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Speaker 1: Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.

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Speaker 2: Hey, what's up, y'all?

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Speaker 1: This is quest Love And as you notice throughout June, we are celebrating Black Music Month by releasing an episode every day, So every day and maybe want to hear especially pick LS Classic.

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Speaker 2: Now for Part one, Part two, and Part three of my all time favorite ULS episode.

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Speaker 1: This is the legendary Jimmy Jam. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of QLs Classic.

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Speaker 2: I'm Questlove.

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Speaker 1: This episode we consider it to be our finest hour. We interview the music god himself, Jimmy Jam. This is, without no doubt one of our best moments, my personal favorite. In Part one of this three part series, we discuss this life in Minnesota, of Minneapolis, coming up as a DJ, his friendship with Terry Lewis's music partner, and getting mentored by the one and only Clarence Aphon, not to mention Uh Princey starting a little unknown band called The Time.

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Speaker 2: We Hope you enjoyed. Here we go.

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Speaker 3: Su Primo sun So Supremo, Roll Call Suprema So Supremo, Roll Call Suprema son So Suprimo roll call So Bremo So so so.

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Speaker 1: So I went to the mirror, yeah, with Grayson Vaness. Yeah, the mirror looked back at me. Yeah, that's where the god said, Supremo.

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Speaker 2: Roll call Supremo So so.

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Speaker 1: So roll What's love double dipping? Yeah, not trying to be facetious. Yeah, that mirror really said.

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Speaker 2: Suprema So Supremo row My name is Fante. Yeah, in the heels of a Gora.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Well, my man, Jimmy Jam Yeah. Now where is my food?

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Speaker 3: Supremo Sun Sun Supremo Role call, Suprema Son Son Supremo role called.

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Speaker 2: My name is Sugar, yeah, the engineer. Yeah, if you need me, Yeah, I'm over here.

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Speaker 3: Supremo Son Son Supremo, Role call, Supremo Son Son Supremo Role call.

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Speaker 2: I'm unpaid bill, Yeah, chilling with my family.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, mister Jimmy Jam Yeah, I had to be my first Grammy.

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Speaker 3: Supprivo roll call, Suprema Son Supremo Role This.

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Speaker 2: Was my name. Yeah, and I still say yeah the best record of the eighties. Yeah, Alex is here saying.

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Speaker 3: Ro come Suprema So Supremo, Role call, Supremo.

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Speaker 2: Supremo roll call. Yeah. Never out of touch. Yeah, Jimmy jam is here. Yeah, I miss you.

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Speaker 1: My.

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Speaker 2: Suprema Supremo.

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Speaker 3: Roll call, Suprema son Son Supremo.

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Speaker 2: Role came. I don't know, Yeah what I was supposed to say. Yeah, I'll be fat Albert. Yeah, so Supremo.

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Speaker 3: Roll call, Suprema So Supremo. Role call, Suprema son Son Supremo. Roll call, Suprema son Son Supremo.

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Speaker 1: Roll call, Ladies and gentlemen. I do not want to waste a second. Welcome Jimmy, jim Okay, let's go, Jimmy Jam Where were you born? No, I'm not wasting a second.

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Speaker 2: No, how you doing, I'm good, I'm good man. We're very overwhelmed for this Pineapple goals man. This is goal yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like my life is whatever.

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Speaker 2: Door I thought she was gonna fall my Yeah, it was like, my life.

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Speaker 1: Is Baltic Avenue and Mediterranean, like this is ward Walking Park place.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Monopoly references, it is. It is sports.

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Speaker 1: Hello there, mister James Harris, the third Man.

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Speaker 2: I'm wonderful man. It's great to be here with you today finally and your crew, your whole crew. Man, it's wonderful. Thank you.

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Speaker 1: We've been looking forward to this one for a minute. Yeah, this is serious of life life goals here.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just we're starting from the begin Where were you born, sir? Minneapolis, Minnesota? Okay, uh, what part of what part of Minneapolis? I grew up South Minneapolis, So you know, I can say like forty first in Portland Avenue, which doesn't mean a lot to anybody, but you know, if you think of downtown, it's like, you know, First Street, second Street, you know, First Avenue, so on and so forth. I lived forty one blocks south of downtown.

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Speaker 1: I feel like when any black person is from the south side of town, south side of east side, that means something something going on.

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Speaker 2: Like what part of what was the town part of town to not go to? In Minneapolish, Well, okay, if you were black, the northeast was where to not go to. It was called actually the northeast is what we called it. Where the white people lived. Yeah. Yeah, every town has always white people. The white people didn't didn't necessarily want us to be there, you know, because white people live every I mean, let's face it. Back, growing up, I think the state population was something like three percent black, and maybe it was eight percent black in Minneapolis or something like that. So pretty much white people were everywhere. But certainly, you know, everybody was very tolerant, I guess, I would say, and it was very progressive town. But as you can tell from the music, it came out of there. I think that's had a lot to do with it. But no, I mean, really, the north side probably is where the folks were. You know, I was one of the only South Side guy. I mean in Prince obviously because we went to school together and stuff. But on the north side of town you had you know, Morris Day, Jellybean, Terry Lewis, you know, and you had the community center called the Way, which everybody used to rehearse at and that kind of thing. So it was a lot more happening on the north side of town, I would say that on the south side.

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Speaker 1: So in your formative years, how many of your contemporaries and peers that you were professional with would you see on a regular basis?

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Speaker 2: Everybody? Man, it was a small community, it was. It was. It was a lot like I always say that Purple Rain the movie was a kind of a it was fiction, but it was it told a lot of truth and that was there was like a couple of clubs you could play at, and there was more bands than the clubs could hold. So it made for a very competitive situation where if your band wasn't firing, you just wouldn't be playing in the club. And so that's the way we grew up. So there was like the Elks Lounge. There was a club called the Nakarima Nakaima was actually American spelled backwards. And you know, the Cozy Bar was another place. There was a place called the Flame. And you know, so between, you know, back in that day, you had you know, my band, I had a band called Mind and Matter, Terry had Flight Time. We were together and then we were apart. We were you know, we were going back and forth a lot. And then Prince had Grand Central. Morris had a band called the Enterprise Band of Pleasure at one point, you know, so on and so forth. So what happened was there was all these bands, but there's only a couple of places to play. But all of those guys and particularly people like that, and really the best, probably the baddest dude up there was Sonny Thompson.

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Speaker 1: Everyone speaks of Sonny Thompson like he's God, Yeah, Like, what is it about? What is the legend of Sonny Thompson. Well, Sonny Thompson.

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Speaker 2: I remember back when I first met Terry, and I remember we put our little band together and stuff, and then they used to do these big outdoor festivals at a place called the Phylliswheetlely, which is a big community center, and they used to do these outdoor concerts and I remember seeing they had a band, actually the original band that was called the Family. Sonny Thompson was in that band. But I'd never seen a brother play the guitar like that. I mean, he just was like he was like legendary. He was like the dude. And on top of it, he had the attitude like if you didn't like him or you didn't like the way he was playing, he was gonna come down to kick your ass. Right, So he'd he'd played the gig and stuff, and then afterwards if he'd like, look at it you and you'd say to him, he killed it, Sonny, Man, that was amazing, because you better say that. But the good news was he always was. He was amazing, and he was a dude that everybody just kind of stopped and stared and went damn. What was his style of playing? He was a great rhythm player. He played with a lot of aggression. You know. The thing I always said about about Prince and the way he played is I've never seen anybody attack instruments the way Prince did, Like he literally attacked the instruments louder or just toned well, you know he would. I mean I always say, like, for instance, Terry. You know, Terry's a great bass player, There's no doubt about it. But you know how we always use the analogy like in basketball, people that make you better. Prince was that person, right, So Terry would be playing a bass part and Prince would take the bass from Terry and go, no, play it like this, and then he'd play it, and then he'd had Terry the bass back, and Terry would look at the bass like he'd never seen it before. You know, it's like damn. You know so that but that was the way Sonny was, and I think Prince got a lot of that from Sonny, like the attack of the instruments. And it's the same with the keyboards. We used to break keyboards all the time because it wasn't like you would just hit the keyboard politely. It was like we were doing all kind of swoops and wow wow on all that kind of stuff, like we would break keyboards. I mean that kind of stuff. I mean that was the way he wanted you to play. And so I mean that that kind of attitude to me was the thing that you know, set him apart, along with a whole lot of other things, but it really set Prince apart for sure.

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Speaker 1: What were the what was a gold club to play in Minneapolis at the time, Like, was First Avenue a dream that was unattainables?

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Speaker 3: No?

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Speaker 2: Actually, here's an interesting thing. Yeah, Now First Avenue was actually the first place that actually allowed like black bands to play. So there was a quiet segregation. Oh it was not in your fleece, Oh it was. I guess you could say it was quiet. I mean, if you were a band and you were trying to play somewhere, you knew there were clubs that were just unattainable. You just weren't going to play that club. And I thank God to this day that that happened because what it did, as history has always shown with black folks, is from adversity comes all good things. You know, you look at what you don't have, and then you figure out that you can't go the easy route that everybody else is going, and then you figure out a way to go get it done. So what we used to do back in the day, we knew we couldn't play I can't remember even the names of the clubs, but there was all these very fancy white clubs and they all had white bands, but they were all playing R and B music, which was ironic. We knew we couldn't play those clubs. So what we would do is, for instance, there was a hotel downtown called the Dykeman Hotel. It was a hotel that was probably about a year away from, you know, being torn down. I mean it was just nobody stayed there. Rooms were rady, the whole thing. But what they had was a big ballroom. So what we would do is we would take, you know, we'd go to the owner of the hotel and we'd say, hey, can we rent the ballroom out. We'll give you the liquor, whatever the liquor sales are, you keep and we'll take the door. We'll charge you know, three bucks at the door or whatever. And so what it did is it forced us to become entrepreneurs, because it wasn't like we just had the talent we could go play. It was like, okay, we got the talent, now we got to figure out how we're going to go play. So we would do that. Now we now back in the day, there's no Twitter and no social media, so it was go to institut prints. That was the place you go. You print up a bunch of flyers and then you put them on people's cars and you'd say, you know, ladies get in free too, for one drink. So you'd say whatever the heck you needed to say to get them to get them down. And all of a sudden you get on Saturday night and all of a sudden, you'd get fifteen hundred people in this ballroom. Meanwhile, the white clubs are sitting empty. So now they're going, wait, where's everybody at tonight, And they're like, well, they're all going to see the band you wouldn't let play at your club. And so what happened after that was there began to be a little bit of a thing where people begin to recognize that maybe there's a talent or maybe we should let these folks in, you know, because these guys are talent and they're obviously drawing, right. But the first person to really act upon it was Steve McClellan at First Avenue who said, we'll book you guys in what was called Seventh Street Entry, which is like the little club, right, so if you were cool there, if you could get it going there, then we'll move you to the main room. But he was the one that really gave us the shot, and he gave you know, back then it wasn't just by the way, it wasn't just black bands, but it was like new wave bands you think about, like the Replacements in the suburbs and all of those bands, those bands all started, those white bands all started in that Seventh Street Entry. We even mixing with those guys at all, like would you see replacements? And we didn't mix at all, not I mean just because we didn't. It wasn't it we didn't like them. We were aware of them, and I think they were aware of us. But we know we never mixed together at all. It was just kind of the same dudes from the neighborhood that we grew up with. It was all of those same guys all together.

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Speaker 1: So kind of jumping ahead a little bit, did you have goals to make it out of Minnesota or.

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Speaker 2: Or was it just like, Okay, we'll just be a local.

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Speaker 1: Band here and maybe well no, I mean, or I'll get a job, like are your parents supportive of this?

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Speaker 2: Or well, okay, so two really good questions. So my parents. First of all, my dad played in a band and was always a professional musician. Used to take me to rehearsals and stuff back when I was, you know, six seven years old, and and I you know, at that point, I had the music bug totally, so I got to see it. I used to used to get to go to the studio and the whole thing. But he was always he never made it really where he wanted to. He was always kind of that guy on the cusp of making it. You know. He'd get on a few Back in the day, there were kind of regional records that were hits, and my dad would play on those records and then they'd ask him to go tour. But because at that point of his life he had me and he had gotten married, my mom always used to kind of frown upon, you know, like, well, no, you can't. You got responsibilities, you got family, and you got you know, you can't just run off and go on tour and that kind of stuff. And that really affected what happened with me because when I got to the point where I really wanted to do music, my mom was one hundred percent behind me because she realized that my dad never had a chance to do what the way he wanted to do it. So she really kind of stepped out of my way and was very supportive of me. So that was huge for me. By the way, and they because they separated and so or they got divorced, and so I basically stayed with my mom. So she said, you know whatever, as long as I see you doing music, you can do whatever the heck you want to do. But you know, as long as you was serious about it and that kind of thing. So that was that was important. What was the industry in Minnesota?

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Speaker 1: Like if cars were Detroit and black families were there, middle class and buying instruments and stuff, and the same for factories in Indiana and the Midwest, what was the industry in Minnesota that kept was that an industry town at all?

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Speaker 2: Well, the things I remember growing up were first of all, grain and flower. I remember gold Metal Flower was a big company back in the day. Pillsbury was up there, big company general. Yeah, I forgot I er, I now realized. He said that the ghetto boys thought he had came, but it was gold metal Flower. Now I get it. It was flower. Thank you for solving it. Mystery whether I was made.

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Speaker 1: Life because of his accent, you know, I thought than flower solving the mystery of Willie.

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Speaker 2: I didn't know there was a mystery. You know, we had it, but I just didn't. You didn't put it together, That's what he was saying.

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Speaker 1: You.

00:17:31
Speaker 2: But all of those were up there, and obviously three M was up there to Honeywell. There were some some pretty big companies up there for sure, but just to and just to wrap the other thing we were saying. The whole idea, yes, was to get out of town. That was our focus because we knew we couldn't sit around and depend on playing in the clubs that weren't gonna let us play, and we knew that we couldn't make it playing in a club circuit where there's two or three clubs and there's a bands or whatever it is like that was not going to happen. So we set our sites always on making it nationally that was our whole thing. When Prince made it out, that showed us that it can happen. And it also because he was so unique in what he did, that then brought everybody started looking at Minneapolis like, Okay, what else is up there? Because that that happens with all towns, happened with Seattle, happens. You know, that's just the thing that happens. It's like something great comes out and it's like, oh, what what else is there? What else is there? So we were definitely the beneficiaries of that. And there's a lot of great I will say, a lot of talented white musicians playing R and B music that never made it out of Minneapolis. Some of them made it out because Jesse took a couple folks with him and when he did his band Jesse Johnson reviews the Peterson's. How many Peterson's were there? A lot? Yeah, that was the That was the musical family up there. I mean, just so much talent, you know, but there were but there were other ones too, And I'm just kind of I'm blanking on names and stuff, but there was a lot of talent. But because they didn't they were very comfortable, so they had no reason to try to think outside of getting out of Minneapolis or anything like that. Like, we were so a lot of great talent up there that people didn't know about until, like I say, until that time when you know, Jesse picked up a few people. And I'm trying to think Margaret Cox, who was actually Tomorrow Margie. But yeah, but Margaret Cox was insanely talented, you know, so as a singer. So yeah, people like that.

00:19:32
Speaker 1: So when can I assume that Funky Town was the first at least indication that an escape could be made or something could happen.

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Speaker 2: Was that just like a fluke went off in your eyes? Well for us, you know, Prince was the example that you could make it because see Prince was like three years before Funky Town. I forgot, yeah, Towns seven but no, but but but but Funky Town was eighties and that was you know, at the height of the disco craze and when it was and actually when disco was being played on the radio, not only in the clubs, but actually the format because I remember we had a radio station up there that went from a rock format to a disco format, which was very controversial, but disco was hot at that point in time. But we thought, what did you grow up listening on? Like, what were you listening to? Grow? For me, yeah, well there was nothing but pop radio up there. I mean, I grew up as a kid. My earliest memories were always you know, I always loved the harmony groups. I loved Seals and Cross America America. Yeah, you know that kind of stuff. Bred that was. I mean, to this day, that's the way I stacked my harmonies because of the way they sang those songs. Back then, a little bit later in life, I liked, like, around the time I met Terry, I was really into Chicago that was. That was my favorite band ever, you know, and me and Terry both loved them. And then Terry then turned me on to when I met him, he turned me on to Earth Wind and Fired, Tower of Power, New Birth. I met Terry in seventy two. Okay, yeah, so we're we're talking Last Days in Time, Earth Winding Fire and Music in my mind Stevie Wonder. You know, these were the albums and Terry turned me on to those.

00:21:18
Speaker 1: Black radio you didn't have no black radio experience at the age of ten twelve.

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Speaker 2: There wasn't a black radio experience for me. When I got into high school, I was really into or junior high and into high school, I was really into Gambling, Huff and everything coming out of Philadelphia. Blue Magic was my favorite all time group. I know everybody was into stylistics, but Blue Magic was my group. But how could you hear it or see it was? Oh yeah, Soul Train definitely was on, and you definitely would hear it on Soul Train. But I remember I had a friend of mine whose dad was an executive of music Land, which is one of the big retail stores back in the day. So he used to get every single record that came out. And my thing was I was always a big liner note reader and a big label reader. So my thing was wit we All collect and Ville Yes. So my whole thing was I remember there were records that would come out and I would particularly during the Motown era because I really I really loved the Motown records, all of that stuff, the Holland Dozer, Holland, like I remember I did. I remember looking at a Supremes album at a like a family reunion or something back in sixty two or something or sixty so I was like three or four years old, and I remember that Holland Dozer Holland. It was the album was called The Supreme sing Holland Dozer Holland, that gold record, and I the gold record, right, I had no idea what that meant. Well, I kept going, what does this mean? What do you mean they singing Holland Dozer Holland, And somebody explained to me, no, they wrote the songs. The girls are the singers, but somebody wrote the songs. And something went off in my head at that point. That always made me look who wrote it? Who produced it? And so I remember all the Motown records would be the first ones I'd always go to. And I remember like staring at the first time I heard I Want You Back Jackson five, and you know Dinah Ross and Dinah Ross presents the Jackson five, and I thought, oh wow, that's cool. And I looked down the record. I'm like, well, I don't see Donna Ross's name anywhere on here. Right, there's some dudes called the Corporation. I got to find out who the corporation is, you know. So that was always my my thing. And and I knew that because what I learned was there were certain there were groups I like, but it was all about who produced them. Like it was. It was like, you know, like Eddie Kendricks could come out with a song and I would be like, Yeah, that's okay. And then you come out with a song I go, oh, I love that song. Okay, who did that song? Okay? Leonard Casting and you know, Frank Wilson and okay. And then I'd hear another song that had nothing to do with Eddie Kendricks, but I'd go, oh, I like that track. Who did that? And it'd be the same dudes, right, and and that's what and I got. That's when I started going, Okay, that's that's my thing. And so for me, that's what always excited me, and that's what, you know, ultimately made me want to become a songwriter and a producer.

00:24:12
Speaker 1: What kind of equipment were you dealing with when you first started, Like did you have a piano in the house or Fender Roads or we had?

00:24:20
Speaker 2: How did you get it around to gigs? Oh? Well, okay, well I'll tell you. Our very first gig was the summer that I met Terry, which was seventy two, and I remember my dad. At the time, I thought of myself as a drummer. I'd had drums in the house since I was like five years old. They bought me a drum set and I used to play and I used to blast. I remember one of my favorite records was this Jackson fire record called Looking through the Window right, because I loved the way it had that and I used to play the drum to that, and I love that the way the and all that stuff, all the dynamics of it. So I used to play like to that kind of stuff, and so I thought of myself as a drummer. So what happened was Terry was going to put this band together to play at this kind of year in summer year in thing, and he said, but he heard me play piano, and so he said, man, I need you to play keyboards for me for this thing. And I said, I'm a drummer, Terry, and he said, no, nah, I heard you play the keyboards. I said no, but really I played the drums and he said, I already got a drummer, and I said, no, I played it. I played the keyboards. I mean I played the drums. So Terry then brought over jelly Bean Johnson, who was his drummer and jelly Bean played and I said, yeah, I can mess with some keyboards. Yeah, So that that ended my drumming career at that point. And it was Jelli being playing guitar back then, he played, Yeah, he did play guitar back then, but he was a drummer. I mean he was, I mean a great drummer. So, I mean you could tell it back then. He's super talented dude. And he's probably the one person in Terry. This probably in Terry's life longer than me. I mean, I think him and jelly Bean go back. I met Terry when I was probably thirteen or something, and jelly Bean probably precedes me by three or four years because they went to school together. So I didn't meet Terry till the summertime, you know, think, but yeah, I mean, yeah, he was amazing. So what we did is we went out. I was playing drums with my dad, okay, and he had a gig where he would play the weekends at a couple of clubs and stuff and that. And real quick, how that happened was he had a trio, right, and was him this guitar player named Coffee and a drummer. Right, But every they never could keep a drummer. So every week there'd be like a different drummer and so yeah, right, So eventually one there was a gig and the drummer didn't show up, and my mom said, why don't you let Jimmy play a set? He knows all your songs. We've been watching you play for all this time. That's a million So anyway, I so I did. I sat in. I did one set with him and stuff, and everybody liked it. Crowd liked it. Okay, right, So a couple of weeks later and stuff, same thing, and so Coffee, the guitar player said, you know, hey, well, my dad's name was Jim. Also, he say, Jim, you know, why don't you let your son go ahead and play? You know, he knows the show show is let him play, So I'm not sure about that whatever whatever, So anyway, I did. I played the whole show. So after they get into that gig, Coffee said to my dad, why don't you just let your son play? Man? We don't have to keep finding drummers, you know. So my dad said, okay, cool, we'll let you play. Will you are a drummer? And then my mom said, and he and my mom said how much you're gonna pay him? And she became my agent real quick. So and and then my dad said, well, you know, i'll throw him out, you know a little something. And she said, no, no, no, you're gonna pay him, just like you pay any drummer. Yes, did you pay right? And that was the start of my you know, and that started my little I don't know college runner. I don't know what happened to that money, but we started putting that money away. So that was parents. Do you ever see your college for money from all them beings? Yes?

00:28:10
Speaker 1: Ever, I had a fifty dollars savings bund like my grandmother bought me when I was like five.

00:28:15
Speaker 2: Never seen. I don't know where it's at. Yeah, I think my dad's been. Last time I saw it was on top of the TV. That was on top of the Big Team. It's been a long time ago. So how does how do you guys melt all your bands?

00:28:33
Speaker 1: Because I can assume that The Time is basically a supergroup of Minneapolis based musicians and one Illinois musician. Yeah, so what starts the process of you guys leaving your respective bands to become the Time?

00:28:55
Speaker 2: Okay, well that's uh I'll try to not make it too complicated. So here's there's a lot of moving parts. So for me, first of all, Terry at this point had put together what was the nucleus of Flight Time, which was Jellyban Johnson on the drums, Terry on the bass. Interesting story how he had found Monty Moyer because Terry had been trying to get me to join the band again. I was. I was off doing my own band for a while, and then I had actually quit doing that and I had started DJing in your band at that time when you drumming or were you playing keys, I was playing keys, and I was writing all the songs we did. We did all original songs, and it was all and I was doing my best, you know Tom Bell gambling of this is impression, mind and matter. Yeah, I mean that's what I was trying to do with a little bit of electronics in it. You know, I had a little synthesizer and stuff in it. But it was definitely trying to be that. That was that was my inspiration, and so so I had you know, those guys to me weren't serious. They were older guys. I was just at I was sixteen at the time. And those guys weren't really serious about it, like they're twenty two twenty three, and I didn't get well. They had jobs and families and kids and stuff. I'm like, twenty four hours music and you know, I'm like, y'all are messing up. You know, they get high and stuff, and I'd be like, y'all getting high, we need to be working on our music. And you know, they were like, who the fuck this punk kid you know telling us? You know. So anyway, eventually I just said forget it. So I started DJing. I started working at a record pool, you know, getting records. I started working at a record store because I the clubs I played at were influentential enough that I could know when I heard a record. I could go to the record store guy and he didn't trust me at first, but I could say to him, hey, there's this record. Matter of fact, MFSB had a record called Dance with Me Tonight, okay. And I had this girl named Joyce whenever I played at the club. And this is a teen club. Because I played at a bunch of different clubs as a DJ, I had and my crowd just kind of followed me around. But the teen crowd was my best. We did about fifteen hundred kids on a Friday and a Saturday night. It was huge, a huge pace, Yeah, huge pressure. Oh, it was great. It was it was awesome. It was awesome. It is the most one of the most fun moments of my life actually was doing that because just the whole idea of introducing people to music, which is amazing, and you know how that feels. I mean, you guys do that now. Teens hold you hoses today. So if you don't play what they know, well you know what, okay. So that that's my point. So I had this girl named Joyce, and Joyce I don't know where she was from, but she'd always hand me some record every week and she'd say, play this, this is gonna be whatever whatever, and i' and I'd listen to a little bit in the headphones and previewed and it would always sound a little weird to me, and I'd be like, Joyce, are you sure, and she'd go, yeah, yeah. And she had a crew of about three or four other people and she would get out and dance. She said, I know the dance floor is gonna clear, but we're gonna I'm gonna dance and we're gonna be cool. I mean, okay. So anyway, she brought me a whole bunch of different records, but the one I remember, the one of the first ones was Dawn for Me Tonight MFSB right. So, and I said to her, you know, Joyce, I got the album that. I said, I've heard the song. It ain't really that No, she said, no, but this is the twelve inches different. It's a different mix. I said, okay, cool. I put the record on and I go cause I talked to I'd mixed and I talked. I did both things, and I just said, here's a new one front zelm backzillm all right, exactly right. And I said, okay, here's a here's a brand new one, you know, exclusive, you know whatever, whatever whatever. I put the record on the intro of the records about I don't know. It's about sixteen bars and stuff, and it sounds like I don't know, it's it doesn't sound like nothing's gonna happen, right, And everybody's kind of staring at me for a minute because they pretty much trust me, so they're staring at me for a minute. And then I see him start to inch off the dance floor, and I'm like going, oh man, I'm right, and then all of a sudden, it kicks into this different group goes into this groove and I see every and then I see Joyce in the middle of the floor with her crew of people start dancing, and all of a sudden, now the dance floor starts coming back on the dance floor. By the end of the night that record, I had to play it again. They loved it that much, so I went to the record There was a record store called Hot Licks, and I remember this guy named Chico, I think his name was Chico fat fingers right, and he played, he played, he played, He played with a reggae band uh called Oh man, I'm gonna I can't remember the name. It's like Shagoy or Shambai or had some name like that. Anyway, he ran the store. So I walked into the store and I said, hey, man, this twelve inch dance with me tonight. Can you get some of these? And he said yeah. He says why and I said, because this is my number one song at my club. I'm gonna play it again next weekend. And I said, and I'm gonna tell everybody to come down that you're the only one that has the record downtown Minneapolis. You're the only one that has record. So okay, So he says, well, how many should I get? And I said, like a thousand? He said, what You're nuts? I said, okay, cool. So anyway, next weekend I played it pack the dance floor. I said, hot Licks, go down to Hot Licks, are the only ones in town with the record. He said, uh, Monday, he said, he sold out. And he said and I said, well, how many do you order? He said, well, I ordered five hundred. I said, I told you to get a thousand, right, And I remember I talked to him later on in life. I talked to some PR person that worked for CBS back in the day and they said, man, it was weird. This one record just jumped off for it, you know. So wait, we we always did this on Quest Love Supreme for old DJs. Can you can you front sell dance with me tonight? Right now? So yeah, I guess here we go, right, all right, here's an exclusive. You're gonna here first for the first time. You trust me all this one now, trust me? This is him speed dance with me tonight. Here we go. That was with me, you know. And you know what's funny is is that ended up being I kept charts from you know, dance Floor Reaction and all that stuff, and then I started printing the charts out and then I would take them down to the record store and I'd leave them right And that record was my number one record of all time during the probably year and a half that I was. I was at that club and she brought me some other ones, a Firecracker mass production, and then she brought me Firecracker was easy. The follow up was Forever, and I don't remember Forever. Forever started off with just a high hat, so it just started off with which was a guaranteed dance floor you know clearer really yeah, But she said, but wait till the beat kicks in, it's gonna be real cool. So I said, okay, here's new mass production. And people were like, well that they knew that Firecracker was the jam, so they stood with me for this one. And they stood and when they kicked in, they uh huh, it sounds like put the word yeah, watch when this kicks in. Though I never even knew they had a follow up record. This was a follow up. This was a follow up and Masterpieces in A S S. They're in storage. Wow, yeah you are. Joyce should have got an A and a job, right, Joyce was. Joyce was incredible. Man, my DJ game already. I'm gonna play these two in my next sets. I got, I got. I'll give you one more from that from that day. What about are you familiar with breakwater? Do it till the fluid gets hot? I don't know that. Do it to the fluid gets hot? Let me go and uh release the beast, but do it to the fluid gets Do it to the fluid gets hot. That was another one that was really hot for me. And these records were only big at my club, right and at this record store. That was the weird thing about it. Oh yeah, okay, I know this got that one? Yeah, I know that. At the time, just DJ Jimmy James.

00:37:42
Speaker 3: Where was your DJ?

00:37:43
Speaker 2: It was Jimmy jam That came from DJing really yeah? Okay, yeah, that came from Jay So what happened? So? Okay? So that club was called the Disco Track right now. Also, Downtown was a club that went through a series of different names, but when I worked there, it was called the Fox Trap. Okay, Now, the Fox Trap had three levels. Downstairs live music, second floor was DJ, which was me, and then third floor was a DJ, but it was more chill or you know, laid back right, more of a lounge type situation. So when I started working, there was a DJ named Kyle Ray, and Kyle Ray was, as you call it, the front selling DJ. Like he did no mixing at all. It was all just personality and playing records, right, So I took an example from him. He was actually tragically killed, which was like nuts and he tragically died, and so I kind of had borrowed a little of his style as far as front loading the records. But I could also mix because I had, you know, kind of the musical thing, so I always did a combination of it. And then I had a little keyboard which I actually have downstairs, which was my first synthesizer, and I used to play along with the records and ate my own little stuff. So I was doing that and that, and there was a at the I was just going by Jimmy Harris, which was my name, and there was a bartender from Philly who called himself Delphonix right right, and I went over to get you know, a drink from him or whatever, a cold because I don't think I was. I don't think that I was eighteen. I was probably still seventeen eight I don't I don't even think. But I didn't drink anyway, so it didn't really matter. And he said yo. He said man. He said, I what kind of name you got? Man? And I said, what do you mean? I said, what's your DJ name? And I said I don't know. He said, man, you gotta be you gotta be something. Man. I'm telling everybody your name's Jimmy Jam. And I said, okay. He said, Jimmy Jams, pot pots and pans, shake my hand. He went into this whole rap, right, and I was like, that's okay, cool. Right, So anyway, he started telling everybody my name was Jimmy Jam and it just stuck, and even to the point when we did the first time record and I said to Prince when Prince was doing like the credits on the record, and I said, Prince, what name should I be under? And he said you should be Jimmy Cham. I said, okay, cool. So that was it. So then it was historic because it was in printed. Brother gave me my name Delphonix. Yes, sir, the bartender at the Fox Trap. Okay, so I'm sorry because we're totally off track here. Yeah, okay, So okay, So I tell this story about playing in all the different clubs and stuff. So at the Fox Trap, Terry was playing downstairs in the in the live music room. I was playing upstairs right and the DJ room, and Terry used to come up. And Terry is really good at bugging the ship out of peace and twisting their arm, and he's really good at that. He's stubborn, right. So his whole thing was, man, you ain't a DJ man, you're a musician man. You need to join the band, and we need a keyboard player and such and such and and I'm like, Terry, I just I'm not feeling it, man, you know whatever. So one day he comes up to the booth and he says, jam, he said, we got a keyboard player. And I thought, oh great, he's gonna quit bugging me now. And he says right. So I'm like, he said come down, and you should come down and check him out. And I said, okay, cool. So I grabbed knee deep by funk a delic, which was I think seventeen minutes or whatever it was. I put that on and I jumped out the booth. It was pretty early in the night, so it wasn't you know, nobody would have cared if if it went ran out. But I ran downstairs. I walk into the room. I hear they're playing what you Won't Do For Love Bobby Calwell, right, and so they're saying, and I'm hearing this somebody singing and dun dudu. I'm like looking around singing, somebody singing their asshole? Who's singing? And I looked behind this stack of keyboards and this little white guy right and I'm like looking and I'm like, oh wait, his mouth is moving, but it doesn't sound like a white boy singing. And who is that? You know? So I went back upstairs. I looked at Terry and I went, you know, gave the thumbs up. I went back upstairs. So after the gig was over, I came back down. I said, hey, man, who was singing to Bobby Callwell? He said, that's our keyboard player, Monty Moyer. And I said, oh, I said nice to meet you, Monty. I said cool. Terry, I said, well good, you got your keyboard player. Now we you know, good luck, you know, he said, no, man, he said, we got to have two keyboard players. Man, that's the that's the vibe, two keyboard players. So fast forward a little while. I was going out with this older lady, right and h she was beautiful too, Puerto Rican. Oh my god. Anyway, so anyway she broke my heart. I was I think I was eighteen. She was thirty proudly right, oh wow, so damn. Her name her name was Carmen, and she worked at the Horse of course, she worked at the at the cosmetic counter, one of the stories up there, man, and she just was amazing. So anyway, she broke over me. So I'm a little broken hearder than I'm walking home, right, I'm walking from her apartment home, which is, you know, maybe ten blocks not that far. So I'm walking up Lake Street, which was one of the main things. And I walked by this club. I didn't even know it was a club. It was like a community center. And I'm walking by and I hear, you know, music coming out of it and stuff, and I was like something going on in here, right, So I opened the door, I look in, I walk in. There's a band rehearsing. Whose band is it Terry's band? Right? I said, Terry, what's up? Man? He said, oh, this is our rehearsal space. Man. Where you know this? They opened up this club. They're letting us rehearse here and then they're going to actually open it up night times. And it was called the YASM y a a s M, which was the Young African American Society of Men or something like that or something. Yeah, it turned out it's upstanding. Yeah. Yeah, so they yeah them. So anyway, I was like, okay, cool. So anyway, they're in their rehearsing and stuff. I said, yeah, cool cool. So Terry said yeah, man, so come on, man, you're ready to join the band. And I said no, man, I said, I you know, I'm this girl. Just broke my heart, man, you know. And Terry's like, man, you get your mind off it, man, you know, you just need to jump back in. Just I said, nah, man, I don't have any keyboards. Man. You know, I sold all my keyboards and stuff. You know, we'll get you keyboards, man, what kind of keyboards you want?

00:44:29
Speaker 1: Man?

00:44:29
Speaker 2: I said no, no, I don't, Terry, I'm good right. So this is before cell phones right, I go home. Next day, my phone rings Terry Lewis, Come on jan what you're gonna do? Man? Come on man, we got we got keyboards for you. Man, come on down, come on down, you know. And at that point they had started getting some gigs and stuff. They were gonna be opening for the Barkas and Switch at this concert, right whoa, So it was like, man, you got to join the band. Man, we're gonna be opening for Barkas and Switch. Now, at this point in time, the Alexander O'Neill was our lead singer. Okay, okay, so this is when alex was the lead singer. So anyway, we had a nice little band. We had basically the band. We didn't have a guitar player. We it was kind of we would rent a guitar player, but we didn't really have anybody serious on guitar. Right, So anyway, we go and do the gig. The gig was cool. Somebody from Switch stole some some of our shoes. Really yeah, yeah exactly, so anyway, but it was cool. So at that point I pretty much was in that. So anyway, so the band was set, except we didn't have a guitar player. So we started gig and started doing our thing. Our reputation was basically that we were the we were the best band in Minnesota. So we you know, would other bands agree with you, Well, yes they would actually, interestingly enough, because what happened was so this is the Jesse Johnson piece. Okay, so Jesse had Jesse had moved to Minneapolis, or actually had come to Minneapolis because he heard Prince was looking for a guitar player. But he was mistaken because he was actually looking for a bass player. He was looking for somebody and he ended up getting brown Mark. But he but Prince met him, and Prince, you know, like Jesse, and he said, he told Jesse, he said, you should, you should stay in town and and you know, get in one of the bands up here and just you know, stick around. So Jesse went to Morris's band, which was called Enterprise Band and Pleasure. So Morris, interestingly enough, was the drummer in that band, not the lead singer, and a girl named Sue Anne Carwell was the lead singer. Yeah, Sue Anne Carwell was amazing, amazing singer. Prince Di's a lot of stuff with her back in the day too. Yeah, I mean she was she was an amazing singer. Interestingly enough, little side note, Morris did come up and sing one song every night. He got off the drums and sue An actually went back and played the drums. Oh, they traded switch and the song was ironically too Hot, like cool in the game Cool the game. Oh okay, okay, okay. So mister Coole sang too Hot, so so and he sang it really good. That was the funny thing. And if you think about it, that's a really tough song to sing. There's a lot of different intervals and it's crazy. If you ever watch people try to sing that song, it's tough. The bridge is tough. No, it's think about it. You gotta hit all the Yeah, it's a lot of and then it goes to the chain and then you know it's a lot. Anyway, he used to hit it flawlessly every night. Right, So, anyway, everybody kept telling us about this guitar player. You know, they come to our gigs and they'd be like, man, you checked out Morrison Nim's guitar player, and we were like no, I said, man, they got this guitar player. Man, he wears pink suits. It does like ten minute guitar solos man, you got to check him out. And we were like, okay, cool. So we had a night off, we went over and checked him out. He was exactly as advertised, right. So afterwards we went up to two women. We said, hey, man, you need to come join our band. You need to come watch us. You know, nothing against Morris, but you need to come to our band. So he said, okay, cool. So the next weekend he came, well, I mean, you know, because I mean there's no I mean, it is all word of mouth and it was fighting words then taking money out of my mouth. Well there's no social I mean there's no social media, so I mean it's all just kind of word of mouth. Somebody hears something, they tell the next person, they tell the next person, so on and so forth. That's what it was. And so anyway, yeah, so you know, he came over, checked our band out and we were good, right. So he went back to Morris and he said, yo, Morris, he said, you know, no offense man, but you know I'm going to join Flight Time. Man. They're like really good. And what Moris said actually kind of surprised. Well, it surprised us when we he told us he said, he said, and Morris said, yeah, that's cool, Jesse, because pretty soon we're all going to be one band anyway. Wow. And we didn't know what that meant. We were like, what's the time I was gonna be one band? That doesn't make any sense. Okay. So, as the story goes, Prince when he was doing the Dirty Mind album, right, and of course the first couple of albums he did were more R and B records with some rock stuff on it, but Dirty Mind was a whole different departure. Warner Brothers was scared of Dirty Mind because they didn't hear any like funky hits on there. Uptown sort of in that, but they wanted another song. They said, we need another funky song on the record. Right. So Morris actually wrote Party Up, but Prince took the credit for it. But he owed Morris a favor and he told Morris, if you put a band together, I'll get your record deal. So Morris came over to our band and said, Prince said, if I put a band together, he'll give it, get it, get us a record deal. So y'all just be the band and now we'll go get a record deal. And that's how Mores ended up in the band. But that's not the end of the store. I was gonna say so because he didn't want to sing initially, right, alex. So we had two dilemmas. One was well, actually it wasn't the We actually had one dilemma because Alexander O'Neil was the lead singer of the group. Was he a good lead singer? Singer at that time? Alexandro amazing. Never would sing the same lyrics. Twice we had a song called I remember, we had a song called march Wright that was an original song, and every gig he'd sing different lyrics. He just would just make up lyrics as he went along. The chorus would always be the same, but the actual lyrics he would sing were always different. And he did that a lot because he never showed up the rehearsals and he never you know, he didn't really care, but he no, he could pull it off. He was alex was amazing. So anyway, our big dilemma was, well, if Morris is the drummer, what happens to Jellybee? Do we have two drummers? Jelly Bean was good on guitar, but not at the point where we could make him into a guitar player, so he was kind of like gonna be the odd man out and it was almost like, Wow, who's going to break the news to Bean? And oh really? Oh yeah, so we were at that point. Well, so Prince called a dinner at Perkins Cake and Steakhouse, which is sort of like the equivalent of Denny's but better. No, it's still there. Still. I went to that Perkins Yep, my first night at Paisley Park. Yep, it's still there. Right, that's crazy. So anyway, we sit down and we're all going to have dinner basically, and Prince is gonna kind of lay out the game plan and what we're gonna do. Right, So Alexander O'Neil's there. Now. The first thing to say about Alex is Alex always speaks in the third person, like a football player. Yeah. So so Alex, now, you know, he goes into his before now we've we've ordered food, right, and of course Princess buying, so Alex orders a big steak and he orders all this food. Right, So Alex goes okay, Prince before we get started, because he had a little lisp, right, so he would have go okay, Prince, before we get started and things like that that you know, I had a few things I just want to get off my chest. Here we go and and we're all like looking at Alex like what what are you doing? Man? And He's like, so, you know, here's the thing, you know, Alex, thatwn On Neil. You know, first of all, Adaxon On Neil need you know, I need a new house. I needed. I need a new call, you know, I need. I need a pooling things, you know, a down on Neil. You know, yeah, I need a pooling things, you know, down need you know, I just need some things. You know. I know this this whole record thing is real cute and all that stuff that, but this, you know, out of that o Neil needs some things. You know what I'm saying, Prince. You know, so this is all cute and everything, you know, but I'm just letting you know that, you know, before we get started. You know, this is and and as he's talking, everybody's kicking each other under the table and nudging everybody like what the heck is this dude doing. We ain't even got the deals, ain't so Louien sign condoeen nothing. It's like, you know, so as he's talking, and I see this and if we ever do our movie we want to do, it's like a movie. Alex. The waiter comes and as Alex is finishing his tirade, puts this big steak down in front of him, and Alex goes right on, Cue Prince, that's just the way I see it. So I'm gonna go ahead and throw down and see a steak right here. So Prince and Morris look at each other and get up and leave the restaurant. Yeah, they're gone. So now we're like, going, he's gonna pay for this stake. This is not right. Yeah. Yeah. So we're like, okay, this is not good. So anyway, I don't even know. We were like, dude, what are you What are you doing here? Man? What are you doing? Alex? Well, man, I'm you know, I'm just you know, trying to point out a few things. You know, people think, you know, because I'm telling you man, you know, he's the way it is without that O'Neill. You know, if there's a bear in the woods in Alexander, Neil, you better help the beard because you don't got to help Alexander. And by the way, we have a publishing company called Help the Bear. And that's why because that was Alexis. That was Alexis line. So, needless to say, we just thought everything was done. And I can't remember whether So Terry got a phone call and I can't remember whether it was from Morris or from Prince. I think it might have been from Prince, and he just said because it was just it was a very short thing. It was. It was basically lose the Bear. Yeah, it was like Alexander or Neil is out, Morris Day is the lead singer, Jelly Breen Johnson is the drummer. Meet tomorrow at nine o'clock at such and such and such at the Yasm to rehearse. And that was it, and Alex was done. Bean was the drummer, Morris was somebody told him. I don't know who told him, but yeah, he got the word. But I need to know the story of the next time you saw Alex. So was Alex cool with this? Of course? Not? Well? Yeah, because yeah, because you know, help the Bean. You don't even know, no, But I remember what our conversation with the conversation I remember having with Alex after that was just one where we said to him, hey, man, if we make it, meaning me and me and Terry had this conversation with him. We just said, man, when we make it, we're coming back and getting you. And that was it. And see, Bill, it works out, no, because we we you know, it just you know, we felt bad and we felt like, you know, we didn't know the way things were going to work out, that we'd actually have an opportunity to do that and come back and grab him. But we did the way things worked out. But now we just kind of felt like that, and you know, and then at that point we were we were off and running and Alex was just you know, still gigging locally and everything, you know. But yeah, he talked himself right out of that and we did one song with Alex, actually recorded one song called you. It was called you, Yeah, he was called you would be Mine. Wow it sounded vague, yes, yeah, exactly, Yeah it was. It was ironic.

00:56:54
Speaker 1: But so once you guys started rehearsing, uh well yeah, talk about that process, like how often would you guys rehearse?

00:57:05
Speaker 2: And every single day? Every single day. Now here's the thing. Now, the album was already done. I mean, Morrison Prince had already done the Time album. We didn't play on the time album a lick. So you were given we were record or the cassette we were given, Yep, given the cassette and six songs could learn learn these songs? Six songs. You also did the what's the to the beat song? The oh no no, no, no oh oh, dance to the beat, Dance to beat dance, So there were extra songs too. Correct. Yeah, but we never recorded dance to the Beat. I don't think. I think we just played it live. I don't think we ever recorded it. If it was recorded, it was live for records. So it was it only expected of you guys to just do a half hour no matter what.

00:57:46
Speaker 1: Or because I'm thinking, like, if you're doing having a show's material, usually people do cover songs, have a forty five minute show ready or hour show ready.

00:57:58
Speaker 2: Well, when we went okay, so when we went up initially, so when we were rehearsed and actually there's one piece of the rehearsal I got it, I got it, or two actually rehearsal stories I'll relate to you while we're on the rehearsals because we're rehearsing at the YASM and the ASTHM as it turns out was owned by this guy named Leonard Weaver was his name, right, Old cat, Old black cat. And he had this bar, and in the bar were these juice machines. One was lemonade and one was fruit punch. And he also had these lamps. It was like a lounge and he had these lamps and they were naked women basically with a lamp shade on top of it.

00:58:35
Speaker 3: Right.

00:58:37
Speaker 2: So when we started rehearsing, Leonard said he had two rules. He said, y'all stay out of my juice machine, and y'all don't touch my titty lamps. It's Italian, so timmy lamb. So we said, okay, cool, we got you man. We're not gonna mess when we got it. So we started rehearsing. We rehearsing every day at this point. So I remember, you know the whole thing. Now, Jerome at this point was not in the group. Jerome was a roadie, right, and I remember we had gone and done a couple of gigs and Jerome had to like ride in the truck with the equipment with this gap tooth British guy, you know, with the British teeth. Jerome helped me, you know, unload the amps, and you know, it was like all this and Jerome was just like so pissed off, like you know whatever, but he's you know, he's going along with it, right, So he's trying to figure out, man, how can I get a gig in this thing? You know, you know something? And Terry's trying to figure it out too, because that's just you know, Jerome's Terry's brothers, right, So we're trying to figure this out. So anyway, we're rehearsing and in the stick, Morrison, somebody bring me a mirror. Right, So on the walls of the yasm are these big mirrors, right, but not like little merrors, but I'm talking about big full body mirrors, right. So Prince is at the rehearsal and he's watching us rehearse, and Morris says, somebody bring me a mirror, and out of the blue, Jerome goes and grabs a mirror off the wall, puts it in front of Morris. Morris turns around, looks at it kind of like starter like oh, and pulls out his comb and starts combing his hair. Prince falls on the floor like he's like, ah, we gotta do that. We gotta do that. We gotta do that. And Jerome was no longer a roadie. So that's how that's how he went from being the roady to be in the valet. It was simple as that, and that happened. And every night we go into the bar and drink the juice out of the juice machine, but then we'd pour water into it, so it would look like nothing happened because every time. So so Leonard would walk in every day and he'd come in and he'd look and make sure everything was cool. And then one day we were playing around and we broke one of the titty lamps. Oh, and so we like turned it around and tried to kind of glue it and try to whatever. And I swear to God, he walked in and he looked and he said, who's been in my juice machine? Because it's because it's because it's all like light colored now like brothers trying to be slick, but it ain't working right, so it's all like that. And then he looks and he's like looking at it all of us. He said, who was in my juice machine? And we're like going on, we don't know, God, but it was Jesse was who it was. So anyway, we were like, no, we don't know, We don't really know. So he was like looking around my titty lamp. Who broke my titty lamb? And it's like, heck, can he see that? He's like one hundred feet away from the teddy lamb? How does he know that lamp was broke? It was crazy, It was times, man, but it was like the whole formation of us as a unit. That was the back drop of it, And it was a reason we were so tight, not only as musicians but just as people because we already grew up as friends anyway, but that those experiences just totally solidified everything that we were doing. And then we would play at night, like like we would rehearse it during the day and then at night Weaver would open the place up, charge people and we play songs, not you know, when we do a couple covers, but mostly it just be our stuff. People didn't know what the heck we were singing, but they just liked it. You know. It was just like a place to go and hang out.

01:02:37
Speaker 1: Okay, this is what I gotta know now. More than anything, you guys had this image that was just as important and prevalent as the music was. And how did you guys actually care for like, did Mars have ten versions of that gold jacket?

01:03:08
Speaker 2: Did you have, Doris? Yeah?

01:03:12
Speaker 1: Exactly, because the thing is that what I know about touring is every show I do, it's drenched.

01:03:21
Speaker 2: Are you? But I know that it's required that you guys you know it. Do you guys have a.

01:03:28
Speaker 1: Wardrobe person that runs shit to the cleaners and stuff? Because I feel like, and did you have to look that way? Twenty four to seven?

01:03:36
Speaker 2: Okay, well, yeah, so the wardrobe really was based on the way we dressed anyway, because guys always as a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, you're looking at it. You're looking at it right now. But I'm going to show you a picture of Terry. You can't see this on the air, but this is Terry Lewis at like fourteen fifteen years old. Wow, that's it's not as a guitar strap. Yeah. And he's got and he's gotten and he painted this base red, black and green. This is the base. When I met Terry, he painted his you know, so he was afrocentric and the whole thing. That's right. So when people talk about the way we looked. I mean that that goes from you know, back in that day. I mean we we we used to take because the thrift stores. We couldn't afford to dress. We wanted to dress nice, but we couldn't afford it. But you could go to a thrift store and get a suit for ten bucks, right, and get a hat and a whole thing. So we were always rocking that style, and Prince just enhanced it. Now Morris is stuff the press we called it the pressley, the jacket that he had on the first two album covers. There was only one. Yeah, there was only one that was it the pressley, And yeah, we kept it dry. You know. That was part of Jerome's job. By the way, he was the real valet for the group, so he'd call everybody and say, you know, have your dry cleaning ready to go, you know, if we'd be at a hotel or that kind of thing. But yeah, all of our stuff was thrift shop stuff. And it was interesting because the first tour we did, I remember, we would go to thrift and we would clean up. Second tour we did, they were all out of stuff. Because people caught on and doing it. Yeah, it totally caught on. So it was interesting. But yeah, no, that that was the thing, man. We just that was always kind of our our style anyway, you guys weren't quite of age, but like that that look when they came out in nineteen eighty one.

01:05:25
Speaker 1: I mean that's the first time I think, like we were all big in our moms, like, yo, take us to the thrift store.

01:05:31
Speaker 2: Word you would never hear darn. I was wondering if that was cool to y'all because.

01:05:34
Speaker 1: That's like the dog I mean, they they talked about baggies and then like and you know, my mom be like, baggies, I can get you some bags.

01:05:44
Speaker 2: It's like two dollars at the thrift store. And it was like the thrift store. Yeah, well f as I frowned on it.

01:05:50
Speaker 1: But like because my cousins were more like in the street, you know, like b boy and just came out and sergery of valent a drug dealer shit, right, But when oh my goodess, like all of sixth grade, all I wore were just baggies and my parents couldn't be more pleased.

01:06:10
Speaker 2: On like twenty bears of pint, you know what I mean. Yeah, So, so you guys just naturally look like gangster. We just naturally, Yeah, we just naturally did it, and and we just kind of fell into it. And we also liked the whole idea, the whole cool aspect. We liked anyway, because it was about respecting yourself and it was about you know, dressing well and having class and that. And we liked the idea of that. I mean we enhanced it, and Prince enhanced it. I mean he he took it to a whole other level. And yes, he wanted us to always look the part he hated the idea of because we used to talk about it back in the day when we first started touring and stuff. We would go out like with Cameo, you know, and Cameo would have, you know, the glitter suits on and the whole thing, and and Prince always kind of frowned on it. He just said, no, he said, you should look the way you look, you know, and nobody should see you looking unlike yourself what they expect to see you. Even to the point where I remember with Morris, I mean, by the second tour, we were holding that pressley together with tape literally, I mean it was just like that thing was about ready to fall apart, and I remember Morris kept saying, Prince, can I get a new jacket? I need a new Presley And Prince was like, no, that's what people expect to see you in, and that's the way you need to look. He was very much into that, right. And I remember about halfway through that tour and we were kicking his ass pretty good every night at that point. Oh we know, yeah, And I remember they at one point in time, I remember the management came to us and said, we're gonna put you guys out on your own, on your own tour because Prince didn't let us play. You have to now think about once again, no media, no social media. Right. So everything that you got you read right. It was a new paper thing. Right. The two biggest markets obviously were La and New York. Right, those two markets. We didn't play with Prince. We didn't open with him, right, So he did Madison Square Garden or whatever it was. We didn't play, but we played for Vanity six. So we were in the building, right, which to this day is the thing you're probably pisss jelly Bean off the most of anything. Man. All our friends are out there, man, we're in the building and stuff, and we can't even play. I was like, he used to get so mad. Same with the Forum in LA. Never played the Forum in LA. We played Long Beach Arena, and we played I think Nasau Coliseum or something in New York. But we never got to play those shows because the reviews were all like, yeah, Prince was great, that was great, but you got to see the time, you know, and he didn't want that, so that was the thing. So we never played those markets. So after we saw that happen and we were kind of like, okay, So the management's like, you know, we're gonna put you on your own tour, and I think it was gonna be Evelyn Champagne King and Shallamar or somebody like that, right, So we were like, okay, cool, great, we'll do our own tour. That's cool. So then they changed their mind and they said so by this point in time, so Morris said, well, if we're doing our own tour, I'm getting me a new Presley. So Morris orders this new Presley, right, And I remember Prince used to sometimes come in our dresser room because after we do the Vanity six set, we would they in the old at the beginning, they would give us like fifteen minutes to change, right, So we would come out and do the Vanity six set, and then we go back in the dress room, hang out for a little bit, and then we come back out. Sometimes we'd actually be dressed, but we put on like capes or we put on something stupid. So people said, the people on the side, yeah, so they couldn't see who we were, right. So, but it was great because we were so warmed up. It was like our sound check, right, play it for Vanity six. So it even made us better, right, And and then it got to the point where he wouldn't even give us enough time to change or anything. We really started killing him then because we were all warmed up, and it was like Jellybean, like the longer he played, the better he got. He was one of those kind of drummers, so it was all working against him. So I remember we had kind of lattashed him in about three or four gigs in a row. So anyway, he comes into the dressing room and we were really kind of feeling ourselves at that point in time, and he comes into the dressing room and he goes and nobody's really reacting to him, and he just kind of goes, what are you guys doing? And Morris says, got something to show you, Prince, And so Jerome goes and brings out this wardrobe thing and unzips it and Morris like flips it and the thing comes off and he goes, I got a new Presley. Prince literally goes, ah, I created a monster and ran out of the room. Swear to God, Swear to God. He did. He created him last year. He did. It's like, yeah, what were those Okay?

01:11:20
Speaker 1: So I know by the time that what times it came out, you guys were and maybe assuming a better place. But in the very beginning the first album, were you guys like I just want to know what a working class musician was into and doing between eighty one and eighty two, Like, were you guys driving yourself to the gigs? Like I don't know if you read Maurice White's autobiography, but I'm shocked at even up until Spirit they were like driving themselves to the gigs.

01:11:56
Speaker 2: They were, you know, station wagons to the gigs and that stuff. Well, we did. We definitely did the station wagon thing. There's no doubt about that. We did, but not by the time, by the time we were actually touring with Prince. No, we had a tour bus, and you know, we were making our little one hundred and fifty dollars a week after they a week Yeah what is Yeah?

01:12:17
Speaker 1: What is a working class musician make in eighty one on that tour? Like, were you guys at the top level or no?

01:12:26
Speaker 2: We were, No, we were well below the top level because we we were like I say, we would get one hundred and fifty dollars a week in a in a check and for that it was in mine per dim Yeah. Well and we get per diem too, so I guess it would add up to two fifty a week. So that if that changes anything. I mean, my my check after taxes was one hundred and seventeen dollars. I still have, I think my check stub, you know, my original check stub. But no, we were going broke and it probably you know, for me at the time, I was living at home anyway, so I hadn't moved out, and I didn't have any kids. I didn't have any responsibility. It was really tough on Terry because Terry, not only Terry drove a school bus, you know, and and was making really good money doing that. But also because when we were gigging his flight time and we're like I say, we were like doing our own gigs and do outing, and yeah, we were doing really well. I mean as a bad I mean, Terry took a huge pay cut, probably the biggest out of anybody had a young son at that point in a house. I mean, Terry was always very like responsible from like an early age, like he was already living his he was like an adult at an early age. So for him, yeah, it hit him really bad, like it messed his credit up, you know, it messed him out rat Oh, yeah, it totally messed it, totally messed him up. And and even I remember the second year we had an ultimatum, like it was in I think it was San Dieg. I think we were in San Diego and we had we were all sharing rooms at that point in time, except for except for Morris, and I remember Terry said, man, we got two gold albums. They had bumped us up to two fifty a week, and then Vanity, Yeah, Vanity six was giving us another one hundred a week or something like that at plus per diem. So everybody was saving the per diem to buy a VCR or whatever. I mean, you know that was the hot thing back in that day, was save up for a VCR, right. But we but everybody was getting you know, at that point in time, he getting on everybody's getting on everybody's nerves. So it was like, you know, Terry said, man, we need our own room. So he went to management at the time, and there was this lady named Jamie Shoop, and Jamie shop was like, she was our tour manager. Not Alan, No, okay, Ali came along after us after yeah. Yeah, So Jamie was amazing, took great care of us. She I mean as best she could. I mean, because it was it was Prince's thing. I mean, there was no doubt about Prince ran it. But she looked out for us the best she can. And she said, listen, she said, if you guys, you guys should have your own rooms, I'll advocate for that. Let's have a meeting whatever. So we told everybody, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have a meeting in San Diego, and we're basically going to say if we don't get rooms, we're quitting the tour. That's the thing right now, Jesse. For some reason, we said don't tell anybody, but Jesse for some reason went behind our backs and told management or told Prince or told somebody. So when we got everybody in this room, we thought, you know, we had the upper hand. We're gonna spring this on them. We walked into the room and Prince was like, so you guys are going to boycott. Huh, We're like going. We like all looked at each other. Then we all looked at Jesse, and Jesse's like, what, you know whatever, We're like, okay. So Terry at that point was just like, you know, listen, dude. He said, I can't. You know, I can't. I got a kid, I got you know whatever, whatever. I can't. You know, I can't do this. And I remember Prince he said to Terry rock stars shouldn't have kids. Wow, never forget that. I'll never forget that to this day. And uh anyway, so Terry, so Terry walked up. Terry said, Terry said quit. Terry said, Terry said, I remember going into it. He said, I'm always gonna have enough money to get a bus ticket. If i can do nothing else, I'm gonna have enough money to get a bus ticket to go home. And so he had his you know, fifty dollars or whatever the heck a bus ticket was. He had it, and he said, that's it. I'm out of here. Well, of course, Jamie came to the rescue and talked to Prince and said, Prince, come on, these guys, you know, they can have their own rooms. It's what's not what's the big deal. It's you know, it's three more rooms a night. What's the big deal? And anyway, Prince was so Prince was said, okay, fine, they got it. But if it wouldn't have been for Terry doing that, right, because because for Terry it was serious. It wasn't like a you know, a grand standing type thing or anything. It was like serious, like Terry, Terry had real life and real responsibilities. And for nineteen eighty two, what would have been fair.

01:17:13
Speaker 1: Market share for what, you know, what tickets were back then, what the gross was for these shows? And I know everyone's on this tour, so I know it's vanity and yeah there are people and you guys and your people and the revolution and printing his people, I'm sure the staff and all that stuff.

01:17:31
Speaker 2: What is fair for that time period? Honestly, quest So I don't know I don't really know.

01:17:38
Speaker 1: It wasn't that because you know, we were and tour support wasn't a thing like Mo Austin and those guys weren't.

01:17:45
Speaker 2: Like I think Warner Brothers. Yeah, I think Warner Brothers definitely supported the tour. I mean because all three records were all Warner Brothers records. I mean, you couldn't actually have a better situation. Yeah, right, you know, they were all records. But the other thing was we weren't making any We made any royalties on the time records. All we made was the salary, So it wasn't like it was an advance against royalties. And remember back in those days, if you had a gold record, you were doing pretty well because you know, the money flowed. I mean, the royalties were pretty good.

01:18:17
Speaker 1: So when they would open a budget, that wasn't split with you guys, like it was just like we just paid regular salary.

01:18:23
Speaker 2: Just played a regular salary. We never we never were royalty artists individually. Morris was, but the rest of us weren't. Was there a big difference between you guys and the Revolution when it came to that, Like financially, I never knew what the Revolution made quite Honestly, I never did. We never, we never really dealt with it. I'm sure they were making more than us, you know, but so what point does.

01:18:49
Speaker 1: The idea of moonlighting even come into your you know, your brain light and its moonlighting and thing like we need to make our own money and get our own publishing.

01:19:03
Speaker 2: Or just like, no, hey, we want to express ourselves. Yes, yeah, no, it wasn't. It wasn't a money thing ever. It was so so the way that went down was Terry. Once again, Terry, And if I don't say it enough during this interview, thank God for Terry Lewis. I mean, I swear to God that brother in my life has just been a godsend in every possible way. And but Terry said, I can't remember where we were at. I want to. First I was thinking it was Houston, but it wasn't Houston, but it was somewhere and we were kind of ending up. The tour was kind of beginning to end up, and we were and Terry said, I'm going to go to la after the tour, and everybody was like, what are you gonna do in l A t And he said, he said, man, he said, I'm just gonna make some demos and try to get some songs placed and just do some stuff. And everybody was like why, and he said, because they need us out there, and everybody said, man, you're crazy. And so Terry said, well, who wants to go? Somebody wanted to come with me, and everybody's like, man, no, man, I'm saving up from my VCR man. And literally that's what everybody said. And I looked at Terry and I said, well I'll go. Terry said okay, and I said, but where are we going to stay? He said, I don't know, We'll figure it out. Said where are we going to get equipment from? I don't know, We're gonna figure it out. I said, where we gonna get a car from? I don't know. We'll figure it out. And I trusted that brother because that was the brother that when the girl broke up with me and when I was a drummer and he told me I needed to be a keyboard player, got me into the band. And I just trusted because he because he had made decisions before and twisted my arm to do things. And I'm like, I'm not gonna he doesn't need to twist my arm on this one. I'm going to go on faith on this one. And so when the tour ended, we went to La Uh. Terry sold his car, I think, if I'm not mistaken, we bought uh some Viking ship. We bought uh. We bought uh you know in the classifieds. We bought a task cam, a little four track tape, a little microphone. I had this little Cassio keyboard with a little drum machine built into it. He had his base. And there were some people we knew from Minneapolis that had a house that they were renting a house out there, and they had one bedroom in the house and it was smaller probably in this little area we're sitting there. We had enough room to put two cots in there, and that's where me and Terry bunked. We didn't have a car, so we would walk to there was a California, yeah, but but but the eighties, in the eighties, well, here's the funny thing, though, we the only places we went because we we do our demos at home, right, So we'd do our demos at the crib. So we'd sit at the crib all day. They'd go to work, the people who we were staying with, and we'd all day be in like the bathroom and stuff to get reverb and stuff and be making our little demos and stuff. And then we would walk. There was a place called Golden Bird Chicken that was on Losienega Avenue. Best chicken ever to me, and you could get a four piece for two ninety nine. Because we didn't have any money, so we'd go get the two piece the four piece rather for two ninety nine. That was our one meal of the day. And then when the people got home at night, they'd all make milkshakes or whatever, so we'd have a milkshake at night. And that was That was basically the way we lived. And it was funny because oh and we didn't have any clothes. We had our time clothes, so like we're in ninety degree weather, but we got these suits. And the police used to the police used to stop us, right, We'd just be walking and the police would stop us and they go, everything okay, gentlemen, and we'd go like, yeah, everything's good. And they'd look at us and they go, you're not from here, are you? And we'd be like, no, how could you tell you know? And uh, But they never messed with us, really, and it was cool, and that was kind of our thing. And then eventually, you know, we hooked up with some girls that had cars, you know, right, I found a girl that had a Porsche. It was cool, you know, so we figured it out. But but that was what we were doing. And of course the word back in Minneapolis is that we were out there starving to death, and you know, we're starving to death and they're nuts and they're crazy, and you know, that was kind of the thought process.

01:23:24
Speaker 1: How much downtime did you have because I figured, at least until the time that you guys were dismissed, that there was no downtime, like you're always rehearsing.

01:23:36
Speaker 2: We had, we had, Okay, so that was between so the first tour was eighty one into eighty two. We think we were done in April of eighty two, so we had between April and probably June or July before we started rehearsing for the next tour and stuff. So it was never where he's like, where are you guys, I'm doing? Oh yeah, no, that was good. That was a good Onefinitely. Definitely, it definitely turned into that were you guys given a general rule that you weren't allowed to like, yes, it wasn't a general rule, it was a mandate. Basically, did mars enforce these rules or was it just like Prince said, Zoe, this was Prince No, this was princes had This was not Morris. As a matter of fact, I really Moore said something that rehearsal one day that was so for us, very empowering and very enlightening. I don't know how everybody else took it, but he said that this thing ain't gonna last forever. Whoa And he said that I suggest everybody figure out what it is that they want to do out of this and start working towards it. He said, I don't know what everybody else is doing. He said. Now, he said, I'm taking acting lessons because he said, I want to learn to actually, you know, do I want to be a to be able to act? I want to be able to do stuff?

01:25:01
Speaker 3: You know?

01:25:03
Speaker 2: Was this before this, before Purple rain? This is yeah, this is this is going into the into the nineteen ninety nine tour. Okay, so and he so he said that, and then he said, uh, he said, you know, he pointed in me and Terry and he said, Jimmy and Terry producing records. He said, I don't know what the rest of y'all are doing, but y'all need to figure it out. So he knew, he knew, you know, he knew what it was going to be. So that was very encouraging to us. And well, Terry and I used to do. I mean, we spent a lot of money doing it, but and I have no idea where we got the money from quite honestly now that I think about it. But Prince used to we would rehearse during the week, and we would we rehearse, you know, Monday through Friday or whatever. When we would get done Friday, Terry and I would hop like the last flight to LA and you know, we had booked a couple of you know acts at that point time. We were doing a group called Reel to Reel for Leon Silvers. We were doing Climax for Dick Griffy at Solar, so we had a couple of things going right. So we would fly and we do, you know, twenty four hour lockout at the studio, right, which we didn't know. So we do twenty four hour lockout, but then we would work twenty four hours. We didn't know that. It just meant that nobody could come into studio after you, right, So we drive the engineers. He'd be like, what time do you think we're going to end tonight? We said, we got twenty four hour lockout. What are you talking about? He was like, no, but that doesn't mean you were. I said, no, we got it for twenty four hours. We're working twenty four hours. Terry'd be asleep on the couch. I'd be working that I fall asleep and Terry would be working. Oh man, no, we were. I mean it's like, come on, man, we're trying to get this done. So that was the way we would work, and then we would catch a plane back to be back in time for Monday rehearsal. So Prince got wind of what we were doing. Who's nitch Jesse? And so all of a sudden the rehearsals would start going longer and longer. Then all of a sudden, there'd be a Saturday rehearsal, or there would be are we are we rehearsal tonight? No, and there's no rehearsal tonight. Okay, cool, We're gonna hop a plane and then we're literally on our way to the airport. Oh yeah, there's a rehearsal that kind of thing would start happening. So it was a lot of roadblocks, you know, kind of thrown in front of us at that point. And yeah, out of that. So it was it was an interesting time. But no, we were doing it. We certainly weren't doing it for the money because we weren't making any money. But we were doing it just because we had a love of music and we didn't feel what we were doing sounded like the time, because one of Prince's concerns was that, you know, don't give away the time sound. And it's like, well, but you are all the time sign So what we're doing isn't the time, I mean, you know, And so there was a lot of that. I remember. We we got blamed for Leon did just keep on loving me. Prince swore we did that record. We said, Prince, we weren't even in the studio when that record was done. We still swear that we did that record, right.

01:28:13
Speaker 1: He told me a story like you know, they're hid behind Leon Silvers, but I know it was them, Like he still believes that that's them.

01:28:23
Speaker 2: We didn't. Actually a matter of fact, it's funny we heard that record. I think the first time we heard that record was on the radio and we loved it. I mean we were because we were Leon Leon Silver's disciples man. We love Leon Silvers man, and we heard that record and we were like, oh, hell yeah, we love this, this is great. And were we never heard it before? We weren't in the studio. I mean, he took how approach you like, listen to this? Well, you know, it's funny because we did. When we did we did a record called can You Treat Me Like She Does? For Real to Real and a very obscure record. But the demo of that song, Terry's playing the bass very much like the time, and uh, Leon always called it the patent bass, like when you're patting something, because it's really it's more of a percussive thing than actually playing notes, so it's just boom, you know. Terry calls it boogaloo bass, right. So Leon always called it the patent patent bass, like you're patting the bass. Right. So when we did the demo of the record and Leon heard it, he says, oh, he said, because he always scratched his beard and he always talked like this, and he'd say, yeah, he said, I like that. I like that record. He said, we're going to do that record. I'm like real to real, and we're like, okay, great, Leon, cool. You know, So we went in and did the track. So as we're doing the track, Princess in our mind talking about don't give away the time sounds so now so Terry like is watering down the bass part now right, So now Terry, Terry's just going boom, you know, he's just kind of doing like that. So we turned, you know, we did the track and we said, okay, here you go, Leon, and he goes what happened to the patent bass? And we were like, no, that's the way we do it, just like that. No, I heard the shits on the demo and he was patting the base different than he's doing it. So either you guys can do the pattern on the bass or I'll go in and do it myself. And so we were like, oh shit, okay. So we went in and I think I think Leon Terry did kind of add a little bit to it, but never wanted to give the whole thing away. But I think Leon did go in and you know, put a few little pats of his own there. But nah, I mean we really were conscious of that of not. We didn't want to give away the time sound and I think and and by the way, when we were producers, that was the same thing we did when we started producing. We we would do one act and then the next act we'd be like, no, we're going a whole different groove or drum machines or keyboards or whatever to try to keep everybody. You know, how did you.

01:30:56
Speaker 1: Avoid the Dick Griffy pitfall? Because you guys could have easily been just still our house producers?

01:31:05
Speaker 2: Yep? Did he pursue you guys at all? Sort of the Well, the reason is one man, Clarence Savon. Clarence Savon didn't allow that to happen. Now, when we went to see Clarence, there was a lady named Dina Andrews who was an A and R person that sold our records, and she, pardon me, she was the one that actually introduced us to Griffy and she also knew and and by the way, all of these songs we were doing back then were all based on one demo tape that we did at the house and high Hopes was on their SOS band I saw called when You're Far Away that we ended up doing on Gladys Nyne and the Pips a song called the only one that we did on Dynasty, which was Leon's. Yeah, I didn't know that. As matter of fact, the keyboard on there is that original little Cassio keyboard because because Leon said, man, keep that keyboard sound just like you had it, I said, okay, So like literally climax we did for Dick graphy real to real we did Dick, not for I mean for Leon Silver's Yeah exactly, and and so on and so forth. So anyway, but all of these songs were all on that same demo tape, and everybody just heard different songs they liked. Dick heard, you know, wild Girls. Yeah, he said, heard wild Girls and said, oh yeah, wold Girls. That wild Girls. We like that. You know, he still a copy of you know, Terry probably does. He probably does. I don't. I don't have it, but I bet you he does because he still got the four track you know that we did all that stuff probably in his room somewhere. Yeah, he's got no, it's not here. It's not he's got it at his house, but it's not here, but he's got it definitely. But anyway, so that was that was the whole thing. So everybody had their own different kind of things that they liked. But what happened with Clarence was Dennis said, I'm gonna introduce you to Clarence Avon because Clarence had wanted us to do he We had done High Hopes, but we didn't produce it. We just wrote it right, So Clarence wanted to hear what it would have sounded like if we produced it. So he had the demo. So we, you know, Dinah set up a meeting. We went to meet him. Clarence called us the two thugs because we walked in with, you know, our hats and our suits and stuff, and he said, who are you two thugs? You know? So anyway, he listens to the he said, he said that High Hopes. He said, I like that record, he says, you know, and we said, well, Clarence, he said, it's cool, but the way it came out, but you know, he said, what's the difference in the demo? I said, we put the chili sauce on the demo. He said, oh, you did chili sauce. I like that. Okay, let's hear that we put it in and he said, yeah, yeah, I like that. I like that. He said, okay, so I want you to do two songs on the next SOS band record and we said okay, cool, Yeah, we're down, you know whatever. So he said okay, he said but here's the thing. He said, now, y'all's manager is negotiating your fee. And when he said that, our first thought was oh man, So we were like, okay, Clarence, well we can you know, we can get the budget down, man, you know, whatever you you know want to do. And he said, get the budget down. She ain't asking enough money, y'all. Y'all are worth more than that. And we were like, oh, we was representing you at the time. Dina andrews, Okay, okay, yeah, she was like our kind of de facto but she but she worked for Solar but yeah, but she was moonlight and I guess you could say, you know, representing our affairs and uh. She had also got introduced us to a guy at Warner Brothers Publishing and I'm trying to think of who it was or Warner Chapel, I can't remember his name, who was going to give us a publishing deal. Right, So Clarence had seen the publishing deal and Clarence said, if y'all signed this publishing deal, I'm never speaking to YouTube again day. And we were like, wow, what's what's the problem with the with the deal? Clarence and the deal was something like it was like I don't know one hundred and I don't know it one hundred and seventy thousand dollars for three years or something like that, right, which at the time he thought, Oh my god, I'm like, are you kidding me? Taking us one hundred fifty dollars a week? Yeah? Right, We're like, oh, come on, man, that's great, he says. He said, well, let me just break it down for you, gentlemen. So he said, so you got one hundred and seventy thousand dollars. So first of all, you know you're gonna split that in half because there's two of y'all, in case you didn't understand that there's two of you. Okay, So now maybe you have you know, eighty five thousand dollars. Now Uncle Sam's gonna take his fifty percent. And now you got forty thousand dollars and three years for forty thousand. That's fifteen thousand dollars a year. What are you gonna do with that? We were like, uh, well, he said, gentlemen, he said, I guarantee you your first runty check will be more than that total three year check, mark my words. And we said, okay, Clarence, we're cold, we're with it. So we never never signed a deal. Clarence gave us a SOOS band deal, and of course that led to the ill fated recording session of Atlanta that we all know about. So but that was the thing. And by the way, Clarence was absolutely right. Our first royalty check was uh, probably right around that number, just for I think just for the first like sos name, so for one song. Yeah, what was was?

01:36:13
Speaker 1: It?

01:36:13
Speaker 2: Just be good? Yeah? So he was right. So that's how we didn't get into the Dick Griffy thing, because he didn't allow that to happen, he said. And the other last little thing he told us when we met with him, he said, think about this, gentlemen, what are you going to be doing seven years from now? And we said we're gonna be making hits and he said no, no, no, no, he said, I don't mean that. He said, right now, you got me, you got Barry Gordy, got Lonnie Simmons. You got Dick Griffy, right, you know where the guys are in the industry. Who's going to be the next us? He said, that's who you need to That's what you need to start looking at. You need to start identifying talent and then helping them out. And he says, if you ever come across somebody who you think is talented, they're in a screwed up deal or whatever it is, you would introduce him to me. And we said, okay, And you know who we met l A l A Read He was in the deal yep, because he was in the deal and he was and they had that in the contract as nobody else did. They had that, They had that contract. And we met him and knew him and face were doing stuff together and he said, can you introduce me to Clarence And we said absolutely. We called Clarence. We said, Clarence, we got somebody for you, just like you said, and the rest is history there. So Clarence Clarence is the funk whisper. Yeah he is, he absolutely is, He absolutely is.

01:37:38
Speaker 1: Well yeah, the first time, I I mean, I love Sussex Records, but I didn't know that he was.

01:37:44
Speaker 2: They ahead of it or even taboo.

01:37:49
Speaker 1: But yeah, I remember he was one of the first people you thinked when you got your Grammy, your producer the year, Yes for your Grammy. So how okay, I'm playing wilfully ignorant here. The day that you got fired, I mean, was that mid tour or did you that was between tours? So so what had happened was of course obviously the whole snowstorm happened. We missed the gig in San Antonio.

01:38:18
Speaker 2: We went to say, you're sitting on the plane as no, the planes, they weren't letting people on the plane. There was literally no I'm from Minnesota. What time was the flight? Flight was like first thing in the morning, like seven o'clock in the morning, like just when even then, and think like maybe we rent a car. We did think of that. We thought of every possible scenario. We booked ourselves on any flight leaving. We booked ourselves on it. You could do that in those days. And literally we were booked on like ten different flights and they all canceled, and they all canceled. Literally. Then we thought, well, can we get the rent a car back drive to an airport that's open. But once again, now you're not dealing with it's not ways and you know and and and Siri and what's the closest airports that's opened, Siri? And it's none of that. You know, you had none of those, you know, the ability to do that. So but no, all of those possibilities. We were like, take a flight to anywhere we can connect and get to San Antonio. So we had the whole day to figure it out. And so literally for eight hours. And of course we're in the Atlanta airport. Everybody been in the Atlanta airport. It was one of the first airports with totally separate terminals for everything, where you had to take the train to get to each terminal. We were up and down on the train, up and down like what's taken off? Anybody taken off? Anybody? It was It was probably the worst day of my life, I would say, because we had never missed a gig. I mean you just as a musician, the show must go on. I mean I remember Terry, there was a gig we had. Terry had stitches and stuff and was bleeding and gotten in a car accident, still showed up and did the gig. You know, we actually we were opening for uh maybe it was a cam it might have been a cameo we were opening for or something. But he showed up. I mean he was like, where's Terry? Always at the hospital, but he's on his way. It's like, okay, cool, you know, it's like you just don't miss a gig man. So that was crazy. But we figured out we were going to miss it when we got into town. It was really funny because I actually went to the club afterwards and everybody was saying, oh many, y'all were great, y'all were great. I felt so weird. I was like, I'm going home, man, this is this is too weird. So when we got back to La we just figured, you know, because we were still making our little check, a little paycheck, right, so we got you know, we would go by the accountant's office, and I figured we're going to go get our last check, right. So we walked into the account's office and everybody was like, hey, how you guys doing. Oh, here's your checks. Okay, we'll see you next week. We were like you will, okay, cool, all right, So we took our check right. So we did that for the next couple of weeks, three weeks you know, just went in and got our check and whatever. And I'm like going, I don't think they know we're fired. That's weird, you know. So then we were at this Whispers concert. Did you know you were fired? Though we were told we were fired. Okay, yeah, we were told we were fired. Matter of fact, who told you you? Rent?

01:40:58
Speaker 1: Prince told us, So he is confrontational. It wasn't like get my management to tell you.

01:41:05
Speaker 2: That over at a dinner too or something where like Prince and Morris were sitting together. It wasn't. It wasn't a dinner. It was what happened was and this is so damn movie storybook time. Okay, we had, you know, we're ready to mix the SOS band songs and we had ended up doing just be good to me, but also did tell me if you still care also in a subsequent session. So we're like ready to go. We're like got the time booked at Larabie Studios, right, and we're gonna mix with Steve Hodge. Way, we know Steve Hodges from looking at the liner notes, and it's like, okay, we need Steve Hodge at Larabie. That's the combination that we need right to mix the record. That's all we didn't know, but that's what we figured. So we got the time booked. That day, we get a call from Prince meet me at Sunset Sound at six thirty and we were like damn. So we kind of looked at each other and we said, well, we're supposed to be mixing the SOS bad record. Well we got to go. We have to go to Sunset Sound. I mean, it's like it was obvious to it was no choice. It was like, no, the time is our priority, you know, the SOS thing. We can wait and we'll figure it out. So we went. When we pulled up the accountant was there, a guy named Fred Moultrie. He was there, and we said, we're getting our We're getting fired. Like we knew the jig was up, right, You instantly knew. We just knew. We just knew that what So we said, hey, what's up Fred? And Fred had this high voice and he said, hey, guys, how you doing. Have a good session? Y'all have a good session. We were like, okay, cool, all right, well maybe not, you know. So we go into this little room, kind of this little sitting room right adjacent to the studio, myself Terry, Jesse Morris, and Prince, just the five of us, right, And Prince goes, I told you guys not to produce other records, and you did, so you're fired. And room went silent for a minute. And then I got up and I said, okay, cool, and I got up and walked out the door. So Terry stayed in there for a little while, trying to reason with him, like yeah, Terry was like, come on, mane, well Terry, you know, Terry was great because here's the one thing. First of all, Prince couldn't bullshit Terry ever. You just he's just usually he's just not the cat you do it with. And that's what Prince liked about Terry so much. He knew he couldn't do you know, oki dok on him, like like he would just tell him straight, like Prince, you suck right now or you He would just always say that yeah he could. Yeah, oh absolutely, Oh yeah. They used to get in, They used to get in these five six hour conversations about stuff about about life and religion and you name it. And and because Prince would have all these philosophies and he'd do all this stuff and it would be like and he talked, and you when he talked, man, he had this way of kind of like it was like drinking the kool aid. Man. It was like, right, no one ever challenged the morning. Nobody challenged him. And Terry would always go like, yeah, okay, well that's what you think, but here's what I think, and would come right back at him. And I think Prince always appreciated that with Terry, and Terry was really the leader of the time. I mean, Morris was the lead singer, but whenever there was a decision to be made, Morris would always go, Terry, what do you think? Okay, right, So Terry was that dude. So Terry, Yeah. So Terry tried to reason with him a little bit and just kind of go like, come on, man, would you why would you do that? We're not giving away the sound like you say, we're doing you know so and so, you know whatever. Anyway, about ten minutes later, Terry comes out and he says, Okay, well, what do you want to do now? And we looked at our watch and I said, well we got time. Yeah, we got time at Larabie. Let's go to Larby and missus right, So we walk into Larabie and we had never even met Steve Hodge before, and so we walk in and he goes, you guys, me Tarry, Yeah, he says, I'm Steve and I said, hey, Steve, nice to meet you. How you doing no good? And Steve goes, what's wrong with you guys? And he said something wrong and we said, we just got fired from the time and he said. Steve said hmm. He said, well, I'm gonna tell you something. He said, you don't have much story about because this record you guys got here. He said, this is a hit. And he knew, he knew, he knew, and it was that should be the end of the story, but it wasn't. Oh okay, so because that was how that happened, of course not. I'm telling you. We're still picking up our little paychecks right every week, right right. So now we're backstage at a Whispers concert. We run into Lee Bailey. He's got this show called Radio Radio. So so Lee Bailey's backstage and he walks up to me with a microphone and he says, Lee Bailey, radioscope here, you're fired from the time. What's the bottom line? And he puts the mic in my face and yeah, right right, and I'm going, who are you Lee Bailey? Radioscope, I said, I said, I know. I said, we're just here watching the concert, man, but I heard you got fired. From the time, I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Man, We're just here watching the concert, right, So I just kept saying that. Right. A couple of days later, we go to the accountant's office and we go, hey, guys, and they go, we can't give you your checks. Guys. We said, why not? I said, because you guys got fired. And we laughed and we said, we got fired like four or five weeks ago. Who told you we got fired? It was just on the radio. He's still doing it. He's still doing so. So then the epilogue, as we call it, back from the Dan August Days. Anybody Dan August fan over, everybody, budd he said, a Quinn Martin production. Anybody ever watched Quinn Martin production shows? Okay, well I got some. Yeah, I stopped it. Oh, I can't believe it. I can't believe nobody in the room. Okay, So Quinn Martin was a production team did TV shows back in the day. But Burt Reynolds was on a show called Dan August. He was a detective. It was really good, great show. Anyway, they would always say. It would always say act one, act two, Act three, and then at the end it would always say epilogue, and it was always the wrap up of the show. So the epilogue of the story is Prince had jelly Bean called Terry, and as it turned out, the reason that the accountant didn't know we were fired just because we never were really fired. It was a bluff. And the idea was we were supposed to fall flat on our faces and then beg for our jobs about right. Well, unfortunately that didn't happen because just be good to me came out unfortunately for who and not for us. So anyway, it just be good to me. Everybody basically was felt like, okay, well this is a this is a smash. Whoever did this? We're good, you know, so jelly Bean. So Prince decided divide and conquer. So he called Jellybe and he said to jelly Bean, get get Terry lewis back and Terry said, and uh, Bean said, what about what about Jimmy? And he said no, he said, just just Terry. So jelly Bean, Jelly Bean called Terry and I never forget this. We're in this, We're in this little little room and we had a little three bedroom apartment, uh, with Dina, with Dina Andrews, I think, as a matter of fact, at that point, and I remember Terry getting a phone and going, hey, Bean, what's up. What are y'all doing? And so Bean's telling them, oh, yeah, we're gonna do this movie, Purple Rain, and we're gonna do this whole thing, and you know, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and uh, Terry says yeah. He says, well, he said, what about Jimmy And he said, you know, I want Jimmy back. Terry said, you every cuss word, every like if he could climb through the phone and run. Bean's knocking, and I was like, Terry, what's going on? He says, no, no, you can't. I mean, he was so pissed off. Anyway, I said to Terry, I said, man, go do the movie. It's no big deal. I said, I'm not going anywhere. I said, you know, make the movie sounds fun, go ahead and do it and whatever. He said, No, he'll no, he said, no, we in this together. He said, if they're not going to do that to us, you know, we're a team and you know whatever. Yeah, so that was it. So that was it. So then and that's so, that's why we were out. And then wait, wait, why are you looking at me?

01:49:40
Speaker 1: Like?

01:49:40
Speaker 2: Why did you look at me? Mayor? Because I felt you looking at me like you can learn from this and there are some words of wisdom coming from this story about Lord, you're here with you for twenty years. You're here with me now flashback. It took a long time, like another episode of tune in. Look did you give me that? You listen? You're with me?

01:50:14
Speaker 3: Okay, it's what I'm taped now.

01:50:15
Speaker 2: I just needed it. Thank you, I love it. I love it. I'm sorry. That's what we do here. That's what we do here. It's a public service. Oh man.

01:50:29
Speaker 1: That's it for part one of our conversations with Jimmy jim Thank you guys for tuning in. And next week we have part two and that's when Alexander returns, Jimmy and Terry helped Janet take control and much more. Don't miss it quest Love Supreme. It is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.