Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: This is Sugar Steve and On this week's Quest Love
Speaker 2: Supreme classic jazz musicians. Songwriter and co founder of A
Speaker 2: and M Records, Herb Alpert talks about the art of
Speaker 2: the trumpet, writing hits with Sam Cook, the secret to
Speaker 2: out selling the Beatles, and how he really feels about
Speaker 2: getting sampled by Biggie. Originally released October fourth, two thy
Speaker 2: and seventeen.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome, Welcome to a very special one
Speaker 1: on one edition of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: Well so one on one.
Speaker 1: Well you're here too, Sugar Steve's always you know, one
Speaker 1: of the one of the great things about one of
Speaker 1: my many jobs that I have is the interaction I
Speaker 1: get to have with an endless parade of musicians and
Speaker 1: artists that come to the tonight show so kind of
Speaker 1: off the cuff and spur of the moment I thought
Speaker 1: it would, I'd be remiss.
Speaker 3: If I behoove you like behoove.
Speaker 1: No, That's why I said remiss instead of behoove. Well,
Speaker 1: I changing my style, Steve, that you know, if I
Speaker 1: didn't have an in depth conversation. Uh with I meant
Speaker 1: to say, renaissance man is almost cliche at this point.
Speaker 1: I guess if you like do three things well or
Speaker 1: four things, well, you're a renaissance man.
Speaker 4: But hey, I can chew gum too.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, now he's a renaissance man. Tell me the
Speaker 1: world's greatest gum cheer of all time. Please welcome to
Speaker 1: a very questlove supreme special. Uh mister Herb Albert.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you very much. Hey, well, what a round up?
Speaker 1: Applause? Thank you? How are you today?
Speaker 4: I'm feeling good.
Speaker 1: You're good?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Good. I guess as of this recording, you're in New
Speaker 1: York doing a residency yet, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: We play at the Cafe Carlisle. There's our fifth time there. Okay,
Speaker 4: I enjoy it. It's fun.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: This is a small little group of people. I think
Speaker 4: the room holds about ninety people, and it's really up
Speaker 4: close and personal. In the sixties, I used to play
Speaker 4: for the Height of the Tijuana Brass. We were playing
Speaker 4: for like twenty thousand people at the Big Arenas.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, what do you prefer, like
Speaker 1: the intimate setting or like the.
Speaker 4: Actually I prefer a room that has a good sound
Speaker 4: with an intimate setting, you know, that's the best. In
Speaker 4: the old days, it was like you never really got
Speaker 4: a feeling of the audience. They were just way out
Speaker 4: there someplace. And that was the days, you know, when
Speaker 4: people smoke, so you could see people light up cigarettes,
Speaker 4: and for the most part, you don't see that anymore.
Speaker 4: But I like the intimate setting. It's more fun.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, cool. So I had to say, we have
Speaker 1: to discover your music. When I was a child, I
Speaker 1: had a father had a very extensive record collection. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that I'm not alone in which I thought you
Speaker 1: were naturally of Mexican descent.
Speaker 4: Episo did I for while?
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: I used to go to bullfights in Tijuana in the
Speaker 4: springtime for about three years I did before I just
Speaker 4: decided I don't like bullfighting anymore. But you know, that
Speaker 4: was an experience for me. And I never heard mariachi music.
Speaker 4: But I heard this brass band in the stands that
Speaker 4: kind of knocked me out because they would like introduce
Speaker 4: all the events of a bullfight, you know, like before
Speaker 4: the bull would come out, they'd come up with but
Speaker 4: bang the bull shows up, you know, and then another
Speaker 4: fanfare for the matador and the picadors in them, So
Speaker 4: it was kind of exciting, you know. And I tried
Speaker 4: to translate that feeling into a song, and I had
Speaker 4: a good melody from a end of mine, and that
Speaker 4: became The Lonely Bull and that record we released. That
Speaker 4: was the first record released on A and M nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty two, and it took off like a rocket ship.
Speaker 4: So it was a good feeling.
Speaker 1: So can I assume that before nineteen sixty two in
Speaker 1: American culture sort of the the mariachi sound or even
Speaker 1: the sound of Mexican music wasn't fully developed yet as
Speaker 1: far as I mean, how popular was it at the time,
Speaker 1: Like was it introduced to you because you specifically went
Speaker 1: to these bullfights?
Speaker 4: I'm not sure, you know, it kind of just morphed
Speaker 4: into me. I was, you know, I like cal Jader
Speaker 4: and Predesprato, Macheto and those type of Latin groups. I
Speaker 4: remember seeing one time Macheto here in New York and
Speaker 4: it was a real eye opener for me because I
Speaker 4: got there early. The band was on the stand, Machito
Speaker 4: didn't arrive yet, and the band was very loosey goosey.
Speaker 4: They were playing some stuff that was really kind of
Speaker 4: straggling along, you know, everyone kind of not in the
Speaker 4: groove of things. Then Machito came out with the cow
Speaker 4: bellum and bing bang bing bang bang, and all of
Speaker 4: a sudden.
Speaker 1: Everybody everybody alive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody came alive at the right time. It was beautiful.
Speaker 4: So I mean that I've had several experiences where it
Speaker 4: really hit me that is not what you do. It's
Speaker 4: the way how you do it, and that's the way
Speaker 4: I've been been operating.
Speaker 1: True, I can agree with you.
Speaker 3: I do agree with that's the way how you do it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's as far as your your your your musical development,
Speaker 1: your your childhood. What was how were you when you
Speaker 1: first picked up a trumpet?
Speaker 4: Well, I had this great experience in my grammar school
Speaker 4: and there was a music appreciation class. I don't know
Speaker 4: if they call it a music appreciation class, but it
Speaker 4: was a class talking about music, and there was a
Speaker 4: table filled with various instruments. I happened to pick up
Speaker 4: the trumpet because I liked the feeling of it. I
Speaker 4: was very small and the trumpets seemed to fit my
Speaker 4: hand and I tried to make a sound out of it,
Speaker 4: which I couldn't do. I was just blowing hot air
Speaker 4: into it and that didn't work. But when I finally
Speaker 4: you know, made sound out of the instrument and started
Speaker 4: working on it, I realized that it was talking for
Speaker 4: me because I was very shy as a kid. I'm
Speaker 4: basically an introvert, but.
Speaker 1: More so than all musicians.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's yeah, I guess one of those things.
Speaker 4: I've met a lot of great musicians in my days now,
Speaker 4: but yeah, I was so anyways, the trumpet was talking
Speaker 4: for me. It was it was saying things that I
Speaker 4: couldn't get out of my mouth. So it was been
Speaker 4: a great friend for me through the years, and I've
Speaker 4: learned a lot from it. We've had our ups and downs,
Speaker 4: like all musicians do. Jumping forward, Dizzy Gillespie was a
Speaker 4: friend of mine, and Dizzy used to say, you know,
Speaker 4: the closer I get, the farther it looks okay.
Speaker 1: Well, how first of all, what type of what trumpet
Speaker 1: do you play?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: I know there are different types of saxophones, altos and sprint,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: A regular B flat trumpet. You know. I've had different
Speaker 4: models through the years, and I played all the Tijuana
Speaker 4: brass records on a Chicago Benz trumpet. But it's not
Speaker 4: the trumpet. You know. I ran into a huge problem
Speaker 4: playing the instrument around nineteen seventy, going through a divorce,
Speaker 4: and I don't know, my body wasn't feeling good and
Speaker 4: I was not mentally in good shape, and I had
Speaker 4: a real problem was it was a struggle to play
Speaker 4: the instrument. I was stuttering through the horn. I was like,
Speaker 4: couldn't get the note out in time, really right. So
Speaker 4: I took some time off, and then I started studying
Speaker 4: with a teacher here in New York, Carmine Caruso, and
Speaker 4: he was known as the troubleshooter.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: He could teach brass instrument, he could teach any instrument.
Speaker 4: Never played the trumpet, but he taught the trumpet. He
Speaker 4: taught trumpet players from all over the country and all
Speaker 4: over the world. And he used to tell me, man,
Speaker 4: it's not the trumpet. The trumpet is just a piece
Speaker 4: of plumbing.
Speaker 1: So you're essentially playing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was his description of the instruments. A piece
Speaker 4: of plumbing. Man, you're the instrument. Doesn't matter what kind
Speaker 4: of mouthpiece of user, kind of trumpet you're playing. You know,
Speaker 4: the sound is inside you, and that's, you know, the
Speaker 4: sound I've always tried to make, you know. I went
Speaker 4: through a period of thinking, well, man, do I can
Speaker 4: I play like Clifford Brown? Heck no, you know that
Speaker 4: guy was a genius beyond you know, and then Miles
Speaker 4: and Louis Armstrong and all those great players. I was thinking, well,
Speaker 4: I was trying to imitate them for a while, and
Speaker 4: then I realized, who wants to hear that? They've already
Speaker 4: done it? So I was looking for my own voice.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you found it because I'll probably say
Speaker 1: that next to Miles Davis, I could probably tell Dizzy
Speaker 1: Gillespie's tone and about if you give me about twenty seconds,
Speaker 1: I know, and maybe a touro, like there's certain Freddie trumpet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's certain trumpet players in which you could tell instantly.
Speaker 1: But with you, you have such a distinctive tone and
Speaker 1: voice with your playing that even yesterday, of course, like
Speaker 1: we all get very nervous when our heroes come to
Speaker 1: play with us, and you know, the rule number one
Speaker 1: is like try not to freak out in front of you.
Speaker 1: So the quieter the quieter the roots are when rehearsing
Speaker 1: like you best believe we're on our cell phone.
Speaker 4: Like I enjoyed playing with you guys. But I had
Speaker 4: the supreme compliment from Miles. Miles said, you hear three
Speaker 4: notes and you know it's so it's I mean, well, I.
Speaker 1: Want to know how how much practice did it take
Speaker 1: as far as your craft is concerned before you knew? Okay,
Speaker 1: this is my lane and stay in it. And I
Speaker 1: know that you know, were you ever tempted? Like for
Speaker 1: me as a drummer, I guess I've made my mark
Speaker 1: playing flat footed When I was young. Bernar Party once
Speaker 1: told me. He says, dude, I keep food on the
Speaker 1: table with the two in the four. You want to
Speaker 1: keep food on the table or you want to like
Speaker 1: do you look mino? You know, because drummers are or
Speaker 1: musicians always want to flex and let other musicians know
Speaker 1: I got more technique than you and that sort of sure.
Speaker 1: But I followed this advice and he's like, yo, just
Speaker 1: if you just do the two and a four that
Speaker 1: that will last forever like a good tuxedo.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that's true to it. Agree, But I mean,
Speaker 4: you have to be authentic, you know, you have to
Speaker 4: be real. I don't think you can fake fake that
Speaker 4: you have to do something that's you're passionate about. And
Speaker 4: if it's two and four you're passionate about, great, go ahead.
Speaker 1: But during the time period in which, like you know,
Speaker 1: Miles is pushing the boundaries with you know, in a
Speaker 1: silent way and bitches brew and all this stuff, are
Speaker 1: you thinking like, damn, like I got to catch up
Speaker 1: or you know, or for you it's just like.
Speaker 4: No, I wasn't thinking about that. I wasn't really thinking
Speaker 4: about making hit records. I mean, that's jumping forward. But
Speaker 4: you know, I was drafted in the Army out of UH.
Speaker 4: I went to University of Southern California for about a
Speaker 4: year and I really didn't take to college. I just
Speaker 4: didn't have that feel yet. But after the Army and
Speaker 4: they sent me to Well, first off, I told them
Speaker 4: that the only thing I know how to do is
Speaker 4: play the trumpet, you know, I said, And I lied
Speaker 4: a bit. I played with Dizzy, and I played with
Speaker 4: you know, Count Basie, and I gave him the whole
Speaker 4: story of anyways, I was a trumpet player and that
Speaker 4: was my m O. So they sent me to band
Speaker 4: school in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and there were like about
Speaker 4: ten trumpet players there, and these guys were all better
Speaker 4: than me, and you know, and I was coming from
Speaker 4: a situation where I was the number one trumpet player
Speaker 4: at my school and all these gigs in Los Angeles,
Speaker 4: and I realized that these guys could play higher, faster, louder,
Speaker 4: read better, and the jazz was for the most part,
Speaker 4: I mean not all of them, but most of them,
Speaker 4: you know, were just pretty darn good. And I thought,
Speaker 4: if I'm ever going to make it as a professional musician,
Speaker 4: I have to come up with my own style, my
Speaker 4: own voice. And that's what I start started pursuing. I
Speaker 4: heard this record by the guitar player, how High the
Speaker 4: Moon Les Paula and so Less was layering his his
Speaker 4: guitar on this on these tracks, and I tried doing
Speaker 4: that at home. I had two tape machines. But believe
Speaker 4: it or not, I'm saying two tape machines. You know.
Speaker 4: When I started, are you sitting? I said, I had
Speaker 4: a webcre wire recorder.
Speaker 3: It was a wire recorder, wire recorder, this pre tape.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was pre tape. And it was like, you know,
Speaker 4: if you wanted to make an edit, you needed a
Speaker 4: soldering iron anyway, So I got the tape machines. I
Speaker 4: got the Ampex Mono machine, and I had two of those,
Speaker 4: and I used to go from one machine to the other,
Speaker 4: layering the trumpet, and all of a sudden, ah, that's
Speaker 4: a nice sound. Was the Tijuanna, the genesis of the
Speaker 4: Tijuana brass sound and the stacking the horns, And when
Speaker 4: I hit on it, it felt like right. And then
Speaker 4: you know, came The Lonely Bull and this record, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, it was a big hit record. And I
Speaker 4: got this letter from a lady in Germany. I chuckled
Speaker 4: when I first read it, but she said, dear mister Aubert,
Speaker 4: thank you for sending me on this vicarious trip to Tijuana,
Speaker 4: you know, which made me think, Wow, that music was
Speaker 4: so visual for her, it transported her. And I said, well,
Speaker 4: that's the music that I really like to make. Make
Speaker 4: music that takes you someplace, you know, post a elevator music,
Speaker 4: which is it's music. It's not bad, not good, it's
Speaker 4: just there. You know. You don't go out the elevator
Speaker 4: whistling anything.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't invented at the time. What's that It
Speaker 1: wasn't invented at the time. So you know, I don't
Speaker 1: consider elevated music to be like a four letter word.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, it's cool.
Speaker 1: But I think it's ubiquitous, like okay, like it's beyond
Speaker 1: your home stereo, beyond your headphones, beyond your car, which
Speaker 1: is like the three places that people mostly listen to music.
Speaker 1: You know, when your music is in supermarkets and in
Speaker 1: dentist office and that sort of thing, then it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's in another dimension.
Speaker 4: So right, So anyways, that letter kind of stuck home.
Speaker 4: And of course, you know, we haven't talked about it,
Speaker 4: but I learned a heck of a lot from Sam Cook.
Speaker 4: You know, I worked with Sam. We wrote a song together,
Speaker 4: Sam and I and lou Adler. We wrote don't know
Speaker 4: much about history, don't know my trigger. We wrote that
Speaker 4: song and Sam was.
Speaker 1: A wait, you're singing you wonderful world, wonderful world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but Sam and Louis I did not know this, well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't know.
Speaker 5: He was the les Paul the trumpet, like the first
Speaker 5: one to over it. So you're saying you were the
Speaker 5: first or one of the first to layer trumpet.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I was the first, but that
Speaker 4: was the sound, you know, that was the start of
Speaker 4: the Tea Wanna brass sound. But I learned a lot
Speaker 4: from Sam. Sam had a really unique style. He came
Speaker 4: out of the gospel field. He was with the Solsterers,
Speaker 4: as you know, and Lou Adler and I were partners.
Speaker 4: And it was right after we were hired by Keen
Speaker 4: Records as staff writers, and it was right after Sam
Speaker 4: had that big record of You Send Me and we
Speaker 4: became friends with Sam, who was an extraordinary guy. I mean,
Speaker 4: he just had he oozed talent. He used to walk
Speaker 4: around with a notebook filled with lyrics. One day he
Speaker 4: came up to me and said, Herbie, what do you
Speaker 4: think of this lyric? And he opened his notebook and
Speaker 4: I was looking at it, thinking myself, just to myself, Man,
Speaker 4: this is corny. This is really corny. You know, I said,
Speaker 4: how's the song? What does it sound like? He picked
Speaker 4: up his guitar and started singing this song, and I
Speaker 4: was thinking, Holy moly, man, he turned this corny lyric
Speaker 4: into something magical because of his authenticity, his intent, his
Speaker 4: passion where he put the notes, how we put the
Speaker 4: melody together with the notes, and you know, the rhythm,
Speaker 4: the feel, and that was just a real big aha
Speaker 4: for me. That was the you know, it ain't what
Speaker 4: you do, it's the way how you do it feeling moment.
Speaker 5: There's also like a simplicity to Sam Cook's lyrics and
Speaker 5: his singing style. So did you pick is that part
Speaker 5: of what you picked up from him? Sort of that
Speaker 5: keep it simple?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: I don't think he thought about keeping it simple. I
Speaker 4: think he thought about being authentic. I mean he was
Speaker 4: doing the follow up to You Send Me, and he
Speaker 4: was singing I Love you for sentimental reasons. And the
Speaker 4: owner of the company kind of dabbled as a piano player,
Speaker 4: but not professionally, And we were in the recording booth
Speaker 4: listening to the playback of one of the takes, and
Speaker 4: the owner goes up to Sam and says, Sam, you
Speaker 4: know here in bar twelve and bar eighteen and bar
Speaker 4: forty four you can put in a who wo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what that live or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's the one that was the kind
Speaker 4: of the hook of the you Send mething, right, And
Speaker 4: Sam looked at him and said Jack, And his name wasn't.
Speaker 1: Jack, right?
Speaker 4: He says, you can't just put.
Speaker 1: In a who wo.
Speaker 4: Whenever you want, man, you gotta feel it. Yeah, And
Speaker 4: that was Sam. You know, he was.
Speaker 1: Feeling emotion.
Speaker 4: He was totally into it, you know he was. I
Speaker 4: loved him.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 5: So is that what you ended up looking for to
Speaker 5: skip forward in Ben's and artists that you were signing?
Speaker 5: Is that specific thing that you're talking about right now?
Speaker 4: Well, you know I learned from him that. I'll give
Speaker 4: you another example of him. He was he started, you know,
Speaker 4: he was the first artist to have his own record
Speaker 4: label called SAR remember that. And he was auditioning this
Speaker 4: artist from the Caribbean, beautiful looking guy green Eyes, came
Speaker 4: in with a little stool to put his foot on
Speaker 4: hi as he was plucking his guitar, and I was
Speaker 4: looking at him while he was singing, thinking that, man,
Speaker 4: this guy is great. This guy really has something magical.
Speaker 4: And Sam looked at me. He said, and I was
Speaker 4: in the control room and this guy was out in
Speaker 4: the studio and he came in. He said, what do
Speaker 4: you think of this guy? I said, well, I think
Speaker 4: he's pretty good. You think I should sign him? I said,
Speaker 4: I think so. He says, we'll do me a favorite.
Speaker 4: Turn your back on him and listen to him for
Speaker 4: five minutes. So I turned the chair around and all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, I didn't receive anything. The guy wasn't
Speaker 4: talking to me. And so at that moment I realized
Speaker 4: that there's there's something to learn. And Sam, you know,
Speaker 4: didn't sign the guy, and he told me that, you know,
Speaker 4: it's not about how you can razzle dazzle somebody with
Speaker 4: your looks or with your movement. You know, it's just
Speaker 4: it's it's does he does it touch you? Or does
Speaker 4: it not touch you?
Speaker 1: You know, if only Sam knew sixty years of now.
Speaker 4: Well you know, yeah, well you're absolutely right, but man,
Speaker 4: it changed with you know, computers and video and yeah,
Speaker 4: the music videos and yeah, if you can razzle dazzle
Speaker 4: somebody as a dancer and as a as a.
Speaker 1: Well now it's like singing and talent. Really, I'm not
Speaker 1: even being sarcastic or bitter sounding like I think it's
Speaker 1: maybe even fifteen percent of the factor and it's more
Speaker 1: about your personality.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, there's an artist out now that currently has the
Speaker 1: number one song and their whole appeal basically rides on
Speaker 1: them going on Instagram live like they're so charismatic as
Speaker 1: a person that it makes you cheer for them and
Speaker 1: they have like serious marginal talent. But even I find
Speaker 1: myself cheering for marginal talent now in twenty seventeen, which is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, yeah, I agree with you. There's a different
Speaker 4: That was a different time though, when I'm talking about it.
Speaker 4: And then Sam taught me how to close my eyes
Speaker 4: and listen to the artists. And that's what I did
Speaker 4: with A and M. When you asked me, you know
Speaker 4: about auditioning certain artists, I would always go in there
Speaker 4: with my eyes closed and hear the music and make
Speaker 4: a judgment on that. I mean, there was an artist
Speaker 4: I don't want to mention her name, but she called me.
Speaker 4: She was an an M artist and she says she
Speaker 4: had this single that was a smash man. You can't
Speaker 4: miss with this thing. This was beautiful and she was
Speaker 4: in the studio and she begged me to come by
Speaker 4: and listen to it. So I did. Walked in the studio,
Speaker 4: closed my eyes, sat down on the couch. I said, okay,
Speaker 4: play it, and they played this thing and I couldn't
Speaker 4: find any part of my body to move, you know,
Speaker 4: I couldn't. I couldn't find my tota tap or anything,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: So there's no goose bump.
Speaker 4: There was zero goosebumps. And then I finally opened my
Speaker 4: eyes and the artist and the engineer and the producer
Speaker 4: they were dancing around the room. Man, they were just
Speaker 4: having the best time, and I just did not get
Speaker 4: it at all, And so well that That's always been
Speaker 4: my measure. You know, if it gets in me, then
Speaker 4: I'm good at that.
Speaker 1: Can I take one while? Guess?
Speaker 4: Yeah, not read it. I liked reader. You know, Rita
Speaker 4: was part of the group that the Mad Dogs in Englishmen. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that was a pretty amazing moment for me too.
Speaker 1: Would I would like you to at least explain to me,
Speaker 1: I guess the perception of California musicians, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm putting you kind of in the jazz genre. I
Speaker 1: don't know if do you consider yourself a jazz artist
Speaker 1: or an instrumentalist.
Speaker 4: Or I think I'm an improvisational artist in well, see,
Speaker 4: that's a whole long discussion, because I think jazz needs
Speaker 4: a renaissance, it needs a revision, and Miles had it,
Speaker 4: you know, Miles kind of took it forward. I think
Speaker 4: he understood the genre just about probably better than any
Speaker 4: other jazz musician. You know he would, I don't know.
Speaker 4: He was involved in the melodies, in the feel, and
Speaker 4: always choosing the right musicians to play with. And I
Speaker 4: think we need that. I think the day of playing
Speaker 4: the song and then everybody taking a course and then
Speaker 4: playing the song again, I think that's old hat.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm only asking because like the perception of I
Speaker 1: guess the perception of the New York musicians snobbery, which
Speaker 1: New York is considered cool and cold and not as
Speaker 1: laid back as California. So thus it's sort of the
Speaker 1: perception that you have to suffer for your art, or
Speaker 1: it's a gritty you have to come from a gritty
Speaker 1: environment for your art. Whereas you know, you look at
Speaker 1: these California musicians and I know that New Yorkers sort
Speaker 1: of looked down on them, Like was there as far
Speaker 1: as like the perception of your contemporaries at the time,
Speaker 1: like were you mixing it up with Chet Baker or
Speaker 1: you know, the California instrumentalist of the time period of
Speaker 1: the late fifties.
Speaker 4: Definitely, yeah, no, but I was in high school. Chet
Speaker 4: was playing with the quartet with Jerry Mulligan at the place,
Speaker 4: a place called the Hag and I used to go
Speaker 4: there to see them in high school. Uh, and it
Speaker 4: was it was a great experience obviously, you know, there
Speaker 4: was no piano, just based drums and chat and Jerry
Speaker 4: Mulligan and the and the four of them just made
Speaker 4: some music that was very very avant garde and beautiful
Speaker 4: at the time. And I remember when they wanted to
Speaker 4: take a break, Jerry Mulligan would get up to the
Speaker 4: microphone and say, shortly.
Speaker 1: Cut to the chase, Yeah, just shortly, so about the
Speaker 1: Tea Wana brass. Can I assume that that was just
Speaker 1: the Wrecking Crew and name only like or was there
Speaker 1: a point where you actually like on the record that
Speaker 1: has to be the recond Crew because it was so
Speaker 1: clean sounding right well up.
Speaker 4: Through the Whip Cream and Other Delights album. That was
Speaker 4: not all the Wrecking Crew, but it was definitely Hal
Speaker 4: Blaine on drums, Carol Kay sometimes on bass, and guitar,
Speaker 4: mainly bass. Yeah, I used musicians of my choice, and
Speaker 4: that's how it started, because you know, I had this
Speaker 4: idea of how I wanted the record to sound, and
Speaker 4: I knew the musicians in town.
Speaker 1: So but when it came to reproducing that live.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, after the Whip Cream and Other Delights album,
Speaker 4: I got an actual group together, and it was always different,
Speaker 4: you know. It always gave me a feeling like it's
Speaker 4: not quite the sound that I made on record, but
Speaker 4: it's okay. I had a great drummer, Nix s so Roli,
Speaker 4: and I went to the musicians that I found. I
Speaker 4: went to their strength. Instead of trying to give them
Speaker 4: something that they couldn't do, I tried to see what
Speaker 4: they could do really well. And the music kind of
Speaker 4: took a turn from that point on.
Speaker 1: What were your audiences looking like at that time period?
Speaker 4: Wow? When when the Tijuana Brass really hit after the
Speaker 4: Whipped Cream album, it was young and old, it was
Speaker 4: it was a basic I had this experience in Seattle, Washington.
Speaker 4: We were playing there with the new group and the
Speaker 4: my partner Jerry moss I recorded a record called third
Speaker 4: Man Theme. He loved it, you know, and on b
Speaker 4: side was a Taste of Honey. So in Seattle, Washington
Speaker 4: at the Edgewater End, every time I played Taste of Honey,
Speaker 4: the audience went wild. I mean they loved it for
Speaker 4: some reason. And sometimes I played it twice in a row,
Speaker 4: and I called.
Speaker 1: So, it's only two minutes, so how would.
Speaker 4: You well, I mean, you know, they liked it so
Speaker 4: much they let's hear it again. So I called Jerry said, man,
Speaker 4: you're on the wrong side. It's taste of honey. He says, Ah, Man,
Speaker 4: you can't. He says, it's not a good radio song.
Speaker 4: It's it's uh, you know, stops in the middle twice
Speaker 4: and it slows down and you can't. You know, it
Speaker 4: wasn't suited for radio. I said, look it, man, there's
Speaker 4: a focus group up here, and I'm telling you it's
Speaker 4: taste of funny. Let's try it. So we eventually turned
Speaker 4: it over and that that's the record that really opened
Speaker 4: the door for the Tijuana Brass because after that then
Speaker 4: we started performing in all the major shows, you know,
Speaker 4: the Ed Sullivan and Dean Martin and Andy Williams and
Speaker 4: Danny k all those big shows wanted us. So from
Speaker 4: that point on we were sailing.
Speaker 1: So let's bring in Jerry Moss. How did you how
Speaker 1: did you two meet?
Speaker 4: Well, we met, Uh. My story is we met him
Speaker 4: in New York. I met him in New York. History
Speaker 4: is he met me in Loss Lou Adler and I
Speaker 4: did a record that was a huge monster here in
Speaker 4: New York called Alioup and our friend Ted mutual Fred
Speaker 4: friend Ted Fagin was the head promotion man Madison Records,
Speaker 4: and he went to school with Jerry and he introduced
Speaker 4: me to Jerry. And Jerry was a promotion man. He
Speaker 4: was just getting going, but he had a great feel
Speaker 4: for records and a great field for people. He's a
Speaker 4: real you know, he's a real person. And we got
Speaker 4: together in Los Angeles started talking about producing a couple
Speaker 4: of records. What he wanted to do a record with
Speaker 4: an actor friend of his. And I had this record
Speaker 4: that I was fooling around with called tell It to
Speaker 4: the Birds that I was singing on, and we put
Speaker 4: out Tell It to the Birds, and we put out
Speaker 4: this record that he wanted to put out and tell
Speaker 4: It that the birds started popping up. It started happening
Speaker 4: in San Francisco and Los Angeles and we turned it
Speaker 4: over to Records for distribution. They gave us I think
Speaker 4: five hundred dollars for that plus a percentage, and with
Speaker 4: that money we recorded The Lonely Bull, which was an
Speaker 4: offshoot of my visits to Tijuana and I played it
Speaker 4: for a disc jockey friend, b Mitchell Reid was a
Speaker 4: friend of mine that he was the number one jock
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles, and I played the demo for him
Speaker 4: before it was released, and he said, where's the hook?
Speaker 4: I said, what do you mean the hook? He says,
Speaker 4: you know you need a hook. I said, man, this
Speaker 4: is an instrumental. It's not a vocal. He said, you
Speaker 4: think about a hook. And that's when I called Ted
Speaker 4: Keeps at Liberty Records, who was the head engineer, and
Speaker 4: he had this tape of thirty thousand people screaming Ola
Speaker 4: had a bullfight, and he gave it to me to use,
Speaker 4: and that was the thing I used, right in the
Speaker 4: front of the lonely bull, and that was the supposed hook,
Speaker 4: and that cada pulled at the record. Man, it took off,
Speaker 4: and it took off in it broken in San Francisco,
Speaker 4: right and there was a disc jockey, Jim Lang who's
Speaker 4: also on The Dating Game, was the MC of that
Speaker 4: for a while, and he broke that record, and I
Speaker 4: went up to San Francisco to thank him. You know,
Speaker 4: I walked into the control room and I introduced myself.
Speaker 4: He was excited and I said, man, I want to
Speaker 4: thank you for playing that record. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: He looked at me and says, I wouldn't have played
Speaker 4: it if I didn't like it. And from that point on,
Speaker 4: I never thanked the jock for playing the record. I
Speaker 4: thought that was a very appropriate thing to say. You know,
Speaker 4: I would hope to think that they liked the record,
Speaker 4: that's why they're playing it.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: So wait, Well you mentioned Lou Adler, which I'm thinking
Speaker 1: because you two went down similar paths, and I know
Speaker 1: that eventually he did a distribution thing or association thing
Speaker 1: with his label. But did you two never discuss, uh,
Speaker 1: starting a partnership together, like starting your own label at
Speaker 1: one point.
Speaker 4: Or not a label. We were partners, you know, we
Speaker 4: wrote you know, Lou dated my ex wife, Oh boy,
Speaker 4: no sound effects. But that's how I met Luke he
Speaker 4: was married to after that, he was married to my
Speaker 4: ex wife's girlfriend, Damn Lou, and we became friends. We're
Speaker 4: very I love the guy. I remember, We're very close.
Speaker 4: And we started He wrote poetry and I wrote some
Speaker 4: melodies to his poetry, and we took around these demos
Speaker 4: after making demos records, and this one, well, we took
Speaker 4: this demo to Specialty Records in nineteen fifty seven or so,
Speaker 4: and Sonny Bono was the head and and R guy
Speaker 4: Specialty Records at the time, and so he listened to
Speaker 4: our records and he said, look, I want to be
Speaker 4: honest with you guys. I think you guys ought to
Speaker 4: get out of the business. But we like Sonny. He
Speaker 4: was an interesting characters. Yeah, that was cold. That was
Speaker 4: a coold thing to tell anyone. You know, I'd never
Speaker 4: do that, you know, even at A and M and
Speaker 4: I interview and audition groups, and I tell them if
Speaker 4: I didn't get it, I say, look it, man, just
Speaker 4: because I ain't receiving anything, don't mean you ain't sending something.
Speaker 4: So don't give up, you know, do whatever you know
Speaker 4: you're passionate about doing. Anyway. So when I you know,
Speaker 4: got this job, I told you before as writers for
Speaker 4: Keen Records, And that's how we met Sam Cook and
Speaker 4: have been bit of boom. A lot of things happened from.
Speaker 1: That because because of his because of his New York association.
Speaker 1: Have you ever done anything in the Brill building at
Speaker 1: all or considered going to?
Speaker 4: No, But you know all those writers, those great writers,
Speaker 4: you know, Backreck recorded for us and Carol King and
Speaker 4: all those I know they came out of that place
Speaker 4: and Jerry Leeber and Stoller. I knew those guys. Liber
Speaker 4: went to Jerry liber went to the same high school
Speaker 4: I went to. He was a couple of years ahead
Speaker 4: of me. But he was an extraordinary guy. He uh,
Speaker 4: he was very innovative. You know that that record of
Speaker 4: There Goes My Baby by the Drifters, it was his
Speaker 4: idea to put strings on. That was before anybody put
Speaker 4: the string reception on a record. And the story of
Speaker 4: him dancing around the studio kind of telling the string
Speaker 4: players you know what he wanted to hear. It was
Speaker 4: very vivid. And those guys you know, obviously made some wonderful,
Speaker 4: wonderful records together.
Speaker 1: So how easy or challenging was it to form your
Speaker 1: own label, because you know, I mean, today it's so
Speaker 1: do it yourself. People can make a complete album on
Speaker 1: their laptop very little resources, and the quality is just
Speaker 1: as good as spending you know, at an entire budget
Speaker 1: in the studio. But you know, why did you not consider, like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe we should take this to Columbia, or maybe we
Speaker 1: should take this to you know, mercury or something like
Speaker 1: an established label, because I tend to think that to
Speaker 1: be to be a creative, it's just hard enough. Now
Speaker 1: you've got to be a creative person and you got
Speaker 1: to be a businessman, right.
Speaker 4: Well, lucky for me, you know, I'm not a businessman,
Speaker 4: and my partner Jerry Moss was is.
Speaker 1: But it's still your business though. I'm sure that you
Speaker 1: guys have to have like a fifty to fifty kind
Speaker 1: of like. Okay, I got to make some decisions and
Speaker 1: come to meetings and shaking.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, definitely. But I had this major experience. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I recorded for RCA Victor before I ended records. I
Speaker 4: recorded for them for about a year and a half, okay,
Speaker 4: maybe two years, and I was I filed everything I
Speaker 4: didn't like about how they treated me. You know, I
Speaker 4: was a number to them, I was. I wasn't the
Speaker 4: Herb Albert. I was three eight two five one take three,
Speaker 4: you know that type of guy. And in this recording
Speaker 4: facility they had that was very ice cold. It was
Speaker 4: you know, white on white on white on white, and
Speaker 4: then in the control room it was no different. It
Speaker 4: was a cold place. And I was listening to a
Speaker 4: playback of one of the songs I did, and I
Speaker 4: wanted to push up the bass channel because I needed
Speaker 4: more bass on the sound. And I went over to
Speaker 4: the board and I lifted the bass up and with
Speaker 4: the pot and the engineer slapped my hand.
Speaker 5: I get out of wow, no wait, yeah, you don't
Speaker 5: allowed to do that.
Speaker 4: No, and uh, you know I he said, don't ever
Speaker 4: touch this board again. This is a union house and
Speaker 4: blah blah blah, and yeah yeah yeah, And so I
Speaker 4: filed all that, thinking like, man, shouldn't a record of business.
Speaker 4: Company shouldn't revolve around the artist, you know, And that's
Speaker 4: what I tried to do at A and M and
Speaker 4: was a really peaceful company and we were thinking about
Speaker 4: the artist and had this well, you know, when the
Speaker 4: Lonely Bull happened, our distributors around the country said, why
Speaker 4: don't you guys take the money and run. You know,
Speaker 4: you got lucky with this Tijuana brass thing, your close
Speaker 4: proximity to Tijuana, and it's not going to happen again,
Speaker 4: Like that's an instrumental. Instrumental zon't happen that often. And
Speaker 4: those a that gave us fadder for trying to hang
Speaker 4: on to it. See how long we could hang on.
Speaker 4: They wanted a Lonely Bull album, which we gave them
Speaker 4: and that sold well, so we tried to hang on
Speaker 4: to it as long as we could, and we started
Speaker 4: recording a couple other artists and the big AHA for me,
Speaker 4: and this was the moment that I realized that A
Speaker 4: and M was going to be successful. We signed Waylon Jennings.
Speaker 4: Whylan was living in Phoenix, Arizona, and he was He
Speaker 4: played with Buddy Holly and he was for some lucky reason,
Speaker 4: he didn't get on that airplane, but I used to
Speaker 4: fly down to Phoenix. We signed him to a four
Speaker 4: year contract. He used to fly down there and record
Speaker 4: him and he really wanted to be a country artist.
Speaker 4: And I you know, did a record with him called
Speaker 4: four Strong Winds that was excellent. It was really had
Speaker 4: a good feel. He got this call from Chad Atkins
Speaker 4: who heard that record and made some you know overtures
Speaker 4: to UH to Whalen, which he probably shouldn't have done
Speaker 4: because he was Whalem was under contract us. But he said,
Speaker 4: you know, when when Whalen gets free, he'd like to
Speaker 4: talk to him. Whalen told me about that, and at
Speaker 4: that point I wanted to take Whalen just a little
Speaker 4: more pop. Whalen wanted to be a country artist, so
Speaker 4: he was all excited about chat Atkins calling because chet
Speaker 4: Adskins was the messiah of country music at that time.
Speaker 4: He was the an R head of RCAA Victor and
Speaker 4: so we talked it all over. I talked it over
Speaker 4: with my partner Jerry, and we decided to let Waylan
Speaker 4: out of his contract so we could go with Jet
Speaker 4: and we had about three more years on his contract.
Speaker 4: And I remember the day that we signed his release
Speaker 4: and I looked at Jerry. I said, this guy's going
Speaker 4: to be a big star, and Jerry said, yeah, I
Speaker 4: think so too, and we let him out. And I thought,
Speaker 4: from that point on, man, if we could be that honest,
Speaker 4: that authentic and that caring for our artists, we were
Speaker 4: going to do. We were going to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, who was the first artist you guys signed outside
Speaker 1: of releasing your own music.
Speaker 4: Well, there were a couple of hours. One was George mccerrn,
Speaker 4: who was the bass singer with the Pilgrim Travelers and
Speaker 4: that was like the number one gospel group in the
Speaker 4: which I learned a lot from. By the way, just
Speaker 4: thinking back on that as you mentioned that, because I
Speaker 4: used to watch them record and it was just the
Speaker 4: five guys with George mccern who called himself Oopy. He
Speaker 4: was singing bass, and then just a guy playing snare
Speaker 4: with brushes, no big deal, no big backbeat, you know,
Speaker 4: no two and four slamming at you, and these guys
Speaker 4: would would just make you feel like, Wow, this this
Speaker 4: unrelenting time zone that these guys were in, and the
Speaker 4: feeling and the the energy that they had it was
Speaker 4: just like swinging swinging hard. And I thought from that point, man,
Speaker 4: you don't need all that stuff to make a good feel.
Speaker 4: It has to just all the musicians have to gel
Speaker 4: together in a common cause, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So George mccurrn was one. We had a group called
Speaker 4: the Kenjelaires that was a vocal group. Didn't do very well,
Speaker 4: but they had a nice sound. And then Wayland came along. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but the Tijuana Brass was We were kind of supporting
Speaker 4: A and M a long until around nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 4: or eight we signed a group called the We Five
Speaker 4: You were on my Mind. It became number one record
Speaker 4: and then sixty six, well, in sixty six we signed
Speaker 4: Brazil sixty six, Sergio Mendez in Brazil sixty six. That
Speaker 4: was a big one for us because they had a
Speaker 4: really unique sound. You know, we auditioned them and remember
Speaker 4: walking in this room and hearing this hybrid sound of
Speaker 4: Brazilian classical jazz, Brazilian jazz, American jazz pop. They had
Speaker 4: that whole thing. And then my wife, Lonnie was the
Speaker 4: lead singer.
Speaker 1: I lost my mind when I realized that. I think
Speaker 1: she was promoting her book and when she mentioned that,
Speaker 1: and then it finally hit me that, oh my god,
Speaker 1: she's the one of the female voices of Brazil sixteen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so she was not one of them, she was
Speaker 4: the singer. Yeah, I doubled her. I got that hy puppa,
Speaker 4: the t want to brass twist on her on Sergio's
Speaker 4: thing because they had another girl. There were two girls, yeah,
Speaker 4: and one girl was very beautiful, but she was not
Speaker 4: a recording artist. You know, she just have that sound.
Speaker 4: And when I heard my wife was that voice. Yeah,
Speaker 4: she had that voice, and that was her sound on
Speaker 4: you know, Maski, Nada, Fool on the Hill and all
Speaker 4: those early records that I produced with Sergio.
Speaker 1: What was the question, Well, no, I'm just going through
Speaker 1: your initial roster of Vietnam dealing with those those artists,
Speaker 1: and I guess in the in the seventies.
Speaker 3: Well wait, we're getting awfully close to CTI.
Speaker 1: Yes, let's not skip CTI. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And Quincy, well, Quincy Man, you know, Quincy is Quincy.
Speaker 4: He's a unique character. Yeah, he's one of those guys.
Speaker 4: You know, you don't have to you don't see him
Speaker 4: for eight ten months, a year or three, and you're
Speaker 4: like old buddies right from the get go. He has
Speaker 4: a magnetic personality, he's brilliant. He has eighteen balls going
Speaker 4: up in the air at the same time, and they're all,
Speaker 4: you know, worthwhile, they're all doing something interesting.
Speaker 1: We had the we had the fortune of recording our
Speaker 1: show at the former A M. Studios, which is now
Speaker 1: Jim Henson Studios, which I guess was formerly the Charlie
Speaker 1: Chaplin Studios. You know, even now past I'm sure that
Speaker 1: anyone that goes through there that has had some sort
Speaker 1: of history there, there's there's a feeling that you get
Speaker 1: in that environment when the gates closed and you're just
Speaker 1: inside of that world, in that environment. So the entire
Speaker 1: A and M operations was inside of the former Chapman Studios.
Speaker 1: Like that's where as far as the studio was concerned.
Speaker 1: In the offices, everything was in.
Speaker 4: The well not in the early days. The early days
Speaker 4: was in my garage. I mean that's where we started, yeah,
Speaker 4: I And then we had an office on Sunset Boulevard
Speaker 4: for a while that was, you know, little modest place,
Speaker 4: but then we bought the studios. I think nineteen, I
Speaker 4: don't remember the year.
Speaker 6: How did you avoid the the ugly side of the business,
Speaker 6: because I know that to be an upstart to get
Speaker 6: your stuff played.
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of hand shaking, kissing, babies, politicking,
Speaker 1: grease and palms. I know that, you know, the the element.
Speaker 1: What's the New York guy used to have records, Mars Leavey.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I believe.
Speaker 1: Like, how do you how do you deal with people
Speaker 1: that see you like, oh, getting success in Hey, I
Speaker 1: like a piece of that or you know that, because
Speaker 1: I mean you guys were essentially always an independent label.
Speaker 4: Right yeah, well I personally side stepped all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But how can you when people are like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: let me let me bring my wife sings and let
Speaker 1: me get a piece of the like again, you have
Speaker 1: to be a business person also, like how do you
Speaker 1: avoid how do you avoid that? Especially when the late
Speaker 1: sixties and the early seventies was so record label were
Speaker 1: so corrupted. I mean, you didn't hear about that with
Speaker 1: your label, you didn't hear that, but with Moe Austin
Speaker 1: at Warners. But you know, definitely, I know that a
Speaker 1: lot of those mom and pop labels that were trying
Speaker 1: to get the status of a CBS or a Mercury,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of grime that they had
Speaker 1: to avoid and how do you sidestep?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I never got involved personally. I heard about it,
Speaker 4: but it wasn't something that interested interested me. And I
Speaker 4: wasn't good at that, you know, I didn't. I just
Speaker 4: know about trying to be me. You know, it's it's
Speaker 4: not enough just to be yourself, you know, and work
Speaker 4: in that world. I'm an artist, you know, I'm eighty
Speaker 4: five percent on the right side of my brain. I paint,
Speaker 4: scope make music, and I'm a lucky guy. So I
Speaker 4: always you know, when we A and M started growing
Speaker 4: and we had these business meetings every Thursday with lawyers
Speaker 4: and count and and all that. Man, my eyes would
Speaker 4: glass over that was just like, holy moly, man, this
Speaker 4: ain't me. So I kind of found a way to,
Speaker 4: you know, get out of that thing because it was
Speaker 4: it would it would dig into my creativity.
Speaker 1: So at on the business and what was your role?
Speaker 1: Did you look for new artists that you listened to tapes? Jerry?
Speaker 1: These brothers and sister act that we gotta sign. Man,
Speaker 1: their harmonies are really crazy. They're called the Carpenters. We
Speaker 1: gotta do it, Like, how do you convince?
Speaker 4: I didn't have to convince anybody when I wanted. I
Speaker 4: signed the Carpenters because I loved them, period not. There
Speaker 4: was no you know, we didn't have a committee, you
Speaker 4: It was just my office was right next to Jerry's
Speaker 4: and I just said, you know, I'm signing these kids.
Speaker 4: You know they were great, but I used the Sam
Speaker 4: Cook method with them. You know they heard I heard
Speaker 4: this tape, put it on in my office and closed
Speaker 4: my eyes and it felt like Karen's voice was coming
Speaker 4: right up and sitting next to me on the couch,
Speaker 4: I said, I got to meet this girl. You know,
Speaker 4: she's has this very interesting voice, and she didn't think
Speaker 4: of herself as a singer. She was a drummer and
Speaker 4: a pretty darn good drummer too, So signed them, and
Speaker 4: luck be having.
Speaker 1: When you heard these tapes, were those harmonies hitting you
Speaker 1: like the way that the final product was.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, No, there was something there because Richard and
Speaker 4: it wasn't just Karen. It was a combination of the
Speaker 4: two of them. Richard Carpenter is a very creative guy.
Speaker 4: He has great taste and songs, and he was great
Speaker 4: with choral harmonies, and he was very instrumental in their success.
Speaker 4: But in nineteen seventy, you know, they had a couple
Speaker 4: of records that didn't do great, and people in my
Speaker 4: own company were saying, wem man by just signing these guys.
Speaker 4: I mean, that was the rumble I was hearing. You know,
Speaker 4: they're a little too cute, they're little, they don't fit
Speaker 4: on on radio, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So people thought they were like more bubble gummy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, bubble gummy music. No, uh huh. And so then
Speaker 4: I gave them close to You. I had that song
Speaker 4: that Bert Backreck and how David wrote and they recorded
Speaker 4: it and I didn't like the recording. Karen was playing
Speaker 4: drums and they recorded again. That wasn't it? I said,
Speaker 4: we need more, we need you know, let's get them guys,
Speaker 4: Let's get the wrecking. So Hal Blaine came in and
Speaker 4: Joe Osbourne was on bass and they made that record.
Speaker 4: And that record I remember after they finished it, I
Speaker 4: played it for Bert over the phone and he flipped
Speaker 4: out and that record was a monster. And then, of course,
Speaker 4: after all the same people in my company that were
Speaker 4: saying why'd you sign those guys, all of a sudden
Speaker 4: thought I was a genius.
Speaker 1: Christmas Bonus time, Right? Did you give Bert backack his?
Speaker 1: Were you the start of his? Because I know he
Speaker 1: wrote this Guy's in love with You? Correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he wrote this Guy's in Love with You with
Speaker 4: Hal David.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And that was their first number one record, which was
Speaker 4: really interesting.
Speaker 1: Man, it was their first so that started the ball
Speaker 1: rolling for.
Speaker 4: Well, not for them, Oh no, they had my humpteen
Speaker 4: hits before that, but that was the first number one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, they have all sorts of records that were beautiful.
Speaker 4: I mean they're really Bert is a very very unusual artist.
Speaker 4: You know, he has his own voice, his own style.
Speaker 4: You can't really second guess his melodies. They just kind
Speaker 4: of take his someplace and there there's a logic to it,
Speaker 4: but only he knows how to get there.
Speaker 1: What made you decide to sing one This Guy's in
Speaker 1: Love with You?
Speaker 4: Well, there was a television show we were doing for
Speaker 4: NBC and the director, Jack Hayley Jr. Asked me to
Speaker 4: try and sing a song, you know, because he was
Speaker 4: tired of photographing me with the trumpet my mouth. So
Speaker 4: I called Bert and asked him if there was a
Speaker 4: song that he he you know, starts whistling in the shower,
Speaker 4: or maybe a song he recorded but didn't like the
Speaker 4: recording anyways. He sent me this Girl's in Love with
Speaker 4: You that he recorded with Diane Warwick and I liked
Speaker 4: the song a lot, but the gender had to be
Speaker 4: changed because it was written for her called hal David
Speaker 4: flew to New York. He was living in New York
Speaker 4: at the time, and I was there while he was
Speaker 4: changing the lyric, and I asked him the same question
Speaker 4: as I was leaving his house, and he sent me
Speaker 4: close to You And I was going to use that
Speaker 4: as the follow up to This Guy's in Love with You,
Speaker 4: which was zoom to number one in two weeks. That
Speaker 4: record was number one after the television show hit, and
Speaker 4: so I recorded Close to You and I had a
Speaker 4: pretty good recording and the engineer, who was a friend
Speaker 4: of mine, Larry Levine, I said, listening to the playback,
Speaker 4: I thought it was good. I said, Larry, tell me
Speaker 4: the truth. What do you think? He says, Man, you
Speaker 4: sound terrible singing this song.
Speaker 1: He's just that blunt, honest with you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, he was a how many naysayers in your life?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: No, that's good. You know. I'm not saying your life
Speaker 1: should be full, yes, Ben, but.
Speaker 4: Oh look at I'm I like to have people around
Speaker 4: me that give me the truth.
Speaker 1: That's that's was he right?
Speaker 4: Well, I think he was right, although I still liked
Speaker 4: the record, but I put it away. I didn't, you know,
Speaker 4: I got a gun shy.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: So in nineteen seventy, when the Carpenters had a couple
Speaker 4: of records out there that didn't happen, then I gave
Speaker 4: Richard Close to You. And that was the start of
Speaker 4: their monstrous career. Because I mean that, man, that when
Speaker 4: that once that door opened for the Carpenters, it was
Speaker 4: like watch out, man. It happened all over the world.
Speaker 4: It was fantastic.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what was your relationship, Like, how did the
Speaker 1: Creed Tailor Association come to be?
Speaker 4: Well? Well, Creed? In my opinion, Creed is one of
Speaker 4: the most He was one of the great jazz producers
Speaker 4: I think of all time. He just had a field
Speaker 4: for what to do with Wes and do you know
Speaker 4: he made some extraordinary records with Bill Evans, and he
Speaker 4: just had a feel for how to market them, how
Speaker 4: to how to package it. You know, they packaged the
Speaker 4: record properly, and he sequenced it properly. I think he
Speaker 4: knew what to do. That record he made with the
Speaker 4: organ player Jimmy Smith, Jimmy Smith, that's one of my
Speaker 4: favorite records, you know, the one he did with Walk
Speaker 4: on the wild Side. And I don't know, he was
Speaker 4: just looking for a different distribution deal and we were
Speaker 4: honored to have him because I just love him as
Speaker 4: a producer.
Speaker 1: Were you guys not worried well, because you guys had
Speaker 1: a lot of distribution deals. Were you guys not worried
Speaker 1: at all about I don't know if branding was still
Speaker 1: the thing the way it is now, Like people want
Speaker 1: to have their branding set now and in motion, make
Speaker 1: that front and center before even the product. But you know,
Speaker 1: was there any fear that because I didn't even know,
Speaker 1: like I know, I guess now that that I'm an
Speaker 1: adult that you know, like Tapestry is and in related
Speaker 1: even though it was on Lose Album and all those
Speaker 1: Cheech and Song records, well it was on records. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, but I'm just saying that, was there
Speaker 1: any fear of like the label not being up in
Speaker 1: front and you having these other subsidiary labels under you.
Speaker 4: No, I don't think we ever thought about that. We
Speaker 4: were just putting out good music. You know. My partner
Speaker 4: Jerry had the same feeling I have about music. We
Speaker 4: try to make. You know, in the early days when
Speaker 4: we started in sixty two, you know, there were a
Speaker 4: lot of record companies operating out of the trunks of
Speaker 4: their car, and a lot of companies would you know,
Speaker 4: get one hit record and then they make an album
Speaker 4: with fillers. You know, they'd have the hit record and
Speaker 4: they have a bunch of junkie records you know that
Speaker 4: are hardcovers. Yeah, just things that were just economically good
Speaker 4: to do or I guess, I don't know, but we
Speaker 4: never wanted to do that. We wanted to, you know,
Speaker 4: give the public a fair shot and make music that
Speaker 4: we would purchase ourselves. And then when the Lonely Bull
Speaker 4: and the tierron and brass started happening, we hired a
Speaker 4: guy that was working at the pressing plant and turned
Speaker 4: into be our quality control person. So all the records
Speaker 4: and all the masters that came out of it, and
Speaker 4: we're really as clean as they could be. So we
Speaker 4: weren't thinking about how much money we could make, how
Speaker 4: much you know, good music we put out there, and still,
Speaker 4: you know, be honest, didn't make a good living doing it.
Speaker 4: That's what was it. That's what we were pursuing.
Speaker 1: How big was the staff once you guys got to
Speaker 1: the Chaplain Studios.
Speaker 4: Well, at the Chaplain Studios we had thirty three people
Speaker 4: at that time, started with the two, then there were three, five, ten,
Speaker 4: you know, and all of a sudden it got way
Speaker 4: out of hand, you know, towards the end. I didn't
Speaker 4: know anybody in the company.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, you knew, well, well, in.
Speaker 4: The beginning, it was just Jerry myself, you know, that
Speaker 4: wouldn't be make all the decisions.
Speaker 1: And who was your if you can recall who was
Speaker 1: like your star an R? Who was the an R
Speaker 1: guy that like just brought to you, like your top
Speaker 1: five favorite acts to the label, Like who was the
Speaker 1: one guy that you could depend on.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, there were some guys in in London
Speaker 4: that did really well when we.
Speaker 3: Got okay and there we go squeeze, well squeeze yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But then.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that there was an A and m
Speaker 1: uh division in London, Well, yeah, because that would plase
Speaker 1: and yeah the place and Joe Cocker and okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well we am we had super Tramp, which they
Speaker 4: were huge in Europe.
Speaker 1: So all the all the British associated An m acts, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they came out, were signed and right when did you
Speaker 1: guys expand past?
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, that was around nineteen sixty nine, I believe
Speaker 4: you know when Jerry you know, thought that you know,
Speaker 4: our image at the time was kind of easy listening,
Speaker 4: kind of cool music, and he wanted to you know,
Speaker 4: jump into the five pan Yeah, the real stuff, the
Speaker 4: stuff that was happening, you know, a little more edgy.
Speaker 4: And that's when Joe Cocker and Mad Dogs and Englishmen
Speaker 4: you know, got going. And that was the first time
Speaker 4: I was kind of indoctrinated into that type of music
Speaker 4: because I was not a stuff shirt. But you know,
Speaker 4: I came up through the classical field and then I
Speaker 4: was making my own music. And when I remember walking
Speaker 4: into these sound stage when Cocker and Leon Russell was
Speaker 4: playing piano and they had two drummers and Rita Coolidge
Speaker 4: and the singers were doing the thing with they were
Speaker 4: rehearsing for upcoming upcoming tour. I remember walking into the
Speaker 4: sound stage. I listen to him and I had my
Speaker 4: eyes closed, you know, the way I usually do. It
Speaker 4: was open enough to see where I was gonna sit.
Speaker 4: I sat on the sound on the stage, and all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, Joe started singing and I got goosebumps,
Speaker 4: you know. I said, Wow, that's a sound. And I
Speaker 4: opened my eyes and Joe was gyrating like he was
Speaker 4: playing guitar or something, you know, as he was singing
Speaker 4: and totally into it. And I said, hmmm, I like that.
Speaker 4: So that from that point on I was the door
Speaker 4: opened for me for rock and roll and that other
Speaker 4: type of music.
Speaker 1: So you always kept that Sam Cook theory of I
Speaker 1: gotta I got to hear it first before I see it,
Speaker 1: before I opened my eyes.
Speaker 6: See what.
Speaker 4: Definitely I use that always. Yeah, there was a. There
Speaker 4: was a female group that was floating around New York.
Speaker 4: I can't remember their name, but they all the record
Speaker 4: companies supposedly were interested in signing them. Yeah, so I
Speaker 4: flew to New York and I think they're Basil. They
Speaker 4: were playing at that one of those clubs, Basil, I
Speaker 4: don't rego, okay, sweet Basil. Yes, or they were playing,
Speaker 4: and so I walked in there and had my eyes
Speaker 4: closed and kind of open enough to see where the
Speaker 4: seed was, and I sat down started listening to him,
Speaker 4: and zero man zero came out. I didn't get them
Speaker 4: at all. I finally opened my eyes and these checks,
Speaker 4: you know, with tattoos, and they were playing you know,
Speaker 4: this stuff that was like loud. You know, certainly give
Speaker 4: them credit for that, but I didn't get it. So
Speaker 4: I didn't have no interest in signing them. And actually
Speaker 4: I don't think they even signed to another lady.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, who they wind up being.
Speaker 4: I don't think they signed. So yeah, no, I used
Speaker 4: that approach. I think that's that's the one. And it
Speaker 4: got harder and harder because you know, like when MTV
Speaker 4: he came along, and like we talked about before, you
Speaker 4: see these guys dancing like wizards and uh, you know
Speaker 4: that that all of a sudden people started listening with
Speaker 4: their eyes and that was a whole other groove.
Speaker 1: You know, it should be it should be noted, especially
Speaker 1: for our listeners that aren't that familiar. You kind of
Speaker 1: were the not the impetus, but uh, a lot of
Speaker 1: those promotional videos for our listeners out there. If your
Speaker 1: band had international hits and they weren't able to travel
Speaker 1: to certain countries at the at the snap of you know,
Speaker 1: in a snap and get there immediately, that was the
Speaker 1: initial reasons why promotional performances were used for those artists.
Speaker 1: So say, if the Lonely Bull or Taste of Honey
Speaker 1: is is really hidden in Chili or or or in
Speaker 1: Japan and you can't get there immediately to you know,
Speaker 1: to tour, you would send a promotional clip of you playing, uh,
Speaker 1: and then they would play them on these particular shows.
Speaker 1: Hence the idea of early videos. But your your performance
Speaker 1: videos at least you know, all the ones that I
Speaker 1: that I binged on on YouTube, they had concepts to them,
Speaker 1: like you it's kind of the music video.
Speaker 4: Well, you got to think it through. You can't just
Speaker 4: throw something in there. You know, we've had an artist
Speaker 4: that didn't want to do music videos. There was Joe Jackson,
Speaker 4: who had the number one record, you know, and not
Speaker 4: a particularly good looking guy. Or he couldn't dance, and
Speaker 4: he couldn't you know, didn't have his interesting though lucky
Speaker 4: come on, I'm saying that probably from him, from his
Speaker 4: point of view, you know, I think, and he just
Speaker 4: didn't think it would be appropriate for him to do
Speaker 4: a music video, which she never did so and then
Speaker 4: you got, you know, artists like Janet Jackson who like
Speaker 4: she had it, you know, she didn't get by on
Speaker 4: on Michael's talent. Janet had something, you know, she was
Speaker 4: she had her own magic. And it seems like these
Speaker 4: these artists that could dance had an upper hand because
Speaker 4: if he could dance really well, they could swing. They
Speaker 4: always put these songs in the in the proper, proper groove,
Speaker 4: and they always made you feel good, you know.
Speaker 1: You know now now that I think about it, even
Speaker 1: beyond the Tijuana Brass videos and whatnot, your videos for it,
Speaker 1: particularly when not you know, when I was coming up
Speaker 1: as a teenager, you know, BT was playing the mess
Speaker 1: out of keep your Eye on Me and and with Diamonds.
Speaker 1: It's weird, though I love the fact that I wonder
Speaker 1: now that, as an adult, was it important to you
Speaker 1: to have such a heavy anti drug message, Because even
Speaker 1: with keep your eye on Me, with the plane going
Speaker 1: by and just kind.
Speaker 4: Of an ugly thing right there that happened, you know.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I know, but like it actually, and
Speaker 1: even in the Diamonds video, some some stony kid comes
Speaker 1: up to you and You're like, just say no to drugs, kid,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, were you imagining that, Like some thirteen
Speaker 1: year old kid in Philadelphia is looking like, okay, herb,
Speaker 1: I'll just say no.
Speaker 3: He told me to stop smoking outside just an hour ago.
Speaker 3: Oh god he did, he did?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: But my point was that watching a string of your videos,
Speaker 1: they kind of pressed pushed the envelope, even though you
Speaker 1: did the putting on the Ritz video, which I think
Speaker 1: was like a one camera.
Speaker 4: Take camera one at six takes, but one camera.
Speaker 1: So are these ideas coming from you that, like I know,
Speaker 1: you're saying that, you know, it shouldn't be visuals should
Speaker 1: be audio like the the the musicality should give you goosebumps.
Speaker 1: And Matt's what sells you, which I agree with you,
Speaker 1: But you can't also discount the fact that you've kind
Speaker 1: of went the extra miles and a lot of your
Speaker 1: videos way above what people were going through at that time,
Speaker 1: you know, with with with visuals, like even with the
Speaker 1: Whipped Cream album cover, like you had to know that
Speaker 1: visuals play an important role with it. And I can't
Speaker 1: believe I skipped the whipp Cream album coming.
Speaker 5: Yes, that goes without saying that the Whip Cream Album
Speaker 5: was mighty influence in so many ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he sold six million units and that's the reason
Speaker 1: why he sold more records the Beatles in nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: How many units did just the cover self?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean the album sold fourteen million, but I
Speaker 4: mean the cover, it wasn't.
Speaker 3: Hard to get all that whip cream on that girl.
Speaker 1: Well I'm in the record stores. Was it seen as
Speaker 1: a risk.
Speaker 4: Because well, at the time it seemed risky, but obviously.
Speaker 1: Looking at it now, it looks like she's wearing a
Speaker 1: wedding dress.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well then she's wearing shaving cream, by the way,
Speaker 4: and she was three months pregnant, by the way, And
Speaker 4: by the way, the sky comes up to me like
Speaker 4: a month and a half after that record was released.
Speaker 4: He says, man, this is the greatest album cover I've
Speaker 4: ever seen. I love the girl, I love the concept,
Speaker 4: the whip cream, blah blah blah. I said, thank you
Speaker 4: so much. What about the music, he says, I haven't
Speaker 4: had a chance to listen to it.
Speaker 3: So that's who is the girl?
Speaker 4: Uh, Dolores Erickson. She was a professional model and she's
Speaker 4: so beautiful. Yeah, she's beautiful, Yes she was.
Speaker 1: Now now I see where the Ohio players got their
Speaker 1: inspiration the honey up. Yeah, so I guess the roots
Speaker 1: need to make it. I'm called sugar, just keeping with
Speaker 1: sweet snacks.
Speaker 5: I think Stanley Turrentine has the sugar category covered.
Speaker 4: C T.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, Sugar can't give us more CTR stories.
Speaker 5: Like Gulamatari is I mean? I mean, wow? Was that
Speaker 5: done at A and M students? Yeah, she's ct I
Speaker 5: stuff was done there.
Speaker 4: Quincy was on an M. Quincy wasn't on c T I.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, do you mean very early the A M,
Speaker 3: the A N M C T I.
Speaker 1: Oh, I guess I can assume that. Uh, because of
Speaker 1: the proximity of the brothers Johnson and Billy Preston's band
Speaker 1: and then winding up on A and m Via with
Speaker 1: Quincy is some sort of and in connection as well.
Speaker 1: But I mean, at what point are you able to
Speaker 1: kind of back away as the A in Albert and
Speaker 1: Moss and just let it run on its own? Like
Speaker 1: are you driving in the car one day and you
Speaker 1: hear Strawberry letter twenty three and you're like, oh cool,
Speaker 1: Oh that's all my label.
Speaker 4: No, we didn't give up. We were always there, you know,
Speaker 4: Jerry and I made the major decisions together. The everyday
Speaker 4: nuts and bolts I was not a part of, but
Speaker 4: the overall brushstroke of the company and the feeling and
Speaker 4: the artists that come came through, Yeah, we were there. No,
Speaker 4: we had Tommy Lapumo was producing records for us. It
Speaker 4: was you know, got his start with us.
Speaker 1: And I was going to say, who was the Did
Speaker 1: you guys have a house system where you had your
Speaker 1: house producers and your house engineers to engineer that sound.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we had our own recording facilities, so you know
Speaker 4: we made those state of the art, the best equipment
Speaker 4: and great acoustics, and you know, like I had, like
Speaker 4: I said, I had that experience at RCA Victor that
Speaker 4: the studio was cold. So I was very intent on
Speaker 4: making our recording facility these very user friendly colors and feel.
Speaker 4: I think when you walk into a studio, like the
Speaker 4: studio we're in right now, you know, you know darn
Speaker 4: well the sound is good in here. It has that feeling.
Speaker 1: And incidentally, we're at Electric Ladies Studios in New York City,
Speaker 1: the House of Hendrick.
Speaker 4: So we wanted to make sure if we had that vibe,
Speaker 4: and I think the art appreciate that. In Studio B,
Speaker 4: I put in this huge crystal, like h eight hundred
Speaker 4: pound crystal embedded in there in the wall, and a
Speaker 4: lot of artists would come in there and and like.
Speaker 5: Uh, it's still there, Well, well it's he took his.
Speaker 1: I took them.
Speaker 4: I took the monster out and.
Speaker 3: They replaced they they put a different one in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah okay, yeah, and uh, you know, artists would come
Speaker 4: in there, even if they weren't recording in that particular studio,
Speaker 4: they'd stand in front of that crystal. It would be
Speaker 4: like they're at the Whaling Wall in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: You know, it's energy. When Shaka Khan walked in that
Speaker 1: studio with us, uh, she acknowledged that, you know the
Speaker 1: energy of the crystal. So I I know that as
Speaker 1: an artist, there's one particular project I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about Synchronicity. No, I'm talking about Herb's own career.
Speaker 1: You did an album with Hugh Masekuila. Yeah, really, And
Speaker 1: I believe seventy seven Soul Train is one of my
Speaker 1: all time favorite shows and kind of the thing that
Speaker 1: I've done as an adult is collect every episode. So
Speaker 1: seeing you kind of make the quote Graceland move before
Speaker 1: Paul Simon did was very interesting, especially in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven when people's eyes and you know, you had South
Speaker 1: African artists and you know, kind of world artists with
Speaker 1: you on this project. What was your intent? Was your
Speaker 1: intent to bring attention to or relief to those artists
Speaker 1: from South Africa?
Speaker 4: That not really? You know, I just liked I liked Hugh.
Speaker 4: I liked the way he played, and when we talked,
Speaker 4: he felt that the music I was making was kind
Speaker 4: of similar to the groove of what they do, you know,
Speaker 4: not not necessarily all the rhythm stuff, but that there
Speaker 4: was a compatible sound. And so we recorded together and
Speaker 4: I think that that one record we did, man, I
Speaker 4: think is great. Uh Skochian, Yeah, it's it's it happens man,
Speaker 4: and there's you know, we had great musicians.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: And and let Umboolu was singing in the background with
Speaker 4: my wife Lonnie. And I had this great guitar player
Speaker 4: from the Caribbean, Freddie, who was you know, a groove machine,
Speaker 4: and a couple of the guitar buts. I can't think
Speaker 4: of their names right now, but Freddie used to every
Speaker 4: morning I'd come in when we were doing the album.
Speaker 4: I said, Freddy, how you feeling? He'd see everything is everything?
Speaker 4: Say that every day? Uh? But I know I loved
Speaker 4: working with you. We traveled, we did concerts together and
Speaker 4: had a great time. It was all always you know, fresh,
Speaker 4: it was always lively.
Speaker 1: You did one studio album, one live album.
Speaker 4: We did exactly that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, studio album came first, and we did we recorded
Speaker 4: our concerts and they're both good. They're both good albums.
Speaker 4: And some unusual players. Guang Wa from Butswana was playing
Speaker 4: trombone and man, this guy sounded like a wild element
Speaker 4: elephant and he just had a whole different concept for
Speaker 4: playing jazz. So it was really it was fun playing
Speaker 4: with them. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I guess I'd be remiss if we didn't mention also
Speaker 1: Billy Preston recording for the label who of course you
Speaker 1: know Steve and I are are We can go on
Speaker 1: and on about the artists that have been on the label.
Speaker 1: I'm also forgetting that this Max Pistols at one point,
Speaker 1: and I want to know, I do want to know
Speaker 1: what that week was like. Uh, but who are your
Speaker 1: just in your general you're you're, you're, you're starting five?
Speaker 1: Who were the five artists that you're like, I'm so
Speaker 1: proud that I've had them on the label.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you who comes to mind first is Kat Stevens.
Speaker 1: A little bit? What about Cat was just.
Speaker 4: A real talent. I mean he just had he oosed talent.
Speaker 4: He was him and a guitar, his passion, he was
Speaker 4: something special. Of course, the the uh, the police, those
Speaker 4: those three guys far I mean one, two, three, It
Speaker 4: sounded like seven eight guys army. Yeah. And I remember
Speaker 4: seeing it at the Whiskey you Go Go in l
Speaker 4: A and thinking, wow, that's a good sound. And then
Speaker 4: Sting was jumping around the stage like he was on
Speaker 4: a pogo stick. And they were all fine musicians, really
Speaker 4: good musicians. And of course when Sting went off by himself.
Speaker 4: You know, that was a whole other dimension because Sting
Speaker 4: is a is a brilliant guy and a very sensitive,
Speaker 4: emotional and good guy. You know, so he would be
Speaker 4: one Let's see, of course, Ser'sio Mendez and Brazil sixty
Speaker 4: six of course, and Burt Backrack and Janet Jackson. Of course,
Speaker 4: There's so many artists that it'd be hard to nail
Speaker 4: down my top Wheeze.
Speaker 3: Right, Squeeze would be probably in the top five. I'm
Speaker 3: I'm I'm being I'm.
Speaker 1: Trying to make it. He's Suez fan, big Squeeze fan. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but uh and no, there's Super Tramped. There was Frampton,
Speaker 1: there was.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well Frampton is another guy. Man. This guy, you know,
Speaker 4: he was really a good looking kid. When you know
Speaker 4: he recorded Oh Baby, I Love You right that thing.
Speaker 4: But he was one hell of a good guitar player.
Speaker 4: The guy could really play, and then you know he
Speaker 4: had that look and he was a really good artist
Speaker 4: and a gentleman. I mean, I tried to surround myself
Speaker 4: with artists that really had a nice vibe. I can't.
Speaker 4: I couldn't hang with the sex miristles. I mean, that
Speaker 4: was just something that was going against my grain?
Speaker 1: Whose idea was it to introduce it? I mean you
Speaker 1: you do acknowledge that they're culturally relevant.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, but.
Speaker 1: You know whose idea was it to sign them? And
Speaker 1: whose idea was it to drop them two weeks later?
Speaker 4: Well it was I guess that came out of the
Speaker 4: office in London. But uh, the.
Speaker 1: Like, did you do? You? Are you? Because I can't
Speaker 1: think of any artists that you have that have been controversial?
Speaker 1: But did you not see that the controversy of offending
Speaker 1: the world could be a thing that can also move
Speaker 1: units and as long as long as they're talking about this,
Speaker 1: that's all that is.
Speaker 4: No, I didn't care about that stuff. It's uh. I
Speaker 4: didn't like the energy that they brought to our lot.
Speaker 4: To tell you the truth, I passed that on. But
Speaker 4: no I didn't. I don't. I don't get that that
Speaker 4: that that doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's crazy. Has there any been an artist
Speaker 1: that you were in pursuit of that you almost had?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: That who? Who's like? Your your three regrets? Like, I
Speaker 1: really wish I had them more?
Speaker 4: Well, the number one would be the Beatles.
Speaker 1: You had a chance to sign the Beatles ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can say that and I'll say it to ship.
Speaker 4: Okay. Yeah, well, you know everyone had a chance because
Speaker 4: they were like going around to U get some distribution
Speaker 4: deal and blah blah blah. So anyways, I don't know
Speaker 4: if we had a door into getting them, but yeah,
Speaker 4: I think they were available around that time we started. Okay,
Speaker 4: so yeah, Prince, what I heard those STAPs? I said, man,
Speaker 4: let's sign this guy. There is something happening here. And
Speaker 4: my partner had lunch with him and his manager and
Speaker 4: he told me that he was like, didn't have any charisma,
Speaker 4: that he was very quiet and very reserved. He didn't think.
Speaker 4: Then all of a sudden, you know, people were offering
Speaker 4: them all sorts of money, and Warner Brothers offered him,
Speaker 4: you know, eight zillion dollars. So we passed on them.
Speaker 4: But I knew this guy was going to be an artist.
Speaker 1: He was an artist, wow, based on charisma, because I
Speaker 1: would think that if you're eccentric, when you see eccentric artists,
Speaker 1: then Matt to me is the sign of they're going
Speaker 1: to make it. Because I don't know any artists that's
Speaker 1: just all that combative. Do you show me a compatible,
Speaker 1: friendly artist, I'll show you someone that's not at the
Speaker 1: top of the.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I agree with you. But you know, the
Speaker 4: people were throwing around these big companies, big corporations. You know,
Speaker 4: we were just a we were just a partnership. And
Speaker 4: you throw around a couple million bucks to an artist
Speaker 4: and you make a mistake.
Speaker 3: Hey, your entry.
Speaker 4: You couldn't be in trouble.
Speaker 1: So that was monst You have a chance.
Speaker 4: With h Well, I think most of the other artists
Speaker 4: all worked out. You know, we had some great jazz artists.
Speaker 4: Stan Getz recorded for us, Paul Desmond, Jerry Mulligan, Willie Bobo.
Speaker 4: Of course, Wes Montgomery was on CTI West was you know,
Speaker 4: he was he was something special. You know that that
Speaker 4: sound of his you know, I thought it was like, wow,
Speaker 4: what a magical sound.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I was doing this television show and Wes was on
Speaker 4: the show. I was the MC and I was waiting
Speaker 4: for Wes to come in for the rehearsal, wondering you
Speaker 4: know what he used as a setup. And he came
Speaker 4: in from with a little Fender guitar amplifier that was all.
Speaker 4: It was small, it was, you know, filled with cobwebs.
Speaker 4: In the back was dusty and funky, and he plugged
Speaker 4: in and banged. There was there, and there was that
Speaker 4: magic sound. So there there again. You know, it's it's
Speaker 4: all the sound comes from inside the artist. It's not
Speaker 4: the instrument. It's that sound that they want to hear,
Speaker 4: and that's the sound comes out.
Speaker 1: Okay. So in eighty when you well, seventy nine when
Speaker 1: you did Rise, which you know brought you back to
Speaker 1: the forefront, were you surprised at all by the success
Speaker 1: of it? And in the reception?
Speaker 4: This ribes was recorded live in the studio. I played
Speaker 4: the horn if we're doing the track, and.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm laughing at one reason. I'm sorry whenever
Speaker 1: that breakdown happens. Yeah, I'm a DJ and my monitor
Speaker 1: speakers allowed as hell, So of course you know when
Speaker 1: that breakdown happens and you guys are like laughing at
Speaker 1: each other in the background.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was at it. Obviously.
Speaker 1: I always look at my MC guy because I think
Speaker 1: he's I'm always looking at him like, why are you
Speaker 1: talking on the microphone, and he's like, that's not me,
Speaker 1: that's the record. And it happens every time I spend
Speaker 1: that record.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's a really, really good record, and when
Speaker 4: I was I think it was the third take listening
Speaker 4: to the playback in the studio and I got goosebumps.
Speaker 4: I said, Wow, this could be a big record. This
Speaker 4: has something. And I remember walking up behind Julius Wector,
Speaker 4: who was playing marimba on on the cut. I said, ma'am,
Speaker 4: what do you think, Julius? He says, I don't dig it.
Speaker 4: What's wrong with it? Yeah? You know he said, you
Speaker 4: know he couldn't handle that boom boom boom forward to
Speaker 4: the floor. You know that bothered him.
Speaker 1: He thought you were trying to go too much disco.
Speaker 4: I don't think you know. What I learned from Sam
Speaker 4: Cook was to be an audience to my music. I
Speaker 4: don't when I'm recording, I don't listen to the trumpet player.
Speaker 4: I don't listen to anything but the overall feeling. If
Speaker 4: the overall feeling strikes me, I'm in. If the overall
Speaker 4: feeling doesn't strike me, I try to do something to
Speaker 4: make it work. But Rise had that feeling, I don't know,
Speaker 4: there was something about it. And you know it didn't
Speaker 4: start out like that. My nephew Randy Badass out but
Speaker 4: wrote wrote it.
Speaker 1: With the drummer.
Speaker 4: Right, No, he's not a musician. He wrote it with
Speaker 4: the with the Andy Armor and they had but they
Speaker 4: wanted to do it as a disco. It was originally
Speaker 4: at one hundred and twenty beats per minute, and I said,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, no man, this is a nice melody.
Speaker 4: Let's slow it down. And we finally slowed it down
Speaker 4: to one hundred beets per minute. I said, you know,
Speaker 4: every now and then people want to dance together. Maybe
Speaker 4: this is the chance because I just didn't want to
Speaker 4: make disco music.
Speaker 1: Very wise moves on your choice. How did you feel
Speaker 1: about Biggie's resurgence of it?
Speaker 4: And well, you know, obviously it's a good record and
Speaker 4: it was a huge record. But I'm not crazy about
Speaker 4: people taking your stuff. I think it just shows that
Speaker 4: they don't have the creative to do something themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, yeah, I mean there's a generation
Speaker 1: of Yeah, absolutely, Rise will now last forever in people's memories.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I love it. I love the checks that
Speaker 4: come in from that too.
Speaker 1: I got I gotta say that of your entire song book,
Speaker 1: Root one on one is I will probably go on
Speaker 1: record and say, and I've never done this, this is
Speaker 1: probably my favorite song of all time.
Speaker 4: All right, I'll give you some other ones to think about.
Speaker 4: But the Root one one is good. I did that
Speaker 4: album with one Carlos Calderone, famous Spanish composer, arranger overall
Speaker 4: good guy. Rest is soul be passed about four or
Speaker 4: five years ago and Jose Quintana, the two of us
Speaker 4: produced that record and Root one on one is definitely
Speaker 4: a good one. But if you listen to other a
Speaker 4: couple other ones on there.
Speaker 1: Well, I love the whole Fandango record, Yeah, the Fandemic.
Speaker 1: I felt that was a return to your element, did
Speaker 1: you because the groove based stuff of the Beyond record,
Speaker 1: and I forgot what came out in eighty one, the
Speaker 1: album after Beyond, but it was Fandango was sort of
Speaker 1: like a return to form where.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no it was. It was a good one and
Speaker 4: one on one it is one of my favorite songs
Speaker 4: as well. But I was all set to do a
Speaker 4: world tour with that and then I got hepatitis and
Speaker 4: that I'll put the cabbage on it, so that that
Speaker 4: record didn't receive the attention that it could have. But
Speaker 4: there are some other records that I did. I think
Speaker 4: I don't have to think about that since you've labeled
Speaker 4: that as your favorite.
Speaker 1: Well, it's just for me.
Speaker 5: It's it's saying he knows about fifty five million songs,
Speaker 5: so that's saying something.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you the record we were doing last
Speaker 4: night that we you know, didn't really do the whole thing,
Speaker 4: but rotation. If you listen to that, rotation, rotations are
Speaker 4: really good. It's a good feel.
Speaker 1: Well, all your stuff is good feeling. Actually, well, there
Speaker 1: was an album you made in eighty five that, uh,
Speaker 1: all I know is that when you promoted it on
Speaker 1: Soul Train, you had a young Lenny Kravitz on keyboards
Speaker 1: back when he was a Romeo Blue.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That's how I knew him as Romeo. He was
Speaker 4: used to rehearsing our studio CE and he was introduced
Speaker 4: to me as Romeo and I thought of him as
Speaker 4: Romeo talented guy.
Speaker 1: Was he ever a part of your touring grew or
Speaker 1: he just did that promotional appearance on soul He just
Speaker 1: did that, Okay, Because I was going to say when
Speaker 1: when the drummer introduced himself, he said, yeah, not badass,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wait, did he just curse on
Speaker 1: Soul Train? So that's why I was trying to make
Speaker 1: the connection. Oh yeah, if your drummer was badass with
Speaker 1: jam and Lewis and keep your Eye on Me.
Speaker 4: Well, those guys were really original. They really had a
Speaker 4: flair for picking out the right song, the right grooves,
Speaker 4: and and I flew to Minneapolis to record. They said
Speaker 4: they had this great song for me. And they played
Speaker 4: the song and I said, well, what's the title? They said, Sausage.
Speaker 4: I said, no, man, I don't think so. Yeah, well
Speaker 4: that was that was keep your Eye on Me. That
Speaker 4: was the original title they had, was sausage. But these
Speaker 4: guys are good, you know, they're they have a great
Speaker 4: sense of humor. I was doing this interview for one
Speaker 4: of the news channels and the phone was ringing rang
Speaker 4: in the studio, and Jimmy picked it up, said, Sinatra
Speaker 4: will tell him. I'm busy. I'm working with herb Robert
Speaker 4: right now. Will you tell Sinatra call him back?
Speaker 1: You know? Oh man, that was kind of cool. I
Speaker 1: also love the way that you guys kind of did
Speaker 1: the Janet Jackson trick on the Diamonds video.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to know. I guess I would have
Speaker 1: to ask her how easy is it to say no
Speaker 1: to your boss.
Speaker 4: I think she was doing she was someplace else in
Speaker 4: the world. But all right, it all worked out. It
Speaker 4: was kind of a fun thing to do.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it because I was waiting for it, because
Speaker 1: I swore that was her in the limousine, the way
Speaker 1: that was lit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, the little kid that it.
Speaker 1: Turns out to be an eight year old kid. So
Speaker 1: in eighty okay, in eighty nine, you guys decided to
Speaker 1: sell the label. At what point, like, how did you well?
Speaker 4: I was into selling a forty nine percent, That's what
Speaker 4: I wanted to do, and then keep fifty one and
Speaker 4: keep control of the company. They kept upping the ante,
Speaker 4: you know, and it reached a point where I thought,
Speaker 4: maybe it's time. You know, the Internet was coming, the
Speaker 4: Internet was making noise. I'm not saying that I saw
Speaker 4: what was going to happen with file sharing, but there
Speaker 4: was something about it that said, maybe the time is right.
Speaker 4: So when they finally made this nice offer and they
Speaker 4: wanted to buy the whole company, we agreed. And I'll
Speaker 4: tell you what the interesting part of that whole thing was.
Speaker 4: Jerry and I started the company in nineteen sixty two
Speaker 4: on a handshake we never signed any contract together. Lots
Speaker 4: of millions of dollars went through the doors in various ways,
Speaker 4: and we ended up signing over to Polydor and that
Speaker 4: was the first time we ever signed a contract together.
Speaker 4: And we concluded with a big hug and Jerry is still
Speaker 4: one of my dear friends.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah, so you're trying to figure out a
Speaker 1: way for us to remember the company, Steve, Oh no, no, no, anyway, well, her,
Speaker 1: I thank you very much for sharing a story on
Speaker 1: Quest of Supreme. There's so much.
Speaker 4: There's more, there's more, there's part two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we gotta do a part two. I have one
Speaker 3: more question. Okay, what does your record collection look like?
Speaker 4: It's not very extensive, you know, because are you asking
Speaker 4: for that CTI No, I was curious.
Speaker 3: I'm just curious a man like this, you know, I
Speaker 3: have a few.
Speaker 4: I have some classical music that I like a lot.
Speaker 4: I'm crazy about ravel, you know, Daphnis and Chloe is
Speaker 4: one of the things that I love to listen to
Speaker 4: when I feel a little down. The fourth Movement knocks
Speaker 4: me down, knocks me out, you know. I love Miles
Speaker 4: like all of the musicians, and Charlie Parker was the guy.
Speaker 4: He was on another planet. He was doing things that
Speaker 4: will resonate for years to come. I love Paul Desmond.
Speaker 4: Jerry Mulligan was a dear friend of mine. Stan Getz
Speaker 4: and I were like brothers. Stan was a guy that
Speaker 4: I really really, really really really had a feel for
Speaker 4: it because he was He always just said I never
Speaker 4: played a note that I didn't mean. You know, I
Speaker 4: love that about musicians. And we were so close, you know.
Speaker 4: He said, do you want he wanted to give me lessons?
Speaker 4: I said no, I asked him, I said, how about
Speaker 4: giving me some bebop lessons? I never played with Charlie
Speaker 4: Parker and Coltrane and all those guys you played with.
Speaker 4: And he said sure. So I'm in my studio with
Speaker 4: Stan and I said, do you think I should work
Speaker 4: on these two five one chords in every key? Which
Speaker 4: is page one of Berkeley School of Music and all
Speaker 4: the other you know, Manhattan School. That's what they teach,
Speaker 4: you know, that's just basic. Do you think I should
Speaker 4: work on those in all keys, these two five one chords?
Speaker 4: He said, what's that? Which was like a real man.
Speaker 4: These guys didn't think like that. They were playing from
Speaker 4: another point of view. They were looking at music from
Speaker 4: another angle, and you know, the music's tried to break
Speaker 4: it down what these great jazz musicians were doing. Uh
Speaker 4: So it was let's see, there's another part of that
Speaker 4: Stan story. I wanted to tell you. Oh yeah, yeah, so,
Speaker 4: I mean yeah, So he gave me some lessons and
Speaker 4: we talked about jazz. And here's a pro. I said,
Speaker 4: tell me that you what do you what are you
Speaker 4: thinking about when you're playing? Because I did this record
Speaker 4: with him. There's a beautiful record I did called a
Speaker 4: Pascionado and one of them the songs was a waltz
Speaker 4: for Stan and he played this thing. It was gorgeous,
Speaker 4: and I said, what are you thinking about when you're
Speaker 4: playing something like that? He says, well, I think about
Speaker 4: that I in front of the whaling wall in Jerusalem
Speaker 4: and I'm dobvining. I mean, this guy was. He was fabulous, man,
Speaker 4: he was. He had an extraordinary life. He was you know,
Speaker 4: went through all the drugs imaginable to man, and then
Speaker 4: the last four years of his life he was on
Speaker 4: macrobiotics and he had cancer and you know, so he
Speaker 4: had a kind of a split personality when it was
Speaker 4: all when he was on drugs and one of the
Speaker 4: musicians that it was either al Coon or Zoot Siems
Speaker 4: when they asked him, you know what was stand like?
Speaker 4: And he said he was the best bunch of guys
Speaker 4: I've ever met. But I loved him and he was beautiful.
Speaker 4: He was a real, real good friend.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, in closing, we had to say that you
Speaker 1: have a new album out, yeah, music Volume one, I believe,
Speaker 1: and hopefully there will be.
Speaker 3: A Christmas album coming to you.
Speaker 4: Well, there is a Christmas album. It's called The Christmas
Speaker 4: Wish and it's with orchestra and choir and it's it's
Speaker 4: darn good, if I must say so myself.
Speaker 1: Well, you're her a man, the best come to of
Speaker 1: all time.
Speaker 4: Well, you know something, I think, if you don't believe
Speaker 4: in what you're doing, why should you anyone else believe
Speaker 4: even what you're doing?
Speaker 1: Those are wise words. Well on behalf of Sugar, Steve
Speaker 1: and the Missing Alumni and Court Love Supreme. This is
Speaker 1: Quest Love signing you off. Thank you for listening, Thank
Speaker 1: you her Palfer Pleasure again, thank you for coming to
Speaker 1: the show. And I will see you guys on the
Speaker 1: next go round only or on Pandora quest Love Supreme
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced
Speaker 1: by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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