saw
Speaker 4: the tree growing. And this is when I was very,
Speaker 4: very young, so I've always had that feeling. So there
Speaker 4: wasn't a moment of that Jesus moment of music. I'm
Speaker 4: going to do this in my life. It was just
Speaker 4: a part of the maturation, was all of it. So
Speaker 4: when it did happen, got it. I was already in
Speaker 4: the midst of it, and it never overwhelmed me at
Speaker 4: that time.
Speaker 5: If you understand what I mean, yeah, yeah, I got it.
Speaker 2: So I'll ask you what was your knowledge of the
Speaker 2: moment they became cool in the Gang? I know they
Speaker 2: were various other groups, but were you wear them from
Speaker 2: there first self titled record? Those?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah first?
Speaker 2: So what was your opinion of like what did you
Speaker 2: think were they just like are they from Jersey or no?
Speaker 4: No, I thought they were awesome because we used to,
Speaker 4: you know, carry the boomboxes have Ben and a friend
Speaker 4: of mine, Curtis, he would always have his boombox and
Speaker 4: we would listen to Cooling the Gang stuff walking to school.
Speaker 4: And sometime I go to his house and I remember,
Speaker 4: I forget what Albert was. I think was the ice
Speaker 4: Block Cooler Gang. It was like a block the message
Speaker 4: yet the message yet Yeah, And so I got into
Speaker 4: what they were talking about because we were growing up
Speaker 4: in the civil rights so those things they were talking
Speaker 4: about in a musical way. So that's pretty clever how
Speaker 4: they got the message across. You know, we're not even
Speaker 4: as blatant as like a girl Scott did, you know.
Speaker 4: But it was something that I could relate to musically
Speaker 4: as well as instrumentally, and something you could dance to
Speaker 4: at the same time. So that was always a magnet.
Speaker 4: And if you look at all the groups back then,
Speaker 4: from James Brown, you know, I'm black and I'm proud
Speaker 4: anything that anybody was doing Marvin. It was the social
Speaker 4: consciousness while we were growing up that implemented music that
Speaker 4: showed instrumentation, and all these great guys playing this stuff.
Speaker 4: And then, like I said, with my uncle dropping jazz
Speaker 4: music off, I realized that they were telling the same
Speaker 4: story growing up. So it was reaching and pulling me
Speaker 4: in all of these different directions. But I thought that
Speaker 4: Coolning were great, and ironically when I mentioned the Flair
Speaker 4: of Soul, we actually opened up for them once at
Speaker 4: the Newark College I think it's Caine College and Newark
Speaker 4: and I tried to get backstage to meet them. This
Speaker 4: is years before I even I became a member, and
Speaker 4: some security guy wouldn't let me come back to meet them,
Speaker 4: but I wanted to talk to them about, you know,
Speaker 4: what they were doing because I liked it very much.
Speaker 2: You know, Oh, okay, that's such a cool story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's all one man, it all, it all. It's
Speaker 4: all related in some way.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting that you were a fan and tried
Speaker 3: to meet that ends up in the band.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, and ended up It's crazy.
Speaker 2: How did you specifically get their attention? What's the story
Speaker 2: process that leads to you guys meeting to audition for
Speaker 2: the band?
Speaker 4: There was a there was a part on the House
Speaker 4: of Music and Studios in the West Orange and I
Speaker 4: did a session with Jeff Dixon.
Speaker 5: Wait what Jeff Dixon?
Speaker 4: Yes, really, and I went I got a call that
Speaker 4: step and said, listen, man, this is this guy doing
Speaker 4: a he's doing trying to put this group together. And
Speaker 4: his name was Jeff Dixon. He wants you to come down.
Speaker 4: I told him about you and b to the session
Speaker 4: and I did a There was a section of the
Speaker 4: song that I did and when I finished my part,
Speaker 4: you know, I went out and when it was done,
Speaker 4: he said, come back in and he said, he said,
Speaker 4: listen to what happened to the song when your part comes,
Speaker 4: and he played it through and he.
Speaker 5: Said, you hear that?
Speaker 4: That's it right there. He said, I got to get
Speaker 4: you with somebody, you know. And I was like, I
Speaker 4: was just doing what he instructed me to do. So
Speaker 4: when I got the call to come to audition, I
Speaker 4: don't know if it was Stephan, whether it was Jeff
Speaker 4: Dition that that told cool himber about me, but I
Speaker 4: know when when I got there, Irene Conrad I mentioned,
Speaker 4: he said, yeah, well cooling him there down here, and
Speaker 4: I went in and I met Chalice and and the
Speaker 4: thing for me, I really wanted to beat DT and
Speaker 4: Spike for some reason, I don't know, because these team
Speaker 4: was always like the cooler dressed guy and he had
Speaker 4: he played a great horn and Spike played the trumpet,
Speaker 4: and I like making he had this this jazzy thing
Speaker 4: about him that was cool when he had a widow's
Speaker 4: peak kind of but he was just like a attractive
Speaker 4: kind of aura that they had, you know, So.
Speaker 2: You really knew these cats, Yeah, I know them from
Speaker 2: just the music. In my mind, I was like, especially now,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I'm gen X and there's some
Speaker 2: gen Z's and jen Alphas after Z's Alphas that pretty
Speaker 2: much like started with Millennials, but also with gen Z
Speaker 2: and with Jens Alpha where it's just like a kind
Speaker 2: of blatant uh purposeful indifference or it's weird, like I
Speaker 2: wouldn't think. I thought, oh, he's probably a new guy
Speaker 2: in a group and don't even know who Mickens is
Speaker 2: or who, like right, like, oh, some old guys want
Speaker 2: me to sing in their group and that No.
Speaker 4: I never thought that. And if you you know question
Speaker 4: back then, like the albums they had the liner notes,
Speaker 4: they told you who guys were, so you would say there.
Speaker 4: You didn't have a cell phone or anything, so you
Speaker 4: would go through the album and you're listening to it
Speaker 4: and you're finding out, oh this guy played that. Oh
Speaker 4: I didn't know. And I didn't even know Dtu played
Speaker 4: played the flute okay, And then I thought, oh I was.
Speaker 5: Him playing that?
Speaker 4: Oh okay. So when I met him, I was like, yo, man,
Speaker 4: at that part you played on this.
Speaker 5: You know, stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So I was telling them little things that I appreciated
Speaker 4: and and you know, funky George and listening to that
Speaker 4: foot man, I said, wow, that's you know. So it
Speaker 4: was I was like in heaven kind and so to speak, you.
Speaker 2: Know all that I said about your your velvet voice
Speaker 2: and and you being a modern nat king Cole. I
Speaker 2: asked him in my class, like what was that process
Speaker 2: like of finally striking gold? Because you know, he told
Speaker 2: a story about everybody's disco dancing album like flopped And
Speaker 2: they were in the store and doing an autograph session
Speaker 2: and nobody was there and one girl was.
Speaker 1: Like who they supposed to be?
Speaker 5: Cool?
Speaker 2: Gang ill Like he was like, man, we gotta get
Speaker 2: a singer, we gotta get a singer. It's like desperation,
Speaker 2: but he says that he knew within the first three
Speaker 2: seconds you were the singer because you sounded like Nacking
Speaker 2: Cole and I thought like that might have struck me
Speaker 2: odd because I would I would almost think like, Okay,
Speaker 2: during that time period seventy nine, you gotta compete with
Speaker 2: all these gruff, all these I mean, either they're kind
Speaker 2: of over the top. I'm not saying primitive exotic, but
Speaker 2: you know, unless you come super animated, ah you like
Speaker 2: sfoot is animated, boots in Parliament they're animated, or you're
Speaker 2: coming like you know, I mean the Mendingo, Yeah, like
Speaker 2: or spiritual. You came very classy, but you came classy
Speaker 2: in a way that wasn't like like I don't know
Speaker 2: if Johnny Mathis would be like just walking down the hood,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: What I mean.
Speaker 2: But you almost had like a you had some street
Speaker 2: confidence about you. But you also came off like you
Speaker 2: might have done two years in ROTC T training or
Speaker 2: in college.
Speaker 4: I actually did.
Speaker 2: As much as I love the Jackson's and they were
Speaker 2: my heroes, I'd never looked at them once and thought
Speaker 2: like you might be some college educated brothers, you know,
Speaker 2: the Commodore's talk all the time about going into.
Speaker 1: Skiingsitute but you know, but but they still wow.
Speaker 2: So for me, you were like the first look into
Speaker 2: what we might perceive.
Speaker 1: Day at sold to be or like yeah yeah. So
Speaker 1: for you, though, what was the audition process? Like?
Speaker 4: I didn't go in there like super nervous. And I
Speaker 4: think again, as I said to you, the process was
Speaker 4: the whole the whole thing included, meaning the music process
Speaker 4: from being young all the way through. So this feeling
Speaker 4: that I've had, the spiritual feeling I've had, was like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm here, So this is what we're going to do.
Speaker 4: And he said, let me hear you sing something. I said, well,
Speaker 4: what do you want me to sing? He said anything,
Speaker 4: just make something up and he started playing these changes
Speaker 4: and I sang, you know in my baritone voice, you know.
Speaker 5: And he said, can you sing Hi?
Speaker 4: And I said yeah, And I did some falsettle stuff,
Speaker 4: you know, And that's pretty much all I remember doing
Speaker 4: for him.
Speaker 2: Did you know what you were walking into?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: So no one officially said cool in the gangs looking for.
Speaker 4: A lead singer said that the only thing I knew
Speaker 4: was that they were looking for some background for me.
Speaker 4: To sing background on a record, okay, and again you
Speaker 4: know that's what I do, so okay, the songs that
Speaker 4: you know, and my thing, I'm like that, what's the song?
Speaker 5: What are we going to do?
Speaker 4: And thinking it's going to be more in the vain
Speaker 4: of what they did before, you know, background, you know
Speaker 4: Hollywood's well, you know, jungle boogie, all that.
Speaker 5: Stuff, you know. And when I met with I.
Speaker 4: Think it was Gabe Figarto the Light Records, he said,
Speaker 4: you know, Jay, that era has passed. And when I
Speaker 4: met Diodado, I was I don't think I was in
Speaker 4: the meeting, but he asked Gabe, he said, he said, well,
Speaker 4: who's who's gonna sing this? And he said him this JT.
Speaker 4: And he said, I want you to put the music
Speaker 4: around him his voice, and I'm said okay, okay, And
Speaker 4: you know, so I'm green at this time. You got
Speaker 4: to understand, as far as studio work, I've never worked
Speaker 4: in the studio in any capacity, Like what's going to come?
Speaker 3: Was Diodado part of your audition? Like was he one
Speaker 3: of the people?
Speaker 5: It was, No, No, he wasn't in there at all.
Speaker 4: I met him a little later.
Speaker 3: But he was already involved with them at that point.
Speaker 4: At that point, I was so everything was great, you know.
Speaker 4: I was like I knew I was school a gang.
Speaker 4: I'm in the studio, a house of music. They liked me,
Speaker 4: and when we started working, we instantly I wouldn't say instantly,
Speaker 4: but we started working on music and we would go
Speaker 4: to I think on thirtieth West thirties Street at Daily.
Speaker 5: Planet, just playing songs there. You know.
Speaker 4: So when did Donald got involved. This whole thing was
Speaker 4: trying to mesh what they brought in, what everybody was writing.
Speaker 4: And at the time, I wasn't bringing anything in as
Speaker 4: far as like songwriting anything like that. I was more
Speaker 4: like just feeding off of what's coming at me. Let me,
Speaker 4: let me be here, let me listen to this guy,
Speaker 4: let me be over here. And it was all interesting.
Speaker 4: Nothing was boring. But the thing that was that was
Speaker 4: funny though, was that they had three girls, three women
Speaker 4: I would say, singing background, and a couple of other yeah,
Speaker 4: something sweet, and there was a couple other guys in there,
Speaker 4: and I remember them looking at me sideways, you know,
Speaker 4: and I'm up here saying, Okay, I have to get
Speaker 4: my street vibe on, you know, because what's going on,
Speaker 4: like what are these people looking at me like this? For?
Speaker 5: So I'm thinking, do I have to make a phone.
Speaker 4: Call, you know, get some of my guys that come
Speaker 4: because this is all me thinking this is not them,
Speaker 4: and because I'm saying, why these dagger's being thrown at
Speaker 4: me when I'm here to help. You know, I didn't
Speaker 4: ask to be here. I was encouraged and asked invited
Speaker 4: to be here, and I thought that they were good,
Speaker 4: and I said, well, we just keep them to myself.
Speaker 4: This is all internal, you know, while music is going
Speaker 4: on and people are walking around and I don't know
Speaker 4: any of these people. I don't even know cooling them really,
Speaker 4: so I'm trying to vibe I've been to make sure
Speaker 4: I'm safe at the same time, and you know, I
Speaker 4: wasn't a person who hung out in the city, so
Speaker 4: that whole thing, you know, was new too.
Speaker 5: So you know, there's a lot coming at me.
Speaker 2: What were you doing to survive before you joined the
Speaker 2: band and how long was it until you felt secure
Speaker 2: enough that you were making your living as a member
Speaker 2: of Cooling the Game.
Speaker 4: Well, I went to HBCU as well in Norfolk State, Virginia.
Speaker 4: I did two years there and it just wasn't my
Speaker 4: time to be in college. You know, I was all
Speaker 4: about music and I didn't study music there, and I
Speaker 4: just had a difficult time. So I dropped out because
Speaker 4: music was my passion, you know. But when I came home,
Speaker 4: you know, I was pretty much bumming around. I was
Speaker 4: playing a lot of different bands and working on jobs.
Speaker 4: Got me an apartment and had a raggedy car, that
Speaker 4: type of thing, and you know, all of this happened,
Speaker 4: and then I get the phone call from Cooling them.
Speaker 4: But I think at seventy nine when we did the
Speaker 4: Ladies and Night album and we started going to Paradise
Speaker 4: Garage and all your different places for promotions and clubs.
Speaker 2: Paradise Garage, yes, yes.
Speaker 4: We did it. What was that? I knew that was
Speaker 4: gonna raise the eyebrows, but we we actually had the
Speaker 4: record company did a promotion there because you know, it
Speaker 4: was the greatest sound system in the in the city,
Speaker 4: right you know, with the with those the speakers, the
Speaker 4: speakers right cranked up. You wouldn't even be able to
Speaker 4: hear when you left there. But we did a thing
Speaker 4: when they dropped Ladies' Night at Paradise Garage, you know,
Speaker 4: which was appropriate and I remember we went up and
Speaker 4: the DJ called us a cooling the Gang record, you know,
Speaker 4: and he said, cool is here, JT's here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know that, you know, and they dropped it.
Speaker 2: Dude. I aspired to be his level of DJing.
Speaker 4: Like that he would hear awesome, man, and he dropped
Speaker 4: it and they hit the floor and everybody just looked
Speaker 4: at each other was just like okay. And the record
Speaker 4: company I think that they knew that that they had
Speaker 4: it right there, because again, nobody expected it to sound
Speaker 4: like that. You know, they looked they were looking for
Speaker 4: all these horns and everything, and they were like, well,
Speaker 4: who's who's the who's the voice?
Speaker 5: Where that voice comes from?
Speaker 4: And you know, some people were like, nah, man, that
Speaker 4: can't be cool. And then you know, and some time
Speaker 4: I got I got a little flat back to that,
Speaker 4: because well, I want I want to hear the old stuff,
Speaker 4: the winds down and they were telling me, say listen, man,
Speaker 4: we weren't eating on that stuff anymore, right, So yeah,
Speaker 4: it was it was awesome. Did I answer the question? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 4: because that that ladies out. That's when I realized I
Speaker 4: could I start making a living, and you know, bout
Speaker 4: some new clothes.
Speaker 2: I figured as well, this is probably one of the
Speaker 2: rarest chances I get to ask this question, so I'm
Speaker 2: gonna try to ask very careful. Okay, Okay, So what
Speaker 2: could a working class musician make in nineteen seventy nine?
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm basically asking what is a living in
Speaker 2: seventy nine? And I'm only asking this because, okay, like
Speaker 2: hip hop has distorted the expectations of what one should
Speaker 2: expect from this industry because you know, it such a
Speaker 2: hustler culture and you see everyone just like their money away.
Speaker 2: And the thing is is that my manager kind of
Speaker 2: told us from the gate, Look, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 2: You guys aren't going to ball out of control, like
Speaker 2: you're going to be able to slide mom some very
Speaker 2: significant petty cash monthly. You'll be able to have a
Speaker 2: half decent crib. And if I do my job right,
Speaker 2: you know, you guys will at least be able to
Speaker 2: make at least what a surgeon would make. At the time,
Speaker 2: I did agree with that, and I subscribe to it.
Speaker 2: Now I'm in a mind state where I want to
Speaker 2: be a daredevil and dream my highest dream like, but
Speaker 2: back then I was I was really small minded, with it.
Speaker 2: But that said, you know, I think that's what at
Speaker 2: least for the twenty years of doing the Roots, you
Speaker 2: know before the Tonight show, that that enabled me to
Speaker 2: not have distorted expectations and stay focused. You know, like
Speaker 2: a lot of people after the third or fourth time,
Speaker 2: like it took us four albums to really get to
Speaker 2: a satisfactory place, but I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: would start to give up or start sabotaging their cells
Speaker 2: for And I'm asking this because there really wasn't the
Speaker 2: standard of hip hop baller lifestyles expected for not at
Speaker 2: all black singers. So what could you expect to make
Speaker 2: a living on as e leite singer of been established
Speaker 2: ben with albeit with a new lease on life that
Speaker 2: they didn't have before like NB eighties.
Speaker 4: Our situation, we didn't have that type of manager that
Speaker 4: you had. We were not given any direction as far
Speaker 4: as what you're going to make per se. My expectations
Speaker 4: were simple, Matt. You know, how many records did we sell?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 4: We got six of us record label gets this Okay,
Speaker 4: so where's that was left over? And that wasn't happening now.
Speaker 4: I couldn't rock the boat at that point because I
Speaker 4: didn't really have the cachet, the input, the.
Speaker 5: In seniority to do.
Speaker 4: That, so they were rationing out weekly income.
Speaker 2: So you were getting paid like a rookie.
Speaker 4: Like a rookie, right, but enough to live better than
Speaker 4: I was living just about.
Speaker 5: A little bit more above that.
Speaker 4: And we were we were actually working so much that
Speaker 4: it should have been maybe five to ten times more
Speaker 4: than that, you know, because we were killing it. We were,
Speaker 4: and we were like working every day like like seem
Speaker 4: like we never never stopped. So the money really wasn't
Speaker 4: adding up with the hits and how much we were touring.
Speaker 4: And my family started asking that question. I, okay, well
Speaker 4: get your apartment.
Speaker 5: You got a decent car now.
Speaker 4: And I when I wanted to slide my mother that
Speaker 4: money you were talking about, I didn't have as much
Speaker 4: as I thought to do that because at the time,
Speaker 4: you don't really need a whole lot, you know, you
Speaker 4: just kind of still in the midst of the musical part,
Speaker 4: you know, and you just expect the money to be there.
Speaker 4: You got around people around you. I'm with cooling them.
Speaker 4: They've been around here since the sixties. You know, all
Speaker 4: this is going to come around. And it was fine.
Speaker 4: You know, when I started asking questions, that's when I
Speaker 4: started finding out, you know, all of the the side deals,
Speaker 4: all the things that were not there, and you know,
Speaker 4: you just kind of find your way through speak when
Speaker 4: you can't speak. And some of the people that we
Speaker 4: were working with, you know, I was told, you know, well,
Speaker 4: you can't talk to these people like that. I said, well,
Speaker 4: if I'm being a man, no one's going to stop.
Speaker 5: Me from talking and speaking up for my.
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to be a bad guy, a sweet guy, nothing.
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna say that this shit ain't right, you know,
Speaker 4: and this should be a little bit more balanced right here,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: So that was always my position.
Speaker 2: Were the people that were running Delight Records the same
Speaker 2: people by the time you got in the seventy nine position,
Speaker 2: you're tenure in nineteen seventy nine. Because Ronald told me
Speaker 2: that he was very careful with his words, but he's
Speaker 2: basically insinuating to me that the whole Jungle Boogee story
Speaker 2: was kind of at the insistence of some some friends
Speaker 2: of ours.
Speaker 5: I would say that, yes, I heard that.
Speaker 2: Ah that kind of hitman level.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, the same same people.
Speaker 4: Wow, I see, do you understand I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I totally understand what you're saying.
Speaker 3: So glad for once, it's not my people who are
Speaker 3: screwing up.
Speaker 4: It was you. It was you.
Speaker 1: Have you read Mars Leavey's Hitmann?
Speaker 4: No not yet?
Speaker 5: No, No, I haven't.
Speaker 2: Now that's that's the book that exposes the you know,
Speaker 2: that's what built Jerry's, the whole game, Jersey, Sylvie Robbinson,
Speaker 2: all the people.
Speaker 3: So I'm sorry, let me let me interject here. So
Speaker 3: what about the publishing side of things though? Was that
Speaker 3: also sort of shady because you were you were reading
Speaker 3: some of these big hits.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because when I came into the group, and I
Speaker 4: again when I started keeeping some of the stuff, it
Speaker 4: was more like they had told me they had a
Speaker 4: deal that was already set when I came in. So
Speaker 4: I kind of had to buy into what was already established,
Speaker 4: right I was, I wasn't a separate entity. I was
Speaker 4: now a part of the of the entity. And with
Speaker 4: that that means that I was I had to dop.
Speaker 5: Some of the things that.
Speaker 4: They had already had in order, and that really wasn't
Speaker 4: anything I could do about it.
Speaker 2: I do have a question about the repertoire when you
Speaker 2: first get in the group. You know, as I said
Speaker 2: at the top of the show, there's like almost five
Speaker 2: to six levels of the band's history that one could
Speaker 2: gravitate towards. If you're into a lot of early rap samples,
Speaker 2: then you know the first three years, or you bag
Speaker 2: for kind of like the first real true steps into
Speaker 2: funk territory, not soul funk. There's there's an era of
Speaker 2: like you know, seventy four is seventy nine, and then
Speaker 2: there's the disco period seventy seven to whatever, and then
Speaker 2: here comes the hits seventy nine and so on. When
Speaker 2: you guys are putting your shows together, is there any
Speaker 2: attention being paid to for the kind of pre wild
Speaker 2: and peaceful catalog songs or songs like in t or
Speaker 2: Ron Hamburger or like a lot of these or are
Speaker 2: they still a part of the show, like the instrumental
Speaker 2: part of the group.
Speaker 5: Not really that that was once you came in.
Speaker 2: Then it was just.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well sing not totally, but but you know, Ron,
Speaker 4: everybody was like, listen, man, they want to hear the
Speaker 4: new songs. And I said, yeah, but we got the
Speaker 4: we have the best of both worlds here guys, and
Speaker 4: I used to preach. I said, man, we have to
Speaker 4: play open Sesame tonight, and it depends on where we
Speaker 4: were playing.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, they wouldn't do that.
Speaker 4: No, we did it once that a hit.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, like obscure and stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, once in a while. And I said that we
Speaker 4: would because you know, we always had great segues into songs.
Speaker 4: You know, I picked up a lot of that from
Speaker 4: from working with with police, and I said, we could
Speaker 4: just sneak that in right here. We could sneak in
Speaker 4: tea right here, or you know, Gookoo Boxer something like that. Okay, anyway,
Speaker 4: nasty nasty, little funky track man. And then of course
Speaker 4: open Cessity and some of Madness I'm sorry, yeah, some
Speaker 4: of madness. They didn't have a problem with that. And
Speaker 4: Hollywood swinging.
Speaker 5: We would play that.
Speaker 4: But as far as involving all the other stuff that
Speaker 4: I was grew up on walking to school with, over time,
Speaker 4: it just was moved out and each album that we did,
Speaker 4: because we had like a almost a decade run of
Speaker 4: just top ten or top five hits that those are
Speaker 4: the songs that they said people wanted to play and
Speaker 4: the audience became more global, and the global audience didn't
Speaker 4: know all of those songs that we that you and
Speaker 4: I like, you know, they nts and all that they knew,
Speaker 4: celebration and all this. And I remember when we did Joanna.
Speaker 4: You know this, this is one of the most hurtful
Speaker 4: things that ever happened to me. And this no no
Speaker 4: I was good, but.
Speaker 2: The way they're done, yea.
Speaker 4: And we were doing Joanna and we had this black
Speaker 4: station and you know, we rolling everything and the an
Speaker 4: R guy was trying to get the record played. I
Speaker 4: don't think it was down with butter down there in Philly,
Speaker 4: but uh, it was something like a big station like that.
Speaker 4: But anyway, they said that it wasn't black enough. Question.
Speaker 4: I'm telling you.
Speaker 5: I remember going back.
Speaker 4: To my room and walking just pacing in my room
Speaker 4: back and forth. I don't know how long I did it,
Speaker 4: and almost like water coming on my eyes right and
Speaker 4: I'm saying, I'm thinking about Frankie Lineman and all these
Speaker 4: guys that paved the way to do all these things,
Speaker 4: from from you know, jazz to Leontine Price and all
Speaker 4: the I'm thinking about all of them that were you know,
Speaker 4: couldn't even dressing dressing room had to come in the
Speaker 4: back door. That all this is in my head. We
Speaker 4: were going through civil rights and you know, we're trying
Speaker 4: to find our way through and I'm doing this song,
Speaker 4: this melodic song that is a part of me. And
Speaker 4: if it's part of me and me and the group,
Speaker 4: then it's a part of black America, you know. So
Speaker 4: how could somebody black tell me that it's not black enough?
Speaker 4: I said, what is black enough mean? So that was
Speaker 4: the first time I was hit with that, and I
Speaker 4: remember calling my mother and I said, Mom, I said,
Speaker 4: I said, they said it wasn't my singing, ain't black enough,
Speaker 4: you know? And she said something she told me. She
Speaker 4: eased my mind.
Speaker 5: She said, that's a good thing. That means that you're different.
Speaker 4: They try to tell you that you're supposed to sound
Speaker 4: like something they want you to sound like, but you
Speaker 4: don't sound like that.
Speaker 5: So that makes you unique. How you feeling?
Speaker 4: And it sobered me up because it reminds me that
Speaker 4: you've grown into this rainbow of styles from from the
Speaker 4: little Transistor radio to the Philea Soul and then hearing
Speaker 4: all my heroes like the Motown and then the Philly
Speaker 4: International Sounds and all this and Stacks Records and all
Speaker 4: these different great people and you're amongst those people now,
Speaker 4: So you don't have to try to be anybody but
Speaker 4: who you are, and that is a black man who
Speaker 4: can do rock, funk, jazz, love, the love the classics,
Speaker 4: Leontine Price, love Stravinski. You know what I mean, you can.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter. It's not a colored thing with music.
Speaker 4: So she cooled my little ass down real quick, said,
Speaker 4: you know know who you are, your tailor, and people
Speaker 4: have already given you the christen you. You know that
Speaker 4: they accept what you are. So don't you start thinking
Speaker 4: that you have to be somebody else just because the
Speaker 4: radio station said this song ain't black enough. Maybe not
Speaker 4: for what they want to play, but globally the world
Speaker 4: has already said we love this.
Speaker 1: You also got the last laugh, bro.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, yeah, it was. It was, but it
Speaker 4: was a it was a traumatic time, bro, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean.
Speaker 2: This is the dumbest question I remember want to ask
Speaker 2: in my professional career, but this is the only chance
Speaker 2: I get to ask it. When you shot that Schlitchmont
Speaker 2: liquor bull commercial, come on, come on, there was never
Speaker 2: a real bull on the premises right hell no, okay.
Speaker 4: I would have been gone before he broke through that.
Speaker 4: That that was a pretty good pre uh editing right pre.
Speaker 2: Ai to this day when I go down a rabbit
Speaker 2: hole on YouTube, I literally watched all forty five minutes
Speaker 2: of every Slitchmon't Liquor bull commercial of every great running
Speaker 2: and I always wanted to.
Speaker 4: Know they used to edited it. I mean, I hope
Speaker 4: I'll didn't ruin it for everybody, but yeah, we suggest
Speaker 4: you know, just looking running.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got but that was that was that was a.
Speaker 4: Hot commercial for a long time.
Speaker 2: It was it was man like it was a big
Speaker 2: deal because you never saw like your favorites on that level.
Speaker 2: My dad especially liked it because sometimes they would juxtapose,
Speaker 2: like you know, I think you guys did a version
Speaker 2: and there was the platters.
Speaker 5: As well that we did with the four Tops or
Speaker 5: the four.
Speaker 2: Tops yeah, like yeah, yeah, my dad, my dad comes
Speaker 2: from you know, the fifties eras.
Speaker 1: For him, it was like important to see the groups
Speaker 1: he like represented.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when I first.
Speaker 2: Got my record deal, like I would say that my
Speaker 2: first splurge, Like, okay, I made it. It's not much.
Speaker 2: There was too much of a build up. But you know,
Speaker 2: for me, sneakers and my record.
Speaker 4: Collection, that was it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was all I wanted to do in life.
Speaker 2: For you, what was your first like extravagant? I want
Speaker 2: cheese on my whopper like.
Speaker 4: That type of thing. Let me see, I think I
Speaker 4: got my first Mercedes, okay, because before, as I said,
Speaker 4: I had my own apartment, you know, barely paying the bill,
Speaker 4: you know, at a raggedy car, so you know, the
Speaker 4: being showed a little little prestige. Man, you know, let
Speaker 4: me get a decent car because the good car that
Speaker 4: I had, I'm gonna tell you this, the car I
Speaker 4: had it had been hit from the side, oh, on
Speaker 4: the passenger side, right, So whenever I went to pick
Speaker 4: somebody up, I would drive and pomp on the driver's side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 5: We had some pride.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: We had a group a group purchase. We got a
Speaker 2: land Cruiser that we all shared whoever needed a land Cruiser.
Speaker 2: I wasn't driving then, but Tarik would often dent that
Speaker 2: land Cruiser and get to the point where he would
Speaker 2: pick you know, his lady friends up only on the
Speaker 2: right side of the street so that she could never see.
Speaker 4: Right, exactly, That's exactly what I did.
Speaker 1: I see, I see.
Speaker 2: When you guys are on tour. Do you have to
Speaker 2: do Don Boyce's at libs on Jungle Boogie?
Speaker 5: I did? Yeah, I tried.
Speaker 2: What was your first show like with the group? Your
Speaker 2: your very first school in the Gang show?
Speaker 4: This is I think this was before we actually started
Speaker 4: working On Ladies' Night, I did a show with them.
Speaker 2: Oh you were singing with them even before?
Speaker 4: Yeah, right before we started. Yeah, I all needed one
Speaker 4: show and then right after my audition, and I think
Speaker 4: I did an earth Wind and Five song on their show.
Speaker 4: I sang a ballad. I'm trying to remember which one
Speaker 4: it was.
Speaker 2: Do you have a wonderful a song for you?
Speaker 4: Yes, I don't know, maybe from the Head to the
Speaker 4: Sky album or something. Oh you went deep okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: something like that, you know, because he asked me because
Speaker 4: he just wanted to show the people that, you know,
Speaker 4: just I'll see how I you know.
Speaker 5: Or something? Yeah, you know, and it was very smart.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, you're the lead singer. How do
Speaker 2: you know things like eye contact and communicating with the
Speaker 2: audience and you know, make the whole room feel like
Speaker 2: you know, the things that you probably have to lodge
Speaker 2: one hundred shows on your belt to truly know, like
Speaker 2: back in your hand, are you just being thrown in
Speaker 2: the river like singer swim she was up.
Speaker 4: But see again, as I said, I wasn't threatened by that,
Speaker 4: not not about being on the front of the stage,
Speaker 4: because I was always that guy, like if I had
Speaker 4: a band and then the band was called the Street
Speaker 4: Dancer or or or play. So I was always JT
Speaker 4: you know, and got it.
Speaker 5: And we were thirty.
Speaker 1: That wasn't your first show ever, like you.
Speaker 5: No, No, When I was thirteen, we did the Apollo.
Speaker 2: What was that?
Speaker 4: Like? That was scary.
Speaker 5: I think we're like thirteen.
Speaker 4: We were trying to, you know, make this something we
Speaker 4: were going to do, you know, like our little band.
Speaker 4: And in fact, we did the Intruders, Cowboys, the Girls,
Speaker 4: We did the rehearsal. And I never forget at the Apollo,
Speaker 4: I never I didn't think it was going to be
Speaker 4: this raggedy downstairs right where all the guests were. And
Speaker 4: there was the stairs that you had led us, you know,
Speaker 4: to go up to the stage, and there was this
Speaker 4: huge rat trap under the staircase. And I'm saying what
Speaker 4: the hell? And we're all sitting in and I'm saying, okay,
Speaker 4: so you just blanket out of your mind. So that night,
Speaker 4: our biggest thing was to make sure that Sandman didn't
Speaker 4: hook us off stage. That was our goal. If we
Speaker 4: could do that, we got it, and we actually came
Speaker 4: in third place. And this guy, uh, this older guy
Speaker 4: that's saying nat King Cole by the way and on
Speaker 4: the piano, he won that night. But we didn't get
Speaker 4: pulled off. We just we were in the line, you know,
Speaker 4: well first he was thinking hand clapped, you know, third
Speaker 4: you know, he said, okay, you guys, come off, and
Speaker 4: then he won. So we were just relieved that we
Speaker 4: didn't get pulled off by sand Man.
Speaker 1: Which member of pulling the gang was the most diplomatic
Speaker 1: and welcoming you into the fold because you're also a
Speaker 1: rookie kind of coming to an established house where you know,
Speaker 1: even there was a point where Alan Iverson had to
Speaker 1: carry the bags of six ers that he was better.
Speaker 4: Than yea, yeah, yeah, I didn't do any of that.
Speaker 2: Which member was the most diplomatic in welcoming you into
Speaker 2: the fold?
Speaker 4: I would say it was calise and cool, because cool
Speaker 4: at the time. In fact, when we first started going
Speaker 4: through the House of Music, he actually came up from
Speaker 4: Jersey City and picked me up from my home and
Speaker 4: he drove me down and back home. So Cool was
Speaker 4: more like like that guy. And you know, we started
Speaker 4: hanging out as well. But he and I'll say it, Calise,
Speaker 4: I went like to meet his mom, like Cool's Calise's
Speaker 4: mom and stuff like that, you know, And I just
Speaker 4: think they realized I was, like, you know, I was
Speaker 4: a down guy, like you know, like you could you know.
Speaker 4: I wasn't like a rough rider, you know, but I
Speaker 4: wasn't wasn't.
Speaker 5: No punk either, you know.
Speaker 4: I was just like and musically, you know, I could
Speaker 4: talk to them, and I actually learned so much from
Speaker 4: just sitting around listening because my mother said, just keep
Speaker 4: your ears open. You don't have to talk all the time.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Are you significantly younger than them or.
Speaker 5: Just a few years like three? I think George was
Speaker 5: three years at least was two.
Speaker 4: I think Cool was three, so it wasn't too far.
Speaker 4: But a lot of people thought I was a lot
Speaker 4: younger than them.
Speaker 2: I thought you were the baby brother.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: Which remember would you have the most conflicts with.
Speaker 4: Well in the beginning, you know, none I was, I
Speaker 4: was hanging out with everybody. But I don't even know
Speaker 4: where it turned. But uh, for some reason, d ted started.
Speaker 4: We started rubbing a little bit, you know, And I
Speaker 4: didn't understand what happened because I was I remember him
Speaker 4: and Penwa bringing their daughter Michelle to my room to
Speaker 4: meet me.
Speaker 1: Actress Michelle actors.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the late yeah, and.
Speaker 5: Ocle if ever matters, and so you.
Speaker 4: Know, it was all all good man were hanging out,
Speaker 4: party together, and somewhere along the line, you know, we
Speaker 4: just started friction. And I just didn't understand it because
Speaker 4: we were constantly, you know, banging out songs. You know,
Speaker 4: we were in the studio all the time, and if
Speaker 4: we were in the studio, we were on the road,
Speaker 4: and most of those albums we were actually touring and
Speaker 4: would come home off the road and go right to
Speaker 4: the studio, and we, I think for almost a decade,
Speaker 4: we never had a vacation, you know, So I didn't
Speaker 4: understand what the success what happened. I tend to believe
Speaker 4: that more of the focus became on me than the group,
Speaker 4: and and I used to tell them, I said, listen, man,
Speaker 4: who's in the studio with you, who's on the stage
Speaker 4: with you. These people are going to say whatever they
Speaker 4: you know, they want, and any band, they usually gravitate
Speaker 4: to the lead singer no matter, you know, if you
Speaker 4: had the Stone, people know Mick Jacket or Genesis, they
Speaker 4: know you know Phil, you know. So it's not put
Speaker 4: you down or anything like that. It's just the way
Speaker 4: things are. Because I was never into that mindset or
Speaker 4: just here I said, man, listen, if it wasn't for
Speaker 4: this guy being in the room, this wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 5: And I never forget that.
Speaker 3: Were you singing lead vocals on every song on every
Speaker 3: album as soon as you started on.
Speaker 4: Leadies, yes yeah, But then on it was all yeah,
Speaker 4: and in the shows and the shows yes well. And
Speaker 4: we didn't have like background singers either, so we had
Speaker 4: like horn players singing background and that was sometimes, you know,
Speaker 4: a bit more stressful for me because I would have
Speaker 4: to you know, i'm m singing, singing highs and lows,
Speaker 4: singing background dancing and entertaining, and it started wearing me
Speaker 4: out of little bit. You know.
Speaker 2: Later on for me, this is a rare chance to
Speaker 2: find out, like what my life would have been, like,
Speaker 2: you know, had I been born maybe twenty years earlier.
Speaker 2: Like if me and my best friend in high school
Speaker 2: still say we started a group in seventy nine instead
Speaker 2: of ninety three, then this is about as close as
Speaker 2: I'm going to get to. Hmmm. I wonder what it
Speaker 2: happened if the roots came out like fifteen years earlier.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, was it a strict environment when you
Speaker 2: entered the group?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Was there rules it here too?
Speaker 4: Nothing was said. The only thing when we were my
Speaker 4: first first show I did was till we stopped to
Speaker 4: get stuff to eat, and they were trying to convince
Speaker 4: me not to eat pork because they were only cool,
Speaker 4: uh and police from most of the people thought the
Speaker 4: whole band was, but it was only the two of them,
Speaker 4: and that actually, you know, I didn't mind that. Give
Speaker 4: up bacon then okay, it's food. So but as far
Speaker 4: as like musically they're like through osmosis so to speak,
Speaker 4: it premeated you, you know, and my respect for what
Speaker 4: they did musically, I respected that greatly. So I didn't
Speaker 4: really want to, you know, upset the cart, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. I was kind of like fit in,
Speaker 4: and I think maybe Calice felt that I had that
Speaker 4: type of spirit too, like them, because after a while
Speaker 4: it was almost like we had so much in common.
Speaker 4: Like they moved their parents moved them from Youngstown for Hi,
Speaker 4: you know, for a better life in Jersey, and my
Speaker 4: mother moved us from South Carolina for a better life
Speaker 4: in Jersey. So there was things that we didn't even
Speaker 4: have to discuss. That was just part of our DNA,
Speaker 4: you know. That made it easy when.
Speaker 2: You're tracking your vocals, what's the particular environment that you're
Speaker 2: used to, Like, is it like a whole crowd of
Speaker 2: them there watching or is it just like do you
Speaker 2: prefer to be alone and just with Calice or just
Speaker 2: someone one person or a mirror.
Speaker 4: And in the beginning, I was so green that I
Speaker 4: had to I wasn't accustomed to singing with headphones.
Speaker 5: Somebody would just say listen, just put one behind your ear.
Speaker 4: And that was kind of weird too, you know, because
Speaker 4: I'm listening to the room and everything. So I had
Speaker 4: I had had to really make adjustments, and it caused
Speaker 4: me to sing fragments like like like part of phrase
Speaker 4: things like that, you know, you know you sing ladies tonight,
Speaker 4: you know, girl y'all got one, you know, then we
Speaker 4: have to go back go yah, you know, do it
Speaker 4: over again instead of singing through. And but I found
Speaker 4: out that the more that I studied the song and
Speaker 4: I knew it lyrically, then I could ingest the point
Speaker 4: of the song and that made it a lot freer
Speaker 4: for me. But I didn't really care if who was
Speaker 4: in the studio because I didn't really see them anyway.
Speaker 4: I would mostly see Dio and like Jim Bonafon and
Speaker 4: maybe somebody who was in the corner. But the concentration
Speaker 4: was just trying to do the best performance. I really
Speaker 4: wasn't worried about the people got it.
Speaker 2: I'm one of those music kids that never gravitates towards
Speaker 2: the single. And that's because, you know, in Philly before
Speaker 2: kind of in nineteen ninety seven, bill was signed in
Speaker 2: which like radio conglomerates could pre program all their own music.
Speaker 2: You know, Black radio pretty much let their DJs be
Speaker 2: the taste maker, and you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and DJs had names, you know, right.
Speaker 2: So that said cats like Doug Henderson, doctor Perry Johnson,
Speaker 2: like all the Philly cats spinning a das.
Speaker 1: You know, it's weird.
Speaker 2: They played Jones versus Jones.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I know more.
Speaker 2: Than like Jones versus Jones? Was that even a single?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: I recently found out, maybe like four five years ago
Speaker 2: that Stevie's Isn't She Lovely? Was never a single?
Speaker 4: What that wasn't a single?
Speaker 2: Never a single? Well, but Barry had a genius plan.
Speaker 2: He basically wanted to guarantee a number one debut. So
Speaker 2: it was sort of like she use what you want
Speaker 2: to play off the album and just play it. Most
Speaker 2: people gravitated towards Isn't She Lovely? But then weird enough,
Speaker 2: like almost nine months later, they'll officially release I wish Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: like a single, but it's like July of seventy seven.
Speaker 4: Like that was a great thing about DJs though, because
Speaker 4: you know, before even though what was that the the
Speaker 4: Late Night Von Harper and all of them, right, Frankie
Speaker 4: Crocker and them, they would they would play singles off albums,
Speaker 4: and that also helped us spread out. So like you,
Speaker 4: I would find songs and say, oh man, they did
Speaker 4: just need to a single, you know, right, And so
Speaker 4: that was that was the power. Man. That was a
Speaker 4: beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: When when something special first came out they weren't playing
Speaker 2: take My Heart, even though I know there was the
Speaker 2: first single, right they was Billy owned Stepping Out. Stepping
Speaker 2: Out should have been the first single. We weren't mad
Speaker 2: at to get down on it that that sufficed. But
Speaker 2: you know, back when DJ's would get promos of the
Speaker 2: albums three months ahead of.
Speaker 4: Time, Yeah, why do you think that's so? Why watch
Speaker 4: Stepping Out? Was that because of the party that the
Speaker 4: stepping parties they had.
Speaker 2: I'm you know, I'm in added all the keys to it.
Speaker 2: You're singing in a smooth falsetto. As a DJ. I
Speaker 2: was like, well, you know, okay, so the group that
Speaker 2: did this all the time was and I kind of
Speaker 2: really ridiculed him for this, but this is also how
Speaker 2: I live.
Speaker 1: At the Tonight show.
Speaker 2: You play any bark song for me now, and I'll
Speaker 2: tell you the forty five of what they were originally playing.
Speaker 4: It was like, all right, color over it, right.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, listen is Ruben scub and mix this up
Speaker 2: and yeah, like shine is earthwinding fires on your face
Speaker 2: or right right right, shaking rumps to the funks, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, like very derivat But in my
Speaker 2: mind I was like I was like, I bet you
Speaker 2: stepping out started as a quasi don't stop to get
Speaker 2: enough groove.
Speaker 5: I don't know, but it's possible.
Speaker 1: Answer this for me.
Speaker 2: What is the division of labor when you guys are
Speaker 2: recording in the studio, Like are you all together trying
Speaker 2: to jam something out or is it like here's your part,
Speaker 2: here's your part, here's your part, and then you write
Speaker 2: the song later.
Speaker 4: It was all of that. Sometime we would be playing together,
Speaker 4: but most of the time after Ladies' night, people would
Speaker 4: bringing bits and pieces, like like when Chale we did Joanna.
Speaker 4: Charles came in. It was just a stroke guitar and
Speaker 4: he wanted to dedicate it to his mother and we
Speaker 4: were sitting there and said, okay.
Speaker 5: Dear mom, that's what he called it.
Speaker 4: We say, well, well what else? Man? No, And it
Speaker 4: wasn't really much going on. And I think George was
Speaker 4: the one that said, let's let's let's just take.
Speaker 5: A name Joanna Nobody. It wasn't a Joanna.
Speaker 4: We knew. He just grabbed a name and it sang
Speaker 4: really well and we never changed it. For example, who
Speaker 4: directed that video, I don't know who was that We
Speaker 4: shot that acting up in north Bergen on the first
Speaker 4: part and then over in Lynnhurst, New Jersey.
Speaker 5: At the diner.
Speaker 4: I forget who who actually shot that though that was
Speaker 4: a lot of.
Speaker 2: Fun in retrospect, how Burdisom was celebration because this wasn't
Speaker 2: like at the rate where you released this song. Do
Speaker 2: you realize that this song is not just a hit
Speaker 2: song like that. This song is never ever going to die,
Speaker 2: ever ever, ever ever going to die.
Speaker 4: It's funny you say that because I don't know if
Speaker 4: you had you had a long talk with police, But
Speaker 4: I don't think police liked the guitar riff. Really, there
Speaker 4: was a part that he didn't like too much because
Speaker 4: we came off the road and it was it was
Speaker 4: a part that was done. I think it was a
Speaker 4: guitar riff and he was really pissed off about that.
Speaker 4: We used to take the cassettes home to study, and
Speaker 4: this is the truth.
Speaker 5: I played it for my mother.
Speaker 4: That's what you think about that.
Speaker 5: She said, you're going to sing that for the rest
Speaker 5: of your life. Really, i Q I'm telling you, bro.
Speaker 4: She was always like that. She was intuitive, but with
Speaker 4: certain things. You know, she said, you're going to sing
Speaker 4: that for the rest of your life and here we are.
Speaker 4: That's why that was enough for me, but we didn't
Speaker 4: know as a group though.
Speaker 2: That song is still in my DJ playlist, but now
Speaker 2: it has a new meaning because I played the Spanish version.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and.
Speaker 2: When people like, you know, when people were playing the
Speaker 2: hook like I'll eq, it's such that they think they're
Speaker 2: in the regular version, and then when I put the
Speaker 2: Spanish version on, it's always the moments where they stop
Speaker 2: and they look at me and it's like they got
Speaker 2: processed for.
Speaker 4: Four seconds right right, and then.
Speaker 2: Like they're really like it almost energizes the more that
Speaker 2: you guys would have been so considerate. I mean Motown
Speaker 2: used to do that all the time. But whatever burdens some.
Speaker 4: To Yeah, that was a big thing to do, but
Speaker 4: we were really huge in South America. They and that
Speaker 4: was the labels idea. They said, listen, man, you got
Speaker 4: a huge following to South America. Let's try the Spanish version.
Speaker 4: And Diodado actually wrote out the lyrics for me.
Speaker 1: How did you guys hook up with Dia Datto?
Speaker 4: I don't know how he came into play, except that
Speaker 4: I think he was working at House of Music. Was
Speaker 4: a John Trope if I'm not mistaken, and gave in
Speaker 4: them talk to him about you know, producing cool in
Speaker 4: the gang. That was before I came, so I don't
Speaker 4: really know that entire story.
Speaker 3: What was your daughter from your perspective bringing to the production,
Speaker 3: to the making of the music or the arrangements or
Speaker 3: anything like that.
Speaker 4: Well, the most I had heard, you know, he was
Speaker 4: this unbelievable arranger. I didn't know much about him, and
Speaker 4: so I just started looking them up, you know, and
Speaker 4: I think he had Did he have two thousand and
Speaker 4: one space honesty? Yeah, yeah at that time, but beyond
Speaker 4: But more so than that, I just heard that his
Speaker 4: collection of and respect that he had as an arranger
Speaker 4: was pretty pretty widespread. Everybody that spoke of him spoke
Speaker 4: very highly of him. So when he would talk to
Speaker 4: us about music, it wasn't so much telling us this
Speaker 4: is that I'm going to put this major chord here
Speaker 4: and this minor. It wasn't that, it was just he
Speaker 4: would do it, and he would always do.
Speaker 5: It with a smile, with his little cigarette in his mouth.
Speaker 4: You know, his piece and you know, an unassuming guy.
Speaker 4: But when he brought the orchestra in to do the
Speaker 4: streaming work, that's when I opened my mind again and
Speaker 4: saw him, they you know, they greeted him as doctor,
Speaker 4: and I said yes, And it actually flipped me back
Speaker 4: to when I was in high school or what was it,
Speaker 4: maybe grade school when my my music teacher took us
Speaker 4: to see how the West was Won in New York.
Speaker 4: The movie but it was a screenplay, and I mean
Speaker 4: screen was on a movie was on screen, but there
Speaker 4: was a real orchestra. And that was my first time
Speaker 4: seeing an orchestra. So when I saw dal do that,
Speaker 4: you know, I had become accustomed to first be quiet
Speaker 4: and listen and understand how parts work together.
Speaker 3: I was always curious what he was bringing to that
Speaker 3: the recipe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was I again, I'm all ears man and
Speaker 4: just bringing it all in. And I think that his
Speaker 4: the key thing was just his arrangements.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Was he playing any of the keyboards?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, sometimes he did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But he also brought in a couple of people,
Speaker 4: this guy named Adam on Too Hot. If you listen
Speaker 4: to Too Hot real close, there's a Fender Rods in
Speaker 4: the back besides the whole courts that are playing, and
Speaker 4: it's it's making these certain movements that each time I
Speaker 4: I have a band keyboards try to play it, they
Speaker 4: usually uh miss that because the movements have all these
Speaker 4: overtones going, you know, for those roads had that beautiful
Speaker 4: reverb bottom you know. So, but yeah, he was, he's
Speaker 4: he's a master man, he's he's a treasurer. Now. I
Speaker 4: think if he had met him, or the Groove had
Speaker 4: met him, we wouldn't have all these hits.
Speaker 2: I would probably say that something special is that's sentimental
Speaker 2: to me, because you know, I got that for Christmas.
Speaker 2: It was Christmas. Christmas of eighty one.
Speaker 1: Was a special Christmas one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Of your canon, which album do you feel is your
Speaker 2: best performance and of your song catalog?
Speaker 3: How are you going to steal my question like this
Speaker 3: mister quest left take it away? Well, no, no, because
Speaker 3: actually they are coming from you because it's kind of like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of you're not supposed to ask
Speaker 3: this question really, you know, like because they're all in
Speaker 3: your baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's your favorite kid?
Speaker 4: You like? Yeah, right, exactly. But I'll say the album wise,
Speaker 4: it would be Emergency Okay, wow, Emergency album. But I
Speaker 4: think that.
Speaker 2: Was also the biggest selling correct.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, biggest self.
Speaker 4: But I still say, you know too Hot has something
Speaker 4: that's romantic that because when I listen to it, you know,
Speaker 4: I could listen and I remember how again I was
Speaker 4: still learning things, and I could hear vocal things that
Speaker 4: I said.
Speaker 5: Would do that now, you know, or things that, being more.
Speaker 4: Mature and able to do more with my voice now
Speaker 4: things I would have tried something a little different. But
Speaker 4: I think too Hot as a song, but Emergency as
Speaker 4: the album.
Speaker 2: Wait, I don't know if I got the answer. Did
Speaker 2: Celebration become burdensome at all?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Did it get too big for you? Do you feel
Speaker 2: like it was ridiculed too much? Was it too successful?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: Not for me, Like this song took you places that
Speaker 2: I don't think your other contemporaries like, they weren't your contemporaries.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like BT Express or Mass Production or hell
Speaker 2: even Earth Wind and Fire kind of stalled at the
Speaker 2: gate of the early eighties, and you guys were able
Speaker 2: to go places that they weren't able to ago.
Speaker 4: It was electric man, because again, you know, you know,
Speaker 4: you write songs and when you finish, you just feel
Speaker 4: good about it. You don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 4: with it. You know, you just put your heart and
Speaker 4: soul into it. And that's basically what we did. And
Speaker 4: there was the pieces. We had a mechanic over here.
Speaker 4: One got twisted and knob there, this guy turned that
Speaker 4: one just did that, and we put it together and
Speaker 4: the label said, I think we got something.
Speaker 5: But you know, if the machine isn't.
Speaker 4: There a lot of songs that may have been a
Speaker 4: celebration level, you know, don't make it. We had everything,
Speaker 4: everything was lined up for us, you know, and with
Speaker 4: me becoming more of a face and a sound that
Speaker 4: was becoming familiar, they kind of went with that, you know,
Speaker 4: and even the yahoos and all that stuff. And you know,
Speaker 4: I always tell that joke, you're not you very rarely
Speaker 4: hear like a black group say Yahoo.
Speaker 5: You know, that's.
Speaker 4: Usually doubt for the country groups, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: But it was again, you know, you got the low voice.
Speaker 4: It's a solo graces, you know, so.
Speaker 2: Something for everybody to sing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and you just sing along. And we talked
Speaker 4: about the Bob mitchfih you're talking about. You know, the
Speaker 4: worst thing is when you hear them playing the wrong inversion.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've been pretty to every version of celebration
Speaker 2: knowing the man.
Speaker 4: I'm telling you, man, and the worst when they tried
Speaker 4: to get me to come up and sing, no, I
Speaker 4: have too many drinks already, so.
Speaker 2: Oh cool game saying at our hostell Yah, yeah exactly,
Speaker 2: Jay Tay, you come down, don't about so if you
Speaker 2: don't want to answer, you don't have to answer.
Speaker 4: Go go to it.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: What were the hedonistic eighties?
Speaker 4: Like girls, girls, girls, some drugs? All right, but we
Speaker 4: did we didn't really really get into that. It was
Speaker 4: just again, the the success became big within a year
Speaker 4: to two year period that it consume us in a
Speaker 4: way that we did. I don't think that the group
Speaker 4: knew how to be how to receive it in that way,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: So for you to come in at seventy nine and
Speaker 2: you're pretty much coming into a situation one you know
Speaker 2: that bring success and you're kind of the reason for
Speaker 2: that success. Yeah, But I always wanted to know for
Speaker 2: the band members that were there before nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: before the label deals and all that stuff, or Spike
Speaker 2: for DT for Cool, for Calice, for George, what is
Speaker 2: success for them?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: I mean, you guys are the only Americans besides Jody
Speaker 2: Wattley at do they know it's Christmas? Right, But you
Speaker 2: guys are at a crazy level of notariety. So how
Speaker 2: are they adjusting to this? If you can speak for them.
Speaker 4: I really can't. But all I know is that we
Speaker 4: all shared and everything equally. It wasn't like at a
Speaker 4: certain point, you know, when we were at one time
Speaker 4: flying coach, you know what I mean, then you're flying
Speaker 4: first class full you know, when attensions started happening. I
Speaker 4: started having my own car. Stuff like that happened. But
Speaker 4: when we hit the stage, it was about let's go
Speaker 4: take this, let's put the flag down, you know, and
Speaker 4: and all of this stuff really helped me segue into
Speaker 4: my solo career, right.
Speaker 5: It was. It was a really proven ground.
Speaker 4: But I can't really speak to how they received it,
Speaker 4: whether they were overjoyed, because they never said to me,
Speaker 4: you know, don't forget this is the group, you know,
Speaker 4: or don't think you're too big, and stuff like that
Speaker 4: that came from outside, you know, And it was time
Speaker 4: for me to make my exit. It had reached a
Speaker 4: height where that type of tension had gotten too much
Speaker 4: and I didn't think that they had my back anymore.
Speaker 4: And we did a show it and I forget it.
Speaker 4: New Year's done, Atlantic City, and I had flu and
Speaker 4: I was really, really sick. And of course back then,
Speaker 4: I was about one point fifty, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: soaking wet, and we had been touring and it was
Speaker 4: the end of the year, and you know, New Year's
Speaker 4: was always big Moneay night, and I was sick, but
Speaker 4: I refused not to perform. And I went out there
Speaker 4: and sound voices half gone, and I doing cherish and
Speaker 4: I closed. I closed my eyes, and when I tried
Speaker 4: to open them, all I saw was red. No, not
Speaker 4: an object, just a wall of red, like just red.
Speaker 4: And I froze and I opened my eyes again and
Speaker 4: it came open, but then it went red again, and
Speaker 4: I got scared to death, man, and I was able
Speaker 4: to walk backstage, and poor, I think poor. I pulled
Speaker 4: cool off of somebody. I said, listen, play play jungle Boy.
Speaker 4: Holly was swinging something. Let me go back here and
Speaker 4: get myself together. And when I couldn't, I had to
Speaker 4: come back out. And I left the stage that particular night.
Speaker 4: I'm back there and all my family was at the audience.
Speaker 4: You know, they ran backstage. People even fans were coming
Speaker 4: back saying you know what's wrong with what happened. They
Speaker 4: knew something was wrong because I've never been like this
Speaker 4: and I'm sitting in my room and none of the
Speaker 4: guys came over to see how I was doing, except
Speaker 4: one guy, Curtis that he told them, he say, God,
Speaker 4: didn't you see this guy sick? You know he can't
Speaker 4: do it. And that part hurt me more because I
Speaker 4: felt that their interest was more worrying about making.
Speaker 2: The money that brand.
Speaker 4: A guy who've been here since the label was gonna
Speaker 4: was going to drop you guys in the seventies and
Speaker 4: we got together and it was never I never claimed
Speaker 4: it was just me, you know, never had that attitude.
Speaker 4: But to get to this point and you don't even
Speaker 4: come back to check on a guy, I said, that's
Speaker 4: it and I.
Speaker 5: And I left.
Speaker 2: That's how you left the group.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that night, I called my family and I said,
Speaker 4: I got it.
Speaker 5: I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 4: So it was it was obviously back to your question
Speaker 4: that they must have felt something along the way, more
Speaker 4: than what I felt of them, because I never looked
Speaker 4: at them any other way except what we did. And uh,
Speaker 4: but that was that was that was a rough time
Speaker 4: because I was really really sick. But I never let on.
Speaker 4: And you know I've had that many times over the years.
Speaker 4: I was not well and I still did shows, you know,
Speaker 4: because I knew I had more responsibility just myself. You know,
Speaker 4: they had families, you know, themselves. We had records to
Speaker 4: break and you know, sacrifice, man, you know, you can
Speaker 4: do this. And many times I just go back to
Speaker 4: my room and you know, taking Mrror and Gen sing
Speaker 4: and you know, all these different things. And I mean
Speaker 4: a cliff for Adams, you know, he would he was
Speaker 4: into all of that and he would be me Golden
Speaker 4: seal and I'm not, you know, trying to get right.
Speaker 4: So but I never let all. Hey man, I can't
Speaker 4: sing the night. You know. Sometime, like when we started
Speaker 4: to sing a stepping Out, it was difficult because it
Speaker 4: was a falsetto and you know, sometimes that click wouldn't
Speaker 4: happen and it would take like a few songs to
Speaker 4: get there, so we'd have to like take that out
Speaker 4: of the set. But most of the time, you know,
Speaker 4: you can walk your way through it, you know. But
Speaker 4: but that was it, man. But again, what I got into,
Speaker 4: you know, my solo solo dealing, you know, my first
Speaker 4: I met with Gerald Busby, and Jerreld said.
Speaker 5: Listen, man, I don't think you need to be at motow.
Speaker 5: You need to go talk to Clive.
Speaker 4: And and I remember sitting with Clive and Clive played
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 5: You don't believe that that's what friends are for.
Speaker 4: In his office, you know, with Luther and Stevie and
Speaker 4: and and at that time I thought maybe he felt
Speaker 4: that maybe I should be one.
Speaker 5: That was singing that could do that and make a
Speaker 5: long story short.
Speaker 4: M c A offered me more money, so I ended
Speaker 4: up signing with MCA over.
Speaker 2: There well the Master of the Game album correct.
Speaker 5: Master the Game.
Speaker 4: I was the first, yeah master the game and uh,
Speaker 4: you know working with little Silas over there, the A
Speaker 4: and R.
Speaker 2: I hear a lot about him, but his name always
Speaker 2: comes up when it's like new edition related stories or whatever.
Speaker 2: But what was it like being on your own and
Speaker 2: only having yourself to answer to?
Speaker 4: It was a little frightening, I was must say, go
Speaker 4: frightening because you know I was so used to from
Speaker 4: you know, being a young teenager with the band. You know,
Speaker 4: like I said, Electro five, you know the street dance
Speaker 4: of these bands, file at Soul, you know, moved the gang.
Speaker 4: It was always like.
Speaker 5: A group of collection, you know.
Speaker 4: And when I got out there, I realized that I
Speaker 4: didn't know as much as I needed to know about
Speaker 4: how to really structure songs like complete, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. I could do parts and things like that,
Speaker 4: but and lyrics, but I didn't claim to be a pianist,
Speaker 4: like a skill musician and nothing like this. But I
Speaker 4: could anything I hear, I can write. I've always had that,
Speaker 4: you know. And when I got with MCA, I realized
Speaker 4: that they wanted me to do something like I had
Speaker 4: done before with cooling them, and I was already beyond that,
Speaker 4: you know. I wanted to be more of a eclectic
Speaker 4: artist and bring in the styles that I loved, you know,
Speaker 4: from rock and all these different things. And so I
Speaker 4: hoped it was had named Dennis mccowski.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: He introduced me to James Ingram Ta Vega, Rose Stone,
Speaker 4: Phil Perry, James, you know, Jeff Picaro, Pelino da Costa,
Speaker 4: and I was like, Okay, this is this. I love this,
Speaker 4: this this collection right here. And that's when I started
Speaker 4: working on Massive Game and plus publishers were sending me
Speaker 4: songs uh to uh to choose from, you know, and
Speaker 4: that kind of helped me a lot. But Louell, he
Speaker 4: was there the whole time trying to help me get
Speaker 4: a hit record, you know, because again I got paid
Speaker 4: well and the record company was just kind of letting
Speaker 4: me do what I wanted to do. And uh, you know,
Speaker 4: the first single, I still think they picked the wrong song.
Speaker 5: They picked the other songs.
Speaker 4: Sister Rosa and I did a video with Michael Peters,
Speaker 4: you know who did Thriller, you know, with Michael and
Speaker 4: all that stuff, and we went did the whole video
Speaker 4: and everything like this, but they didn't jump on the
Speaker 4: record because I still think they should have chosen Romancia
Speaker 4: or some other yeah, yeah, you know, And uh so
Speaker 4: that kind of a little bit of taste there, and
Speaker 4: you know, people were expecting j T the song. You know,
Speaker 4: it ain't no ladies night, you know, when are you
Speaker 4: gonna do that? And I was doing my interviews, I'd
Speaker 4: tell everybody, I said, well I did that, and my
Speaker 4: mind isn't there now.
Speaker 5: And that's when I think Bobby Brown hit a.
Speaker 4: New audition, right and by Bobby was blowing the doors out,
Speaker 4: you know, right there, and they said, well won't you
Speaker 4: give me something like that.
Speaker 5: And I was like, I.
Speaker 4: Said, then you talked to Bobby and he's like, well man,
Speaker 4: we tried to be like what you what you did?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: So how you guys telling me to do something like that?
Speaker 4: So it started that. That's when the mill started turning
Speaker 4: and we knew we had to you know, kind of
Speaker 4: go back at it, you know. And and even with
Speaker 4: James Ingra and all these guys on, they still didn't
Speaker 4: you know, promoted the right way.
Speaker 2: Was it hard adjusting in an environment more conducive to
Speaker 2: like New Jack swing than say, the kind of musicianship
Speaker 2: that you were used to?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: Was it? What does it mean to be faced with
Speaker 2: a pivot? You know instead of a band, you might
Speaker 2: have to have two dancers with you.
Speaker 4: That was fun I did. I did in fact, actually
Speaker 4: that Teddy, Yeah, that Teddy Teddy actually did a song
Speaker 4: you know, eight days for me.
Speaker 5: So I had those dancers.
Speaker 4: But it was again, it wasn't it was music, man,
Speaker 4: It wasn't. This is not rocket science here. You know,
Speaker 4: it's like, what do you feel? You know? I'm still
Speaker 4: that same way today, you know, like I write every
Speaker 4: day and it's always something that you know, I'm sure
Speaker 4: when I finished with you, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 4: write something about this experience. So wow, I said, let's
Speaker 4: go at it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Hey, in the history of you being a professional singer,
Speaker 2: as anyone ever yelled fire and rein to you from
Speaker 2: the audience, you did steal my question, I was.
Speaker 3: I was honestly wondering about that today about look at
Speaker 3: his victory pose. That's great.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: I used to sort of study the publishing stuff in
Speaker 3: credits and in like sort of books, and I was
Speaker 3: always wondering if if the publishing ever got crossed between
Speaker 3: you guys, you know, and anything.
Speaker 4: Not the money At that time, he was making big
Speaker 4: money and we weren't. But but I used to when
Speaker 4: I first went solo, the publishers got things mixed up.
Speaker 4: In fact, at the at the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 4: of Fame, he came over to my room and I'm
Speaker 4: in the dressing room, and he came over to meet me.
Speaker 5: He said, I always wanted to beat you.
Speaker 2: I said, really, and no, that was the first time
Speaker 2: y'all met.
Speaker 4: That's the first time we met, right.
Speaker 2: I wish I could have been there for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, And he came over and we hugged each
Speaker 4: other and we share some you know, conversation, and I
Speaker 4: told him that story. I said, I was getting these
Speaker 4: like kind of country songs, man, and you know, my
Speaker 4: manager said, wait a minute, I think this supposed to
Speaker 4: be for the other James Taylor. So we had a
Speaker 4: laugh and I said, I want to do something with you,
Speaker 4: and he said, let's do that. You know, so that
Speaker 4: might happen in the near future.
Speaker 2: Voices I approve of that. Do you know Marvin ever
Speaker 2: heard You're not to him on? Take my heart if
Speaker 2: you want it.
Speaker 4: I don't know, man, but I've been tell you because
Speaker 4: you know I'm a big Marvin fan as well. But
Speaker 4: we were doing the that's when I was still with Cool.
Speaker 4: We did the rain I think the Rainbow Room or
Speaker 4: the Rainbow Theater in London, and we're on stage because
Speaker 4: I don't know what song we were singing, and I
Speaker 4: looked to my left over in the corner and Marvin
Speaker 4: is standing in the way man, almost like yeah, he
Speaker 4: was living there, right, So of course I had to
Speaker 4: bring him on. And just walking on stage place with berserk,
Speaker 4: and you know, he walked off and we were taking
Speaker 4: a picture to the other look, he's looking over at
Speaker 4: me like this, you know, looking down on me. He said,
Speaker 4: j T.
Speaker 5: You know I can slam dunk you.
Speaker 4: You know that, right, I said, bro, I can play
Speaker 4: ball too, but let's do this. We never got to play,
Speaker 4: but he was. He was amazing. Man. I would have
Speaker 4: loved to just take the ball to him a little
Speaker 4: bit because he was a tall he was kind of
Speaker 4: a tall guy. It would have been tough. But yeah,
Speaker 4: but no, I don't know if he ever did.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite as yours.
Speaker 4: Like I was actually talking to George because George wrote
Speaker 4: the song, and he was like I said, like Marvin,
Speaker 4: huh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly. You know, there was a time period in
Speaker 2: which videos were not necessary but could be an option
Speaker 2: to help you sell a little more if you were
Speaker 2: trying to get your stuff played on like Top of
Speaker 2: the Pops or you know, if you couldn't get to
Speaker 2: Europe in time. What was the video process like, because
Speaker 2: even that video for Misled, which I'll never understand, like
Speaker 2: are you just showing up? And like okay, it's a
Speaker 2: chase scene with an Indiana Jones and a bunch of
Speaker 2: white peoples dancing around me, like yeah, right, well, you.
Speaker 4: Know, you know, of course I've always been into film,
Speaker 4: you know, and like even right now, you know my
Speaker 4: future project that I'm working on now, I'll tell you
Speaker 4: about that in a minute. But okay, because I was
Speaker 4: in the film earlier in my life, I was able
Speaker 4: to when videos came along, I could process everything that's
Speaker 4: hot because most of our songs was like a storyboard.
Speaker 4: And you mentioned Misled. It was about you know, it
Speaker 4: was basically Coalice's life story. Part of his life story,
Speaker 4: and my my input, and it was the metaphor of
Speaker 4: the White Dancer was like she was like the cocaine
Speaker 4: that people were taking, you know, misleading, looking beautiful and
Speaker 4: everything and taking you down that rabbit hole, you know.
Speaker 4: And my nephew who played me as a young kid, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that was my nephew. Yeah, you know. And so to
Speaker 4: bring that part in, that was theatrical and the special effects.
Speaker 4: So and then the one thing that happened on that
Speaker 4: video was that we said how are we going to
Speaker 4: get the band in? And I wrote most of that
Speaker 4: concept and I said, well, you guys are going to
Speaker 4: be you know, incognito as well. And it's a dream state.
Speaker 4: So that's why you know that happened, and when we
Speaker 4: came at the end and they were like j T,
Speaker 4: we got to go, man, we got a gig to do.
Speaker 4: They were in the dream and that's when they turned around.
Speaker 4: So my Michael definitely influenced that as far as the
Speaker 4: video because remember MTV wasn't playing us, and Michael turned
Speaker 4: that around. So that's when the whole video thing for
Speaker 4: black artists started kicking in. And we knew that Michael
Speaker 4: had raised the bar, So we had to raise the
Speaker 4: bar because if you remember, on most of the charts,
Speaker 4: if we knew Michael was coming, we had to get
Speaker 4: our position first, you know, because came. You know, we're
Speaker 4: gonna knock you out a number one, but being there
Speaker 4: in the top five or top ten, that means in
Speaker 4: the stores your music was right there along inside his
Speaker 4: and it would help your sales. Yeah, all of that
Speaker 4: the video world actually helped me with the project I'm
Speaker 4: doing now and what my future is gonna be?
Speaker 2: Got it? At the time, do you guys get invited
Speaker 2: to do band aid? Like, do you have any ankling
Speaker 2: of the clue what you guys walked into?
Speaker 4: No, because we were on tour again.
Speaker 1: I just had a Night off in London.
Speaker 4: We were actually just I don't know if we I
Speaker 4: think we did having that off. But the thing that
Speaker 4: that bothered me was that they had mentioned, i think
Speaker 4: on the news or something that you know, it was
Speaker 4: all of these big stars there and when we got
Speaker 4: there there was no cameras and I remember telling DT,
Speaker 4: I said, you know it with the press man and
Speaker 4: all people telling about the press and we walked in.
Speaker 4: No one said, you know, okay, j T. You're going
Speaker 4: to be doing this and it's going to be doing that.
Speaker 4: We kind of just walked in the studio and there
Speaker 4: was everybody was just sitting around the room and and
Speaker 4: Phil Collins and and Geldolf and they were behind the
Speaker 4: board and they just kind of waved and you know,
Speaker 4: and later on I thought somebody mentioned that they wanted
Speaker 4: me to do the part that watch a Night thank God,
Speaker 4: and I didn't. And I'm glad they didn't ask me,
Speaker 4: because I would have never done that bear line, your
Speaker 4: Botto's line. Thank God it's you, it's them instead of you.
Speaker 4: I said, well, no, I would have never sang that anyway,
Speaker 4: because that's just a little too much for me, you know.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't thank God, it's you. You know, that's not
Speaker 4: my vibe, you know what I mean. But yeah, it
Speaker 4: was awesome, man, But we still didn't know how it
Speaker 4: was going to come out. I just enjoyed, you know,
Speaker 4: meet and you know, sting and filled, but it was
Speaker 4: it was intense. It was like no time to really
Speaker 4: hang out and talk about it. And when they put
Speaker 4: us all on the stands together, it was just like, Okay,
Speaker 4: this is what we're going to sing. We learned the
Speaker 4: song and we went through the process.
Speaker 2: For you, what was the best, like when you think
Speaker 2: of like the good times or whatever, like places you played,
Speaker 2: or even people you met or people that you never
Speaker 2: thought you meet, what's a career highlight for you of
Speaker 2: something like like, wow, I can't believe this happened.
Speaker 6: There's many, but I think going to Africa for the
Speaker 6: first time was monumental because I remember when we were
Speaker 6: at House of Music once and this is doing a
Speaker 6: part time and.
Speaker 4: This agent came to the studio and asked us to play.
Speaker 4: And that's when everybody was refusing to place some city.
Speaker 4: It was part of our protests and I remember looking
Speaker 4: at this guy almost tearing up that how could he
Speaker 4: have the nerve to come here and ask us to
Speaker 4: perform there, knowing the atrocities that were going on, right
Speaker 4: And I remember we got a silver record I think
Speaker 4: from South Africa, and when we got it, I said,
Speaker 4: I refuse to hang this up in my house until
Speaker 4: Mandela is freed, and I put it in the closet,
Speaker 4: and when he was freed, I took it out and
Speaker 4: celebrated that. But I think going to Liberia and then
Speaker 4: learning about the slave quarters and where our people were
Speaker 4: brought from the shores and things like that, the Ivory
Speaker 4: Coast up and down, you know, And I always felt
Speaker 4: like I didn't want to take money out of there
Speaker 4: like like I because it wasn't really built up as
Speaker 4: much like Ghana right like it is now, you know.
Speaker 4: And I just didn't understand what I understood. But I
Speaker 4: didn't feel good about doing a concert and taking money
Speaker 4: from a place that we should have just left it there,
Speaker 4: you know. But I think Africa was it's still to
Speaker 4: this day, the feeling I get that touches my heart
Speaker 4: most one.
Speaker 2: Congratulations on getting in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised or were you actively hoping for this?
Speaker 4: Well? You know, I tell the story. I said, it's
Speaker 4: when I think back to being at thirteen, you never
Speaker 4: think about it. You never think about any accolades, at
Speaker 4: least I did. My whole thing was just a love
Speaker 4: for music. Man. And you know, when they told us
Speaker 4: about the rock, of course, I called all my family
Speaker 4: and I think they announced it on the American Idol
Speaker 4: or something like that, and we were all sitting around
Speaker 4: watching waiting for it to come on when they said bam,
Speaker 4: cool in the Gang. My phone jumping off the hook,
Speaker 4: people talking about how can I get there? I want
Speaker 4: to come. We had a lot of family there, but
Speaker 4: it was just a culmination of all of the years
Speaker 4: of the sweat, being away from my family, having my
Speaker 4: family there, enjoying some of it, coming into cooling the gang,
Speaker 4: and then leaving the group. And also, you know, I
Speaker 4: brought everything from Hackensack High School to you know, the
Speaker 4: bands I was in too, you know, Jersey City. Anybody
Speaker 4: that I met along the way were a part of it.
Speaker 4: And that's including you, your group, the Philly Sound, Motown Sound,
Speaker 4: you know anything. It was like I was. It was
Speaker 4: like I was bringing all of you with me, you know.
Speaker 4: And then of course you know, to find out that
Speaker 4: you were going to be with me. I'm like, oh man,
Speaker 4: this is too good to be true, you know. So
Speaker 4: you know when I walked up and met you, you know,
Speaker 4: I was like yo, right in the middle of playing Yo, man,
Speaker 4: what's up? And I got a good picture. I want
Speaker 4: to say to you about that too.
Speaker 2: But I was nervous, man, and like, you know, well
Speaker 2: you were nervous.
Speaker 4: Come on, man, you were smacking.
Speaker 2: No I mean, but just you the only legendary illuminaria
Speaker 2: of like my Life sound check track that I haven't
Speaker 2: met yet, you know.
Speaker 4: What I mean. So, yeah, it was awesome and you
Speaker 4: guys play man and it was And the thing about it,
Speaker 4: it was that you wouldn't be leave this that night.
Speaker 5: That was the week.
Speaker 4: That week I had some dental work done right, and
Speaker 4: I had this I don't know if you ever heard
Speaker 4: of TMJ, but it's when your jaw locks. So that
Speaker 4: whole night and the performance, I couldn't open my mouth
Speaker 4: with this much what so I'm singing and in rehearsal,
Speaker 4: I was actually when I was walking around the stage,
Speaker 4: was trying to find vowel sounds of how I was
Speaker 4: going to say certain things. And I couldn't hit like
Speaker 4: the high notes. Yahoo, if you listen back at it,
Speaker 4: I couldn't. I couldn't do it. Oh wow, old night.
Speaker 4: So I was in a little bit of an agony
Speaker 4: while I was enjoying myself. That's a story nobody could tell, right,
Speaker 4: I didn't know, man, nobody knew it.
Speaker 2: You know, we wouldn't have been the Wi wow.
Speaker 4: But the night was awesome, bro, And it's like it's
Speaker 4: something that I will you know, treasure forever.
Speaker 2: Before that night, had you had any contact with cool, Like,
Speaker 2: was that the first time you guys spoke since the
Speaker 2: reunion or No?
Speaker 4: No, the first time was a few years ago when
Speaker 4: we were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, got it.
Speaker 4: And that was the first time I had seen them
Speaker 4: and since the early nineties. I still went in there like,
Speaker 4: you know, just proud of what we had accomplished over
Speaker 4: the years. And you know, so they all came to
Speaker 4: me and we spoke and they were cordial and and
Speaker 4: in fact, Calice came to me and pulled me to
Speaker 4: the side and said, man, why don't we get back
Speaker 4: together and do this again? And I was taken back
Speaker 4: because we did celebration that night, got our award, and
Speaker 4: you know it, we went our separates and again going
Speaker 4: back to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That
Speaker 4: was the other thing that was kind of bittersweet that,
Speaker 4: you know, George and all the DT Clifford and they
Speaker 4: weren't there. And it was like, I'm sitting with their
Speaker 4: wives and their children, you know, there We're talking and
Speaker 4: things like this, and you know, I was just a
Speaker 4: little empty. There was a space there. I was empty,
Speaker 4: you know. But I hope if they're looking down they
Speaker 4: appreciated what cool and I did along with you know
Speaker 4: you and the roots as well.
Speaker 3: What are you working on now?
Speaker 4: Well, you know the thing right now is I just
Speaker 4: kind of you know, I was right before COVID hit.
Speaker 4: You know, I realized I was doing out, going out,
Speaker 4: doing all these one nighters. You know, money was great
Speaker 4: and everything, but every day you leave, you know, you
Speaker 4: come back home, you lose three days, three or four days.
Speaker 4: And when I was working on I started working on
Speaker 4: this project with my son who's a filmmaker and a director,
Speaker 4: and we weren't getting anywhere, and so I said, listen,
Speaker 4: I got to stop touring. And actually COVID helped me
Speaker 4: because nobody was really working that much much anyway. So,
Speaker 4: like I've always done, I said, well, I want to
Speaker 4: do something that hasn't been done before or something different
Speaker 4: and include different genres social media, film, music, and make
Speaker 4: a combination of all of those things and involve people
Speaker 4: like yourself, you know, your group and different artists from
Speaker 4: different genres around and include like like the visual effects
Speaker 4: of things, and you know, to vote all the time
Speaker 4: to new kind of music and development, you know, and
Speaker 4: you know it's enhanced my knowledge, you know, or directing
Speaker 4: and writing in that genre without letting everything out of
Speaker 4: the bag. It's like, you know, when you're trying to
Speaker 4: do something that hasn't been done, it takes a lot
Speaker 4: of attention. You know, you have to go through every
Speaker 4: little piece. Is not just one creative idea. The idea
Speaker 4: grew and now we're at a point where we're at
Speaker 4: I would say the script for example, you know, And
Speaker 4: all I can say to you is, I will promise
Speaker 4: to lead you on as we've developed this because it's
Speaker 4: something that hopefully will you will be.
Speaker 5: A part of.
Speaker 4: I'll just ask you straight out, you know. Uh, And
Speaker 4: I think that it's something that is needed today, because
Speaker 4: when I listened to some of the music that's out here,
Speaker 4: it seems like things are either plateaued or just have
Speaker 4: staged a little stagnant.
Speaker 2: Little vibrational.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, so we need we need a little something,
Speaker 4: and you know, U usually over the years, you know,
Speaker 4: we've had a collective of people doing so many different
Speaker 4: styles that we could pull from anywhere. You know, Now
Speaker 4: it just seems like there's some some things that are
Speaker 4: just not you know, when I listened to it, I'm
Speaker 4: not being fed as much. So right, you know, six
Speaker 4: years of like revising this this project. You know, I'm
Speaker 4: kind of looking at some things that I wrote down,
Speaker 4: combining like the meters of music and films. But it's like,
Speaker 4: how can I explain this? It will be something that
Speaker 4: will be future, but something with grassroots of the arts, Okay,
Speaker 4: something I think that everyone will be able to relate to.
Speaker 2: All I gotta say is, man, you are in the
Speaker 2: highest sense of the term of class act.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: You just you know, I'm so glad you got your flowers.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you got recognition. And that's often hard,
Speaker 2: especially for a lot of our brothers and sisters who
Speaker 2: are pioneers, our leaders, and oftentimes their artwork is taken
Speaker 2: for granted and they're not given the proper respect you
Speaker 2: and you are that person, man.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that, you know, and those artists that you
Speaker 4: mentioned you deserve to be heard, they deserve to to
Speaker 4: have that like that, that renaissance, you know.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And and I really think that this project, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm going to do that and listen before we be
Speaker 4: in this, man, There's so much more to talk about,
Speaker 4: but I just first want to, you know, congratulate you
Speaker 4: on a summer soul.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: By Hey, bro, were's that Oscar? Man? I'm looking for
Speaker 4: that goal. Look behind you over there and put that
Speaker 4: statue up behind you.
Speaker 1: This is my office, man, I keep my Oscar at home.
Speaker 4: But yeah, well this is gonna be another one, bro.
Speaker 4: I mean it was. It was really so well put together, man.
Speaker 4: And like the way you when you brought in the
Speaker 4: people from Halem, you know, telling their stories, the way
Speaker 4: you interplayed that with the music, it was like it
Speaker 4: was like a story book. It was magical. Man. You
Speaker 4: you have a special gift with that. And as I said,
Speaker 4: you know, with the special that you're doing, I think
Speaker 4: it's It's great to hear because it kind of leads
Speaker 4: into what we're what we're doing.
Speaker 3: Now, I want to say some sort of an announcement
Speaker 3: of my own. I've done the math JT. And since
Speaker 3: you've technically technically technically appeared at the most of bar
Speaker 3: Mitzvah's in the history of bar Mitzvah, I am announcing
Speaker 3: that you have been declared an honorary Jew and you
Speaker 3: can consider yourself bar Mitzvah.
Speaker 4: All right, do I have to have to learn my
Speaker 4: speeks and everything.
Speaker 3: You're part of the Hebrew persuasion.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, brother for doing this podcast. And
Speaker 2: you know on behalf of the family. Answer to Steve
Speaker 2: this Quest Love brother James, J T. Taylor one and only.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, love you, Thank you guys, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: J T.
Speaker 4: That was.
Speaker 3: This is Sugar Steve. Thank you for listening to Quest
Speaker 3: Love Supreme. This podcast is hosted by a Mere quest
Speaker 3: Love Thompson, Lijah Saint Clair Sugar, Steve Mandel, and unpaid
Speaker 3: Bill Sherman. The executive producers are a Mere Quest Love Thompson,
Speaker 3: Sean g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Britney, Benjamin Payne
Speaker 3: and Liiah Saint Clair.
Speaker 2: Edited by Alex Conroy. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.