Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Oh damn, I'm paid Billsie. What the hell?
Speaker 1: Snap Son, Jesus Christ, Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another
Speaker 1: episode of course I'm Supreme. Bill, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Yes, sorry, starring up date Phil Man.
Speaker 1: You in the house. You even with even with a Tony,
Speaker 1: You're you're still with us.
Speaker 2: I know I'm just close from not.
Speaker 3: I'm here for now, Billy.
Speaker 1: The second you complete you got, You're not gonna mess
Speaker 1: with this anymore.
Speaker 2: The second I he got before you.
Speaker 1: Hell, yeah, I'm getting out. Bill loves Supreme.
Speaker 2: All I'm taking everybody with you.
Speaker 1: Days coming too, He says, exactly, all right, sugar, Steve,
Speaker 1: you're still loyal, correct to Bill Sherman. Yes, okay, Hey, Alicia,
Speaker 1: lord On, somebody we gotta fund Ticolo in the crib.
Speaker 1: What's up?
Speaker 2: Brother? You call us good?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm good Man. Were down twenty six?
Speaker 2: Cause yeah, nice?
Speaker 1: We move, we move, we moveing weight. Son. I like
Speaker 1: the fact that we down twenty six actually is a
Speaker 1: good thing, because normally that could mean like Atlanta is
Speaker 1: down by twenty six. Are you down twenty six thousand dollars? Exactly?
Speaker 4: What is the game, nah man, you know it's still
Speaker 4: try trying to live past fifty?
Speaker 2: Yes, which is you know, struggle, super struggle. How are
Speaker 2: you hey?
Speaker 3: I'm good man, I'm feeling all right, feeling all right.
Speaker 1: We're good, all right, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, what can
Speaker 1: I say? Yes, it is a freaking known to us,
Speaker 1: of course, as one third of probably one of my
Speaker 1: favorite groups. I don't know, I can't categorize Shalamar as
Speaker 1: a soul group. I can't categorize them as a pop
Speaker 1: group or a bookie group. But you know, I mean
Speaker 1: because they transitioned between disco, between bookie and between new
Speaker 1: wave eighties pop, you know they were everlasting. And you know,
Speaker 1: of course our guest today is, without saying, a singer's singer,
Speaker 1: a real singer and awesome singer has had such a
Speaker 1: story career singing the soundtrack of our lives. I don't
Speaker 1: even want to waste one minute in my patent long
Speaker 1: nineteen minute intros. I will just say, welcome to Quest
Speaker 1: Left Supreme, the one and only Howard Hewitt. Thank you, Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for coming. Yeah, I can't wait
Speaker 1: till we're off zoom. So we could have like real
Speaker 1: hand claps. Again, I like the last seven episodes were all.
Speaker 5: Breathing, and that's what that's what it's a killer because
Speaker 5: that's exactly what it sounds like when you're in, when
Speaker 5: you're in like a.
Speaker 2: Huge crowd, like right, exactly right, All right, well we'll
Speaker 2: be effects.
Speaker 1: How are you today?
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 5: Very good, very well, Just just like we were talking
Speaker 5: earlier about, I do my my daily walk and I'm
Speaker 5: trying to stay ahead of this heat out here. It's
Speaker 5: like crazy, man, really crazy out here in California. Well
Speaker 5: where I am, it's different temperatures different, Yeah, Long Beach.
Speaker 5: Out of the Long Beach yesterday it was like seventy
Speaker 5: seven degrees out here all day yesterday was like a
Speaker 5: hundred uh and real field was one hundred and eight.
Speaker 5: So Jesus great, what one hundred and eight man there was.
Speaker 5: That's one of those times you just stay in that
Speaker 5: you stay in the house, you don't even go outside,
Speaker 5: close the curtains.
Speaker 1: You mentioned something that this this actually might be inspirational
Speaker 1: for me. How often do you have to commit to
Speaker 1: the daily walk. I'll admit that I will often let
Speaker 1: my work schedule become become my excuse to get out
Speaker 1: of it. So I've been I've been sort of religious
Speaker 1: about the daily walk, but in the last two weeks
Speaker 1: I've sort of slacked off on it just due to
Speaker 1: the scheduling of it. But how important is the daily
Speaker 1: walk because before we were rolling, we were just basically
Speaker 1: talking about the struggle to survive, especially for black people,
Speaker 1: to struggle to survive past fifty without you know, some
Speaker 1: sort of condition happening. So you know, like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: certain that most of us that are on our walking
Speaker 1: thing is doing it for health reasons and whatnot.
Speaker 5: So conditioning, you know, conditioning and and But for me,
Speaker 5: especially for the past years since the pandemic, it was
Speaker 5: almost like in the beginning of the pandemic, it was
Speaker 5: a spiritual thing for me because it was like it
Speaker 5: was almost like God said to me, he said, I'm
Speaker 5: going to remove everything from you that can distract you
Speaker 5: from me. You did what I'm saying. Me and my
Speaker 5: girl broke up a couple of months before before COVID.
Speaker 5: You know, my partner. I'm not saying that that's why
Speaker 5: he took him away from here, but he passed. Like
Speaker 5: in the beginning the very beginning of of COVID. I
Speaker 5: known this this cat since I was twenty years old,
Speaker 5: and I'm best friend.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: So, but through my career, I've gone through you know, death,
Speaker 5: my mom and dad. You know, I've gone through breakups
Speaker 5: and all that kind of stuff. Some of the saddest
Speaker 5: times that I spent in my career was spent on stage.
Speaker 5: You did what I'm saying, because and I had my work.
Speaker 5: I always had my work. And so so.
Speaker 1: He said, no distractions now and he said, he.
Speaker 5: Said, and I'm take that away from you right now.
Speaker 5: And then and then my next question in my spirit was,
Speaker 5: now what you're gonna do? You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And so that's when I did it. Daily. I did
Speaker 5: a daily reading. I get up, I read a daily situation.
Speaker 5: I read. I started from Genesis in my Bible and went,
Speaker 5: I'm all the way up, almost halfway through the New
Speaker 5: Testament now, you know, and all the way and every
Speaker 5: day because when I built my house, I had them
Speaker 5: build a deck off of right, I can I can
Speaker 5: roll out of bed in five or six steps. I'm
Speaker 5: right outside on my deck, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So that was my daily devotion between me God, Christ,
Speaker 5: the Holy Spirit. And so it was like and with that,
Speaker 5: I started a whole situation as far as like we
Speaker 5: were being shut in, but that didn't mean that we
Speaker 5: had to be conspectators. So like when I in the
Speaker 5: beginning of the pandemic, you know, I got out on
Speaker 5: my bike. There's like a fifteen to twenty mile route
Speaker 5: that I can take around my crib. I got out
Speaker 5: on my bike, and then in the middle of that
Speaker 5: fifteen to twenty miles route, I decided I stopped to
Speaker 5: take a break, and I said, well, let me go
Speaker 5: on Facebook, my Facebook fan page Live. Let me go
Speaker 5: on live for a minute. And I went on there
Speaker 5: and all these people started flooding into the thing. What's up,
Speaker 5: what's going while you're doing you know, what's happening? Blah
Speaker 5: blah blah blah blah. And so then that told me
Speaker 5: that people are in But you know, and the thing
Speaker 5: about this pandemic, about this virus rather is that it
Speaker 5: thrives on It thrived on low immune systems. It thrived
Speaker 5: on load vitamin D deficiencies, which is really heavy and
Speaker 5: all especially within black people, right, and so like it
Speaker 5: was like my that's when I started when I started.
Speaker 5: I said, Okay, I'm gonna do with my walk because
Speaker 5: I do it like a four mile walk. And then
Speaker 5: and at first I was walking and had my had
Speaker 5: my had my phone in my hand walking. I'm walking
Speaker 5: and talking at the same time, right, And then I'm like,
Speaker 5: I wasn't getting any benefit from the walk actually because
Speaker 5: I'm not pacing myself. So then eventually I did in
Speaker 5: the middle of the four miles, after about two miles,
Speaker 5: I'd stopped at a specific place and then I talk right.
Speaker 5: So first at first it was fac dot dot dot
Speaker 5: and life right fresh air cardio. All that leads to life,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying. And then after we started
Speaker 5: talking and I started having these conversations, my my, you know,
Speaker 5: take on what was happening as far as the last
Speaker 5: administration was concerned, my take on you know, the virus,
Speaker 5: my take on this, my take, and people were chiming in.
Speaker 5: Then it became a conversation. So then I added fac
Speaker 5: c at another C dot dot dot in life fresh
Speaker 5: air cardio conversation, which as the communication understanding each other
Speaker 5: and all that leads to life, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So it's almost like now, after all this time. It's
Speaker 5: like I feel like I'm obligated to get on there
Speaker 5: for my people, so like, you know, the people that
Speaker 5: have have dedicated themselves to being there, So I have
Speaker 5: a dedication to that myself. So on top of that
Speaker 5: getting you know, my health and keeping my health up
Speaker 5: and keeping everything up. You know, it's like, Okay, I
Speaker 5: can take the time to do all that stuff. Sometimes,
Speaker 5: you know, the schedule will well like get in a
Speaker 5: way as far as like how early I start, how
Speaker 5: early I can get out there. But I'm always going
Speaker 5: to get out there, you know what I'm saying. Every day,
Speaker 5: every day, I'm out there every day.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 5: Even on the weekend. I know, I don't come online
Speaker 5: on the weekend, I don't go live on the weekend,
Speaker 5: but I get out there and do something on the weekend.
Speaker 3: Do a daily show.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, all right, well yeah, how are you just
Speaker 1: let it be known that you're definitely the straw that
Speaker 1: broke the all right, fine if.
Speaker 2: You that's what I need to hear, you know, because
Speaker 2: people have been get on.
Speaker 1: Me like yo, man, you slacking off.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: You you were committed your da da da, You're falling off,
Speaker 1: like you know, my partner's don't walk with and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. So they were getting on me today about that,
Speaker 1: like you ain't walked in like ten days a mirite,
Speaker 1: So all right, I now know, I now.
Speaker 2: Know that I have to.
Speaker 5: It's important, man, it's really important because you know you all,
Speaker 5: you know, all you got. If you don't have anything else,
Speaker 5: you know you got and you have your health if
Speaker 5: you if everything's jacked up, everything can be going well.
Speaker 5: But if you don't have your health, man, that's crazy.
Speaker 5: It's crazy. And then if stuff is jacked up and
Speaker 5: your health is jacked up, that's like a whole other thing.
Speaker 5: There's a whole other situation.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, Well, brother, you look awesome, like you
Speaker 1: look good, great and great health.
Speaker 3: That's five year old gold. That's it.
Speaker 1: Sixty five brothers late forties to me, like for real,
Speaker 1: for real, they still look great. Six.
Speaker 2: So yeah.
Speaker 1: The the question I want to pose to you, of course,
Speaker 1: is the first question always ask on the show. Uh,
Speaker 1: could you please tell us what your first musical memory was?
Speaker 5: My first musical memory, man, was Actually I would think
Speaker 5: Isley Brothers, Sam Cook and my grandmother's garage when we
Speaker 5: would have all the holidays we would, we would. It
Speaker 5: would always be at my grandmother, my grandma fitz Hugh's house.
Speaker 2: And well, you mean records or in person.
Speaker 5: No records, I'm talking about records. Say Damn was like, oh,
Speaker 5: you're talking about live as far as no no.
Speaker 2: No, no, no no, I mean first all right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's one years ago. Because we played. I wasn't.
Speaker 5: I was when I was five years old, four or
Speaker 5: five years old. I was in charge of like playing
Speaker 5: the forty fives and stuff, and and they clear out
Speaker 5: the garage and put a turntable in there, and we
Speaker 5: had the forty fives and stuff. So I remember chain Gang,
Speaker 5: Sam Cook and Twists and shout of course you know
Speaker 5: the brothers. Yeah, I remember, I did you know? I
Speaker 5: did about about twenty cities with Ron Iley about some years,
Speaker 5: about six seven, eight years ago. And usually when I
Speaker 5: do a show, I'm Usually I do my show and
Speaker 5: I'm gone, or or if I'm headlining, I get there
Speaker 5: twenty minutes before I go on and that's it. I
Speaker 5: don't want to get there and hang around and stuff.
Speaker 5: And if I'm on before the headliner, then I'm gone.
Speaker 5: But with with Ron, when I was out there with
Speaker 5: Ron and and uh Isy brothers and with Ernie and stuff. Man,
Speaker 5: every night, I was like in the wings. You know,
Speaker 5: it's just like watching because he took me all the
Speaker 5: way back to when I was like five years old,
Speaker 5: you know, five six seven four six seven years old,
Speaker 5: and then he caught me. You caught me out on
Speaker 5: stage every once in a while, man, and that was like, what,
Speaker 5: all right?
Speaker 6: Cool?
Speaker 5: You know, but that's my first as far as musical
Speaker 5: musical situation. I think that's the foundation that I had,
Speaker 5: and then you know, went into the whole gospel thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I was going to say that.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense because usually every musical great has
Speaker 1: some sort of DJ curation experience before they get into
Speaker 1: their profession. So that makes sense that you were in
Speaker 1: charge of the family collection.
Speaker 5: All DJ's wanted to be singers, and all singers want
Speaker 5: to be DJ's. I was saying exactly he's saying with
Speaker 5: Frankie Crocker a lot back in the day. And frank
Speaker 5: that was one of my best parts. And what was
Speaker 5: he like? Man?
Speaker 1: Was he you know known him as that personality? Was
Speaker 1: he really out there like that?
Speaker 5: Frankie? Frankie was the most down down nigga in the world.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, and I remember because when we.
Speaker 2: First so proper all the time I heard him speak,
Speaker 2: and you know.
Speaker 5: I said, I'm on the Quest Love Show. I got
Speaker 5: to be proper nigga.
Speaker 1: No, you must an't listen to the.
Speaker 5: He's done my homework, you know.
Speaker 1: Now we keep it out, Let it go.
Speaker 5: Now. Frankie was down nigga boy, he was like and
Speaker 5: it was like when I first met him, you know,
Speaker 5: we it was we had a second time around out.
Speaker 5: So we were a lot of the lot of the
Speaker 5: promotion in New York and stuff, and and uh, we
Speaker 5: got to the we got to w B l S
Speaker 5: and h he wasn't ready yet. So the lady that
Speaker 5: was the rep that was from the record company, she said, okay, hey,
Speaker 5: while we're waiting on Frankie, we'll go over down to
Speaker 5: this other I forget what the station was, kiss or
Speaker 5: something like that, Kissing. And so we went down there
Speaker 5: and did the interview and stuff, and then we came
Speaker 5: back and like Frankie, we're sitting down in the lobby
Speaker 5: of the BLS and Frankie comes out. When he walks out,
Speaker 5: you know, this is tall, I mean black nigga man.
Speaker 5: He's like fine features, you know. And I remember reading
Speaker 5: about Frankie when I was like fifteen, sixteen years old
Speaker 5: when he got into the into the thing with the
Speaker 5: Paola thing. So I remember. I remember there was like
Speaker 5: an article and Playboy, and of course, you know, I
Speaker 5: never looked at the.
Speaker 7: Picure the article, but it talked about it talked about
Speaker 7: his whole ordeal with the Paola situation and the fact
Speaker 7: at the time that he when he came back after
Speaker 7: the piel, he came back riding up one hundred and
Speaker 7: twenty fifth Street on the White Stallion.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Class, he was all the saying, so like we when
Speaker 5: he came out, he's stood up there and he just
Speaker 5: kind of stood there right, and we're sitting. He said,
Speaker 5: I got my spies out. I know y'all went to
Speaker 5: the other station. Y'all heard you. That's how we started out, right,
Speaker 5: So we went in and then he looked at it
Speaker 5: and he was doing the interview and stuff, and he says,
Speaker 5: you know, your voice reminds me of Gladys Knight, And
Speaker 5: I'm like, glad it's night, what come on, man, glads Knight.
Speaker 5: I'm flattered, But Gladys night. That's a chick, right, so
Speaker 5: and uh and so then that's that's how our whole
Speaker 5: thing started out. And I kind of clammed up on
Speaker 5: the on the interview because I also heard about the
Speaker 5: Isley brother interview, the historic Issy brother interview when they
Speaker 5: got in the fight on on you know, they.
Speaker 1: Never heard of that one.
Speaker 5: I've heard looking at us fight live on the air.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a lot of eyes.
Speaker 5: That was before any that's that's before any of them
Speaker 5: passed away.
Speaker 4: So they was all on the all Christ Jasper too,
Speaker 4: about six.
Speaker 5: But take out. So like later on we said, you know,
Speaker 5: I saw him, I think because we were there doing
Speaker 5: the thing. I think it was at Madison Square or
Speaker 5: something like that, one of those big festivals, and so
Speaker 5: at the you know, when I saw him later on
Speaker 5: that night or the next night or something, he said, look,
Speaker 5: I got a house, you know, and in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 5: you know, off bend the canyon, he said, he said,
Speaker 5: here's that. You know that We exchanged numbers and stuff.
Speaker 5: He said, when you're when you're back in town, when
Speaker 5: you're off the road, get me a car. You come up,
Speaker 5: you know, have some dinner. I said, cool, you know,
Speaker 5: let's go, I said, And so a couple of two,
Speaker 5: three weeks later, we're going. I'm home and I give
Speaker 5: him a call and he says, yeah, come on left
Speaker 5: for dinner. And I'm thinking, you know, all right, Frankie
Speaker 5: Cocker's house. I know, he got ladies all over the
Speaker 5: the whole thing. I'm bowling, you know. And I got
Speaker 5: up there and it was me, him and his moms
Speaker 5: Rocker and he took care of his mom, and like
Speaker 5: from that point on, we got jam type. It was
Speaker 5: like it was that that was my that was my man,
Speaker 5: that was my man. So so dope man, you know, yeah,
Speaker 5: he was. He was. He was not the persona basically.
Speaker 5: I mean, he lived large, you don't, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 5: and he he demanded his respect as far as that's concerned.
Speaker 5: But he wasn't someone unorderly, un you know, crazy deal.
Speaker 1: He had a house in Beverly Hills and he was
Speaker 1: a New York personality too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, up on house, up on Benedict off of Benedict Canyon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was the highest plate like black radio jock
Speaker 3: in the country.
Speaker 1: So was he doing syndicated back then or was it just.
Speaker 5: He was he was doing he would do. I think syndication.
Speaker 5: Syndication was just coming in maybe not too long after that,
Speaker 5: but but he had he's had that house up. He
Speaker 5: had that house up there for a long time.
Speaker 1: Say that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 5: Coast.
Speaker 1: They put you in the.
Speaker 2: Paper maybe you know, yeah, I see.
Speaker 1: Do you do you remember the first album that you
Speaker 1: purchased with your own money, with.
Speaker 5: My own money. I don't remember which one of what
Speaker 5: it was exactly. I can't say, uh back in the
Speaker 5: day because.
Speaker 1: I also be stolen to Just in case I'm saying
Speaker 1: people have come stealing their first records.
Speaker 5: Yeah exactly. But see, you know I come, I come
Speaker 5: from my household, my I have four older sisters. You
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. Soyo, wow, Okay, so you know
Speaker 5: times I had to I think of an album. Though
Speaker 5: I do believe an album that I would have purchased.
Speaker 5: It might not have been the very first one, but
Speaker 5: like Parliament Funkadelic and you know all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 5: like Maggot Brains and I love that Eddie Agel situation.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, ok, yeah, I take it. I know you
Speaker 1: were born in Ohio, but I don't know what city
Speaker 1: you were born in.
Speaker 5: Akron, Akron, Ohio, Akron.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, wait a minute, Okay, this explains it all right.
Speaker 1: So I know that James Ingram is also from Akron, Ohio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I assume that you two were really good friends fifteen.
Speaker 5: I met James when I was fifteen.
Speaker 1: So this is this explains why you two are also
Speaker 1: seeing background on PYT together exactly.
Speaker 5: Okay. I was with James when when he got the
Speaker 5: demo for Just Once, you know, and he's like, man, listen, listen,
Speaker 5: because we lived right around the corner from each other
Speaker 5: at that time. And he's said, man, and he said, listeners,
Speaker 5: what do you think about this? I said, Man, I
Speaker 5: think that's a coblet song? He said, Man, this is
Speaker 5: some there's some pop pussy right here. Man. And I said,
Speaker 5: I said, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's true boy. Because
Speaker 5: you know, but see when Jane, when I was back
Speaker 5: in Ohio, my group, my group was called Life. We
Speaker 5: spelled the l yf E, so Life. Jennings won the
Speaker 5: first nigga to say that right when we spelled l
Speaker 5: yfy Life Banding Show. And it was like seven of
Speaker 5: us and we were like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, I
Speaker 5: think Ricky Parker Ricky Fletcher was eighteen nineteen years old,
Speaker 5: and so we were proteges of Revelation Funk, which you know,
Speaker 5: James played keyboards and they were all they were all
Speaker 5: like about four years older than us. Games played keyboards
Speaker 5: and sang background because he didn't consider himself a lead singer, right,
Speaker 5: And they had this lead singer called named Bernard lost
Speaker 5: and he's still back and aftr now Bernard lost him too.
Speaker 5: This day could sing me under this, under this, my
Speaker 5: desk over here, this this boy really what is you're
Speaker 5: talking about? Going from natural effortlessly up into your foss
Speaker 5: He had that back, he had that down back then
Speaker 5: tall lanky brother and like a dance of red dance
Speaker 5: and sing the same time. And it was like, I mean,
Speaker 5: they were funky. Revelation Funk was funky.
Speaker 1: You know. Wait a minute, okay, so what's the name
Speaker 1: that's the group that James Ingram was in that he
Speaker 1: was playing keyboards and Revelation God, damn it, damn it,
Speaker 1: damn it, damn the ones from uh Dolomite.
Speaker 5: Yeah, weren't they movie movie?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, because they came out.
Speaker 5: Here, they came out here. Bernard never came out here
Speaker 5: because he Lord called him back to the church, fortunately
Speaker 5: because it was some crazy stuff that was happening. But
Speaker 5: they had this cat named Wouchie Wayne Arnold that came out.
Speaker 5: Wayne was bad too. I don't know what he means,
Speaker 5: like ARNOLDI So we were like nobody, but they came.
Speaker 5: They came out here, and then they only stayed together
Speaker 5: out here about a year and a half, uh maybe
Speaker 5: two years or so, and then they broke up and
Speaker 5: James stayed out Dap the drummers stayed out t Tucker
Speaker 5: the bass players stayed out here, so you know, and then, uh,
Speaker 5: for James, the rest was history. He started working with
Speaker 5: h Ray Charles and a bunch of other people and stuff,
Speaker 5: and you know, in the studio and stuff.
Speaker 3: It was cool just to get this straight.
Speaker 8: James Ingram sounded like that at fifteen years old.
Speaker 3: No, nothing has ever changed.
Speaker 5: Well, he was about when I first met it, he
Speaker 5: was nineteen, because he was about four years older than me.
Speaker 5: And uh yeah, I mean he had all that stuff
Speaker 5: down hard, it's like, but but he didn't develop it
Speaker 5: and and really kind of take it out where it's
Speaker 5: supposed to be until you know, until he got it,
Speaker 5: until he went solo.
Speaker 1: So well, one more thing, so if you were friends
Speaker 1: with James, uh, were you at all in proximity of
Speaker 1: his brother Philip at the time when Philip was developing
Speaker 1: a switch? M The switch also has achron connections, correct.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Philip Phillip was like Philip was his younger brother.
Speaker 5: So Phillip's younger than me. And uh, phillips group back
Speaker 5: in Achron. Uh Man, what was his name? I forget,
Speaker 5: I forget their name. The name we had, we had
Speaker 5: weird names back there. There was a group called picket Fence.
Speaker 5: I don't know what that was about, but it was like,
Speaker 5: you know, but the Philip was with raw Soul I
Speaker 5: think it was. And I mean Akron, Akron was an
Speaker 5: amazing place to grow up man, and and the rubber cat.
Speaker 5: It was the rubber capital of the world at that time,
Speaker 5: so so middle class was thriving. It was like you know,
Speaker 5: it was it was and you either did you either
Speaker 5: did music, you did you worked in the rubber factory,
Speaker 5: or you were pimp one or the other. You know
Speaker 5: that some cats tried to do all three.
Speaker 1: All three, all three. But rubbers and.
Speaker 5: Philip I think the name of Phillips. The group was raw,
Speaker 5: so if I'm not mistaken, but yeah, Philip had a
Speaker 5: great voice and everything. And and when they came out
Speaker 5: with Switch, I didn't even have a deal at that time.
Speaker 5: We were I was talking to L about that just
Speaker 5: the other day because every time I listened to L,
Speaker 5: I hear Bobby you know what I'm saying, and it's
Speaker 5: just it's crazy. And uh so they came out, and
Speaker 5: you know, it was like Eddie Flewell and the trumpet player.
Speaker 5: Eddie and I. Eddie and I went to grade school,
Speaker 5: junior high and graduated high school together. So when they
Speaker 5: came out, I was I would go, you know, they
Speaker 5: were coming out and bringing them out, and so I
Speaker 5: went and hung out with them at the studio, you know,
Speaker 5: while they were while they were calling uh called it,
Speaker 5: I call your name or something like that, and I
Speaker 5: would just sit there and all just listening to Bobby.
Speaker 5: He could do that because I think it was his false,
Speaker 5: but that wasn't his false. That was that was his
Speaker 5: natural voice, just like I was listening to Elle the
Speaker 5: other night. Elle's false is his natural voice. That's his
Speaker 5: natural voice, right, so you know it's it's it's you know,
Speaker 5: it was amazing. It was amazing as far as I
Speaker 5: was concerned. So yeah, Philip and and and Eddie, Yeah
Speaker 5: came out when switch came out.
Speaker 1: Question, I do remember, I think I remember during one
Speaker 1: of the interviews with Don Krnoli's on Soul Train where
Speaker 1: you talked about you were actually dancing on the show first.
Speaker 2: Is that true? Were y'all just joking with each other?
Speaker 5: I was never a soul trained dancer.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: I heard okay there because because it said it said,
Speaker 1: it was said with a laugh, So I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's serious or not, but okay,
Speaker 1: I knew if that was true.
Speaker 5: I was dating, uh this this lady that worked for
Speaker 5: down and there and at the Souldier and Dance Studios
Speaker 5: studios in the office in the front.
Speaker 2: Office, Pam Brown.
Speaker 5: No no, no, this is her name was Ann.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait
Speaker 1: a minute. Jesus Christ, I can't believe I'm talking to
Speaker 1: you right now. How are you You've no no, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no no no.
Speaker 2: It just hit me.
Speaker 1: You literally have christened a human being with my all
Speaker 1: time favorite name. I read about this and ride on
Speaker 1: you have a daughter named Rainy Days.
Speaker 5: Rainy Days d a z rather yo.
Speaker 1: When I read that ship when I was ten years old,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm gonna have a girl, and I'm the
Speaker 1: name of.
Speaker 2: Rainy Days, Like it just wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 5: Her mom, you know, eventually became my wife and she
Speaker 5: his mother and my two older daughters. But when when
Speaker 5: Rainie was born, Rainy was the only only child that
Speaker 5: I didn't see come out, you know, because I was
Speaker 5: I was on the road. I had my my my
Speaker 5: oldest darted with me. She was like a year and
Speaker 5: a half at the time, right, and so her mom
Speaker 5: was so huge. I was like, look, I'm gonna take
Speaker 5: I'm gonna take Lakeiva. My oldest daughter's name is Lakiva,
Speaker 5: you know, which was the name let Kiva k I
Speaker 5: v E. Which is a name, which is the name
Speaker 5: I made up when I was nineteen years old. I
Speaker 5: used to go to Kent State for a minute, and like,
Speaker 5: I used to walk past Kiva Hall. This hall called
Speaker 5: Kiva Hall, Andy, I say, every morning i'm walking to
Speaker 5: my first class, I say, wow, Kiva Kiva would be
Speaker 5: a beautiful name for a little girl. But had a
Speaker 5: love on the front of.
Speaker 1: Luck that is so black.
Speaker 2: You got all the names correct, Bill, I got it.
Speaker 5: I got it.
Speaker 1: Anything Bill, and my friend Lafonte and quest got.
Speaker 5: You so like but like, I took Lakeiva out on
Speaker 5: the road with me because her mom was so huge.
Speaker 5: I just wanted her to concentrate on being pregnant, not
Speaker 5: not having so she was having to take care of
Speaker 5: one and half kids. So I took my daughter out
Speaker 5: on the road with me so we would we would
Speaker 5: work at the time, Shalamar, we were working Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Speaker 5: Sunday off, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So Thursday I finished the show. Monday,
Speaker 5: I mean Sunday rather, I finished the show. Then Monday morning,
Speaker 5: me and Kieva would jump on the plane, fly back
Speaker 5: here to l a sit there.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I take her to the beach, walker on the sand,
Speaker 5: you know, a whole thing, trying to make that baby drop,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying. And after after about three
Speaker 5: weeks or so, agoing back and forth, back and forth,
Speaker 5: I was like wiped out. So we were near Ohio
Speaker 5: and I called her and I said, you know, how
Speaker 5: do you feel? She said, it feels you know. I said, look,
Speaker 5: me and Kieva are going to go to my mom's
Speaker 5: house and just chill. So I went to my mom's
Speaker 5: house and said enough. We got there on Monday, and
Speaker 5: like Tuesday or Wednesday, she had the baby right, so
Speaker 5: named her, named her after her mom. Her mom's name
Speaker 5: was Raining. And so my partner and partner mine was out.
Speaker 5: I got him a job working with the group. When
Speaker 5: when when I was with the group and stuff, So
Speaker 5: one of my best partners, so you know, he was
Speaker 5: out on the road with her, and like we were
Speaker 5: sitting in my in either his room in my room,
Speaker 5: and like he said, so, uh.
Speaker 1: I can tell this is already gonna be my favorite interview.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Yes, I feel like member of this Tobias.
Speaker 1: I think howard you were?
Speaker 5: He said, and I and and he said, so you
Speaker 5: know your name the baby Rainie had the baby? You said, yeah,
Speaker 5: said what, so what's you gonna name her? I took
Speaker 5: the time, what are you gonna name her Rainie? After
Speaker 5: my you know, say, what what's the nile name gonna be?
Speaker 5: But I was thinking about.
Speaker 1: Days the the story.
Speaker 5: She sees his interview, she thinks that I was drunk
Speaker 5: or something when Ian the whole time you.
Speaker 8: Was talking, I was just thinking I was like, I
Speaker 8: hope Howard remembers all the stories of how how his
Speaker 8: kids were born, because not for nothing, especially the girls.
Speaker 8: My dad used to call me every year of my
Speaker 8: life up until he got like eighty and tell me
Speaker 8: on my birthday, like how my conception of how I
Speaker 8: was born?
Speaker 3: And it's just it's just a love.
Speaker 2: About the conception, the conception.
Speaker 8: I'm sorry, the conception, but the dad was.
Speaker 3: Born sign Yeah, but ye say those stories, tell them stories.
Speaker 3: People love us.
Speaker 1: I was going to say there was a ten year
Speaker 1: old reading write on magazine that it was really really
Speaker 1: hell impressed with that name. At the time. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's the greatest name ever. Raindy Days. All right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have raindy Days two point oh all right. So
Speaker 1: it's it's still in the cards for me.
Speaker 5: She hated it when she was in grade school, but
Speaker 5: when she got into junior high and then high school
Speaker 5: and then all that time adulthood, she loves it. She
Speaker 5: loves her name.
Speaker 1: You know, nice nice is she in the Does does
Speaker 1: she have musical talent? Does she?
Speaker 2: I have no clue what she.
Speaker 5: Came out of schools, came out of high school, wanted
Speaker 5: to do you know, wanted to get into the business
Speaker 5: and stuff, and so like you know, I gave her
Speaker 5: my advice and she, you know, got herself a little
Speaker 5: job started, you know, putting putting together her demos, about
Speaker 5: three or four demos, three or four songs, and she
Speaker 5: got her head shot together and then got herself a
Speaker 5: deal with this company called notting Hill. You know, notting
Speaker 5: Hill was in l a and as well as in London,
Speaker 5: you know, in the UK, so she was They were
Speaker 5: working on an album together, and then halfway through the
Speaker 5: album she comes to me she says, you know, Dad,
Speaker 5: I'm really not into this. I said, what do you
Speaker 5: mean into it? She said, I'm more interested in what
Speaker 5: I'm gonna wear than the music, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So he was into the fashion for Unfortunately, the people
Speaker 5: at at at notting Hill were cool and they had
Speaker 5: put a single out in uh in the UK that
Speaker 5: did fairly well. But you know, she wasn't she wasn't
Speaker 5: into it, so they let her go and then she
Speaker 5: got a position with Vera Wang company, you know, did
Speaker 5: that for.
Speaker 1: A while then, so she lived in London for a while.
Speaker 5: She went to London, she didn't live there, but she
Speaker 5: spent a lot of time.
Speaker 2: Okay, I see, I see, Okay, I do want to know.
Speaker 1: Okay, first of all, before you get into your entry,
Speaker 1: do you know exactly what the situation was that caused
Speaker 1: Jerald Brown to leave Shalamar that was your vacancy? Because
Speaker 1: even with those first two records, I always felt like
Speaker 1: I had, you know, the first two albums as a
Speaker 1: kid or whatever. I had the Uptown Festival forty five
Speaker 1: and what not, and it's like, I never thought his
Speaker 1: voice blended in with that group. Well even even take that,
Speaker 1: I'm mean, take That to the Bank, of course was
Speaker 1: a classic song, no matter what, but I never felt
Speaker 1: like his voice fit into He was like he was
Speaker 1: like a grown adult, and I always felt like Jody
Speaker 1: and Jeffrey represented like the kids while.
Speaker 2: He was like a proper adult or whatever.
Speaker 1: But what's the situation that caused him to vacate the group? Don't?
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't know the specific situation exactly what happened.
Speaker 5: I think there was some stuff, some questions about management
Speaker 5: maybe or about whatever. Because you know, Gerald had been
Speaker 5: been in the business for a while with Soul Trained,
Speaker 5: with the Soul Trained gang, and and coming from coming
Speaker 5: from Cincinnati and that first Uptown Festival album, the first
Speaker 5: that wasn't Gerald, that was this guy named Gary Mumford.
Speaker 5: So they had they had two lead singers before before me. Right,
Speaker 5: so it was Gary Mumford on Uptown Festival and then uh,
Speaker 5: Jerald Brown. Uptown Festival was one of those things where,
Speaker 5: you know, back in the day with disco and stuff.
Speaker 5: That's why I was never really a big fan of
Speaker 5: disco because I always thought it was pretty fabricated music
Speaker 5: and and you know, I was more into the into
Speaker 5: the band and the real people that did it, because
Speaker 5: you do you know, they would put together uh you know,
Speaker 5: a on with with studio musicians, studio vocalists, throw it
Speaker 5: out there, see if it made some noise. If it
Speaker 5: made some noise, then they go and put a group together.
Speaker 5: And that's how Salomar basically, you know formed. So it
Speaker 5: was like Gary Mumford on Uptown Festival and then uh
Speaker 5: and then he I think he went back to the
Speaker 5: church too, if I'm not mistaken. And and then Jerald
Speaker 5: Brown came in. They took him from you know, because
Speaker 5: it was Don Cornelius and uh Griffy, right, you know,
Speaker 5: at first it was sole trained records, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. And so they brought Jerald Brown in and
Speaker 5: then they did take that to the bank. They were
Speaker 5: out in the middle of a promotional tour. I was
Speaker 5: working with this cat uh Jeffrey Bowen at the time
Speaker 5: because I was with a group. I was with a
Speaker 5: group down that was formed people that was formed by
Speaker 5: the people in uh Matthew Jeffrey Bowen.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Bowen produced a song for You by the Temptations, right.
Speaker 5: Yep, and a bunch of colm did Bonnie Pointer was
Speaker 5: his lady, and.
Speaker 1: Here was his wife? Right dom Bonnie Pointer was his wife?
Speaker 1: And wait did he did he produce? I think he
Speaker 1: co produced with George Clinton two songs on guitarist Eddie Hazel,
Speaker 1: Eddie Hazel's record, Hey.
Speaker 5: We were, Well, we were. He had hired me because
Speaker 5: I I was this girl Tammy Gibson who used to
Speaker 5: sing for Stevie in Wonder Love. She was looking and
Speaker 5: she came looking for me because I was with a
Speaker 5: group that ended up we ended up overseas for about
Speaker 5: a year and a half, this show group called Beverly Hills,
Speaker 5: right and the people at Mavericks Flat down in the
Speaker 5: Crenshaw district, John Daniels and and Alonzo Daniels's brother. They
Speaker 5: put together show groups and stuff, so this was one
Speaker 5: of the groups that they put together. We ended up
Speaker 5: touring overseas for about you know, about a little less
Speaker 5: than a year and a half or so, and I
Speaker 5: was making like two point fifty three years is this around?
Speaker 5: This is like seventy seven, seventy seven, because I brought
Speaker 5: seventy eight in seventy seven. Out the end of seventy seven,
Speaker 5: I was in Helsinki, Finland, which was the first gig
Speaker 5: that we did, and then we went to Geneva, Switzerland,
Speaker 5: and I read that because I brought we brought seventy
Speaker 5: eight nineteen seventy eight in in Geneva, Switzerland, and then
Speaker 5: we went on to Bena, Dorm, Spain, Santa Pez, France.
Speaker 5: We're all over the place. I was making two fifty
Speaker 5: three hundred a week, you know what I'm saying. But
Speaker 5: I was having them ball I was like twenty two,
Speaker 5: about twenty two years old.
Speaker 1: Again, I'm pulling out my inflation calculator just to see,
Speaker 1: just to see. So when you're saying the show group,
Speaker 1: you're saying in terms of like you guys, because I
Speaker 1: think heat Wave was sort of in the same situation
Speaker 1: where they were perform more on like army.
Speaker 2: Bases or clubs of the day. Is that the same situation.
Speaker 5: Or no, we never did army bases. But when I
Speaker 5: say a show group, I mean like a top forty group,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying. We did everything from Disco
Speaker 5: Infernal to Mandy you know what they so yeah, and
Speaker 5: it's like and you know, did you know Afternoon Delight
Speaker 5: all that kind of stuff. You know, it was like,
Speaker 5: you know, it was my stuff, old stuff exactly. We
Speaker 5: didn't do any original stuff. It was just and it
Speaker 5: was like, you know, so.
Speaker 1: But wait, by the way, guys, two fifty back in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven was one thousand, one eighty seven and
Speaker 1: eighty six cents by today.
Speaker 2: That was that was good. That was cool money.
Speaker 5: I wish I would have felt that. Then I came
Speaker 5: back a year and a half with about five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: That was this.
Speaker 5: But so, you know, so like I came back and
Speaker 5: and all the Mavericks Flat was was a really interesting
Speaker 5: place where on the weekend it was a club and
Speaker 5: on the week days that's where we rehears. We will
Speaker 5: rehearse the band anytime we had a show that we
Speaker 5: wanted to try out on people at a live audience.
Speaker 5: We would play at Mavericks Friday and Saturday the night
Speaker 5: and so it was like, you know, I mean, Mavericks
Speaker 5: was interesting in that you could look out in the
Speaker 5: audience at any time. Shaka Khan would be sitting out there,
Speaker 5: or lion On Richie when he was with the Commodores,
Speaker 5: or Richard pryor hung out there all the time, and
Speaker 5: it was it was just it was just a great
Speaker 5: place to like cut your teeth as far as like
Speaker 5: you know, uh, the way that you do your show,
Speaker 5: the whole thing, and uh. And where it was located Crenchhall,
Speaker 5: right Crenshawn Stocker, right on the corner of Crenshaw on Stocker.
Speaker 1: So this point in Crenshaw, because I also know that
Speaker 1: what was Total Experience also a club.
Speaker 5: On Crenshaw as well, right up the street.
Speaker 1: As far as the black clubs are concerned, you're saying
Speaker 1: at Maverick Flats and Total Experience, And like, where were
Speaker 1: the other nightlife options for black people to go.
Speaker 5: To Strawberry Hill? Was the club there? I don't know
Speaker 5: a whole bunch of clubs around there a bit, because
Speaker 5: I hung at Mavericks all the time. You know. It
Speaker 5: was like I had a key to Mavericks at one time.
Speaker 5: So you know, that was my that was my hang
Speaker 5: that was my hanging spot. You know. So there's other
Speaker 5: guys in Dolls. I think was a was a club,
Speaker 5: but I think that was a little bit before I
Speaker 5: got there, you know, guys and dolls. But I'm not
Speaker 5: really familiar with the whole bunch of the clubs over there.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that if you if it's nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: seventy eight, seventy nine and you're a black professional, chances
Speaker 1: are like you're hanging in on Crenshaw Boulevard at a club.
Speaker 1: So we weren't really doing like West Hollywood back.
Speaker 5: Then, or no, I didn't do a lot of West
Speaker 5: Hollywood back then because that was like I got to
Speaker 5: I got out here in LA in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 5: you know, and so I hooked up with the people
Speaker 5: at Mavericks about about two months after I got out here,
Speaker 5: you know, and we and John Daniels told me what
Speaker 5: he what, what he was, what he wanted to do
Speaker 5: he had. He had a bunch of show groups, and
Speaker 5: one of his main show groups was this group called
Speaker 5: the Love Machine. It was like seven seven fine, Fine,
Speaker 5: with Kathleen Bradley, who was the first black model on
Speaker 5: The Price Is Right. She was in yea from Friday. Yeah,
Speaker 5: she was in. That's what she shut up built.
Speaker 1: She was.
Speaker 5: And uh, he's done, He's done over there, it's like man,
Speaker 5: So yeah, she she was in. She was in the
Speaker 5: Love Machine and six other beautiful women. They and they
Speaker 5: went all around the world. When I first went down there,
Speaker 5: the cat T Tucker that played bass for Revelation Funk
Speaker 5: like I said at that time. By that time they
Speaker 5: were broken up and T was playing for the Love Machine.
Speaker 5: And I called T one day. I said, I got
Speaker 5: his number.
Speaker 2: I called him.
Speaker 5: I said, Yo, man, I'm in town. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: I said, man, come down to Maverick Flat. I'm rehearsing today.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm playing with this group called Love Machine.
Speaker 5: So me and my cousin went down to Maverick Flatt
Speaker 5: and stuff, and they were rehearsing at that time to
Speaker 5: do a showcase that night for Tom Jones. Because they
Speaker 5: were Tom Jones wanted them to open up for him.
Speaker 5: So you know, that was how that whole thing came about.
Speaker 5: And then we started putting the group and stuff together.
Speaker 5: But I was working there, went overseas, came back from there.
Speaker 5: We broke up the group Beverly Hills broke up after
Speaker 5: about a year a little less than a year and
Speaker 5: a half over in England, and came back and I
Speaker 5: started kicking around in LA and then that's when I
Speaker 5: hooked up with Jeffrey Bowen, you know, to he was
Speaker 5: doing this album with this solo album on Eddie Hazel,
Speaker 5: and he.
Speaker 1: Please describe with what Eddie Hazel was like. Besides George Clinton,
Speaker 1: I really haven't gotten a straight story about Eddie Hazel.
Speaker 5: He was he was an interesting cat in that you
Speaker 5: really couldn't get a good feel for Eddie because he
Speaker 5: was he was. He was high a lot of times,
Speaker 5: you know, he was. He was like, you know, an
Speaker 5: amazing guitar player, maggot brains, that's Eddie, you know, right, Hazel.
Speaker 5: And but he was he he I mean, I I
Speaker 5: just smoke weed, but he smoked weed. You know I
Speaker 5: know what that means. You go back, yes, so, but
Speaker 5: but he was cool, I mean real cool, real cool brother.
Speaker 1: But so you're saying that Eddie Hazel once potentially had
Speaker 1: a deal on Motown Records that fell through. M hm.
Speaker 5: I don't know if it fell through because they were
Speaker 5: they you know, Eddie Jeffrey was producing it. And then
Speaker 5: we were working because after I came, like I said,
Speaker 5: Tammy came and got me because she wanted me to
Speaker 5: do this. She was she was contracting the backgrounds or
Speaker 5: that they were doing. So I went in and did
Speaker 5: the sessions. Me, Tammy, this girl Kathy James, I forget
Speaker 5: I think that was the name. And we went in
Speaker 5: and did the session. And then after after we got
Speaker 5: done with the tunes and stuff, Jeffrey Cone Jeffrey Bowen
Speaker 5: came to me. He said, you know, man, I love
Speaker 5: your vocals. I loved it. This is going to be
Speaker 5: a self contained situation, so you know, I'd love for
Speaker 5: you to be a part of It's going to be you,
Speaker 5: Tammy and the girl that we were working with. And
Speaker 5: I said, cool, you know that's that's great. He said,
Speaker 5: I can get you in. He said, we can start
Speaker 5: working on the contracts, you know, but I can get
Speaker 5: you into the union tomorrow, right and said, I said, cool, Okay.
Speaker 5: So the next day I joined after you know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying, and all the checks and we started and
Speaker 5: it was like I wasn't contracted yet, you know. So
Speaker 5: if you're an uncontracted artist, you have to get paid
Speaker 5: from the time you walk into the studio the time
Speaker 5: you walk out of the studio. So Jeffrey would book
Speaker 5: book the time for like eight o'clock, you know, in
Speaker 5: the evening. He wouldn't show up for whatever reasons, I
Speaker 5: don't know, until midnight, and then we would work till about,
Speaker 5: you know, about four or five o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 5: so that's like nine hours you know, at about one
Speaker 5: hundred and thirty hundred and forty whatever the scale was
Speaker 5: at that time if you were doing a solo or
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: Inflation inflation count it's a lot of money, bill, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of money, a.
Speaker 3: Lot of money right there.
Speaker 5: So that sound like that, yeah, So, like you know,
Speaker 5: but then after about working about a couple of months,
Speaker 5: you know, started getting kind of flaky, you know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying, kind of shaky as far as like the
Speaker 5: checks we weren't reflecting the time that we you know
Speaker 5: that we were in the studio and so then I
Speaker 5: called him me. I took my lady. I took my
Speaker 5: lady to work. She worked at you know, like I said,
Speaker 5: for dying down at the Souldichrained Dance studios up in
Speaker 5: West Hollywood, and I took her, dropped her off of work,
Speaker 5: told her, I'm going to the Motown Building and have
Speaker 5: a meeting. Right. So, I'm sitting in a meeting on
Speaker 5: the fifteenth floor and I'm like, you know, y'all giving
Speaker 5: me the Motown running around, blah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 5: blah blah, you know, blah blah, getting all this stuff
Speaker 5: off my chest. And the phone rings, right, and this
Speaker 5: Angelo Bond was his co producer. Angelo answers the phone
Speaker 5: and he looks at me and he says, it's for you.
Speaker 5: I said, it's for me. I said, if it's my lady,
Speaker 5: tell her I'll call her. I'll call her back, right.
Speaker 5: He said, well, not a lady. And it sounds like
Speaker 5: it's long distance. That was before cell phones. When you
Speaker 5: hear the crackling on the phone, right launch he said, you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's nine dollars a minute, he said.
Speaker 5: He said, it's not a lady, it's a guy. And
Speaker 5: it sounds like it's long distance. So I take the
Speaker 5: phone and it's Jeffrey. Right. They were in New York
Speaker 5: at the time, in the middle of this promotional tour
Speaker 5: whatever it was that they got into an argument about.
Speaker 5: I never he said, he told me some I forget
Speaker 5: exactly what it was because I wasn't interested in why
Speaker 5: with this was happening. It's like, what are you? What
Speaker 5: are we getting to as far as like this phone call,
Speaker 5: and he said that you know that Jerald Brown, that
Speaker 5: Gerald said, Hey, when y'all can see it my way,
Speaker 5: give me a call. And he jumps on the plane
Speaker 5: and leaves. Oh, they're in the middle of a promotional tour.
Speaker 5: You did, and so like he says, I know, you
Speaker 5: know because they Mavericks Flat. All the soul trained people
Speaker 5: used to come down to Mavericks Flat all the time.
Speaker 5: I first I first met Jeffery and Jody before Shallamar
Speaker 5: at Mavericks Flat, right, and say, so they used to
Speaker 5: come there and they used to show They used to
Speaker 5: see the show that I did with Beverly Hills there, right,
Speaker 5: all this three degrees of separation is crazy, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. So they saw the show Jeffrey Before,
Speaker 5: before Shala Maar resisted, Jeffrey had told me, man, I
Speaker 5: love your vocals. I said, I love your dancing. Man,
Speaker 5: you and Jodie. I used to watch them before I
Speaker 5: even left Ohio on soul train. I see them dancing. Wow,
Speaker 5: that's great, that's great. So he says, I know we
Speaker 5: you know we, I know, you know that we formed
Speaker 5: Shalamar blah blah blah. We got to take that to
Speaker 5: the bank out there when in the middle of promotional tour,
Speaker 5: we want to offer you an equal position in the group,
Speaker 5: you know, as lead singer. And I said, I said, well, okay.
Speaker 5: Then he told me all this stuff, and then he says,
Speaker 5: you're at the Motown building, right, I said yeah. He
Speaker 5: said where are you. I'm up on the fifteenth floor.
Speaker 5: He said, well, so Large's offices are down on the
Speaker 5: ninth floor in the same building. And we talked to
Speaker 5: and we already talked to Dick Griffy and he he's
Speaker 5: waiting for you to, you know, for you to get
Speaker 5: in touch with him. So like, you know, so he
Speaker 5: talked a little while longer. I get off the phone
Speaker 5: and I tell Jeffrey Bowen and I tell angelabaum, what
Speaker 5: to do? No, I said what? And then the Dan
Speaker 5: angel says, man, Chellamar is just a fly by night
Speaker 5: disco group. They'll never amount to anything. And then you
Speaker 5: don't want to get involved with Solar that you're You're
Speaker 5: you got the potential to be with Motown, you know.
Speaker 5: And then Jeffrey started talking some stuff. And when things
Speaker 5: like that happen, I have a tendency just kind of
Speaker 5: sit back, and ever since I was a kid, if
Speaker 5: I if I had to think, you know, I want
Speaker 5: to sit back and take in everything that they're saying.
Speaker 5: So I'm listening and when they get done, I said, well,
Speaker 5: my car is parked on the street. I need to
Speaker 5: go put some money in the middle.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 5: I went down to the ninth floor, got in, talked
Speaker 5: to Dick. This was on a Friday, right, and and
Speaker 5: Dick reiterated what Jeffrey the offer Jeffrey made and uh,
Speaker 5: I said, I told him. I said, no, I'm really interested.
Speaker 5: I said, but I got to give these people upstairs
Speaker 5: a chance to rectify themselves, because even though I didn't
Speaker 5: have contracts, my words was still you know, worth word contract, right.
Speaker 5: So I called them and told them, look, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: be home. If you guys want to rectify this thing,
Speaker 5: let me know, call me right And so all night
Speaker 5: Friday night nobody called. Saturday morning, I called Dick and
Speaker 5: I went over to his house, watched the videotape of
Speaker 5: the Shalomar Show. And then I was sitting in this
Speaker 5: rocking chair, right, I remember, I was watching the show,
Speaker 5: was sitting this rock and said, the show goes off,
Speaker 5: and Dick says, well, sing something, you know. Jeffer and
Speaker 5: Joey say, you're a great singer. Sing something. I said,
Speaker 5: I said, right here, I compel them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: He said yeah. And I said to myself, I say, well, lord,
Speaker 5: you know me and you so I broke in. I
Speaker 5: broke in the field of Fire by Peebo Bryce. I
Speaker 5: compel them something that to me, you know, and yeah,
Speaker 5: And got through the first verse half the and Dick says, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 5: I'll be right back. He goes upstairs, comes back down.
Speaker 5: He has like, goes in one pocket. He has some cash.
Speaker 5: He said, here's some cash, you know, leave with your
Speaker 5: old lady. Pay some bills. And he went in the
Speaker 5: other pocket and brought out an airline ticket and that
Speaker 5: was pre nine to eleven. I could ride on your ticket.
Speaker 5: You know, I could ride up right on my head right,
Speaker 5: I could ride. You didn't have to have a specific name.
Speaker 5: He said, here's an airline ticket. You got to be
Speaker 5: on the red Eye out tonight. Meet the group of
Speaker 5: New Jersey tomorrow, as they moved from New York to
Speaker 5: New Jersey, he said, Meet the group of New Jersey tomorrow.
Speaker 5: He said, because and go over the lift sync and
Speaker 5: the choreography of take That to the Bank, he said,
Speaker 5: because Monday you got a TV show to do. And
Speaker 5: I'm like, you know, I'm like, you know, being from Ohio,
Speaker 5: think about Ohio? Is that the prereconsist as far as
Speaker 5: our being from a house. You got to be cool
Speaker 5: about everything, you know what I'm saying. So like, I'm like, okay, okay,
Speaker 5: you think you can handle it. Oh sure, I can
Speaker 5: handle it. Side, I'm like, I got a job.
Speaker 4: Well, I would have asked, what was Dick Griffy Like, man,
Speaker 4: it's been about let me experience.
Speaker 2: Let me add on to that.
Speaker 1: Fonte Howard, We've we've asked at least seven people this
Speaker 1: question and they kind of glide by the situation. Okay,
Speaker 1: I know, I know the brother's not here right now,
Speaker 1: but can you give us a real, real in quotations
Speaker 1: Dick Griffy's situation.
Speaker 5: Uh, he did. Dick was was a very should I say,
Speaker 5: complex character in certain ways, but very direct in other ways.
Speaker 5: And as far as like you know, he used a
Speaker 5: lot of under the thumb type of tactics to keep things,
Speaker 5: you know, in in tact as far as his so
Speaker 5: but that was his thing, that was how, that was
Speaker 5: where he came from. For uh, for instance, all.
Speaker 1: Right, all right without without you compromising your position, were
Speaker 1: there any buildings with balconies on them office from nine
Speaker 1: to five?
Speaker 5: I don't think that happened with Dick, you know, with
Speaker 5: the five heartbeat situations, you know. But but I've heard
Speaker 5: of certain situations with other characters of who we won't
Speaker 5: you know, going to right now also doing that whole.
Speaker 5: But I don't think Dick ever ever did that type
Speaker 5: of thing. But he was he was, he was you know,
Speaker 5: he was a gangst gangster type of cat, you know.
Speaker 5: And and but he respected if you stood up for
Speaker 5: what you you know, stood for you know.
Speaker 3: Five minutes the first time you stuttered, huh five minutes.
Speaker 3: We've been talking.
Speaker 5: It's the first time because because you want to be
Speaker 5: because I.
Speaker 2: Be careful, I get it.
Speaker 3: I guess respectful.
Speaker 5: I get it. Yeah, because you want to be because
Speaker 5: because I have, I have much respect for it. Because Dick,
Speaker 5: thank god, you know, Dick was a vehicle that was
Speaker 5: chosen to get my foot in the door, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. And as long as you you know,
Speaker 5: once you get your foot in the door, it's up
Speaker 5: to you to put to open up the door and
Speaker 5: get in there. So like, you know, I appreciate the
Speaker 5: the opportunity that Dick presented to me and and and
Speaker 5: respected him, you know, immensely and missing dearly now. But
Speaker 5: you know, I mean we had our drag knockdown, drag
Speaker 5: out fights, man, and and it was like, you know,
Speaker 5: when if I felt something and if I felt this
Speaker 5: was not the way that this should be, he really
Speaker 5: he really didn't like me going out and and working
Speaker 5: with people like Quincy, working with people like uh other
Speaker 5: other producers and stuff, because then I could see, you know,
Speaker 5: how it's really supposed to be done and.
Speaker 1: How and how the real business looked like.
Speaker 5: The business was supposed to be done. And he didn't
Speaker 5: like for me to do that. But I was going
Speaker 5: to do that. I went out and worked with Stanley
Speaker 5: when I work with George, you know, yeah, and all
Speaker 5: those and and like I said, Quincy and you know,
Speaker 5: so I could see how that whole thing was supposed
Speaker 5: to go down, you know, and as far as financially
Speaker 5: everything is concerned.
Speaker 8: So it's kind of like a you feel like it's
Speaker 8: kind of like a learning process that he was the
Speaker 8: beginning of the learning process, because I was wondering when
Speaker 8: you got excited about getting a job and everything, at
Speaker 8: that moment, you don't wonder, well, what do I have
Speaker 8: any say in the songs that we sang? And you know,
Speaker 8: like all the business stuff that like in retrospect you
Speaker 8: may have, but at the same time.
Speaker 1: You didn't have it at that time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, at first, at first, I didn't want to
Speaker 5: have any sales far as concerned, because because my whole
Speaker 5: thing was like, I want to learn, I want to
Speaker 5: look at it. I'm not I don't want to come
Speaker 5: here and act like I know what I'm doing because
Speaker 5: I had never been in a recording a real recording
Speaker 5: studio at all up to that point, you know, like
Speaker 5: you know, and and and Leon Silver's you know, like
Speaker 5: you know, it was like a learning process. I saw
Speaker 5: how he worked, I saw how his uh, his crew work,
Speaker 5: his cruel writers, Will Shelby, Kevin Spencer, and I would
Speaker 5: sit back a lot of times. I was back. The
Speaker 5: first song that I really participated on and in participated
Speaker 5: in writing and felt comfortable enough to present it to
Speaker 5: them as far as writing was concerned, was for the
Speaker 5: lover in you, you know, and so yeah, so like
Speaker 5: you know that was me and Dana Myers and like so,
Speaker 5: I mean we had a thing where were reprint presented
Speaker 5: to the people to his his cruel, his stable writers
Speaker 5: and stuff, and they would say veto you know or
Speaker 5: so you know, it was like it was it was
Speaker 5: a learning process for me. I didn't want to jump
Speaker 5: in there. I know, I want to write down.
Speaker 3: I want a lesson that a lot of the youth here.
Speaker 3: So that's why I want you to tell.
Speaker 1: So let me let me ask them so with So
Speaker 1: your first album with is big fun correct? I got
Speaker 1: it Okay. When I was the kids like, oh the
Speaker 1: Dolphin record.
Speaker 5: It would they would killer wells.
Speaker 1: I thought there was dolphins too.
Speaker 5: Black Actually, the barrels that we were sitting on and
Speaker 5: they're superimposed.
Speaker 2: Barrels.
Speaker 1: Okay, the classic moment, So with barrels, okay, with Big Fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So walk us through the process of one. Like by
Speaker 1: this point when you're doing Big Fun, how long have
Speaker 1: you been in the group? What's your Gelling situation? Now
Speaker 1: complete disclosure. I'm probably the only human being on earth
Speaker 1: that has not seen Unsung. I've heard it might have
Speaker 1: been a tense episode. I don't know, so I'm kind
Speaker 1: of asking you this, you know, from the total naivete
Speaker 1: of not knowing what the situation was, But what was
Speaker 1: How long was it before after that New Jersey first
Speaker 1: gig with him, until you started recording Big Fun, And
Speaker 1: what was the Gelling situation? Like with you, Jeffrey and Jody.
Speaker 5: It was, you know because when we first when I
Speaker 5: first got there, we were like thrown together, you know,
Speaker 5: when I first got to Jersey and we were, you know,
Speaker 5: we I was in all day Sunday, I was in
Speaker 5: a I forget. It was either Josie's room or Jeffrey's room.
Speaker 5: I forget. But it was crammed into you know, like
Speaker 5: learning the lip sync. I studied the lip sync, you
Speaker 5: know while I was flying across country, and and then
Speaker 5: learning the choreography because I'm used to sing and I
Speaker 5: used to I'm not used to dancing. I'm a singer, right,
Speaker 5: so you know that choreography. And so then we got
Speaker 5: that together, and then we continued on from the rest
Speaker 5: of that promotional tour, which if I'm getting I'm trying
Speaker 5: to get it. I'm at that point now where I'm
Speaker 5: even trying to get the timelines together because I'm I'm
Speaker 5: writing a book. I want to write my book, you know,
Speaker 5: so I need to get these timelines together myself. So
Speaker 5: when I got I think I got there in New Jersey,
Speaker 5: it had to been winter time because I had to
Speaker 5: I had to buy an overcoat because I didn't have
Speaker 5: an overcoat. So I went to this this clothing store
Speaker 5: in New Jersey thing it was called Heaven on Earth
Speaker 5: or something like that, and and bought this overcoat, you know.
Speaker 5: So so that was so it had to been like
Speaker 5: about maybe November, November, September, October, November, December time. And
Speaker 5: then We've finished up that promotional tour at the Copa Cabana,
Speaker 5: you know, in New York. And then as soon as
Speaker 5: we flew back to back to La which was the
Speaker 5: beginning of seventy nine, I believe, because it was seventy eight. Yeah,
Speaker 5: the beginning of seventy nine. We started immediately recording the
Speaker 5: Big Fun album, went in and started putting that whole
Speaker 5: whole thing together, and it took us. It took us,
Speaker 5: you know, four or five six months or so, four
Speaker 5: or five months or so to do the whole album
Speaker 5: and then put then we put, so we went, So
Speaker 5: that takes us into towards the end of seventy nine,
Speaker 5: you know, the middle mid towards the end of seventy nine,
Speaker 5: and then put Second time Around out there, and Second
Speaker 5: Time Around at first was kind of creeping up the charts,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying. But it wasn't It wasn't
Speaker 5: until we did a remix that back then, that's when
Speaker 5: remixes were real big, you know what I'm saying. So, yeah,
Speaker 5: twelve instance and sof so, I forget who did the remix.
Speaker 5: We did a remix on it, put it out there,
Speaker 5: and then it like screamed up the charts. So like
Speaker 5: that was towards the end of seventy nine into eighty,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying. So it was like from
Speaker 5: that time. Then we had a hit record in eighty Wow.
Speaker 1: Can you describe what working with Leon Silvers is?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Do you have any do you have any big friend
Speaker 1: Lewis stories to go with it?
Speaker 2: And I'm playing.
Speaker 5: It was like I know that at one point, you know,
Speaker 5: because Leon is like a stickler for backgrounds and stuff
Speaker 5: like that. I mean, just like stickler for backgrounds. And
Speaker 5: like I remember going in there one time and there
Speaker 5: was a part I was supposed to be doing that day,
Speaker 5: and like he we started out, I could tell it
Speaker 5: was gonna be one of those days. We're like, that's good,
Speaker 5: it sounds great, Let's do it again. Uh, And then
Speaker 5: he's like you know, and and that after about after
Speaker 5: about forty five minutes, so I said, Lee, I said, man,
Speaker 5: I can't do this today. They'll start a getting tomorrow. Man.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 2: He was just a test actually, Like all right.
Speaker 5: I mean I mean phrasing, you know, And when you
Speaker 5: talk about Howard Hewitt sound, I would give a big
Speaker 5: portion of that. The kudos up to Leon for helping
Speaker 5: me develop the Howard Hewitt sound. You know, I had
Speaker 5: my sound, you know, going from the natural to the Falls,
Speaker 5: you know, before I left out Ohio you know, when
Speaker 5: I was a kid, I developed that in my mom's
Speaker 5: bathroom with all the all the tile and everything, with
Speaker 5: the you know, built in reverb that you got in
Speaker 5: the bathroom. So I developed that natural going into the
Speaker 5: falls back then. But he helped me develop that other
Speaker 5: like staying like Stickler as far as phrasing is concerned,
Speaker 5: you know, looking that at every nuanced all those ad
Speaker 5: libs that you think are ad lives on there on
Speaker 5: those there ain't no ad libs. We we thought that
Speaker 5: stuff out, you know what I'm saying. He put it there,
Speaker 5: put it here, put it there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Do you remember like a moment of time when that
Speaker 8: when that happened, when you thought, all right, I don't
Speaker 8: know about this.
Speaker 3: But like no, you gotta you gotta do that.
Speaker 5: And it worked, but oh yeah, worked every time. But
Speaker 5: like those type of things were like are you sure
Speaker 5: that's that's that's gonna work in there? You know yeah,
Speaker 5: and that poomomoom boom, and it just fell right in
Speaker 5: places like but do.
Speaker 4: You have any memories of recording because like two of
Speaker 4: my favorite shadow my songs of all time over and
Speaker 4: over and let's find the Time for Love, Remember those.
Speaker 5: Sessions yeah, I remember over and over like it was
Speaker 5: like yesterday, because that was when I was the only
Speaker 5: one in the group basically, you know, Jeffrey and Jody
Speaker 5: had already split. So like at that time I wanted
Speaker 5: to do I wanted to do my solo thing. But
Speaker 5: Dick says, well, you know, you still got two and
Speaker 5: a half three years left on this contract, so you
Speaker 5: either got it. You're either gonna do it, you know,
Speaker 5: go you just sit around and ride it out, go
Speaker 5: to Court, you know, or move to England or wherever
Speaker 5: where Jeffrey and Joey moved to. Well else you can
Speaker 5: do another you know, another album. And so of course
Speaker 5: I hate Court. I don't like Court. You know, Court
Speaker 5: is like of course, like the Court's like a nightmare Vegas.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, You're just doing to you
Speaker 5: don't know what's happening. So so like you know, but
Speaker 5: we recorded that over and over at that time, did
Speaker 5: the video and that whole thing that was when in
Speaker 5: the videos like Me and Mickey Free, you know me
Speaker 5: Mickey and Leonne in that video, and and Let's Time
Speaker 5: Let's find the Time for love? Was that the song
Speaker 5: you said, Let's time.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Let's find a Time for Love?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not on the look is it?
Speaker 5: Is it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: That was was that?
Speaker 4: I think that was on three for Love let me
Speaker 4: let me hold them let me Yeah?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it wasn't. It was on Friends.
Speaker 5: No, I think it's going on uh fante.
Speaker 1: Let me find out that you're a fan of go
Speaker 1: for It, yo, like on the loaf, like you bullshit
Speaker 1: you deep cut cat col Dog Hey man, I rocked
Speaker 1: that album. Yo, here you go man, all right?
Speaker 5: Was finding Time for Love? That wasn't on Go for It?
Speaker 1: Wasn't that was? It wasn't Friends. I mean what that was.
Speaker 5: For love? It's just a beautiful song, man, just.
Speaker 1: It really it is.
Speaker 2: I love that record.
Speaker 4: Do you remember recording it? Do you remember like recording
Speaker 4: that joint or like that session.
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't really really remember anything that stuck
Speaker 5: out in my mind about recording except that it was
Speaker 5: just a nod boom boom damn.
Speaker 2: Now I'm looking for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And the thing and the thing that that really that
Speaker 5: really stood out to me as far as that song
Speaker 5: was concerned, also was just the combination of me and
Speaker 5: Jody Widley. Man, it was like.
Speaker 1: It was on Big Fun. It was on Big Fun,
Speaker 1: Big Fun.
Speaker 5: It was the first album. Yeah, I think that was
Speaker 5: the first time we really realized the magic that the
Speaker 5: combination of our of our voices really projected out there.
Speaker 5: It was it was you know them. The timbre of
Speaker 5: her voice and my voice together even on the background
Speaker 5: situation was like, amazing, amazing.
Speaker 1: That's a gorgeous song man, a great performance by all Right.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily want you to throw him under the rug,
Speaker 1: but can you answer two questions for me? Because you know,
Speaker 1: I just gotta know because again, like it's also my
Speaker 1: perception of Shalamar coming from a ten year old. But
Speaker 1: every time I turn around, like Jeffrey Daniel had a
Speaker 1: guitar in his hand, but I don't recall him playing guitar.
Speaker 2: Was he always air guitaring?
Speaker 5: Well, he was air guitar sometimes. But you know he
Speaker 5: knows how to play. You know, he really stuck to
Speaker 5: it and he really he can he can play it now.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying. He really knows how to
Speaker 5: play now.
Speaker 2: And that's him singing on pop Along Kid.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's him singing on a long Kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, I get I get it.
Speaker 1: Okay, No, I just wanted to make sure I didn't
Speaker 1: know if that was him, that was you, if he
Speaker 1: was giving much singing duties or not. Okay, now from
Speaker 1: from one from one too impossible? How hard were they
Speaker 1: on the choreography front of things, because you guys, you
Speaker 1: guys really had a together.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I wish it was five of you
Speaker 1: because you guys were doing shit. That's like, for a
Speaker 1: listeners out there, if you if you can, if you
Speaker 1: could demo, if you could demo, if you could google.
Speaker 2: A song called Shoe Shoe Shine by.
Speaker 1: The Dynamics Superiors, in my opinion, is one of the
Speaker 1: greatest performances ever on Soul Train, in which they literally
Speaker 1: act out every word that's saying, like, this is past
Speaker 1: Charlie Atkins, this is past Brook Payne as far as
Speaker 1: choreography is concerned. But yeah, I was saying that the
Speaker 1: choreography that you guys had, even if you say like
Speaker 1: I'm not a dancer, somehow, in my mind I just
Speaker 1: always walked away with like, Schallamar really had great, polished choreography,
Speaker 1: Like how hard were how hard? And like how much
Speaker 1: time did you guys spend on those routines.
Speaker 5: Spending a lot of time on the routines Jody. Jody
Speaker 5: was really instrumental as far as like putting together a
Speaker 5: lot of routines. Jeffrey would throw his his his situation
Speaker 5: in there a lot, and I at fir. I mean,
Speaker 5: I was just you know, because one of the things
Speaker 5: that that I was concerned about was the fact that
Speaker 5: I sing, and when you sing, it is like you
Speaker 5: got to breathe, and you got and you're breathing if
Speaker 5: you're out of breath, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 5: so that's when I, you know, I did the I
Speaker 5: did the choreography and went through the quote. But I
Speaker 5: told them, let's make be conscientious of the fact that
Speaker 5: I'm singing. You know what I'm saying. You got you know,
Speaker 5: you guys, I'm saying, I'm singing, I got to hit
Speaker 5: those notes that I created on those albums and all
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff. So you know, so that's yeah,
Speaker 5: like you you know, and then then get it, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. So you know, it was like
Speaker 5: then we started being I think we started being conscientious.
Speaker 5: They started being conscientious of that, and that's when the
Speaker 5: whole situation of like, you know, there's in choreography a
Speaker 5: lot of times less is more, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And the human mind, the human brain can only just
Speaker 5: take so much, you know. So I would rather people
Speaker 5: walk away from a concert saying, man, you remember when
Speaker 5: they did this thing together, boom boom, boom boom. They
Speaker 5: were together, and then Howard broke off and they broke on,
Speaker 5: and then they came back and did it together. And
Speaker 5: so I would rather that than a whole bunch of
Speaker 5: stuff that they're not really gonna remember anyway. And so
Speaker 5: Jeffrey and Jody were on it, Jeffrey's whole backsliding thing
Speaker 5: that he had. Eventually, he's the one that taught Michael
Speaker 5: how to do that, and Michael named it the moonwalk.
Speaker 5: Jeff taught him how to do that. So but at
Speaker 5: the you know, during the show, we would play the
Speaker 5: song called what was it called I Forget It? But
Speaker 5: it was first first part of writing the Socket. It's
Speaker 5: called writing the Socket, yeah, yeah, And we and they
Speaker 5: were being in the band would break down into this
Speaker 5: funky groove and me and Jody would be on one
Speaker 5: side of stage right and Jeffrey be all the way
Speaker 5: on the other side of the stage, and Jody and
Speaker 5: I would pull this imaginary rope right and pull it
Speaker 5: and boom like that, and Jeffrey would backslide all the
Speaker 5: way across the stage. Man First, all people on the
Speaker 5: on the floor. It's guaranteed they're standing up because they
Speaker 5: think he's on like a conveyor belt. That's how until that.
Speaker 5: From that point on, we could do anything. We would
Speaker 5: do it. It was on. It was on.
Speaker 1: So do you have any do you have any knowledge
Speaker 1: of because I know that Jeffrey was also trying to
Speaker 1: get another group off the ground, the one that with
Speaker 1: Casper Cooley and Casper like his other dancers there was
Speaker 1: there was like I think it was like a singing
Speaker 1: group whatever. I assume that he was trying to bring
Speaker 1: them through the solar channel. Did anything ever happen.
Speaker 5: To that project, I'm not sure. I remember Casper and
Speaker 5: Cooley though definitely Casper and Cooley actually went over first
Speaker 5: because we were we were going overseas for a promotional
Speaker 5: thing for about six weeks, so that's when Michael wanted
Speaker 5: to learn the backslide. So first Cap and Coley, Crassperan
Speaker 5: Cooley went over there to try and teach it to him,
Speaker 5: but for some reason he couldn't grasp it from them.
Speaker 5: So when we came back from uh, from the promotional tour,
Speaker 5: that's when Jeffrey went over and taught him how to
Speaker 5: do Okay, but I think the the group was called, uh,
Speaker 5: what was the what's the name of the group? I
Speaker 5: forget to forget.
Speaker 2: I'm forgetting. Yeah, I'm a blink right now.
Speaker 5: It's a it's a It was a dance group basically,
Speaker 5: and yeah, and like I don't know whether Jeffrey was
Speaker 5: trying to make it into a singing group too and
Speaker 5: maybe bring it to Dick or whatever, but nothing really
Speaker 5: came of it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So at the time when second time Around becomes a
Speaker 1: big ass hit and it's definitely established that you're in
Speaker 1: in a you know, a well established group that's not
Speaker 1: going to have to struggle at least in our eyes,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, you made it right out the box.
Speaker 2: How different does your life change?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What is it to be a young successful blackmail with
Speaker 1: a hit group? In Los Angeles, California nineteen.
Speaker 5: Eighty goopies were crazy, you know, but.
Speaker 1: Wet ass pussy did you just say that?
Speaker 8: And it made so much sense between me and Steven Howard,
Speaker 8: and I'm afraid the resid or feeling there too.
Speaker 3: I just don't know if every was there to really.
Speaker 1: Leading out of context, leave it out in context. They
Speaker 1: just trust me, listeners. The conversation was had earlier.
Speaker 5: But but in a sense that was one of the
Speaker 5: changes because you know, I had dealt with with the
Speaker 5: whole groupie thing since I was like, you know, young,
Speaker 5: very young, Like even in the gospel situation there you
Speaker 5: had your gospel groupies, you know, and when.
Speaker 4: I, oh, yeah that's what they was holy from the
Speaker 4: waste stuff.
Speaker 5: Man would think, you know, the Lord told me to
Speaker 5: give this to you. Okay, you know so, But but
Speaker 5: then you know, and then I had, you know, when
Speaker 5: I when I went into the R and B situation
Speaker 5: back in back in Ohio, we had our our fans
Speaker 5: that follow us around and then going overseas with the
Speaker 5: group with Beverly Hills, you know yeah yeah, foreign, yeah,
Speaker 5: foreign situation. When I get with the group, I'm like,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm like, man, I got this down. This
Speaker 5: is like I've been dealing with this for a long time.
Speaker 5: There ain't nothing like hit record groupies. Hit record groups
Speaker 5: are the ones that like you know, you can all
Speaker 5: of a sudden it's like, oh, how did you get
Speaker 5: in here? You know? And so you know it that
Speaker 5: after a couple of years of that, that really made
Speaker 5: me look at that whole thing and and look and see, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, that's not something I really want to deal
Speaker 5: with as far as that's concerned, because it's not like
Speaker 5: they know me. They just know what they think about me.
Speaker 5: They knew me, they might not even like me, so
Speaker 5: like so that so I ended that whole thing that
Speaker 5: was That was a change in my life. But you know,
Speaker 5: as far as the responsibility, I think you started getting
Speaker 5: at least I did, anyway, started getting a sense of
Speaker 5: responsibility of what you're saying because you know that people
Speaker 5: are really listening to you, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 5: and it's like and that's with that comes responsibility. It's like,
Speaker 5: you know, I got to like I said, I came
Speaker 5: from I came from a whole housefuld of women, you know,
Speaker 5: like my mom, my mom, four sisters, and then me
Speaker 5: and my dad were the only testosterone, you know, walking
Speaker 5: around there for about three or four years until my
Speaker 5: younger my younger brother came. But you know, but I
Speaker 5: always looked at that and that always kind of shaped
Speaker 5: what I would allow myself to, you know, to say
Speaker 5: in my music and what I do and what I
Speaker 5: and what I project and project as far as the
Speaker 5: music is concerned, so you know, but I mean it
Speaker 5: was it was because at the time, was we were
Speaker 5: only second time around was out there. I think it
Speaker 5: was like I think I was about twenty three, twenty
Speaker 5: three years ago, you know, so young. We were really
Speaker 5: really young. Jeffrey's only like a couple of months older
Speaker 5: than I am, and Jody's like, I forget, like about
Speaker 5: three four years younger. But you know, we were young,
Speaker 5: you know when that whole thing went down, So it
Speaker 5: was it was a big adjustment and big adjustment.
Speaker 1: Is there any I mean not preparing you, but did
Speaker 1: it ever get to the point where, especially when you're
Speaker 1: young and impressionable, you have ideas of what starter was
Speaker 1: like like ah, there's a limousine and there's a bodyguard.
Speaker 1: But I mean, was there just ever a time when
Speaker 1: you just couldn't do something simple like just go to
Speaker 1: the seven eleven to get you know, that would stick
Speaker 1: of gum or something like that. Was it like that?
Speaker 2: Or was it just.
Speaker 1: Could you still have a personal life or was it
Speaker 1: like constantly being chased around and that sort of thing.
Speaker 5: Not being chased around. I think it was like, you know,
Speaker 5: here in the States, you had to realize you had
Speaker 5: to get a sense of where you could go and
Speaker 5: where you couldn't go. You dig It's like, you know,
Speaker 5: there's places, there's places that even now I won't go
Speaker 5: because I won't be it won't be you know, like
Speaker 5: you want a piece, yeah, you're eating it was I
Speaker 5: don't mind, you know, autographs and stuff. That's the part
Speaker 5: you asked for it. You got it, Toyota, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. So that's a proper whole thing. But
Speaker 5: like you know, the place that was really difficult to
Speaker 5: get around was was in the UK once when it
Speaker 5: when everything hit in the UK, because the UK is
Speaker 5: so condensed, you know what I'm saying. I mean, the
Speaker 5: whole the whole island is what Bobble's biggest California, but
Speaker 5: you got all kind of people in there and then
Speaker 5: and so once once we hit there, it was like,
Speaker 5: I mean, it was hit hit. Jeffrey went on top
Speaker 5: of the pops, did his thing. The next day. It
Speaker 5: was like bam, it was crazy, and uh.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that situation? Because I've seen him do
Speaker 1: uh night to remember where he's just pop locking by himself,
Speaker 1: and you know, even I went to live there for
Speaker 1: a couple of years and they still talk about like
Speaker 1: that being such a game changing moment. I know that
Speaker 1: Jeffrey also hosted, uh the this version of Souldiering Soultring
Speaker 1: six twenty or whatever it was called. But what was
Speaker 1: the situation that both you and Jody didn't make that
Speaker 1: promotional tour and Jeffrey just decided to pop lock and
Speaker 1: there Well to give you guys a backstory, I believe
Speaker 1: that the legend is that you guys were supposed to
Speaker 1: perform on top of the Pops, but something happened, so
Speaker 1: he decides, I'm just gonna pop lock and he does
Speaker 1: the moon walk on the show, and suddenly you guys
Speaker 1: become instant make us celebrities.
Speaker 5: That's how I always say, whatever we were, whatever we
Speaker 5: are over there in the UK, I mean we still
Speaker 5: Jeffrey and I and Carolyn Griffy still tour over there now,
Speaker 5: and we out we've carved out a real niche out there,
Speaker 5: real good niche over there where we're doing festivals with
Speaker 5: sixty seventy thousand people over there is now you know
Speaker 5: so and but what happened was a right.
Speaker 2: Happened?
Speaker 5: Was it happened? Uh? We have been on the road
Speaker 5: so much. Also Jody was like pregnant with her first
Speaker 5: her first child or daughter, Lauren, and uh, and I
Speaker 5: was trying to piece together what little bit was left
Speaker 5: of my first marriage, you know, and which didn't happen.
Speaker 5: You know, it didn't work. But but we have been
Speaker 5: on the road so much for so long, we said,
Speaker 5: and at the time I can make you feel Good.
Speaker 5: There's another song that that me and get we wrote,
Speaker 5: we wrote together, and and I Can make You Feel
Speaker 5: Good came out over there. I can make you Feel
Speaker 5: Good blown up, you know, going up to charts, and
Speaker 5: took so long for us to decide what we were
Speaker 5: going to do. By time he got there, I Can
Speaker 5: make You Feel Good had had fallen to number two,
Speaker 5: and Top Fox was the number was a program where
Speaker 5: they only did number one records on there, so so
Speaker 5: he couldn't do he couldn't do I Can make You
Speaker 5: Feel Good. But then somehow I forget what happened? They
Speaker 5: they arranged it so he could come back on there
Speaker 5: since he was all the way all the way over there,
Speaker 5: because it felt the number two on his way over there,
Speaker 5: you know, I know, so like like they said, you know,
Speaker 5: they said, well, you know, yo, we can get him
Speaker 5: on here. You can do you know, do a dance
Speaker 5: because he was going to do a dance thing to
Speaker 5: I Can make You Feel Good, But he ended up
Speaker 5: doing it.
Speaker 1: To a night remember, yes, and I.
Speaker 5: Think that was going to be the next single anyway
Speaker 5: or something like that. So he went on there, and
Speaker 5: and Top of the Pops is the type of show.
Speaker 5: It came on every Thursday, you know. And and if
Speaker 5: you went on Top of the Pops and and Kill Friday,
Speaker 5: you saw your album sales go go through the roof.
Speaker 5: That's how how how instantly impactful you know that that
Speaker 5: show was to the UK. So man, he went on there.
Speaker 5: They went crazy. Man, they went crazy. It was like
Speaker 5: it was like, you know, we couldn't we couldn't walk
Speaker 5: down the street Apps and then over there.
Speaker 1: You know, I was going to say that in some
Speaker 1: weird way, you guys, not going over there almost served
Speaker 1: the group better because of that very specific Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you. I don't know if you remember,
Speaker 1: but when Leon had did our show, he had mentioned
Speaker 1: a Shalamar video that.
Speaker 2: It's escaping me right now.
Speaker 1: But I went, I forget the title, but I went
Speaker 1: to actually look it up on YouTube, and I have
Speaker 1: to say it, it's probably in my mind.
Speaker 2: I thought the emergency.
Speaker 1: Video for the Whispers was the weirdest video from the
Speaker 1: Solar Cannon with him arguing inside of a phone booth.
Speaker 1: But you guys have a very it might have been
Speaker 1: for the song you just mentioned. It was like you
Speaker 1: were in a garden or do.
Speaker 5: You not remember in a garden?
Speaker 1: Like you were in a flower shop or something like that.
Speaker 5: It's like, I don't want to be the last to know.
Speaker 1: Yo, Okay, who conceptualized? Have you guys seen this video?
Speaker 2: Y'all?
Speaker 1: Now forget forget keep on love of me, forget all
Speaker 1: the weird videos that have come from Solar Records like this, chops,
Speaker 1: every God.
Speaker 2: Everything.
Speaker 1: I only I only wish I had a time machine
Speaker 1: to go back to Leon Silver's interview so we could
Speaker 1: talk about this video some war because I looked it
Speaker 1: up way after after we did the interview. What was
Speaker 1: who conceptualized that videos?
Speaker 5: It's like it's like meats and had one of them
Speaker 5: flop hats on and something like that.
Speaker 1: It's like an anti bellum, Like what's going on in
Speaker 1: this video?
Speaker 5: I don't want to be the last, you know, if
Speaker 5: you're gone. Yeah, man, it was like that was back in.
Speaker 5: That was back We did three videos in the same day.
Speaker 3: Man, this was the last one.
Speaker 6: This time.
Speaker 5: I don't know who came up with their concept, because man.
Speaker 3: Wow, your hair looks great though.
Speaker 5: I mean, but but it's just like, what was it
Speaker 5: the night to remember I think when Jeffrey was the
Speaker 5: the waiter or the bar, he came out the closet
Speaker 5: and I'm like, oh, that's not cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that video was weird.
Speaker 1: But this, this, this takes.
Speaker 3: Me click this man, this white face the time.
Speaker 1: I wish the show had a visual component.
Speaker 4: Everybody looking at it now this this is the oddest thing.
Speaker 3: Yo.
Speaker 5: Man is crazy. Like I said, but we did three videos.
Speaker 5: I remember it was it's nice to remember I don't
Speaker 5: want to be the last. And this tune called work
Speaker 5: work it Out, work it out, you know, check out,
Speaker 5: work it out, work it out.
Speaker 1: Is like that that's even that's even crazy.
Speaker 5: It's even weirder.
Speaker 1: You know, so who directed these videos?
Speaker 5: Bill Parker, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: It's weird, You're right, I'm sorry, I'm like, you're looking
Speaker 1: at it right now.
Speaker 5: But work it out. Yes, we got balloons working out, yes, yes,
Speaker 5: and then the balloons go back.
Speaker 1: But I mean, but really though, I mean, those videos
Speaker 1: are weird.
Speaker 4: But I really, looking back at it, videos were really
Speaker 4: something that I think it took a lot of like
Speaker 4: black artists a while to figure out, you know what
Speaker 4: I'm saying, like what it was because a lot of
Speaker 4: those like early age, I mean, they you could tell
Speaker 4: that they didn't know what the fuck to do, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, you know what I'm saying. I mean,
Speaker 4: you look at it, don't look any further video, it's
Speaker 4: just like what.
Speaker 1: In the hell, you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Right right?
Speaker 1: Uh, don't look any further video from Dennis Edwards inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I will.
Speaker 1: Admit, like you guys, the whole Solar Cannon, all the groups,
Speaker 1: including the Lakeside videos, and even though I'm coming like
Speaker 1: at least like the fact that you guys we're thinking
Speaker 1: forward as far as the visual component that most groups
Speaker 1: weren't even thinking of back then. You know, so it's
Speaker 1: almost like and that probably explains I'm gonna get into Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the life of me, I don't even know how
Speaker 1: you guys were successful in getting a deck giveaway on
Speaker 1: MTV at a time when MTV was very slow to
Speaker 1: play back black videos. But wait, I do have a question.
Speaker 1: I gotta go to Charlene and Willis's theme. Please. Why
Speaker 1: wasn't somewhere There's a Love for Me ever released as
Speaker 1: a single.
Speaker 5: Amazing song the way that people respond to it, man,
Speaker 5: you would single, You would think it was it was
Speaker 5: a single at some point because it's like they go crazy.
Speaker 1: That Different Strokes episode, did y'all justice?
Speaker 2: Like that's you.
Speaker 1: Know, for those who don't know, you know, when Janet
Speaker 1: Jackson first was on Different Strokes like that was her
Speaker 1: and will in Todd Bridge's song on on on that show.
Speaker 5: So I didn't. I didn't know that, you know, I
Speaker 5: didn't know that.
Speaker 1: You never knew that.
Speaker 5: I never knew that. I didn't I never really watched
Speaker 5: Different Strokes that much.
Speaker 1: But song placement, man, song again, I was a ten
Speaker 1: year old, so it's like, you know, can you explain
Speaker 1: why me being aware of what you guys's records were
Speaker 1: as they came out. I do remember being very shocked
Speaker 1: and surprised when Gofert was just like in the record
Speaker 1: Ben and I was like, well, wait, where's the single
Speaker 1: at how how come? Like I almost felt like it
Speaker 1: was just put out there. It was just arbitrarily like
Speaker 1: what was was go for a bunch of throwaway songs?
Speaker 5: Or it was it was there was we were going, Uh,
Speaker 5: Solar was going from r c A Distribution to Electure Distribution,
Speaker 5: to complete, to complete their obligation to r c A
Speaker 5: each group on the on the on the Solar label
Speaker 5: old r c A. Another another album, one more album
Speaker 5: and then we could then Solar could move on to
Speaker 5: Electure Distribution. So it was like it was we called
Speaker 5: we used to call it the throwaway album. But on
Speaker 5: that album you had you had Sweeter as the Days
Speaker 5: Go By, you had you know, uh, this talk to Me,
Speaker 5: which was which was like a crazy crazy things. James
Speaker 5: and I did a song on there called you Got
Speaker 5: Me Right, you know, one of those urgency things you know,
Speaker 5: and and but that's what it was. We used to
Speaker 5: call it the throwaway album, you know, And that was
Speaker 5: because we had to fulfill the obligation to h rca
Speaker 5: disabusing company and so that they can move on to
Speaker 5: the electric election.
Speaker 1: So at the time, though, and you know, like Thuraway albums,
Speaker 1: are you know, Frank Zappa was famous for it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Prince did cast and disorder. Like Thuraway albums,
Speaker 1: there's nothing new about it. But at the time, are
Speaker 1: you feeling like, well, we do have a are you
Speaker 1: thinking about it in terms of legacy, Like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to just put a stinker out
Speaker 1: there or something that doesn't have all this promotion or something,
Speaker 1: because you guys are basically releasing it knowing that it's
Speaker 1: going to be dead in the water anyway. But did
Speaker 1: you feel any sort of way about that as a group,
Speaker 1: like we don't want to waste a shot, especially when
Speaker 1: we have this much momentum mmmm.
Speaker 5: We we really didn't think about that a lot because
Speaker 5: I guess we were depending on the guidance of the
Speaker 5: record company as far as that's concerned. You know, they said, Okay,
Speaker 5: we're gonna do this, It's gonna be cool, blah blah blah,
Speaker 5: and like I said, some some uh sweeter as the
Speaker 5: days go by. That was that was a that was
Speaker 5: a pretty you know turned out to be a pretty
Speaker 5: especially overseas, turned out to be a pretty popular song
Speaker 5: and stuff. So it wasn't it wasn't like we put
Speaker 5: it wasn't like if you listen to the album, wasn't
Speaker 5: like we put a stinker out there. There was some
Speaker 5: stuff on. There was some stuff.
Speaker 1: Sorry I didn't mean, but in terms of releasing it,
Speaker 1: knowing that you're just gonna go put all the energy
Speaker 1: in front of the friends album that's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, in front of the album with the new
Speaker 5: distribution company. Now, I think we were you know again,
Speaker 5: we were so we were still at that point, we
Speaker 5: were still pretty young in the business, and like so
Speaker 5: we were we were depending if Dick said we're gonna
Speaker 5: put it with you know, get a throw Way album,
Speaker 5: lean I said, we're gonna do a throw Way album. Okay,
Speaker 5: all right, cool, let's do. Let's get in there and work,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: But I also noticed that this is the album that
Speaker 1: the three of you really got to contribute a lot
Speaker 1: of your personal songs to.
Speaker 5: It, right right, especially Jeffrey. Jeffrey did a lot of
Speaker 5: stuff on there.
Speaker 1: And so in your in your mind, like what's what's
Speaker 1: your favorite album of v Shallamar Cannon.
Speaker 5: I think like I really dig Three for Love. I
Speaker 5: dig Three for Love because of the the politics of it.
Speaker 5: And as far as because Lee Young Junior told me
Speaker 5: when I first got with the group, because up until
Speaker 5: that time, it was a lot of caricatures as far
Speaker 5: as album covers concerned. You know, the Uptown Festival album
Speaker 5: cover was a cartoon type of character, the disco gardens
Speaker 5: and Disco Guarden and and uh and and also you
Speaker 5: know even the big Fun album on those yeah and
Speaker 5: stuff still you know, but Lee told me, man, you
Speaker 5: have to establish your faces as far as the group
Speaker 5: is concerned when people, you have to establish it so
Speaker 5: that when people say Shalomar, they think of Howard, Jeffrey
Speaker 5: and Jody because they see it. And then and on
Speaker 5: the on the legal tip, you know, that was very cool.
Speaker 5: So that was that was really important to me as
Speaker 5: far as that album was concerned, which album, which album
Speaker 5: was for the lover and you on? Was that on
Speaker 5: three for Love? That was on three for Love?
Speaker 2: I believe, I believe, Yeah, it's on three yeah, yes.
Speaker 5: And what we were talking about in the very beginning
Speaker 5: of the of this whole of this whole show was
Speaker 5: very important because when I first got with the group,
Speaker 5: it was like, you know, Shalomar the disco group, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. And like, like I said, I
Speaker 5: wasn't a big fan of disco, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So my thing was like, that's we need to establish
Speaker 5: this as a as as a group, as a as
Speaker 5: a whatever you want to pop, R and B whatever,
Speaker 5: not disco. So when we did for the Lovering You,
Speaker 5: for the Lovering You was very instrumental in doing that,
Speaker 5: taking us from the disco group into you know, when
Speaker 5: they started talking about Shalamar, you know, after for the
Speaker 5: Lovering You, it was like, yeah, the group Shalamar, the
Speaker 5: singing group, pop group, R and B group, but you know,
Speaker 5: put the disco group out of the picture.
Speaker 1: What was the name? Where did the name come from?
Speaker 1: What was the meaning of the name Salamar?
Speaker 5: This is there's this cat named Simone Susan who brought
Speaker 5: h Uptown Festival to Dick and Don Cornelia's Uptown Festival
Speaker 5: was like a medley of motown hits, you know, so
Speaker 5: like uh you know, in the disco, in the disco format,
Speaker 5: and uh so Simone Soussan was this cat and there
Speaker 5: was a there was a garden over in the at
Speaker 5: least or something like that called Shalomar Garden. It's a
Speaker 5: s h l I M A R you know, shally Mar.
Speaker 5: It was this there was this, uh, there was this
Speaker 5: botanical garden that this potentate or somebody you know, put
Speaker 5: together for his lady, you know, and and so like
Speaker 5: there was this beautiful garden. That's how they got Disco
Speaker 5: Garden out of it. And then they changed the I
Speaker 5: to the A and s A A L A m
Speaker 5: A L s h s h A l.
Speaker 1: A m A L.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Okay, what can you what can you tell us both
Speaker 4: legally and and respectfully about Jody's situation and why she's
Speaker 4: not torn with the band currently.
Speaker 5: With us currently.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, at the time, we we got an offer Jeffery,
Speaker 5: like I think it was about twenty years ago, seventeen
Speaker 5: twenty years or so ago. We we uh uh got
Speaker 5: a well, Jeffrey got an offer to do five gigs
Speaker 5: over in Asia and throughout Japan and stuff, and and
Speaker 5: so you know, we called Jody, we said, you know,
Speaker 5: jeff called me. I said, yeah, I'm down, I'm coold,
Speaker 5: it'll be fun. And then we called Jody, and Jody said, well,
Speaker 5: I don't think I really want to revisit that part
Speaker 5: of my life, you know, and and which you know
Speaker 5: you can't say. I mean, she she, you know, everybody
Speaker 5: didn't have the same you know. It's a situation you
Speaker 5: can do. You know, three people, two people can experience
Speaker 5: the same.
Speaker 1: Exact thing and come on with different experiences.
Speaker 5: Different experiences. So you got three people who experienced the
Speaker 5: same exact thing and came away with three different, uh experiences.
Speaker 5: So at that time, Jeffrey and I went and we
Speaker 5: did the shows by herself. We put the band together
Speaker 5: and we did the shows ourselves, you know, and uh.
Speaker 5: And then in fact we went on to do a
Speaker 5: bunch of stuff in the UK. We went to Africa
Speaker 5: a couple of times with that light, with just me
Speaker 5: and Jeffrey. And then when we wanted to bring the
Speaker 5: female entity back into it, Carolyn Griffy, who is Dick
Speaker 5: Griffy's daughter, and she was she was singing background for
Speaker 5: me on a lot of my solo stuff, you know,
Speaker 5: and so she had the history of the group, she
Speaker 5: had the passion of the group, so we didn't even
Speaker 5: we didn't even. And also she had she has an
Speaker 5: amazing voice. I love her, I love her instrument. And
Speaker 5: we didn't even audition to anybody else. We just offered
Speaker 5: the position.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how was your How was your relationship before mister
Speaker 4: Griffy when he passed? How was our relationship at that
Speaker 4: time right before he passed?
Speaker 5: Me and Dick, Yeah, yeah, we were. We were We
Speaker 5: were at each other's about something. I forget what it was.
Speaker 5: I forget what it was. He didn't, And it was
Speaker 5: funny because you know, he was just he was just
Speaker 5: learning about and stuff at that time and accidentally sent
Speaker 5: it to me.
Speaker 6: I'm like, nigga, you know, and I just I just laughed,
Speaker 6: you know, and and uh, I forget what it was
Speaker 6: we were arguing about at that time.
Speaker 5: But I loved him. I loved it, you know. And
Speaker 5: then we had a bitter sweet thing.
Speaker 3: Was he when he passed?
Speaker 5: So yeah, seventy so you know, and like, you know,
Speaker 5: it was it was, it was. It was sad I
Speaker 5: never got a chance to see him right when before
Speaker 5: he passed. We had a couple of meetings before he
Speaker 5: got before he got sick, and uh, you know, but
Speaker 5: we were arguing about something then I forget what it was.
Speaker 1: But wow, you know, I know, I know I brought
Speaker 1: it up earlier, but I kind of want to if
Speaker 1: you visited, I know that you and James Ingram are
Speaker 1: singing on p YT. Are you at all involved on
Speaker 1: the original version of p YT the slower before it
Speaker 1: turned into the version that's on Thriller? There's another alternative, slower,
Speaker 1: smoother version of the Yeah, yeah, a slower version. Are
Speaker 1: you on that version at all? Or is it just
Speaker 1: the version that's on Thriller?
Speaker 5: Just a version is on Thriller. I didn't even know
Speaker 5: there was a slower version out.
Speaker 2: You know, you know good?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, they left no stone unturned, like they kept.
Speaker 5: Where the background sampled from the from the no.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's completely different recording. Just the title, they
Speaker 1: shared the title.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 1: Like they turned into something totally totally different. But speaking
Speaker 1: of speaking of Griffy again, you know, MTV was was
Speaker 1: just a baby, and of course they were world famous
Speaker 1: for really not focusing on that many black acts. And
Speaker 1: and yet I remember at the same time when they
Speaker 1: started slowly playing Billy Jean and beat It, you guys
Speaker 1: were one of the few groups that they slowly letting
Speaker 1: the door along with like Prince and Lionel, Ritchie, Eddie Griant.
Speaker 1: How do you do you know how that happened? Like
Speaker 1: how was was that the making of Dick Griffy or like.
Speaker 5: I don't know what the politics were as far as
Speaker 5: what the politics were as far as getting all that
Speaker 5: into in uh into the playlist, but at the time,
Speaker 5: it was just it was just us and Michael. And
Speaker 5: but you know down you had that you had that
Speaker 5: famous uh interview with David Bowie and Bowie Yeah, and
Speaker 5: I think at that point they started kind of re
Speaker 5: re looking at certain situations. When David Bowie comes up
Speaker 5: to us this, how can you call yourself a music channel?
Speaker 5: And and you not playing black music? It's like it's crazy,
Speaker 5: you know, so so like, but I'm not about the politics.
Speaker 5: It was just you know, people they the promotion. People
Speaker 5: kept pushing it, kept pushing it. But at the time,
Speaker 5: like I said, it was just it was just us
Speaker 5: and Michael at the time that they were playing.
Speaker 1: Okay, So can I assume that the look was technically
Speaker 1: kind of sort of maybe your first solo record, but.
Speaker 5: Kind of okay, it was the last It was the
Speaker 5: last album that we did that Jeffrey and Jody and
Speaker 5: I did together, but they participated just.
Speaker 1: Like they equally.
Speaker 5: As far as like just like we used to do
Speaker 5: all the rest of the projects and stuff. There's a
Speaker 5: tune on there called you Are the You're the one
Speaker 5: for me, man, check that tune out if you get
Speaker 5: a chance to check that TOI.
Speaker 1: Oh, I know, I know it well, I know it well,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to know, like the working process.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the Look, I know, I know, and you
Speaker 1: know I'm a Philadelphian, So I feel like a bad
Speaker 1: Philadelphia because I'm gonna ask you this question.
Speaker 2: But I know that you wrote the Look with Stanley Clark.
Speaker 1: Now personally one of my all time favorite how Hewitt
Speaker 1: songs non shall marve related. But really, if I'm honest
Speaker 1: with it, this is probably my all time favorite song.
Speaker 2: Of yours is Heaven Sent? Now?
Speaker 1: You know, as a jazz head, you know this is
Speaker 1: a guy that's you know, done, returned it forever, doesn't
Speaker 1: change the world of bass music. I feel really silly
Speaker 1: that this is also might be my favorite Stanley Clark
Speaker 1: songs though he has such an intricate history with his bass,
Speaker 1: but this one particular song says, could you what I
Speaker 1: really want to know is why didn't you say that
Speaker 1: for your own project? Yes, even though it made noise
Speaker 1: on his record, I almost felt like because when it
Speaker 1: came out, I felt like, oh, this is the how
Speaker 1: are you are? Solo joint?
Speaker 2: And then my aunt couldn't find it. She's looking for forever.
Speaker 1: And then finally it's like it's buried on you know,
Speaker 1: the Stanley Clark record.
Speaker 2: Did you talk about that song?
Speaker 5: That song? It was was one of the first times
Speaker 5: that I ventured, one of my first ventures off from Solar,
Speaker 5: you know what, I'm right, And so, like I said before,
Speaker 5: Dick wasn't really a big fan of that, but you know,
Speaker 5: it was like you gotta you can't just you know,
Speaker 5: keep people sold up in certain situations. So it was
Speaker 5: when Stanley because Stanley and I met first, and then
Speaker 5: he me to George and when we met we had
Speaker 5: a mutual friend that was his accountant, I think, and
Speaker 5: then he did some he doesn't work for me, and
Speaker 5: then he introduced me to Stanley. Stan was a fan
Speaker 5: of you know, the Shalomar stuff, and I was definitely
Speaker 5: a fan of Stanley's because my first instrument that I
Speaker 5: learned how to play when I was like twelve years old,
Speaker 5: was bass, so you know, I was the Stanley was
Speaker 5: like the cat, right. So we just started working together.
Speaker 5: And there was another cat that wrote that song. I
Speaker 5: think he passed away. I can't remember that wrote.
Speaker 1: A lot was Heaven sent?
Speaker 5: Heaven said, yeah, okay, I gotta look it up. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I can't remember his name. There was some I remember
Speaker 5: there was some stuff that was going on with him
Speaker 5: and Stanley, but you know, we got we you know,
Speaker 5: we went in and started recording, started messing around with it,
Speaker 5: and it was just it was it was just slated
Speaker 5: to go on his album. It wasn't slated to go
Speaker 5: on my album. And that was before I think, you know,
Speaker 5: the whole concept of putting a song. You could put
Speaker 5: it on this album, I'll do it that album, put
Speaker 5: it on my album. You know what I'm saying. We
Speaker 5: weren't doing that then.
Speaker 2: Is this song is it? Is it still in your repertoire?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely definitely. I love that.
Speaker 4: You know, I was just gonna ask, what was the
Speaker 4: creative chemistry, like, uh, Stanley and George working together?
Speaker 1: What were they like in the studio together?
Speaker 5: Man? It was like because because I did a lot
Speaker 5: of the Clark dou uh and a lot of involved
Speaker 5: in a lot of that, especially the videos I do.
Speaker 5: These little crazy cameo appearances on the videos didn't make
Speaker 5: any sense all of a sudden, I'm there, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. It was amazing. I mean, George just
Speaker 5: working with George. So George was just I mean, if
Speaker 5: if you didn't know anybody that didn't all the whole
Speaker 5: bottom part of George's house and U in Hollywood, uh,
Speaker 5: lower Hollywood Hills, basically off of Franklin. The whole bottom
Speaker 5: part of his house was his studio. Everything room, studio,
Speaker 5: you know, everything, the lounge, everything was. The studio had
Speaker 5: a he had his wine cellar down there and stuff,
Speaker 5: and I mean it was it was just we We
Speaker 5: would just going there and it was a place to
Speaker 5: go in and just be creative and working with and
Speaker 5: then watching him and Stanley together was just a double
Speaker 5: double situation, double dose of what you know, George did
Speaker 5: and it and it and it was was enhanced by
Speaker 5: Stanley's stuff. Stanley do some stuff, George would enhance it
Speaker 5: with his thing. I mean, it was It was a major,
Speaker 5: major creative, total creative atmosphere in there.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Man, Wow, could you what was the audition
Speaker 1: process like for Mickey Free and Delisa Davis once Jeffrey
Speaker 1: and Jody left, uh Shallamar.
Speaker 5: Well, for Mickey, there wasn't really an audition situation. Mickey
Speaker 5: was working on a project I think with Leon, you know,
Speaker 5: and Mickey was like, basically, you know this prince like
Speaker 5: our player cat and he was working out of a
Speaker 5: studio masters, and so I would come there. I was
Speaker 5: working on something and then we see each other, I
Speaker 5: think with these studio masters of Lairbie a studio I
Speaker 5: can't remember, but we crossed each other across the path.
Speaker 5: Hey man, was up, Hey man, what's up? And then
Speaker 5: keep on going right, and then we started talking and stuff.
Speaker 5: And Mickey is Mickey, if he ever decided to put
Speaker 5: this guitar down and not do music anymore, he could
Speaker 5: be a stand up comedian for real. That nigga had
Speaker 5: me cracking up the whole time. And so then that's
Speaker 5: when I talked to Leon, because like I said, they
Speaker 5: were they were working on something. And then I said, well,
Speaker 5: why don't I bring you know, uh Mickey in, which
Speaker 5: changed the whole situation of the group, you know, because
Speaker 5: Mickey was more of this rock cat and I was
Speaker 5: just looking to do something to pass the time for
Speaker 5: two and a half years, you know, So you know,
Speaker 5: and we went into the whole you know, we went
Speaker 5: into the whole rock thing. You know. I always had
Speaker 5: my dressing room when Jeffrey was in the group. Its
Speaker 5: me and Jeffrey had a dressing room, right we went together.
Speaker 5: Joey would have her own dressing room, but it's just
Speaker 5: you know, the camaraderie of it, you know. So Mickey
Speaker 5: and I had our dressing room together. Our theme song
Speaker 5: in the dressing room was Rebel Yelle, which would call
Speaker 5: it leather Gloves on and the built can you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying? And we ready to go out there
Speaker 5: and deal man. So like it changed the whole thing.
Speaker 5: Now with Delisa, we Dick came up with this idea
Speaker 5: of involving a lot of the local different local radio
Speaker 5: stations across the country and do this contest, the contest
Speaker 5: to find the girl for Shalamar, you know, and it
Speaker 5: involved the local radio stations and and all of them.
Speaker 5: They put together this thing. They had auditions Don Lewis.
Speaker 5: Don Lewis auditioned in New York. That's when I first
Speaker 5: met Don Lewis.
Speaker 1: I don't remember I was that was it all the episode?
Speaker 1: I missed that episode? Yeah, was our last pre COVID interview.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I remember Don coming out with these hot
Speaker 5: pants and these and these uh uh what they called
Speaker 5: fish net stockings. Right. For years I called her fish
Speaker 5: net right because she didn't she didn't win the audis
Speaker 5: in delease because she won the New York audition, and
Speaker 5: then she was then they flew they flew her to
Speaker 5: l A and one it was here's l A in
Speaker 5: l A. One of the time she was in l A.
Speaker 5: That's when she I guess she connected with the different
Speaker 5: world people are are, yeah, the different world people. But
Speaker 5: for years after I knew and you know, after I
Speaker 5: knew Don for years, I can never really remember her name.
Speaker 5: But I called her fishnets, you know, so you know,
Speaker 5: but that was the process. De Lisa was from Nashville.
Speaker 5: So when we went to Nashville, did the did the
Speaker 5: audition and there so.
Speaker 1: This this was nationwide's nationwide Yeah, oh wow, okay.
Speaker 5: Georganashville all all over the place. We're all over the place.
Speaker 1: By the way, did did Mickey ever share any of
Speaker 1: that basketball Charlie Murphy story with you at all.
Speaker 2: The day after, he said, he told you.
Speaker 5: After the day after it happened. Man, That's why when
Speaker 5: people called me, when people called me after Dave Chappelle
Speaker 5: did it, and years later when people called me and
Speaker 5: told me, Man, you see that skit, the Charlie Murphy
Speaker 5: Hollywood stories and on Dave Sappelle, they did a thing.
Speaker 5: They talked about Mickey going up and going up to
Speaker 5: the Princess House. I said, Man, Mickey called me today
Speaker 5: after they the day after they did that, And so
Speaker 5: we were up at short Cast House man last night,
Speaker 5: and and Eddie Murphy and Charlie Murphy, everybody came up
Speaker 5: and played basketball, he said. Prince Prince went out there
Speaker 5: in his heels and was dumping. He said, Man, anybody
Speaker 5: wants some pancakes?
Speaker 1: He called me.
Speaker 5: He called me the day after, a day after that
Speaker 5: went down.
Speaker 1: Wait, can I get this fronte because I'm gonna forget this. Also,
Speaker 1: on the Look, you worked with the legendary David Hawk
Speaker 1: Wazinski formerly of Rufus. Yes, yeah, could you talk to
Speaker 1: like that? That's a cat I definitely want to interview
Speaker 1: as well. Like, did you talk about the process of
Speaker 1: songwriting with him and working with him?
Speaker 5: It was wild. Hawk was wild. His studio was called
Speaker 5: it was up in the hills, off of a little
Speaker 5: off the off, the one on off, the one on one. Uh,
Speaker 5: Laurel wasn't Laura can I can't remember. Okay, it was
Speaker 5: up in the hills, and the name of the studio
Speaker 5: was called Food in the Hill. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 5: Called the Hill Okay, Pool in the Hills studios. So
Speaker 5: it was like me him, Mickey, we had it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was just the whole writing process and would get
Speaker 5: serious then all of a sudden it would just go
Speaker 5: off the chain somewhere else and we were just you know,
Speaker 5: we were just up there. We had we had, you know,
Speaker 5: interesting situation visitors up there in and out and.
Speaker 1: I as you're going.
Speaker 5: And so like, you know. But it was but but
Speaker 5: the creative situation of it when we would be on
Speaker 5: track was amazing. It was amazing. We got a lot
Speaker 5: of work done, a lot of creative looking at uh
Speaker 5: we did. One of the songs we did was called Mike.
Speaker 2: My Girl Loves Me, That's my ship, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, I know, probably to you like this was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm just gonna do this bid and then
Speaker 1: get out here and do my solo join. But you know,
Speaker 1: for a whatever past the time record, at least in
Speaker 1: your words, like I the the Heartbreak record was actually
Speaker 1: kind of dope. And I do, I do want to
Speaker 1: know the story. Okay, So I know the history of
Speaker 1: Dean Pitchford because I went to perform an arts high school.
Speaker 1: So Dean Pittsford, of course you know he's he's he's
Speaker 1: a fellow e gotter Bill. You should know this person.
Speaker 1: He wrote, I mean from Godspell, the Fame. He wrote
Speaker 1: like a lot of Broadway stuff. He won Matt Grammys
Speaker 1: and a Tony and Emmy.
Speaker 2: I know that him and.
Speaker 1: Bill Wolford wrote uh about to say footloose?
Speaker 2: Well, they were of that too. They were dancing in
Speaker 2: the sheets.
Speaker 8: Sheets like the streets to a child here, excuse me,
Speaker 8: mister Hewett.
Speaker 3: And I know I called you Howard the whole time.
Speaker 8: But a young child who hears that song you sang
Speaker 8: the first time you heard somebody said it was dancing
Speaker 8: in the street.
Speaker 1: I mean they talking about getting it on and they
Speaker 1: talking about the sheets.
Speaker 8: Kids don't even hear that part you just hear the
Speaker 8: I was a kid and I heard body of friends.
Speaker 2: You know, Yes, I.
Speaker 1: Now grab your coat when we're going home, That's what
Speaker 1: he said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm enlightened. As of today, I am enlightened.
Speaker 2: Yes, she thought I was dancing in the streets.
Speaker 1: But wait, can I can I just ask though, Yes,
Speaker 1: the song was a bona fide hit, But did anyone
Speaker 1: ever raise the question that it might be a tab
Speaker 1: bit derivative of nineteen ninety nine at all?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, the thing, the whole the way that
Speaker 5: whole thing came about was at the time, like I said,
Speaker 5: it was just me. I don't even think I had
Speaker 5: Mickey in the group at that time. It was just
Speaker 5: it was just me and and Dean Pittsford called and
Speaker 5: wanted me and Leon to come to the Paramount Studios
Speaker 5: and listen and look at this movie that he had
Speaker 5: and he had temporary music in it, you know, just stuff.
Speaker 5: And then when it came to the park where he
Speaker 5: had written you know, for dancing and sheets, he said,
Speaker 5: this is where I want, you know, shalomar thing to be.
Speaker 5: And so like you know, we watched a movie, we talked,
Speaker 5: got blah blah, blah blah, and Leon and Leone and
Speaker 5: I are walking back to the UH to the the
Speaker 5: parking lot, and I said, well, what do you think?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 5: He said, Wow, I got a whole lot on my plate.
Speaker 5: I don't think that's going to be a big movie.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying. It's it's like and I
Speaker 5: got I got a whole lot on my plate. I
Speaker 5: don't really I'm not I'm not really gonna have time
Speaker 5: to do it. He said, well what do you think?
Speaker 5: I said, well, I don't think it's gonna be a
Speaker 5: big movie either, you know.
Speaker 1: But oh god what.
Speaker 5: I ain't gonna throw Leon under the bus like that.
Speaker 5: It was me too, I said, I don't think it's
Speaker 5: going to be a big movie.
Speaker 1: You saw Footloose and you were just like, man, whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, okay.
Speaker 5: You know because it because it was it was just
Speaker 5: you know, this guy, this cat teaching white folks how
Speaker 5: to dance and and all that. You know, it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, it's like, hey, you know, I don't think
Speaker 5: it's going to be that big of a movie. But
Speaker 5: I said, but being with the position that the group
Speaker 5: which I was gonna have to keep on at that time,
Speaker 5: I knew Dick Griffy wasn't gonna allow me to get
Speaker 5: out of my contract, so I had to keep on
Speaker 5: with the group. I said, But given the position that
Speaker 5: the group is in at this time, I said, I
Speaker 5: think it would be a good even though I don't
Speaker 5: think it's gonna be a I don't think it's a
Speaker 5: great movie. They're gonna put a push behind it, a
Speaker 5: good look.
Speaker 1: It'll be a good look promotional thing.
Speaker 5: So it would be, you know, why not do it?
Speaker 5: I'll do it. I put it, you know, do the
Speaker 5: do the song, put it in there. All of my
Speaker 5: name lives. However, you know what I'm saying. So I know,
Speaker 5: I had to go to Solar, to the legal department
Speaker 5: in Solar when somebody called me one morning and then
Speaker 5: the soundtrack had been out there and it is sold.
Speaker 5: Because at that time, soundtracks weren't really big. People really
Speaker 5: didn't look at soundtracks, you know, and that was like
Speaker 5: the first the first bid of the first one of
Speaker 5: the first big soundtracks out there. But I had to
Speaker 5: go to Solar and say because somebody called me that
Speaker 5: particular morning said, uh, you've been checking out the Footloose
Speaker 5: soundtrack and said, now I was hey, man, they sold
Speaker 5: platinum already. I said, what he's there, you know, and
Speaker 5: so I go I go to and talk to Virgil
Speaker 5: Roberts at the at the record company. I went down
Speaker 5: to the record company. I said, man, Virgil, you've been
Speaker 5: checking the Dancing the Footloose soundtrack. Virgil goes said, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know how these these things really don't don't sell
Speaker 5: a lot. You know, it's not a sound and that's it.
Speaker 5: As a dude, it's it's platinum. Somebody told me, yeah,
Speaker 5: there's no way, no way, platinum, and then that's it
Speaker 5: took off from there. Man, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: But I was about to say, you guys, double dip,
Speaker 1: because isn't the only Grammy for Shallamar also for your
Speaker 1: participation on the Beverly Hills cop so yeah, for don't
Speaker 1: get Stopped in Beverly Hills. So it was almost like
Speaker 1: eighty four.
Speaker 5: Was the year of Yeah that was Hawk with Linsky. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: double dip. That's that's that's right. We didn't I don't
Speaker 5: I don't think we know. We didn't win anything for.
Speaker 1: Well that well, the soundcheck one a Grammy, So I
Speaker 1: assume that someone gets that, uh you know, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 4: I was gonna I was gonna ask you out, man,
Speaker 4: what can you tell us about your marriage to near people's.
Speaker 4: I used to always watch the Party Machine when I
Speaker 4: was a kid.
Speaker 1: Jesus got first.
Speaker 3: Like so I felt like a little celebrity couple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the original James b.
Speaker 5: I gotta say, h.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, never mind, keep going. That's a good.
Speaker 5: Story, right.
Speaker 1: There was.
Speaker 5: There was a cat. There was a cat Jerome Gasper,
Speaker 5: who was an r cat for PolyGram. I think at
Speaker 5: the time it's a good friend of mine and so
Speaker 5: and maybe prefaced it. Also. I had a I had
Speaker 5: a condo and Handcock Parker that at that time, and
Speaker 5: I had this in my bedroom. I had this big
Speaker 5: you know, remember the rear projections, big screen TVs. I
Speaker 5: had a big rear projections, big screen TV at the
Speaker 5: bottom of my bed. And uh, every morning I wake up,
Speaker 5: you know, turn on the TV, flip through the channels,
Speaker 5: get the channel eleven or nine or whatever, and I
Speaker 5: see Fame was on. You know, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And there I say, man, there's this fine woman that
Speaker 5: comes on Fame. You know, I never knew. I never
Speaker 5: waited for the credits or anything. I just wanted to
Speaker 5: look at her, you know what I'm saying. And then
Speaker 5: I keep it on Fame on the channel where Fame
Speaker 5: was for about you know, ten fifteen minutes. If she
Speaker 5: didn't come on the screen, I'd start flipping through the channel.
Speaker 5: But I'm sitting there. Yeah, fine, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So this guy's your own Gaspar called me and uh
Speaker 5: he said he talked. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: yeah yeah yeah yeah. Howard, how Howard? You know? He said, man,
Speaker 5: we just we just signed the girl from Fame, you know,
Speaker 5: to a contract or a PolyGram. I want you to
Speaker 5: do a few songs on her. I wanted to do
Speaker 5: a couple of two three songs on her. I said, well,
Speaker 5: which girl is there's near people's I said, well which
Speaker 5: girl is?
Speaker 1: This is it?
Speaker 5: There's you? That's same, he said. He said, I sent
Speaker 5: you overnight a compilation, uh via a tape to you
Speaker 5: and I said, okay, cool. Next morning the FedEx Con,
Speaker 5: they they get the tape. I put the tape in
Speaker 5: my vah seeing and they said, ladies general near people
Speaker 5: and she comes walking out on stage. I pushed cars
Speaker 5: and I called, I'm in, I'm in.
Speaker 1: I'm on my way.
Speaker 5: Whatever you want me to do, I'm there, you know.
Speaker 5: And soul Train was first.
Speaker 8: I said, I messed up that timeline and my kid
Speaker 8: here because I was like, oh, I thought soul Train
Speaker 8: was first.
Speaker 3: With soul Train was after the two of you, our hosts.
Speaker 1: And she was never on soul Train.
Speaker 2: Was never she was on Party Machine.
Speaker 1: Sorry but to our long but to our younger gen
Speaker 1: Z listeners, she's all she's the hot mom on Pretty
Speaker 1: Little Liars. So that's that's what That's what everyone knows
Speaker 1: her as like.
Speaker 5: We worked on we worked on the album and really
Speaker 5: got you know, got got really close. So's she's a
Speaker 5: good ladies, she's a good woman. We have our son.
Speaker 5: We have Christopher is uh our son, you know, and
Speaker 5: it's amazing. We just we just had lunch about two
Speaker 5: weeks or so ago, she and I, Christopher, her other
Speaker 5: daughter and stuff. It's like this, it's very cool. It's
Speaker 5: very cool.
Speaker 3: First response and be like, let's cool, we just had lunch.
Speaker 1: No wait, I gotta say though, Damn, I didn't wait
Speaker 1: because I know we got to end this episode eventually sometime, however.
Speaker 2: I will, I got this. What is okay?
Speaker 1: This is always what I always wanted to know when
Speaker 1: an artist does their signature, like when they do the
Speaker 1: token gospel song on their record. I ee in.
Speaker 2: Love that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Where is are you at a place in your life?
Speaker 1: What it's sort of like because we we didn't even
Speaker 1: get into the personal comings and going through your life
Speaker 1: in the turmoil whatever, Like we're just on the creative
Speaker 1: and the things. But at that point, the fact, the
Speaker 1: fact that Save Men became such a signature song for you,
Speaker 1: mm hmm, Like where were you in your life that
Speaker 1: that song made made its appearance and the way that
Speaker 1: you delivered it, like we really believed it. So were
Speaker 1: you at a transitional phase in your life where that
Speaker 1: song came right in time?
Speaker 5: Okay? So before I left the group, before I left
Speaker 5: Salomar at the time, like two or three years, two
Speaker 5: or three years before I left Salomar, I always had
Speaker 5: the situation I wanted to do a solo album. So
Speaker 5: I remember praying seriously, I prayed prayer. I said, Lord,
Speaker 5: when I'm by myself, when i'm so when I'm when
Speaker 5: I'm responsible for what I say. I said, I promised
Speaker 5: that I will honor you on every solo project that
Speaker 5: I do, you know, and and I have so say
Speaker 5: man was the first was on the eye, Committal Love
Speaker 5: album was the first sol and then on and on.
Speaker 5: But when I finally rolled my contract out, I had
Speaker 5: a lecture. You know, if you know the term electure
Speaker 5: had first rights or refusal one everything that came off
Speaker 5: of Solar right, So I had to give them. I
Speaker 5: had to. I had to go through them before I
Speaker 5: could go anywhere else, you know, as far as my
Speaker 5: solo situation was concerned. So you know, at the time,
Speaker 5: e lecture was like cold as ice. They didn't they had.
Speaker 5: All they had over there was the eagles and and
Speaker 5: and that whole thing, and and and so. Like I
Speaker 5: told my attorney, I said, okay, so they have to
Speaker 5: have first rights or refusal and in other words, they
Speaker 5: have to you know, decline the deal that we bring
Speaker 5: to them. You know, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 5: I said, if that's the case, why don't we just
Speaker 5: make this deal so ridiculous that they're gonna decline it?
Speaker 5: You did, so, you know, put all kinds of stuff
Speaker 5: in there, bumps here. You know, the money was like
Speaker 5: unheard of for the first time solo arts. Even though
Speaker 5: I had the success with Shalamar was crazy and we
Speaker 5: took it to him. Bob Krasnow, who was head of
Speaker 5: the company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bob, Bob says, he calls you bluff.
Speaker 5: He says, okay, what else? Wow? You know, so so like,
Speaker 5: you know, okay, they accepted it. So it was a
Speaker 5: great deal monetarily, and the company was a great turnout
Speaker 5: to be a company, a great company. But it was
Speaker 5: almost like I just describe a solo electra like a
Speaker 5: twelve cylinder car and you running on six cylinders, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. And like because they did their job,
Speaker 5: they did their situation as far as the urban R
Speaker 5: and B situation is concerned, but the pop department over
Speaker 5: there never came to the party. So you know, it
Speaker 5: was like it was a whole thing. But getting back
Speaker 5: to when I first went to the thing, I had
Speaker 5: the new record company and I had a new management company.
Speaker 5: So this was in nineteen eighty five when I first
Speaker 5: left the group, and so I had a meeting with
Speaker 5: the new record company, I had a meeting with an
Speaker 5: RCAT and a new record company, had a meeting and
Speaker 5: with the new management company that I had hired, and
Speaker 5: I went in I was excited about doing my first
Speaker 5: solo project. Shook everybody's hand and I sat down and
Speaker 5: I said, first of all, before we get started in
Speaker 5: this meeting, I said, I want to say I want
Speaker 5: to do a song to the Lord on this album.
Speaker 2: It was like, that's how you started the.
Speaker 5: Meeting, That's how I started to meeting, okay, and so
Speaker 5: I want to do a song to the Lord on
Speaker 5: this and like it's like you can hear crickets in there,
Speaker 5: and this is eighty five. This I don't know when
Speaker 5: Jesus Is Love came out, but.
Speaker 1: This that was eighty But again, it was a rare move.
Speaker 1: Like the door, you normalized it when you did it.
Speaker 1: Then everyone started doing it.
Speaker 5: But it was but at the time it was like,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm talking about putting you know, Denise would
Speaker 5: do a gospel album and then she going she come
Speaker 5: back and do an R and B album. I was
Speaker 5: talking about combining putting that on there. You know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying. And so like you know, this one cat
Speaker 5: starts talking, well, you know Howard, you know we might
Speaker 5: get into we want to take your career in the
Speaker 5: sex symbol direction might not be conducive to religious overtones
Speaker 5: and this and that and that and this, and then
Speaker 5: my management companies, the cat from my management. He started
Speaker 5: talking because I hadn't even talked to him about this yet, right,
Speaker 5: And so I'm sitting again, I said. I sat back
Speaker 5: and I listened. I listened to what they were saying,
Speaker 5: and all the time, in my head, I'm saying, Okay, lord,
Speaker 5: you know what am I supposed to do here? You
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. And so when they got done talking,
Speaker 5: I said, you know what, I hear you, and I
Speaker 5: understand you, and I can dig where you're coming from.
Speaker 5: I said, but maybe because in my mind, too, man,
Speaker 5: is that these people got to promote my record. I
Speaker 5: don't want to get anybody, you know.
Speaker 4: If you want to give them something that they're enthusiastic
Speaker 4: about as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sour about promoting the record and stuff. But I
Speaker 5: had to stand, you know, I had to stand for
Speaker 5: what I had promised. And when I said, I said, look,
Speaker 5: I said, I understand it. I hear where you're coming
Speaker 5: from this nineteen eighty five, I said, But let me
Speaker 5: just let me let me go back and let me
Speaker 5: rephrase what I said. I said, let me say that
Speaker 5: I'm going to do a song ask him and asked, like,
Speaker 5: I'm going to do a song to the Lord on
Speaker 5: this album. Hit My promise to him sits up here
Speaker 5: as far as like my priorities and if it's like
Speaker 5: you know, and and I'm going to do a song
Speaker 5: to the Lord on this album. So I said, we
Speaker 5: can talk about everything else now, you know. So we
Speaker 5: talked about everything else, and then then you know, we
Speaker 5: went away once once Monte Seward, who's co writer on that,
Speaker 5: on that on same men. When we put it. When
Speaker 5: we put it together, man, it was like it was great.
Speaker 5: But I will say that it was nineteen eighty five
Speaker 5: around that time or so. And then I I was
Speaker 5: dating as a girl in Miami, lit was her family
Speaker 5: was in Miami. So I remember we were going to
Speaker 5: spend Thanksgiving there with her family. She had moved to
Speaker 5: la and we were going to spend Thanksgiving. So I
Speaker 5: was in the in the studio, you know, all the
Speaker 5: whole day, and she had already flown down there and
Speaker 5: I was gonna get on the red eye and meet
Speaker 5: her there, right So I get on a plane and
Speaker 5: Monty and I had come up with the track, like
Speaker 5: a real rough track for sa Men, and I knew
Speaker 5: that's what I wanted to be, you know, the inspirational song.
Speaker 5: So I jump on the Red Eye going to Miami
Speaker 5: and I get on the plane, I put my headphones on,
Speaker 5: I put the cassette in. It was on a cassette,
Speaker 5: you know, and so I was listening to about three
Speaker 5: or four songs that I still had to write melodies
Speaker 5: and lyrics to. And at the end of that cassette
Speaker 5: was a was like a real rough track of say Men,
Speaker 5: I mean one of the and it didn't even go
Speaker 5: all the way through it just you know, it's just
Speaker 5: a real rough track of Samen. And when it came on,
Speaker 5: all these lyrics started coming to me, and it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, it's time to say goodbye for now. You know,
Speaker 5: we'll have our second time around, sac in time around.
Speaker 5: You know, we'll have our second time around. But before
Speaker 5: we go, there's something I got to say. Everything's not
Speaker 5: what it seems. There's a stronger force behind the scene.
Speaker 5: He's in our lives every day. He's right there when
Speaker 5: we call on him. It's where and I'm writing and
Speaker 5: I'm writing, and there was this lady sitting next to me.
Speaker 5: And then when I got to the second I got
Speaker 5: to the second verse where it says talks about cattle
Speaker 5: on a thousand hills. My mom used to always tell
Speaker 5: me when I was a kid. She says, you're the
Speaker 5: King's kid. You're the King's kid, you know, and the
Speaker 5: king had he had, you know, your God's child. This
Speaker 5: is what she was saying. And she would always tell
Speaker 5: him there's golden cattle on a thousand hills, and that's yours.
Speaker 5: You know, that's yours because you're you're the King's kid.
Speaker 5: That's ours. You know, we're children of the God's God.
Speaker 5: And so when I started writing now and I said,
Speaker 5: you know, I know there's someone who don't believe. Sometimes
Speaker 5: it's very hard to see living those life every day.
Speaker 5: Some things don't go away, but to be without it
Speaker 5: is not his will. There's cattle on a thousand hill. Man,
Speaker 5: it hit me. I'm like writing it's cattle on the
Speaker 5: thousand It hit me. There, tears started coming down, and
Speaker 5: this lady sitting next to me, like, what the hell
Speaker 5: is happening over here? You know, can I can I
Speaker 5: move my seat or something like that. But by the time,
Speaker 5: by time it touched down in uh at Miami, international lyrically.
Speaker 5: The song was totally done.
Speaker 8: It's crazy because you know, most people when they hear
Speaker 8: that song, no matter how many times they hear that song,
Speaker 8: they feel the same way you felt when you wrote it,
Speaker 8: Like it's one of those songs where it just catch
Speaker 8: you no matter where you are, Like.
Speaker 5: It's an ultimate It's an ultimate crazy song.
Speaker 3: How they go to a single. They didn't even want
Speaker 3: the gospel song, and then it became a.
Speaker 1: Single because they playing they were playing the album cut
Speaker 1: on black radio.
Speaker 3: Right, they had to make so that Black radio made
Speaker 3: it a single.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they played it. I mean, you know Donnie Simpson
Speaker 5: ended in show. They did that the show he ended
Speaker 5: with a whole bunch of black radio uh shows across
Speaker 5: the across the country, you know, Uh ended it with it.
Speaker 5: And and then I did it at one of Black
Speaker 5: Black Radio Exclusive b r E. Remember I'm sitting in
Speaker 5: Miller's things. I closed up the closed up the whole
Speaker 5: h uh convention with that song.
Speaker 4: And stuff I remember from from like you did it
Speaker 4: also on the Robert Townsend part of the Crime Robert Towns.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when Robert, when Robert got in touch with me.
Speaker 5: That's because I'm still my boy. We we you know,
Speaker 5: we're really good friends still now. But like when he
Speaker 5: approached me about it, he called and called and asked
Speaker 5: and asked for a meeting. So I went over to
Speaker 5: where he was doing some stuff and went into the
Speaker 5: office and stuff, and he says, man, you know, I'm
Speaker 5: getting ready to do my my uh my Partners the Crime,
Speaker 5: my you know, HBO special. He said, I would love
Speaker 5: for you to do, you know, say man, I said, oh, man,
Speaker 5: that's what's up. Okay, let's gold. I love to be honest.
Speaker 5: And then he says, I want to sing it with you.
Speaker 5: Oh and my mind, you know, do you sing? I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't know, And I guess because I don't, you know,
Speaker 5: my face kind of tells all kind of stuff when
Speaker 5: I'm thinking. Sometimes I unfortunate. But like, you know, he
Speaker 5: looked at me and he said, hey, man, you know,
Speaker 5: this is my first special, this is my first HIO special.
Speaker 5: And I couldn't find I couldn't think of any other
Speaker 5: way to thank God, you know, for this first special
Speaker 5: thing in this with you. And it came off so
Speaker 5: cool and and what was interesting about that was that
Speaker 5: at the time when the Partners in Crime uh special
Speaker 5: air I was my second solo album had already been released.
Speaker 5: I Commit to Love was in the bend, second out.
Speaker 5: Yeah enough, already been released. But once that, once Partners
Speaker 5: in Crime aired across the country, you know, record stores
Speaker 5: had to reorder I commit to Love because everybody flowed,
Speaker 5: you know, flooded in, you know, looking for say amen,
Speaker 5: you know I.
Speaker 2: Was gonna say, was it was? Was this the this
Speaker 2: is pre Sylvia Rome.
Speaker 1: So this is like the Bob Maryland era of Electra Merton.
Speaker 1: Bob Marland I always called Marland. Was he there at
Speaker 1: the time or is it now? Well rock President was ahead,
Speaker 1: but Merlin, Bob wasn't there at the time, was.
Speaker 2: He or did he come in like eighty eight nine?
Speaker 5: Okay, I don't. I don't remember him, but that I
Speaker 5: didn't know.
Speaker 1: But afterwards did they of course acknowledge that.
Speaker 2: Okay, you was? He was on point with this then, you.
Speaker 5: Know, because Bob and I had had had created a
Speaker 5: routine of like whenever I would start, whenever I get
Speaker 5: ready to start an album, I would I would call it.
Speaker 5: If I was in New York, I'd go have a
Speaker 5: meeting with him. And I was here and here's in
Speaker 5: New York, we we talk on the phone and just
Speaker 5: talk about and talk about the direction, talk about what
Speaker 5: I want to do, blah blah blah blah blah. And
Speaker 5: at the end of every after say man, at the
Speaker 5: end of every conversation, Bob said, well, I know you're
Speaker 5: gonna do another one of those gods songs, right, I'm
Speaker 5: gonna do another guy song. It's gonna be because, of
Speaker 5: course after the success and the popularity is say man,
Speaker 5: of course it was. It was everybody's idea.
Speaker 2: Then you know, wait they took credit for it.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, so wait.
Speaker 2: Before we wrap, I got one. Unless you had something.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say, man, show me, yes, thank you.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you know like how popular that is.
Speaker 4: Me and my wife we danced, we step. That is
Speaker 4: a very popular stepping song, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: But that's just I just a gorgeous song and beautiful
Speaker 4: performance everything.
Speaker 1: What was the inspiration for that and what was it
Speaker 1: like recording it?
Speaker 5: Don nettlesby and uh Terry Kofay. You know, it was
Speaker 5: this writing partner, Terry kole Fay. It was actually coffee
Speaker 5: he spelled, but he wanted to co face so that's cool,
Speaker 5: that's all good, you know. So they wrote this track.
Speaker 5: I forget how we got. I forget how we connected,
Speaker 5: but they got this track to me, man, and like,
Speaker 5: and when when I heard this track, I just moved
Speaker 5: into this new crib and I didn't have any recording
Speaker 5: equipment up or anything. So I'm like, I got this
Speaker 5: track and I was like, man, this track is amazing.
Speaker 5: It's an amazing, amazing track. And so I didn't have
Speaker 5: any recording equipment set up, so I had but I
Speaker 5: had two boomboxes that recorded you did. So I lay
Speaker 5: down in the in the middle of my floor and
Speaker 5: up in my up in my bedroom, and I had
Speaker 5: a like probably a bottle red wine, you know, and
Speaker 5: I put one box on one side, one box on it.
Speaker 5: I put concess in and I started bouncing things, you know,
Speaker 5: from that, and I started coming up with with, you know,
Speaker 5: different scenarios, different things I wanted to think about, things
Speaker 5: that romantic stuff that I wanted to do with my
Speaker 5: woman for my woman and all that and like and
Speaker 5: then that hook came. And then the hook was just
Speaker 5: so money, man. It was just it was you know,
Speaker 5: it was like, you know, like you do some songs
Speaker 5: in it, and it's like fighting you pulling teeth to
Speaker 5: make just go here and may it fit melody and
Speaker 5: you know, uh, praising life. Man, show me. It was
Speaker 5: like butter and it just came down and like you
Speaker 5: to let me know, just to let this go, help me,
Speaker 5: show me, you know what I'm it's like. And then
Speaker 5: the video was like crazy man.
Speaker 1: Of course I remember that video. Yeah, of course it was.
Speaker 5: You know what was hated?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did, yeah, very much, so very much.
Speaker 8: So I just wanted to say, if I was ushow
Speaker 8: must be a very religious experience. And the way that
Speaker 8: you put these songs together and the way that the
Speaker 8: at least the ladies or if some of the fellas
Speaker 8: received them live, like do.
Speaker 3: You see that in the crowd? Do you see people
Speaker 3: responding in a way.
Speaker 5: That's like like most shows crazy? It's crazy. If I
Speaker 5: had a dollar for every time a cat came up
Speaker 5: to me, man, you helped me out, man, I'd be
Speaker 5: I'd be a multi millionaire at this time. And and
Speaker 5: like I always say, you know, my thing is like
Speaker 5: you know, some cats don't know what to say, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying, So my thing is like Okay,
Speaker 5: I'll give you what to say. You can say, listen
Speaker 5: to Howard, listen out show me uh once twice three times,
Speaker 5: you know, and and listen to how Listen and I
Speaker 5: tell them, now, I can get you to the bedroom.
Speaker 5: I can get you through the bedroom door.
Speaker 2: But you got the.
Speaker 5: Bedroom with you, right, So.
Speaker 3: All the credit and.
Speaker 9: Then when I do when I do the shows, I mean,
Speaker 9: it's so it's so beautiful because you know, before BC,
Speaker 9: before COVID, anyway, I would spend most of my time
Speaker 9: in the audience rather than on stage because I like
Speaker 9: to I like to feel my audience.
Speaker 5: I like to have them participate. And it's a beautiful
Speaker 5: thing because you know a lot of cats there with
Speaker 5: their women and they with the lady and their pointing
Speaker 5: come sing to her. Yeah, you know, because she ain't
Speaker 5: gone home with me? Right? All right?
Speaker 1: Well, I got to ask this one last question because
Speaker 1: you know, I've asked one too many soldiering questions. But
Speaker 1: I know that you took over the theme to the
Speaker 1: show in eighty seven with George Duke. What was what
Speaker 1: was the well, like what was the process? Like basically
Speaker 1: Don just asked you guys to do it? Or like
Speaker 1: how how did that go down.
Speaker 5: Don asked George to do it, and George asked me
Speaker 5: to do it, you know what I'm saying. So it
Speaker 5: wasn't it wasn't a collaborative situation as far as I
Speaker 5: ask concerned. But you know, George said, George, you know,
Speaker 5: George and I wrote a bunch of stuff, you know,
Speaker 5: through the years, and a bunch of theme songs for
Speaker 5: this and and that and and I mean we did
Speaker 5: a song for he said. He said, how I want
Speaker 5: you to come write these lyrics, you know, for this
Speaker 5: pop artist over in Japan, right, I forget the cast's name,
Speaker 5: he said, But you can't get deep. This dude is
Speaker 5: not deep. You can't get deep. It's got to be shallow.
Speaker 1: So I love you, you have baby O my mind,
Speaker 1: I think about that time.
Speaker 5: I wrote called New York Girl. You know, it's like
Speaker 5: it's like, you know, I can't even remember lyrics, but
Speaker 5: but it was. That's the perfect But now with the
Speaker 5: Souldier and award thing, uh, Don, George was taken over
Speaker 5: all the stuff as far as that's concerned. And then
Speaker 5: he asked me to come in and do uh, do
Speaker 5: some ad libs and stuff on the on the so yeah, So.
Speaker 1: What is it I guess in closing, what is it
Speaker 1: that you've what is it that you've learned that made
Speaker 1: you a wiser human being? Like it just in your
Speaker 1: your your your journey m hmm to this point that
Speaker 1: that's brought you here to this day, that still has
Speaker 1: you here.
Speaker 5: You know, that's that's the deep question, because you know,
Speaker 5: you learn so much on your way, in different scenarios,
Speaker 5: in different places. I think one of the things though,
Speaker 5: that is most important as as an artist for me
Speaker 5: and as a man, as with your integrity, as far
Speaker 5: as as concerned, is to let your yes be yes,
Speaker 5: and your nobo no. You know what I'm saying, Understand
Speaker 5: and do and say what you're gonna do, what you're
Speaker 5: gonna You know, like I said in the earlier situation,
Speaker 5: my word was was worth more even before I knew
Speaker 5: that my word was worth more than than anything any
Speaker 5: piece of paper I could sign. You know, your integrity
Speaker 5: will follow you through this business closer than anything else will.
Speaker 5: All you can do, you can do all that, you
Speaker 5: can have, all the hit records you want, all the
Speaker 5: you know, the love people love. But if you are
Speaker 5: a flaky person and and and and deal in uh
Speaker 5: situations where your integrity is not you know, intact. You
Speaker 5: know it's it doesn't mean anything. It really doesn't mean
Speaker 5: because at the end of the day, it's gonna be
Speaker 5: about who this man? What you as a man is about?
Speaker 5: What are you about? You know, you can do all
Speaker 5: the music and people say, what do you want? What
Speaker 5: do you want your music? Want people to remember about
Speaker 5: your music? I want to remember the integrity of my
Speaker 5: music that I stayed.
Speaker 1: I stayed in.
Speaker 5: Av I had people saying you should put rapper, and
Speaker 5: you used to put a rap thing, you should do
Speaker 5: some talk about you know, sex and all this kind
Speaker 5: of stuff. Now that's not my lane. You know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying. My lane is like here and stay here,
Speaker 5: and and I have to. When I got in this business,
Speaker 5: I wanted to be I wanted to achieve longevity. I
Speaker 5: didn't want to just come into this business, make a
Speaker 5: couple of hit records and then go laid out on
Speaker 5: the beach. You know what I'm saying. I wanted to
Speaker 5: work at it. I wanted to work the work ethic,
Speaker 5: what it takes to keep and stay and keep your
Speaker 5: integrity in this business. And as a man, you know,
Speaker 5: man It's like, you know where I where I've come
Speaker 5: as far as where I am now, is that I
Speaker 5: can look in the mirror and say, I like that cat.
Speaker 5: He's cool. It's all right, it's cool. You know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying. And I've had my my, my, my craziness
Speaker 5: and all that. But hey, it's about you know, praise God.
Speaker 5: That's that's all I can say. Praise God.
Speaker 2: That's all you can say.
Speaker 1: Man, Well, thank you very much, brother Ewett, thank you
Speaker 1: for doing our show. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 5: Pleasure zoom pleasure.
Speaker 1: Sugar, Steve, are you are you gearing up to say.
Speaker 5: Knocked out over there a minute ago?
Speaker 1: Now that's just the weed talking.
Speaker 2: I'm serious.
Speaker 1: I'm on the scissor tonight. So you got a cold.
Speaker 1: I never went fully unconscious, but.
Speaker 2: You're Oh.
Speaker 8: I told you you wosibly tell people that you got
Speaker 8: to do disclaimers and stuff.
Speaker 3: You can't just put that out there.
Speaker 5: Just a good thing.
Speaker 8: We're on zoom, right, And I said, but look, they
Speaker 8: worked receive like three hours ago.
Speaker 4: So I was gonna say, Howard man, like some years ago.
Speaker 4: This has been over a decade ago. I actually met you,
Speaker 4: I ran in you. It was real quick. It was
Speaker 4: an lax and if I'm not mistaken, I think it
Speaker 4: was it was lax. But you were just just as
Speaker 4: you are now, man, super cool, and I just walked up.
Speaker 4: I was like, yo, man, I'm a big fan, and
Speaker 4: like you were just kind of low key. So I
Speaker 4: didn't want to blow your spot up, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean? Because I was like, all right, I don't
Speaker 4: want to make people notice. And then it's like thirty
Speaker 4: more people coming, so I just I was like, yo,
Speaker 4: I'm a fan.
Speaker 1: Brother.
Speaker 4: He was like, thank you man, like super cool, and
Speaker 4: I started the tweet. I was like, yo, I just
Speaker 4: met how you and I thought, I was like, I
Speaker 4: don't know what was he doing out here, so let's me. No,
Speaker 4: I don't want to blow the spot up or whatever, but.
Speaker 5: Sneaking, you know, right right?
Speaker 4: But you were super cool and I just I never
Speaker 4: forgot that man, and just where you were a class
Speaker 4: act and you still are.
Speaker 1: And I just thank you for the music and for
Speaker 1: all your man for.
Speaker 5: Absolutely thank you. I always say, man, we're all in
Speaker 5: this thing together, none of us getting out of this
Speaker 5: thing alive, you know what I'm saying, So we might
Speaker 5: as well might as well do this together and be
Speaker 5: as as cordial and respectful and right, you know, as
Speaker 5: as possible. Unfortunately, some of my peers, you know, use
Speaker 5: their celebrity as an excuse to be rude to people.
Speaker 5: But you know it's like, especially in this business, it's
Speaker 5: like we're not athletes.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Sometimes athletes they want people to hate them because they'll
Speaker 5: come to the stadium to hate them. But in this business,
Speaker 5: if somebody hate you, they ain't gonna buy your records.
Speaker 5: Are customer service true truthactly?
Speaker 1: Well, we thank you for doing our show on behalf
Speaker 1: of Scissor Steve and unpaid Bill. Putting the kids to
Speaker 1: bed right now, Fontagelo and Laiya this Quest Love once
Speaker 1: again the immortal Howard hewittt Quest Love Supreme and we
Speaker 1: will see you next go round. Thank you y'all. What's up?
Speaker 1: This is fante.
Speaker 4: Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at
Speaker 4: QLs and let us know what you think.
Speaker 1: Who should be next to sit down with us? Don't
Speaker 1: forget to subscribe to our podcast all right, peace. Quest
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