Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: Hey, this is Sugar, Steve and In this week's QLs
Speaker 2: classic episode, Quest Love and I sit down with legendary
Speaker 2: musicians Chuck Rainey and Bernard Perty to talk through how
Speaker 2: they influenced and in some cases invented, the ubiquitous.
Speaker 3: Groove that became the music of our Lives.
Speaker 2: Originally released April seventeenth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, do not attempt to adjust your dial.
Speaker 1: This is a special special edition of Quest Love Supreme
Speaker 1: only on Pandora. If you remember previously when Sugar to
Speaker 1: Steve and.
Speaker 3: I had a chance to chat it.
Speaker 1: Up with brother Herb Albert, we just did a rogue
Speaker 1: episode without the family, so we are still family. But
Speaker 1: right now this is ague episode of Quest Left Supreme.
Speaker 1: I would say, right now we are having a summit
Speaker 1: meeting of the gods. We have two gentlemen who have
Speaker 1: shaped some of the most daring art, funk, pop, rock,
Speaker 1: soul music of our lives. Not of music, but just
Speaker 1: of our lives. Our first guest brother Chuck Rainey, his
Speaker 1: session resume is life Goals, having played on classic album
Speaker 1: after classic album after classic album, projects and musicians such
Speaker 1: as Brother Cal Jada, Eddie Harris, Laura Niro, George Benson,
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones, ROBERTA. Flecton, Hathaway Crusaders, Don a Berg, Bobby Humphrey,
Speaker 1: Marlina Shawl, Sergio Mendez, Marvin Gay, Minnie Ripertons, Steale Dan.
Speaker 1: It just goes on forever and not to be outdone.
Speaker 1: As a drummer, Brother Bernard Purdy inspired the drummer, who
Speaker 1: inspired the drummers, who inspires drummers and continues on. This
Speaker 1: man is quite literally unavoid and his influence both men
Speaker 1: are his resume. Also to reads like life Goals, name
Speaker 1: It Herbie Man, Jack McDuff, James Brown, Nina Simone, Shirley Scott,
Speaker 1: Hank Crawford, Gene mm Is, Dizzy Gillespie, B B. King,
Speaker 1: Five Stair Steps, David Fat, Anne Newman, Sister Retha, Franklin, King,
Speaker 1: Curtis Gil Scott, Heron, Les McCann, Esther Phillips, Kat Stevens,
Speaker 1: Hall of Notes, Joe Cockerham, The Beatles, and Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I said it, Steely Dan. Please give it up, y'all
Speaker 1: for the one and only Chuck Rainey and Bernard Purney.
Speaker 3: It's a QLs.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you guys making it happen. It should
Speaker 1: be noted that both of you are kind of doing
Speaker 1: the rounds in celebration of a film that we never
Speaker 1: thought would see the light of day, which is Uhretha
Speaker 1: Franklin's documentary Amazing Grace.
Speaker 3: Many people know that.
Speaker 1: The classical live album that came from those sessions and
Speaker 1: in the in nineteen seventy two, but many people don't
Speaker 1: know that there was an accompanying film that went along
Speaker 1: with it, and it's been a miracle to finally get
Speaker 1: it out to the people, and I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: It's a masterclass and a miracle. So we thank you
Speaker 1: for coming. So how weird is it to I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys are have written history and we just take
Speaker 1: for musicians like myself and all my peers take from it.
Speaker 1: But for you is it just like breathing like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's nothing, like it's just a Thursday. I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: history today.
Speaker 4: Like oh, never like that.
Speaker 3: So you're appreciative of where we are now?
Speaker 4: Well, number one, working is important, you know, having a gig,
Speaker 4: and of course what makes it better is when you
Speaker 4: get paired up with the same person a whole lot. Okay,
Speaker 4: and so Bernard and I have been paired up a
Speaker 4: whole lot. He's so he's as much a part of
Speaker 4: my career as I am. And if I were a drummer,
Speaker 4: my man, I would play just like him.
Speaker 1: Well, explain this to me as as a musician asking UH,
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies, what were the most important
Speaker 1: UH traits or what are the most important characteristics to
Speaker 1: have to make sure that you are always constantly being
Speaker 1: the call guy, being the go to person for session gigs.
Speaker 5: Well, for me, it was always the easiest part.
Speaker 3: Getting the gig was the easiest part.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I'd beg What's I knew? I knew how to.
Speaker 3: Beg you you begged for gigs?
Speaker 5: No shame whatsoever, really, And the beauty of it was
Speaker 5: I wasn't begging just for myself. I was taking the
Speaker 5: credit of Rainy and everybody else that wanted to do
Speaker 5: it with us, but Chuck, and I was actually fifty
Speaker 5: percent of all the records that I made with Chuck.
Speaker 1: So how in a time in which okay, let's take
Speaker 1: the late sixties and a time in which a crew
Speaker 1: like the Wrecking Crew were the default go to people
Speaker 1: for a lot of West Coast musicians, Like, how are
Speaker 1: you able to even ease your way into a system
Speaker 1: in which you know, most people just want half the time,
Speaker 1: I just hear like, hey, half the people just show
Speaker 1: up on time. The other half just shuts up and
Speaker 1: do what they're told. They're not high maintenance. Like how
Speaker 1: do you infiltrate your way into a system that otherwise
Speaker 1: normally would be occupied by someone who's been grandfathered in
Speaker 1: and locked into a gig?
Speaker 4: You know, actually that's a great question for me. I'm
Speaker 4: a bass player. I've always wanted to just play the bass.
Speaker 4: So whenever I get a call coming out of King
Speaker 4: Curtis's band, just but everybody came through his band and
Speaker 4: King Curtis All Stars in the sixties sixties ended up
Speaker 4: in the studio, and I just wanted to play, so like,
Speaker 4: I did not maneuver my way into anything other than
Speaker 4: just be the best player that I could. And a
Speaker 4: new face always helps too, But just just to be
Speaker 4: prepared and be able to play, to be able to
Speaker 4: read when it's necessary but when and also be able
Speaker 4: to just play the bass, So I never considered myself
Speaker 4: working at being a part of a group and the
Speaker 4: record crew. You know, you mentioned that, you know, like
Speaker 4: those guys and Guy and get Out with Carol. They
Speaker 4: were la Is a very huge scene, very big scene.
Speaker 4: Holly was a big scene in music, and they just
Speaker 4: happened to be the kind of selective group that producers
Speaker 4: would hire because they were work together all the time.
Speaker 4: Between me and Bernard, Paul Griffin and that well you
Speaker 4: just basically Corneill dupri Billy Butler, we worked together so much.
Speaker 4: Eric Gale, I don't know why that he should have
Speaker 4: been first. We worked together so much. If I were
Speaker 4: a producer, I would hire the people that are on
Speaker 4: your record, that would work for Alan, that worked for
Speaker 4: c I mean, I mean you hired the same people
Speaker 4: I think now. I Now, don't get me wrong. I
Speaker 4: think I'm a good bass player. I think I'm a
Speaker 4: very good musician. But but I will say this a
Speaker 4: large part of me being involved in so many projects,
Speaker 4: it's because a habit. My name was a habit. Who
Speaker 4: should we get on a bass, Chuck Raine, just like
Speaker 4: who should we get on the guitar? I mean the drums?
Speaker 4: Bernard pretty because our names were a habit. We were
Speaker 4: on everybody's records, and so usually people hire the last
Speaker 4: person that they saw or the one that they remember.
Speaker 4: I did. Jams I was a bachelor thought I was
Speaker 4: kind of halfway cute to begin with. But I have
Speaker 4: a lot of a lot of friends, you know, and
Speaker 4: played my bass all of the time, and jams I
Speaker 4: played for nothing many many times. That's how I got
Speaker 4: into business. I think we all went that way with Eric.
Speaker 4: You know, you you got a year coming up, you
Speaker 4: don't have a budget, and you want to do it
Speaker 4: on Sunday. I'm not working on Sunday. And you tell
Speaker 4: me that that Paul Griffin or that Eric Gale or
Speaker 4: burn our parties on the yate to what I want
Speaker 4: to share it with him. So I played a whole
Speaker 4: lot for nothing. I kind of think that that's what
Speaker 4: kind of helped both of us in that if I
Speaker 4: do something for you for nothing and you happen to
Speaker 4: get it signed and then you want to do the
Speaker 4: rest of the album, basically people will call the same
Speaker 4: people to help them out, and I help out just
Speaker 4: about wanting to play the bass.
Speaker 1: Now, I would say that as as a listener, What
Speaker 1: made both of you very distinctive in your playing style
Speaker 1: is the fact that you were able to infuse your
Speaker 1: personality per se in these songs.
Speaker 3: Normally I would think that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been told by many a producer musician,
Speaker 1: like you know, when you do a session, just do
Speaker 1: what the song is called for, try not to infuse
Speaker 1: yourself too much in it. But as far as trademarks
Speaker 1: are concerned, I mean, I think of you, and I
Speaker 1: instantly think of like that's your that's your little business
Speaker 1: card or your little graffiti tag left on every song.
Speaker 1: So whenever I hear those those near harmonic slide notes,
Speaker 1: I know, okay, this is a chuck brainy affair. And
Speaker 1: the same with Bernard Purty. I mean, I you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you. So my father was a singer,
Speaker 1: a musician, a singer who had his period like in
Speaker 1: the fifties and did some stuff in the seventies. He
Speaker 1: had a du wop called Lee Andrews and the Hearts,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, that's my dad, I think. So there
Speaker 1: was a session that producer Billy Jackson was having in
Speaker 1: the early seventies. So I was at this gig and
Speaker 1: Bernard was the drummer in the gig, and I was
Speaker 1: around four years old, and.
Speaker 3: At the end of the session, my dad says aid, here, come.
Speaker 1: Here, and he says, I want you to shake this
Speaker 1: man his hand. And he's like, Bernard, I want you
Speaker 1: to tell my son how you keep food on the table.
Speaker 1: And I'll never forget. This is the first thing I
Speaker 1: remember in life. Bernard said the two and the four.
Speaker 1: And at the time I was confused, like huh. But
Speaker 1: my dad was such a stickler and disciplinary for just
Speaker 1: keep it in the pocket.
Speaker 3: That's all you gotta do. You keep it in the pocket,
Speaker 3: your work forever.
Speaker 1: And of course you know, when you're young, you're impressionable,
Speaker 1: you want to go all over the place. But I
Speaker 1: will say that you were able to. I wouldn't know people.
Speaker 1: People know about the fabled pretty shuffle, which of course
Speaker 1: is kind of a slow down halftime groove, which for
Speaker 1: for listeners of today, I would actually say that the
Speaker 1: pretty shuffle could be the genesis of what a lot
Speaker 1: of trap producers today. I feel like that's the beginning
Speaker 1: of trap with the pretty shuffle is basically trap music
Speaker 1: today is basically the pretty shuffle minuses to swing on it,
Speaker 1: so still halftime, got and a lot of high hat
Speaker 1: grace notes on it. But in addition to like your fills, likesps,
Speaker 1: all these things, all these fills, how are you able
Speaker 1: to insert your personality on one songs?
Speaker 3: Uh? That?
Speaker 1: Otherwise I feel like any other producer would say, I
Speaker 1: just want it straight, no filler, Like were you were
Speaker 1: producers then giving you guys freedom to add your personality.
Speaker 3: To things, and or you just have free reign of
Speaker 3: the land.
Speaker 5: We have never ever had free range. Really, when you
Speaker 5: get free range is when you can actually tell the
Speaker 5: producer try it, you might like it.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, have you met a producer that was
Speaker 1: a little bit like, well that's too much?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Really you had to fight to get here, But.
Speaker 5: There's fighting is the right word. But diplomacy, that's the
Speaker 5: one that I had to learn. That was the hardest
Speaker 5: thing in the world for me, because I knew immediately
Speaker 5: when you ask for something, what you knew, what you
Speaker 5: wanted to, what you wanted to hear. Having chucked on
Speaker 5: the base freed me, okay, it freed me through. I
Speaker 5: could do the pretty shuffle, I could do the circle
Speaker 5: into music.
Speaker 1: So he was the anchor, Yes, and okay. This is
Speaker 1: similar to the relationship with Ron Carter and Tony Williams,
Speaker 1: where Ron Carter was the anchor of Miles Davis and
Speaker 1: allowed Tony Williams to freedom to weave in and out.
Speaker 4: So it's that's very interesting because I would say the
Speaker 4: same thing about him. See a lot of my rhythm ideas,
Speaker 4: a lot of ideas when I do it, were like
Speaker 4: when I'm giving the chord chart. I come up with
Speaker 4: great ideas by getting rhythm input from the drums. And
Speaker 4: like I said earlier, if I were a drummer, I
Speaker 4: know I would play just like him because of the
Speaker 4: way that it feels. But like I sit on his shoulder,
Speaker 4: he might think he's sitting on mine, but I'm sitting
Speaker 4: on his.
Speaker 5: But what he just said earlier, if I had to
Speaker 5: play bass, I would be Chuck Randie, and I'd be
Speaker 5: better than Chuck ran All my life I wanted to
Speaker 5: be better than Chuck Randy, but I can't play the bass.
Speaker 3: Who do you who both of you? Who do you
Speaker 3: feel your greatest disciples were?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: I would think.
Speaker 1: As a listener, I would kind of think that perhaps
Speaker 1: as a drummer, maybe Steve Arne, who played with the
Speaker 1: average white man, was a student of yours because he
Speaker 1: would infuse your personality and he had a tight pocket
Speaker 1: rhythm and as a bassis. I always thought that Willie
Speaker 1: Weeks was very severely under championed as far as his
Speaker 1: playing style and infusing yourself. But in your eyes, like,
Speaker 1: who who were some of the musicians that you felt
Speaker 1: or maybe you don't see the mass disciples, maybe they
Speaker 1: were just your equal peers or whatever, But like, who
Speaker 1: were the cats that you guys enjoyed or or perhaps
Speaker 1: were a little like hmm, okay, I gotta.
Speaker 4: You know, I get something from everybody, Okay. Basically I
Speaker 4: came out of King Curtis's band. I was there for
Speaker 4: four years and he is my musical father hero because
Speaker 4: he taught me discipline, being on time, when to do
Speaker 4: something and when not to do it. And they're playing tune.
Speaker 4: That was my that's that's that's so, I would say
Speaker 4: King Curtis. And he wasn't a bass player. But other
Speaker 4: than that, what was he like as a band leader?
Speaker 3: Great? Really?
Speaker 4: I mean nobody could I mean, he was the epitome
Speaker 4: of a band leader.
Speaker 3: And why was he the go to md for a
Speaker 3: lot of these projects.
Speaker 4: That because his talent. It's telling everybody knew him number one,
Speaker 4: that he was a great musician. He also knew who
Speaker 4: the guys were. He knew who the musicians were that
Speaker 4: could play. Okay, And if he called you to play,
Speaker 4: he wouldn't have called you if he knew that you
Speaker 4: couldn't do it because he was a rhythm If he
Speaker 4: listen to the way he plays, he was like a
Speaker 4: drummer or a bass player. So I would say King Curtis.
Speaker 4: Other than that, James Jamieson has been very influential to
Speaker 4: the way that I think as a bass player. So
Speaker 4: those two people first come to mind, James Jamison, King Curtis.
Speaker 4: Now I could go on forever, but I.
Speaker 5: Was going to say the same, but you can count
Speaker 5: me in on King Curtis, Okay, most most definitely. The
Speaker 5: other one was my teacher, mister Lezzard Hayberd.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 5: He had fourteen piece orchestra that wasn't his. It's called
Speaker 5: the Clyde Besicks Orchestra. But I got this in my
Speaker 5: hometown in Elkton, Maryland. Every Friday and Saturday, that band
Speaker 5: played and they played dance music. Everything was dance. You
Speaker 5: have to move. You gotta play something simple. Simple is
Speaker 5: the key to what music is, and that's what people remember.
Speaker 5: They can hum, they can sing, they can do anything
Speaker 5: they want, but you need to move the butts in
Speaker 5: the chairs, the feet, whatever that had to be done.
Speaker 5: They had to move their bodies and the people sitting
Speaker 5: can move in a chair.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask, Okay, So I know that you
Speaker 1: guys came from an era and I listened, even as
Speaker 1: someone in the hip hop generation, for a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that we gravitate towards. It is all pocket based,
Speaker 1: finding the perfect four measures of nothing, fancy of nothing,
Speaker 1: just straight pocket. I mean, I have my thoughts and
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of arguments on social media concerning
Speaker 1: what I feel about the state of Okay. So right now,
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, we're kind of in the era of
Speaker 1: the polar opposite of where you two came from. And
Speaker 1: there's a thing called gospel chops, and gospel chops are
Speaker 1: kind of like it's kind of like watching an All
Speaker 1: Star NBA basketball game.
Speaker 3: Now we know that true NBA.
Speaker 1: Sportsmanship and the mark of a true championship team are
Speaker 1: people that know their roles.
Speaker 3: You know, this guy's really good to assist.
Speaker 1: But this guy's good at outside shooting, and this guy's
Speaker 1: good at dribbling, this guy's great. A rebounds like everyone
Speaker 1: knows their roles. However, in an All Star game, you
Speaker 1: do run into the danger of if you have five
Speaker 1: Lebrons on the squad, or if you have five Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's on the same squad, then suddenly it's overkilled. So
Speaker 1: a lot of musicians today, because we live in a
Speaker 1: highlight real era, it's sort of like the musical equivalent
Speaker 1: of hey ma, look at me, look at me, look
Speaker 1: at me, look at me, and whatever I have to
Speaker 1: do to get your attention, I will do it. So
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's a cute novelty for a while,
Speaker 1: but some similar to like a ropodope style, you get
Speaker 1: worn out and you've never seen you rarely see musicians
Speaker 1: trust the process of playing in the pocket, just playing
Speaker 1: a groove without feel free or without Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go off time here and then I'll pick them up later.
Speaker 1: So but I will say that in the set in
Speaker 1: which a lot of your work is prominent, the genesis
Speaker 1: of what I now knew is gospel chops was just
Speaker 1: being born. So like when new styles are coming in
Speaker 1: as far as bass playing, say, let's Stanley Clark, Let's
Speaker 1: say with the playing of Lewis Johnson or even Larry Graham,
Speaker 1: where it's like, okay, now, funk songs in E minor
Speaker 1: and going all over the place is a thing like
Speaker 1: what keeps you grounded and just keeping straight ahead and
Speaker 1: being such a melodic pocket bass player.
Speaker 4: Well, I've sort of been trained to first to do
Speaker 4: with the leader wants and how they're doing. Also too,
Speaker 4: from our generation, the me aspect of us was a
Speaker 4: little different, and that the social media was not at
Speaker 4: all like it is now. Like I could come to
Speaker 4: the studio like Hran Bullock, come to the studio but
Speaker 4: naked and play Nobody cares. Now of course, when I say.
Speaker 3: Basically Iron Bullet was a little crazy with this.
Speaker 4: Oh no, Well he would dressed, he would wear no
Speaker 4: wearing those shoes and stuff like that, you know, but
Speaker 4: he was such a good player it doesn't matter. In
Speaker 4: New York in particular, so like we didn't have to
Speaker 4: I didn't have to look good to go to a session, right, okay,
Speaker 4: unless you're someone like Bernard. He wore stuit every day
Speaker 4: he's clean. He was clean, But you know, I would
Speaker 4: think to answer that question sort of like today's. I know,
Speaker 4: at Victor Wooden's camp, where I'm a regular instructor every year, right, Uh,
Speaker 4: they posted my AllMusic dot Com resume on the barn wall.
Speaker 4: It's nineteen pages. So at the time I must have
Speaker 4: been well, I won't say, but I wasn't. You know,
Speaker 4: I've been around for a while. I've been around all right,
Speaker 4: and so like in talking to the students and in
Speaker 4: my rotations there were two or three students. I found
Speaker 4: it hard to believe that I was involved in so
Speaker 4: much stuff until I told him how old I was.
Speaker 4: They think today they wake up on Monday, they want
Speaker 4: to be Stanley Clark on Friday, or they want to
Speaker 4: be a Larry Graham, and they don't understand that Stanley Clark,
Speaker 4: Larry Graham, Chuck Rainey, James Jamieson. Before you even heard
Speaker 4: of us, we had a large background of experience and
Speaker 4: playing with a lot of people like I've been on
Speaker 4: the road, which just about every R and B act
Speaker 4: in the out of the fifties and sixties before I
Speaker 4: even got to do one session. Okay, you know, so
Speaker 4: like a lot of the guys that day. They wanted
Speaker 4: too quick. Also too they wanted for another reason. They
Speaker 4: wanted to look at me. They want for that. They
Speaker 4: wanted to say, look at me. I'm just a bass player.
Speaker 4: I just want to play the bass. I get a
Speaker 4: kick out of playing the bass. And I'm a lady
Speaker 4: that it shows.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, you see, yeah, the opposite.
Speaker 5: Definitely, most definitely everything that he said, I'm gonna double it. Okay,
Speaker 5: But I had a big, big problem when I was
Speaker 5: coming because I had to beg for everything that I got.
Speaker 1: And I you sure, all right, all right? Can you
Speaker 1: give me an example of a gig that you almost
Speaker 1: didn't get that you had to like, Please please give
Speaker 1: me a chance, because I would think the work would
Speaker 1: speak for itself.
Speaker 5: Just one look, and I felt so really, just one look.
Speaker 5: Bonnie Richmond came around the corner. He's the contractor. There
Speaker 5: was not one drummer, and Sweet and Charlie's the bar,
Speaker 5: none around the corners, and the other bar the restaurant,
Speaker 5: not one drummer. And I was running after him. Please
Speaker 5: please please, I'm a drummer. I'm good, I'm good. I
Speaker 5: can do anything, I can play anything. I read music.
Speaker 5: I do whatever has to be done. I begged and
Speaker 5: pleaded and I followed him for the fifteen minutes that
Speaker 5: he was out there looking and this was all a demo. Really,
Speaker 5: this was a demo. So I got there. There was
Speaker 5: Bob bush Now Hayes, Ernie Hayes, and the guitars Wally Richardson.
Speaker 5: They were sitting there. They had been sitting there for
Speaker 5: half hour or more waiting for a drummer to show up.
Speaker 3: So they literally came in a restaurant for a bar
Speaker 3: to find drummer.
Speaker 4: That's a music Charlie's.
Speaker 5: That's where everybody.
Speaker 4: Everybody hung there, so.
Speaker 3: That was like the holding place in.
Speaker 4: The beefsteak Charlie, Is that the same beef steak?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is in California, New York, Okay, Broadway on Broadway,
Speaker 1: right off of Brother Round on the corner.
Speaker 3: So just one look, that's all it took.
Speaker 2: Charlie's had like all you can eat shrimp right the
Speaker 2: peel and eat.
Speaker 3: Uh. The big salad bar did.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well that was one of the main reasons because
Speaker 5: that was the cheapest thing in there.
Speaker 4: Oh I see, and catered to musicians.
Speaker 5: Thank you everybody. Because the musicians would play free in
Speaker 5: the place, just to play. They didn't nobody, nobody wanted
Speaker 5: any money. They wanted to be there, They got drinks.
Speaker 5: They just that was the place to hang. But I
Speaker 5: was actually too young to hang. But the thing was, oh,
Speaker 5: you're right. But the beauty for me is that all
Speaker 5: I did. I asked Ernie Hayes to play the piano,
Speaker 5: and Bob Bush now he started playing the bass because
Speaker 5: I wanted to find out what the tune was about.
Speaker 5: So for me, basically, I just wanted to where the temple.
Speaker 5: Just show me where the temple, and then I just
Speaker 5: went crossed it only so I could just feel okay.
Speaker 5: But I put the feeling into the four people. They
Speaker 5: were in the control room fussing and cursing each other
Speaker 5: out and everything else and bl and the engineer he
Speaker 5: you know, tapped, hey, listen because he had turned it
Speaker 5: up just a tiny bit just to hear yeah. And
Speaker 5: then they turned they looked, they listened and it was like, whoa,
Speaker 5: what's that? Well, who's the drummer who's earned Barnie Richmals,
Speaker 5: I don't know, he's been bugging me. He said he
Speaker 5: can play anything. I don't even know who he is,
Speaker 5: you know, so they listen. She started singing because the
Speaker 5: only thing that was missing was where the flavors should be.
Speaker 5: Whether you're cling quarner notes, whether you're playing eights, whether
Speaker 5: you're playing sixteenth or what are you planing?
Speaker 3: Doted?
Speaker 5: So you just have to know where the rhythm needs.
Speaker 3: To be, can I ask? Okay?
Speaker 1: So, based on everyone that I get on this podcast,
Speaker 1: the story always varies.
Speaker 3: I'm slowly finding out now again.
Speaker 1: I was raised by, you know, a drill sergeant father
Speaker 1: who's like, you know, you gotta you know, practice five
Speaker 1: hours a day outside. No, you gotta practice, which I get.
Speaker 1: How imperative or how much of an advantage was it
Speaker 1: to be able to know how to read thoroughly? So
Speaker 1: when new songs come to you, do you get a
Speaker 1: cassette a week at advance or is it just like,
Speaker 1: here's your charts, I'm giving you three minutes to look
Speaker 1: it over.
Speaker 3: Really listen.
Speaker 5: If I got three minutes I had that was a
Speaker 5: lifetime for me. What everybody go ahead?
Speaker 4: We were young, okay, and Bob Bushnell and all those
Speaker 4: people were at least ten years our senior.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: So when we came on the scene, we were younger
Speaker 4: Eric Cornell, although Cornell were number us involved, but we
Speaker 4: were young people and we also had a different view
Speaker 4: of what he's saying about the groove. We played the
Speaker 4: groove a little differently. I played more rhythm on my
Speaker 4: base than Bob. He was older than I was. Now,
Speaker 4: what did you just ask?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm like, when you're getting a song.
Speaker 4: Oh, now, will hold it? Hold it right there? Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm being very honest with you. Okay, coming from demos,
Speaker 4: nothing's written. And we both got involved in this business
Speaker 4: doing demos, working for people who don't know sick and
Speaker 4: from came here about music, but they have the money
Speaker 4: and they have the connection, right, and so they just
Speaker 4: hired people to make things up. Like most of the
Speaker 4: most of the just make it. If there's a coord chart,
Speaker 4: sometimes you will make out your own court chart. I
Speaker 4: stopped doing that because there ain't my job.
Speaker 3: But now I always felt like I was lied to.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're eight years old and your dad's like,
Speaker 1: you gotta go to Juilliard so you can know. I'm
Speaker 1: under the impression that these albums I'm listening to were
Speaker 1: thoroughly written out, like part for part for a part
Speaker 1: here you go. And then I gotta get the piece
Speaker 1: of paper and know one and two, three, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta know like I learned. I was taught that
Speaker 1: you have to know how to read on site the
Speaker 1: second you see these drum charts, because the ain't no producer
Speaker 1: gonna have the patience to sit there and wait for
Speaker 1: you to figure out, thank you, what it is.
Speaker 3: But are you saying half the time, It's just like.
Speaker 4: Not more than half the time.
Speaker 3: Here's the chords and make up the rhythm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, call to Quincy. All of them. They don't write
Speaker 4: no base parts.
Speaker 5: And they don't write the drum punch.
Speaker 3: So they're like, you got it.
Speaker 4: And they're smart because the continuity to the director exactly.
Speaker 4: They say, Okay, we know what to do here. Like
Speaker 4: Walter and Donald did not know anything at all about
Speaker 4: us at all. Garry Katz did because he was a
Speaker 4: New York producer, right okay, and so like he would
Speaker 4: hire because he knows Walter and Donald. Number one, they're
Speaker 4: very strange to begin with. And when I say it's strange,
Speaker 4: it's not negative. It's just that they're different. But they
Speaker 4: don't know what to play. They don't know what the
Speaker 4: bass should do. Maybe they have an idea. They don't
Speaker 4: know what kind of drum beat should be there. They
Speaker 4: don't know these things. They don't have that well you
Speaker 4: know what I'm talking about. Even Quincy never wrote one
Speaker 4: note for me.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: It's like walking in space and all that stuff and art.
Speaker 4: Now I tell you why that is. Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 4: tell you why that is. You have people, You have
Speaker 4: musicians that are talented. Of of course, talent is the
Speaker 4: word to use, but they are. The rhythm is very important.
Speaker 4: Like he said earlier, people want to dance, even in jazz,
Speaker 4: they want to dance. And there are certain people that
Speaker 4: can give you if you don't know what to play,
Speaker 4: If you don't if you don't know what I should
Speaker 4: play on this song, I bet you the house, the farm.
Speaker 4: I got something for you if you ain't got nothing.
Speaker 4: Because I'm a rhythm person and I've had experience. Well
Speaker 4: it's only there's only seven notes in music rhythms. I
Speaker 4: would think that probably there's thirty two, but I've only
Speaker 4: seen maybe nine rhythms for the play as a bass player.
Speaker 4: So now when you start worrying about reading, you have
Speaker 4: to learn how to read by experience. Now you don't
Speaker 4: have to, and you also have to have experience to
Speaker 4: create something. But there are jobs that you get that.
Speaker 4: We both have clients that write out everything, okay, but
Speaker 4: then we have most of our clients that't write out nothing.
Speaker 4: Thank you. They hired a person that can come up
Speaker 4: with a part. I'm supposed to create a part for
Speaker 4: you that sounds like you wrote it. So if you
Speaker 4: look at the baselines that I play there, they are repetitive,
Speaker 4: like the lines are repented because it sounds like Quincy
Speaker 4: wrote it, or it sounds like Donnie Hathaway was different, meticulous.
Speaker 4: See before you play anything, truck, before you do anything,
Speaker 4: do this first, and I really don't want anything else.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: Now it took a couple of years for Donnie to
Speaker 4: trust me to do because, like I was popular, and
Speaker 4: I do have a style and a flare about how
Speaker 4: I'm seeing things. But he insisted that you play this
Speaker 4: first before you do your thing, and I don't really
Speaker 4: want your thing. And he was a master, yes really.
Speaker 5: Not only a master. But the point is is that
Speaker 5: it wasn't his date, wasn't his. He was writing for
Speaker 5: other artists. Okay, okay, So all of this was all
Speaker 5: written down written out.
Speaker 4: If you want that gig, you got to know how
Speaker 4: to read.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, there's so much of you're both of your
Speaker 1: collective cannons?
Speaker 3: Are you know.
Speaker 1: So much to dig through? I'll briefly touch on a
Speaker 1: few of them, but I'll start with what gig was
Speaker 1: considered a fun gig? Who did you look forward to
Speaker 1: as a basis as the drummers? Who's the one artist
Speaker 1: like we're gonna have fun on this one?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: Tell us?
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pick a random song, tell me you're out
Speaker 1: rock steady or just a memorable.
Speaker 4: Rock steady is very interesting? Okay Number one. I love
Speaker 4: telling this story, Okay, if I get along with no,
Speaker 4: that's what this shows. We went down to Miami in
Speaker 4: the wintertime. Living in New York in the winter is
Speaker 4: different than living in Miami, okay, And so we're going
Speaker 4: to Miami Beach and Landing took good care of us.
Speaker 4: We were staying in a mansion, you know, uh, and
Speaker 4: we played. Now, we went to the studio Criteria one
Speaker 4: morning and our car picked us up okay before uh,
Speaker 4: Tommy Dowell and Ritha and whoever else was there before
Speaker 4: the car picked them up. So we got there first
Speaker 4: with Jane Paul. And all I'm saying is Gene Paul.
Speaker 5: Is Let's Paul's son.
Speaker 4: Let's Paul's son. Okay, But Jeam Paul was the second engineer,
Speaker 4: second everything that came out of Atlantic Records as far
Speaker 4: as engineering goes, Tommy Dowell is the one that they
Speaker 4: look to wrong. Jean Paul. He's the one to set
Speaker 4: the mics. He's the one to set the anyway, so
Speaker 4: we we at criteria. We had a great breakfast. The
Speaker 4: sun is shining is in eighty five ninety degrees and
Speaker 4: Aretha was there, so I guess Retha did come, but
Speaker 4: Tommy Dowell and Jerry Wilston weren't there, and so Dream
Speaker 4: Paul set up in the mic. I think it was
Speaker 4: the second song that we've done. And and she taught
Speaker 4: us the song. She taught us all the songs. She
Speaker 4: would sit down and plays, say and teach us the song.
Speaker 4: A Reef wasn't there or then they picked a Reef
Speaker 4: up the arranger right, and so she taught us the song.
Speaker 4: Now I'm when a Reef and and Tommy Diald and
Speaker 4: Joy Western got there. We knew the song, but a
Speaker 4: Reef job was he was the arranger, so he would
Speaker 4: now have to learn the song. So we sit there
Speaker 4: and play what we knew. When he would write down
Speaker 4: a chord chart, you know, he would write down and
Speaker 4: he did that all the time, Right, okay, I write
Speaker 4: a chord chard. Now we tracked the song and before
Speaker 4: they got there as a demo, we demoed the song
Speaker 4: as a demo. So when they got there, they heard
Speaker 4: the demo and blah blah blah. I think we worked
Speaker 4: all morning trying to improve it, improve, try to improve it.
Speaker 4: So what you're hearing on rock Steady is a demo.
Speaker 3: So the only thing this day they went back to
Speaker 3: the original demo and kept the.
Speaker 5: Went back to the original music that they heard and
Speaker 5: the field and the field that was everything.
Speaker 3: So he came in and tried to change it up
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 5: They always do. They always Every arranger in the world does.
Speaker 4: It because they want to get the producer or the arranger.
Speaker 4: They get paid for that, whether they did it or not.
Speaker 4: But rock Steady is a demo. If you listen to it,
Speaker 4: it almost you can see it in a way. But
Speaker 4: it's the groove. It's the groove. And Aretha was playing
Speaker 4: with us, she played with us, and so like a
Speaker 4: thing about you mentioned the gospel world for a second. Now,
Speaker 4: I'm out of the Pentecostal church and I've been immersed
Speaker 4: in that all my life. And you can't get no
Speaker 4: more rhythmic. You can't get no more feel out of
Speaker 4: a good Pentecostal shutdown. You know. As far as we
Speaker 4: like the amazing great album, it showed a little bit
Speaker 4: of it, Yes, a little bit of it. Now the
Speaker 4: border Song is not on it, but but the Border
Speaker 4: Song is the most precious thing I've ever recorded, because
Speaker 4: it takes me right back to my being being twelve
Speaker 4: years old, sitting up in church and listened to the
Speaker 4: choir okay, you know, and the feel of it is
Speaker 4: that's gospel, That's Pentecostal gospel. And so we both said
Speaker 4: that Retha's Fendler and cried. But listening to that that
Speaker 4: choir was slamming. That choir was just it was very
Speaker 4: large too, but slamming. U. So like it gets too,
Speaker 4: I've talked so much stuff forgot what we were talking about.
Speaker 4: Rock Steady, rock steady, Yes, that's a demo. We had
Speaker 4: a good time that way too. H We had a
Speaker 4: very very good time with that we did. I don't
Speaker 4: know how many songs we did, but rock Steady is
Speaker 4: a demo Andretha played with. She played with us on
Speaker 4: every song, by the way, first, Yes.
Speaker 3: How is he as a musician? Not? Not much is
Speaker 3: made about her piano playing.
Speaker 4: She is a great piano player, like Marlina Shaw, great
Speaker 4: piano player.
Speaker 3: Malina Saw played piano You kidding me?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 5: Oh man?
Speaker 4: Penecostal like Valerie Simpson Pentecostal. Both they can play.
Speaker 3: I never knew. And so is the piano play?
Speaker 4: Well, she doesn't playing much because her nails is that
Speaker 4: long now any white nails like she has played. I've
Speaker 4: been on tour with her for the last nine years.
Speaker 4: She retired. Wow, and we just hold the Japan okayd
Speaker 4: of thing me and David T walking Harvey mation.
Speaker 3: Does she still do the go away little boy speech?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Really man, that's after who is his bitch?
Speaker 3: Who's this bitch? Anyway? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I had that record, but Aretha had a lot to
Speaker 4: do with. All she had to do was sit down down,
Speaker 4: just sit down and play.
Speaker 5: Tinker. She tinker.
Speaker 4: She just played with the field.
Speaker 5: That's like, what's the whole thing?
Speaker 4: Spanish Harlem is a song that crosses two rhythm borders. Right,
Speaker 4: it is a to the bar and it's and it's
Speaker 4: also a shuffle not shuffle, but it's two different grooves there.
Speaker 5: Right, But it is the idea of it is it
Speaker 5: is to make it feel like a shuffle because that
Speaker 5: part I got from you.
Speaker 4: No, but I got it from you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just gonna compliment each other whole episode.
Speaker 5: No, but it's just see for me, I was fresh
Speaker 5: out of Jamaica, okay, doing by Mindley and all this
Speaker 5: other stuff I had done too.
Speaker 3: You just casually dropped that like it's.
Speaker 5: Well, I made two albums with it, the first two albums.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, that's you.
Speaker 5: Yes, But the point is is that right now it's
Speaker 5: it's see, I don't mind anything with anybody. I don't
Speaker 5: have a problem if somebody wants to take credit for somebody,
Speaker 5: you go right ahead, because I know what I did
Speaker 5: also too.
Speaker 4: If you're listening, you can tell the difference between this
Speaker 4: drummer and that drummer. You know the difference between this
Speaker 4: bass player and that bass player and those And I'm
Speaker 4: not talking about musicians, I'm talking about the general public.
Speaker 3: They know the.
Speaker 4: Difference between like Steve Gadd who was a great drummer,
Speaker 4: and Bernard Purdy. You can tell just like we're bass
Speaker 4: players and I bow a musicians. But a lot of
Speaker 4: the people who are not musicians, they cond say, let's
Speaker 4: you okay.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that, all right, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: to the Beatles ghosting story. What session have you What
Speaker 1: sessions have you done that you had to go somebody?
Speaker 4: I had to kill somebody?
Speaker 3: No, no, no ghost I've heard sessions of like well
Speaker 3: known bands.
Speaker 1: Then what's the basement? Like, Okay, let's get out of
Speaker 1: out coming here and sweeten it up for real.
Speaker 5: But it's not even about using the word ghosting.
Speaker 3: We fix okay, okay, so give me some fixing stories
Speaker 3: like who have you fixed that you weren't credited for it?
Speaker 3: But that's you.
Speaker 5: Well, for me, there's about two thousand at least, okay,
Speaker 5: there's about two thousand. I got paid. Can we bet
Speaker 5: you can talk about it? But what it is for me,
Speaker 5: it's a dead issue. That issue has hurt me so badly.
Speaker 5: It as Yeah, see I've fixed twenty one tracks.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's it. There was nothing that she as a musician,
Speaker 3: I get it. All the time. I do it all
Speaker 3: the times people, But I.
Speaker 5: Was doing what I was doing at that particular time,
Speaker 5: is that I was doing the group from France, all
Speaker 5: these different countries. They were bringing the music over to
Speaker 5: fix music and to make music because it was the
Speaker 5: way things were done. The record labels would not pay,
Speaker 5: would not that none of these groups would have gotten
Speaker 5: signed if studio musicians were not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that that's what.
Speaker 1: Okay, So for our listeners out there, they're a little
Speaker 1: lost basically, uh you know, okay, well as you as
Speaker 1: we discussed in the Philip Bailey Earth, Wine and Fire episode,
Speaker 1: we made some discoveries that yes, you know, occasionally Maurice
Speaker 1: White would use a core of a few musicians that
Speaker 1: weren't the the central members of Earth were in Fire
Speaker 1: either their touring or even the Beach Boys like Brian
Speaker 1: Wilson pretty much made bad sounds with.
Speaker 3: The Wrecking Crew.
Speaker 1: Yes, while the people that we know as the Beach
Speaker 1: Boys went and tour. But it doesn't make it any
Speaker 1: less of a fraud or anything.
Speaker 3: It's just you gotta it.
Speaker 1: Was the way of the world, yes, exactly, and many
Speaker 1: many non musicians don't know that's the modus operandi, you know.
Speaker 5: And that is what all the record companies, all of them,
Speaker 5: they all said the same thing. I'm not gonna spend
Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty thousand dollars on somebody that we
Speaker 5: don't know your boys, we like your boys, but you
Speaker 5: gotta use studio musicians because what it is bam bam bam,
Speaker 5: they knocked the songs out.
Speaker 4: Also true for drummers. I've experiences to the drummer has
Speaker 4: to hit the snare at the same place every time ansistently.
Speaker 4: But now on the road you don't have to because
Speaker 4: sound equipment will make it sound okay. But you got
Speaker 4: to use the studio drummer whose use he has the
Speaker 4: experience there in the same place, or else you're going
Speaker 4: to have a million dollars worth of remixed money. But
Speaker 4: you don't have the same way with bass players are good.
Speaker 4: I know I'm a good bass player. However, I think
Speaker 4: there are a lot of bass players that play better
Speaker 4: than me, but they're road based players. When I sit
Speaker 4: down to play, when I've overdubbed a lot of other
Speaker 4: bass players, mainly because what they played was okay, It's
Speaker 4: just that it was not as audible as it should
Speaker 4: be tone and tone wise, whereas like I've been I
Speaker 4: play a certain way in the studio to make a note,
Speaker 4: a particular kind of way.
Speaker 3: Did you okay?
Speaker 1: So was the preference for you to be a road
Speaker 1: drummer or a studio musician? Like or is the grass
Speaker 1: greener on the other side, Like you're in the studio,
Speaker 1: like damn, I wish we were in Europe and you're
Speaker 1: on the road, and it's like, ah, I miss New
Speaker 1: York sessions, Like what's the.
Speaker 5: No being able to play? And whether you on the
Speaker 5: road or in the studio, that is the best news.
Speaker 3: In the world.
Speaker 5: You're working and your name is going to be out there.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: It took the record labels maybe forty years before they
Speaker 5: put studio musicians name on the record. When they found
Speaker 5: out that they can guarantee ten percent more profit and
Speaker 5: not have to do anything. They didn't give us anything
Speaker 5: by putting our names on. It gave us a little
Speaker 5: bit of something that kept us.
Speaker 4: Like who you know today knows has today? And I agree,
Speaker 4: I probably have said the same thing working it's important,
Speaker 4: baby shoes the bank and I'm missing stuffing al and
Speaker 4: helped me out here, you know, they are very important
Speaker 4: for baby shoes and the bank. Right, Okay, you know,
Speaker 4: so you have to work for your car. Note, I see,
Speaker 4: so you have to you have to make money. You
Speaker 4: have to work. So working in live in Europe doing
Speaker 4: a session to me is the same thing.
Speaker 3: Are there?
Speaker 1: Could you tell me anything that you guys remember about
Speaker 1: the particular Amazing Grace project, how it was presented, and
Speaker 1: what the preparations that went into it were.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm sorry that, you know, like world would never
Speaker 5: be able to hear the rehearsal.
Speaker 4: That's what I've talked about with somebody today. The rehearsals
Speaker 4: was the real deal, for real. And when you listen
Speaker 4: to the recording, the sound is not bad. The sound
Speaker 4: is good.
Speaker 5: It's good.
Speaker 4: But they should have recorded that album in James Cleveland's
Speaker 4: church because we were there all week and we got
Speaker 4: used to it.
Speaker 1: You know, so we were you rehearsing James Cleveland's church
Speaker 1: and then relocated to Okay, Okay.
Speaker 5: But you know, I've been talking about it. I've said
Speaker 5: it for years. If people could have seen seen what
Speaker 5: happened in the rehearsals. Besides her singing, she preached, she
Speaker 5: actually preached.
Speaker 4: Really oh Oh my, Alan, were you there doing the rehearsals?
Speaker 4: A well, you only seven, but you went in the studio.
Speaker 3: I saw you in the studio, so you were you
Speaker 3: were seven years old watching this.
Speaker 4: He wasn't there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I the project first came to my attension and I
Speaker 1: think two thousand and three, and I saw just maybe
Speaker 1: a four minute mark of it, and I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, is that the rolling Stone sitting in
Speaker 1: the deacons pew?
Speaker 3: Like? How how major was this?
Speaker 1: Like again, I just thought it was a live album
Speaker 1: and that's.
Speaker 5: Supposed to be. He was there on the last day.
Speaker 3: And Paulack just happened to have cameras running and.
Speaker 4: Cameras all week, cameras rehearsal all week.
Speaker 5: Really, and you had other folks that are now superstars
Speaker 5: that were there early, right, but you don't see them.
Speaker 1: Are there any other projects that you guys have done
Speaker 1: that's like sitting in the can somewhere, like you're any
Speaker 1: festivals that could be?
Speaker 4: It could be. We're not privy. We're not privy.
Speaker 5: To I'm privy to one, okay, and that was on
Speaker 5: Bang Records.
Speaker 3: Okay, another Bang label, well.
Speaker 5: The Bang label of the artists I made their records.
Speaker 1: Don't tell me you're on bricks.
Speaker 4: Mhm, why listen to it? That's all you happen on
Speaker 4: druma just listen to it?
Speaker 3: Yes, all right? So uh Brick.
Speaker 1: Our our listenership should know. The lead singer Brick is
Speaker 1: the father of Sleepy Brown, who's made a lot of
Speaker 1: outcast classics in Atlanta. They're a unit from Atlanta and uh.
Speaker 3: They had a major hit. Uh.
Speaker 1: They wrote a song about their amalgamation of disco and
Speaker 1: jazz called Dazz and it was.
Speaker 3: It was a notable hit.
Speaker 4: You know, we were talking earlier about groove. I think
Speaker 4: the disco era proved the point that that that Bernard
Speaker 4: was making to beat the field. People want to dance.
Speaker 3: How did you feel about four in the Floor. I
Speaker 3: feel a certain way.
Speaker 1: About it, or yeah, I didn't like it really because
Speaker 1: the women got in your way.
Speaker 4: Only in country music now, being in New York playing
Speaker 4: country music is progressive country music now I see with
Speaker 4: Lynn Novy, pure country from the West, from the from
Speaker 4: from the mountains of West Virginia, except that we got
Speaker 4: a chance to put a little bit of this all
Speaker 4: this country violin fiddle is everything like that. It's shipt
Speaker 4: that underneath it. It was progressive and so you could do
Speaker 4: something other than four on the floor. Now, I've been
Speaker 4: in Dallas, Texas for the last thirty five years, and
Speaker 4: I had to learn how to deal with the four
Speaker 4: and the four because the baby's shoes and the bank,
Speaker 4: you know, as far as playing with the with the
Speaker 4: downbeat of the drummer and also following the left hand
Speaker 4: of a piano that's traditional country. I did it because
Speaker 4: I had never done it before, and I came out
Speaker 4: of New York not doing that right. In New York,
Speaker 4: they didn't do that. So Florida four doesn't bother me anymore,
Speaker 4: especially when I get to all the babies are grown now.
Speaker 4: No more baby shoes, right, you know, but well grand
Speaker 4: babies maybe, yeah, well yeah, yep, but daddy taking care
Speaker 4: of grand baby.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: You had mentioned memorable things from Amazing Grace. I'm going
Speaker 4: to say this, I'm probably going too far.
Speaker 3: Nope, not far enough.
Speaker 4: But I've done at least fifteen interviews since she died, okay,
Speaker 4: and I'm always compelled. And I talked to her either
Speaker 4: at least once a year, okay, and it was always short.
Speaker 4: And one thing that I remember about that whole thing's
Speaker 4: number one. King Curtis had put together a band of gentlemen. Okay,
Speaker 4: we wanted lucy lucy, average musicians. But when we got
Speaker 4: to California, James Cleveland went out of his way a
Speaker 4: couple of times to remind us that we were in
Speaker 4: church and about the women and blind balah blah, and
Speaker 4: I remember good, I remember somebody told him to back
Speaker 4: off because this was a different kind of band, right.
Speaker 4: That bothered me. I am a gentleman, and he also too.
Speaker 4: When it came to rehearsing, I felt that the whole
Speaker 4: deal was more about James Cleveland and Aretha. I mean
Speaker 4: I saw it, I felt it. I felt that it
Speaker 4: was all about him all during the week was the pain,
Speaker 4: but and how he was doing things. If you look
Speaker 4: at the film, although I haven't seen the latest film,
Speaker 4: but I do know, there's a whole lot of hesitation
Speaker 4: deciding what to do. After each song, He's going over
Speaker 4: and talking to what was his name? The Uh he's
Speaker 4: in a wheelchair now, Aliceander, okay, talking and Reth just
Speaker 4: sitting there.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like a service, you know.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: And that there was too much about.
Speaker 3: Him that didn't micromanaging.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, no managing.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: Now, the only thing that's my saving grace was this,
Speaker 4: I just moved to La okay, and I was engaged
Speaker 4: to be married okay. And she also thought it was
Speaker 4: a big deal, uh to uh to come to church,
Speaker 4: you know, and to look at you know, what was
Speaker 4: going on, because the Retha was a big deal. But
Speaker 4: during the whole thing, people being too protective over the past.
Speaker 4: I mean I parked somewhere one time in front of
Speaker 4: the church. Guy came and said, my pastor parks here.
Speaker 4: That's why I say, well, they should be a sign,
Speaker 4: you know, something like that. I mean, I wasn't rude
Speaker 4: or anything like that, but there's a whole lot of
Speaker 4: a whole lot of California garchy New York kind of
Speaker 4: things that you know, the two coasts have always had
Speaker 4: a little different kind of thing going on. But saving
Speaker 4: grades for me was playing those songs over and over
Speaker 4: and over. It wasn't really necessary. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 4: on the second day of rehearsal, they could have recorded
Speaker 4: the album really, because when it comes.
Speaker 3: To how many days of rehearsal, worthy.
Speaker 5: Will fur four days of rehearsal and the three days
Speaker 5: of recording.
Speaker 1: And you guys were that intense with those songs or
Speaker 1: was it just like run through?
Speaker 4: And we all knew those we knew what we were
Speaker 4: supposed to do. Every song on that album is from
Speaker 4: the Gospel Pearl Songbook.
Speaker 5: And I played gospel before I played anything else in life,
Speaker 5: So I didn't have a problem playing gospel, and I
Speaker 5: didn't have a problem playing for the last forty to
Speaker 5: fifty years because I still go and I played with
Speaker 5: gospel group.
Speaker 1: So on the other side of that coin, I would
Speaker 1: imagine the answer would be steely Dan. But okay, well,
Speaker 1: pretty much the world knows how hard or how rigid
Speaker 1: or anal retentive or whatever difficult word you want to
Speaker 1: put put in that description. But besides the Steely Dan sessions,
Speaker 1: what client was also quasi? Its tightly wound as far
Speaker 1: as rigorous rehearsals, micromanaging, a session that would make you
Speaker 1: want to roll your eyes, like, okay.
Speaker 4: That happens.
Speaker 1: Well, just give me an example. It's hard, but you
Speaker 1: played on so many like these brothers us you.
Speaker 4: Forget those people.
Speaker 5: Bert Dicoto, What Burt wasn't that.
Speaker 3: His sessions though? What were his sessions that I would know.
Speaker 4: Very told was like down the Hathaway. They arranged hundreds
Speaker 4: of New York artists that were recording here. It's hard
Speaker 4: Hard one song I found it.
Speaker 5: One of the songs is uh that the three Degrees,
Speaker 5: which one the biggest had that would be like maybe maybe.
Speaker 3: To the hip hop generation.
Speaker 1: Maybe means everything to us because it's been chopped and
Speaker 1: sampled and so like three degrees version of maybe, but
Speaker 1: before they went to Philly International, that means something to
Speaker 1: my my generation.
Speaker 3: So well, you make no but it's new are it's
Speaker 3: just super new? But so it's not new.
Speaker 5: It's not new because that's what we had to do.
Speaker 4: And it's new for you.
Speaker 1: Well it's okay, not new for me per se because
Speaker 1: I grew up with that record. Let me give an example.
Speaker 1: So in my world, uh, there's shall we say, a
Speaker 1: guru and his name is James Yancey aka j Dilla,
Speaker 1: who was a producer from Detroit who basically made us
Speaker 1: just listen to.
Speaker 3: Older records in a new way.
Speaker 1: So this is an example of him taking the three
Speaker 1: degrees maybe and what he calls flipping it, which he
Speaker 1: will take a song sort of chop the parts and
Speaker 1: redo them.
Speaker 3: So heard voice fine, saying.
Speaker 5: I just fell all apart inside because I hadn't heard
Speaker 5: that voice in such a long time. I turned around.
Speaker 3: So Diyl is the kind of guy.
Speaker 1: He'll use a record and he's so inspirational. Now, what
Speaker 1: makes this particular project notable was that he passed away
Speaker 1: from lupus.
Speaker 3: So he's making this it's kind of his.
Speaker 1: He's making this record in the hospital, kind of in
Speaker 1: the last months of his life, so he wasn't even
Speaker 1: able to talk or be mobile, but his brain was
Speaker 1: still able to create miracles. So any record that he
Speaker 1: ever uses will then make cats like me turn around
Speaker 1: and pay top dollar for those old records, read the credits,
Speaker 1: and then study those credits, and then buy all those
Speaker 1: records and then buy all those records.
Speaker 3: And so that's what I mean about him being a guru.
Speaker 1: But is this weird that what might be an eye
Speaker 1: roll session for you at that time we play, you know,
Speaker 1: for someone in my generation, that could be everything. Like
Speaker 1: I didn't know that you played drums on Synthetic Substitution
Speaker 1: by Herb Bruney, And I'm certain that you're tired of
Speaker 1: hip hop historians like, oh my god, you played on
Speaker 1: synthetic substitute, like I'm sure that's a footnote in your life, Like,
Speaker 1: oh that thing, Like I did that in two seconds.
Speaker 5: But that was the way things were. You guys wanted
Speaker 5: something different, so you would actually take and try to
Speaker 5: turn records completely all the way around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's just so weird that something that could
Speaker 1: be a footnote in your life could be an anchor.
Speaker 3: Like thirty years down the line, Like how do you
Speaker 3: feel feel about that?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think it's great, but we don't think
Speaker 4: of it that way.
Speaker 3: If you.
Speaker 1: Thought your work on Donald Bird's records are like something
Speaker 1: like think Twice or or or I'm assuming like Harlem
Speaker 1: River Drive or or fancy dances like all that Bobby
Speaker 1: Humphrey stuff, especially now that we have access to the
Speaker 1: stems and can individualize attracts and just listen, like it's
Speaker 1: Pete Rock would die right now if he knew I
Speaker 1: was talking to you like you you between between uh
Speaker 1: between uh.
Speaker 3: The Ohio players, uh turban on I said, uh.
Speaker 1: Marshall Jones between Marshall Jones and you like you guys
Speaker 1: birthed Pete Rock's whole life, which.
Speaker 3: In turn he birthed us. You know, what I mean,
Speaker 3: and it just it just goes in circles.
Speaker 4: So you guys are in this in this generation. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, you have so much technology that you can
Speaker 4: do these kinds of things. We couldn't do that. And
Speaker 4: plus you mentioned Donald are that.
Speaker 3: You are technology like you.
Speaker 4: Mentioned Donald Burn and Bobby Humphy you see once and
Speaker 4: we talked about this early. Once you come into favoritism
Speaker 4: with one producer, everything they do, you're they call you
Speaker 4: everything that Maazelles did. I was a basic player doing
Speaker 4: a certain span of time. Freddy Parent and and and
Speaker 4: and and and and the Isaiels.
Speaker 3: What is Freddy Parent Like?
Speaker 1: I never get to hear stories about him as a producer.
Speaker 4: What was He's one of those kind of people that's
Speaker 4: sort of kind of uh, He's able to be in
Speaker 4: a room and you don't know he's there. I don't
Speaker 4: remember much about Freddy other than he was very religious.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 4: But once you start working with them, they keep everything
Speaker 4: they do. They got their thing. They call the same
Speaker 4: people over and over and over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: You know, I was listening to a a radio program
Speaker 4: where Donald Bird's band of the original band of the Blackbirds,
Speaker 4: The Blackbirds. They were talking and I kind of feel
Speaker 4: sorry for a lot of these guys because I did
Speaker 4: three records with Donald Bird. But you listen, but listen,
Speaker 4: you listen to these guys and everything's made about that
Speaker 4: they were the original band, and now they're talking. Of
Speaker 4: course they feel freedom. Everybody has an ego. And so
Speaker 4: I'm in there with my with my son in law
Speaker 4: and and and we're talking about you know, they said, well,
Speaker 4: do you know these guys that do not having a
Speaker 4: clue on who they are other than that they had
Speaker 4: to have been a road band for Donald Bird, but
Speaker 4: they did not make those records.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, that has to be you
Speaker 1: on the Blackbird records too, So that's you in Rock
Speaker 1: Creek Park and walking rhythm and and and.
Speaker 4: The music business is very very good. Bobby Humphrey is
Speaker 4: not a great musician, but her records sold a lot,
Speaker 4: a lot because of the rhythm session they Jerry Peters,
Speaker 4: Harvey Mason made, David T. Walker. We we also work
Speaker 4: as a group. Absolutely, are you on love His uh
Speaker 4: the album with the Love Vibrations?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: No, oh okay, but I'm glad you don't want to
Speaker 4: die right now. You know you you will have a
Speaker 4: you gotta you know a lot about sponge Man David T. Walker. Ye,
Speaker 4: Love Vibrations. I was here in New York. I just
Speaker 4: got the New York when that record came out. Okay, okay,
Speaker 4: And David was here with the with the band called
Speaker 4: the Kinfolk. Yes, okay, and Love Vibrations is one of
Speaker 4: my When I heard that record, almost died really because
Speaker 4: of the feel and the sound, not so much of
Speaker 4: what the rhythm was, although I'm a rhythm god. But nobody, nobody,
Speaker 4: no guitar player sounds like David Walker. He's special. You're right,
Speaker 4: none you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So I assume with Freddie Pearron, Uh, can I also
Speaker 1: assume that the Silvers and the Jackson five are also
Speaker 1: under your.
Speaker 4: No, I didn't play with the Silvers. Jerry Peters Okay.
Speaker 4: Johnson produced the Silvers and that was a little bit
Speaker 4: before my time in Hall. For the Jackson five or
Speaker 4: the Jackson five.
Speaker 5: The Jackson five was the Jackson five. It wasn't, uh,
Speaker 5: because I'm the one that also made the records for
Speaker 5: the Jackson five at the beginning, which ones the very beginning,
Speaker 5: the first one, the one that was written by the
Speaker 5: the Corporation. No, well he was on TV. He had
Speaker 5: his big job on TV. You talk about a producer, No,
Speaker 5: he wasn't. He was the actual writer of.
Speaker 1: The song Clifton Clifton, Davis Clifton, but never can save Goodbye?
Speaker 3: Yes, that's you. What songs are you on?
Speaker 4: Uh that I don't don't think of down dancing machine
Speaker 4: ship that's you. And I'm sorry, Bill, I know, I
Speaker 4: know there's a nightmare for you. Very very interesting too
Speaker 4: about when you get to if it's okay, tell it.
Speaker 4: I just come from New York, yes, and I was
Speaker 4: living in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: Now, if you come from New York, you have a
Speaker 4: certain New York attitude, especially if you're making money.
Speaker 3: That your hipper.
Speaker 4: You know, not that you're hip, but you just don't
Speaker 4: have to put up with you don't have to put
Speaker 4: it with bs right and you and you. The New
Speaker 4: York attitude is to tell you when it's full of ship,
Speaker 4: oh you know, it's not cool. The Steve approves and
Speaker 4: number one Motown had a Ben Bart. I don't mind
Speaker 4: talking about him because everybody hated him. I did, and
Speaker 4: so now everybody knows he was not a likable god.
Speaker 4: And I I came up around, not came up around.
Speaker 4: But I knew Smoky Robinson, I knew the devastating affair.
Speaker 4: I knew. I knew a lot of these these people
Speaker 4: because they're from my neck of the woods. Time from Ohio.
Speaker 4: And every nine and then I would be on tour
Speaker 4: with one band from Ohio, this with somebody from Detroit
Speaker 4: or from Chicago's anyway, Smokey or somebody else would call.
Speaker 4: They had two studios, Sunset and Sunrise, and so they
Speaker 4: would call for me because they number one personally.
Speaker 3: They knew me.
Speaker 4: And plus I did have a little bit of a
Speaker 4: rip and Ben sometimes would take the liberty of putting
Speaker 4: you over here in this studio, putting you over here,
Speaker 4: and I had to straighten him out real quick. And
Speaker 4: I didn't mind doing it because I was fresh out
Speaker 4: of New York. I said, I he hired me, I
Speaker 4: know him, So I'm not going to Sunset. I'm going
Speaker 4: So that was one thing I'm getting away from the
Speaker 4: Jackson five.
Speaker 3: Thing I got you.
Speaker 4: The producer was a pain in the button. He's the
Speaker 4: kind of producer where when you're going to do a session,
Speaker 4: he's got four or five people in the in the
Speaker 4: control room. His cousin, his old lady is the Bline Blade,
Speaker 4: the blind Blah. Drugs were very very prominent at that time.
Speaker 4: And when we did a dancing Machine perfect I mean perfect,
Speaker 4: James Gotson, I mean we we it was perfect. Unlike
Speaker 4: the second tape. Yes, but Motown will keep you there
Speaker 4: for forty.
Speaker 1: Takes just to get their money's worth it, just to get.
Speaker 4: In the band. The guy who wrote the song with
Speaker 4: me producing, and we got a click track, but he's
Speaker 4: breaking the sweat directing us five five music anyway recorded it.
Speaker 1: So back then even use click tracks. Huh back then
Speaker 1: click tracks were still used.
Speaker 4: Absolutely okay, absolutely, So if you know how to play
Speaker 4: with a click track, you don't have that.
Speaker 3: Problem, right okay.
Speaker 4: And it's very very hard for people to play, especially drummer,
Speaker 4: the every jump to play with the click track. I've
Speaker 4: experienced that in Texas, I mean a whole lot. Now,
Speaker 4: so we record the song. I wanted the producers dead now,
Speaker 4: but his name is Hal Davis, Hal Davis, Yes, So
Speaker 4: he decides, he decides that they don't want to hear
Speaker 4: the bass, they don't want to hit the bass until
Speaker 4: until maybe the third verse. What ok that was his problem.
Speaker 4: So now the engineer and James Carmichael wrote the arrangement. Arrangement.
Speaker 4: James Carmichael told him. The engineer told him, James Gatton
Speaker 4: told him, and I told him, all you got to
Speaker 4: do is pull the faded down and then bring it
Speaker 4: back up. But no, he's producing, he's his noses running,
Speaker 4: and he's uh and so he don't want me to play,
Speaker 4: and it's ridiculous. No town, I thought was very ridiculous.
Speaker 4: I can talk about that a lot, right, Okay, However,
Speaker 4: so like okay, get a session. About two or three
Speaker 4: weeks later, ben Bart calls me. He wants me to
Speaker 4: come back and do an overdub, and I ignore him.
Speaker 4: I didn't need a motown client, right, I didn't need
Speaker 4: a more town. I was from Quincy all the way
Speaker 4: down to his father, uh to a lot of people.
Speaker 4: I was taking care of business, my wife, the baby,
Speaker 4: the bank was happy with my butt. So I didn't
Speaker 4: need more towns, especially if it's giving me some kind
Speaker 4: of And there are a lot of things I'm not
Speaker 4: saying that's in that I feel, So I don't I
Speaker 4: don't return to call uh to to your girl to
Speaker 4: ben buryed, don't return. I don't want to work front.
Speaker 4: Don't have to put it that way.
Speaker 3: I feel, you have to feel.
Speaker 4: And so time goes by. So how David calls me?
Speaker 4: Oh number one? Ben Bart had had a happy of
Speaker 4: calling you directly on your line, directly to you. It
Speaker 4: ain't supposed to happen that way. You ca all the
Speaker 4: answering service, the answer service calls you. So anyway, uh
Speaker 4: uh he been Burrett. He calls me for for for uh.
Speaker 4: He calls me to come back. I have to come
Speaker 4: back and fix something. Anyway.
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 4: I didn't call him back right now. I lived in
Speaker 4: Hollywood on Vermont in the in the Oakwood Garden apartments.
Speaker 4: That was huge, all musicians stage, you know, it was
Speaker 4: just huge. And to get to my apartment you had
Speaker 4: to know where my apartment was, you know. I came
Speaker 4: home one day and how David's cart was in my
Speaker 4: door and he said, please give me a call. We
Speaker 4: need you to come and fix something.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: So when somebody went that far, I said, well, I'll
Speaker 4: give him a call. And so he said he made
Speaker 4: a mistake that I had to come there. They had
Speaker 4: tried Wilton Felder. They had tried Tom Scott's I can't
Speaker 4: think of his name, the bass player. They had tried
Speaker 4: two or three bass players to put a baseline on
Speaker 4: the front of that song. Wilton Felder said, what you
Speaker 4: need to go do is go back and get the
Speaker 4: same guy because they didn't have the same kind of feel. Yes,
Speaker 4: and so they try to do it without me because
Speaker 4: Ben Barry probably didn't care much about me because I
Speaker 4: would call him down when he called me down, you know,
Speaker 4: and things like that. So like finally I went and
Speaker 4: went ahead and did it. But the style is kind
Speaker 4: of I had no problem just playing the same thing.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you now, it's it's weird because even
Speaker 1: the Jacksons are touring now, their bass players nailed every
Speaker 1: note of that song, which.
Speaker 3: Is not is not It's not usual at all.
Speaker 1: Like I feel as though the star of Dancing Machine
Speaker 1: is the bass work on It's just unusual. And how
Speaker 1: that almost they can come to be is some mind
Speaker 1: boggling shit.
Speaker 4: Part of my involvement with Michael Jackson in the film
Speaker 4: Ben but the back star is called it Jermaine. Jermaine
Speaker 4: always tended to play the bass and then he became
Speaker 4: a bass player. He's the bass player. So like he
Speaker 4: learned him and Kenny burt Ah five stair steps yeah
Speaker 4: him and correct yes, yes you are okay, and so so,
Speaker 4: him and Kenny Burg were always very very to me,
Speaker 4: very very I'm trying to find a word, but I
Speaker 4: can't rite now, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And so Jermaine, I did his first album. That's that's
Speaker 4: me playing based on his first album.
Speaker 1: On Let's Be Young Tonight and all those Now are
Speaker 1: you playing based on Eruku? Please don't break my heart.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure. All I do know is I did
Speaker 4: his first album, right, And I remember asking him, said, Jermaine,
Speaker 4: why don't you He says, I can't play this. I
Speaker 4: will play it. I will be I will play it,
Speaker 4: he said, but right now we're trying to get the
Speaker 4: record done.
Speaker 3: He has a study, right, okay. You know.
Speaker 4: So, like Jermaine basically was the reason that I even
Speaker 4: got involved with Michael. I did two Michael sang on
Speaker 4: two songs. One was been Okay and then there was
Speaker 4: another song that he did. But I think my my
Speaker 4: association with the Jackson five different. Jermaine definitely because of Jamaine,
Speaker 4: and I think for the whole thing around. Although you know,
Speaker 4: when your name is kind of shining everybody's face, they
Speaker 4: do want to get what they call the best players,
Speaker 4: who are not always the best players, but the name
Speaker 4: is familiar.
Speaker 3: Right, like all about the name, I see that, you.
Speaker 4: Know, I tell you it's very important, you know, Like
Speaker 4: I've run across the bass players to say, I don't
Speaker 4: come out to the house this is for one hundred fifty
Speaker 4: dollars or for one hundred dollars right, right, that's not
Speaker 4: a musician. Okay, you should say I don't come out
Speaker 4: of the house if I'm sick. Oh, I don't come
Speaker 4: out of the house if it's in, And say you
Speaker 4: don't smoke cigarettes, right, And you're going to do a
Speaker 4: bar playing a bar like I stopped smoking quite a
Speaker 4: while ago, and going to playing the bar is totally
Speaker 4: beneath me, right because of the cigarette smoking. You know, now,
Speaker 4: I know how you do? Know?
Speaker 1: So speaking of Motown, you also have you how many
Speaker 1: Motown sessions have you done?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Probably four or five hundred?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you got me.
Speaker 3: You're also and I once you correct.
Speaker 5: The thing is is that everybody thinks that it was
Speaker 5: all done in Detroit. Half of those things we did
Speaker 5: here in New York.
Speaker 3: Really, you know what?
Speaker 4: Speaking of that here in New York, a lot of
Speaker 4: the Motown artists when they were on tour, when they
Speaker 4: come to New York, Me, Bernard and Eric, we'll do
Speaker 4: a lot of Sunday demos for the Temptations for a
Speaker 4: lot of groups coming out of Detroit when they came
Speaker 4: this way. That's because of the name value that we had,
Speaker 4: me him in Eric, So a lot of times we
Speaker 4: would do little demo sessions. Okay with withste are traveling.
Speaker 5: You remember the Old Jays.
Speaker 3: Yeah, talk to me.
Speaker 4: The Old Jays are my homeboys.
Speaker 3: By the way, Oh Cleveland, the Cleveland Clinton accent.
Speaker 5: Well, I had six months out of a year on
Speaker 5: Saturdays when they were not working, yes, and trying to
Speaker 5: do things, they'd be here making their records.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: And a lot of people don't know that. It's gonna
Speaker 4: blow a lot of minds. Yes, when you look at
Speaker 4: Detroit now, I've been to both studios or the one
Speaker 4: studio that's now closed, but to the regular studio, I've
Speaker 4: been there. Get ready to go there again in June
Speaker 4: for the base day. But a lot of people don't
Speaker 4: understand when you read a credit, or when you read
Speaker 4: someone's interview, or when you with someone's biography, you have
Speaker 4: to be very careful on what you believe, Okay, because
Speaker 4: so many things, like we're just talking about, I would
Speaker 4: not be surprised if a lot of the demos that
Speaker 4: we made, well, well, I'm not surprised a lot of
Speaker 4: demers we made for Detroit artists coming here. Number one,
Speaker 4: we're not in Detroit. Detroit used the same people all
Speaker 4: the time, and they lived in Detroit. Yes, when you
Speaker 4: come to New York, you got at least ten bass
Speaker 4: players that are different, ten drummers that are different. Well,
Speaker 4: I never, I didn't never really care for I shouldn't
Speaker 4: say it that way, but I can't find the right words.
Speaker 4: But the Motown rhythm section was very, very basic. The
Speaker 4: only body that was different was Jameson. That's why those
Speaker 4: records are so based ominous, if that's if there's a word,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 3: But a lot of.
Speaker 4: Things that we did here in New York helped everybody
Speaker 4: go back home and better their record or maybe to
Speaker 4: add to it, Okay, that kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 4: Like so like we definitely like we look at the
Speaker 4: record crew. Somebody had the money, the ego from those musicians.
Speaker 4: They're not the only musicians in LA. I've gotten all
Speaker 4: kinds of not all kinds, I mean, let me stop.
Speaker 4: I've gone to these three people that have called me
Speaker 4: or emailed me asking me to be a part of
Speaker 4: doing a New York rhythm section thing similar similar to me,
Speaker 4: you don't need my Okay, you don't need to do it,
Speaker 4: and you don't need it. I lived in California for
Speaker 4: twelve years. California people have huge egos, right because it's Hollywood, right,
Speaker 4: and so they can do something like that. In New York.
Speaker 4: We don't care. We didn't care. We just didn't care.
Speaker 4: There was a time that I can listen to a
Speaker 4: record and I can tell you who the bass player was.
Speaker 4: I can't do that anymore.
Speaker 3: Can't do that now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's different now because it's just the machine.
Speaker 3: Some cats.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I feel Pino Palladino is probably
Speaker 1: the one cat who he holds you and Jamison in
Speaker 1: high regards and still to this day on his work
Speaker 1: with D'Angelo.
Speaker 3: Projects that he does.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he still has the same precision
Speaker 1: based from ninety five Goo jillion years ago. That's in
Speaker 1: your hands right now, like he's definitely keeping the torch alive. Wait,
Speaker 1: I have just a few more questions. I know we
Speaker 1: got to wrap up soon, but I gotta know. So
Speaker 1: your work with Leon Ware, I'm starting to realize that
Speaker 1: it's it's once a producer uses you guys and continues
Speaker 1: to use.
Speaker 3: Have you ever worked with Leon Ware before? Brother Party?
Speaker 1: I gotta say that your work on his record for
Speaker 1: many representding for Could you describe any of those, like
Speaker 1: the I Want You sessions or any of those?
Speaker 4: Well, everything I Want You. James Gaston describes it as
Speaker 4: a jam and that there were no notes written. Okay,
Speaker 4: all Carmichael did was just put down court changes and
Speaker 4: maybe every now and then an ensemble lick or something
Speaker 4: like that. What did you just.
Speaker 3: Ask me about? No, no, about the I Want You sessions?
Speaker 4: And so when it comes I want you one basic thing?
Speaker 4: Now that ain't a marking your record?
Speaker 3: Okay, it was a Leon record.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Leon always used the same people me, Sonny
Speaker 4: Burke or Clams McDonald, James Gotson and David T. Walker
Speaker 4: and Leon. When he died, he was worth in the
Speaker 4: millions because of his songwriting. He wrote a couple of
Speaker 4: things that Quincy did I Want I Want You. The
Speaker 4: only drag about I Want You was that it was
Speaker 4: done in Motown because Leon was signed to Motown.
Speaker 3: Okay, I feel you.
Speaker 4: You know, going over there was always when I say
Speaker 4: it's a drag and I say it's a dragon.
Speaker 3: Sometimes business is Jenki. You earned the right, You earn
Speaker 3: the right.
Speaker 4: But I have never complained I feel you because I
Speaker 4: like I said, just like I said, my car, note,
Speaker 4: my house, note, my baby's shoes, and a wife was satisfied.
Speaker 3: Hey, at the end of the day, man we ket
Speaker 3: food on the table, the four.
Speaker 5: When you start, and the continuation of the thing of Motown.
Speaker 5: The person that was so underrated Mel Brown.
Speaker 1: Describe Mel Brown, describe Mel Brown for me for those
Speaker 1: that don't know.
Speaker 5: Well, he was there and he was covering for Papa
Speaker 5: mm hmm. Because half the time he was out of it,
Speaker 5: but he played on every act They used to get him,
Speaker 5: put him out of the road on the road they didn't.
Speaker 5: They didn't want him to stay in Detroit, so the Supremes,
Speaker 5: it didn't matter, the temptations, whoever he was out with.
Speaker 5: He could get home and then one day, maybe two days,
Speaker 5: and they get him out because there was friction inside
Speaker 5: with all the different musicians.
Speaker 4: The greatest Motown producer for me is Willy Hutch really
Speaker 4: really will He was phenomen not because he's from Dallas,
Speaker 4: but he was out work with Willie and he was
Speaker 4: a good producer.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, you know, so you're playing on the macn Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm sad.
Speaker 5: To ask Simpson asked for than Simpson. You know, it's
Speaker 5: same thing. But see they were from here, from New
Speaker 5: York and they were heavy duty songwriters, just like Smooky
Speaker 5: Promising or the brothers, the Three Brothers.
Speaker 1: Holland you know what, wait before I wrap this time,
Speaker 1: I got to ask that the world doesn't know about.
Speaker 3: How did you get this project?
Speaker 1: This movie Project Lee that came out in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: You're drumming on it. It's like.
Speaker 1: It's you on a stage with a dancing woman. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's uh. It just came on YouTube, like I'll say,
Speaker 1: like a couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: But do you know this project? How did that come
Speaker 3: to be?
Speaker 5: It was the first time, okay, the very first time
Speaker 5: that I got credit. Oh, okay, okay, and it was
Speaker 5: the first black X rated movie.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, okay, I remember that movie.
Speaker 3: So okay, when all is said and done.
Speaker 1: For both of you, what do you feel like your
Speaker 1: top three definitive works are as far as.
Speaker 3: Can you even do that? Like your three?
Speaker 1: What three songs would you save, like the three songs
Speaker 1: that define for both of you?
Speaker 3: What three songs are they?
Speaker 5: Well? Damn okay, rock steady until you come back to me, yes, okay, and.
Speaker 1: Uh not one of the shuffles, yes, now that I'm
Speaker 1: stilly Dad not uh.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah Dad.
Speaker 1: Home last okay, okay, all right, So brother Rainy, what
Speaker 1: what are the three that you feel are like?
Speaker 4: Well, my favorite is the Border Song? Okay, I just
Speaker 4: get the goosebumps and sometimes I cry.
Speaker 3: It has to. It's not recorded anywhere.
Speaker 4: Now the Border Song.
Speaker 1: The Border Song was well, no, no, no, no, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the live version that didn't.
Speaker 3: Make uh.
Speaker 4: We didn't do that on an amazing grace.
Speaker 5: Okay, no, it wasn't.
Speaker 4: The Border Song. And then also to Home in the
Speaker 4: last also gives me goose bumps. It's something about it.
Speaker 4: I like minor keys anyway, but it gives me, you
Speaker 4: for goose bumps, Okay. Quincy's along Camp Betty is also
Speaker 4: something that I really really enjoy playing. Really actually, when
Speaker 4: you ask me that question, I don't really have it's
Speaker 4: hard to pick out three. It's hard to pick up
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 5: He just said the magic words. It's the hardest thing
Speaker 5: in the world. Now. I played safe for the last
Speaker 5: forty five fifty years by talking about a reason.
Speaker 3: But this album right here, and which album is that?
Speaker 5: This is done by an arranger and Gary McFarland, Garry McFarland.
Speaker 3: Gary McFall, Yeah, creative River Dreams and so many other.
Speaker 5: And the point is is that sack.
Speaker 3: Full of dreams, not river dreams. Sorry, suh.
Speaker 5: I was going up on the elevator on forty eighth
Speaker 5: Street to A and R Recording studio, and uh, Grady
Speaker 5: Tate was on the elevator. Was so, we're going upstairs,
Speaker 5: you know, to record. Wow, Grady, I said, where are
Speaker 5: you going? You said, I'm going the same place you're going.
Speaker 5: I said, well, you know sens to me going up there.
Speaker 3: I don't need me.
Speaker 5: I didn't know. He also sang.
Speaker 3: Oh, no one knew, Grady Taste saying yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I didn't know. I've been knowing the man for.
Speaker 3: You just coming there to taking your Gruman gig and
Speaker 3: that was it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, hey, I loved him. I loved watching him
Speaker 5: and do things, and and the arranger knew exactly what
Speaker 5: he wanted, and he also knew that I was gonna
Speaker 5: be the one playing the drums, even the ones where
Speaker 5: he wasn't singing. Man, So we actually did this album
Speaker 5: almost live with the whole band.
Speaker 4: IM talk about one mills of my mind.
Speaker 5: The Windmills was came after us, but this this particular album,
Speaker 5: he was in the process of also doing his record,
Speaker 5: so I did his record right after.
Speaker 4: I see so.
Speaker 5: That that they had come from rehearsal together.
Speaker 3: Right, and we go up there.
Speaker 1: This isn't the first time that I heard h a
Speaker 1: weird Grady Tait story where people didn't know that he
Speaker 1: was also a singer.
Speaker 5: Awesome.
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of my generation us growing
Speaker 1: up and on television, never knew that he was the
Speaker 1: voice on Schoolhouse Rock, like all those little.
Speaker 3: All those cartoons we grew up.
Speaker 1: Gentlemen, I could I could nerd out and ask questions forever,
Speaker 1: but I gotta wrap it up. But I just have
Speaker 1: to say from the bottom of my heart that having
Speaker 1: this conversation with you two is is this is one
Speaker 1: of the greatest.
Speaker 3: This is why I do what I do.
Speaker 1: Like you guys have no idea what your your work
Speaker 1: and your contribution. And this isn't blowing smoke up your ass,
Speaker 1: none of that. Like this, you guys have true are
Speaker 1: the architects.
Speaker 3: And the.
Speaker 1: Gas to a lot of us, not just me as
Speaker 1: a musician, but for a lot of us out there,
Speaker 1: and I truly thank you for it. Once again, Chuck
Speaker 1: Rainey and Brother Bernard party on Quest Love Supreme Special
Speaker 1: Edition on behalf of Fun Tigelow both Bills, Sugar, Steve
Speaker 1: and Laia. This is Questlove signing off of probably one
Speaker 1: of the greatest Quest Love Supremes ever. We will see
Speaker 1: it next time on the next go round this Quest
Speaker 1: Love Supreme only on Pandora.
Speaker 3: Thank you Hill.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.