Speaker 1: Of course, Love Supreme is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Quels classic. My name is
Speaker 1: Quess Love. And we go back into the archives November
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, and we interview the legendary exquisite Patrese Russian.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoy Suprema Suprema role called Suprema Suprema
Speaker 1: role called subprima Suprema role called Suprema saprima role called
Speaker 1: president production genius. Their piano flowers singer. Yeah, it's Patres Russian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he k baby fingers Suprema roll call, Suprema Subprema roll
Speaker 1: My name is Fante. Yeah, and I got to yawn, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I've been up, oh man since before the dawn?
Speaker 1: Um roll? How is my listen? Wrimam road calls in
Speaker 1: the house. Yeah, like the Eagles best of Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not the host of this show. Yeah, settle for quest
Speaker 1: love Prima Suprema roll call, repeating Prima Suprema roll call. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I forget it not Yeah, Patres Russian. Yeah, a black
Speaker 1: girl who walks BA call su Prima sub prima roll
Speaker 1: call su Prima sub Primo roll call, Sugar. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: brought this album in. Yeah, because it's called Before the
Speaker 1: Dawn Supremo Roma Fremo roll Call. This is Patrese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got no rhyme. Yeah, but I am here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a good time. Fremo roll call, So
Speaker 1: Prema so Fremo roll call, So Frema Fremo roll call. See,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know you had already. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to talk about her later stuff. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the jash Ship. Wait listen, let's just re capt our audiences.
Speaker 1: We're gonna recompetilate for our audience now. About usually about
Speaker 1: three minutes before every taping, I I just give a courtey,
Speaker 1: a courtesy check to all the members of the team
Speaker 1: Supreme to see if they're ready to do their verses.
Speaker 1: And of course the guest has always startled like I'm
Speaker 1: you know, it's three minutes of putting out fires. And
Speaker 1: today Steve, Steve you Bill took my turn. What happened
Speaker 1: was that Steve was not because on the right, and
Speaker 1: we already discussed we wouldn't say forget me, nas wouldn't
Speaker 1: say sound for you. Love and you know, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was because I was like I thought, I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: remind me. I'm like, okay, somebody's gonna remind me. I
Speaker 1: was going to do all remind me, reminded, and then
Speaker 1: it was okay, feel so real. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: maybe that one but before the dawn. So yeah, but
Speaker 1: had the nerve to like I can't think of an
Speaker 1: I roll? Yeah, like, how dare you ask me? Am?
Speaker 1: I prepared? I am the I am the Steve take
Speaker 1: a lot of pride in his role. I had the
Speaker 1: same thing too, I had gone thing damn all right,
Speaker 1: no hard feelings, prick feelings. Wait, gentlemen, welcome, this is
Speaker 1: what our day is going to be like the Supreme. Yes,
Speaker 1: welcome to another episode of course of Supreme. Question love
Speaker 1: your host? Uh, I don't know. I'm also in like
Speaker 1: twenty minutes or hours of sleep. Yeah. We have Team
Speaker 1: Supreme with us, we have Facolo everything. How's it going?
Speaker 1: Everything's good man, Happy to be here, I've been This
Speaker 1: is one interview I've been wanting to do since we started.
Speaker 1: Quesse of Supreme. Yes, like she's been on my wish
Speaker 1: list from day one. Yeah, so this is a dream
Speaker 1: come true. It happen. Yes, come on, I'm doing good
Speaker 1: in Capital Rush. That's right. We're in the home of
Speaker 1: uh this this NATS NATS room. Yeah yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in the Capitol Building. This is my first time here.
Speaker 1: We also have uh, I've been here more than you. Well,
Speaker 1: you work for Universal, So I never went here when
Speaker 1: I when I worked here or I worked for Universal.
Speaker 1: So what did you do here? I had a friend
Speaker 1: that worked here, and I just came to visit friends
Speaker 1: all my friends I did, and we have a sugar
Speaker 1: Steed with us. Any other factories about the building. I'm
Speaker 1: certain that you were here now hours before we were.
Speaker 1: I was. But I was here twenty five years ago
Speaker 1: trying to sneak in the front door and made it
Speaker 1: as far as the lobby. It's got the excuse me,
Speaker 1: please leave kind of thing. Came back? Now? Is that
Speaker 1: beautiful story? And now you in here? So you you
Speaker 1: got ejected, You got Jazzy Jeff out there. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was before I was even engineering. I was just here
Speaker 1: like trying to check out the building and stuff. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cool, ladies and gentlemen, our guest today. Um, I
Speaker 1: can say that you know We often throw, uh throw
Speaker 1: the word musical genius or musical innovator around a lot,
Speaker 1: but I will say that our guest today is is
Speaker 1: pretty much UM lives up to that title UM as
Speaker 1: a musician, as a singer, composer, arranger, UM and soul
Speaker 1: training dancer. Yeah. Question, and I'd like to know if
Speaker 1: the sounds that you're right do they relate to any
Speaker 1: of your past experiences or do you just write sperato?
Speaker 1: You got to interview Build Withers. That's amazing. Ladies, wait
Speaker 1: before we get please walcome to the quest of Supreme
Speaker 1: Patrice Russian. Thank you, thank you. How are you today?
Speaker 1: I'm great? Thank you, Sorry for the crazy energy we
Speaker 1: just she was happy to get out today. A good
Speaker 1: all good? So how are you every Everything's fine, Everything's
Speaker 1: been beautiful, you know, doing a lot of different things.
Speaker 1: UM school just started, you know, the the chair of
Speaker 1: the popular music program at the University of Southern California.
Speaker 1: So we're back. Dr Russian, I am that too. That
Speaker 1: one that's from the Berkeley College of Music. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: from doctor years ago? Yes, okay, tradition, Where were you born?
Speaker 1: I was born in Los Angeles, California, right, here in
Speaker 1: l a yep, in the heart of Partner from the
Speaker 1: People's Republic of Watts. I'm from south central Okay. So
Speaker 1: your childhood, uh I want to know how music entered it,
Speaker 1: But what was your childhood into? Music was just part
Speaker 1: of the air. You know, the radio was always on.
Speaker 1: My parents watched television. I was never without TV. So
Speaker 1: your parents weren't sings, not at all, not at all,
Speaker 1: not at all. In fact, really music lovers. They belonged to,
Speaker 1: ah they used to have a record club that they
Speaker 1: would send you a record a month. So my parents
Speaker 1: belonged to this record club and they would send these records.
Speaker 1: And so there was always music in our house just
Speaker 1: because they just loved music. I mean like Columbia House,
Speaker 1: Columbia exactly, exactly. And so music of all types, classical music, jazz,
Speaker 1: gospel music, anything you didn't know what you were going
Speaker 1: to get. And uh so on Saturdays when we would
Speaker 1: be cleaning up the house, they would put a stack
Speaker 1: of records on. Because you know that you guys are
Speaker 1: a little young to remember you never have even been here.
Speaker 1: It sounds on the turn tables. You know, you have
Speaker 1: a spindle and you stack your records and they would
Speaker 1: drop down the whole stack up records, and we were
Speaker 1: supposed to have that house clean by the time you
Speaker 1: got the last one, so sometimes you just had to
Speaker 1: keep going tell that last record. So I heard a
Speaker 1: lot of different kinds of music. And then growing up
Speaker 1: in l A, you know, we had the Latino population
Speaker 1: and so there was a lot of the influence of
Speaker 1: that music. Of course, the music of the church, Black church. Um,
Speaker 1: I learned to play the piano visa classical music because
Speaker 1: that was how you learned back then, the study study
Speaker 1: of the tradition of that instrument. Then when did you
Speaker 1: start playing? Started playing when I was about five and
Speaker 1: I was in this experimental of course, I went to
Speaker 1: the six years difference between my younger sister and I.
Speaker 1: So my parents put me in a nurse school program
Speaker 1: while they worked when when I was a kid, and
Speaker 1: the teacher there was really musical and she's the one
Speaker 1: that really noticed that during the day, when we would
Speaker 1: do any musical or movement to music activity, that's when
Speaker 1: I would, you know, really shine. Yeah, So they said,
Speaker 1: all of us beautiful, So what do we do? And
Speaker 1: she knew about this program that was designed four young kids.
Speaker 1: That was actually happening at USC. It was a graduate
Speaker 1: course for music education majors. It was called Rhythmics, and
Speaker 1: they were designing programs for uh little kids who just
Speaker 1: seemed to be gifted in music. They were developing studies
Speaker 1: that this is pre you know, early childhood development stuff
Speaker 1: that we just say for granted now because that's just
Speaker 1: a part of the way we rolled now, But back
Speaker 1: then that was still new here. So I was a
Speaker 1: part of this class and I went through this program,
Speaker 1: started playing that was when I was three, started playing
Speaker 1: when I was five because they said, you want to
Speaker 1: play an instrument now, right, So I did that piano
Speaker 1: was chosen for me and stayed in that program right
Speaker 1: up and through through high school. And so there are
Speaker 1: a few of us that I met a few people
Speaker 1: rolling through there. I met pianist Billy Childs roll through there. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a some some amazing people that have since
Speaker 1: you know, used their background there to start doing film scoring.
Speaker 1: A guy named Nathan Wang. There's there's plenty of people
Speaker 1: that I saw go through there. The conductor of the
Speaker 1: UH San Francisco UH Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas. He used
Speaker 1: to be coming out of his piano lesson as I
Speaker 1: was going into mind. And so these were people that
Speaker 1: I just kind of ran into. I didn't know then,
Speaker 1: but then seeing them years later. Um, that idea of
Speaker 1: that spark as a kid is a big deal, and
Speaker 1: we take it for granted. But that's why I'm such
Speaker 1: a big proponent of exposing kids to music, not just
Speaker 1: just have it going so they can't hear it. We
Speaker 1: recently had Bobby McFerrin on the show, and he said
Speaker 1: some similar things because he started out kind of parallel
Speaker 1: with you, like six years old and the music program
Speaker 1: and just and then the composer and the conductor thing
Speaker 1: and his his his dad was an amazing operaction we learned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that exposure is like kind of critical and one
Speaker 1: of the things that um, I hope we will um
Speaker 1: find a way to kind of uh put back into
Speaker 1: our just daily lives is you know, we used to
Speaker 1: see music on TV. We watched people dance to music
Speaker 1: just as a matter of course, like this is what
Speaker 1: music does to just the average person. Uh So you
Speaker 1: saw people moving to music. You heard music on television
Speaker 1: all the time with shows with live band I mean,
Speaker 1: coming up out here, it was like wow, when you
Speaker 1: would see an orchestra on TV or playing the Grammy
Speaker 1: Awards or playing one of those big shows, it's like,
Speaker 1: m I want to do that. You wake up? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know I was always looking at stuff. And
Speaker 1: then the theme songs of shows, you know, of just
Speaker 1: sitcoms or of series. That was a big deal because
Speaker 1: you know, you could you could recognize what was about
Speaker 1: to come on. You be in the kitchen, here's something
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, song songs on or you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it would be the theme right in my head,
Speaker 1: give me a break. And those are not Those are
Speaker 1: not easy to do when you figured that, Wow, the
Speaker 1: composer is going to put together something that's gonna have
Speaker 1: so memorable in a very short period of time. That's
Speaker 1: gonna set the tone for a television show. And people
Speaker 1: are that's really falling off though if you really think
Speaker 1: about it, right, like what themes so throws today? Do
Speaker 1: you really know besides doom doom, strange things? They don't
Speaker 1: exist anymore because there's something at time the time that
Speaker 1: was supposed to be for themes. It's so I got
Speaker 1: to do. I got to do a couple of them,
Speaker 1: which I was really happy about. I did the Steve
Speaker 1: Harvey Show. In fact, we recorded it here. I did
Speaker 1: most of the television stuff that I did here, some
Speaker 1: other ones, but remop well we did. I did the
Speaker 1: Image the Image Awards for about thirteen years straight. Oh man,
Speaker 1: and you're always uh in the booth, in the in
Speaker 1: the pit. Yes, how was music director of the show.
Speaker 1: I'd be conducting, didn't have to play at the same time,
Speaker 1: such great fun, worked with so many um amazing artists,
Speaker 1: and working in the medium of television actually was what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do that. That's what I want to be.
Speaker 1: That was your initial point. That was my initial plan.
Speaker 1: I wanted. I watched so much to be I wanted
Speaker 1: to be in there. I wanted to do that so
Speaker 1: just I love the music, so I said, I wanted to,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know the past, you know, to get there.
Speaker 1: So later, um, you know, I knew I needed to
Speaker 1: stay in Los Angeles. But as I kind of went
Speaker 1: through public school system and stuff like that, I went
Speaker 1: to a high school, uh Ela and Lee Roy at
Speaker 1: Lock High School, and it was there really where I
Speaker 1: figured out what I kind of wanted to do and
Speaker 1: how I was going to use I had had music
Speaker 1: in my life, my whole life. But I didn't know
Speaker 1: what I was gonna do with it because I see
Speaker 1: many people look like me doing it. So okay, since
Speaker 1: you you have an actual education in music maybe and
Speaker 1: you're from uh the West Coast. Is kind of a
Speaker 1: two part question. One in in California, was there a
Speaker 1: specific kind of fall off or waning period of where
Speaker 1: they started to take the music education Asian out the schools,
Speaker 1: because I know that in the sixties especially, and uh
Speaker 1: in the seventies. Uh well, I mean I went to
Speaker 1: performing arts school. But even then, like when in the
Speaker 1: seventies when I was in elementary school, there was like
Speaker 1: trumpet lessons and that sort of thing, and then like
Speaker 1: come the eighties and it just totally you know, it's
Speaker 1: just sports and that's it. Was there a period in
Speaker 1: which that that fell off in Los Angeles where yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it seems like it started in the
Speaker 1: middle seventies and by the time we got to the eighties,
Speaker 1: it was almost gone. There are special programs and things
Speaker 1: like that, but in terms of music just being in
Speaker 1: the schools because it's supposed to be something that people
Speaker 1: do have around a well rounded education, that that did
Speaker 1: start to go away, and I think that um, I
Speaker 1: probably got out of the l a uh City school
Speaker 1: since we graduated from that. Just at the big getting
Speaker 1: of when you could see the the funds and the
Speaker 1: uh the idea of doing that kind of going away,
Speaker 1: they started trying to rather than have separate school programs,
Speaker 1: they did try to put some community type programs together
Speaker 1: where you had several schools, which is a good idea,
Speaker 1: had several schools that would do stuff. But in terms
Speaker 1: of I was, I was at probably the one of
Speaker 1: the schools, one of the few that had a very
Speaker 1: very strong music program. Out of that program came a
Speaker 1: lot of musicians. Uh. They were there at the school
Speaker 1: the same time. Gerald Albright Sex from player in the
Speaker 1: late in Duty Chances, he was there. We were there
Speaker 1: at the same time. This elementary or high school. This
Speaker 1: is high school. This is high school. He didn't even
Speaker 1: give recorders out of high school anymore, remember like everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we were in bands and orchestra and jazz band
Speaker 1: and things like that, and our teachers were pretty innovative
Speaker 1: at that time. They had the that to keep the
Speaker 1: kids who are in the community focused on that as
Speaker 1: opposed to outside influence. If you're gonna be in a gang,
Speaker 1: and you need to be in the marching band, that's
Speaker 1: the biggest gang. So we had music as a as
Speaker 1: sort of the platform and the jumping off point to
Speaker 1: study history, to study social graces, to learn about things
Speaker 1: outside of our neighborhood, outside of ourselves, and those of
Speaker 1: us who did opt to be professionals had sort of
Speaker 1: a point of view on the different kinds and different
Speaker 1: styles of being a professional musician. There were those who
Speaker 1: went on the road that played, but there were also
Speaker 1: those nameless faces that played, uh in the studios. And
Speaker 1: there were people who wrote things, and there were people
Speaker 1: who arrange things, and people who actually literally copied music
Speaker 1: before the software that we that we now use as
Speaker 1: as music publishing software. Uh So there were all these
Speaker 1: different lifestyles and of being a musician that we were
Speaker 1: exposed to being in Los Angeles, and a lot of
Speaker 1: us wanted that skill set that would allow us to
Speaker 1: do any of it, all of it. When you said
Speaker 1: that you were when you were young, you said you
Speaker 1: played like classical. What was some of the pieces you
Speaker 1: would play? What was some of your favorite stuff to play? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I had to learn the classical repertoire left
Speaker 1: Bach a lot of box in. My hands are small,
Speaker 1: so my teacher really worked a long time to develop
Speaker 1: a certain kind of strength so that the fact that
Speaker 1: my hands were small wasn't gonna be any pitfall when
Speaker 1: I got the larger work. So I played bagging a
Speaker 1: lot of Mozart and a lot of hiding. Then I
Speaker 1: played uh, Beethoven, my man, and then you know, bigger
Speaker 1: pieces and stuff. But but the piano for me spoke
Speaker 1: to me in a certain way. But it was the
Speaker 1: It was the playing with other people because piano, I
Speaker 1: was playing a lot, a lot alone until I got
Speaker 1: to high school and was playing in different ensembles. And
Speaker 1: I learned to play the flute because I wanted to
Speaker 1: a case and you can't get the kids had a case.
Speaker 1: I know exactly how she feels because I was just
Speaker 1: drummer in school and like I wasn't looking my biggest
Speaker 1: snare drumming. It's all over, So yeah, I know exactly.
Speaker 1: I learned to play the flute, and that that experience
Speaker 1: of being inside of an orchestra flutes in the in
Speaker 1: the middle or in a band where it flutes it
Speaker 1: on the side that is what gave me a perspective
Speaker 1: with like I want to write. I want to write
Speaker 1: for these kinds of ensembles. I love this. I want
Speaker 1: to jump on your question. I'm glad you asked this
Speaker 1: because okay, as a as a person that samples, were
Speaker 1: you leading to you remind me what? No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I want well, okay, I all I want to ask
Speaker 1: what you're uh your your practice regiment was at least
Speaker 1: hour wise? Because um yeah, I was gonna say, I
Speaker 1: you do at the top of you remind me you
Speaker 1: don't have to quantize it like, well, we didn't. We
Speaker 1: didn't have any sequences. I know that. But the timing,
Speaker 1: like as a person that knows like this particular artist
Speaker 1: fluctuates and you might have to time stretch it or whatever.
Speaker 1: You don't I know for a fact that you don't
Speaker 1: have to do that on yours, and which tells me
Speaker 1: that you're right hand is strong as hell. As far
Speaker 1: as your what was your your as far as your
Speaker 1: your your practice regiment, how many hours a day would
Speaker 1: you Well, when I had time to practice, I didn't
Speaker 1: take as much advantage of as I probably should have.
Speaker 1: But there was a particular there's there's always you're going
Speaker 1: to have certain technical actors sizes. This is my belief
Speaker 1: was I was taught this way turtle technical exercises as
Speaker 1: war as as warm ups that you have to do
Speaker 1: just because you know you're developing a certain kind of
Speaker 1: strength and everything, and you also got to be under control.
Speaker 1: Then you work on the pieces that you're learning or
Speaker 1: the song that you're trying to learn to play. And
Speaker 1: um my teachers always emphasized if you want to learn
Speaker 1: to play fast, play slow mm hmm. Get your accuracy
Speaker 1: up exact exactly because you're trying its muscle memory as well,
Speaker 1: which is hard to do when all you want to do,
Speaker 1: but that's really that was really an important part of
Speaker 1: developing a good technique is to play slowly. What was
Speaker 1: it about Beethoven? Because I mean I hear classical music
Speaker 1: and to me it just all sounds like classical music.
Speaker 1: What in particularly was it about Beethoven's pieces as a composer, Like,
Speaker 1: what did you like about his stuff? What set some
Speaker 1: apart from everybody else? I think after playing so much
Speaker 1: Bach with a lot a lot of single line harmonies
Speaker 1: that are implied to be able to really play chords
Speaker 1: was like, whoa, my man had some chords. And then
Speaker 1: later you know, getting into revel and debut saying more
Speaker 1: of the colors and things like that. Remember that quala
Speaker 1: of this was happening at home. I'm hearing Duke Ellington
Speaker 1: and Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald and Saravan and Perry
Speaker 1: Como and Frank Sinatra. I'm hearing all this stuff on
Speaker 1: these records that are dropping every Saturday. And so now
Speaker 1: I'm starting to identify a relationship between the music that
Speaker 1: I'm actually playing for my lessons, because that's what that represents,
Speaker 1: and then the stuff that I'm hearing at church, and
Speaker 1: then the stuff that I'm hearing on the radio and
Speaker 1: see I'm a motown baby, and then the stuff that
Speaker 1: my parents bought. I'm starting to hear this relationship. So
Speaker 1: you didn't look down to pop music like most serious musicians.
Speaker 1: Was like pop music not at all, because for me, Um,
Speaker 1: the music had a mood and a purpose and it
Speaker 1: was motown at the time, right like when you say pop,
Speaker 1: we're talking about at that time it was both. It
Speaker 1: was motown and and then on the other Yet Beach
Speaker 1: Boys and then Yet the Beatles, you had a lot
Speaker 1: of things that were kind of converging it at the
Speaker 1: same time. It's lidestone and all this stuff. You had
Speaker 1: a lot of things converging at the same time. And No,
Speaker 1: it was like it was music that you liked, the
Speaker 1: music that you didn't like. It moved you or didn't
Speaker 1: move you. You know, it didn't really matter in terms
Speaker 1: of the category for me, you know, which is why
Speaker 1: I can read it, read it, you know, Brahms and
Speaker 1: James Brown, James Broms. So okay, because I know I
Speaker 1: know the way that most U Northeast, Well you went
Speaker 1: to Berkeley, see you already know what's something, how snobby
Speaker 1: the East Coast is, the far as jazz musicianship is concerned,
Speaker 1: the seriousness and kind of how they looked down on
Speaker 1: the l A jazz scene. Were you at all aware
Speaker 1: of the of the difference difference there was? There was
Speaker 1: a perception for some reason, I never really got that
Speaker 1: because all you had to do was come here. Look now.
Speaker 1: Did you have to look a little harder because it
Speaker 1: wasn't staring you in the face at every corner? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, there was there was always, at least when
Speaker 1: I was coming up there was always a scene here,
Speaker 1: and musicians came here. There were a lot, there were clubs,
Speaker 1: and this was part of a circuit. And we did
Speaker 1: I guess you know, you can only do this at
Speaker 1: a all black eye school. We went on field trips
Speaker 1: that innovative, what did that permission? Slip? Look right? And
Speaker 1: he would pick us up. But then we would sit
Speaker 1: in the back have our fruit punch. So see, I
Speaker 1: still I heard all of this music that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be um uh indicative of what the East Coast
Speaker 1: vibe was like. Because if you're coming out here playing
Speaker 1: a two and it was like I said, and there
Speaker 1: was a scene here. If I was going to qualify anything,
Speaker 1: I would say that there was a different awareness here,
Speaker 1: not necessarily better or worse, but different because you saw
Speaker 1: all kinds of different musicians. So it wasn't only the
Speaker 1: person playing at the club. You had to have mad
Speaker 1: respect for the person who was playing at the student
Speaker 1: in the studios too, because you know what they did
Speaker 1: on their brakes, They read the stock market and tried
Speaker 1: to decide where they were gonna take their yacht this
Speaker 1: next next vacation. Because they were worked every day just
Speaker 1: as hard. They had to have mad skills and could
Speaker 1: go home at night and rest with their family and
Speaker 1: then the beautiful. So we saw these different styles of
Speaker 1: being a musician. I'm not saying one was better than
Speaker 1: the other, but a hunger deeper a little bit on
Speaker 1: the other side, and in that way, I don't know,
Speaker 1: because it's like if you're aspiring to be the best
Speaker 1: of what you do, or have the the idea of
Speaker 1: being able to be uh so versatile, that you can
Speaker 1: be a contributor on so many fronts, So we would,
Speaker 1: you know, I could come and sit down and watch
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones in a in a studio and all the
Speaker 1: musicians that were there playing that music for those television shows.
Speaker 1: And then I could go to the jazz club, you know,
Speaker 1: and here Farrell Sanders or Orbie Hancock or somebody like that.
Speaker 1: And then I could talk to a George Duke, or
Speaker 1: I could talk to uh Gerald Wilson about his big
Speaker 1: band writing. I never left Los Angeles to do any
Speaker 1: of that. It was all available to me, and all
Speaker 1: of these different takes on this idea of music as
Speaker 1: a lifestyle allowed for me to be able to find
Speaker 1: many ways to achieve my goal, which was I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do anything else. I just wanted to have
Speaker 1: a career where I could do music. As a quick question,
Speaker 1: like what was George do like? Because he's the person
Speaker 1: that I mean godress and so like we I would
Speaker 1: have loved to get him on the show, but like
Speaker 1: what was what was he like just as a musician,
Speaker 1: as a person, what was it like working with him?
Speaker 1: Georgia's like just kind of like you would see him
Speaker 1: like super Joviel, He's really one of the musicians. Because
Speaker 1: I had a little more access to him, who kind
Speaker 1: of without saying it, embodied what it was that I
Speaker 1: thought I wanted to do because he could do anything.
Speaker 1: He could He could write orchestro music. He was a
Speaker 1: great producer Haut and the stuff. And I heard it
Speaker 1: Team Billions. Yeah, no, I saw it, so no I
Speaker 1: knew what it took, you know, to to do that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And George was doing it all and
Speaker 1: always uh I was with a smile. And when he
Speaker 1: would produce a lot of times he would call me
Speaker 1: to play. Were there were there notable not where they
Speaker 1: are notable shows, but was there a notable concert performance
Speaker 1: that you saw as a youngster that it was finally
Speaker 1: your moment of eureka, like, Okay, this is this is
Speaker 1: what I want to do professionally for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life. Like what was what was a mind changing
Speaker 1: or life altering? There were a few, um, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I really liked orchestral music a lot.
Speaker 1: So when I would watch back in the day, there
Speaker 1: was a Grammy orchestra that was on TV playing for
Speaker 1: everybody like wow, And when I saw Quincy Jones conduct
Speaker 1: that orchestra, okay, and then I paid more attention to
Speaker 1: the other live orchestras on TV. Who's who Who's conducting
Speaker 1: the Emmys, Well, Who's well, who's who's conducting the Tony's Well,
Speaker 1: who's conducting the Oscars? I wanted to know what that
Speaker 1: process was because that's that's because everyone would be like
Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder and You're like, that's three different checks. Well
Speaker 1: the idea. The idea was that you know, I loved
Speaker 1: commercial music. I'll just put it under that big umbrella
Speaker 1: and that encompasses everything. I love jazz, I love popping
Speaker 1: to music. I'll see I see all of these things
Speaker 1: as branches of the same tree. But music director and conducting,
Speaker 1: can you break that down? Because what that's about. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like the difference is because most people because I look
Speaker 1: at you, what I'm thinking of? Okay, well Adam, but no,
Speaker 1: he doesn't conduct, he's just the music direct not just
Speaker 1: but it well the music. You know, the definition has
Speaker 1: kind of morphed into some other things, but the idea
Speaker 1: of it, the concept of music direction, is that that's
Speaker 1: the individual that is in those of shows who is
Speaker 1: responsible for the music happening. Now, it can take on
Speaker 1: different forms. Sometimes you're the one who actually would pick
Speaker 1: the musicians. Sometimes you're the one who has to pick
Speaker 1: the musicians and also be the catalyst for what the
Speaker 1: sound of the music is going to be as far
Speaker 1: as the writing is concerned, what people are gonna play. Um,
Speaker 1: you're usually the translator from what the producers in the
Speaker 1: show and the directors what they want to do and
Speaker 1: then what has that happens happen musically anyway, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you're the person who really speaks with the
Speaker 1: musicians and the other designated cast of music people to
Speaker 1: get it done, whether that's the arrangers, the pre going
Speaker 1: into a studio to pre record something for the show.
Speaker 1: I want to make those You make all the meetings,
Speaker 1: how hard is it to elbow room, uh yourself into
Speaker 1: that situation. Okay, I'll put it out there like right now,
Speaker 1: Ricky Mannus cover problem. No, I'm just saying that he's
Speaker 1: he's the guy. He ain't buzzing, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't even Yeah, so's you'll have to take
Speaker 1: me out. Has I mean your mind, Rickey Minor is
Speaker 1: where like he has things Rickey Minor has let's Rickey minus. Basically,
Speaker 1: I mean he's the musical go to director at the moment.
Speaker 1: What I realized now isn't necessarily and there's no shade,
Speaker 1: no dig whatever. I realized that, Um, a lot of
Speaker 1: positions in Hollywood are based on how you nuance your
Speaker 1: relationships with the people in power, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of the times is just you know, I think you know,
Speaker 1: to to her or to anyone in this room speaking now,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, man, to get a project like that
Speaker 1: would be amazing. But I think to a higher up
Speaker 1: at at a movie company or whatever I mean, musical director,
Speaker 1: it could sort of be like a band aid or
Speaker 1: something like an afterthought. And usually with afterthought situations, well,
Speaker 1: you're thinking about your actress, your actor, your director, and
Speaker 1: all that, your producer and all that stuff. Nine times
Speaker 1: out of tend you just go with your instinctual Okay,
Speaker 1: who who Who's who delivers? And usually who delivers mainly
Speaker 1: like who shows up on time? Who's not trouble who
Speaker 1: can yeah? Who? Yeah? Yeah? Exactly? Who can deliver consistent work?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Because I mean we can
Speaker 1: all attest that some of our favorite geniuses can be troublesome.
Speaker 1: So it's like, who's consistent? And you know a lot
Speaker 1: of times I'll hear of a project happening in the
Speaker 1: wings and I'm like, I can get it, and damn
Speaker 1: Ricky got it? Again? What kind of project Ricky had
Speaker 1: the monopoly on? You feel like, uh, Ricky's definitely gonna
Speaker 1: go to for like, uh, the Grammys, definitely the Emmy's. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean he at the time when American Idol was hitting,
Speaker 1: he was that. I think I think Ricky is the
Speaker 1: reason that because Ricky shout to Sis Smith, who sings
Speaker 1: to me important to change. She her and Ricky have
Speaker 1: like worked together forever, and I think it was Ricky
Speaker 1: that put me in contact with Patrice. Now Here's the thing, though,
Speaker 1: sometimes and sometimes the trickle down theory works good because
Speaker 1: sometimes he has something and looked done the war shows
Speaker 1: music direct then if the call so usually anything you've
Speaker 1: seen me do that's notable either, Commons Ricky Ricky Baston. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing, anything that Adam Blackstone has done. So
Speaker 1: now Adam is in the foes just because I had
Speaker 1: to say no to everything. So Jay z Eminem, Rihanna
Speaker 1: Mary Janet like right now that it's the trickle down thing,
Speaker 1: and so no, he's definitely really messing with me. I'm like, damn,
Speaker 1: I'm never getting that's the way Adam comminated. I think
Speaker 1: you need to go back even further ahead because he
Speaker 1: will tell you and so will rate you tee you
Speaker 1: that somebody had to open the door for them. Who
Speaker 1: was it? Well, that might be me. I was thinking that,
Speaker 1: how that might be me you talked to, because I'm
Speaker 1: sure that you know you guys will have your opportunity
Speaker 1: to speak to them. Should ask them about that, because
Speaker 1: see I'm on the other end of the phone hearing
Speaker 1: them ask me stuff. So let me do it like this.
Speaker 1: Let me say like this, you asked you, you started
Speaker 1: your the start of your question. How is it it's
Speaker 1: it's very that's not an area that was open and
Speaker 1: understood that much in terms of what people did as
Speaker 1: music directors or what that was about. I I pieced
Speaker 1: it together watching it because I was kind of fascinated
Speaker 1: at that. But it is one of those things where,
Speaker 1: at least in my feeling, where your work has to
Speaker 1: speak so loudly in terms of what you can do
Speaker 1: that when there is an opportunity that that you can't, uh,
Speaker 1: something will happen. I just, I just I just have
Speaker 1: this feeling that when you're an artist and you will
Speaker 1: remain true to your your work and remaining true to
Speaker 1: your goal and true to your why I call it,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be okay. You don't know what how it's
Speaker 1: gonna come, but it's gonna be okay. You just be
Speaker 1: ready when the opportunity arises. That's what I think. So
Speaker 1: the idea of music direction fell in my lap, but
Speaker 1: it fell in it this way where Uh, Robert Townsend's
Speaker 1: doing what it's gonna do Hollywood self. He was looking
Speaker 1: for a composer. Now, this was his first film and
Speaker 1: he didn't even know what he was supposed to be doing,
Speaker 1: so he just went around to the different agents who
Speaker 1: represented composers and goes down this list of gets to
Speaker 1: an agent that I had happened to just have signed with,
Speaker 1: gets to my name and it's in pencil. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm that new and I'm the only name he recognized
Speaker 1: because of the records to remind me that, and he
Speaker 1: was a fan, so he said, oh, Caba Trees, and
Speaker 1: of course they are. The agents are horrified because it's
Speaker 1: like she hasn't done anything. You don't know her. But
Speaker 1: I no, no, no, I do know, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I know her music. And so that's how that happened.
Speaker 1: So I did Hollywood Shuffle and he got five HBO
Speaker 1: comedy specials and he called me to do the Partners
Speaker 1: in Crime. This is where those relationships and the building
Speaker 1: of those relationships happened. So I did five of those
Speaker 1: Partners in Crime. Then the guy who had been the
Speaker 1: producer of the N Double A C Image A Horse.
Speaker 1: I knew that the music director who was for those awards,
Speaker 1: who was H. B. Barnum, who was a Wreatha's music director,
Speaker 1: was going to kind of pull back on due in
Speaker 1: the Image Awards, And it was suggested between Hamilton Cloud,
Speaker 1: who was the producer and HB we look for somebody
Speaker 1: else to take on the Image Awards. They were going
Speaker 1: to try to make them really bigger and special and
Speaker 1: da da da dad. So I just on these five
Speaker 1: things and they called me to ask me if I
Speaker 1: were do him. So I said yes, So I did
Speaker 1: the Image Awards. Now, after doing the HBO specials and
Speaker 1: seen in the scene in the capacity of the of
Speaker 1: being director and then doing those years of the Image Awards,
Speaker 1: one of the directors of those shows was about to
Speaker 1: do the Emmys. We're talking a span of ten years though,
Speaker 1: and they had and had a falling out with the
Speaker 1: music director and and I guess during the following I
Speaker 1: was said, well, you know, hey, I'll get somebody else
Speaker 1: up in here to do it. And they called me.
Speaker 1: It was last minute and thing. But I had worked
Speaker 1: with him before on him one of those other comedy specials,
Speaker 1: and so you talk about the elbow room. For me,
Speaker 1: it wasn't about that as much as it was that
Speaker 1: circumstances brought in certain opportunities and I was determined to
Speaker 1: crush it. How does one like, do you have to Okay?
Speaker 1: Now I feel so Jankie like my level of my
Speaker 1: level of musical director. He's just like, all right, you know,
Speaker 1: it's five seconds and then whatever. But I'm certain that
Speaker 1: you had to notate all the we didn't have the
Speaker 1: you know that that that software and stuff that we
Speaker 1: use now all the time, we didn't have that. So no,
Speaker 1: you were writing by hand, you were preparing the music
Speaker 1: by hand. Um, you know I would sometimes, especially a
Speaker 1: big show like Image Awards or Emmy's. So you mentioned
Speaker 1: all the ones that I didn't. You say, Redy have
Speaker 1: the thing the thing locked up now, but he didn't
Speaker 1: at first. So does that mean question off, you didn't
Speaker 1: do your research to find out that brit was to
Speaker 1: put everybody for most people don't know that because they
Speaker 1: didn't start looking. Now. This is the other part about
Speaker 1: what you're saying about Ricky. This is one of the
Speaker 1: things that I actually admire about him most. He figures
Speaker 1: out how he's gonna get let you know, he has
Speaker 1: figured out a way to be able to kind of
Speaker 1: uh quantify all of the activities that go along with
Speaker 1: that and and and get it done and be able
Speaker 1: to say yes to a lot of things that are
Speaker 1: high profile. And he's a very personable individual and he
Speaker 1: will go out of his way to make sure you
Speaker 1: know what was happening. At that time, I was about
Speaker 1: to I just wanted to get the word done because
Speaker 1: I was having to do so much of it myself.
Speaker 1: I did a lot of shows for b ET, I
Speaker 1: did a lot of the I did the Grammys the
Speaker 1: last a few years that they used live orchestra to
Speaker 1: record anything. You know, I probably did some of the
Speaker 1: last ones that they did that in this room that's
Speaker 1: right or somewhere right. And when you were aware that
Speaker 1: you were a draw still, like even though you might
Speaker 1: have been quiet monks, when we would see your name
Speaker 1: and the credits, like people were fan of the record
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, I remember seeing her name in
Speaker 1: the Hollywood. I mean, I was aware of it. Only
Speaker 1: I was aware of it. But but but I think,
Speaker 1: like I said, I've had some happy circumstances to just
Speaker 1: happen on the way too while I was trying to
Speaker 1: go where I was trying to go, and everything seemed
Speaker 1: to help. The other thing, the fact that that that
Speaker 1: I had an audience and and a and a and
Speaker 1: a following, particularly among the African American community, gave me
Speaker 1: the courage to be able to almost walk away from
Speaker 1: the recording side to focus as the opening, which was
Speaker 1: a little slipper opening, happened for me to be able
Speaker 1: to really do the music direction thing because I could
Speaker 1: bring other musicians of color who never would get those
Speaker 1: calls to it. As the sensibility musically began to change.
Speaker 1: Now you relate to list as the sensibilities in terms
Speaker 1: of what audiences wanted to hear and the relationship between
Speaker 1: the shows that they watched and the music that a
Speaker 1: company that began to change and have more of the
Speaker 1: sensibilities of people of color and of different and certainly
Speaker 1: you can call me in I can't and I and
Speaker 1: you know, but there's some music directors who you know,
Speaker 1: they can't do that. So when I was was able
Speaker 1: to speak all the different languages or at least go
Speaker 1: there and call in you know people, then we could
Speaker 1: get a whole bunch of work done. Okay, I have
Speaker 1: a great question for you. Now we totally skipped or
Speaker 1: we're gonna back to listen, but now that you went there. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this computer on my lap never leaves my side,
Speaker 1: and usually when I'm in situations like that, there's always
Speaker 1: an audible to be called, and usually director in my
Speaker 1: air is like, uh, mirror, we need to queue up,
Speaker 1: uh Julio and is to all the girls I love
Speaker 1: before and I know I got nineties seconds, like the
Speaker 1: way that the roots have mastered hearing it and knowing
Speaker 1: exactly what. But without the technology of you playing for
Speaker 1: all thirty of your musicians and your orchestra that you're
Speaker 1: about to call an audible or something, not knowing they
Speaker 1: have the the ability to improvise them, how would that happen?
Speaker 1: Would would there ever be situations like that where you
Speaker 1: get the last minute? Yeah, but things were changed, changing
Speaker 1: even the way the directors directed changed when they had
Speaker 1: access to being able to not plan and to say
Speaker 1: stuff at the last minute and watch people scramble and
Speaker 1: watch it happen. Uh you know, then they took advantage
Speaker 1: of that. So now be the audible becomes just another
Speaker 1: thing that we have to that you have to have
Speaker 1: in your tool, just another thing that you have to do.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, those shows were planned to the
Speaker 1: tenth of a second in terms of what was going
Speaker 1: to happen, and you had to have a plan so
Speaker 1: that you will be ready for something that might happen
Speaker 1: uh spontaneously. Now The difference was everybody had a plan
Speaker 1: and everybody knew what was there they were supposed to do,
Speaker 1: and you had to be ready to deliver. But if
Speaker 1: it did take that little slight left, could the music
Speaker 1: director and the people that were there respond and how
Speaker 1: are you going to respond right now? So that balance
Speaker 1: an act did start to happen as a technology allowed
Speaker 1: for more of it to shift into last minute let's
Speaker 1: just go by the seat of our pants. Now it's
Speaker 1: like this. Now you've got people who are coming on
Speaker 1: who are playing in um television, orchestras and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: They might read music, they might not, they might understand
Speaker 1: what they understand concept because somebody's gonna say, oh, give
Speaker 1: me something that sounds like uh Coldplay meets uh Bruno
Speaker 1: Mars right now, and everybody will go, yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: you're you're your oral vocabulary. And the musicians that are
Speaker 1: on TV now seem to have a very wide palette
Speaker 1: in terms of a certain amount of oral vocabulary that
Speaker 1: they can call into at least get you through it
Speaker 1: for the thirty or nineties seconds. But when you had
Speaker 1: more people, a fifty piece orchestra or something like that,
Speaker 1: you can't depend on. Everybody had they might I've never
Speaker 1: heard so wet a lot we had. We had to
Speaker 1: write a lot, and the and the arrangers and music
Speaker 1: directors who had the vocabulary had to be able to translate. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be playing for Gladys Night and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna play for print. M you need to translate
Speaker 1: what it is so that it's seamless. So okay, uh,
Speaker 1: gun to your head. If because I know or assume
Speaker 1: that you're well versed in site reading on the spot
Speaker 1: and the ability to improvise. Most musicians I know can't
Speaker 1: chew gum and walk at the same time. Usually like
Speaker 1: I can't read. I mean I can read, but you know,
Speaker 1: no one's gonna have time for me to be like,
Speaker 1: give me fifteen minutes, one knee on the two and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So if you go into your head,
Speaker 1: come on, if you have to lose one of the
Speaker 1: two abilities, m h, what would you would you rather
Speaker 1: keep your natural feel or the technical keep the technical reading? Okay,
Speaker 1: you put in my face and I'll play it for
Speaker 1: two Well, and that is a loaded, loaded question. Are
Speaker 1: people even to I have to I have to kind
Speaker 1: of two answers to that. First of all, there was
Speaker 1: a time when you would have to maybe choose. In
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, you don't have to choose. It's about
Speaker 1: It's about do you want the insurance that you'll be
Speaker 1: able to do music for your career until you can't
Speaker 1: do it anymore? And you when you want to do
Speaker 1: something real bad, I think that it behooves you to
Speaker 1: find every way possible to be able to ensure that
Speaker 1: you would never have to do anything else. Now you
Speaker 1: don't have to necessarily get all you can't get all
Speaker 1: the skills together at one time. Nobody's asking you to
Speaker 1: do that. But I think that sometimes people fall on
Speaker 1: and default to what's the easiest for them to do,
Speaker 1: and they stay there, and that's okay. But I would
Speaker 1: wonder what would happen if they would allow what they
Speaker 1: do really well to get them in a position to
Speaker 1: be able to then, as they're doing what they do
Speaker 1: really well, be able to use part of that income
Speaker 1: and part of that movement and part of that desire
Speaker 1: to continue to do it, then also over here be
Speaker 1: working on that thing that they don't do as well. See,
Speaker 1: we get caught in this thing of like if I
Speaker 1: don't do this, somebody thinks less of me. You know,
Speaker 1: you're good at what you're good at, and it's and
Speaker 1: if you've got talent and and you've and you've worked
Speaker 1: on that, I think that you should go with it.
Speaker 1: But it also behoods you that if you want to
Speaker 1: stay with it and contribute that there may be other
Speaker 1: ways if you would learn certain things that would allow
Speaker 1: for you to be able to keep keep it moving.
Speaker 1: More tools in your tool bucks, more tools in your
Speaker 1: tool bucks. And I think that's an individual choice, but
Speaker 1: I was. I was told at least when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, Like my dad was like, yo, you're not
Speaker 1: going to get the work if you don't learn how
Speaker 1: to read. So for him, it was like you gotta
Speaker 1: go to Curtis or Berkeley or you know wherever, Juilliard,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And I didn't do that. I
Speaker 1: cheated and just went straight to a record deal. Um.
Speaker 1: But I meant for you, if you're okay, if you're
Speaker 1: if you get the call for the Emmys, is it
Speaker 1: would you rather pull uh a guitarist that has amazing
Speaker 1: feel that can at least get by it on court
Speaker 1: charts or whatever ord for you to be in that
Speaker 1: high tension environment. You gotta read on site. I think
Speaker 1: the first question is really to define what the medium
Speaker 1: is asking of you. See, to do the Emmy's Award Awards,
Speaker 1: and the requirement for that is different than to do
Speaker 1: uh Jimmy fallon. It's different. You want music. That's the
Speaker 1: only common denominator. The rest of it is that it's different.
Speaker 1: The Emmy Awards. You're gonna play a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: television show. Themes they're gonna arrange from a smission impossible
Speaker 1: to friends. You might have masterpiece theater thrown in there,
Speaker 1: you might have anything thrown in it, and you you're
Speaker 1: gonna record them. You're gonna record them all so that
Speaker 1: the winner is they press the button and go, and
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have all the music there so that
Speaker 1: whoever did win. When the person is talking too long,
Speaker 1: you can play them off. That's not the time for
Speaker 1: somebody to sit there and go one end and to
Speaker 1: end any good time. So you cast who you call
Speaker 1: on the basis of the end result and what is
Speaker 1: required of you in your in your show a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, it's so fluid and it's beautiful. Because it's
Speaker 1: so fluid. You guys have a thing, you have a feel,
Speaker 1: you have a sound, you have the responsibilities. There's certain
Speaker 1: ones that are laid out that you know you gotta
Speaker 1: do every night. But then there are other things that
Speaker 1: it if it goes this way or this way where
Speaker 1: you can turn on the diamond, this show like that,
Speaker 1: it's it's because of the nature of the show. And
Speaker 1: then in in in in that case it might not
Speaker 1: be as necessary. And you guys have spent so many,
Speaker 1: so much time together. Wait, guys inside, When she said
Speaker 1: Jimmy fallon to myself, I was like, she knows what
Speaker 1: you gotta pay attention and hey, and when it's good,
Speaker 1: you want to know who's that? Like are you watching?
Speaker 1: You know the folks like a mirror and Adam Blackstone.
Speaker 1: Because remember I'm still I'm in education now. So the
Speaker 1: kids who are going to school, there is this ballot
Speaker 1: and this is getting back to what I was. I
Speaker 1: was saying, you don't have to you don't have to choose,
Speaker 1: because now there are at least some places. Not every
Speaker 1: music school. You gotta find the one that supports what
Speaker 1: you think you want to do, but there are places
Speaker 1: for people to go now to be able to develop
Speaker 1: that skill set and that awareness to be able to
Speaker 1: go from one side of it to the other side. Uh,
Speaker 1: flawlessly if they if they so choose to learn that
Speaker 1: it's not this or this or this, but this one
Speaker 1: big thing. I'm a better musician if I if I
Speaker 1: even know what a producer does. I'm a better participant
Speaker 1: in a in a band or an orchestra if I
Speaker 1: have a sense of what the music director is dealing with.
Speaker 1: And I'm a better music director because I know what
Speaker 1: the musicians have to do. In other words, these are
Speaker 1: skills that kind of we're co dependent, and you want
Speaker 1: to be able to see how different people do it
Speaker 1: in different ways and develop ways to be able to
Speaker 1: do it that allow for you to produce to get
Speaker 1: it done. How how big is your database right now?
Speaker 1: As far as are you the person are you the
Speaker 1: bridge that knows off the top ten guitar players, uh?
Speaker 1: Eleven good keyboard players or that guy really plays for
Speaker 1: insuring well, Uh, guy's a great engineer. You're not, are
Speaker 1: you people? I'm one of the people that may know
Speaker 1: some but what we learned to do with myself, Greg
Speaker 1: Feeling Games, Ricky Minor rachel Um, we learned to call
Speaker 1: on each other. You need something and you got something
Speaker 1: to do, and you need a certain kind of information
Speaker 1: or a certain kind of individual to be able to
Speaker 1: help you get it done. Then you call. You can
Speaker 1: call your peers. This is this is why the community
Speaker 1: is so important. You can call on your peers, or
Speaker 1: you should be able to call on your peers to
Speaker 1: say yo, and without it being a situation of any
Speaker 1: kind of other agenda. That's what you're trying to avoid
Speaker 1: to be. But you want to be able to call
Speaker 1: on your peers and say, I'm doing such and such
Speaker 1: and I need see that's what the old school had together.
Speaker 1: They had that on lockdown where that many of us
Speaker 1: involved in the TV world, So they really will depend
Speaker 1: on each other when you come and want to and
Speaker 1: you're up there on the podium and this is another one.
Speaker 1: I was up there in the part you don't play.
Speaker 1: That's people. They created this term called hayden. You're going
Speaker 1: to make it work and you're going to support what's happening.
Speaker 1: And people would do that on the band stand, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's that was that's that's that's a part of
Speaker 1: the heritage of our music, of all the music that
Speaker 1: we do that. It's survival. And our way of being
Speaker 1: able to communicate with each other came from like an
Speaker 1: unspoken thing of like, hey, we're trying to make this happen.
Speaker 1: We don't need to support each other because meanwhile I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm like is this where are there any other sisters?
Speaker 1: I mean, I was thinking women period, But I was like,
Speaker 1: in this community, is are they're just women that I'm
Speaker 1: not seeing? Music directors very few Michelle now disappearing acts
Speaker 1: years ago? Yeah, there from from alive. From a live
Speaker 1: television type standpoint, that's what I'm like. Patristas, who was
Speaker 1: the who was the Well, you know, there's not that
Speaker 1: much live television unfortunately, and I think that that's a
Speaker 1: problem because I think that there are more women who
Speaker 1: are to have, who are capable to have some of
Speaker 1: the skills that they would take. But she's such a
Speaker 1: boss position. It was. It was pretty cool. Okay, now
Speaker 1: we that was literally just one question. I would like
Speaker 1: to know how did you uh interact or run it
Speaker 1: into Pam Brown, who was the team coordinator for a
Speaker 1: soul train. Okay, I wish it was a beautiful, sexy story,
Speaker 1: but it's not over Boom did you say teen coordinator? Coordinator?
Speaker 1: I went to a park. I was at a park.
Speaker 1: I don't even know why I was there, but I
Speaker 1: was at a park, you know, high school, hanging with
Speaker 1: your hanging with your friends, you know. And this bus
Speaker 1: pulled up and she and Don Corneiz get out and
Speaker 1: they talked about this show that they were bringing from
Speaker 1: Chicago called Soul Train, and that they were gonna shoot
Speaker 1: it out here and they would come by the same
Speaker 1: park next Saturday. And if you wanted to go over
Speaker 1: to the television station, you know, just bring a change
Speaker 1: of clothes. We'll pick you up here, we will bring
Speaker 1: you back here, and we're gonna all you gotta do
Speaker 1: is have fun and dance on the show. So what
Speaker 1: was that, like, I'm gonna be on TV? Yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know me, remember I wanted to me and that
Speaker 1: I'm like kind away from a long time ago. So
Speaker 1: I was like, this is actually very cool. And the
Speaker 1: show was we didn't have a lot of detail about
Speaker 1: what to do. They just to come, bring a change
Speaker 1: of clothing, dance and that's what we did. So but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm looking around at all the other stuff
Speaker 1: that's happening because you know what I'm saying, this is
Speaker 1: this is stuff going on in here. It's people in here,
Speaker 1: and um we would go come and go blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah like that. And so I was on
Speaker 1: the show. I did maybe five or six of them,
Speaker 1: I think, because they would shoot a lot on like
Speaker 1: one week when they would do a lot, So I
Speaker 1: was like maybe on five or six of those shoots,
Speaker 1: which meant that I was on quite a few shows
Speaker 1: and saw quite a few artists come on that show.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, at that moment, you're such
Speaker 1: a to see an unknown al green Bill Withers on
Speaker 1: she's on the episode of your The Dead President's episode
Speaker 1: where I was doing with the sling, not with the
Speaker 1: cast where he's wearing the hot person. Yes, you can
Speaker 1: let the pleather pants. You have to ask your own questions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's what I was wondering. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if I was gonna particularly cute that dad and what
Speaker 1: But they said, you ask the question, okay, And I
Speaker 1: guess I got chosen a lot to do stuff. I
Speaker 1: had a little scramble board one time and things like that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: pam uh with then you know, if you do a
Speaker 1: few of these. She gets to know people who's who's who,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was just amazing that. Then later years later,
Speaker 1: I'm back on the show as a guest to do
Speaker 1: you know, forgive me. That's the thing. Um, In all
Speaker 1: of your appearances on the show, usually done will acknowledge
Speaker 1: or child or sort of like joke about like your
Speaker 1: days of this old tring dance or whatever. But in
Speaker 1: your four or five appearances, you guys never discussed that,
Speaker 1: and we never talked about that. That's true. Does he
Speaker 1: know he? I think he did, but you know I would,
Speaker 1: I would see him in other places. See by this time,
Speaker 1: I'm still I'm I'm still in high school, but I'm
Speaker 1: starting to play in town. So he he used to
Speaker 1: go out and just go to a club or something
Speaker 1: like that, she would do. And he may have seen
Speaker 1: me do something else. And I think he really did
Speaker 1: appreciate um musicianship from the standpoint of of of you
Speaker 1: know players, you know from Chicago, so that you know,
Speaker 1: jazz was a big deal. Uh, so he may have
Speaker 1: seen me in a slightly different light. And I and
Speaker 1: Pam Pam Brown, she did know. She did know that
Speaker 1: I played and and stuff like that some kind of way,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but anyway, those days on slow train
Speaker 1: were really um, really magical, you know, told me a lot,
Speaker 1: gave me a lot of of pride and in in
Speaker 1: in our music for one, and then in certainly UH
Speaker 1: kind of um helped me to understand sort of the
Speaker 1: the way that UH television and radio could coexist as
Speaker 1: a means by which we would get UH very important information,
Speaker 1: particularly that of our image to each other. Radio was
Speaker 1: the way how did you sign your first record? Dere okay?
Speaker 1: So uh In nineteen seventy two, I was in this.
Speaker 1: I was my last year high school, and like I said,
Speaker 1: I went to all black High school, Lock High School,
Speaker 1: and we played a lot of Battle of the band's
Speaker 1: type of things a jazz band did, because you know,
Speaker 1: you win a trumpet, you win a kick drum pedal,
Speaker 1: you know. So we did a whole bunch of these,
Speaker 1: and one of them was up in Monterey, California. And
Speaker 1: the winner of this high school band competition that a
Speaker 1: band competition and a combo competition. So the winner of
Speaker 1: this band competition or combo competition, the prize was to
Speaker 1: appear at the Monterey Jazz Festival, which remains today one
Speaker 1: of the largest, you know, jazz festivals. Now, our band
Speaker 1: didn't win, but my combo did, so we got to
Speaker 1: play on this as festival. And it was after that
Speaker 1: that record companies who were doing that kind of music
Speaker 1: were interested in me signing. Now I'm gonna set the
Speaker 1: the environment a little bit. There was an artist named
Speaker 1: Bobby Humphrey, and so all the companies now are looking to, Oh,
Speaker 1: we need to have an answer to them. They need
Speaker 1: the answer to them, you know. And so we we
Speaker 1: had a great set and everything went really really well,
Speaker 1: but the companies were really looking. Now. I wasn't interested.
Speaker 1: And this is another difference. Back then, I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like I was ready. I was going to go to college,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still trying to figure out all in
Speaker 1: terms of what I really want to do. And the
Speaker 1: whole idea of doing an album was really daunting to me.
Speaker 1: Remember because my album collection had Joe Innerson in it
Speaker 1: and Miles Davids in it, and Ella and it and
Speaker 1: all these people in it, and I'm like, nah, I'm
Speaker 1: not ready for that just yet. But there was a company,
Speaker 1: Fantasy Records. They had a subsidiary label, Prestige, and Uh,
Speaker 1: it was a short deal, just a three album deal.
Speaker 1: I had complete creative control, just you know, we just
Speaker 1: want you to do you think and uh, I said, okay.
Speaker 1: And I needed money for school, so I said, okay,
Speaker 1: how did you get your afro so tight on the cover?
Speaker 1: Having an afro was an art. You had to really
Speaker 1: work at work at it a lot. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: work with Reggie Andrews. Well, Reggie Andrews was one of
Speaker 1: the three music directors at music music teachers at Lock
Speaker 1: High School. It was his first year of teaching. He
Speaker 1: had just graduated from college. It was his first year
Speaker 1: of tea gene. So there were three people Don Dustin,
Speaker 1: Frank Harris, and Reggie Andrews. And see, Reggie was only
Speaker 1: a little bit older than us, so we all really
Speaker 1: could relate to him very very well from the standpoint
Speaker 1: of he handled all of the jazz and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: contemporary music in terms of our training, and he was
Speaker 1: really um indispensable with to all of our understanding about
Speaker 1: these different kinds of musical uh music lives that you
Speaker 1: could lead. So one day he's bringing you know, he
Speaker 1: goes to the club and he tells, uh, Lenny White
Speaker 1: looks a man, I'm gonna bring you down to the
Speaker 1: to the high school. This was before jazz was institutionalized too.
Speaker 1: Come on that and so and he go pick him up,
Speaker 1: and they come. Herbie Handcock came, Minnie Mobbin came, and
Speaker 1: then he knew Maurice White and they needed a place
Speaker 1: to rehearse, and he said, well, once you come over
Speaker 1: to the high school after hours and rehearsing the multi
Speaker 1: purpose room, and we helped slap their instruments in and
Speaker 1: out and got them up on the stage so that
Speaker 1: they could place. How I met all of them? I
Speaker 1: met all of them earth to Fire when I was
Speaker 1: in high school and they couldn't pay for the use
Speaker 1: of the room, so they played my high school prom.
Speaker 1: So wh didn't they play? And that was the band
Speaker 1: with Jessica Clevees and Ronnie Laws Wait a minute, Rolling Batista,
Speaker 1: earth Wing Fire played your high school proNT Yes, sir
Speaker 1: so up and Larry Dunn and all of them, Al
Speaker 1: McKay and of course Maurice and I think we're playing
Speaker 1: drums at that time. Ralph Johnson was playing drums at
Speaker 1: the time. And these people became like people we would see,
Speaker 1: you know, on a bi weekly basis as they would
Speaker 1: come by to to try to rehearse. And that summer
Speaker 1: Mighty Mighty came out and blew up and uh me
Speaker 1: after the right after, So that you know these kinds
Speaker 1: of you talk about relationships, and you talk about being
Speaker 1: in certain kinds of environments and a sense of community
Speaker 1: and helping each other. I saw that over and over
Speaker 1: and over and over. How did you make the transition
Speaker 1: from playing at that time to like composing and writing
Speaker 1: like your own songs? What was that like? I think
Speaker 1: I was always doing it because for me, the playing
Speaker 1: and the composing was kind of all melted together. I
Speaker 1: didn't have maybe as many um opportunities to put it
Speaker 1: out there, but I had all kinds of stuff because
Speaker 1: in the little groups that I was in, I was
Speaker 1: always I was writing or always arranging something. I had
Speaker 1: a little band, you know, during the college days, called
Speaker 1: Red Means and Rice, and that was a lot. We
Speaker 1: made a little money playing house parties and things like this.
Speaker 1: And in that band was big player named Charles Meeks,
Speaker 1: who ultimately went on to work with Chuck Man, Joni
Speaker 1: and Josie James, who ended up singing with uh George
Speaker 1: Duke for many years, and lots of different people came
Speaker 1: through that band, and we worked me a little money
Speaker 1: and we played cover tunes, which was a great way
Speaker 1: to learn about arranging and stuff like that. Oh cooling
Speaker 1: the gang line what you know. I would learn so
Speaker 1: much by doing this kind of stuff. So the writing
Speaker 1: and the arranging and all of that sort of kind
Speaker 1: of found it's it's it's it's its own platform through
Speaker 1: the plane and then being learning about jazz and learning
Speaker 1: the history of the music and learning about improvisation, you know,
Speaker 1: because that is spontaneous composition. When you were putting out
Speaker 1: your Prestige records, did you tour it all? Like? What
Speaker 1: was your life like at that time when you first started.
Speaker 1: I was in school, so I didn't really tour. I
Speaker 1: did a few days, like during the summer a little bit,
Speaker 1: but but I didn't I didn't really do too much.
Speaker 1: I know. I remember I got the call from John McLoughlin.
Speaker 1: He wanted me to join what I said, okay, can
Speaker 1: And I talked to my parents and they were like,
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, no, you know, so I'm in
Speaker 1: school and he was so kind and nice. You know
Speaker 1: that this Prestige period was just like, look, I just
Speaker 1: need the college money and you're just very casual about
Speaker 1: like it was a platform and an idea of being
Speaker 1: able to do that. But I was always a little
Speaker 1: shy about being put out there too too soon, half Baked.
Speaker 1: There was a whole bunch of stuff I didn't know.
Speaker 1: So how did you go? Yeah? Let me because the
Speaker 1: three albums is so distinctively different, Like the first one
Speaker 1: is straighthead jazz. Now uh with the I know the
Speaker 1: last last one was before the Door or the last
Speaker 1: one was called shouted out shot it. Okay, Well I
Speaker 1: was going to say sword the last I'm sorry my
Speaker 1: arts are horrible. Um okay. Before I knew that Regie
Speaker 1: produced that or co reduced it, um, it had such
Speaker 1: a mind Zello Brothers feel to it that I was asking.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if, well, you mentioned Bobby Humphrey already,
Speaker 1: Like if was it the label asking you guys to
Speaker 1: switch each time around or no? No. I just had
Speaker 1: all that freedom and I was into so many different
Speaker 1: kinds of music, and you know, I to this day,
Speaker 1: I look back and I said, that could never happen today,
Speaker 1: where a record company would allow your expression to continue
Speaker 1: to to to morph into different things and allow for
Speaker 1: you to document where you were at the time or
Speaker 1: where you were feeling at the time in that way
Speaker 1: without being that concerned about whether or not there was
Speaker 1: going to be a hit. But this was a jazz
Speaker 1: label and they were accustomed to I mean the other
Speaker 1: people on the label. They had Stanley Taranty and on
Speaker 1: that label. Joe Henderson was on that label. Uh. They
Speaker 1: had canniball Adderlee on that label. Floor Paiem was on
Speaker 1: that label. So there were different takes on the music,
Speaker 1: and they were accustomed to people kind of moving and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, the the, the, the the the overarching
Speaker 1: label was owned by Saul Zins and they had Cretan's
Speaker 1: clear Water and people like that on the other side
Speaker 1: of the world. Okay, So they were always experiment and stuff,
Speaker 1: so they were kind of come into that that could
Speaker 1: not happen today where you could do three distinctively different
Speaker 1: albums and everybody was okay, okay. So usually on this show,
Speaker 1: something that means something like in a sentimental, uh valued
Speaker 1: way to us means like everything Usually there artist is
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, I wrote that in two minutes. Can
Speaker 1: you give us any stories about before the dorms. Did
Speaker 1: not write that in two minutes. I was because that
Speaker 1: for for us, like hip hop heads, like that means
Speaker 1: a lot like past. You remind me all that, But
Speaker 1: what was the process of writing that. I mean, you
Speaker 1: made it the title cut, so obviously it yet to um.
Speaker 1: I think that some of the some of your audience
Speaker 1: will relate to this. You know, that time of a
Speaker 1: day is I don't know, there's just something about it
Speaker 1: that where things seem to be at peace. Everything seems
Speaker 1: to be just so mellow, so peaceful, just just before
Speaker 1: the daybreak. And if you've had issues during the day
Speaker 1: that follow you into into your trying to get to
Speaker 1: sleep at night, and you wake up and you have
Speaker 1: just that early early, early, early early morning, it kind
Speaker 1: of there's something about it settles you. I still work
Speaker 1: when I'm under pressure or a deadline. That seems to
Speaker 1: be my productive, most productive part of the day. You
Speaker 1: think everyone is sleep, when you think everybody seems the
Speaker 1: alpha is like the rest of the world is. You know,
Speaker 1: you have that solitude to yourself. It's just something special
Speaker 1: about that. So the mood of that was what I
Speaker 1: was trying to capture. And uh and and at the
Speaker 1: same time there's a certain kind of balance between a
Speaker 1: certain sophistication and soulfulness that when you are operating with
Speaker 1: just again that area of your life where you just
Speaker 1: feel is your truth. That's that's that was my interpretation
Speaker 1: at that time of what that felt like. And I
Speaker 1: loved the idea of being able to you know, again
Speaker 1: going back to my idea of arranging and orchestration, having
Speaker 1: just those few instruments to work with trombone, auto flute
Speaker 1: and flu flu horn as the different textures and as
Speaker 1: almost almost like acquire against this rhythm section that is
Speaker 1: very very quiet, and then we hit this group and
Speaker 1: we just stayed there means everything to us, Thank you.
Speaker 1: So what was the transition to electric records? Because I
Speaker 1: mean digging hip hop producers, digging in the crates, that's
Speaker 1: how I'll discovered your fantasy output. But I actually, I
Speaker 1: mean Hanging Up was the first thing that I first
Speaker 1: here when I was like seven, and I thought that
Speaker 1: was your debut that whole time. That was like I
Speaker 1: sang one song on the Fantasy Um song called let
Speaker 1: Your Heart Be Free, and I played bass based on it.
Speaker 1: Man listen, So my my deal was over my three
Speaker 1: albums were up and and Electra was very interested. A
Speaker 1: guy named Don Mizelle was about to start a different,
Speaker 1: um smaller label within the Electro label that focused on
Speaker 1: music that was had jazz sensibilities but also had commercial
Speaker 1: and pop sensibilities. So oh, that's interesting. So he wanted,
Speaker 1: he said, now the things that like this, will you
Speaker 1: do more of that kind of stuff where there's some
Speaker 1: there's some vocal. I don't want you to I don't
Speaker 1: want you to minimize, you know, the the improvisation and
Speaker 1: aspect aspect of it or anything like that. But the
Speaker 1: giruls are so strong, do you think you oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, that's kind of what I was hearing and
Speaker 1: where I was at that time. Anyway, did you have
Speaker 1: any report with Was this the period? No, this was
Speaker 1: before that. That was this was the Joe Smith period?
Speaker 1: Was president still it was then Crabs now came in
Speaker 1: though during the time that I was there on my
Speaker 1: last album. Oh okay, okay, there like the late seventies
Speaker 1: and early eighties, but yes, so um yeah, So I
Speaker 1: Hang It Up was the first single off of that
Speaker 1: first album for Electra, and uh, you know, I was
Speaker 1: influenced by Parliament, Funkadelic and all of that sold them.
Speaker 1: Gang vocals or having multiple vocals, even though it was
Speaker 1: a different feel, was very appealing to me because I
Speaker 1: was always a little skittish about doing solo singing. I
Speaker 1: did it because that was the way, you know, I
Speaker 1: would sing as a means by which I would get
Speaker 1: my point across. But in terms of singing, I was like, no.
Speaker 1: But you know, okay, since we're in n there's a
Speaker 1: question you can finally settle for me after all these
Speaker 1: years are borndering. Um, And again you know, Abbot reader
Speaker 1: right on magazine. So that's that's where all my information
Speaker 1: came from. Um. But I'm led to believe that your
Speaker 1: involvement in the second Prince album was a lot more
Speaker 1: than what you were hinted at, not even credited for,
Speaker 1: but hinted at. And then again like, you know, information
Speaker 1: has come to me as an eight year old, and
Speaker 1: again it's it's right on magazine. My one of my
Speaker 1: first conversations with him was actually about you and asking
Speaker 1: you know, he said that, uh, you know, Patrice gave
Speaker 1: me a lot of advice and dadda dada, could you
Speaker 1: describe what exactly what you're relationship with Prince? Was your
Speaker 1: working relationship with Prince? Because I guess like I weren't
Speaker 1: either did he want to put you in the band
Speaker 1: or why did you do you taught him how to
Speaker 1: program and synthesizers or something like? What was the story? Okay,
Speaker 1: um are common? Are you coming with the right ones?
Speaker 1: So that's fine. Our common denominator was that the engineer,
Speaker 1: uh of one of my albums told me about him, said,
Speaker 1: you know, after Steve, he played all these instruments on
Speaker 1: his records. You know that we we all thought that
Speaker 1: that was just so amazing. But many of us were
Speaker 1: multi instrumentalists, and so we that gave us permission to
Speaker 1: at least do that. You know, we might not play
Speaker 1: every instrument, but we would play more than the thing
Speaker 1: that we were known to do. We wouldn't have any
Speaker 1: fear about doing that anymore. And the technology would allow
Speaker 1: us to do that, with us being able to overdub
Speaker 1: and things like this. So Tommy vicari is his name,
Speaker 1: is a very well known engineering producer, and at that
Speaker 1: time he says, there's somebody that I have recently come
Speaker 1: across that I'm gonna be working on a project with them,
Speaker 1: and I really would love for the two of you
Speaker 1: to meet. I said, okay, So he called him on
Speaker 1: the phone and we talked. Now I didn't know at
Speaker 1: the time that Prince already was aware of you know, me,
Speaker 1: but he was new and I hadn't heard. So we
Speaker 1: we talked some and uh, Tommy said, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be you know, working with him, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: that's great. I would love to, you know, have a
Speaker 1: chance to meet him. So we did, finding me, but
Speaker 1: you know, he was not a man of many words,
Speaker 1: especially in that first meeting. Well then he had then
Speaker 1: stuff came out and it was like things things were
Speaker 1: happening with him and all said, oh okay, I get
Speaker 1: it now. And we had other our paths crossed on
Speaker 1: some of these TV shows like American band Stand and
Speaker 1: things like that, and we did, you know, his guard
Speaker 1: kind of went down enough that he really wanted to talk.
Speaker 1: And so he used to call me and we would
Speaker 1: talk and he would ask me technical questions sometimes how
Speaker 1: did you do uh what what what pedal were you
Speaker 1: using on the clavnet to get that sign? What did
Speaker 1: you do with this? How did you do this? This? This?
Speaker 1: And when he would come to town. Uh. We would
Speaker 1: try to find a way to be able to to
Speaker 1: meet and I remember that the one distinct day I
Speaker 1: went to a hotel to pick him up. And this
Speaker 1: was back in the trench, croat and diaper days, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: and we were going back to I lived at my
Speaker 1: parents house because in the on the bottom floor was
Speaker 1: a double uh level house and on the bottom that's
Speaker 1: where I had on my stuff and we were supposed
Speaker 1: to be going back to my house to to play,
Speaker 1: you know, so we could jam and stuff. Then he
Speaker 1: got a call and we didn't have to take him back.
Speaker 1: We didn't. We didn't get that far. But the idea
Speaker 1: was that we developed really a relationship from the standpoint
Speaker 1: of just being again in support of what each other
Speaker 1: was doing and a willingness to kind of share. And
Speaker 1: as eccentric will call it, as he could have been
Speaker 1: when I would be with him, he was very down earth,
Speaker 1: very very real, because the music was our common bond
Speaker 1: and our association with one another started there. We became friends.
Speaker 1: But we started there and then years passed, you know,
Speaker 1: and he just now on the album that you asked
Speaker 1: asked about. I know, I remember that I he asked
Speaker 1: me to do. He asked me to to write out
Speaker 1: the string arrangement for I think the song was called Baby,
Speaker 1: and then I then there was another album where he
Speaker 1: asked me about a piano solo that I had done
Speaker 1: on one of my albums. You know, he was listening
Speaker 1: to something because he was ask about specific stuff sometimes
Speaker 1: how did you do this? And what does that? And
Speaker 1: what's what makes up this chord and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So you know we would talk like that and then
Speaker 1: I would hear his stuff and you know they'll be
Speaker 1: oh m G. You know, it's like stuff going on.
Speaker 1: There was just really uh, it was great. His big
Speaker 1: yet big influence was Slye and Slide was you know,
Speaker 1: from San Francisco, so everybody in California was like that
Speaker 1: was one of our game changers, you know in terms
Speaker 1: of the music, and you ask questions about that. And
Speaker 1: he liked jazz and he was all in all this
Speaker 1: different kind of stuff and just would ask a lot
Speaker 1: of questions. That we didn't see each other for a while,
Speaker 1: and then when Purple Rain was about to come out,
Speaker 1: we happened to be in New York at the same
Speaker 1: time and happened to be staying at the same hotel.
Speaker 1: How he knew that, I don't know. But he called
Speaker 1: and I said, well, where are you? And he said downstairs?
Speaker 1: And I said, well where downstairs? It would be a
Speaker 1: little more specific. I'm in restaurant. There's no one here.
Speaker 1: Can you come down? So I said, okay, So I
Speaker 1: went down to the restaurant he had. The restaurant was closed,
Speaker 1: and we sat and he was really nervous about Purple Rain.
Speaker 1: He was like, he says, you know, I've kind of
Speaker 1: put it all on the line on this. When I said,
Speaker 1: what did you do the best you possibly good? He
Speaker 1: said yeah. I said, well then let it go because this,
Speaker 1: I said, because it's gonna you know, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: what it's gonna be. I mean's a new medium for you.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the music is stellar. You put your heart
Speaker 1: and soul into it, and that's about all you can
Speaker 1: do is done. So let it, you know, just now
Speaker 1: enjoy the ride, whatever that is. And you know, I
Speaker 1: went to the premier and I said, what was he worried?
Speaker 1: You know, So we have that kind of rapport and
Speaker 1: then we had another one of those kinds of moments.
Speaker 1: The year he did that he opened the Grammys with Beyonce.
Speaker 1: Remember that I was there. That was my first one,
Speaker 1: that was the award. That was an awesome part of
Speaker 1: that production. Yes, so let me tell you what happened.
Speaker 1: So let me tell you what happened then. So you
Speaker 1: remember Prince and Beyonce did a killer opening for the show.
Speaker 1: And when we the way that the Grammys worked because
Speaker 1: it's live, they rehearsed the entire show top to bottom,
Speaker 1: then they reset it and run it live. So they
Speaker 1: were rehearsing and the producer direct you know, there was
Speaker 1: some pre recording that in the first uh his segment,
Speaker 1: and the director and producer came to me and said,
Speaker 1: you have got to go and convince him to do
Speaker 1: it live live, just to do everything live. And they
Speaker 1: had been rehearsing for a week and it was slamming,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, was there a reason that you
Speaker 1: would want to do it live live? And they said yes,
Speaker 1: because it'll just be live, blah blah blah. And I'm
Speaker 1: saying to myself, it's on television. I was about to say,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what you're talking about. Just play
Speaker 1: the whole thing live. Don't have any prerecorded happening, No
Speaker 1: pre pro tools, doubling, nothing that is enhancing TV at home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, so anyway, I said, well I'll talk
Speaker 1: to him. So I went to him and I said, okay, uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're asking me two for you to consider doing
Speaker 1: this live completely, do not to not use any of
Speaker 1: the pro tools and things and like that. What do
Speaker 1: you think I should do? He says, So I look
Speaker 1: around for he hidden microphones because he's just looking at you.
Speaker 1: Took my stuff off. I said, look, they're gonna run
Speaker 1: this show down. You and Beyonce are opening the show.
Speaker 1: They're gonna run the show down. Everything's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: They're they're set up in the booth. They're set up
Speaker 1: in bla blah blah blah blah, and they're gonna run
Speaker 1: this down and then they're gonna reset and the next
Speaker 1: time we see you, it's going out. Nobody has rehearsed
Speaker 1: it that way. Nobody has rehearsed it that way. Cameraman
Speaker 1: hasn't rehearsed it that way. SI man hasn't rehearsed it
Speaker 1: that way. The engineer who's mixing in your stuff, your
Speaker 1: guys haven't rehearsed it that way, he says, I understand.
Speaker 1: I said, okay. Now, I said, what I can do
Speaker 1: is I'll go out in the house and I'll make
Speaker 1: sure that that the house is banging so the other
Speaker 1: tens of millens of people will feel that energy because
Speaker 1: the house will feel that energy, but the sound will
Speaker 1: be pristine going out. And I think that needs to
Speaker 1: be the priority. He says, yes, I feel the same way.
Speaker 1: So I said, okay. So I went back to the
Speaker 1: directors that probably now never work again, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, he's just not feeling that, so maybe we
Speaker 1: should go what we know was gonna work and they
Speaker 1: and they said, okay, but that was one of those times.
Speaker 1: This is my point, is like, what would have been
Speaker 1: different is the fact that everyone who was prepared to
Speaker 1: do it a certain way not been prepared, and the
Speaker 1: first note of that show that they were opening would
Speaker 1: have potentially created a disaster. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: it was one of the best performances ever. Everybody knew
Speaker 1: exactly what needed to happen, and it was amazing and
Speaker 1: it was electric. They did a great job. And you know,
Speaker 1: but I I say that I share that story again
Speaker 1: to indicate the idea of respect and to indicate the
Speaker 1: idea of sharing. The agenda was to come off killing.
Speaker 1: How you get there in your methodology has to be
Speaker 1: organized so that you can come off killing, not the
Speaker 1: ego of somebody who feels like they just want to decide,
Speaker 1: just to be able to say and they did it
Speaker 1: live at whose expense? You know? So again that community
Speaker 1: protecting each other. Use the word electric and it reminded
Speaker 1: me of something else. Um, you did uh SNL with
Speaker 1: Prince in nine? Can you give us a recollection? Which
Speaker 1: you know? That was the performance of Electric Chair on SNL.
Speaker 1: There was the fift anniversary Huh, look at him? How
Speaker 1: I missed that? I don't know if she's on a
Speaker 1: piano that says her name on the side. He uh
Speaker 1: called and asked if I would do that, I'll show
Speaker 1: it to you after what. Yeah, so I thought you
Speaker 1: called it as he says, I'm going to play the
Speaker 1: fifteenth anniversary show of SNL and Batman was coming out
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna do Electric Chair and I want you
Speaker 1: to do it with me. Okay, fine, So he says, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna rehears and we're gonna have eleven days of rehearsal.
Speaker 1: How many songs you're doing on the show. We have
Speaker 1: a rehearsal tape, don't we? I think we do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't. I have an audio. Was it done at
Speaker 1: S I r the rehearsal tapes? The rehearsal tapes, because
Speaker 1: I don't know for part of it wherever it is.
Speaker 1: I have at least fourteen complete. I wish the audience
Speaker 1: could see that boss Bill is going through his bag.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to tell everything. Yeah, we're collectors of well,
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing is, it's just the science, the
Speaker 1: science of constantly rehearsing. Yes, intrigues me more than anything.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they rehearsed that song for eleven days. I
Speaker 1: think I came in on day nine. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, I I can't leave, but he
Speaker 1: said okay. So I came in on the ninth day,
Speaker 1: I think something like that, and I rehearsed it, you know,
Speaker 1: that day and the next day, and then we went
Speaker 1: to New York and you run it down. So he
Speaker 1: had put on the on the piano, which was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. And I think they were the band
Speaker 1: wasn't transition there? Um, so I don't know if this was,
Speaker 1: you know, looking back now, looking back on it, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this was like a lightweight audition. I
Speaker 1: don't know what this was. But the idea though that
Speaker 1: he did call me to participate in that, and that
Speaker 1: he felt that it was a big deal and a
Speaker 1: big enough deal that he would want my name on
Speaker 1: the piano, I thought was, Wow, this is and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we do have that. You do have rehearsal,
Speaker 1: I was going to say from them from the night
Speaker 1: of the show, Yeah, that's gonna tell us that's all
Speaker 1: you're gonna do that. I thought he was thought that
Speaker 1: it was clearing stuff a lot like it was amazing.
Speaker 1: Though it was amazing, and and see, it's a different situation.
Speaker 1: It's different when you know someone and you see there
Speaker 1: their process from afar. But having been there at that
Speaker 1: short at the short rehearsal and that during that short
Speaker 1: you know time that I was there, this gave me
Speaker 1: a little even additional insight into his detail, into his
Speaker 1: listening to every part in every line, into an understanding
Speaker 1: that so much of what we saw that looked so
Speaker 1: effortless and spontaneous was built out of the security of
Speaker 1: knowing that everything was in place, you know it was
Speaker 1: it was. It was great to be able to to
Speaker 1: witness that. All right, possess Oh okay, what's your question? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I was just moving to possess because we should talk
Speaker 1: about your kidding. Yeah, well man, possess Okay, what was it?
Speaker 1: Always the hit? But then there's always the thing back
Speaker 1: in the damning. When I was a kid, it was
Speaker 1: about you. You would knowing you would buy the forty five,
Speaker 1: but you better listen to that side, yes, because something
Speaker 1: was usually happening there. I told Smokey Robinson one time,
Speaker 1: I said, dude, you could release the whole album of
Speaker 1: B sides and so you know what we became accustomed
Speaker 1: to was, you know, don't sleep your your your entire presentation,
Speaker 1: your whole album. UM needs to have those moods in
Speaker 1: it and things in it that allow for everybody to
Speaker 1: come to it because you never know, you know, what's
Speaker 1: gonna really resonate with that? Right? Haven't you heard? Was
Speaker 1: was possessed? Yes? How did you feel about when that
Speaker 1: it kind of got resurrected by groove? Thing? Great? Okay?
Speaker 1: How many things I felt? I felt great? When? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say yes, yet the whole and your
Speaker 1: whole string intro. Now here's the thing about the string
Speaker 1: introp because most people didn't know you that drains can
Speaker 1: be funky, but they didn't typically in in those records.
Speaker 1: You know, they didn't get to do that. But I
Speaker 1: know they can do that. So that's definitely so you know,
Speaker 1: I would, I would, I would add you know, I
Speaker 1: tell my students sometimes that I purposely hide the vegetables
Speaker 1: in the dessert. You don't always know the thing that
Speaker 1: somebody is contributing or the lesson that's happening through the
Speaker 1: particular activity that they're doing. But later when you dissected
Speaker 1: a little bit and you find out other stuff, you realize, Wow,
Speaker 1: what an influence that had. Now Here was the thing
Speaker 1: I was very Uh Obviously the genre version that they
Speaker 1: did was awesome, and I was really elated at Kirk Franklin.
Speaker 1: But you know what elated me as much as what
Speaker 1: they did with the song the fact that they used
Speaker 1: a string intro. Because you work so hard on it,
Speaker 1: it's like wow. So you know, little things like that
Speaker 1: come up and let you know that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: people are listening. They don't always understand all of the details,
Speaker 1: but they feel it and uh so, yeah, that was awesome.
Speaker 1: How many times I settled for your lovery? Mate? Was
Speaker 1: that music? Did it right well? And it's been sampled
Speaker 1: a lot. It is one of the sample requests that
Speaker 1: we get the most often, speaking of samples giving it
Speaker 1: up as giving up talk about that. So I love that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do a duet on the record, and
Speaker 1: I asked Stevie to do it with me, and he
Speaker 1: we couldn't make the dates hook up hook up, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, man, okay, But I had previously
Speaker 1: met d J. Rogers. I loved his voice and his delivery,
Speaker 1: and he was a friend of Reggie Andrews. So I said, well,
Speaker 1: then maybe DJ will do it. And he came in
Speaker 1: and slated. I was laughing so hard most of the time,
Speaker 1: just because he was just so soulful that I'm surprised
Speaker 1: if my laughter didn't end up on front of that.
Speaker 1: I could hardly sing. I was just chest your cat,
Speaker 1: you know, smiling. It was Can I ask you about
Speaker 1: these beads? You know what I'm saying? And you held
Speaker 1: up the beads and the braids and the consciousness and
Speaker 1: so was it a conscious decision and then like, I
Speaker 1: just I want it's a it's a process. We all
Speaker 1: know that this is not something easy to do to
Speaker 1: keep it fresh as an artist and having and you
Speaker 1: need a good chiropractice that because on the other cover
Speaker 1: you kind of leaned because it looked like it was yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well it was something that we you decided to do.
Speaker 1: I wanted. I wanted braids, um because I thought that
Speaker 1: they looked really beautiful, and I thought that it was
Speaker 1: another way too. And I had a frow for so long,
Speaker 1: and I thought that it was another way to be
Speaker 1: able to kind of express express a certain pride and
Speaker 1: a certain consciousness and things like that, and to be
Speaker 1: able to do it in in some way that was different.
Speaker 1: And then the lady that was braiding my hair su
Speaker 1: bungle A Bradley West is her name, and she uh said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, um, she was going through these books you
Speaker 1: know of African uh folklore and styles and things like that,
Speaker 1: and she said, let's try some beads. So we did
Speaker 1: some beads and it became like a thing and it
Speaker 1: was really a beautiful way to adorn these braids uh
Speaker 1: and sort of frame a very um natural feeling, but
Speaker 1: to do something that, you know, just added that that
Speaker 1: thing as an artist and a frontal girl who bore
Speaker 1: braids when you started getting into the jam like how
Speaker 1: was you ma choreograph? How you every time? Yeah? But no,
Speaker 1: it was a style that was really became really really
Speaker 1: popular and other people started doing it and it was
Speaker 1: really cool and I enjoyed it for a long long time.
Speaker 1: It was good, easy to maintain, you know, on the road.
Speaker 1: Always looked nice, and you know, it was cool. I
Speaker 1: was always always wanted to ask you ready, Freddie Washington,
Speaker 1: that is like forget me. I mean, that's one of
Speaker 1: the top five baselines of all times? Can I ask
Speaker 1: it about that? Though? Okay, so it's it's in uh Steve.
Speaker 1: I know that most bass players will choose E because
Speaker 1: it's an open e. But that was a very transition
Speaker 1: to the bridge. Why why didn't he just take like
Speaker 1: why did he just not take a bass solo in
Speaker 1: uh F sharp the key of the song? Because he's Freddie?
Speaker 1: No I done it. I was like, oh, oh, you
Speaker 1: just said anything. You know, here's what I am. I
Speaker 1: tay story because there's a story. Yes, okay, So Freddie
Speaker 1: is from Oakland, California north of here, and he had
Speaker 1: been you know, playing bass, coming and coming around when
Speaker 1: he would when I was up there for sessions and stuffing.
Speaker 1: We had mutual friends, and we finally met him. I
Speaker 1: heard him playing us a man. He's he's really good.
Speaker 1: So he decided he wanted to live in Santeles because
Speaker 1: he wanted to do sessions. So he called. You know,
Speaker 1: I used to do some gigs and occasion call him
Speaker 1: from the Bay Area to come and play, you know,
Speaker 1: a little gig a weekend or something like that. So
Speaker 1: we became good friends and he would stay at my
Speaker 1: parents house and stuff like that. So then one day
Speaker 1: he just called and he says, Okay, I'm about done
Speaker 1: up here. I really want to come down there, really
Speaker 1: try to get in on the recording session scene. As
Speaker 1: your mama can I live on her couch for and
Speaker 1: so my parents were pretty progressive, you know. I said,
Speaker 1: this is gonna stretch it, but okay, and they said,
Speaker 1: oh yes, Freddy can stay down here in a little
Speaker 1: guest room for a little bit. So he did. He
Speaker 1: came down. So we played every day, as you gonna imagine,
Speaker 1: we played every day, and sometimes he would play drums
Speaker 1: and I would play bass. Sometimes he played keyboard and
Speaker 1: I would play drums. Sometimes you would play bass, you know.
Speaker 1: And we had a little for track, so we would
Speaker 1: record everything. And one day, uh he was he was
Speaker 1: home and I had just come from the market or
Speaker 1: something like that, and I'm hearing this baseline, that one
Speaker 1: and I'm saying, WHOA, what's that? I don't know, just something,
Speaker 1: and so I said, well, let's record it. So recorded it,
Speaker 1: and that's how the chorus and everything kind of came together.
Speaker 1: I said, well, this baseline is so fierce chord wise,
Speaker 1: it doesn't need that. That's the that's the vibe, that's
Speaker 1: the movement right there. So we were doing this and
Speaker 1: as we continue to play it, um we said, well
Speaker 1: it needs it needs something, but it doesn't need to
Speaker 1: go far, but it needs to it needs to go
Speaker 1: away from this and come back and there you have it.
Speaker 1: Do do do do do? I was like, what role
Speaker 1: did it? Was? Charles mems he what role did he playing? Producing? Like,
Speaker 1: how did in terms of taking it from just a
Speaker 1: four track demo to a fully produced song? Well, Charles
Speaker 1: I had known since high school. He went to Lock
Speaker 1: High School. Also great pianist. So you hired your high
Speaker 1: school because Gerald also played in your band, right? Is
Speaker 1: that him playing the solo? That is Gerald's first recorded
Speaker 1: solos ever on record, and that is a first, that's
Speaker 1: the first TAKEO. Wait, is that also Gerald doing the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Shuffle Team? No? No, wats okay? Really Ernie Watts? Really? Okay? Okay?
Speaker 1: Who taught Gerrold? Who come over to the school played with?
Speaker 1: Did he play with Swen or I know that he
Speaker 1: did stuff with He did a whole bunch of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1: He was like Quincy's go to solos on everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was solo solos on all that stuff. That so
Speaker 1: Charles in the studio, Like Charles back then, the producer
Speaker 1: it was not necessarily a producer's medium where every where
Speaker 1: the producer would change things. The producer's primary role at
Speaker 1: that time was to manage that buzz and to be
Speaker 1: sure that the flow of the sessions, because they were
Speaker 1: all alive, that the flow of the sessions yielded enough
Speaker 1: work each day. And you know, they would have musical
Speaker 1: things to say because especially as a player, I'm not
Speaker 1: in the booth to be able to hear it. As
Speaker 1: it's going across. So somebody that you're close enough to
Speaker 1: musically who can say we need one more or careful
Speaker 1: a letter B or whatever the situation is, or to say,
Speaker 1: I know it felt weird, but it's killing you need
Speaker 1: to come in now and check it out or what
Speaker 1: you know, just would have suggestions to keep keep the
Speaker 1: flow going and then after you had captured then be
Speaker 1: able to help you, um, continue to take those ideas
Speaker 1: and mold them into the final product. UM A little
Speaker 1: bit different from composing by committee or where you're handing
Speaker 1: it into the producer and and it's going to be
Speaker 1: completely they're a new canvas or some completely something that
Speaker 1: they would do. So Charles was really good at being
Speaker 1: able to um be really inside my head and yet
Speaker 1: remains uh totally objective to what the final result would
Speaker 1: need to be and monitor our workflow in our work progress.
Speaker 1: So that song becomes a hit, how does your life change? Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: first of all, you need to know the story that
Speaker 1: it didn't. It was not received at the that whole album,
Speaker 1: that whole straight from the Hard album which has number
Speaker 1: one on it, Remind Me on It, Get Me Not.
Speaker 1: It was not received well at Electric when we turned
Speaker 1: it in should say, yes, very a very well meaning man,
Speaker 1: but his name was Oscar Fields. So dealing with as
Speaker 1: far as artists, artists well over Washington was on the
Speaker 1: label at the time, was on the same league Lady
Speaker 1: White and Peanut Butter they want the label. It was
Speaker 1: a bunch of folks. Someone got my Peanut Butter reference
Speaker 1: from yesterday. I never got to explain that to you guys.
Speaker 1: So there were there, you know, there were a few
Speaker 1: of us because we represented this cross hybrid of again
Speaker 1: jazz sensibilities running through the music. But the music was
Speaker 1: danceable and part of again part of our heritage in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, R and B and and all
Speaker 1: of that. So, uh, you, most of the black acts
Speaker 1: at a large label like Electra, we're not necessarily given
Speaker 1: access to the same kinds of promotion and no tools
Speaker 1: and help that became part of the day. The money
Speaker 1: would be less. And in terms of this is when
Speaker 1: we were kicking over into now, videos having to be
Speaker 1: one of the main things that would allow for people
Speaker 1: to be able to to see and you couldn't do that.
Speaker 1: And unless your record like crossed Over and and and
Speaker 1: and even promotional dollars. Even touring dollars were set up
Speaker 1: with some kind of criteria where you had to sell
Speaker 1: so many records first and crossover unless you had some
Speaker 1: other means by which you could make it happen. It
Speaker 1: was Quincy Jones that really told us, Uh, you better
Speaker 1: get with this indrependent promotion thing and and figure out
Speaker 1: how you are going to be the first entrepreneur in
Speaker 1: the first catalyst for getting the music out there. You
Speaker 1: can't make people love it, but you gotta get it
Speaker 1: in front of them, and sometimes they leave the record
Speaker 1: companies at that time, they would they would miss because
Speaker 1: even if you have of the video, I'm like, where
Speaker 1: can you service the video? Well, that was there just
Speaker 1: allowing you not to have you know, just hit me.
Speaker 1: Did you tour it a lot or at all? Because
Speaker 1: besides soult train, you didn't see me much. I didn't,
Speaker 1: I mean, jeffreysarn the dollars weren't there for them to
Speaker 1: justify any kind of help with the tour. And at
Speaker 1: that point, Uh, part of would record company promotion and
Speaker 1: marketing plans included you being able to get out in
Speaker 1: front of people. So I ended up I did get out,
Speaker 1: but I ended up on a lot of these all
Speaker 1: star events, but why the sprofessor or like that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Well, and and and somewhere was like multiple
Speaker 1: artists playing type playing, and then you say, well, here's
Speaker 1: my new single and then you have you know, Lenny
Speaker 1: White actually playing Forget Me Nots in front of people
Speaker 1: for the very first time. I mean when people heard
Speaker 1: it before it came out. He was the first drummer
Speaker 1: that played in and you got the saxophone solo being
Speaker 1: played by Stanley turnteen instead and awful, let me tell you.
Speaker 1: But the idea was that was the way I could
Speaker 1: get out because it was just me. I didn't have
Speaker 1: to support a band, and I didn't have to support
Speaker 1: all the other kinds of things that go out to
Speaker 1: Al Hayman, he missed. Haman was the young, upstart uh
Speaker 1: uh concert promoter that was going to turn it all
Speaker 1: on its ears because because he saw so many artists
Speaker 1: not able to get in front of their audiences, so
Speaker 1: he created ways by having these multi artists things. He
Speaker 1: couldn't do it on the scale of of of of
Speaker 1: the Budweiser super Fest and the Cool Jazz Festival, but
Speaker 1: he could do it in smaller things where he could
Speaker 1: take five or six of us and we would go
Speaker 1: and we would play different schools and things like that,
Speaker 1: colleges and places where he said to get the music
Speaker 1: and you guys as artists in front of these people,
Speaker 1: because when your music blows up, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: different thing. When you said, you know, I was there
Speaker 1: and I heard that song blah blah blah. So I
Speaker 1: really truly believe despite the fact that between Freddy and
Speaker 1: Charles and myself we put our life savings of a
Speaker 1: few dollars together to buy three weeks of interper promotion
Speaker 1: to get Forget Me, not at least in front of radio.
Speaker 1: I really think that having the idea that people appreciated
Speaker 1: it because I had played it out there before it
Speaker 1: was out and let them know that this is new
Speaker 1: and it's about to come out. Hey, it's either thumbs
Speaker 1: up with thumbs down. And then it was resounding thumbs
Speaker 1: up Forget Me. And this was a little ahead of
Speaker 1: the curve too. So it was that courage given by
Speaker 1: my people that allowed for me to be able to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would be worth trying to see what happens at
Speaker 1: the radio. When did it finally hit like when the
Speaker 1: how long did it take forward to them able to
Speaker 1: catch on? The label caught on maybe a month after
Speaker 1: he came out, to the point that they gave me
Speaker 1: my money back to them. So, okay, you it's rare
Speaker 1: that we get an artist who actually composes the songs
Speaker 1: that will later be sampled. Um, and you're just such
Speaker 1: a uh sample friendly artists? Is the not the myth
Speaker 1: true or whatever? Because I guess when we talk to
Speaker 1: Ali willis about uh, the the September effect of writing
Speaker 1: September Earth one and fire, And then she reminded us, well,
Speaker 1: I was one fifth of the writers. So even though
Speaker 1: that was a massive hit, sharing a check with five
Speaker 1: of the people still meant like, you know, don't quit
Speaker 1: your day and got work just yet. But as someone
Speaker 1: who has created music with the least seven to eight
Speaker 1: songs that you can pretty much stand the test of
Speaker 1: time of of hip hop sample ability, are you able
Speaker 1: to make a nice living off just the sample residuals?
Speaker 1: Or is it just like, Okay, I could put I
Speaker 1: could have steak with the beans, and right, I can
Speaker 1: put some cheese, get some new braids, because I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess the perception is always like that one hit
Speaker 1: single that caused me to retire for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life. Or man, if this to be the sampled
Speaker 1: on this thing, or somebody covers it like yeah, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So is that myth true or is
Speaker 1: it just like it's my mortgage cool for three months.
Speaker 1: I think that the mechanism um that allowed for somebody
Speaker 1: who is like like an Alley like a songwriter to
Speaker 1: be able to uh live on those royalties, that that
Speaker 1: that mechanism isn't there in a way that it used
Speaker 1: to be. So the samples are about as close as
Speaker 1: you'll get to what may have been covers before. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, no dis because I totally get it.
Speaker 1: But you know, it ain't like the sample that everybody
Speaker 1: wants a sample. Your stuff doesn't have any money too
Speaker 1: at that moment to necessarily, uh pay you an advance
Speaker 1: or something like that, and those sample requests and uh
Speaker 1: those those kinds of licenses. I mean it would, especially
Speaker 1: the way things are now, it has to be like
Speaker 1: super massive for you to be able to see a difference.
Speaker 1: So it's about now having um the ability I think
Speaker 1: to do it many different ways. Sampling is an income stream.
Speaker 1: It is a decent one. But if somebody I don't think.
Speaker 1: I think we're the day of somebody being able to
Speaker 1: live off that is not there the way that it
Speaker 1: was when you were living off of royalties, because you
Speaker 1: were receiving several sets of royalties, you were getting your mechanicals.
Speaker 1: You were getting if it was using the films, your
Speaker 1: performance sync, licenses, data la la la la la, and
Speaker 1: if you had covers, and if that cover happened to
Speaker 1: be done in another language. There were all these mechanisms
Speaker 1: and companies that were promote the use of all of
Speaker 1: this music. If now the songs had to be worthy,
Speaker 1: they had to be able to stand up. But there
Speaker 1: are people who every day their job nine five they're
Speaker 1: writing songs all day. That was a job as a songwriter.
Speaker 1: We're getting back to the craft of that. I think
Speaker 1: we're getting back to people who are songwriters, um exercising
Speaker 1: that muscle every day to write ten or fifteen songs
Speaker 1: to find one that they can then release and see
Speaker 1: how it's gonna go and or hopefully get it to
Speaker 1: another artist or something like that. But it's it's it's
Speaker 1: I think it would be very difficult now to just
Speaker 1: make your living off of sample. I imagine. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you what the men in black check imagine. They
Speaker 1: had to be pretty good. It is. I could actually
Speaker 1: put the words savings back in my vocam. Indeed, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. I take that bag. Yeah that
Speaker 1: was that was good. So I recalled the rapid fire
Speaker 1: or we've missed anything? Um? Uh we didn't ask feel
Speaker 1: so real? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, okay, it feels so real. Um,
Speaker 1: well Snoop Dogg cover Snoop Dogg. He did, and he
Speaker 1: was on the scene. I forgot. I forgot. Now I
Speaker 1: got one question I always I wanted to ask you, Um,
Speaker 1: as a musician, I mean, you have your ups and
Speaker 1: down periods whatever, Um, what was what would be considered
Speaker 1: your down period? Because to me, you've always worked and
Speaker 1: I've always seen you doing stuff. So what were some
Speaker 1: of a period you know where things just kind of
Speaker 1: you know, mab might got a little tight, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, how did you navigate that? Uh? My downs
Speaker 1: wouldn't be bad. They were moments of clarity, I guess
Speaker 1: the biggest one. I did one album for Arista, after
Speaker 1: my after my extent, after my standard fantasy, I mean sorry,
Speaker 1: after my stint at Elektra. Bob kras Now came in
Speaker 1: on my last of seven albums. Okay, that was the
Speaker 1: album that Feels a Real was And when I didn't
Speaker 1: see the kind of still after all we had gone through,
Speaker 1: after we had come they had, I never got that
Speaker 1: our relationship was such that I, in their mind, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, earned even the opportunity to be able to
Speaker 1: use the best of their machine. So after that album
Speaker 1: and Feels a Real sat between when Doves Cries number one,
Speaker 1: feels a Real number two and tell me I'm not
Speaker 1: dreaming Michael Jackson and Jermaine Jackson and they didn't. But
Speaker 1: trying to take things to the next level, I said,
Speaker 1: come out. So I had been being courted a little
Speaker 1: bit by Clive Davis um he said he really really
Speaker 1: wanted me on the label. So I went to Arison.
Speaker 1: I did one album for Ariston and he held onto
Speaker 1: that album for almost close to three years. So it's
Speaker 1: sat while he's waiting on the hit. I don't hear
Speaker 1: a hit and see the last time of somebody telling
Speaker 1: me that it was, so I'm like to go off
Speaker 1: in your head. It went off in my head. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, I said you know,
Speaker 1: I think I'm at a crossroads where I need to
Speaker 1: determine whether or not having done these albums and received
Speaker 1: all this great uh energy, you know, from an audience
Speaker 1: that accepted me as I was. When nobody was cared
Speaker 1: enough to even ask what we we're gonna do, we
Speaker 1: just go in and do to all of a sudden
Speaker 1: being like almost like a little bit feeling like a
Speaker 1: little micromanaged. But I also knew that that was a
Speaker 1: part of the way that they did things over there.
Speaker 1: But the waiting game was I'm not ready for the
Speaker 1: waiting game, So I got busy because I had other
Speaker 1: skills and other things to do. Remember for me, that
Speaker 1: signing at all was kind of on on the on
Speaker 1: a path to anything else. Remember, I wanted to do
Speaker 1: TV and music for TV and film. That's that's that
Speaker 1: was my goal. That was not my final destination, but
Speaker 1: it was. It was a great training ground, and it
Speaker 1: offered me a lot of opportunity, and it offered me
Speaker 1: a lot of access um. So I wasn't so afraid
Speaker 1: when it when it got to be going on three
Speaker 1: years and I'm still waiting on this magic bullet uh
Speaker 1: to say, you know, I don't know that I can
Speaker 1: do this this way. So when I did hear the
Speaker 1: song that they chose that they felt was like, you know,
Speaker 1: the second coming, I was like, really, and radio, particularly
Speaker 1: Black radio, was like, oh, we were not expecting this
Speaker 1: from you. Now. Remember I had had like all these
Speaker 1: other albums, So I developed relationships with program directors and
Speaker 1: things like that because the music was consistent in terms
Speaker 1: of whatever they were listening for, and the audience had
Speaker 1: already received what I do based upon what I do.
Speaker 1: So um, this was really a departure and was not
Speaker 1: received very well. And so um, that's when I knew.
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, well it may be time to kind
Speaker 1: of press a pause on this part of it and
Speaker 1: be focused on the used use the time to focus
Speaker 1: on the things that I was on the way too.
Speaker 1: And sort of once they put on the what got sidetracked?
Speaker 1: You know? But the scoring it solf because that's a
Speaker 1: that's a thing where you gotta pump, you gotta pump
Speaker 1: that machine in a whole other way of just trying
Speaker 1: to get in the meeting. Album also just sort of
Speaker 1: like exfusion, yeah, with Ernie and and do google upon.
Speaker 1: So we did, we did, We did too, two CDs
Speaker 1: actually and that and that was always for me. I
Speaker 1: always had a release that I didn't have to feel
Speaker 1: locked in. I think what took soul and takes so
Speaker 1: many of our artists out is that what ever they're doing,
Speaker 1: they reached some barrier or boundary and they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have a way to punch themselves out of it. And
Speaker 1: it's at the at the at the highest level. In
Speaker 1: the lowest it's like, you know, I mean, I watched
Speaker 1: I watched people who I feel like would have just
Speaker 1: exploded had they had a way to be able to
Speaker 1: compartmentalize a little bit and go do something else. I was.
Speaker 1: I was hurt when Philip Simon died, you know, and
Speaker 1: you both feeling these were people that Harris to remember
Speaker 1: they're wrested too. I saw, like Stephie Stephanie Mills for
Speaker 1: a while was there and kind of it kind of
Speaker 1: got and I'm like, man, the difference maker for me
Speaker 1: was I think having something else that I love that
Speaker 1: didn't take me away from the music and allowed me
Speaker 1: to have another platform and another outlet. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's one of the other um contributors to me
Speaker 1: being involved so deeply in education now because you want
Speaker 1: to do this thing and you want to have every
Speaker 1: option open to you of how you're gonna get there
Speaker 1: and how you're gonna do it. You know, you want
Speaker 1: difference paths of window open, window not open, and go
Speaker 1: through the back door, back door, not go through the side,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's about the music and you have
Speaker 1: something you want to do and you have something you
Speaker 1: want to say and it's important. So you need multiple
Speaker 1: ways to be able to place yourself in that environment.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's what saved I think that's what saved
Speaker 1: my life. So what is your life like now? Like
Speaker 1: what should the average day in the life your kids
Speaker 1: know Russian? Is patrees Russian? Or is it just like
Speaker 1: like my mom's a teacher. Well, my my my my
Speaker 1: son is nineteen, he's almost twenty. He knows now he
Speaker 1: does now becau when other people have told you. But
Speaker 1: he you know, has been around and comes to the
Speaker 1: has come to different things and kind of like connected
Speaker 1: the dots. Oh, it's different. So when she told me
Speaker 1: to take out the trash, it was her telling me
Speaker 1: to do you one son and a daughter, and now
Speaker 1: my daughter is now thirteen, she's just now getting it
Speaker 1: because now she's uh, you know, finding her own music
Speaker 1: and go and she knows a little bit and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know that they'll do it as a profession.
Speaker 1: But they both played He plays guitar a little bit,
Speaker 1: she plays string bass, so they they kind of get it,
Speaker 1: him more than her. But what about your students, Like
Speaker 1: to your students, Oh yeah, they get it, um and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, teaching at the college level, so so they
Speaker 1: they are you know, they want to get it because
Speaker 1: they want to be there, and so you need to
Speaker 1: know who you How do you manage that though? But
Speaker 1: the can I meet you after class? Can I when
Speaker 1: I can have any of your time? Can I? Like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you get a lot of those requests. But
Speaker 1: the curriculum, especially the curriculum at the Popular Music program
Speaker 1: at USC, I helped. I helped to sort of coordinate, um,
Speaker 1: those things that were important. So they get a lot
Speaker 1: of information. And then I'm still active, you know, as
Speaker 1: a teacher, So they get a lot of information all
Speaker 1: the time, and and from not just me, but from
Speaker 1: other you know, people who have a lot of the
Speaker 1: uh same kind of information who came up wanting to
Speaker 1: be able to play anything and want to do it
Speaker 1: just I just want to be in it. I just
Speaker 1: want to do it, so I better get really good
Speaker 1: at a lot of stuff. Have you been involved in
Speaker 1: any of advocating of music education like nation wide? Because
Speaker 1: you just seem like the perfect person that would do
Speaker 1: some things like that. Man, And I know that you
Speaker 1: work with the Grammys that I will from the standpoint
Speaker 1: of teaching. I do that, And then I'm also at
Speaker 1: Berkeley College Music as their ambassador for artistry in education,
Speaker 1: so sometimes and I've worked with Grammy in the schools
Speaker 1: and I've worked at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.
Speaker 1: So I've had different platforms and different been asked to
Speaker 1: do different kinds of things. But in terms of us
Speaker 1: having a certain kind of generational advocate for the kind
Speaker 1: of thing you're talking about on a broader base, I
Speaker 1: don't know that I've ever been asked to do anything
Speaker 1: like that on a consistent basis. I'll just see you
Speaker 1: at the White House, but now maybe not this White House.
Speaker 1: That's not rushing over that. I don't no collusion, no
Speaker 1: collusion for Donald Trump. Dr Russian. We really thank you
Speaker 1: for thank you, Thank you. I was so happy. You
Speaker 1: don't understand when I when I sent you the text
Speaker 1: message and I saw the three dots, that is awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys for asking them. Congratulations. You know, you
Speaker 1: guys do to have an open platform to be able
Speaker 1: to speak truth and really be able to get inside
Speaker 1: of our people's heads and what's going on and talk
Speaker 1: about it. It's really important that communication is so so key.
Speaker 1: It's been our survival. And so he said the same thing,
Speaker 1: just like this is one of the first time, like
Speaker 1: the older generation and the younger generation, we don't really
Speaker 1: get the dialogue like that, and you know, just we
Speaker 1: just thank you for being over like doing this show.
Speaker 1: It's like a life lesson after life lessons for me.
Speaker 1: So it's beautiful. Well, it's an important thing because, like
Speaker 1: I said, by I don't want to go so far
Speaker 1: to say by design, but by design. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: as people become successful, you know you're pulled away as
Speaker 1: opposed to being able to gather and when you have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to be able to, you know, get out
Speaker 1: and do some things. The information that you get and
Speaker 1: the understanding that you get from being able to absorb
Speaker 1: other kinds of things and be other places and meet
Speaker 1: other people. That's important stuff to be able to bring
Speaker 1: back so people's horizons can be broadened. So please continue
Speaker 1: to do what you're doing and know that you have
Speaker 1: a thousand percent of my support. Manscious. Thank you. As
Speaker 1: a new California resident, just meeting somebody who has a
Speaker 1: history of blackness and it's still very conscious and deep
Speaker 1: in it, because you know, as the East Coast person,
Speaker 1: you come here, you're like, well, I'm just soaking it
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna ask you some recommendations later for all
Speaker 1: kinds of black things. Got black Well, ladies and gentlemen
Speaker 1: on behalf of Team Supreme. Fine, take a little It's like, uh, sugar, Steve, Okay, sugar, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he salty Steve. I'm a little under the weather. But
Speaker 1: I did have, um, I know that you were saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, go ahead. I was just curious out of
Speaker 1: the I know you said that East Coast jazz people
Speaker 1: would come out here, and you see them too, But
Speaker 1: at the West Coast jazz seen in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: who were your favorite piano players or just jazz artists
Speaker 1: from from out here, from out here, Well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to broaden our coast a little bit to just
Speaker 1: do the west of the Mississippi side. So Joe samples
Speaker 1: from Houston. It's not right here in l A. But
Speaker 1: he was here a lot because they did someone studio
Speaker 1: work here, so you know, he was He became sort
Speaker 1: of again another person that had that kind of mentoring
Speaker 1: attitude and was helpful. Um, let me see, let me see.
Speaker 1: And then you know, some of my peer group, Billie
Speaker 1: Child is amazing, Todd Cochrane amazing, and we're not that
Speaker 1: far in age. But we listened to a lot of
Speaker 1: the same people and listened to each other. Haven't haven't
Speaker 1: grown up in l A? Like what we what chads
Speaker 1: are your parents listening to? People? They listened to Harold
Speaker 1: Land and Blue Mitchell. They were out here. Um a
Speaker 1: lot to um. Joe Henderson lived up in the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: so we heard a lot of that. I heard a
Speaker 1: lot of that. Um brew Beck was here. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: heard a lot of his stuff too, not quite as much, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the really well known stuff. But I didn't
Speaker 1: really get into a lot of you know, his other
Speaker 1: music other than the stuff that most people knew, you know, UM,
Speaker 1: what about like cal Jad he was on a fantashy
Speaker 1: oh yeah, cal Jater was on a fantasy he had
Speaker 1: one of his records was it was read I had
Speaker 1: this moment moment. Yeah, Claire Fisher. You mentioned Claire Fisher earlier. Yes, yes, Um,
Speaker 1: do you have any say whatsoever about the reissues of
Speaker 1: your records or anything like, yeah, we can't find find something.
Speaker 1: None of the stuff on streaming, like none of the
Speaker 1: I'll give you. I'll give you a scoop the masters.
Speaker 1: Now recently, just recently, I went to a German company.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember that wonder Bird has that son
Speaker 1: they have something. I was like, that's a label, okay,
Speaker 1: K seven Sea. They just acquired a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: from the Warners catalog under which this stuff was. Um.
Speaker 1: So those will be ways you can investigate and then
Speaker 1: you know, if you still can't find something, you can come.
Speaker 1: We gotta leave. You still needs to alight anyway, y'all
Speaker 1: taking stems, y'all will be having to take the track date.
Speaker 1: Plea stem your stuff up, please please? Alright, so on
Speaker 1: behalf of anything else, Steve, No, thank you? All right. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve, I'm with you now that I totally
Speaker 1: forgot about Hollywood. Listen I'm talking about I know, I know.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying now. I wish we could do role
Speaker 1: Call again because I totally forgot about Hollywood Shuffle and
Speaker 1: I would have made a Timmy reference the next ground
Speaker 1: jaredy Kurve, you know all those people in that movie,
Speaker 1: I saw it happening, keenan Ill. All these people are
Speaker 1: really blown up. So again, community, community, beautiful. Let's hear
Speaker 1: from the community to the people, because the people got
Speaker 1: the power. I'm sorry here, sorry, and that's how we'll
Speaker 1: setting off the community station. Thank you very much, y'all good.
Speaker 1: Of course. Love Supreme is a production of My Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.