Speaker 1: Of course. Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Suprema Su Su Suprema role called Suprema Suck Sun Supreme
Speaker 2: role called Suprema Sun Sun Supremo role called Suprema Sun
Speaker 2: Sucks Supremo role.
Speaker 3: I may have moved, Yeah, you could say I roomed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when I'm back in the studio. Yeah, ain't no place
Speaker 3: like home.
Speaker 2: Suprema Su Supremo. Roll called Suprema Sun Sun Suprema roll call.
Speaker 1: My name is Fante.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: My favorite movie is Belly. Yeah. I just learned that
Speaker 1: the plural of cello is chilly.
Speaker 2: Supreme Suprema roll call, Suprema So Supreme, roll called.
Speaker 5: My name is Sugar, Yeah, I keep it mellow. Yeah
Speaker 5: when Larry Gold, Yeah, playing this check though.
Speaker 1: So Supremo, Roll Suprema.
Speaker 6: My name is Boss pill Yeah, just here to say hello. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and I'm feeling great. Yeah, mellow as a cello.
Speaker 7: Supremo roll It's like yeah, and my boot Larry Gold, Yeah,
Speaker 7: my favorite tough jew.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that never gets old.
Speaker 1: Supremo.
Speaker 4: Roll call, Supremo, roll call. They say I play thee
Speaker 4: I'm very nice Yellow, but I'm not. I'm the last
Speaker 4: name Gold and I'm very bold.
Speaker 1: Suprema son So supremo.
Speaker 2: Roll call sup Prima son so supremo, suprema suprema.
Speaker 1: See was that really was?
Speaker 4: It was a bit intimidating, especially with all the everybody.
Speaker 4: It flashed through my head, you know, I was, I mean,
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 1: Know a lot with Larry Gold as he did the
Speaker 1: word mold bold. Oh yeah, there you go, Old.
Speaker 4: I was going to leave that go even though she
Speaker 4: could have gone that way right.
Speaker 3: My My favorite part of uh taping this podcast is
Speaker 3: when guests of the show start expressing fear when I
Speaker 3: tell them two minutes ahead of time they're about to start.
Speaker 3: We never, of course, you know, we never tell the
Speaker 3: guests that they're doing the freestyle.
Speaker 4: Uh was looking at her phone.
Speaker 1: Oh we know, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: See this lets us know, like, you know, your enthusiasm
Speaker 3: for doing the show, like you know, you're there.
Speaker 1: We'll give you an eight.
Speaker 4: It definitely is intimidating.
Speaker 1: You got an eight. You're good man. You can eat.
Speaker 4: Fuck. I didn't get that in school.
Speaker 1: You got you got an eat.
Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: Your host Quest Love, and we're here with Teams Supreme
Speaker 3: find Tickeolo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sugar Steve and Boss Bill Hello, and.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, how you doing. Uh, we're man down now Bill,
Speaker 3: And he didn't make it. I think that we might
Speaker 3: have have affected uh two of our guests with the
Speaker 3: love the Quest Love Supreme diet here. Yeah, so we fed,
Speaker 3: we fed uh unpaid Bill. He had impossible cheese steaks.
Speaker 1: He has some drink.
Speaker 3: Uh, he had some David's chicken from Chinatown and this
Speaker 3: is all in the same night and have more drink.
Speaker 3: And now he's out of commission. So I think that
Speaker 3: if I had a rough morning to yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 3: went to.
Speaker 1: Barley, went to Barkley Pro and I.
Speaker 9: Had a ribby and the truffle mac and geese and
Speaker 9: the mac and geese.
Speaker 1: It came back to say what's up? Really? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was I just yeah, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 9: I meant I haven't I mean really really rich rich
Speaker 9: dairy ship. Right, it was good, but but yeah, this
Speaker 9: morning not it reminded me.
Speaker 7: But do y'all hear that that's the dopeness of the
Speaker 7: Philly because that's all Philly food. That's like Bill got
Speaker 7: sucked up. He couldn't take it, got fucked up. He
Speaker 7: couldn't take it because it was good as hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I went to McDonald's. Damn.
Speaker 3: Actually that that speaks more about me, like I'm killing off.
Speaker 1: Our sometimes were all your choices, ladies and gentlemen. Uh,
Speaker 1: so let's say that.
Speaker 3: Uh you remember that moment where you were in your
Speaker 3: feelings when you first heard those strings on Love My
Speaker 3: Things part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that rush.
Speaker 3: You felt like, whoa, the roots are growing up here
Speaker 3: and I might be cutting onions.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Our next guest today, I'll say, has his both his
Speaker 3: feet planet in the the history of Philadelphia and also
Speaker 3: the future of Philadelphia as integral part of the foundation
Speaker 3: of what we know as the Sound of Philadelphia. Of course,
Speaker 3: if you're familiar with the any of the works from
Speaker 3: the Sound of Philadelphia, be it Gambled and Huff creations,
Speaker 3: or even things produced by Tom Moulton or Tom Bell, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Tom Bell, or any any of the Sound of Philadelphia luminaries,
Speaker 3: dex of Winzel, whoever, Baker.
Speaker 1: Harris, yes, Nick Fadden and white Fad and Whitehead. Just
Speaker 1: they the the the.
Speaker 3: Secret sauce, the special sauce of the Sound of Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: I will say, are the less strings it gives a
Speaker 3: touch of class, a step further than what I think
Speaker 3: Barry Gordy thought he was doing with the Motown sound,
Speaker 3: trying to make it palatable to America.
Speaker 1: And our guest today was a part of that.
Speaker 3: But not only that, we can also say that he
Speaker 3: had his hand in the second resurgence of the sound
Speaker 3: of Philadelphia as owner of the much fabled the studio here.
Speaker 3: And what part of town are we Northern Liberties Okay,
Speaker 3: we'll call it Northern Liberties.
Speaker 4: Or North Chinatown Okay, which I prefer, but North Chinatown,
Speaker 4: Northern Liberties, And at this very studio, I will say
Speaker 4: that pretty much any and everybody.
Speaker 3: This is where I first met the great Bruce with
Speaker 3: Dean oh wow, when he was doing Jennifer Lopez.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But uh, this has been home to the roots for
Speaker 3: at least ten albums.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a list not to mention. You've done
Speaker 1: string arrangements for everyone justin Timberlake.
Speaker 4: Just yeah, I've done good.
Speaker 1: He's done good. He's done good for himself.
Speaker 4: How you doing, man, Thank you? I'm fine.
Speaker 1: I was I was.
Speaker 3: Trying to figure out when did we first cross paths?
Speaker 3: I remember my version of the story was, well, I
Speaker 3: know that Fateen danceler, Uh.
Speaker 1: Daddy Kendrick told me about the studio.
Speaker 3: But at that time, you know, I was I was
Speaker 3: married to the sound and set up that I had
Speaker 3: at Sigma both of our old homes, and then an
Speaker 3: incident happened.
Speaker 4: That's what I remember. An incident happened, and James Poyser
Speaker 4: called me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so an incident happened without putting out the business
Speaker 3: of one of the.
Speaker 1: Former members of the Roots.
Speaker 4: No, I don't want you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, we've we've we've made no bones about our
Speaker 3: feelings about Malix situation.
Speaker 1: Uh much left to Malik be.
Speaker 3: But an incident happened at the studio that kind of
Speaker 3: got us all kicked out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it got us all kicked out. Well here's the
Speaker 1: thing though.
Speaker 4: Sort of overnight too as well.
Speaker 3: It was instantly and for me, uh, I kind of
Speaker 3: played the the sentimental card. You remember in in uh
Speaker 3: Chris Tucker's Money Talks when he was sort of like
Speaker 3: what my mom staatement, Come on, pitty pat right, what
Speaker 3: would my mom say?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: It was that situation where me and Joe tarci At,
Speaker 3: the owner of Sigma, get the I want them back.
Speaker 1: Here, and I was just like, come on, man, you
Speaker 1: know my daddy.
Speaker 3: And my plea was like, at least I didn't want
Speaker 3: an inconsistent sound like I recorded the album right, maybe
Speaker 3: seventy of the music in sigma, and I wanted a
Speaker 3: consistence down throughout. So he he was like, all right, well,
Speaker 3: I'll let you guys track the music here, but you
Speaker 3: know Malik can never come back here, so uh so,
Speaker 3: thus all the vocals were then done here in this
Speaker 3: very room that we're in. Wow, So I'll say that
Speaker 3: adrenaline all aside to almost an adrenaline.
Speaker 1: You got me? What's that? So? Why don't do everything?
Speaker 3: And then eventually, once we started working on Phrenology, we
Speaker 3: just moved here.
Speaker 1: Stay here. You know, he made this offer we couldn't refuse.
Speaker 3: I think the first song I cut here was that
Speaker 3: it was the impronounceable, the plump yeah good.
Speaker 1: One number, the one that fans are still waiting for
Speaker 1: you to give them the lyrics to. I gotta find it.
Speaker 1: It's somewhere in this building. Whatever it was. I was
Speaker 1: cussing out the Angelo, so I'll give you that much.
Speaker 8: This was this.
Speaker 1: It was four days after he stood us up or
Speaker 1: break you off? I remember that night. Yeah, yeah, I think.
Speaker 3: One of the lines I remember is meanwhile your hero
Speaker 3: is running scared some some something.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no it was it was a distract for you. Anyway, Larry,
Speaker 1: how you doing, bro?
Speaker 8: I'm sorry?
Speaker 1: Anyway, how's it going Mary?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's going on. Yeah yeah. Yeah. Are you
Speaker 1: a Philadelphia native, did you?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I grew up a few blocks from here in
Speaker 4: North Philly. Really yeah. My dad had a toy store, little,
Speaker 4: you know, toy and hardware store, and we grew up upstairs.
Speaker 1: Really we're part of well, you know our h or.
Speaker 4: You o R thirty the thirty the twenty nine hundred
Speaker 4: block of Frankfurt Avenue, which is the Heroin district right
Speaker 4: now in Philadelphia. It's really hardcore. Really yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I as.
Speaker 4: A let's put it this way, I had many cellos
Speaker 4: cracked open on the way home from the elevated really,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, I had. I had to run home sometimes
Speaker 4: carrying your carrying the cello.
Speaker 3: So it's always been I guess we should note that
Speaker 3: I had to find out through a New York Times
Speaker 3: story that I guess you could say the Kensington section or.
Speaker 4: It is it's the Kensington section, even though the there's
Speaker 4: a whole group of twenty year olds now moving further
Speaker 4: north than where you guys were when you were.
Speaker 1: Well, Fisttown is becoming gentrified.
Speaker 4: My goodness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they try to sell me a trip there for
Speaker 3: a lot of money. No, Fisttown is gentrified, which like
Speaker 3: thirty years ago, Fishtown was.
Speaker 1: Sort of like benson Hurst.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, that's the only place in the world I've
Speaker 8: ever been called a nigger.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, like thirty years ago it was.
Speaker 4: And I'm not surprised. Well yeah, yeah, I mean now like.
Speaker 3: Some of the world US restaurants and you know, Stephen's
Speaker 3: like it's it's upscale. However, further north northeast, northeast of
Speaker 3: there and Kensington, Philly's like getting hit with its third
Speaker 3: wave of you know, we we had a little or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had a thing like in two thousand and six.
Speaker 4: I think we have the worst problem right now that
Speaker 4: major city. We are really well. I think we hit
Speaker 4: a low point in town here right now. You know,
Speaker 4: the school system sucks, you know, I mean, and you know,
Speaker 4: the property and taxes are so high that you can't
Speaker 4: really raise them anymore without people suffering, you know. I
Speaker 4: mean it's, you know, time to deal with the cities again,
Speaker 4: you know, to take a good look at everything.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Hey, people aren't getting an even break it, you know,
Speaker 4: and that's that's the thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like we have to come back now. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean that was kind of the solution before. It
Speaker 3: was like nothing's happened in this town. Hey, let's make
Speaker 3: something happen. And well, you did, you know you did.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's.
Speaker 4: Going to say that that's my little You represented Philly
Speaker 4: music for the a period of time. I remember early
Speaker 4: in the nineties when you guys were first starting, one
Speaker 4: of the big executives said to me, have you heard
Speaker 4: the Roots? And I said the Roots? He said they're
Speaker 4: from Philly and I felt like an ignorant SunUp fool,
Speaker 4: you know, I had not heard of them. And then
Speaker 4: I remembered you played Columbia's Oak freshman party and my
Speaker 4: daughter went to see you when she was a freshman there,
Speaker 4: and she called me on the phone and said, they're extraordinary. Wow, Dad,
Speaker 4: you got to go introduce them, introduce you know. And
Speaker 4: so you guys were representing Philadelphia long before Neo Soul.
Speaker 1: Wow, thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: So where does your musical introduction start, Like, how did
Speaker 3: you were your plans?
Speaker 1: Were your plans to be like Curtis Institute?
Speaker 4: Yeah, classical cellist? Early early on, I got I got
Speaker 4: caught by the fever of popular music though, really as
Speaker 4: a kid.
Speaker 1: So how did you ease out of that? And did
Speaker 1: you disappoint people when you?
Speaker 3: He told Okay, explain well, first of all, he explained,
Speaker 3: a lot of people hold Juilliard in the highlight of like, Okay,
Speaker 3: well that's the that's the pinnacle of music education, for
Speaker 3: classical music.
Speaker 1: But can you explain how.
Speaker 3: Hard and I think Curtis has a harder, way, harder curriculum.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's not particularly a curriculum. It's just Curtis
Speaker 4: has always been about. When I was there, there were
Speaker 4: seventy five kids. Now there's about one hundred and fifty Julliard.
Speaker 4: There's thousands that take lessons. Right, it's a different it's
Speaker 4: a different kind of entity, you know. I mean, Curtis
Speaker 4: might be up to two hundred by now, I don't know.
Speaker 4: They build a new building and they got a lot
Speaker 4: of money, and it was a very it was a
Speaker 4: very private school, yeah, curtis Is. It's in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: Way harder to get in the Curtis than for me,
Speaker 3: at least, like I saw the audition, I failed them.
Speaker 9: This is a performing arts school, yeah, servatory, yeah, conservatory,
Speaker 9: but performing arts, mostly instrumental arts.
Speaker 4: You know, it's now operatic and a lot of other things.
Speaker 4: And I think they're teaching improvisation starting next year. They
Speaker 4: brought somebody in and I think they're going to. Like
Speaker 4: everyone else in this world, things have changed since the sixties.
Speaker 4: In the sixties, you were put in a box. If
Speaker 4: you got out of that box, nobody knew what to
Speaker 4: do with you, you know. I mean it was like
Speaker 4: it was a weird time, you know. When I wanted
Speaker 4: to be in popular music and classical music, that wasn't
Speaker 4: even really possible in the early sixties.
Speaker 1: What year did you attend Curtis.
Speaker 4: I was fifteen, so that would have been in nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty three.
Speaker 1: So by this point are you seeing your other I.
Speaker 4: Was already making a little bit of a living. I
Speaker 4: met some of the in those days. The Union in
Speaker 4: Philadelphia was run by you know, South Philly musicians, and
Speaker 4: that's the nicest way I could say, you know, you
Speaker 4: know back.
Speaker 1: You mean some friends of our Yes, yeah.
Speaker 4: Some you know back all right, back in the early sixties.
Speaker 4: I made a when I first started playing on records,
Speaker 4: I made a brilliant discovery. There was a white union
Speaker 4: and a Black union.
Speaker 1: I did not know that.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm telling you that. And mister Gamba, I it
Speaker 4: was here yesterday, Kenny was here. Yes, he would have
Speaker 4: told you that, which I found amazing. And I don't
Speaker 4: know much about it, but I know that by the
Speaker 4: time the mid sixties rolled around, they formed one union. Okay, okay,
Speaker 4: so I would say, I think sixty six or something
Speaker 4: like that, there was one union.
Speaker 3: Technically, I'm a union guy, yeah, I know, but I'd
Speaker 3: never go to the meetings and no, I know, like
Speaker 3: what who does the union benefit?
Speaker 1: Well, because they always ask me in the old days.
Speaker 4: In the old days, it was a real sort of
Speaker 4: like mob kind of a thing because they would go
Speaker 4: into a restaurant and if you had live musicians, they
Speaker 4: would make sure they were union players. So I mean
Speaker 4: collect yeah, exactly. If you go back to the twenties
Speaker 4: and the thirties and the forties, yeah, it was a
Speaker 4: way to collect dues, a way to have easy jobs,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean then a way to make sure
Speaker 4: your musicians union people were represented in these clubs or
Speaker 4: these places. I always thought, I think the union is
Speaker 4: a good thing because I think people take advantage of
Speaker 4: other people without them at times. Absolutely okay, But I
Speaker 4: also think that the union gets too like.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I felt okay, so and doing that we
Speaker 3: both know that. So in doing the Hamilton recording, this
Speaker 3: is when I knew, like, oh god, man, these union
Speaker 3: people get on the nerves, like they literally have a
Speaker 3: person over your shoulder micromanaging with the stop watch. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's like they're always reminding you like T minus
Speaker 3: three hours and nineteen minutes folks, and it's like, yo,
Speaker 3: can we get rid.
Speaker 1: Of this person?
Speaker 3: But then don't get down to like they'll say T
Speaker 3: minus nine minutes before first twenty minute break and they
Speaker 3: have to make this loud declaration no matter what you're doing,
Speaker 3: it blows the vibe. But like their job is there
Speaker 3: to protect. But then I found out once you speak
Speaker 3: to maybe a label president or whatever, and you slide
Speaker 3: some squills or whatever, then maybe they could just sit
Speaker 3: in the in the break room or whatever. Like this
Speaker 3: happens with like the cast albums I've worked on. So
Speaker 3: I just I realized that, Okay, maybe to protect you
Speaker 3: so that you know, I don't underpay you or that
Speaker 3: sort of thing. You join the union, then of course
Speaker 3: I have to pay you union scale or double scale
Speaker 3: or triple scale or whatever your price is.
Speaker 1: So I see that benefit. But and it goes into
Speaker 1: your healthy shurance.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And also supposedly, you know here we are talking
Speaker 4: about this is bullshit, but I mean supposedly, like I'm
Speaker 4: on a.
Speaker 1: Pension from pension.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they're fucking around with the pension man, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, so I don't know what to say about
Speaker 4: all these people.
Speaker 7: But from a non union perspective, union just looks like heaven.
Speaker 7: I'm just gonna tell you, Like all my life, i mean,
Speaker 7: even in black radio has never been unionized.
Speaker 8: Like it's a whole thing.
Speaker 7: So it's like I've always looked at y'all like, Wow, protections, doubility.
Speaker 4: Well, some of it, some of it's good, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I see, do.
Speaker 3: You remember the first professional gig that you did in
Speaker 3: a studio?
Speaker 4: I don't I knew you were going to ask me this,
Speaker 4: and I really it was you know, it was like
Speaker 4: came on Parkway. It was probably in nineteen sixty three
Speaker 4: or before sixty two, and I started playing on records.
Speaker 4: Whenever they used two cellos, there used to be I guess,
Speaker 4: like maybe four violins, one viola, one cello. Then they
Speaker 4: expanded they went six violins, two viola's, two cellos. So
Speaker 4: as soon as they did that, the head guy took
Speaker 4: a liking to me. He really liked He was a
Speaker 4: really good jazz violin player. He grew up legit, but
Speaker 4: he was more like Jovenudi. He had a real sort
Speaker 4: of that sound. You know that most legit players have
Speaker 4: a great sound, but it's more formal.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: His was much looser, and I liked him. He was
Speaker 4: a great guy. His name was Dom Ronaldo. He's on
Speaker 4: every record the Gamblingoff ever made Dom Ronaldo strings and Horns. Well,
Speaker 4: Don Renaldo.
Speaker 1: That was the name of the of.
Speaker 4: The strings and horns. In other words, it was it
Speaker 4: always said, none of our individual names, right, It was
Speaker 4: Don Ronaldo's strings and horns. So he was an executive
Speaker 4: at the Union. He got me into the Union. I
Speaker 4: was probably fourteen or something. He was supposed to be sixteen, okay,
Speaker 4: and he started, get me gigs.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is something that I should know that I
Speaker 3: don't know. Can you explain the difference between the violin,
Speaker 3: the viola, and the cello and the bass.
Speaker 4: Yes, the base, So those four string instruments. The bass
Speaker 4: starts the first string. On the bass, the lowest ring
Speaker 4: is like an E low E. On the piano, R low.
Speaker 4: The lowest string on the cello is a C above
Speaker 4: that see right, A C above that the next. On
Speaker 4: the viola, the lowest string is an octave above that
Speaker 4: cello C A C C right. Then on the violin,
Speaker 4: the lowest string is the G above that C, which
Speaker 4: is the G below middle middle C.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, so.
Speaker 4: It encompasses the whole bottom of the piano and the
Speaker 4: whole top of the piano. The violin goes from that
Speaker 4: G all almost to the end of the piano.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: A great violinist can go all the way to the end.
Speaker 1: So violin has more range. Viola has half the range.
Speaker 4: No, but viola can go very high too, but not
Speaker 4: as high sounding as the violin. It would be an
Speaker 4: octave under the violin even at its highest oh.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 4: So the violin gets up where the birdies go.
Speaker 1: So the what we know as the sound of Philadelphia.
Speaker 4: Was mostly six violins, two viola's, two cellos doubled, and
Speaker 4: sometimes we performed it that kills me. We performed well.
Speaker 4: Sometimes we performed it three times, and the best takes
Speaker 4: were you know, I mean you didn't have you see,
Speaker 4: you didn't have the luxury in those days of like
Speaker 4: you had to know you had a good performance and
Speaker 4: then you doubled it onto two your moot. In the
Speaker 4: early days with sixteen track or eight track, you had
Speaker 4: to already bounce it to move it, oh, double it.
Speaker 4: So you had to have a good track to begin with,
Speaker 4: and then you were going taking that old track and
Speaker 4: the new track, the old track out of phase and
Speaker 4: the new track, moving them together, Yeah, moving them together.
Speaker 4: Is there a risk that oh, you know what, it
Speaker 4: would be naturally out of phase because it was two
Speaker 4: different performances too, you know, no two performances are exactly
Speaker 4: the same, so there wouldn't be like.
Speaker 3: But is there a risk of say, maybe the bass
Speaker 3: is now out of tune and his a is slightly
Speaker 3: off and now that's there's.
Speaker 4: Always that risk and a lot of times if you
Speaker 4: go listen to the strings their attitude, you know, But
Speaker 4: yet so are the vocals. A lot of that stuff,
Speaker 4: so a lot, a little bit attitude, you know that,
Speaker 4: But it all works together and in the song. But
Speaker 4: a lot of times you're listening solos, so you're if
Speaker 4: it's attitude, you do it again here. So so you
Speaker 4: might end up doing your double a couple of more
Speaker 4: times than you would. But people compromised much easier back
Speaker 4: in those days. They were just looking for a feel
Speaker 4: on those records. It was more short, they were elegant,
Speaker 4: and and there were certain producers that wanted it pristine.
Speaker 4: You take someone like Burt Backrak who came into the
Speaker 4: city a few times, you know, and everything had to
Speaker 4: be precise and exactly, you know what I mean. But
Speaker 4: there were an awful lot of people that that was
Speaker 4: not the case. They were like unmade beds, you know.
Speaker 4: They would as soon as they got the feel of
Speaker 4: the record right, that was it. They didn't care what
Speaker 4: was in duner.
Speaker 1: Attitude right, as long as it felt right.
Speaker 4: As long as it felt right.
Speaker 3: So you're trying to tell me, I'm trying to think
Speaker 3: of okay, So like Stairway to Heaven.
Speaker 4: That's already twenty four track or sixteen twenty four track.
Speaker 1: But even you're like, yeah, oja, yeah, I had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with le Zeppelin. For those listening.
Speaker 3: A song like Stairway to Heaven that I when I
Speaker 3: hear it, I'm just imagining it's fifty of you in
Speaker 3: a room doing me strings and it's really just twelve fourteen.
Speaker 4: Well it's it's ten doubled.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So the first see Phil Ramone couldn't get over that.
Speaker 4: That's what it was too.
Speaker 1: I can't you know what I had.
Speaker 4: I always had my problems with Joe Tarzia, but I
Speaker 4: have to say he was a fucking good engineer.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 4: Yeah. You know, I always thought they were a little
Speaker 4: bit too aggressive for me, and maybe, you know, maybe
Speaker 4: other people felt that way, you know, just as people
Speaker 4: in a way when I live, aggressive like don't move
Speaker 4: the microphones, no, no, no, no, just aggressive.
Speaker 1: His people Oh okay, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: They didn't fit into my hippie self, you know, they
Speaker 4: they rubbed me the wrong way a little bit, okay,
Speaker 4: But he was a great fucking engineer. They made great
Speaker 4: records here. He taught a lot of my friends how
Speaker 4: to make magnificent records. You know Donald Murray who did
Speaker 4: all those Spinners records, and you know some of the
Speaker 4: young people eventually did some of the records we all
Speaker 4: know as the Philly Sound. Joe did a lot of
Speaker 4: what Joe sat next to Gamble megan his records, you know,
Speaker 4: so those stairways, that was Joe Tarzis and he he
Speaker 4: had a slate floor at three oh nine that he
Speaker 4: put the strings on this slate floor, so he was
Speaker 4: getting a lot of bounce out of the sound of
Speaker 4: the strings.
Speaker 3: So strings would be cut on three or nine Broad
Speaker 3: Street at a lot of times.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because they realized that first of all, it was
Speaker 4: right next door to where Kenny and Leon lived mostly,
Speaker 4: which their offices were right and where they wrote the songs.
Speaker 4: So and here they built a really nice studio that
Speaker 4: you know, was for the seventies, was sort of state
Speaker 4: of the art. It had shagcarp you know a lot
Speaker 4: of the studios in the seventies were like that. And
Speaker 4: it had a slate floor and hardwood, and it had
Speaker 4: a lot it had a real life off the floor.
Speaker 4: But then when it hit the walls, it was pretty dead.
Speaker 4: Like they had the drums right they cut a lot
Speaker 4: of the drum tracks over there.
Speaker 3: See, in my mind, I thought they were cutting upstairs
Speaker 3: in the Ciga room, not a lot.
Speaker 4: Not not By the time they built three on nine. Okay,
Speaker 4: Now I wish Kenny was here, but I think I
Speaker 4: think in nineteen seventy three he opened three on nine
Speaker 4: South broad which was already a recording studio. When it
Speaker 4: opened up, there was a record first of all. That
Speaker 4: was where cameo Parkway had an enormous studio three times
Speaker 4: the size of this room. Wow, that was when the
Speaker 4: early days, when I first went in to make a record,
Speaker 4: there were thirty two or thirty four musicians and singers
Speaker 4: in the room at the same time. The strings were
Speaker 4: in one corner, the horns were in another corner. The
Speaker 4: rhythm was all in the center, cracking all at once.
Speaker 1: How do you when you record that way? This is
Speaker 1: before we.
Speaker 4: Used to do that sometimes MFSB too, But that was
Speaker 4: in a much smaller room.
Speaker 3: This was a big room, and that's because you can't
Speaker 3: overdub in that. Later, but how many times would you
Speaker 3: have to go over a song so that the engineer
Speaker 3: makes sure I mean, so the engineer.
Speaker 1: Can ensure that they have a perfect performance. I think.
Speaker 4: I think when I was there, it seemed like the
Speaker 4: engineers were very efficient getting getting a sound out of
Speaker 4: all of these musicians at one time. You know, it
Speaker 4: might have taken an hour to get the sound, and
Speaker 4: then they might have recorded a couple of songs.
Speaker 3: You might have to run the song four or five times,
Speaker 3: just again six times.
Speaker 4: But you know, I mean they were miking most of
Speaker 4: the amps. The guitar was you know, there were I
Speaker 4: don't think direct boxes. I even think Joe Tarjie invented
Speaker 4: a direct box that was used all over the world
Speaker 4: after that, you know, early sixties, late sixties.
Speaker 1: Like we gotta get Joe that so he should be here. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Steve, I interrupted you. Oh no, I was
Speaker 1: just wondering.
Speaker 5: So, like, let's say the first set of horns and strings,
Speaker 5: just the two tracks.
Speaker 4: Well it all went down to two track, like an
Speaker 4: ampects two track okay, as or as Scully, This is
Speaker 4: like the best of my recollection. Besides playing and everything.
Speaker 4: I was already an audio freak. My father had bought
Speaker 4: me the first web core portable tape recorder that I
Speaker 4: was turning over. I was already fascinated by popular music
Speaker 4: all through this whole time. I wasn't going to give
Speaker 4: up at Curtis because getting in the Curtis was my
Speaker 4: main goal, you know. So, but I was fascinated by
Speaker 4: popular music and I was watching these guys, and yeah,
Speaker 4: they head it down to a science man. They really did.
Speaker 4: They were fast efficient.
Speaker 5: But it's not like they were making each instrument like
Speaker 5: we do.
Speaker 1: What they did.
Speaker 4: Like with the strings, there was one mic for three violins,
Speaker 4: another mic for three violins. The cellos had separate mics
Speaker 4: and the viola had one mic. So that's that's the
Speaker 4: way they Those were micd and then and when it
Speaker 4: went to horns, you had all ribbon mics on the horns. Yeah,
Speaker 4: each orn out of mic. When they played a chord,
Speaker 4: the engineer had to get a balance on the on
Speaker 4: the cord. Yeah, and the strings too, and they had
Speaker 4: to run it down enough times where the engineer felt comfortable.
Speaker 4: But they were also you know, they're also singing live.
Speaker 4: They might not sing at that time. We did the
Speaker 4: tracking in those early days, because what they did was
Speaker 4: then they went to another machine to put the vocals on.
Speaker 4: They took the instrumental and went to the second machine
Speaker 4: and laid down the lead vocal on the background vocals
Speaker 4: so they could put them way out front. And if
Speaker 4: you listen to some of those old records, the vocals
Speaker 4: are like this compared to the music. I mean, they're
Speaker 4: way out front.
Speaker 3: How would they add the I guess the Okay, there's
Speaker 3: there's the string section, but then there's also what you
Speaker 3: call the chamber or like the the uzophones and the
Speaker 3: trumpets and the.
Speaker 4: They were all there live too. If you were going
Speaker 4: down the two track there there was the only overdubs
Speaker 4: I think they did early on were vocals to another machine, so.
Speaker 1: The strings and all the horns of each at the
Speaker 1: same time.
Speaker 4: And that's why they had big studios in those days.
Speaker 4: They baffled things off.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, the bleeding must have been horrible
Speaker 1: for any.
Speaker 4: But they got an overall sound. In other words, if
Speaker 4: you listen to some of those records, they made them
Speaker 4: bigger a mirror because everyone was in the same room.
Speaker 4: Because the strings had some horns in them, the horns
Speaker 4: had some strings in them, they could talk, you know
Speaker 4: what I'm saying. Everybody had a lot of every all
Speaker 4: the other elements sort of. I mean, you tried to
Speaker 4: do the best you could isolate things, but it was
Speaker 4: impossible to isolate things.
Speaker 1: That's what ire.
Speaker 5: That's like the ultimate restriction. It's just like you have
Speaker 5: to record everything at the same exact time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's too much pressure.
Speaker 4: It was pressure.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm just used to I mean, I've made complete
Speaker 3: records that sound like you know, it's ensembles gelling together
Speaker 3: and you know, but when you do and I'm just
Speaker 3: playing drums by myself for like ten minutes, imagining what's
Speaker 3: going to sound like later and that sort of thing,
Speaker 3: but I can't even imagine that.
Speaker 4: But like when you did the Hamilton record, that's everybody
Speaker 4: altogether too, wasn't it? Or did you do that in part?
Speaker 3: No, that that all the rhythm tracks were done together,
Speaker 3: and then yes they all right, they they did.
Speaker 1: But then in the middle of.
Speaker 3: It, I guess we realized that this is going to
Speaker 3: be thriller. Like there was a point where it's just like, Okay,
Speaker 3: Hamilton is whatever, right, just record top to bottom that
Speaker 3: sort of thing.
Speaker 4: But then, which is the way Broadway cast albums are usually.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then there was one point where it was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: they might have to spend more money.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing.
Speaker 3: Like Atlantic Records realized early that this could change the game,
Speaker 3: and so they were like, Okay, we're willing to invest
Speaker 3: more money in this and mix each individual song and
Speaker 3: that you know, any other Broadway record, like in fourteen
Speaker 3: album hours, like you spend five hours tracking, three hours
Speaker 3: over dubbing, and then you know it's just one big
Speaker 3: giant mix and then that's it. But yeah, we spent
Speaker 3: three to four months mixing and really sweetening up that
Speaker 3: record that it still sounds like the sound of Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: even though different people are at the Helm. So there
Speaker 3: are songs that Norman Harris produced that had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with Gamble and Huff that still used the same
Speaker 3: players that still use the same studios and you can't
Speaker 3: tell a difference.
Speaker 4: But they were part of the original Gamble on Huff
Speaker 4: sound to begin with. Though you picked the name Norman
Speaker 4: Harris was definitely part of that original rhythm section. You
Speaker 4: go back and name a song an early Gamble on
Speaker 4: Huff song, and it was either it was either Rolling Chambers.
Speaker 4: He was in a group with the Chambers. One of
Speaker 4: them played drums and the other one played guitar. I
Speaker 4: think Dennis was his name. I mean, I'm really digging deep,
Speaker 4: you know, and make a long story short. I think
Speaker 4: Norman Harris played on a lot of those records, so
Speaker 4: he was part of that sound. And he was also
Speaker 4: Norman Harris was like a genius R and B dude.
Speaker 3: But how many I'm trying to figure out teams because
Speaker 3: this is another thing that you see on credits. You'll
Speaker 3: see string arranger, rhythm arranger, right, background vocal arranger, which
Speaker 3: I feel like these are like little titles handed out
Speaker 3: from the producer. Said that no one has this so
Speaker 3: that the producer can protect their turf.
Speaker 4: And in a way that's true.
Speaker 3: So all right, so when you're dealing with okay, so
Speaker 3: someone brings, uh, you used to be my girl the
Speaker 3: ojs uh the I'm assuming that the rhythm track is
Speaker 3: done first, I am.
Speaker 4: I don't exactly know for sure. Well if I'm miss
Speaker 4: if I'm not mistaken, that song was done with the
Speaker 4: old rhythm section. Okay, so it was Norman and Ronnie
Speaker 4: and Leon and I left somebody outry.
Speaker 1: You're getting specific.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to know that the factory process, so
Speaker 3: it starts with the rhythm tracks first.
Speaker 1: Vocals, the rhythm track, then the.
Speaker 4: Vocals, vocals, and then strings and horns.
Speaker 3: Okay, so then someone gives a tape to who would
Speaker 3: do the actual writing of what.
Speaker 1: After the vole and huff went string wise on.
Speaker 4: After after, after the vocals were done, a cassette was
Speaker 4: handed to somebody and they went home and wrote an
Speaker 4: arrangement with no machines. You used the piano and you
Speaker 4: came up with lines, or you came up with chordal things.
Speaker 4: You know, when you wrote string, string and horn parts.
Speaker 1: How many days do you have to do this?
Speaker 4: It depended sometimes I did it in the studio at
Speaker 4: times when they added a song or two, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean they would they would forget. I mean Dexter
Speaker 4: did it at times in the studio too. Not the
Speaker 4: best way to do it, but yeah, I would it.
Speaker 4: Maybe a week, you know, you might have five to
Speaker 4: five days to a week to do a couple of arrangements.
Speaker 3: Do you have a particular memorable favorite of yours that
Speaker 3: you worked on that.
Speaker 4: Back that day, Back in that day, mcfannen and Whitehead
Speaker 4: really gave me the opportunity. I think they hired an
Speaker 4: arranger who didn't show up one day, and I think
Speaker 4: Tommy bells around, and Tommy said, you know, let Larry
Speaker 4: try it. You know, Yeah, I think I think I
Speaker 4: think Tommy said because I think Tommy was a little
Speaker 4: upset that they were hiring people that he didn't think
Speaker 4: really knew what they were doing at times. You know,
Speaker 4: I mean, but he could answer you better than I can. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I was gonna mean, how can you you know, because
Speaker 4: you know you could someone who can come up with it. Look,
Speaker 4: it's like all I do is write strings. Okay, most
Speaker 4: of my life that's all I did. And when I
Speaker 4: work on a record, sometimes people give me a string line.
Speaker 4: And once when people give me a stringline, it's going
Speaker 4: to be hard for me to link that stringline go away,
Speaker 4: because first of all, they liked it enough to get
Speaker 4: it to me. Yes, yeah, I mean that. Yeah, they
Speaker 4: might be married to it. Well, sometimes that happened with
Speaker 4: Gamble and Huff, you know, with with mcfatt and white,
Speaker 4: they were married to something and they would tell me that,
Speaker 4: you know. But and a lot of times in today's market,
Speaker 4: I at it and I have to deal with it,
Speaker 4: and a lot of times I think I can do better,
Speaker 4: and I throw away and I hopefully do better you know.
Speaker 1: How does one.
Speaker 3: I was about to say, in at least in the
Speaker 3: seventies and eighties, there's a lot of trust that one
Speaker 3: has to put in an arranger because it's not like
Speaker 3: you have the technology today to play on synthesizer or
Speaker 3: whatever that what you have planned for me, So it's almost.
Speaker 1: Like I have to sit there in real time that
Speaker 1: listen to you. You know. So the.
Speaker 4: Producer, the producer came out into the studio and you
Speaker 4: had your string players there and they put your phones on,
Speaker 4: like we have all you blame me what you got.
Speaker 4: Let me how good it is, Goldie, Let's see what
Speaker 4: you did?
Speaker 1: So has I dare you?
Speaker 3: Has there ever been a case where an arranger had
Speaker 3: something and they were sort of like, it's a little
Speaker 3: too Stravinsky for.
Speaker 1: Me, Like you went darker, Like how how do you know?
Speaker 4: Well in the Philly Sound, I don't know whether Vinsky
Speaker 4: played in too much.
Speaker 3: Well, let's pick something adventurous, all right, So let's take
Speaker 3: Nights over Egypt, which has quite an adventurous beginning at
Speaker 3: least progression.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the first thirty seconds, So that's dexter.
Speaker 4: He wrote the arrangements too, I think, so, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, I didn't think that the.
Speaker 4: Actual that's Dexter. Yeah, Dexter wrote his own I want
Speaker 4: to tell you something Back in the day. Yeah, back
Speaker 4: in the day. Ronnie Baker wrote arrangements, string arrangements. Norman
Speaker 4: Harris was brilliant, real great string arrangements. Earl didn't. But
Speaker 4: everybody else, Ronnie Cursey wrote good arrangements. Everybody sort of did.
Speaker 4: Everybody grew up writing music from high school, you know,
Speaker 4: everybody got into you know, had that as a skill. So,
Speaker 4: I mean, and I learned a lot. Hey, look, man,
Speaker 4: the best arranger ever passed out of passed through Philadelphia.
Speaker 4: I think he's dead now, but it was Bobby Martin,
Speaker 4: who an old school from the thirties arranger, you know,
Speaker 4: who played vibes, you know, I mean.
Speaker 1: I know Bobby's name. Well. On an average week, how
Speaker 1: often would you work?
Speaker 4: A couple of days, a couple of days. It depends.
Speaker 4: During the disco times, it was like four days a week,
Speaker 4: maybe five days a week.
Speaker 1: So was that from people from Philadelphia?
Speaker 4: Really good? From people from all over the world though,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean we did. People don't realize this,
Speaker 4: but we did. Like all of Jacques Moraley's records YMCA
Speaker 4: what oh yeah, that's MFS big wow, non credited. The
Speaker 4: Richie Family was m.
Speaker 1: Y from Philly too. Yeah but okay, so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, Jacques Moral I remember, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: my memory is good when I wanted to be and
Speaker 4: not so good when I obviously when I don't want
Speaker 4: it to be. But I remember there was at some
Speaker 4: fancy Paris nightclub where they danced naked and it was
Speaker 4: the high point of disco music. And this guy named
Speaker 4: I think Ben Alil or something, and Jacques Morale was
Speaker 4: the producers and they brought over and they did the
Speaker 4: first records they did was a Richie Room and it
Speaker 4: was called the Richie Family and it was m FSB
Speaker 4: you know, done with their melodies that they brought in
Speaker 4: a little more European flair and that that Richie did
Speaker 4: for him, and they put vocals on him and they
Speaker 4: did pretty good. And then the next group I think
Speaker 4: they came back with after they had a lot of
Speaker 4: success with that was the Village People. Wow wow, you know,
Speaker 4: and I remember they they came to Philly and they
Speaker 4: had a suitcase full of cash. In those days, some
Speaker 4: of these people literally a suitcase full of cash to
Speaker 4: pay the musicians.
Speaker 1: Really step in our office. Here you go, step in
Speaker 1: our office.
Speaker 4: But that was not talking about non union work.
Speaker 3: What other non Philadelphia International were you part of that count?
Speaker 4: There were a lot of there were a lot of things.
Speaker 4: I mean for a while there, Norman Harris was working
Speaker 4: from Motown. So if you go back and look at
Speaker 4: some of those records in the in the mid seventies
Speaker 4: through the late end of the seventies, I don't know
Speaker 4: whether it was maybe the Temps, the Four Tops some
Speaker 4: of those, right, we did we did a bunch of
Speaker 4: those records too.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, wow, it's amazing, not how.
Speaker 4: Well, it's not my brain, you know, if you think
Speaker 4: about it, I think Barry Gordy wanted to pick up
Speaker 4: on Philly was really kicking. But then you know, those
Speaker 4: mid seventy years to the late years, I mean, it's
Speaker 4: hard to find a place that sold more records than
Speaker 4: Philly International.
Speaker 3: Right, do you guys recall doing any work with Bernard
Speaker 3: Writing now Rogers people at all?
Speaker 4: No, I went I went to Powill What right you
Speaker 4: did it?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sorry, I did.
Speaker 4: I went to power Station to play on a few things.
Speaker 4: But I'm not going to remember the name.
Speaker 1: We have power Station News.
Speaker 4: We took a bus there and all the mfs B
Speaker 4: played all day, maybe one or two days, and we
Speaker 4: came home and I don't remember what records. Okay. I
Speaker 4: also smoked a lot of pot on that literally, which
Speaker 4: I always do and we all know that.
Speaker 1: So you're happy. Man, When.
Speaker 3: Is there a particular date that you can pinpoint that
Speaker 3: you noticed, like like, Okay, this might be an end
Speaker 3: of an era, or we're not used as much, or
Speaker 3: I'm out d X seven is now like the synthesizer is.
Speaker 4: Guess what you just did? The top three right there?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: The Yamaha was definitely a problem. Well it wasn't a problem,
Speaker 4: but I got I started getting calls for some arranging
Speaker 4: and when they would ask me if I would use
Speaker 4: the Yamaha, the d D seven was what was t
Speaker 4: X seven to use them for the strings instead of
Speaker 4: paying the string players.
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 4: And I thought to myself, you know, asking me this
Speaker 4: is and that was like, you know, it was sort
Speaker 4: of getting in the late seventies when I felt like
Speaker 4: it waste curtailing and plus the record started sucking too.
Speaker 4: A lot of the records weren't nearly as good. I
Speaker 4: was not looking forward to go to work in your
Speaker 4: po you know, all day long, you know, I mean so,
Speaker 4: but it was making a living, you know. And I
Speaker 4: started looking around at that moment. The end of seventies.
Speaker 4: I mean, even Gamble will tell you. I started working
Speaker 4: for Sesame Street towards the end of the seventies. Really, yeah,
Speaker 4: I found a few people that I connected with. A
Speaker 4: matter of fact, the gentleman here yesterday, he and I
Speaker 4: had a nice conversation.
Speaker 1: Wow, playing on the disco frog. I did not know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought you did. Remember we one time discussed
Speaker 4: I did you need a little super guy? Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: I thought you remembered that. Oh my god, that was
Speaker 4: done in Philly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I just turned into an eight year old too.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That was Ezra Mohawk, who did the theme for
Speaker 4: Teeny Little, who was an old hippie who was signed
Speaker 4: by Frank Zappa back in the sixties.
Speaker 1: Oh, man, that's crazy.
Speaker 4: That's what we did. That's what we did started doing
Speaker 4: in the tail end of the seventies through the eighties.
Speaker 4: We did Jerry and I, first of all, we were
Speaker 4: friends from early on. I knew him when he was
Speaker 4: playing with Frankie Beverly in the sixties a little bit.
Speaker 4: He was a hippie and great keyboard player. Okay, and yeah,
Speaker 4: and we all through the eighties we were at Sigma
Speaker 4: and we did a lot of commercials. We did a
Speaker 4: lot of different things.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, did you do any like the
Speaker 3: local all of them?
Speaker 1: A lot of news?
Speaker 4: Well, actually know what I'm working on right now, k
Speaker 4: y W the new thing. I'm doing a big orchestral
Speaker 4: arrangement for ky W, the upgrading.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so it is the new in and out.
Speaker 4: Like everything, it's the same ky W. But I mean
Speaker 4: it's just someone else wrote something where I'm putting gonna
Speaker 4: put the strings on. But but we did like New
Speaker 4: Jersey transit. I mean I used to get like Bunny
Speaker 4: Siegler to sing I would get. I did one commercial
Speaker 4: with Lou were all saying I didn't I did. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean I had a good time with it and
Speaker 4: people were willing to pay decent money in those days.
Speaker 4: And did you do and let me smoke reefer in
Speaker 4: the studio?
Speaker 3: So I was the most important When did you decide
Speaker 3: to establish your own business and up a studio?
Speaker 1: And what told you that, Phil you needed one.
Speaker 4: Well, the eighties were, as you well know, in I
Speaker 4: went from doing all of that in the seventies to
Speaker 4: having nothing left of gamble on huff. I mean, they
Speaker 4: they sort of just shut down completely.
Speaker 1: But they'd never they did, but they but they didn't.
Speaker 4: It was always there to make yeah, but to make
Speaker 4: one record a year or you couldn't. You couldn't count
Speaker 4: on that to make a living like we did for
Speaker 4: a while. I mean there were a lot of people
Speaker 4: that that did real well and you counted on it
Speaker 4: to make a living. So in a way, to me,
Speaker 4: it did shut down. And what happened was the eighties.
Speaker 4: As as you guys know far better than I do.
Speaker 4: I've just been on the journey of black music. But
Speaker 4: rap started and then okay, and I happened to be okay.
Speaker 4: We were doing this stuff with the Sesame Street. We
Speaker 4: were doing okay, and all of a sudden, this artificial
Speaker 4: intelligent music thing started appearing, and more readily, I mean
Speaker 4: drum machines. We always bought whatever was new and tried
Speaker 4: around and and we would fool around with it, and
Speaker 4: even the d X seven we had it. I remember
Speaker 4: sitting in the living room when I was playing the
Speaker 4: strings sounds instead of they're kidding me, aren't they? You know,
Speaker 4: thinking that all you could do was these heavenly pads,
Speaker 4: you know, which is okay, but every record gonna have
Speaker 4: heavenly pads on it, I.
Speaker 1: Mean in the eighties.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, So make a long story short. We ended
Speaker 4: up we Jerry and I ended up moving into with
Speaker 4: Studio four early on, and they ended up starting to
Speaker 4: do more rap, and I met Lawrence Goodman. I think
Speaker 4: Kenny actually at Penny actually told Lawrence Goodman to introduce
Speaker 4: himself to me, and he came to Segma. We were
Speaker 4: still at Sigma, and he was tired. Okay, he'd have
Speaker 4: to tell you himself, but I think that he wasn't
Speaker 4: getting any publishing royalties and he wanted to know if
Speaker 4: Jerry and I could copy some. He would bring a
Speaker 4: record and saying, can you make something that sounds like this,
Speaker 4: you know, for work for hire?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah. So I think we did that for a
Speaker 4: little while for him at Sigma, and then we moved,
Speaker 4: we left and went somewhere else, and yeah, we went.
Speaker 4: We went to Victory what was the Victory Victor Ocajum
Speaker 4: and we started and we did Steady B and Cool C.
Speaker 4: We did a whole bunch of albums there with them.
Speaker 4: You know, it was a living synth arrangements or yeah,
Speaker 4: Sinkle of Her arrangements. I bought this. I bought a
Speaker 4: Sinkle ofvir in like eighty three or eighty four. I
Speaker 4: took the session, I took some of the monies and
Speaker 4: borrowed money at the bank. Somebody co signed a loan
Speaker 4: for me, and I bought that fucking expensive thing.
Speaker 1: Man, I'm willing to bet he might not remember. I'm
Speaker 1: willing to bet so since back when Salt and Pepper
Speaker 1: were Super Nature.
Speaker 4: And they were at Studio four, you got it them here.
Speaker 3: I bet you that they commissioned them to play the
Speaker 3: Revenge of the Nerds.
Speaker 1: All right, so you remember there first record was the
Speaker 1: show Stopper.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 1: Their music was the Revenge of the Nerds song.
Speaker 3: I'm almost willing to bet because all the credits on
Speaker 3: the Show Stopper says it was done at Studio for and.
Speaker 1: On a sink clavier.
Speaker 4: So yeah, well that was my sink clavier on this stodom.
Speaker 1: I'm almost willing How did the sink.
Speaker 4: Clavia except you got to understand that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Hey, look when I had Jerry as my partner, I
Speaker 4: didn't even play really, I mean I dreamed. I composed
Speaker 4: like I always had done. But he was a much
Speaker 4: better keyboard player than I could have ever dreamed to be.
Speaker 4: And and so he played. So that was my impetus
Speaker 4: in even buying it to begin with, because I realized.
Speaker 4: First of all, we went up to New York, they
Speaker 4: gave us a morning with it, and he and I
Speaker 4: in the morning we created some pretty hot tracks, you know,
Speaker 4: just fucking around. You know, we looked at each other
Speaker 4: and and the bass. You could feel the bass, you know,
Speaker 4: And you know when you had a Len drum machine,
Speaker 4: and somehow this had simpty. It had all the things
Speaker 4: that were coming into being at that moment.
Speaker 1: So was it like a computer.
Speaker 4: I still have it. I still use it to this day.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, it sounds like shit, but oh that's right,
Speaker 4: that's still.
Speaker 1: You still use it to arranger.
Speaker 4: I still use it.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's from then. It's true.
Speaker 4: Then it's now like forty some years no, thirty some
Speaker 4: years old.
Speaker 1: Wow, ooh, that's crazy.
Speaker 9: The only person I knew was Stevie, right right, right,
Speaker 9: only it was on the prison.
Speaker 1: But you can't do cords on it, can you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not it's not. No, it's it's no. It's
Speaker 4: it's got sixty four voices. It was a it was
Speaker 4: a genius thing when it was invented.
Speaker 8: So is it a keyboard, like it's a keyboard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it just sounds like uh orchestral.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it comes with Yeah, it comes with orchestral patches.
Speaker 1: Right, it's been perfected now leaf.
Speaker 3: But back then you had to pay a lot of
Speaker 3: money to get something that sounds and also.
Speaker 4: To have memory enough to be able to do it,
Speaker 4: you know, in other words, to record a song inside
Speaker 4: a little box.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I think that back in those days we had I
Speaker 4: don't know, eight megs of memory or something, which was
Speaker 4: unheard of. A Linn drum machine had one meg.
Speaker 1: Yeah it did.
Speaker 4: So this was eight nightmare. Right, It was a night
Speaker 4: You had to move, open up the back and move
Speaker 4: the chip. Right, you guys.
Speaker 3: Remember, I mean I remember well, I mean I collect
Speaker 3: them now, okay, but I think I wasn't dependent on
Speaker 3: it for work. But I've talked to enough eighties drummers
Speaker 3: that you know, have had nightmares with that machine. You know,
Speaker 3: moving the chips and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: And keeping in sync. Yeah, sink was always a problem,
Speaker 4: even though they said.
Speaker 3: Every Bobby Z would tell me nightly, like the songs
Speaker 3: start fluctuating faster fast, you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So that was a nightmare for him. So when did
Speaker 1: the studio open in nineteen ninety nine?
Speaker 4: No, the studio opened. When did the roots come here?
Speaker 4: About ninety eight?
Speaker 1: Ninety eight?
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, so the studio opened two years before then,
Speaker 4: so ninety six. And why I opened the studio was
Speaker 4: because I sort of was at that place in Society
Speaker 4: Hill was my I was at Sigma. I thought Sigma
Speaker 4: was going to go bankrupt, because I don't I shouldn't.
Speaker 4: Maybe I shouldn't even tell this story, but anyway, probably
Speaker 4: should we make a long story short. I was told
Speaker 4: to get all my equipment out because I owned my
Speaker 4: equipment in my room there, right, So I left Sigma.
Speaker 4: I had to leave over the weekend sort of, and
Speaker 4: I moved into what was Cajun Okay, that was bought
Speaker 4: by another dude. Cajun was owned.
Speaker 1: By at one point.
Speaker 4: I remember he was a really good engineer. When I
Speaker 4: first opened here, he came here, and he got great
Speaker 4: sound out of this room. He was a really good engineer.
Speaker 4: And I'm not I'm sorry, I'm not going to remember.
Speaker 4: I might as we continue convers conversing, I might remember his,
Speaker 4: but I'm not going to remember his one. He was
Speaker 4: a very good engineer.
Speaker 1: At one point, boys men purchased Kajum they did, yeah
Speaker 1: the days I think.
Speaker 4: While but while while these guys owned it, jazz, he
Speaker 4: moved in there too. Jeff moved somehow, somehow, Jeff Studio
Speaker 4: four and Kajum no before Studio four. Okay, I think
Speaker 4: he and James Poyser I met out there, and I
Speaker 4: think that was the early nineties. Really, I think so
Speaker 4: and and and Victor right or they they were. They
Speaker 4: were a touch of jazz out there then, right they were,
Speaker 4: and I met them. I did the I did that
Speaker 4: Whitehead Brothers record. That must have been an early nineties
Speaker 4: and that's when I met Jane.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, they did. Ah, I'm not a player. I
Speaker 3: don't want to be. They thought I was going to be.
Speaker 1: They took they took Pete Rocks number one, Soul Brothers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh pain, Yes, that was for your pain and I
Speaker 1: love that. But did you know the eighty six record.
Speaker 1: I didn't know they oh like on Atlantic or something,
Speaker 1: right they I think Philly International.
Speaker 3: I had to deal with Manhattan Records.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Capital Kenny and Johnny the white Head brothers.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and they were the sons of John Whitehead of Okay, yeah,
Speaker 9: John Whitehead.
Speaker 4: And I've been messing around with them since they were
Speaker 4: really little, oh wow, really little.
Speaker 1: On the Low Kenny, Uh, the youngest one is Kenny, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. He would come and hang out my studio like
Speaker 4: thirteen years old.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you know the cliche of whenever musicians, uh
Speaker 3: go in to music store and like store managers forbade
Speaker 3: them to play like Stairway to Heaven that sort of thing,
Speaker 3: or like the opening chords of Purple Haze. Like Kenny
Speaker 3: on the Low, he could shred like Hendrix, Like I
Speaker 3: was like, whoa, this is the Whitehead brother guy. But
Speaker 3: this back when he was like fourteen, like he was
Speaker 3: a he was a great guitarist thredder, but sort of
Speaker 3: shrugged it off like eh, you know whatever.
Speaker 4: He was a talented young kid.
Speaker 1: He was.
Speaker 4: He really he could play piano really well too. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean it was a it was We did a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of records that never came out Gamble. They
Speaker 4: were signed, you were right, they were signed to that label,
Speaker 4: and there was that. I don't know how many records
Speaker 4: I helped through those years. Okay, but then they got
Speaker 4: signed to Motown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and.
Speaker 4: They did. They started the album in California and they
Speaker 4: came back to my studio with maybe one or two
Speaker 4: songs done, and we ended up doing the rest of
Speaker 4: the album at the studio with the sink lavier. And yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean I think I got associate producer credit on that,
Speaker 4: which I think, yeah, or co producer. You know, that
Speaker 4: was about right, he really, you know, I mean yeah,
Speaker 4: And we did that beautiful black Princess song which had
Speaker 4: a beautiful string arrangement on it, and uh, I got
Speaker 4: so much notice from that, you know, because it was
Speaker 4: an old Philly kind of song, you know, and and
Speaker 4: Kenny sang it so good.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I wore that album out back then.
Speaker 4: See a lot of a lot of people did, and
Speaker 4: I got I got real notice from that. So you
Speaker 4: asked me why why I opened this place is I
Speaker 4: knew that I still had a little bit in me
Speaker 4: to be able to help young kids make good good products.
Speaker 4: You know, you know so, but you need you need
Speaker 4: major talent. Let's face all facts, guys, you know you
Speaker 4: need good people on every little level.
Speaker 1: So I want I wanted to ask you about that.
Speaker 9: So in doing the string arrangement, and you have your
Speaker 9: chair orders, like you know, first viola, second viola, whatever,
Speaker 9: how important is it because I mean if you have
Speaker 9: I don't know if it's forty pieces or whatever, how
Speaker 9: exact does it have to be, say, oh, the fifth
Speaker 9: cello is a little out or whatever. I don't know,
Speaker 9: Like with so many people, how is it that one
Speaker 9: person can make that big of a difference, Like if
Speaker 9: you hear someone that's a little flat, Like can you
Speaker 9: hear that?
Speaker 1: Does it? Does it really make a difference to hear it? Really?
Speaker 4: It's sure you could hear it. Yeah, I mean you
Speaker 4: want it to sound malifluous. I use that word before
Speaker 4: on it. You know, you want it to sound organic.
Speaker 4: I mean a little bit of here and there. That's
Speaker 4: all part of life, you know. But when something's really whack,
Speaker 4: you know it's weak, you can hear it, you know,
Speaker 4: you know when there's a wrong note. You know there
Speaker 4: were arrangements we did, you know which you know, some
Speaker 4: of that I wrote. Some of them I didn't write
Speaker 4: where I could swear there was just some note rubbing
Speaker 4: somewhere down the line, you know. But it was all live,
Speaker 4: you know, and I had to get over it, you
Speaker 4: know it.
Speaker 9: Did you have like certain favorites that you have in
Speaker 9: terms of, hey, I need a viola.
Speaker 1: I know this guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did for years, And now I'm relying on
Speaker 4: younger people. Now, you know, I'm bringing in, you know,
Speaker 4: different people, and I still only use like maybe like
Speaker 4: this week, I'm doing a date for I'm doing a
Speaker 4: record for some young kid in Indiana, and I'm only
Speaker 4: using ten musicians.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I still do that, and I double and sometimes if
Speaker 4: I wanted to be a little even bigger, you know,
Speaker 4: I'll even triple it, or I'll write another part for
Speaker 4: it so so that it sounds like it's more than
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. I was alwayscusing mem about Vince Montana.
Speaker 4: Yeah he was a good friend. Yeah, yeah, he used
Speaker 4: to come to the studio an awful lot. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: this this play in other words, even and by the
Speaker 4: time I opened this place, Ronnie Baker was dead and
Speaker 4: Norman Harris was dead Earl Young used to come here
Speaker 4: all the time. Oh wow, Yeah, And Vince came here
Speaker 4: all the time. And Leon Come used to come here
Speaker 4: all the time. And Kenny comes and uses the studio
Speaker 4: at times. I mean he doesn't really work that much,
Speaker 4: but I mean he has.
Speaker 1: Come and Vince.
Speaker 9: Was he a keyboard player or he was a vibe player? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 9: I just knew him from a Goodie Goodie. It looks
Speaker 9: like love. That's like I love that song he was.
Speaker 9: He also looks huge.
Speaker 4: I played in the South, so I played all those
Speaker 4: records with him, and you know, I even went out
Speaker 4: live with him.
Speaker 1: But he.
Speaker 4: I don't like talking ill of people, you know, so,
Speaker 4: but he was always a pain in my butt. He
Speaker 4: always made shit hard, you know. I mean, and should
Speaker 4: life should be eat? Try to make it a little easier,
Speaker 4: you know. But he would always like stir the pot
Speaker 4: man they needed. Yeah he did, he did, and he didn't.
Speaker 3: The third tier of your story, of course, is you
Speaker 3: as an arranger. And this is I mean just the
Speaker 3: names alone are straight humble brags.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's al Green.
Speaker 4: You got me that. Oh I'm just saying, come on,
Speaker 4: I had good friends here. You know you know sometimes
Speaker 4: about the relationships.
Speaker 1: Let's go through cut here. Y'all did the Al Green
Speaker 1: record here.
Speaker 3: We cut the rhythm tracks Electric Lady and Synth, the
Speaker 3: strings hilaric. So there's al Green, there's amos Lee, there's
Speaker 3: Aunt Fiddler Angeley grew up Philly, you know that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and Nesby, Anthony Hamilton, Aretha Franklin, uh Backstreet Boys, Pabel,
Speaker 3: Gilberto Brandy, uh.
Speaker 8: Sparks, The Boy is Mine case.
Speaker 4: You did the Whoa, I did the Boys. Well, that
Speaker 4: was when Rodney's when I opened the studio here. Rodney
Speaker 4: was my first client.
Speaker 3: I was about to say I first met here.
Speaker 4: We go back now. He was fifteen when I was
Speaker 4: working with Kenny Gamble, That's right, That's right, when I
Speaker 4: was working with Kenny Whitehead. Wrong. Kenny Rodney loved that album,
Speaker 4: so he came up and introduced his He made his
Speaker 4: father drive him from Atlantic City Pleasentville, New Jersey, appear
Speaker 4: to introduce himself to me. And he was this little kid,
Speaker 4: you know. And I told Alan Rubins at the time
Speaker 4: we were working on some project, that he always had
Speaker 4: me working on different things, whether they were good or bad,
Speaker 4: And I said, you should let him produce a couple
Speaker 4: of tracks, Do me a Favor. I know he's fourteen
Speaker 4: years old, but do me a f and Alan Rubins
Speaker 4: was my but you know my age. You know, he's
Speaker 4: a nice guy. Worked for him my whole love you
Speaker 4: wwmot remember that that label, Okay, make a long.
Speaker 1: Story short, the Double Dutch Buds and you know.
Speaker 4: Who represented Rodney Jerkins who first time I mem that's it.
Speaker 4: So that was that was the early nineties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dranella duflf half Life. He brought Rodney to the studio.
Speaker 3: He was fifteen fourteen or fifteen fourteen, and he was like,
Speaker 3: Brad's like, this kid's going around the world one day.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at you like, yeah, so well
Speaker 1: guess what.
Speaker 4: He came to my studio and I had that one
Speaker 4: of my world'sers there. He sat down and start playing
Speaker 4: me a Stevie Wonders songs and you know what I said,
Speaker 4: I said, you're my friend, you know, and a beautile.
Speaker 1: It was really well.
Speaker 4: Thought of and you know, and and he looked at me,
Speaker 4: big smile on his face, and he loved He and
Speaker 4: Kenny got along really well. And yeah, so that was
Speaker 4: the beginning there. And then I opened this place, yes me,
Speaker 4: and I thought, by meeting all these really talented young people,
Speaker 4: I had a feeling that somehow there was going to
Speaker 4: be a resurgence of the Philly sound. I had a
Speaker 4: sneaky suspicion before it happened, Before it, well, it was
Speaker 4: already happening, meeting people like Rodney and meeting having Kenny
Speaker 4: Whitehead there, having it records, right then, come on, it
Speaker 4: was happening, you know.
Speaker 3: And I gotta say that, Larry, I mean, what really
Speaker 3: makes the studio special?
Speaker 1: And even though it's now Milk Boy here and it's
Speaker 1: a little.
Speaker 4: Different, I'm not here all the time either, you know anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm just saying that the vibe of this
Speaker 3: place the luck. First of all, you made the first
Speaker 3: studio I've ever seen that has.
Speaker 1: Windows in it. Yeah, I like that next to casinos.
Speaker 3: I've never seen a business that shuts you out from daylight.
Speaker 3: I've never been in a studio that gives you any
Speaker 3: sort of time or date indication whatsoever. So when you
Speaker 3: go into the reception area.
Speaker 8: And you see the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, it's just like you know, I mean, I
Speaker 3: shot my album cover Philadelphia Experiments on the rooftop here.
Speaker 1: It's just it feels like home. You know. I mean
Speaker 1: I've spent the night here millions of times, and.
Speaker 7: You know, I mean y'all have not. I mean thanks
Speaker 7: reached out and kind of made it home. Putting you know,
Speaker 7: polls and graffiti.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that. Get to that.
Speaker 4: I thought we were going to skip that.
Speaker 1: That's the main attraction.
Speaker 4: We need Richard Nichols here.
Speaker 1: But there's more.
Speaker 3: There's Bubba Sparks, there's Case, there's Changing Faces there, there's
Speaker 3: Charlie Wilson, there's Christina Aguilera, there's Chromeo, there's Coco, there's Common,
Speaker 3: there's uh uh.
Speaker 1: Oh Daily, Damn Daily was here too, Darn Hall, John Oates,
Speaker 1: Dave cos was here, uh Jessey, Jeff Donelle Jones, Drew Hill,
Speaker 1: Eddie LeVert, Joel oh Man, Yo, the funniest.
Speaker 8: The break Off sessions.
Speaker 3: But not even met whenever Gerald LeVert came to the studio,
Speaker 3: he was here a lot too.
Speaker 1: It was it was just it was a part like
Speaker 1: I really missed that guy. You know what I mean.
Speaker 10: While we're talking about JERD, you did the strings for
Speaker 10: Answering Service. Yeah, oh man, the intro on that man
Speaker 10: I used to I think I almost broke that tape
Speaker 10: just we wanted those strings on that intro over there again.
Speaker 4: That was beautiful and he was a good friend. He
Speaker 4: was really a good kid. I met him at the
Speaker 4: at Sigmund in the eighties when he had that.
Speaker 3: Back where he used to work with what Jim South
Speaker 3: That's right, they did that record together. Yeah, Jim Salomon
Speaker 3: used to play a shout out to Jim Salmon. He
Speaker 3: used to be my dad drummer Eric Bene.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that, Yeah, yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: In the seventies Jim used to drum from my dad
Speaker 3: Eric Roberson and Eric about du flow try uh, Glenn
Speaker 3: Lewis and the I re Jacket Edge.
Speaker 8: First album India.
Speaker 2: I sorry, yeah, the jazz bad Nass.
Speaker 3: He's Jennifer Lopez, whom used Bruce Withdan and.
Speaker 4: Reached us with her presence for a few weeks. We
Speaker 4: were I remember you got up front, you guy.
Speaker 1: We were on r ps and qes. It was so
Speaker 1: clean here. We all wore suits.
Speaker 3: Oh wow there you had catered uh, the best catered
Speaker 3: food in the world.
Speaker 1: Like there was rose there.
Speaker 4: They did that. I didn't. I did buy flowers and
Speaker 4: I brought bought nice hand soap.
Speaker 1: There was.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, you're playing on Karen Young's hot Shot
Speaker 3: Yeah this morning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just listening to that this morning.
Speaker 4: Just the stress record was made, was made in the
Speaker 4: studio that was in fabric Row off of Fourth Street
Speaker 4: in Philadelphia and South Philadelphia. That's not there or anymore.
Speaker 1: Jesus wow, I didn't even realize kids, like, I'm just
Speaker 1: going through I.
Speaker 4: Mere I played on thousands of records played. They're not
Speaker 4: listed there, It says a member of m FSB at
Speaker 4: some point. It says in the in some of those credits,
Speaker 4: you know, but yeah, I all kid Cutty records. He
Speaker 4: doesn't just say what about Lana del Rey's premiere album?
Speaker 7: Ah?
Speaker 1: So are you?
Speaker 3: Is it still like, I mean, how often are you doing?
Speaker 3: Are you to the place now where you could just
Speaker 3: say like, all right enough, I can't do any more
Speaker 3: arrangements or I like doing it.
Speaker 1: So that's still yours? You still get up at five
Speaker 1: am to.
Speaker 4: I don't get up at I do get up. I
Speaker 4: do get up really early in the morning, but I
Speaker 4: don't come here as obsessively as I used to you.
Speaker 4: I mean, I would get here at six in the morning,
Speaker 4: and you guys would still be up recording from the night.
Speaker 4: We would creep and you would laugh a lot about it,
Speaker 4: and I'd go into my room and work.
Speaker 1: No, we just don't want to interrupt you.
Speaker 3: So the thing is like usually when the sun comes out,
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, I better run in the bathroom
Speaker 3: real quick because I know Larry's about to start at scales.
Speaker 3: But it's kind of that creeping in the house where
Speaker 3: you know, like there's a creak in the floor that
Speaker 3: sort of on that spot, ye wake up your mom
Speaker 3: and dad, that sort of thing. So I had like
Speaker 3: a system of I know where the special planks are
Speaker 3: that will give me away, and the squeak of the
Speaker 3: door and all that stuff. So that was my everyday ritual,
Speaker 3: like five forty five am, like all right, let me
Speaker 3: do my business before I hear.
Speaker 1: And so you would still practice your scales every month.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean there was there was a period of
Speaker 4: time when I was so busy that I really didn't
Speaker 4: But now I'm back. I'm back, but I I reversed it.
Speaker 4: So now I go home like and I start playing
Speaker 4: around three to four in the afternoon, and I play
Speaker 4: into until I have to fall asleep at night. Wow,
Speaker 4: So I enjoy it that much, you know. I mean
Speaker 4: I'm still playing, and a lot of times I just
Speaker 4: start somewhere and I end up somewhere else. But I'm
Speaker 4: actually playing a little better than I remember it and
Speaker 4: playing in a while, you know. I mean, I'm about
Speaker 4: as good as I was when I was maybe fourteen
Speaker 4: right now. But I'm with that.
Speaker 1: That's where how the peaks of valleys and the dips start, like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I where when you don't play, you lose
Speaker 4: your technique and you have to rebuild your technique properly.
Speaker 4: And I'm you know, I'm seventy one now, and they're
Speaker 4: really a lot of bones, you ache, and a lot
Speaker 4: of things are changed now than when you're little, you know.
Speaker 1: But it's cool.
Speaker 4: I'm really liking it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I was gonna say, how much in playing cello,
Speaker 9: how much I guess does the physicality play like age?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Is it a like hands things?
Speaker 9: It's always all handsome, any kind of off righters or
Speaker 9: anything that'll that'll slow you up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you have there's certain looseness. I mean, here,
Speaker 4: I'll tell you it's any good musician, you the approach
Speaker 4: to playing. You want it to be real natural, you know,
Speaker 4: and you don't even want to think about the physicalness
Speaker 4: of it right here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I was going to say, how do you
Speaker 1: adjust that? Now?
Speaker 3: Only recently she I told you about the trick that
Speaker 3: Chili you taught me, right, all right, So I'll say
Speaker 3: that I'm at the very beginning stages of what I mean.
Speaker 3: I don't want to put it out there whatever. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's arthritis or a carp you're feeling something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a lot of tightness. So you know,
Speaker 1: I've been open to CBD oil.
Speaker 3: And all these things to to help with the aches
Speaker 3: and pains. Chili told me go to Trader Joe's and
Speaker 3: get the big assu bag of rice, like the the
Speaker 3: the family supply of right, like the big giant supply.
Speaker 3: If I have refrigerator or a freezer big enough to
Speaker 3: store it in there to make it cold or whatever,
Speaker 3: do that. And then right before I drum, just put
Speaker 3: my entire arm inside the back of rice and do
Speaker 3: like ham rotation motions. Wow uh, and exercise warming up
Speaker 3: your hands. That's something I've never done before, you know.
Speaker 3: I just come and start playing drums or whatever. But
Speaker 3: now it's like I'm starting to notice like certain angles
Speaker 3: of my elbows will start to hurt and that sort
Speaker 3: of thing.
Speaker 7: So are you asking other drummers too? Like I just sound.
Speaker 1: Much well, I mean I came to Shila.
Speaker 3: I mean, no one, there's something really weird about between
Speaker 3: forty five and fifty five that I feel like a
Speaker 3: lot of people are a little too ashamed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, still want to talk about it? Yeah, like I
Speaker 1: admit it.
Speaker 3: So you know, yeah, your ankles ever feel like no, no,
Speaker 3: does this start to swell or that start? Nobody there's
Speaker 3: no one really to talk to you, you know, because
Speaker 3: they have the joints A seventy year old.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, the other day I was, I was,
Speaker 4: I watched Ben Art Purty. Sure, sure it still looks good.
Speaker 4: I don't know how old he is. His whole process
Speaker 4: of playing is is not like big, it's very small.
Speaker 3: Well, every every drum teacher I ever had told me
Speaker 3: from the gate, like, don't use your arms, use very
Speaker 3: little hammos. But of course, you know, you want to
Speaker 3: show off and show everyone that you.
Speaker 4: Like rock it out or what's your cock?
Speaker 7: Like this?
Speaker 3: And now I wish i'd listen because you know, even
Speaker 3: to hold the remote controls.
Speaker 1: Like oh wow, you know, and any kind of wrist
Speaker 1: raps or anything like that. Don't really, I don't do respect,
Speaker 1: you know, for real. And that's the thing. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is I believe in CBD oil, No,
Speaker 1: as do I.
Speaker 3: It's you know, I see that's not just you know,
Speaker 3: placebo syndrome or whatever.
Speaker 1: Everybody.
Speaker 4: Everybody says though when it when it has some THC
Speaker 4: in it, which doesn't really get you high, it doesn't
Speaker 4: at all, right, no, but they mix it with THC
Speaker 4: another I like the pharmaceutical brand that my brother's using
Speaker 4: right now is a combination of CBD and THHC. Same,
Speaker 4: Oh is that the same thing?
Speaker 1: Well that you can get options, right, that's what if
Speaker 1: you know, friend, you've changed. You live in New York
Speaker 1: Medicals legal. I got friends many because I've changed, Like
Speaker 1: y is a little surprised and just made I had
Speaker 1: I had nineteen forty two on the rocks.
Speaker 7: Like yeah, order to shot Larry like it was it
Speaker 7: was like we'll say what now, but yeah, he.
Speaker 1: Had nineteen forty two on the rocks. Yeah, this one, well,
Speaker 1: you know they took so long to give us service. Bruh,
Speaker 1: look that than got They had to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was no I do nineteen forty two
Speaker 3: because there's no sugar in nineteen forty two.
Speaker 1: Now you've been sticking to it, man, you've been sticking
Speaker 1: to I'm proud of you, man, been trying trying to
Speaker 1: be here. I want to be pretty Yeah I die.
Speaker 4: I want you to be too.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: So is there anything that you have yet to achieve? Like,
Speaker 3: do you want to do an orchestral album?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean, I don't look at life
Speaker 4: that way right now.
Speaker 1: I'm you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I had a recent about a year and
Speaker 4: a half ago. I almost died and it took me
Speaker 4: about six months to recover from a trauma injury. And
Speaker 4: I recovered.
Speaker 1: Well, you didn't play at all or.
Speaker 4: I couldn't play? Yeah, Like, well, I started playing a
Speaker 4: couple of months in and then I got an infection
Speaker 4: because I was bending my leg. It's a complic I
Speaker 4: don't want to talk about it right now. It's a
Speaker 4: complicated thing. I got gangreen and they had to remove
Speaker 4: a part of my leg and they destroyed the nerves.
Speaker 4: And they didn't destroy they they cut the nerves in
Speaker 4: my leg, so I had I had to sort of
Speaker 4: relearn something some stuff, and they didn't want I started
Speaker 4: playing about them a month or two when I came
Speaker 4: home from the hospital. I was in the hospital about
Speaker 4: two two and some weeks and I came home and
Speaker 4: I started playing and my leg blew way up and
Speaker 4: I got some infection and I had to go on.
Speaker 4: So I was told I had to be reclined for
Speaker 4: another few weeks. And then I started playing again and
Speaker 4: that's it helped me. And then smoked a lot of
Speaker 4: pot because I wasn't going to I wasn't going to
Speaker 4: do the opioids. Yeah, so in the in the hospital,
Speaker 4: they had me high as a cute one delauded, you know.
Speaker 4: And then as soon as they were letting me go home,
Speaker 4: because you get sick in the hospital sometimes from hospital stuff,
Speaker 4: you know, they want to get your home as fast
Speaker 4: as they can so you don't get sick from infections.
Speaker 4: Make a long story short, they cut your delauded like
Speaker 4: to nothing. They don't want to send you home with
Speaker 4: pills anymore. It's not it's not very popular. So I said,
Speaker 4: I said, hold hold the pills. I'm going to buy
Speaker 4: a bag of pot, and we proceeded to go right
Speaker 4: and buy a bag of pot. And and I was,
Speaker 4: you know, I was up most of the time with pain,
Speaker 4: but I was smoking it like crazy, like I was
Speaker 4: a hip, young hippie again. And I got real into it.
Speaker 4: And then I looked at Viking and I said, we're
Speaker 4: gonna buy half a pound. We're doing the old days.
Speaker 4: We're gonna have the freezer full.
Speaker 8: Are you feeling the pot these days?
Speaker 7: Because you know, Pott didn't change since at first you
Speaker 7: started like are you feeling this?
Speaker 4: It was first of all, I was just didn't I
Speaker 4: didn't miss There were a few years where I was
Speaker 4: like drinking stuff and doing other stuff. And but then
Speaker 4: when I got back, I went right. I know a
Speaker 4: guy I have a friend at humbold County. I just
Speaker 4: got a wound the Marilluona.
Speaker 8: Wow, damn, you got straight to.
Speaker 4: The plug, straight to them.
Speaker 1: And and guess what, let's here for miracles.
Speaker 4: It helped, It helped me. It helped me.
Speaker 1: Heal, well, I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 4: Man, me too. And I'm still smoking about a bag
Speaker 4: a week, you know, So what he's doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, anything left from the pound that the town's gone.
Speaker 1: All right, just check check it right now.
Speaker 3: All right, Larry, I thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
Speaker 8: Yes, that was my album.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Larry.
Speaker 8: The song that he did Ain't No Stopping Us now
Speaker 8: is the black right?
Speaker 3: But I mean the song that we did with uh
Speaker 3: she's singing on who did Danna also managed that song,
Speaker 3: that song that's on his Yeah, yeah, that's a good
Speaker 3: That song.
Speaker 1: Was initially love of my Life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would have been where love my Life was
Speaker 3: when things fall apart man then sort of twust the side.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, when Common decided he liked what you know
Speaker 3: is love my Life, then we had to give this.
Speaker 1: I did not want to give up that song.
Speaker 9: I just have a question real quick for we go,
Speaker 9: so Claire Fisher, I was always curious just to hear
Speaker 9: from another string arranger, like what you thought about his
Speaker 9: arrangements and what made him like.
Speaker 3: I always put so whenever I give him something his
Speaker 3: words are he would always say make it like.
Speaker 1: No but you When we did what's the Dylan song?
Speaker 1: When we did Can't Stop This theory? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I know we did.
Speaker 4: We did a lot of nice records.
Speaker 1: I think I think I might have went in the
Speaker 1: room and cried a little bit. I mean it was hard.
Speaker 1: It was really hard to mix that song.
Speaker 3: There was one point when me and Russ started crying
Speaker 3: because I mean, the thing is like we keep it
Speaker 3: keeps to remind.
Speaker 1: You that Dyl is no longer here. Dylan is no
Speaker 1: longer here.
Speaker 3: And then like I was just like, all right, I
Speaker 3: don't want to hear, I told I told Russ like
Speaker 3: I don't want to hear what Larry did because I
Speaker 3: know that when them strings get added, it's going to
Speaker 3: make it even sadder. So I was just like, call
Speaker 3: me forty five minutes before you want to print the
Speaker 3: final and then I'll come and listen to it.
Speaker 4: But that like, that's why some of those records were
Speaker 4: so great though, you know, I mean, you guys weren't
Speaker 4: afraid of feelings and you know, I mean, and they
Speaker 4: were selling them to you know. I mean, it was
Speaker 4: really a nice time in my life. You gave me
Speaker 4: a nice renaissance, you.
Speaker 1: Know, you gave us a home. Yeah, that's that's you know.
Speaker 3: Once again, Well, ladies on behalf of like Fan Cicolo
Speaker 3: and half a Bill and Sugar Steve quest Lovest Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: We will see you on the next go round. Thank you, West.
Speaker 3: Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For more
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Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.