00:00:00 Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. 00:00:09 Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme. 00:00:13 Speaker 1: I'm your host Quest Love Supreme. 00:00:15 Speaker 2: With me, we have the strongest, the strongest team in the land, of course, Team Supreme. 00:00:23 Speaker 3: Are you walking on the moon right now, Sugar Steve? 00:00:26 Speaker 4: That's correct, Yes, the moon. 00:00:28 Speaker 1: That's where you're at. Okay, you're walking on the moon. We also gotta lie you with us. 00:00:33 Speaker 5: What up, Quest Love Supreme? How are you doing? I said, is this the name now? 00:00:39 Speaker 1: Oh? 00:00:39 Speaker 5: Because she was like, welcome to Quest Love Supreme. I am Quest Love Supreme. 00:00:42 Speaker 3: Yes you are, and you. 00:00:44 Speaker 2: Are I I embodied theing tired. 00:00:48 Speaker 3: Sorry that's what it is. 00:00:52 Speaker 2: Sorry, Uh, I know he is working extremely hard. Future episodes. We're getting ready for another round of in person episodes for the for course of Supreme. 00:01:03 Speaker 1: So you know, oh yeah, l a edition. Yes, it's going to be exciting. Fon tikeolo, what's going on? 00:01:10 Speaker 5: Man? 00:01:12 Speaker 1: New bombs on this? 00:01:12 Speaker 3: Man? 00:01:13 Speaker 6: I gotta say, yeah, man, thank you? 00:01:15 Speaker 1: Where did this come from? What you know? You gotta you gotta like me? 00:01:18 Speaker 6: Where? 00:01:19 Speaker 3: Where where did this? 00:01:20 Speaker 6: Uh? 00:01:20 Speaker 1: The spark of an idea come from? 00:01:22 Speaker 6: Who? 00:01:22 Speaker 7: And I you know, we've just been for the last couple of years, been working really hard, like on the documentary. 00:01:27 Speaker 6: Uh. 00:01:28 Speaker 7: And then also you know, playing a block party made in Durham, uh October seventh. But uh but nah man, we just I missed the chair, bro, I missed being in the chair, I missed recording and so were just like, yo, let's just go cook up, like we just wanted to have some fun and just you know, let them go. Those records they're out now. Wish me well, Glory Glory is out on all platforms. But those records ain't even they ain't even three weeks o. Maybe a little over two weeks though, like they fresh fresh, we just. 00:01:54 Speaker 3: Finish Wow fresh fresh otter other all right, that's. 00:01:57 Speaker 1: Just exciting to me. 00:01:57 Speaker 7: That's more exciting and recording something and where for like you know, however long making the year cycle to get it. 00:02:04 Speaker 1: Nah, bro, cook it up, let it go. 00:02:06 Speaker 2: That's what's up, yo. Today is going to be an awesome episode. I will say that for the Wow six, for the last six decades, our Guests has literally been the heartbeat of Jersey City's finest musical unit. Jersey City is probably the most diverse unit they pretty much changed music numerous numerous times. Kind of going through a metamorphosis period really not afforded to any artist, maybe close to Miles Davis in terms of going through different phases. Of course, you know their late sixties early seventies soul phase. 00:02:52 Speaker 1: And then we got the. 00:02:54 Speaker 2: Mid seventies funk phase and then exploding into the disco scene, adjusting to it well enough to guard them a Grammy Album of the Year, not for their participation in the inescapable Mammoth soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever and then riding off successfully into the eighties with just an unprecedented streak of really perfect dance pop classics. In my opinion, this unit known as Cool and the Gang is the dream as far as legacies can turn like, dabbling in many genres, and of course, with this being the hip hop's fiftieth anniversary and our brother Lovlily known as Funky George being part of the unit that's probably the most sampled I didn't realize that Coolnan Gang is the most sampled band in hip hop. That's an honor, so that means that they also changed hip hop. What we have him here today. We hope to go. 00:03:56 Speaker 1: Through his history and his legacy. 00:03:58 Speaker 2: The One and only Funky George, Funky George Brown of Cool the Gang. 00:04:03 Speaker 1: Welcome to course, loves degree, How you doing. 00:04:05 Speaker 6: Nice to be here, quess. 00:04:07 Speaker 1: Great to have you. 00:04:08 Speaker 3: Where are you talking to us right now? 00:04:09 Speaker 1: From where are you? 00:04:12 Speaker 6: Woodland Hills, California? The valley? Okay, you know Calabasa's Tasannah that area Woodland. 00:04:20 Speaker 2: Hills, so literally Hollywood Swing. And how how long have you been out there? 00:04:25 Speaker 6: I've been here thirty seven years? You know. My band members would actually say when you're coming back home, when you're going back to Jersey, you know, So it was used to be a running joke. But love it out here. 00:04:38 Speaker 2: Right before the pandemic, we were privy to a series of animated shorts that basically told the story of the band's origins and their very beginning before they got a record deal, these little animated minustitials, and to me that was one of the most at least as as a as a music head, that was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen, because, you know, a lot of the favorites that we grow up with really aren't afforded much information, especially for like groups in the seventies and eighties, like you guys are given the fair level playing field of your you know, your your peers that get access to mainstream press. So I knew nothing about the history of the band. You guys were like rigorously honest about your beginnings. 00:05:30 Speaker 1: I didn't know that. 00:05:31 Speaker 2: You know, when we're talking about Cool in the gang, that Cool was like a leader of a gang. You know, most most most bands I know, starting church and all that stuff. So well, first of all, where where were you born? I assume that is Jersey City. I don't know, I could be wrong. Okay, that's where you were born, Yes, sir, so you were first generation Northeast family. Most most soul acts I know come from the South and then they migrate up north. But you were born in Jersey City, Jersey City, okay, So could you just give me a description of what Jersey City was like for you in your childhood, at least for those formative years before you started discovering your talent. 00:06:14 Speaker 6: You know, we're going back one hundred and fifty years, you know, so it's kind of hard for me to remember. 00:06:20 Speaker 8: You know what you can't remember the blacksmith shorting Norse the shoes, right, right right, you know, and the guy's pumping the water when it was a fire so long ago. 00:06:34 Speaker 6: But Sugar, he's in jerseys He's in Steve Right. Hoboken. Jersey City and Hoboken were very alike at that time, Jersey City being the second largest city in New Jersey, it was a basically a working class town, quiet working class town. I got. 00:06:58 Speaker 2: I got to put more respect on it because I think, you know, I mean, I'm not a New Yorker, even though I've been here long enough to kind of claim it. I think I should be here for twenty years before I say I'm a New Yorker. But you know, a lot of times, even as a Philadelphia, Jersey's just like over there, you know, from New York, Jersey, Jersey's over there. 00:07:19 Speaker 6: The amount of talent that came out of Jersey City and New Jersey is a mind boggling. I mean, you got count Basie. It's just for one like Sonata, you know, so on. 00:07:33 Speaker 5: This is Jersey City, Jersey, This is just Jersey. 00:07:37 Speaker 6: But out of Jersey City too, you got people like Nick Adams, Brenda Ver, Carol Coolerni, Gang, Roy Hamilton. It just goes on and on. 00:07:48 Speaker 3: Roy Hamilton, Roy Hamilton's don't let go Roy Hamilton. 00:07:51 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:07:51 Speaker 6: Yeah. So there's a pluffer of talents that came out of Jersey City, proper, the Duprees, the spell Buy okay, yeah, because you know I know those names and those you know, like if you if you count Duke by himself, I mean, we wouldn't be playing anything if it was not for a Duke Ellington, you know. So it's it's amazing, no fronk snosa. You know they came with it. 00:08:23 Speaker 1: How old were you when you discovered your talent for the drums? 00:08:28 Speaker 6: I think it discovered me. It discovered me because you know I stop on the table with spoons and forks. You know, I just took it to the next level, just intuitively. I just took it and said, hey, you know, let me go take some lessons. But mind you, we were so poor that we can only afford a couple of lessons. That's three dollars a lesson. So there was a gentleman named Joe to play behind the sirolls. I went to him up on Newark Avenue in Jersey City, and he like, sit down here, it's a practice pad. I take these sticks, show me something, and it wasn't a massester standing grip, wasn't a match grip. And he said, hey, you're you're pretty much a natural. And second lesson three bucks and I got the Buddy Rich sixteen Sensor Rudiment Book and took it from there and from that point on it you know, it was like by the time I reached to thirteen fourteen, I met Ronald Bell and Robert Mickens and Ricky Westfield and we started the Jazz Birds because we're all deep into jazz at the time, which is a main foundation of cooling a gang. So John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, Lee Morgan, a Buddy Rich, you know, all the grace at that time. You know, we were into and we'd sit and listen to all those jazz albums. 00:10:08 Speaker 2: So at the time, though, and assuming that this is the early sixties or mid sixties, you know, were you aware of the pop landscape or the soul landscape? 00:10:21 Speaker 6: We were totally aware of, you know, what was happening pop wise and what was happening jazz wise. Because we would do little shrawets and we'd have to play the music of the day. You know, nobody wanted to hear a bag's groove, who do lead? You know, blah blah dah. They didn't want to hear that. The kids. They wanted to hear the hunter gets captured by the games. Boom boom, boom, body bone, a lot of stuff. So we knew that too. 00:10:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say that, you know, for our listeners that don't know that, you know, in the early period of jazz, which was more danceable, then this virtuoso face starts where the music gets faster and it's more about the solos and kind of more about sit down and watch us play as opposed to like us being a wedding band or a jukebox per se. But you know, every one of my heroes and idols in funk music that tells me about their beginnings in jazz. Most of them sort of had a condescending attitude towards soul and pop music. But I know that you guys were younger, so you weren't like looking down on it because you guys were teenagers. But I mean, how common was it for and having heard like especially like the jazz chops on the first two records, you guys were still teenagers. How common was it for teenagers to be that to have that virtuoso level of musicianship during that time period. 00:11:54 Speaker 6: The con words are being virtual. Also, it wasn't common at all, you know. How. Also was that we played almost nightly, and Newark would play at the Blue Note and NewYork would play Tuesday through Sunday nine pm to two am. And what we were playing was all the popular music at that time and behind different artists and Bay owned New Jersey pretty much the same. At the Kenya Club, there are five six acts that we played behind each evening, so we would be getting our pop chart shopping and honing our skills and loving jazz and learning you know, the all the bebop scales and just hanging out that way. So that's how we grew working the clubs nightly and go to school. 00:12:51 Speaker 2: What's the rehearsal process like, because again, you guys were a tight unit and really intricate, which so I assume that lot of rehearsal went behind that, Like, what's the rehearsal schedules like? 00:13:03 Speaker 6: Well, a rehearsal for the the the pop groups was just you know, they come up, they don't want their music done a certain way. Uh, and basically really close to the the record itself. So we pulled that off and keep the arrangements exactly like they were from Motown or you know, or the Atlantic sound. Uh. For what we did as far as jazz was concerned, if we were going to play take five, we sit down and go through it or Milt Jackson's bag's crew. The rehearsal process was easy flow. You know, Clease would take out us on It's pretty ba bas be uh, you know, and in that process also we came up with our own music. Okay, you know, but we would listen to everyone on the scene, pop, jazz, funk, country, and uh. Rehearsals were easy. It's just we come in and say let's do this, and we get at it and it's come out. 00:14:11 Speaker 2: You were such a large, sizeable unit. How are you guys managing like getting to gigs? Like we live in the era now where you know there's a thing called a rider and you know there there are companies that you rent your equipment from. 00:14:28 Speaker 6: But them stock them on, pock them and stock them. Yeah yeah, I don't mean uh no, we are brought in our own equipment, right, We've set it up, We've had our little rehearsal, you see, if everything was on par as far as it working, and we have no no crew whatsoever. Uh. And even in the early days, the beginning, I think we had two guys, Donald Boyce who became the voice, the voice of Jungle Boogie. 00:15:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to say, and. 00:15:08 Speaker 6: Bobby Simms and those two guys who were Riot, you know, So that was it. I mean, you know, now it's a whole different bowl game. 00:15:20 Speaker 5: He said, you were still in school during this time. 00:15:22 Speaker 3: We were going to school, as in they were like fifteen sixteen. 00:15:26 Speaker 6: We were going to school and working in the club. 00:15:28 Speaker 5: Wow, that was what's your parents saying during this time? Were they just supported from the jumper? 00:15:33 Speaker 3: How did that look? 00:15:34 Speaker 6: We had our parents, all of our parents were very close to each other, and it's just like a gut feeling. Like they had the gut feeling so did we. It was just these all children are going to make it. And sure enough, I mean, of course, but we put that time in and they allowed us to do that time. I was also I was playing with other people up in the Catskills and you know, playing blues, you know, with other artists, and so I just learned I used to play with a guy named a gentleman named Duke Washington all over New York City played tennisax He electrified tennis saxophone player, you know, and electrified elect saxophone. So he would say listen, Papa when I played. But that means all the band members come to the stage, you know, because it's something that he's some of that era that we just got fitished talking about, you know, the twelve years of big band and all that. You know, so you hear that, and me being young, I had to stayed a dressing room or outside, and those cold New York nights, I was sitting in the car. Yeah, it was tough, but I think that's how, you know, people horn their skills and you really show the intense, the intensity of the love that you have for the music. Even today we speak of the music. 00:17:12 Speaker 2: You know, how did you avoid the kind of gang mentality that pretty much what it seems like according to those uh those shorts that everyone but your band somehow didn't avoid. 00:17:32 Speaker 6: In the early stages, we were always rehearsing. The gangs in the area. We avoided, we avoided, we were practicing, and myself, I've even had physical fights with some of the gang members who came out of Jamesburg in uh the like you know, like they've called it the King of Jamesburg and he's back in the school yard taking over the schoolyard. You know, these like major gangs. But you see, in my life, I didn't care about anybody being a gang member and if they stepped to me, I'm going to try to knock you out. And what happened was I got I can go in schoolyard and nobody that touching me. 00:18:22 Speaker 5: This is before the martial arts entered your life. That's crazy. 00:18:26 Speaker 6: Well, I'm a second degree black belt mortal. 00:18:28 Speaker 5: Art second black belt. Yes, sir, retrospect. 00:18:32 Speaker 6: Cools gang is uh the leader of the gang, I forgot his name, Eagle, and I came downtown and uh we got into an altercation the same deal because I'm from the midtown, uh from bergen Lafield, Leftian. What I what I did and cool tell the story. I took a bicycle and beat him with a bicycle. 00:18:55 Speaker 1: That was it, Jesus Christ, the survival tactics done. 00:18:59 Speaker 6: That's you got it on you. No more bathering George Brown. 00:19:08 Speaker 2: Wow, that's a okay, I got the answer to that question. I was expecting that one. 00:19:18 Speaker 5: I don't even know what a double black belt is, but I'm I'm impressed. 00:19:22 Speaker 7: At the same time, I don't find out either, So you know, somebody with the bike, I don't think you're gonna have no problems. 00:19:31 Speaker 2: How long was it before you guys solidified your deal with Delight Records? 00:19:37 Speaker 3: And if you can, I mean I've heard. 00:19:40 Speaker 2: A lot about uh, what's his name, Fred fred vicer Rodo, the the president. 00:19:46 Speaker 6: Fred Faro game Figaro. 00:19:51 Speaker 1: So once once overall, can you can you verifire? 00:19:57 Speaker 6: Not if if they were the people you did not play with if. 00:20:03 Speaker 2: I want to know with names like that, and I don't want to play you know, Monolith or Stereotype. 00:20:08 Speaker 3: But were they you know? 00:20:12 Speaker 6: Actually they were very very sweet, good people because if they liked what you were doing, they gave some type of reward for it. Uh, they made sure that things were safe. You can spend time in the studio developing, and they heard it and saw it and knew the degree of talent of the band. But it's just like the bicycle. They they were the bicycle, if you know what I mean. Once we signed with them, they were the bicycle. 00:20:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna ask later about the the the origins of jungle boogey they sort of figure out they will. 00:20:54 Speaker 5: Oh no, I just wondered if they were the bicycle in business too? Were they fair to you guys and. 00:20:59 Speaker 6: They were a bicycle in business as well? 00:21:03 Speaker 2: Okay, I'm only asking that because. 00:21:08 Speaker 1: Robert tells this. 00:21:10 Speaker 2: This crazy story of how how he puts it about how you guys were quote unquote forced to come up with jungle boogie sort of against your will. 00:21:23 Speaker 6: Oh yeah, it was. It was like force. It was mental block time, mental block time for creative music. 00:21:32 Speaker 3: So are you telling me that your version of the story. 00:21:36 Speaker 6: Yeah, it's gonna it's gonna mess with his Okay. We went up to the office of the attorney at the time. Today he's like the number one attorney for the entertainment business in the world. I'm not going to mention his name, right, okay, So, uh, myself, Calise and Coole went up to see him, and I can say what he said though. He said, listen, guys, we need some effing hits. He said, I don't care how much genius you are and how many instruments you play, And he looked at his watch was probably a Patack Philip and said, my wife's waiting for me at the airport. Goodbye, and he walked out. So Dennis went one way. Ronald Cool and myself were walking together and said, we got to come up with something. And sure enough, going to Baggies is not that. I'm quite sure it's not that. Baggies a rehearsal steel in New York or it's like the thirties on the West Side. And we started coming up with this music. Hollywood Swinging was one where Ricky Westfield came and he's had the idea. Then we were over at Holloquin, which is our forty another hearsal studio like forty fifth Street upstairs over Howard Johnson's right, really cheap studio in Manhattan. 00:23:09 Speaker 3: Yeah, where SR used to be. Okay, I said, I know that. 00:23:13 Speaker 6: Is yeah, and we came up with jungle Boogie. We were playing it police it was we had jungle something, but it was Dennis Thomas that came in and when you heard the track, we said we're calling it jungle gym blah blah blah blah blah, and he said, no, man, people are boogie in. Let's call it jungle boogie bingo, done, wrapped up. That's the story. 00:23:42 Speaker 3: Can you verify that? 00:23:43 Speaker 6: Well? 00:23:44 Speaker 2: Kind of what Ronald told me was basically that that the Heads of Delight were sort of like mesmerized by you know what was slowly morphing into to New York dance night culture. Yeah, and they heard soul Makosa, of which you know, I guess either they acquired a copy and was basically like, we won our version of this song, and you guys were like, no, we were serious musicians. 00:24:11 Speaker 1: We're not playing this mumbo jumble. 00:24:14 Speaker 6: Absolutely no, we love so too. But okay, then we're going to bring in other producers and Kalisa and I said, no, they're not, and we went and did. We got funky stuff out of it and all that day, so we got Hollywood's Figle Juger book and funky stuff all in one package. So you can't beat that. 00:24:35 Speaker 5: Khalif Gamble was just telling me because he follows you guys but video. He's a videographer, and he was saying that the rooms that he's seen you guys change with jungle boogie. I'm talking about the whitest, most southern like it just breaks. It's that's the one song that just changes everything. 00:24:53 Speaker 6: Yeah, it changes a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:24:58 Speaker 5: That's especially because it's called jungle boogie. I I think the irony is. 00:25:02 Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's primitive anxiety. 00:25:04 Speaker 6: It's got jazz, it's got the ground rhythms that I was playing and Cool was playing, and you know, and you got that the horns playing contrary motion and you gotta have to go to going down the other way. You know, that's that's uh in jazz. But you had had a lot of classical music when the strings are going one way and then you hear the troubles going down the whole different. It just opens it up, you know. And then you got a guy going you know, which was novel that also made the record what it was, you know what it is still today. 00:25:46 Speaker 2: So can you also settle a question and dying to ask you guys or someone from the organization? I mean, yeah, one could say that because all the albums were made at the same studio. Of course they sound similar, but were at least with that first album, the Keep on Bumping album, Were you guys really the Cage's No, So the CAGs were their own self contained unit and. 00:26:16 Speaker 6: Their own self contained unit. What happened was Calice was producing them. So you're gonna get you're gonna get a little that cool in the gang's sold. Uh with us. We we've changed studios. We're at the House of Music in Jersey. Uh. The first records were done across the street from the studio fifty four. The Beatles recorded there, Dion Warwick, burke back, everybody recorded there. Okay, so you know we did mix studios. But keep on bumping. You got to keep on bumping. Yeah, yeah, right, that was all done by with a mere, a mere beyond a mere. Yeah. 00:26:59 Speaker 1: Is he a bell as well? 00:27:00 Speaker 3: Is he related to the bells? 00:27:01 Speaker 6: They're brothers. 00:27:03 Speaker 3: Yeah, we're all of you Muslim, are just the just between Ronald and Ronald Cool. 00:27:11 Speaker 6: A mirror Klader Smith? Well, we'll Muslim. 00:27:17 Speaker 5: Uh. 00:27:17 Speaker 6: But that that didn't get in the way when we did our prayer circle at night, I mean before the concert. Didn't matter if you were saying, you know, humdu Allah or prays God. It didn't matter, you know, because we were going out to do the thing and make people happy, and we all understand that God is God. 00:27:38 Speaker 5: We should probably mention when we're talking about Ronald and you call him Calice. The people who are watching and listening, well. 00:27:49 Speaker 6: Back in the I call him both Colise, Ronald Ronald Bell, you know Ronnie, you know. But all that faded away when we got ready to pray and go ready, get ready to get on stage. It didn't affect it didn't affect who and what we were, because you know, Calice and Cool and chall would develop psychologically enough to understand that, you know, there's only one God, and God is God. What we call them right water. 00:28:25 Speaker 2: Marius White shares a story about three last days in time earth wind Fire maybe pre head to the sky earth wind Fire. You know, occasionally they would meet, like in different audiences that weren't familiar with them and either get a cold reception or you know, just get outright boot or whatnot. Marius White tells these stories of like coming to Philadelphia and you know, literally getting the worst treatment from the audiences. But are you guys meeting at all like any sort of indifference or like, how are you guys handling different territories that's outside of your tri state area comfort zone. 00:29:08 Speaker 6: Well, you know, at that point we were we would play what the music of that time, so it was accepted because we were playing what the people wanted to hear in the VFW lodge that we're playing, you know, or some high school homecoming. So we we we uh, just like the old days, people say, look out, see what the audience looks at, you know, and you know exactly where to go. So we so that's what we uh, that's what we did. You know, we played what they wanted to hear. We would enforce anything on the people. Uh, you know, if it's God, if it's Temptations, or if it was the the old they're gonna that's what they're gonna get. Because we know, we know how to work an audience. And that don't mean that in a derogative way. And still today we know how to work an audience because we go out. We look, you say, in a robotic hey, take that out of there, take this song out. Take this song the song because they will give a lull right or working with an orchestra, then we'll say, well let's put this in because it'll keep it it. It gives it that feel, it gives it the tone, it gives it the tone of where where we're coming from. So we'll add something that's jazzy jazz er. Yeah, so it's always been like that. The only time we got like who these guys is we were in East Germany and that the album, But it was all these dance remixes and that's what they were hearing on radio. That's what we got up to play. They were like, huh. Then we used to the right the whole the dancers. That was it, And so that's all awkward and bad. But I presume today the same people they've caught up. But that was it. That was the only time full disclosure. 00:31:25 Speaker 5: I'm gonna just speak for all the folks. Depending on how old you are, you all you have a dummy moment with cooling the game. I feel like people who were maybe my generations, like eighties, eighties, nineties babies, it's a moment when you heard somemmer madness and you were like, oh, so, I mean, yeah, can. 00:31:42 Speaker 6: I can I relate a story about someone? We had a jungle boogie and of course I went up charts and so we put our spirit of the boogie and in summer, and I think we're in Illinois. So this jockey turned it over because it was a B side. There's the bat side of the spirit of the Boogie. He turned it over and the rest is history. I mean, we had two songs going up the charts together. That's unusual, you know, go especially then, was. 00:32:17 Speaker 1: This shocking that something that mellow kind of caught on? 00:32:22 Speaker 6: Absolutely, we were like okay with the two chords, right, it was shocking, the two chords and the wonderful Calisa's wonderful solo. 00:32:31 Speaker 2: I have another question about Summer Madness. Did you guys feel any sort of way about Bill Conti's score of Rocky because there is there's a song on that soundtrack called Reflections, which is is damn near a summer madness. Well, I believe in the movie he runs and works out the summer madness, but when you buy the soundtrack he does, right, But when you buy the soundtrack, there's a song called Reflections, which is basically summer madness just half a chord off. Like the way the way that we write songs that It's Tonight Show, or the way that I believe that the Barcads wrote their songs was basically, put a song on and get it derivative, just like that song, and change one little part so that you don't get sued or whatever but it's it's so do. 00:33:25 Speaker 6: The balcas are like that, but you're talking about what goes to his room he puts on that little single, right, this is you know, somemmer madness. You know, But but. 00:33:36 Speaker 2: Did you guys feel so a way like we're even aware that Bill Conti had made his version of summer madness on that rocky soundcheck at all? 00:33:44 Speaker 6: You know, I don't think we were aware of. But we cool on a gang. There's always been this real high spiritual group and we really are. And if somebody does something, we don't say, we don't get lit just and say, okay, we're going to sue this person. As the years I've gone by, we've been rewarded and awarded with so many different we haven't gotten Oscar yet, but I know that that that's coming, and the Hall of Fame is coming, and so will the Kennedy Awards and the what is it Rogers and Hammerstein or one of those. It's coming. It is, so we don't we've We've never been the type to excuse my friends the bitch that we didn't have this and this one got that. We just move on, let's write some music, and it's it's still it's still like that. 00:34:46 Speaker 3: I always wanted to know. 00:34:47 Speaker 2: At least the first three records were produced by Gene rad I assume that Gene was a house producer of Motown, Okay of Motown, and he came over to the the light later. What was what was Gene like as a producer, because later you guys started producing yourselves, But what were those first initial years like. 00:35:10 Speaker 6: Gene was a bona fide genius. Down down to the sound of the band and bell sound. That's where we recorded. That was the studio. That's where everybody recorded the Beatles at that time. And back then the studios were so stark looking. Today's studios are groovy with the light. But we the board then had the big pan pots, you know. But Jeene played piano. His father played for Coody Williams, so he did a big great musical background. Gene was the producer on Cool Jerk really Oh yeah, he produced and had written a number of things. Him and George Clinton. George Clinton came out of Motown as well. There were more tone writers. 00:36:02 Speaker 2: I'm just finding out that he's also father of Penny Ford of Snap and Sharon Red. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well I know that Sharon Red and Penny Ford are our sisters are half sisters or that sort of thing. 00:36:16 Speaker 6: So, and Sharon was an actress big time. She was in here back in the day, you know, Regina was. He wanted a new sound and we had that jazzy sound. Uh, and we'd go at rehearsal. He'd go and manipulate the amps, you know, you know, the right the tones and things how it should sound. And uh, even with me, even some of the breaks, he would saying, Now, George, it is simple. You could He went, prop, w do that's all I want there, and leve it alone. Get the floor top prop you get the floor Tom resonating. And he came up with the idea before the Jackson's when it was a program was Alison. It was Soul Okay, one of the early black programs, and he had us, he had the filters. I guess you can call it of calling a Gangs Sunday cartoon show back then. Really really it's a b Yeah. Back then I think this show was called soul Okay. Yeah. 00:37:27 Speaker 1: Wow, I never knew that. 00:37:28 Speaker 6: In black and white and all that all that good stuff, right. It was. The stage was so small they had to put me on the side. 00:37:38 Speaker 2: You know, as I said at the top of the show, what's really notable about you guys is the metamorphosis of the group, you know, starting off jazz, adding more soul to it, and then you know, and to this day, like as as a soul trained historian, I credit uh, you Guys's second appearance on Soul Train as a pivotal moment of that show. It's the moment where even Don Cornelius admits to you guys that he never heard Jungle Bookie. Like he basically said that, you know, he got the forty five the day before and he heard funky stuff and thought that nothing ever is going to top funky stuff. So I don't need to listen to the B side, and you guys do Jungle Bookie. And I noticed, as someone who's studied every episode of that show, you know, the first three and a half years of that show was really sort of riding off the cotails of Don's connects in Chicago and you know, the middle of America. So like a lot of Curtis, a lot of you know, like Chicago era groups, some of them like older And what makes it notable when you guys come on the show the second time and you do funky stuff and you do jungle Bookie. 00:38:57 Speaker 1: It's as if the kids. 00:39:00 Speaker 2: Only see themselves because there's a group that's their age or younger than them playing a different type of music that's not really based on motown or based on James Brown. It's like it's it's clearly like a marking of new territory and then introduction of funk and the way they're dancing is like their life depends on it. Like I wish I had a song to compare it to now, Like if you put the song on the moment now and the audience just goes crazy. But what is it like or how jarring is it to adjust to different genres, because you know, jumping from funk to disco was such a hard adjustment, and you guys caught a lot of flack, Like I was raised by uncles that was like, well I remember my Ara Cool mccan, you know whatever, So can you can you talk about what it's like to either sink or swim in a time period in which a lot of your contemporaries are not trying to swim and they're sinking and you guys are like, nope, we got to go on and move. So can you talk about the period at least that everybody's dancing right before celebration at disco period you guys have to go through. 00:40:12 Speaker 6: Well, we've always been eclectic. You listen to the music and it's thread over the years. You say, well, they're not following the scheme of what most artists do. This is the albums all sound the same. Everything sounds the same. We were in London, Coalise and I and we had an interview and he said, you guys got Cajon's and we said, what are you talking about? He said, you don't stay in one niche. You're like, you do this, you do that, and he said most artists they want to save their careers and they're staying at one niche. We've always played what we felt like playing. We wrote what we felt like writing. So in those trends transitional periods, it didn't affect us. It maybe affected the Light records because the sales weren't there, but it didn't affect us and regards to because we weren't making that much money anyway. But so we just were on the down in the trenches trying to make it work and putting things together. But we've always written different styles of music, so coming from that stole R and b Era. It didn't affect us. You know. We got JT, pulled him along and just started writing songs for a vocalist and bingo, it worked. 00:41:46 Speaker 4: Hey, Quest Love Supreme listeners, this is Sugar Steve. We don't like to do this, but we're stopping the episode right there. Please come back next week. We'll look in your podcast for you. From part two of our interview with Funky George Brown of Clearly. In part two, he talks about some of the band's hits in the eighties, his new memoir Cooling the Gang in Me, and much much more. Oh and make sure you check out Cool the Gang You album People Just want to have Fun. It's made by George and another QLs guest, Ronald cool Bell, with the rest of the gang. See you next time. 00:42:21 Speaker 1: Quest Loove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.