Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: What Up People?
Speaker 3: June is here and that means it's Flat Music Month,
Speaker 3: and that Quest Love Supreme now the Quest Love Show.
Speaker 3: We've taken this month seriously. It's our chance to celebrate
Speaker 3: blat music, document its history, and recognize the impact it
Speaker 3: continues to have on our culture around the world.
Speaker 2: GARYL.
Speaker 3: June, We'll be bringing you an episode every day.
Speaker 2: My team and I have gone back through.
Speaker 3: The archives and pulled to gather conversations, stories and moments
Speaker 3: that help tell a biggest story about black music and
Speaker 3: the people who shaped it. We also got four brand
Speaker 3: new Quest Love Show episodes coming your way, spotlining artists, thinkers, innovators,
Speaker 3: cultural shifters, revolutionaries from across the spectrum of black music, past,
Speaker 3: present and future. Thanks for spinning. You're part of June
Speaker 3: with us, Happy Black Music monk.
Speaker 2: All right, Oh damn, I'm paid bills. What the hell?
Speaker 3: Snap son, Jesus Christ, Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode.
Speaker 4: Of course, I'm supreme. I'm sorry, Bill, Thank you very much. Yeah,
Speaker 4: all right, starring up. Pay Bill Man, you're in the house.
Speaker 2: You even with even with a Tony You're you're still
Speaker 2: with us.
Speaker 5: I know, I'm just close from not.
Speaker 6: I'm here for Billy.
Speaker 2: The second you complete, you got, you're not gonna mess
Speaker 2: with this anymore. The second he got before you, Hell yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm getting out. Bill loves Supreme. I taking everybody with
Speaker 2: cover too, He says, right, exactly, all right, sir Steve,
Speaker 2: you're still loyal, correct to Bill Sherman.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, hey, at least you lord of somebody.
Speaker 2: We got Funicolo in the crib. What's up? Brother?
Speaker 7: You call us good bro? Yeah, I'm good man. Were
Speaker 7: down twenty six?
Speaker 2: Cause? Yeah, nice? We move, we move, we moveing weight son.
Speaker 3: I like the fact that we down twenty six actually
Speaker 3: is a good thing, because normally that could mean like
Speaker 3: Atlanta is down by twenty six or you.
Speaker 2: Down twenty six thousand dollars? Exactly what it is?
Speaker 5: The game, na man?
Speaker 3: You know, it's still trying trying to live past fifty. Yes,
Speaker 3: which is you know, struggle, super struggle.
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 8: Hey?
Speaker 6: I'm good man, I'm feeling all right, feeling all right.
Speaker 2: We're good all right, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, what can
Speaker 2: I say?
Speaker 3: Our guest is a freakin' legend known to us of course,
Speaker 3: as one third of probably one of my favorite groups.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I can't categorize Shalamar as a soul group.
Speaker 2: I can't categorize them as a pop group or a
Speaker 2: bookie group.
Speaker 3: But you know, I mean because they transitioned between disco,
Speaker 3: between bookie and between new wave eighties pop, you know
Speaker 3: they were everlasting. And you know, of course, our guest
Speaker 3: today is, without saying, a singer's singer, a real singer
Speaker 3: and awesome singer has had such a story career singing
Speaker 3: the soundtrack of our lives. I don't even want to
Speaker 3: waste one minute in my patent long nineteen minute intros.
Speaker 3: I will just say, welcome to Quest Left Supreme, the
Speaker 3: one and only Howard Hewitt.
Speaker 2: Thank you, yes, indeed, thank you, thank you for coming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't wait till we're off of zoom so
Speaker 3: we could have like real hand claps again, like the
Speaker 3: last seven episodes were all.
Speaker 2: Breathing.
Speaker 5: And that's what that's what it's a killer, because that's
Speaker 5: exactly what it sounds like when you're in, when you're
Speaker 5: in like a huge.
Speaker 2: Crowd, like right, exactly right, all right, we'll be effects week.
Speaker 2: How are you today? 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 and real field was one hundred and eight. So
Speaker 5: Jesus great, what one hundred and eight?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 5: It was one of those times you just stay in
Speaker 5: that you stay in the house, you don't even go outside.
Speaker 6: Close the curtains.
Speaker 3: Actually, you you mentioned something that this this actually might
Speaker 3: be inspirational for me. How often do you have to
Speaker 3: commit to the daily walk. I'll admit that I will
Speaker 3: often let my work schedule become become my excuse to
Speaker 3: get out of it.
Speaker 2: So I've been I've been.
Speaker 3: Sort of religious about the daily walk, but in the
Speaker 3: last two weeks I've sort of slacked off on it
Speaker 3: just due to the scheduling of it.
Speaker 2: But how important is the daily walked? Because before we
Speaker 2: were rolling, we were just basically.
Speaker 3: Talking about the struggle to survive, especially for black people
Speaker 3: to struggle to survive past fifty without.
Speaker 2: You know, some sort of condition happening. So you know,
Speaker 2: like I'm.
Speaker 3: Sure, I'm certain that most of us that are on
Speaker 3: our walking thing is doing it for health reasons and whatnot.
Speaker 5: So conditioning, you know, conditioning. And but for me, especially
Speaker 5: for the past year, since the since the pandemic, it
Speaker 5: was almost like in the beginning of the pandemic, it
Speaker 5: was a spiritual thing for me because it was like
Speaker 5: it was almost like God said to me, he said,
Speaker 5: I'm going to remove everything from you that can distract
Speaker 5: you from me. You did what I'm saying. Me and
Speaker 5: my 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 my best friend.
Speaker 2: 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 he said,
Speaker 5: no distractions now and he said, he said, and I'm
Speaker 5: gonna take that away from you right now, you know.
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 a 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 and all the way and
Speaker 5: every day. Because when I built my house, I had
Speaker 5: them build a deck off of right, I can I
Speaker 5: can roll out of bed in five or six steps.
Speaker 5: I'm 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 conspictators. 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, so and so like
Speaker 5: it was like that when I started. When I started,
Speaker 5: I said, Okay, I'm gonna do it 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
Speaker 5: like I wasn't getting any benefit from the walk actually
Speaker 5: because I'm not pacing myself. So then eventually I did
Speaker 5: in the middle of the four miles, after about two miles,
Speaker 5: i'd stop 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 and like fresh air
Speaker 5: cardio conversation, which adds the communication, understanding each other and
Speaker 5: 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 it's like, okay,
Speaker 5: I can. I can take the time to do all
Speaker 5: that stuff. Sometimes, you know, the schedule will well like
Speaker 5: get in the way as far as like how early
Speaker 5: I start, how early I can get out there. But
Speaker 5: I'm always going to get out there, you know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying. Every day, every day, I'm out there every day.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 5: Even on the weekend. I know, I don't come on.
Speaker 5: I ain't on the weekend. I don't go live on
Speaker 5: the weekend, but I get out there and do something
Speaker 5: on the weekend, do a daily show. Okay, yeah, all right,
Speaker 5: well yeah.
Speaker 3: How are you just let it be known that you're
Speaker 3: definitely the straw that broke the all right, fine if
Speaker 3: you That's what I needed to hear, you know, because
Speaker 3: people have been get on me like, yo, man, you
Speaker 3: slacking off. Man, you you're committed your da da da
Speaker 3: you're falling off, like you.
Speaker 2: Know, my partners don't walk with and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: So they were getting on me today about that, like
Speaker 3: you ain't walked in like ten.
Speaker 2: Days, a mirite. So all right, I now know.
Speaker 5: I now know that I have to It's important, man,
Speaker 5: It's really important because you know, you all you know,
Speaker 5: all you got. If you don't have anything else, you
Speaker 5: know you got and you have your health. If you
Speaker 5: if everything's jacked up, everything can.
Speaker 2: 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 2: You're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm brother, you look awesome like you you look
Speaker 3: great and great health.
Speaker 6: That's the five year old gold.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 5: Sixty five.
Speaker 2: Late forties to me, like for real, for real, they
Speaker 2: still look great. Six. So yeah.
Speaker 3: The the question I want to pose to you, of course,
Speaker 3: is the first question always ask on the show. Uh,
Speaker 3: 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 say damn.
Speaker 2: I was like, whoa, oh, you're talking about live as
Speaker 2: far as no, no, no, no, no, no, I mean your first memory.
Speaker 5: All right, Yeah, that's that's one of musical because we played.
Speaker 5: I wasn't I was when I was five years old,
Speaker 5: four or five years old. I was in charge of
Speaker 5: like playing the forty fives and stuff and and they
Speaker 5: clear out the garage and put a turntable in there
Speaker 5: and we had the forty fives and stuff. So I
Speaker 5: remember chain Gang, Sam Cook and twists and shout of
Speaker 5: course you know the Is brothers. Yeah, I remember, I did.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I did about about twenty cities with Ron Iley about
Speaker 5: some years, about six seven, eight years ago. And usually
Speaker 5: when I do a show, I'm usually I do my
Speaker 5: show and I'm gone or else, or if I'm headlining,
Speaker 5: I get there twenty minutes before I go on and
Speaker 5: that's it. I don't want to get there and hang
Speaker 5: around and stuff. And if I'm on before the headliner,
Speaker 5: then I'm gone. But with Ron, when I was out
Speaker 5: there with Ron and and uh II Brothers and with
Speaker 5: Ernie and stuff, man, every night, I was like in
Speaker 5: the wings, you know, I was just like watching because
Speaker 5: he took me all the way back to when I
Speaker 5: was like five years old, you know, five six, four,
Speaker 5: six seven, years old and then he caught me. You
Speaker 5: called me out on stage every once in a while, man,
Speaker 5: and that was like, what, all right, cool? You know,
Speaker 5: but that's my first as far as musical musical situation.
Speaker 5: I think that's the foundation that I had. And then
Speaker 5: you know, went into the whole gospel thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I was going to say that.
Speaker 3: Okay, that makes sense because usually every musical great has
Speaker 3: some sort of DJ curation experience before they get into
Speaker 3: their profession.
Speaker 2: So that makes sense that you were in charge of
Speaker 2: the family collection.
Speaker 5: All DJs want to be singers, and all singers want
Speaker 5: to be DJ's. I was saying. He's saying with Frankie
Speaker 5: Crocker a lot back in to day, and uh, that
Speaker 5: was one of my best partners.
Speaker 2: And what was he like? Man?
Speaker 7: Was he you know known him as that personality? Was
Speaker 7: he really out there like that?
Speaker 5: Frank Frankie was the most down down nigga in the world,
Speaker 5: you know. And I remember because when we first proper.
Speaker 2: All the time I heard him speak, and.
Speaker 5: You know, I said, I'm on the Quest Love Show.
Speaker 5: I got to be proper nigga.
Speaker 2: No, no, you must an't listen to the question.
Speaker 5: He's done my homework, you know.
Speaker 2: Now we keep it out of let it go.
Speaker 5: Now. Frank 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 lady that was
Speaker 5: the rep that was from the record company, she said, Okay,
Speaker 5: well we're waiting on Frankie. We'll go over down to
Speaker 5: this other I forget whether the station was kiss or
Speaker 5: something like that was kissing, And so we went down there,
Speaker 5: did the interview and stuff, and then we came back
Speaker 5: and like Frankie were sitting down in the in the
Speaker 5: lobby of the BLS and Frankie comes out. When he
Speaker 5: walks out, you know, this is tall, I mean, black
Speaker 5: nigga man. He's like fine features, you know. And I
Speaker 5: remember reading about Frankie when I was like fifteen, sixteen
Speaker 5: years old, when he got into the into the thing
Speaker 5: with the Paola thing. So I remember, I remember there
Speaker 5: was like an article and Playboy, and of course, you know,
Speaker 5: I never looked at the picture article, but it talked
Speaker 5: about it talked about his whole ordeal with the Paola
Speaker 5: situation and the fact at the time that he when
Speaker 5: he came back after the piel, he came back winding
Speaker 5: up under twenty fifth Street on the White Stallion.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, he was all the saying, so like we
Speaker 5: when he came out, he's stood up there and he
Speaker 5: just 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 Night. And
Speaker 5: I'm like, glad it's night. But come on, man, Gladys Night.
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 Eisley brother interview when they
Speaker 5: got in the fight on on you know, they.
Speaker 2: Never heard of that one. I've heard this looking at.
Speaker 5: Us fight live on the air.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a lot of eyes like that was
Speaker 2: before any.
Speaker 5: That's that's before any of them passed away. So they
Speaker 5: were all on.
Speaker 2: All of them. Christ Jasper 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 Bendic Canyon, he said, he said, here's that.
Speaker 5: You know that We exchanged numbers and stuff. He said,
Speaker 5: when you're when you're back in town, when you're off
Speaker 5: the road, give me a car. You come up, you know,
Speaker 5: have some dinner. I said, cool, you know, let's go,
Speaker 5: I said. And so a couple of two, three weeks later,
Speaker 5: we're going. I'm home and I give him a call
Speaker 5: and he says, yeah, come on left for dinner. And
Speaker 5: I'm thinking, you know, all right, Frankie Cockett's house. I
Speaker 5: know he got ladies all over the the whole thing.
Speaker 5: I'm bowling, you know. And I got up there and
Speaker 5: it was me, him and his mom, Miss Brocker, and
Speaker 5: he took care of his mom, and like from that
Speaker 5: point on we got jam type. It was like it
Speaker 5: was that that was my that was my man. That
Speaker 5: was my man. So dope, you know, yeah, he was.
Speaker 5: He was. He was not the persona basically. I mean,
Speaker 5: he lived large, you don't, don't get it wrong, and
Speaker 5: he demanded his respect as far as that's concerned. But
Speaker 5: he wasn't something unorderly, un you know, crazy.
Speaker 3: He had a house in Beverly Hills and he was
Speaker 3: a New York personality too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he up on house up on Benedict On off
Speaker 5: of Benedict Canyon.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he was the highest plate like black radio jock
Speaker 8: in the country.
Speaker 2: 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. He had
Speaker 5: that house up there for a long time.
Speaker 2: Say that's what I was thinking. Put you in the paper.
Speaker 3: Maybe you know, yeah, I see, But do you do
Speaker 3: you remember the first album that you purchased with your
Speaker 3: own money, with my own money.
Speaker 5: I don't remember which one of what it was exactly.
Speaker 5: I can't say, uh back in the day because.
Speaker 3: I still be stolen to Just in case I'm saying
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Soyo wow, Okay.
Speaker 5: So you know two times I had to I think
Speaker 5: an album. Though I do believe an album that I
Speaker 5: would have purchased, it might not have been the very
Speaker 5: first one with it like Parliament Funkadelic and you know
Speaker 5: all that kind of stuff like Maggot Brains and I
Speaker 5: love that Eddie Agel situation.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, I take it. I know you
Speaker 3: were born in Ohio, but I don't know what city
Speaker 3: you were born in.
Speaker 5: Akron, Akron, Ohio, Akron.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, wait a minute, Okay, this explains it all right.
Speaker 3: So I know that James Ingram is also from Akron, Ohio. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I assume that you two were really good friends fifteen.
Speaker 5: I met James when I was fifteen.
Speaker 3: So this is this explains why you two are also
Speaker 3: seeing background and pyt together exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: I was with James when he got the demo for
Speaker 5: Just Once, you know, and he's like, man, listen, because
Speaker 5: we lived right around the corner from each other at
Speaker 5: that time. And he said, man, and he said, listeners,
Speaker 5: what do you think about this? I said, Man, I
Speaker 5: think that's a coble song. He said, man, this is
Speaker 5: some there's some pop pussy right here.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: And I said, I said, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's
Speaker 5: true boy. Because you know, but see when Jane, when
Speaker 5: I was back in Ohio my group, my group was
Speaker 5: called Life. We spelled the l yf E, so Life
Speaker 5: Jennings won the first nigga to say that right when
Speaker 5: we spelled l yfy Life Banding Show. And it was
Speaker 5: like seven of us and we were like fifteen sixteen,
Speaker 5: seventeen eighteen. I think Ricky Parker Ricky Fletcher was eighteen
Speaker 5: nineteen years old, and so we were proteges of Revelation Funk,
Speaker 5: which you know, James played keyboards and they were all
Speaker 5: they were all like about four years older than us.
Speaker 5: So James played keyboards insane background because he didn't consider
Speaker 5: himself a lead singer right, and they had this lead
Speaker 5: singer called named Bernard Lost and he's still back and
Speaker 5: acting now. Bernard Lost him to this day could sing
Speaker 5: me under this, under this, my desk over here, this
Speaker 5: this boy really what is you're talking about? Going from
Speaker 5: natural effortlessly up into your foss He had that back,
Speaker 5: he had that down back then, tall lanky brother and
Speaker 5: like a dance of red dance and sing the same time.
Speaker 5: And it was like, I mean, they were funky. Revelation
Speaker 5: Funk was funky.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, Okay, so what's the name that's the
Speaker 3: group that James Ingram was in that he was playing
Speaker 3: keyboards and.
Speaker 7: Revelation God, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn the
Speaker 7: ones from U Dolomite.
Speaker 5: Yeah, weren't they movie movie?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, okay, because they came out here. They came
Speaker 5: out here. Bernard never came out here because he Lord
Speaker 5: called him back to the church, fortunately, because there was
Speaker 5: some crazy stuff that was happening. But they had this
Speaker 5: cat named Woochie Wayne Arnold that came out. Wayne was
Speaker 5: bad too. I don't know what he means ARNOLDI So
Speaker 5: we were like nobody call. But they came, they came
Speaker 5: out here, and then they only stayed together out here
Speaker 5: about a year and a half, uh maybe two years
Speaker 5: or so, and then they broke up and James stayed
Speaker 5: out Dap the drummers stayed out t Tucker the bass
Speaker 5: players stayed out here, so you know. And then for James,
Speaker 5: arrest was his He started working with Ray Charles and
Speaker 5: a bunch of other people and stuff, and you know,
Speaker 5: in the studio and stuff.
Speaker 6: It was cool just to get this straight.
Speaker 8: James Ingram sounded like that at fifteen years old.
Speaker 6: No, nothing has ever changed.
Speaker 5: Well, he was about when I first met and he
Speaker 5: was nineteen because he was about years older than me.
Speaker 5: And uh yeah, I mean he had to all that
Speaker 5: stuff down hard, it's like, but but he didn't develop
Speaker 5: it and and really kind of take it out where
Speaker 5: it's supposed to be until, you know, until he got
Speaker 5: it until he went solo.
Speaker 3: So well, one more thing, so if you were friends
Speaker 3: with James, were you at all in proximity of his
Speaker 3: brother Philip at the time when Philip was developing a
Speaker 3: switch MH 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.
Speaker 2: Was his name?
Speaker 5: I forget, I forget their name. The name we had,
Speaker 5: We had weird names back there. There was a group
Speaker 5: called Picket Fence. I don't know what that was about,
Speaker 5: but it was like, you know, but but Philip was
Speaker 5: with Raw Soul, I think it was. And I mean
Speaker 5: that Akron was an amazing place to grow up man.
Speaker 5: And the rubber was the rubber capital of the world
Speaker 5: at that time, so so middle class was thriving. It
Speaker 5: was like you know, it was it was and you
Speaker 5: either did you either did music, you did you worked
Speaker 5: in the rubber factory, or you were pimp one or
Speaker 5: the other. You know that some cats tried to do
Speaker 5: all three.
Speaker 2: All three, all three but rubbers.
Speaker 9: And I think the name of Phillips the group was
Speaker 9: raw so if I'm not mistaken, but yeah, Philip had
Speaker 9: a great voice and everything.
Speaker 5: And and when they came out with Switch, I didn't
Speaker 5: even have a deal at that time. We were I
Speaker 5: was talking to l about that just the other day,
Speaker 5: because every time I listened to L, I hear Bobby,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, and it's just it's crazy.
Speaker 5: And uh so they came out, and you know it
Speaker 5: was like Eddie Flewell and the trumpet player, Eddie and I.
Speaker 5: Eddie and I went to grade school, junior high, and
Speaker 5: graduated high school together. So when they came out, I
Speaker 5: was I would go. You know, I heard they were
Speaker 5: coming out and bringing them out, and so I went
Speaker 5: and hung out with them at the studio. You know,
Speaker 5: while they were while they were calling, I 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
Speaker 5: false but that wasn't his false. That was that was
Speaker 5: his natural voice, just like I was listening to Elle
Speaker 5: the other night. Elle's false is his natural voice. That's
Speaker 5: his natural voice, right, So you know it's it's it's
Speaker 5: you know, it was amazing. It was amazing as far
Speaker 5: as I was concerned. So, yeah, Philip and and and Eddie,
Speaker 5: Yeah came out when Switch came out.
Speaker 2: Question, I do remember.
Speaker 3: I think I remember during one of the interviews with
Speaker 3: Don Carneli's on Soul Train where you talked about you
Speaker 3: were actually dancing on the show.
Speaker 2: First is that true. Were y'all just joking with each other.
Speaker 5: I was never a soul drained dancer.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay, damn.
Speaker 3: I thought I heard okay there because because it was
Speaker 3: said it said, it was said with a laugh, so
Speaker 3: I was like, wait, I don't know if he's serious
Speaker 3: or not, but okay, I knew if that was true.
Speaker 5: I was dating. Uh this this lady that worked for
Speaker 5: down and there at the Soul Tirain Dance Studios Studios
Speaker 5: in the office, in the front.
Speaker 2: Office, Pam Brown.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, this is her names any cunning?
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, Wait a minute, wait
Speaker 3: a minute. Jesus Christ, I can't believe I'm talking to
Speaker 3: you right now.
Speaker 10: How are you you've no, no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2: It just hit me.
Speaker 3: You literally have christened a human being with my all
Speaker 3: time favorite name.
Speaker 2: I read about this and ride on. You have a
Speaker 2: daughter named Rainy Days.
Speaker 5: Rainy Days d a z rather yo.
Speaker 3: When I read that ship when I was ten years old,
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm gonna have a girl and I'm the
Speaker 3: name of Rainy Days, Like it just wow.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 5: Her mom, you know, eventually became my wife. She's the
Speaker 5: mother and my two older daughters. But when when Rainie
Speaker 5: was born, Rainie was the only only child that I
Speaker 5: didn't see come out, you know, because I was I
Speaker 5: was on the road. I had my oldest darted with me.
Speaker 5: She was like a year and a half at the time,
Speaker 5: and so her mom was so huge. I was like, look,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna take I'm gonna take Lakeiva. My oldest daughter's
Speaker 5: name is Lakiva, you know, which was the name let
Speaker 5: Kiva k I v E. Which is a name, which
Speaker 5: is the name I made up when I was nineteen
Speaker 5: years old. I used to go to Kent State for
Speaker 5: a minute, and like, I used to walk past Kiva Hall,
Speaker 5: this hall called Kiva Hall, and I say, every morning
Speaker 5: i'm walking to my first class, I say, wow, Kiva.
Speaker 5: Kiva would be a beautiful name for a little girl.
Speaker 5: But I had a love on the front of Lucky.
Speaker 2: That is so black. You got all the names correct, Bill,
Speaker 2: I got it.
Speaker 5: I got it.
Speaker 2: Anything. Bill, and my friend Lafonte and Quest.
Speaker 5: Got you so like.
Speaker 2: But like.
Speaker 5: I took Lakeiva out on the road with me because
Speaker 5: her mom was so huge. I just wanted her to
Speaker 5: concentrate on being pregnant, not not having so she was
Speaker 5: having to take care of my one and half kids.
Speaker 5: So I took my daughter out on the road with
Speaker 5: me so we would we would work at the time Shalamar,
Speaker 5: we were working Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
Speaker 5: So Thursday I finished the show. Monday, I mean Sunday rather,
Speaker 5: I finished the show. Then Monday morning me and Kiva
Speaker 5: would jump on the plane fly back here to l
Speaker 5: a sit there.
Speaker 2: 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, going 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 Kiva 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 2: I can tell you this is already going to be
Speaker 2: my favorite interview.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: I feel like member of the the bank.
Speaker 5: Howard you were, he said, And I and and he said, so,
Speaker 5: you know your name the baby Rainie had the baby?
Speaker 5: You said, yeah, said what, so, what's you gonna name her?
Speaker 5: I took the times. What are you gonna name her Rainie?
Speaker 5: After my you know? Said what what's the middle name
Speaker 5: gonna be? Sid? I was thinking about.
Speaker 2: Days the other story.
Speaker 5: She sees his interview think that she thinks that I
Speaker 5: was drunk or something, when I mean the whole time.
Speaker 6: You was talking, I was just thinking.
Speaker 8: I was, like, I hope Howard remembers all the stories
Speaker 8: of how how his kids were born, because not for nothing,
Speaker 8: especially the girls. My dad used to call me every
Speaker 8: year of my life up until he got like eighty
Speaker 8: and tell me on my birthday, like how my conception
Speaker 8: of how I was born? And it's just it's just
Speaker 8: a love about the conception, the conception.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, how was exception?
Speaker 8: But the day I was born? Yeah, but yes, say
Speaker 8: those stories, tell them stories people loved.
Speaker 3: I was going to say there was a ten year
Speaker 3: old reading write on magazine that it was really really
Speaker 3: hell impressed with that name. At the time, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: that's the greatest name ever. Raindy Days. All right, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have Raindy Days two point oh. All right, So
Speaker 3: it's it's still in the cars for.
Speaker 5: She hated it when she was in grade school, but
Speaker 5: when she got into junior high and in high school
Speaker 5: and then all that time adulthood, she loves it. She
Speaker 5: loves her name, you.
Speaker 3: Know, nice nice is she in the Does does she
Speaker 3: have musical talent?
Speaker 2: Does she? I have no clue what.
Speaker 5: She came out of schools, came out of high school,
Speaker 5: wanted to do, you know, wanted to get into the
Speaker 5: business and stuff, and so like, you know, I gave
Speaker 5: her my advice and she, you know, got herself a
Speaker 5: little job started, you know, putting putting together. Her demo
Speaker 5: was about three or four demos, three or four songs,
Speaker 5: and she had got her head shots together and then
Speaker 5: got herself a deal with this company called notting Hill.
Speaker 5: You know, notting Hill was in la and as well
Speaker 5: as in London, you know, in the UK. So she
Speaker 5: was They were working on an album together, and then
Speaker 5: halfway through the album she comes to me she says,
Speaker 5: you know, Dad, I'm really not into this. I said,
Speaker 5: what do you mean into it? She said, I'm more
Speaker 5: interested in what I'm gonna wear than the music, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. So he was into the fashion
Speaker 5: for Unfortunately, the people at at at notting Hill were
Speaker 5: cool and they had put a single out in uh
Speaker 5: in the UK that did fairly well. But you know,
Speaker 5: she wasn't she wasn't into it, so they let her
Speaker 5: go and then she got a position with Vera Wang
Speaker 5: company you know, did that for.
Speaker 2: A while now, 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 3: Okay, I see, I see, Okay, I do want to know. Okay,
Speaker 3: first of all, before you get into your entry, do
Speaker 3: you know exactly what the situation was that caused Jerald
Speaker 3: Brown to leave Shalamar.
Speaker 2: That was your vacancy, because.
Speaker 3: Even with those first two records, I always felt like
Speaker 3: I had, you know, the first two albums as a
Speaker 3: kid or whatever. I had the Uptown Festival forty five
Speaker 3: and what not, and it's like, I never thought his
Speaker 3: voice blended in with that group. Well even even take that,
Speaker 3: I mean, take that to the Bank, of course was
Speaker 3: a classic song, no matter what. But I never felt
Speaker 3: like his voice fit into He was like he was
Speaker 3: like a grown adult, and I always felt like Jody
Speaker 3: and Jeffrey represented like the kids.
Speaker 2: While he was like a proper adult or whatever.
Speaker 3: But what's the situation that caused him to vacate the group?
Speaker 5: I don't, I don't. I don't know the specific situation
Speaker 5: exactly what happened. I think there was some stuff, some
Speaker 5: questions about management maybe or about whatever, because you know,
Speaker 5: Gerald had been been in the business for a while
Speaker 5: with Soul Trained, with the Soul Trained gang and coming
Speaker 5: from coming from Cincinnati, and that first Uptown Festival album,
Speaker 5: the first that wasn't Gerald, that was this guy named
Speaker 5: Gary Mumford. So they had.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, they.
Speaker 5: Had two lead singers before before me, right, So it
Speaker 5: was Gary Mumford on Uptown Festival and then Jerald Brown.
Speaker 5: Uptown Festival was one of those things where, you know,
Speaker 5: back in the day with disco and stuff. That's why
Speaker 5: I was never really a big fan of disco because
Speaker 5: I always thought it was pretty fabricated music. And you know,
Speaker 5: I was more into the into the band and the
Speaker 5: real people that did it, because you do you know,
Speaker 5: they would put together, you know, a song with with
Speaker 5: studio musicians, studio vocalists, throw it out there, see if
Speaker 5: it made some noise. If it made some noise, then
Speaker 5: they go and put a group together. And that's how
Speaker 5: Salomar basically, you know formed. So it was like Gary
Speaker 5: Mumford on Uptown Festival and then uh, and then he
Speaker 5: I think he went back to the church too, if
Speaker 5: I'm not mistaken. And and then Gerald Brown came in.
Speaker 5: They took him from you know, because it was Don
Speaker 5: Cornelius and uh, Griffy right, you know, at first it
Speaker 5: was Soul Trained Records, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 5: so they brought Jerald Brown in and then they did
Speaker 5: take that to the bank. They were out in the
Speaker 5: middle of a promotional tour. I was working with this cat, uh,
Speaker 5: Jeffrey Bowen at the time because I was with a group.
Speaker 5: I was with a group down that was formed people,
Speaker 5: that was formed by the People, and uh mat Jeffrey Bourn.
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Bowen produced a song for You by the Temptations, right.
Speaker 5: Yep, and a bunch of Colin did Bonnie Pointer was
Speaker 5: his lady and.
Speaker 2: Here was his wife?
Speaker 3: Right dom Bonnie Point was his wife? And wait did
Speaker 3: he did he produce?
Speaker 8: Uh?
Speaker 3: I think he co produced with George Clinton two songs
Speaker 3: on guitarist.
Speaker 2: Eddie Hazel Eddie Hazel's.
Speaker 5: Record, We Were, We Were, Well, we Were. He had
Speaker 5: hired me because I I was this girl, Tammy Gibson
Speaker 5: who used to sing for Stevie in Wonder Love. She
Speaker 5: was looking and she came looking for me because I
Speaker 5: was with a group that ended up We ended up
Speaker 5: overseas for about a year and a half. This show
Speaker 5: group called Beverly Hills, right and the people at Mavericks
Speaker 5: Flat down in the Crenshaw District, John Daniels and and
Speaker 5: Alonzo Daniels his brother. They put together show groups and stuff.
Speaker 5: So this was one of the groups that they put together.
Speaker 5: We ended up touring overseas for about, you know, about
Speaker 5: little less than a year and a half or so,
Speaker 5: and I was making like two.
Speaker 2: Point fifty three years 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 ben the Dorm, Spain, Santa Pez, France.
Speaker 5: We're all over the place. I was making two point
Speaker 5: fifty three hundred a week, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: But I was having them ball I was like twenty two,
Speaker 5: about twenty two years old.
Speaker 3: Again, I'm pulling out my inflation calculator just to see,
Speaker 3: just to see. So when you're saying the show group,
Speaker 3: you're saying in terms of like, uh, you guys, because
Speaker 3: I think heat Wave was sort of in the same
Speaker 3: situation where they were perform more on like army bases
Speaker 3: or clubs of the day.
Speaker 2: Is that the same situation.
Speaker 5: No, we never did army bases. But when I say
Speaker 5: show group, I mean like a top forty group. You
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying we did everything from Disco Infernal
Speaker 5: to Mandy you know what.
Speaker 6: Today.
Speaker 5: So yeah, and it's like you you know, did you
Speaker 5: know Afternoon Delight all that kind of stuff. You know,
Speaker 5: it was like, you know, it was my stuff, old
Speaker 5: stuff exactly. We didn't do any original stuff. It was
Speaker 5: just and it was like, you know, so.
Speaker 3: But wait, by the way, guys, two point fifty back
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy seven was one thousand, one eighty seven
Speaker 3: and 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 rehearsed. We would
Speaker 5: rehearse the band, and anytime we had a show that
Speaker 5: we 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 Lionel Richie when he was with the Commodores, or
Speaker 5: Richard Pryor hung out there all the time. And it
Speaker 5: was it was just it was just a great place
Speaker 5: to like cut your teeth as far as like you know, uh,
Speaker 5: the way that you do your show, the whole thing,
Speaker 5: and uh. And it was located Crenchhall right Crenshawn Stocker,
Speaker 5: right on the corner of Crenshaw on Stocker.
Speaker 3: So this point in Crenshaw, because I also know that
Speaker 3: it was Total Experience.
Speaker 2: Also a club on Crenshaw as well, so right up
Speaker 2: the street.
Speaker 3: As far as the black clubs are concerned, you're saying
Speaker 3: at Maverick Flats and Total Experience, and like where.
Speaker 2: Were the other nightlife for black people to go to?
Speaker 5: Strawberry Hill was a club there. I don't know, a
Speaker 5: whole bunch of clubs around there, bit because I hung
Speaker 5: at Mavericks all the time.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: It was like I had a key to Mavericks at
Speaker 5: one time. So you know, that was my that was
Speaker 5: my hang that was my hanging spot, you know. So
Speaker 5: there's other guys in Dolls. I think was a was
Speaker 5: a club, but I think that was a little bit
Speaker 5: before I got there, you know, guys and downs, But
Speaker 5: I'm not really familiar with the whole bunch of the
Speaker 5: clubs over there.
Speaker 3: So you're saying that if you if it's nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 3: seventy eight, seventy nine and you're a black professional, chances
Speaker 3: are like you're hanging in on Crenshaw Boulevard at a club.
Speaker 2: So we weren't really doing like West Hollywood back then,
Speaker 2: or no.
Speaker 5: I didn't do a lot of West Hollywood back then,
Speaker 5: because that was like I got to I got out
Speaker 5: here in LA in nineteen seventy six, you know, and
Speaker 5: so I hooked up with the people with Mavericks about
Speaker 5: to about two months after I got out here, you know,
Speaker 5: and we and John Daniels told me what he what,
Speaker 5: what he was, what he wanted to do. He had
Speaker 5: a he had a bunch of show groups, and one
Speaker 5: of his main show groups was this group called the
Speaker 5: Love Machine. It was like seven seven fine, Fine with
Speaker 5: Kathleen Bradley, who was the first black model on The
Speaker 5: Price is Right.
Speaker 2: She was in.
Speaker 5: From Friday, Yeah, she was in that's what she shut
Speaker 5: up Bilt and Uh, he's done. He's done over there.
Speaker 5: It's like man. So yeah, she she was in. She
Speaker 5: was in the Love Machine and six other beautiful women.
Speaker 5: They and they went all around the world. When I
Speaker 5: first went down there, the cat T Tucker that played
Speaker 5: base for Revelation Funk like I said at that time.
Speaker 5: By that time they were broken up and T was
Speaker 5: playing for the Love Machine. And I called T one day.
Speaker 5: I said, I got 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 slat. 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 flat
Speaker 5: and stuff, and they were rehearsing at that time to
Speaker 5: do a showcase that night for Tom Jones, because Tom
Speaker 5: Jones wanted them to open up for him. So you know,
Speaker 5: that was how that whole thing came about. And then
Speaker 5: we started putting the group and stuff together. But I
Speaker 5: was working there, went overseas, came back from there. We
Speaker 5: broke up. The group. Beverly Hills broke up after about
Speaker 5: a year little less than a year and a half
Speaker 5: over in England and came back and I started kicking
Speaker 5: around LA and then that's when I hooked up with
Speaker 5: Jeffrey Bowen, you know, to he was doing this out,
Speaker 5: this solo album on Eddie Hazel, you know, and he's.
Speaker 2: Please describe with what Eddie Hazel was like.
Speaker 3: Besides George Clinton, I really haven't gotten a straight story
Speaker 3: about Eddie Hazel.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 5: He was an interesting cat in that you really couldn't
Speaker 5: get a good feel for Eddie because he was he was.
Speaker 5: He was high a lot of times, you know, he
Speaker 5: was he was like, you know, an amazing guitar player,
Speaker 5: maggot brains. That's Eddie, you know, right, Eddie Hazel. And
Speaker 5: but he was he I mean, I I just smoke.
Speaker 5: We but he smoked weed.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know what that means. You go back, yes,
Speaker 2: you so.
Speaker 5: But but he was cool, I mean real cool, real
Speaker 5: cool brother.
Speaker 3: But so you're saying that Eddie Hazel once potentially had
Speaker 3: a deal on Motown Records that fell through.
Speaker 5: M hm. I don't know if it fell through because
Speaker 5: they were they you know, Eddie, Jeffrey was producing it
Speaker 5: and then we were working because after I came, like
Speaker 5: I said, Tammy came and got me because she wanted
Speaker 5: me to do this. She was she was contracting the
Speaker 5: backgrounds or that they were doing. So I went in
Speaker 5: and did the sessions. Me, Tammy, this girl Kathy James,
Speaker 5: I forget I think that was the name, and we
Speaker 5: went in and did the session. And then after after
Speaker 5: we got done with the tunes and stuff, Jeffrey Cone
Speaker 5: Jeffrey Bowen came to me. He said, you know, man,
Speaker 5: I love your vocals. I love it. This is going
Speaker 5: to be a self contained situation, so you know, I'd
Speaker 5: love for you to be a part of It's going
Speaker 5: to be you, Tammy and the girl that we were
Speaker 5: working with. And I said, cool, you know that's that's great.
Speaker 5: He said, I can get you in. He said, we
Speaker 5: can start working on the contracts, you know, but I
Speaker 5: can get you into the union tomorrow, right And I
Speaker 5: said cool, okay, So the next day I joined after
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, and all the checks and
Speaker 5: we started and it was like I wasn't contracted yet,
Speaker 5: you know. So if you're an uncontracted artist, you have
Speaker 5: to get paid from the time you walk into the
Speaker 5: studio the time you walk out of the studio. So
Speaker 5: Jeffrey would book book the time for like eight o'clock,
Speaker 5: you know, in the evening. He wouldn't show up for
Speaker 5: whatever reasons, I don't know, until midnight, and then we
Speaker 5: would work till about, you know, about four or five
Speaker 5: o'clock in the morning, So that's like nine hours you know,
Speaker 5: at about one hundred and thirty hundred and forty whatever
Speaker 5: the scale was at that time, if you were doing
Speaker 5: a solo or you know, inflation inflation count, it's.
Speaker 2: A lot of money, bill, it's a lot of money.
Speaker 6: It's a lot of money right there. So that sounded
Speaker 6: like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So like you know, but then after about working
Speaker 5: about a couple of months, you know, started getting kind
Speaker 5: of flaky, you know what I'm saying, kind of shaky
Speaker 5: as far as like the checks we weren't reflecting the
Speaker 5: time that we you know, that we were in the studio.
Speaker 5: And so then I called a meet. I took my lady.
Speaker 5: I took my lady to work. She worked at you know,
Speaker 5: like I said, for dying down at the SOULDI trained
Speaker 5: dance studios up in West Hollywood, and I took her,
Speaker 5: dropped her off of work, told her, I'm going to
Speaker 5: the Motown building and have a meeting. Right, So I'm
Speaker 5: sitting in a meeting on the fifteenth floor, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: you know, y'all giving me the motown running around blah
Speaker 5: blah blah blah blah blah blah, you know, blah blah,
Speaker 5: getting all this stuff off my chest. And the phone rings, right,
Speaker 5: and this Angelo Bond was his co producer. Angelo answers
Speaker 5: the phone and he looks at me and he says,
Speaker 5: it's for you. I said, it's for me. I said,
Speaker 5: if it's my lady, tell her I'll call her. I'll
Speaker 5: call her back.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: He said, well, not a lady, and it sounds like
Speaker 5: it's a long distance. That was before cell phones. When
Speaker 5: you hear the crackling on the phone, right, he.
Speaker 2: Said, you 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 Daniel. Right. They were in New
Speaker 5: York at the time, in the middle of this promotional
Speaker 5: tour 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 one interested in
Speaker 5: why with this was happening. It's like, what are we
Speaker 5: getting to as far as like this phone call and
Speaker 5: he said that you know that Jerald Brown that Jerald said, Hey,
Speaker 5: when y'all can see it my way, give me a call.
Speaker 5: And he jumps on the plane and leaves. Oh, they're
Speaker 5: in the middle of a promotional tour you did, and
Speaker 5: so like he says, I know, you know because they
Speaker 5: it's Mavericks Flat. All the soul trained people used to
Speaker 5: come down to Mavericks Flat all the time. I first
Speaker 5: I first met Jeffrey and Jody before Shallamar at Mavericks Flat,
Speaker 5: right and say, so they used to come there and
Speaker 5: they used to show They used to see the show
Speaker 5: that I did with Beverly Hills there right, Well, there's
Speaker 5: three degrees of separation. That's crazy, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So they saw the show. Jeffrey before before Shala Maar resisted,
Speaker 5: Jeffrey had told me, man, I love your vocals. I said,
Speaker 5: I love your dancing man. You and Jodie. I used
Speaker 5: to watch them before I even left Ohio on soul train.
Speaker 5: I see them dancing. Wow, that's great, that's great. So
Speaker 5: he says, I know we you know we I know
Speaker 5: you know that we formed Shalamar and blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: We got to take that to the bank out there
Speaker 5: when in the middle of promotional tour, we want to
Speaker 5: offer you an equal position in the group, you know,
Speaker 5: as lead singer. And I said, I said, well, okay,
Speaker 5: and 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 offices are down on the
Speaker 5: ninth floor in the same building. And we talked and
Speaker 5: we already talked to Dick Griffin and he he's waiting
Speaker 5: for you to, you know, for you to get in
Speaker 5: touch with him. So like, you know, so he talked
Speaker 5: a little about longer. I get off the phone and
Speaker 5: I tell Jeffrey Bowen and I tell Angel Obaum what
Speaker 5: to do?
Speaker 2: No, I said what?
Speaker 5: And then the Angel says, man, Chellamar is just a
Speaker 5: fly by night disco group. They'll never amount to anything.
Speaker 5: And then you don't want to get involved with Solar
Speaker 5: that you're you're you got the potential to be with Motown,
Speaker 5: you know. And then Jeffrey started talking some stuff, and
Speaker 5: when things like that happen, I have a tendency just
Speaker 5: to kind of sit back, and ever since I was
Speaker 5: a kid, if I did, if I had to think,
Speaker 5: you know, I want to sit back and take in
Speaker 5: everything that they're saying. So I'm listening, and when they
Speaker 5: get done, I said, well, my car is parked on
Speaker 5: the street. I need to go put some money in
Speaker 5: 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 the
Speaker 5: word contract. Right. So I called them and told them, look,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna be home. If you guys want to rectify
Speaker 5: this thing, let me know, call me, right And so
Speaker 5: all night Friday night nobody called. Saturday morning, I called
Speaker 5: Dick and I went over to his house, watched the
Speaker 5: videotape of a Shalamar show, and then I was sitting
Speaker 5: in this rocking chair, right. I remember I was watching
Speaker 5: the show, was sitting this rock and said. The show
Speaker 5: goes off, and Dick says, well, sing something.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: Jeffer and Joe to say, you're a great singer. Sing something.
Speaker 5: I said, I said, right here, I compel them, you know.
Speaker 5: He said yeah. And I said to myself, I said, well, lord,
Speaker 5: you know me and you so I broke in. I
Speaker 5: broke in the field of Fire by Peobo Bryce, I
Speaker 5: compella something that to me, you know, and yeah, And
Speaker 5: he got to the first verse half the hook, and
Speaker 5: Dick says, okay, okay, okay, I'll be right back. He
Speaker 5: goes upstairs, comes back down. He has like goes in
Speaker 5: one pocket. He has some cash. He said, here's some cash,
Speaker 5: you know, leave which old lady pay some bills. He
Speaker 5: went in the other pocket and brought out an airline
Speaker 5: ticket and that was pre nine to eleven. I could
Speaker 5: ride on your ticket. You know, I could ride up
Speaker 5: right on my head right, I could ride. You didn't
Speaker 5: have to have a specific name, he said, here's an
Speaker 5: airline ticket. You got to be on the red eye
Speaker 5: out tonight. Meet the group of New Jersey tomorrow, as
Speaker 5: they moved from New York to New Jersey. He said,
Speaker 5: meet the group of New Jersey tomorrow, he said, because
Speaker 5: and go over the lift sync and the choreography of
Speaker 5: Take That to the Bank. He said, because Monday you
Speaker 5: got a TV show to do. And I'm like, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm like, you know, being from Ohio, think about Ohio?
Speaker 5: Is that the prereconsist As far as our being from
Speaker 5: a house, you got to be cool about everything, you
Speaker 5: 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 Inside. I'm like, I got a job.
Speaker 7: Well, I would have asked, what was Dick Griffy? Like, Man,
Speaker 7: it's been about me.
Speaker 2: Let me add on to that.
Speaker 3: Fonte Howard, We've we've asked at least seven people this question,
Speaker 3: and they kind of glide by the situation. Okay, I know,
Speaker 3: I know the brother's not here right now, but can
Speaker 3: you give us a real, real in quotations, Dick Griffy's situation?
Speaker 5: Uh, He's Dick. 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 instance, uh, for instance.
Speaker 3: All right, all right without without you compromising your position?
Speaker 3: Were there any buildings with balconies on them utilized.
Speaker 2: Office from nine 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.
Speaker 8: Know, five minutes the first time you stuttered, huh five
Speaker 8: minutes we've been talking.
Speaker 5: It's the first time because because you want to be
Speaker 5: because respectful, Yeah, because you want to be because because
Speaker 5: 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 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 and missing dearly now.
Speaker 5: But you know, I mean we had our drag knockdown,
Speaker 5: drag out fights, man, and and it was like, you know,
Speaker 5: when if I felt something, if I felt this was
Speaker 5: not the way that this should be, he really he
Speaker 5: really didn't like me going out and and and working
Speaker 5: with people like Quincy, working with people like uh other
Speaker 5: other producers and stuff, because then I can see, you know,
Speaker 5: how it was really supposed to be done, and.
Speaker 2: 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 work with Stanley,
Speaker 5: when I work with George, you know, yeah, man, and
Speaker 5: all 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 2: 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 sale as far as we're concerned, because because
Speaker 5: my whole thing was like, I want to learn, I
Speaker 5: want to look at it. I'm not I don't want
Speaker 5: to come here and act like I know what I'm
Speaker 5: doing because I had never been in the recording a
Speaker 5: real recording studio at all up to that point, you know,
Speaker 5: like you know and and and Leon Silvers, you know,
Speaker 5: like you know, it was like a learning process. I
Speaker 5: saw how he worked, I saw how his uh, his
Speaker 5: crew work, his cruel writers, Will Shelby, Kevin Spencer, and
Speaker 5: I would sit back a lot of times. I was
Speaker 5: back the first song that I really participated on and
Speaker 5: in participated in writing and felt comfortable enough to present
Speaker 5: it to them as far as writing was concerned, was
Speaker 5: for the lover in you, you know, and so yeah,
Speaker 5: so like you know that was me and Dana Myers
Speaker 5: and like so, I mean we had a thing where
Speaker 5: were reprint presented to the people to his his cruel,
Speaker 5: his stable writers and stuff, and they would say veto.
Speaker 2: 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 jumping there.
Speaker 5: I know, I want to write down.
Speaker 8: I want a lesson that a lot of the youth here.
Speaker 8: So that's why I want you to tell.
Speaker 3: So let me let me ask them. So with So,
Speaker 3: your first album with is Big Fun?
Speaker 2: Correct, I got it? Okay? When I was the kids like,
Speaker 2: oh the Dolphin record, it.
Speaker 5: Would kill would killer?
Speaker 7: Wells, I thought there was dolphins too, are black?
Speaker 5: Actually actually there were barrels that we were sitting on
Speaker 5: and they're superimposed.
Speaker 2: Barrels.
Speaker 5: Okay, the classic moment.
Speaker 3: So with barrels, Okay, with Big Fun. Yeah, So walk
Speaker 3: us through the process of one. Like, by this point,
Speaker 3: when you're doing Big Fun, how long have you been
Speaker 3: in the group, what's your jelling situation?
Speaker 2: Now complete disclosure.
Speaker 3: I'm probably the only human being on earth that has
Speaker 3: not seen unsung. I've heard it might have been a
Speaker 3: tense episode. I don't know, So I'm kind of asking
Speaker 3: you this, you know, from the total naivete of not
Speaker 3: knowing what the situation was, But what was how long
Speaker 3: was it before after that New Jersey first gig with him,
Speaker 3: until you started recording Big Fun And what was the
Speaker 3: 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 know,
Speaker 5: while I was flying across country, and and then learning
Speaker 5: the choreography because I'm used to singing, I used to
Speaker 5: I'm not used to dancing. I'm a singer, right, so
Speaker 5: you know that choreography. And so then we we got
Speaker 5: that together, and then we continued on from uh, the
Speaker 5: rest of that promotional tour, which if I'm getting I'm
Speaker 5: trying to get 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, uh, November, September, October, November, December time.
Speaker 5: And then we finished up that promotional tour at the
Speaker 5: Copa Cabana, you know, in New York. And then as
Speaker 5: soon as we flew back to back to La which
Speaker 5: was the beginning of seventy nine, I believe, because it
Speaker 5: was seventy eight. Yeah, the beginning of seventy nine, we
Speaker 5: started immediately recording the Big Fun album. Went in and
Speaker 5: started putting that whole whole thing together, and it took us.
Speaker 5: It took us, you know, four or five six months,
Speaker 5: or so four or five months or so to do
Speaker 5: the whole album, and then we put, then we put,
Speaker 5: so we went, So that takes us into towards the
Speaker 5: end of seventy nine, you know, the middle mid towards
Speaker 5: the end of seventy nine, and then put Second time
Speaker 5: Around out there, and Second Time Around at first was
Speaker 5: kind of creeping up the charts, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: But it wasn't. It wasn't until we did a remix.
Speaker 5: Back then, that's when remixes were real big, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. So, yeah, twelve inches and stuff. So
Speaker 5: I forget who did the remix. We did a remix
Speaker 5: on it, put it out there, and then it like
Speaker 5: screamed up the charts. So like that was towards the
Speaker 5: end of end of seventy nine into eighty you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. So it was like from that time
Speaker 5: then we had a hit record in eighty.
Speaker 2: Wow, can you describe what working with Leon Silvers is? Like?
Speaker 2: Do you have any do you have any big Fred
Speaker 2: Lewis stories to go with it? 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, and so I said, Lee, I said, man,
Speaker 5: I can't do this today. They'll start a getting tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Man he was. He was just a test mast Like
Speaker 2: all right, I.
Speaker 5: Mean I mean phrasing, you know. And when you talk
Speaker 5: about Howard Hewitt sound, I would give a big portion
Speaker 5: of that. The kudos up to Leon for helping me
Speaker 5: develop the Howard Hewitt sound. You know, I had my sound,
Speaker 5: you know, going from the natural to the fast, you
Speaker 5: know before I left out Ohio. You know, when I
Speaker 5: was a kid, I developed that in my mom's bathroom
Speaker 5: with all the all the tile and everything, with the
Speaker 5: you know, built in reverb that you got in the bathroom.
Speaker 5: So I developed that natural going into the falls back then.
Speaker 5: But he helped me develop that other like staying like
Speaker 5: Stickler as far as phrasing is concerned, you know, looking
Speaker 5: at at every nuanced all those ad libs that you
Speaker 5: think are ad libs on there, on those there ain't
Speaker 5: no ad libs. We we thought that stuff out, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. He put it, put it there,
Speaker 5: put it here, put it there.
Speaker 2: 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, but like, no, you gotta you gotta
Speaker 8: do that.
Speaker 5: And it worked, Oh yeah, worked every time. But like
Speaker 5: those 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 poompom boom boom, and it just fell right
Speaker 5: in places like but do.
Speaker 7: You have any memories of recording because like two of
Speaker 7: my favorite shadow my songs of all time, over and
Speaker 7: over and Let's find a Time for Love.
Speaker 2: Remember those sessions?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I remember over and over like it was like yesterday,
Speaker 5: because that was when I was the only one in
Speaker 5: the group basically, you know, Jeffrey and Jody had already split,
Speaker 5: so like at that time I wanted to do I
Speaker 5: wanted to do my solo thing. But Dick says, well,
Speaker 5: you know, you still got two and a half three
Speaker 5: years left on this contract. So you either got it.
Speaker 5: You're either gonna do it, you know, go you just
Speaker 5: sit around and ride it out, go to court, you know,
Speaker 5: or move to England or wherever where Jeffrey Jody moved to. Well,
Speaker 5: so you can do another you know, another album. And
Speaker 5: so of course I hate court. I don't like court.
Speaker 5: You know, courts, like of course, like the court's like
Speaker 5: a nightmare Vegas. You know what I'm saying. You're just
Speaker 5: going to you don't know what's happening. So so like
Speaker 5: you know, but we recorded that over and over at
Speaker 5: that time, did the video and that whole thing that
Speaker 5: was when in the videos like me and Mickey Free
Speaker 5: you know me Mickey and Leonne in that video and
Speaker 5: uh and Let's time Let's find the Time for Love?
Speaker 5: Was that the song you said, Let's time that's it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Let's find a time for love? Yeah? Absolutely not
Speaker 2: on the look is it?
Speaker 5: Is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That was was that?
Speaker 7: I think that was on three for Love? Let Me
Speaker 7: let me hold them let me Yeah? No, no, no it wasn't.
Speaker 7: It was on Friends.
Speaker 5: No, I think it's going Uh, let me.
Speaker 2: Find out that you're a fan of Go for It, Yo,
Speaker 2: like on the loaf, like you bullshit, like you deep
Speaker 2: cut cat, but cool dog Hey man, I rocked that album.
Speaker 5: Yo, here you go Manen finding Time for Love that
Speaker 5: was on Go for It wasn't.
Speaker 2: That was it wasn't friends. I mean that was for Love.
Speaker 5: It's just a beautiful song, man, just it really it is.
Speaker 2: I love that record. But do you remember recording it.
Speaker 2: Do you remember like recording that joint or like that session.
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't really really remember anything that's out
Speaker 5: of my mind about recording except that it was just
Speaker 5: a nod boom boom boom boom damn.
Speaker 2: Now I'm looking for it. 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 Wiley.
Speaker 2: Man, it was like it was on Big Fun. It
Speaker 2: was on Big Fun, Big Fun.
Speaker 5: That 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 7: Situation was like, amazing, amazing, that's a gorgeous song man,
Speaker 7: a great performance by all right.
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily want you to throw him under the rug,
Speaker 3: but can you answer two questions for me? Because you know,
Speaker 3: I just gotta know because again, like it's also my
Speaker 3: perception of Shalamar coming from a ten year old. But
Speaker 3: every time I turn around, like Jeffrey Daniel had a
Speaker 3: 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. Okay.
Speaker 3: No, I just wanted to make sure I didn't know
Speaker 3: if that was him, that was you, if he was
Speaker 3: giving much singing duties or not. Okay, from from one
Speaker 3: from one to impossible? How hard were they on the
Speaker 3: choreography front of things? Because you guys, you guys really
Speaker 3: had a together, you know, It's almost like I wish
Speaker 3: it was five of you because you guys were doing
Speaker 3: shit that was like for our listeners out there, if
Speaker 3: you if you can, if you could demo, if you
Speaker 3: could demo, if you could google. A song called Shoe
Speaker 3: Shoeshine by the Dynamics Superiors, in my opinion, is one
Speaker 3: of the greatest performances ever on Soul Train, in which
Speaker 3: they literally act out every word that's saying, like this
Speaker 3: is past Charlie Atkins, this is past Brook Payne as
Speaker 3: far as choreography is concerned. But yeah, I was saying
Speaker 3: that the choreography that you guys had, even if you say,
Speaker 3: like I'm not a dancer, somehow, in my mind I
Speaker 3: just always walked away with like Schallamar really had great
Speaker 3: polished choreography, Like how hard were how hard?
Speaker 2: And like how much time did you guys spend on
Speaker 2: 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 routine. Jeffrey would throw his his his situation
Speaker 5: in there a lot, and I at far, 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 the and you're breathing
Speaker 5: if you're out of breath, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And so that's when I, you know, I did the
Speaker 5: I did the choreography and went through the quote. But
Speaker 5: I told them, let's make be conscientious of the fact
Speaker 5: that I'm singing. You know what I'm saying. You got
Speaker 5: you know, you guys, I'm saying, I'm singing, I got
Speaker 5: to hit those notes that I created on those albums
Speaker 5: and all that kind of stuff, so you know, so
Speaker 5: that's yeah, like you you know, and then then get
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, So you know, it was
Speaker 5: like 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: Then they came back and did it together. And so
Speaker 5: I would rather that than a whole bunch of stuff
Speaker 5: that they're not really gonna remember anyway. And so Jeffrey
Speaker 5: and Jody were on it. Jeffrey's whole backsliding thing that
Speaker 5: he had. Eventually, he's the one that taught Michael how
Speaker 5: to do that, and Michael named it the moonwalk. Jeff
Speaker 5: taught him how to do that. So but at the
Speaker 5: you know, during the show, we would play the song
Speaker 5: called what was it called I Forget It? But it
Speaker 5: was first first part of writing the Socket. It's called
Speaker 5: writing the Socket. Yeah, yeah, and we and they were
Speaker 5: being Then the band would break down into this funky
Speaker 5: groove and me and Jody would be on one side
Speaker 5: of stage rocking, and Jeffrey be all the way on
Speaker 5: the other side of the stage, and Jody and I
Speaker 5: would pull this imaginary rope right and pull it and
Speaker 5: boom like that, and Jeffrey would backslide all the way
Speaker 5: across the stage.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: First, all people on the on the floor, It's guaranteed
Speaker 5: they're standing up because they think he's on like a
Speaker 5: conveyor belt.
Speaker 2: That's how.
Speaker 5: Until that. From that point on we could do anything.
Speaker 5: We would do it. It was on, It was on.
Speaker 3: So do you have any do you have any knowledge
Speaker 3: of because I know that Jeffrey was also trying to
Speaker 3: get another group off the ground, the one that with Casper,
Speaker 3: Coolly and Casper like his other dancers. There was there
Speaker 3: was like I think it was like a singing group whatever.
Speaker 3: I assume that he was trying to bring them through
Speaker 3: 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, Casspar
Speaker 5: and Cooley went over there to try and teach it
Speaker 5: to him, but for some reason he couldn't grasp it
Speaker 5: from them. So when we came back from uh, from
Speaker 5: the promotional to it, that's when Jeffrey went over and
Speaker 5: taught him.
Speaker 2: How to do.
Speaker 5: But I think the the group was called, uh, what
Speaker 5: was the what's the name of the group?
Speaker 2: I forget to forget, I'm forgetting. Yeah, I'm 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 3: Okay, So at the time when second time around becomes
Speaker 3: a big ass hit and it's definitely established that you're
Speaker 3: in in a you know, a well established group that's
Speaker 3: not going to have to struggle, at least in our eyes,
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, you made it.
Speaker 2: Right out the box. How different does your life change?
Speaker 3: Like? What is it to be a young successful blackmail
Speaker 3: with a hit group? In Los Angeles, California nineteen.
Speaker 5: Eighty goopies were crazy, you know, but wet ass pussy.
Speaker 2: Did you just say that?
Speaker 8: And it made so much sense between me and Steven
Speaker 8: Howard And I'm afraid the resident or feeling there too.
Speaker 6: I just don't know if every was there.
Speaker 3: Too out of context leave it out in context. They
Speaker 3: just trust me listeners a conversation had.
Speaker 2: Earlier, but.
Speaker 5: In a sense that was one of the changes, because
Speaker 5: you know, I had dealt with with the whole groupie
Speaker 5: thing since I was like, you know, young, very young,
Speaker 5: like even in the gospel situation there you had your
Speaker 5: gospel groupies, you know.
Speaker 2: And when I, oh, yeah that's what they was holy
Speaker 2: from the way stuff.
Speaker 5: Man, you know, the Lord told me to give this
Speaker 5: to you. Okay, you know so, but but then you know,
Speaker 5: and then I had, you know, when I when I
Speaker 5: went into the R and B situation back in back
Speaker 5: in Ohio, we had our our fans that follow us
Speaker 5: around and then going overseas with the group with Beverly Hills,
Speaker 5: you know, yeah, I can't yeah, yeah, foreign situation. When
Speaker 5: I get with the group, I'm like, you know, I'm like, man,
Speaker 5: I got this down. This is like I've been dealing
Speaker 5: with this for a long time. There ain't nothing like
Speaker 5: hit record groups. Hit record groups are the ones that, like,
Speaker 5: you know, you come all of a sudden, it's like, oh,
Speaker 5: how did you get in here? You know, and so
Speaker 5: you know it that after a couple of years of that,
Speaker 5: that really made me look at that whole thing and
Speaker 5: and look and see, uh, you know, that's not something
Speaker 5: I really want to deal with as far as that's concerned, because.
Speaker 2: It's not like they know me.
Speaker 5: They just know what they think about me. They knew me,
Speaker 5: they might not even like me so like so that
Speaker 5: so I ended that whole thing that was That was
Speaker 5: a change in my life. But you know, as far
Speaker 5: as the responsibility, I think you started getting at least
Speaker 5: I did, anyway, started getting a sense of responsibility of
Speaker 5: what you're saying because you know that people are really
Speaker 5: listening to you, you know what I'm saying, and it's
Speaker 5: like and that's with that comes responsibility. It's like, you know,
Speaker 5: I got to like I said, I came from I
Speaker 5: came from a whole house of women, you know, like
Speaker 5: my mom, my mom, my 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 project as far as the music
Speaker 5: is concerned. So you know, but I mean it was
Speaker 5: it was because at the time, was we were only
Speaker 5: second time around was out there. I think it was
Speaker 5: like I think I was about twenty three, twenty three
Speaker 5: years ago, you know, so young. We were really really young.
Speaker 5: Jeffrey's only like a couple of months older than I am,
Speaker 5: and Jodie's like, I forget, like about three four years younger.
Speaker 5: But you know, we were young, you know when that
Speaker 5: whole thing went down. So it was it was a
Speaker 5: big adjustment, and big adjustment.
Speaker 3: Is there any I mean not preparing you, but did
Speaker 3: it ever get to the point where, especially when you're
Speaker 3: young and impressionable, you have ideas of what starter was
Speaker 3: like like, oh, there's a limousine and there's a bodyguard.
Speaker 3: But I mean, was there just ever a time when
Speaker 3: you just couldn't do something simple like just go to
Speaker 3: the seven eleven to get you know, that would stick
Speaker 3: of gum or something like that.
Speaker 2: Was it like that or was it just.
Speaker 3: Could you still have a personal life or was it
Speaker 3: 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 you had to realize you
Speaker 5: had to get a sense of where you could go
Speaker 5: and where you couldn't go. You did It's like you know, places,
Speaker 5: there's places that even now I won't go because I
Speaker 5: won't be. It won't be you know, like you want
Speaker 5: a piece, yeah you're eating it was I don't mind.
Speaker 5: And you know, autographs and stuff, that's a part. You
Speaker 5: asked for it, you got it, Toyota, you know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying. So that's a whole thing. But like you know,
Speaker 5: the place that was really difficult to get around was
Speaker 5: was in the UK once when it when everything hit
Speaker 5: in the UK, because the UK is so condensed, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. I mean, the the whole island
Speaker 5: is what Boble's biggest California, but you got all kind
Speaker 5: of people in there and then and so once once
Speaker 5: we hit there, it was like, I mean, it was
Speaker 5: hit hit. Jeffrey went on top of the pops did
Speaker 5: his thing the next day. It was like bam, it
Speaker 5: was crazy, and.
Speaker 2: Uh, can you explain that situation.
Speaker 3: Because I've seen him do uh night to remember where
Speaker 3: he's just pop locking by himself. And you know, even
Speaker 3: I went to live there for a couple of years
Speaker 3: and they still talk about like that being such a
Speaker 3: game changing moment. I know that Jeffrey also hosted the
Speaker 3: British version of Souldiering Soultring six twenty or whatever it
Speaker 3: was called. But what was the situation that both you
Speaker 3: and Jody didn't make that promotional tour and Jeffrey just
Speaker 3: decided to pop lock and then well, to give you
Speaker 3: guys a backstory, I believe that the legend is that
Speaker 3: you guys were supposed to perform on Top of the Pops,
Speaker 3: but something happened, so he decides, I'm just gonna pop lock,
Speaker 3: and he does the moon walk on the show, and
Speaker 3: suddenly you guys become instant mega 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 so,
Speaker 5: And but what happened was all right? That happened was
Speaker 5: we have been on the road so much. Also, Jody
Speaker 5: was like pregnant with her first her first child or daughter, Lauren,
Speaker 5: and uh, and I was trying to piece together what
Speaker 5: little bit was left of my first marriage you know,
Speaker 5: and which didn't happen. You know, it didn't work. But
Speaker 5: but we have been on the road so much for
Speaker 5: so long, we said, and at the time I can
Speaker 5: make you Feel Good. There's another song that that me
Speaker 5: and I get we wrote, we wrote together, and and
Speaker 5: I Can make You Feel Good came out over there.
Speaker 5: I Can make you Feel Good blown up, you know,
Speaker 5: going up to charts, and took so long for us
Speaker 5: to decide what we're going to do. By the time
Speaker 5: he got there, I Can make you Feel Good had
Speaker 5: had fallen to number two and Top Fox was the
Speaker 5: number was was a program where they only did number
Speaker 5: one records on there, so so he couldn't do he
Speaker 5: couldn't do I Can make You Feel Good. But then
Speaker 5: somehow I forget what happened. They they arranged it so
Speaker 5: he could come back on there since he was all
Speaker 5: the way all the way over because it felt the
Speaker 5: number two on his way over there.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: That's cold, 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 to night, remember, yes, and I think that
Speaker 5: was going to be the next single anyway or something
Speaker 5: like that. So he went on there, and Top of
Speaker 5: the Pops is the type of show. It came on
Speaker 5: every Thursday, you know. And and if you went on
Speaker 5: Top of the Pops and and Kill Friday, you saw
Speaker 5: your album sales go go through the roof. That's how
Speaker 5: how how instantly impactful. You know that that show was
Speaker 5: to the UK. So man, he went on there. They
Speaker 5: went crazy. Man, they went crazy. It was like it
Speaker 5: was like, you know, we couldn't we couldn't walk down
Speaker 5: the street apps time. And then we went over there.
Speaker 3: You know, I was going to say that in some
Speaker 3: weird way, you guys, not going over there almost served
Speaker 3: the group better because of that very specific Hey guys,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you I don't know if you remember,
Speaker 3: but when Leon had did our show, he had mentioned
Speaker 3: a Shalamar video that it's escaping me right now. But
Speaker 3: I went, I forget the title, but I went to
Speaker 3: actually look it up on YouTube, and I have to
Speaker 3: say it it's.
Speaker 2: Probably in my mind.
Speaker 3: I thought the emergency video for the Whispers was the
Speaker 3: weirdest video from the Solar cannon with them arguing inside of.
Speaker 2: A phone booth.
Speaker 3: But you guys have a very it might have been
Speaker 3: for the song you just mentioned. It was like you
Speaker 3: were in a garden or do you not remember in
Speaker 3: a garden? Like you're in a flower shop or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 5: It's like, I don't want to be the last to know.
Speaker 2: Yo, Okay, who conceptualized? Have you guys seen this video? Y'all?
Speaker 3: No, forget forget keep on love of Me, forget all
Speaker 3: the weird videos that have come from Solar.
Speaker 2: Records, like this tops every Oh my god everything.
Speaker 3: I only I only wish I had a time machine
Speaker 3: to go back to Leon Silver's interview so we could
Speaker 3: talk about this video so.
Speaker 2: War because I looked it up way after after we
Speaker 2: did the interview. What was who conceptualized that video?
Speaker 5: Dude? It's like, didn't white It's like meats and one
Speaker 5: of them flop hats on and something like that.
Speaker 2: It's like an anti bellum, Like what's going on in
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 5: in it. That was back We did three videos in
Speaker 5: the same day.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 6: This was the last one.
Speaker 5: I don't know who came up with their concept, because man, wow,
Speaker 5: your hair was I mean, but but it's just like,
Speaker 5: what was it the night to remember? I think when
Speaker 5: Jeffrey was the bartender, the waiter or the bar, he
Speaker 5: came out the closet and I'm like, that's not cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that video was weird.
Speaker 8: But this, this, this takes the click, this taste, man,
Speaker 8: this white face.
Speaker 2: This is the one time I wish the show had
Speaker 2: a visual component. Everybody looking at it now, this this
Speaker 2: is the oddest thing.
Speaker 5: Yo, Man is crazy. Like I said, but we did
Speaker 5: three videos. I remember it was. It's nice to remember.
Speaker 5: I don't want to be the last. And this tune
Speaker 5: called work work it Out, work it out, you know right,
Speaker 5: check out, work it out? Work it out?
Speaker 2: Is like that, that's even that's even crazy.
Speaker 5: It's even weirder. You know.
Speaker 2: So who directed these videos? Bill Parker, Jesus Christ. It's weird.
Speaker 2: You're right, I'm sorry, I'm like looking 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 7: But I mean, but really though, I mean, those videos
Speaker 7: are weird, but I really looking back at it videos
Speaker 7: were really something that I think it took a lot
Speaker 7: of like black artists a while to figure out, you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying, like what it was because a
Speaker 7: lot of those like early ages, I mean, they you could.
Speaker 2: Tell that they didn't know what the fuck to do,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I mean, you look at it, don't look any further video.
Speaker 2: It's just like what in the hell you know what
Speaker 2: I mean?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Right? Uh, don't look any further video from Dennis Edwards insight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I will admit, like you guys, the whole
Speaker 3: Solar Cannon, all the groups, including the Lakeside videos, and
Speaker 3: even though I'm coming like at least like the fact
Speaker 3: that you guys we're thinking forward as far as the
Speaker 3: visual component that most groups weren't even thinking of back then,
Speaker 3: you know, so it's almost like and that probably explains
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for the life of me, I don't even know
Speaker 2: how you guys.
Speaker 3: Were successful in getting a deck giveaway on MTV at
Speaker 3: a time when MTV was.
Speaker 2: Very slow to play back black videos. But wait, I
Speaker 2: do have a question. I gotta go to Charlene and
Speaker 2: Willis's theme. Please. Why wasn't Somewhere There's a Love for
Speaker 2: Me ever released as 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 2: That Different Strokes episode, did y'all justice? Like that's you know,
Speaker 2: for those.
Speaker 3: Who don't know, you know, when Janet Jackson first was
Speaker 3: on Different Strokes like that was her and will In
Speaker 3: 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 2: You never knew that.
Speaker 5: I never knew that. I didn't. I never really watched
Speaker 5: Different Strokes that much.
Speaker 2: But song placement. Man, again, I was a ten year old,
Speaker 2: so it's like, you know.
Speaker 3: Can you explain why me being aware of what you
Speaker 3: guys's records were as they came out. I do remember
Speaker 3: being very shocked and surprised when Gofer it was just
Speaker 3: like in the record Ben and I was like, well, wait,
Speaker 3: where's the.
Speaker 2: Single at how come? I almost felt like it was
Speaker 2: just put out there. It was just arbitrarily like what
Speaker 2: was was God for a bunch of throwaway songs or
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 5: It was there was we were going. Uh, Solar was
Speaker 5: going from r c A Distribution to Electure Distribution, to
Speaker 5: complete to complete their obligation to r c A. Each
Speaker 5: group on the on the on the Solar label old
Speaker 5: r c A. Another another album, one more album and
Speaker 5: then we could then Solar could move on to Electure Distribution.
Speaker 5: So it was like it was we called we used
Speaker 5: to call it the Throwaway album. But on that album,
Speaker 5: you had you had Sweeter as the Days Go By,
Speaker 5: you had you know, this talk to Me, which was
Speaker 5: which was like a crazy crazy things. James and I
Speaker 5: did a song on there called you Got Me Right,
Speaker 5: you know, one of those urgency things, you know, and
Speaker 5: and but that's what it was. We used to call
Speaker 5: it the throwaway album, you know. And that was because
Speaker 5: we had to fulfill the obligation to h RCA disabusing
Speaker 5: company and so that they can move on to the
Speaker 5: Electric election.
Speaker 3: So at the time, though, and you know, like Thuraway albums,
Speaker 3: are you know Frank Zapple was famous for it. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know, Prince did Cast and Disorder. Like Thuraway albums,
Speaker 3: there's nothing new about it. But at the time, are
Speaker 3: you feeling like, well, we do have a are you
Speaker 3: thinking about it in terms of legacy, like, well, I
Speaker 3: don't I don't want to just put a stinker out
Speaker 3: there or something that doesn't have all this promotion or something,
Speaker 3: because you guys are basically releasing it knowing that it's
Speaker 3: going to be dead in the water anyway. But did
Speaker 3: you feel any sort of way about that as a group,
Speaker 3: like we don't want to waste a shot, especially when
Speaker 3: we have this much momentum.
Speaker 2: Mmmm.
Speaker 5: We really didn't think about that a lot because I
Speaker 5: guess we were depending on the guidance of the record
Speaker 5: 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, it turned out to be a
Speaker 5: pretty especially overseas, turned out to be a pretty popular
Speaker 5: song and stuff. So it wasn't it wasn't like we
Speaker 5: put it wasn't like if you listen to the album,
Speaker 5: wasn't like we put a stinker out there. There was
Speaker 5: some stuff on, there was some stuff.
Speaker 2: Sorry about that. I didn't mean stinker.
Speaker 3: But in terms of releasing it knowing that you're just
Speaker 3: going to go put all the energy in front of
Speaker 3: the Friends album.
Speaker 5: That's yeah, yeah, in front of the album with the
Speaker 5: new 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 was pretty young in the business, and like
Speaker 5: so we were we were depending if Dick said we're
Speaker 5: gonna put it with you know, get a throw Way album.
Speaker 5: Leon I said, we're gonna do a throw Way album. Okay,
Speaker 5: all right, cool, let's do it. Let's get in there
Speaker 5: and work, you know.
Speaker 3: But I also noticed that this was the album that
Speaker 3: the three of you really got to contribute a lot
Speaker 3: of your personal songs to it, right.
Speaker 5: Right, especially Jeffrey. Jeffrey did a lot of stuff on there.
Speaker 3: And so in your in your mind, like what's what's
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 5: it and as far as because Lee Young Junr told
Speaker 5: me when I first got with the group, because up
Speaker 5: until that time, it was a lot of caricatures as
Speaker 5: far as album covers concerned. You know, the Uptown Festival
Speaker 5: album cover was a cartoon.
Speaker 2: Type of character, the disco gardens and.
Speaker 5: Disco guard and and also you know even the big fun.
Speaker 10: Album you know, on thee and stuff and still you know,
Speaker 10: but Lee told me, man, you have to establish your
Speaker 10: faces as far as the group is concerned when people,
Speaker 10: you have to establish it so that when people.
Speaker 5: Say Shalomar, they think of Howard, Jeffrey and Jody because
Speaker 5: they see it. And then and on the on the
Speaker 5: legal tip, you know, that was very cool. So that
Speaker 5: was that was really important to me as far as
Speaker 5: that album was concerned. Which album, which album was for
Speaker 5: the lover and you on? Was that on three for Love?
Speaker 5: That was on three for Love?
Speaker 2: I believe, I believe, Yeah it's on yeah, yes.
Speaker 5: And what you 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, Shalamar 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 a as a group, as a
Speaker 5: as 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 lover and 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 2: What was the name, Where did the name come from?
Speaker 2: What was the meaning of the name Chalamar.
Speaker 5: This is there's this cat named Sis Simone Susan who
Speaker 5: brought h Uptown Festival to Dick and Don Cornelia's Uptown
Speaker 5: Festival was like a medley of motown hits, you know,
Speaker 5: so like uh, you know, in the disco, in the
Speaker 5: disco format. And so Simone Soussan was this cat. And
Speaker 5: there was a there was a garden over in the
Speaker 5: Middle East or something like that called Shalomar Garden. It
Speaker 5: was a s H L I M A R. You know,
Speaker 5: shalle Mar.
Speaker 2: It was this.
Speaker 5: There was this uh, there was this botanical garden that
Speaker 5: this potentate or somebody you know, put together for his lady,
Speaker 5: you know, and and so like there was this beautiful garden.
Speaker 5: That's how they got disco garden out of it. And
Speaker 5: then they changed the.
Speaker 2: I to the A and s A A L A
Speaker 2: M A L s H s H A L A
Speaker 2: M A R.
Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, what can you what can you tell us
Speaker 7: both legally and and respectfully about Jody's situation and why
Speaker 7: she's not torn with the band currently with us currently.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: At the time, we we got an offer Jeffrey, like
Speaker 5: I think it was about twenty years ago, seventeen twenty
Speaker 5: years or so ago. We we uh uh got well,
Speaker 5: Jeffrey got an offer to do five gigs over in Asia,
Speaker 5: over and throughout Japan and stuff, and so you know,
Speaker 5: we called Jody, we said, you know, jeff called me.
Speaker 5: I said, yeah, I'm down, I'm cool, it'll be fun.
Speaker 5: And then we called Jody and Jody said, well, I
Speaker 5: don't think I really want to revisit that part of
Speaker 5: my life, you know, and and which you know you
Speaker 5: can't say, I mean, she she, You know, everybody didn't
Speaker 5: have the same you know, it's a situation you can do.
Speaker 5: You know, three people, two people can experience the same.
Speaker 2: Exact thing and come different experiences.
Speaker 5: Two different experiences. So you got three people who experienced
Speaker 5: the same exact thing and came away with three different
Speaker 5: uh experiences. So at that time, Jeffrey and I went
Speaker 5: and we did the shows by herself. We put the
Speaker 5: band together and we did the shows ourselves, you know,
Speaker 5: and uh. And then in fact we went on to
Speaker 5: do a bunch of stuff in the UK. We went
Speaker 5: to Africa a couple of times with that light, with
Speaker 5: just me and Jeffrey. And then when we wanted to
Speaker 5: bring the female entity back into it, Carolyn Griffy who
Speaker 5: is Dick Griffy's daughter, and she was she was singing
Speaker 5: background for me on a lot of my solo stuff,
Speaker 5: you know, and so she had the history of the group,
Speaker 5: she 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 7: Yeah, how was your how was your relationship before mister
Speaker 7: Griffy when he passed? How was our relationship at that
Speaker 7: time right before he passed?
Speaker 5: Me and Dick, Yeah, yeah, and we were we were
Speaker 5: we were at each other's about something. I forget what
Speaker 5: it was. I forget what it was. He didn't, And
Speaker 5: it was funny because, like, you know, he was just
Speaker 5: he was just learning about texting and stuff at that
Speaker 5: time and accidentally sent it to me. I'm like, nigga,
Speaker 5: you know, and I just I just laughed, you know,
Speaker 5: and and I forget what it was we were arguing
Speaker 5: about at that time, but I loved him. I loved it,
Speaker 5: you know. And then we had a bitter sweet thing
Speaker 5: when he passed, Yeah, seventy something, you know, and like
Speaker 5: you know, it was it was, it was.
Speaker 2: It was sad.
Speaker 5: I never got a chance to see him right when
Speaker 5: before he passed. We had a couple of meetings before
Speaker 5: he got before he got sick, and uh, you know,
Speaker 5: but we were arguing about something then. I forget what
Speaker 5: it was.
Speaker 3: But wow, you know, I know, I know I brought
Speaker 3: it up earlier, but kind of want to revisit it.
Speaker 3: I know that you and James Ingram are singing on
Speaker 3: p YT. Are you at all involved on the original
Speaker 3: version of p YT the slower before it turned into
Speaker 3: the version that's on Thriller. There's another alternative, slower, smoother
Speaker 3: version of Yeah. Yeah, a slower version. Are you on
Speaker 3: that version at all? Or is it just the version
Speaker 3: that's on Thriller?
Speaker 5: Just a version is on Thriller. I didn't even know
Speaker 5: there was a slower version.
Speaker 2: Out, you know, you know good well, yeah, they left
Speaker 2: no stone unturned, like they kept.
Speaker 5: Where the background sampled from the from the no.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's completely different recording. Just the title.
Speaker 3: They shared the title, that's all. Like they turned into
Speaker 3: something totally totally different. But speaking of speaking of Griffy again,
Speaker 3: you know, MTV was was just a baby, and of
Speaker 3: course they were world famous for really not focusing on
Speaker 3: that many black acts. And yet I remember at the
Speaker 3: same time when they started slowly playing Billy Jean and
Speaker 3: beat It, you guys were one of the few groups
Speaker 3: that they slowly letting the door, along with like Prince
Speaker 3: and Lionel, Ritchie, Eddie Griant. How do you do you
Speaker 3: know how that happened? Like how was was that the
Speaker 3: 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, don you had that you had that
Speaker 5: famous interview with David Bowie and Bowie. Yeah, and I
Speaker 5: think at that point they started kind of re re
Speaker 5: looking at certain situations. When David Bowie comes up to usist,
Speaker 5: how can you call yourself a music channel and and
Speaker 5: you not playing black music? It's like it's crazy, you know,
Speaker 5: so so like, but I'm not sure 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 3: Okay, So can I assume that the look was technically
Speaker 3: kind of sort of maybe your first solo record, but.
Speaker 5: Kind of.
Speaker 2: Okay, it was the last.
Speaker 5: It was the last album that we did that Jeffrey
Speaker 5: and Jody and I did together. But they participated just
Speaker 5: like they equally as far as like just like we
Speaker 5: used to do all the rest of the projects and stuff.
Speaker 5: There's a tune on there called you Are the You're
Speaker 5: the One for me, man. Check that tune out if
Speaker 5: you get a chance to check that TOI.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know I know it well, I know it well,
Speaker 3: but I just wanted to know, like the working process.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the Look, I know, I know, and you
Speaker 3: know I'm a Philadelphian. So I feel like a bad
Speaker 3: Philadelphian because I'm gonna ask you this question.
Speaker 2: But I know that you wrote the Look with Stanley Clark.
Speaker 3: Now personally one of my all time favorite how Youwit songs,
Speaker 3: non shallow mar related, But really, if I'm honest with it,
Speaker 3: this is probably my all time favorite song of yours.
Speaker 2: Is Heaven Sent?
Speaker 3: Now you know, as a jazz head, you know this
Speaker 3: is a guy that's you know, done, returned it forever,
Speaker 3: doesn't change the world.
Speaker 2: Of bass music. I feel really silly that this is also.
Speaker 3: Might be my favorite Stanley Clark song, being as though
Speaker 3: he has such an intricate history with his bass, but
Speaker 3: this one particular song says could you What I really
Speaker 3: want to know is why didn't you say that for
Speaker 3: your own project? Yes, even though it made noise on
Speaker 3: his record, I almost felt like because when it came out,
Speaker 3: I felt like, oh, this is the how are you
Speaker 3: were solo joint?
Speaker 2: And then I couldn't find it.
Speaker 3: She's looking for forever, and then finally it's like it's
Speaker 3: buried on you know 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 un me to George and when we met, we
Speaker 5: had a mutual friend that was his accountant, I think,
Speaker 5: and then he did some he doesn't work for me,
Speaker 5: and then he introduced me to Stanley. Stan was a
Speaker 5: fan of you know, the Salomar stuff, and I was
Speaker 5: definitely a fan of Stanley. It's because my first instrument
Speaker 5: that I learned how to play when I was like
Speaker 5: twelve years old was bass, So you know, I was
Speaker 5: the Stanley was like the cat, right, So we just
Speaker 5: started working together. And there was another cat that wrote
Speaker 5: that song. I think he passed away. I can't remember
Speaker 5: that wrote a lot on Heaven sent Heaven said, yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, I gotta look it up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can't remember his name. There was some I
Speaker 5: remember there was some stuff that was going on with
Speaker 5: him 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 2: You know.
Speaker 7: I was just gonna ask, what was the creative chemistry
Speaker 7: like Stanley and George working together?
Speaker 2: 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 Duke, 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: you didn't know anybody that didn't. All the whole bottom
Speaker 5: part of George's house in Hollywood, uh, lower Hollywood Hills,
Speaker 5: basically off of Franklin. The whole bottom part of his
Speaker 5: house was his studio. Everything room, studio, you know, everything,
Speaker 5: the lounge, everything was. The studio had a he had
Speaker 5: his wine cellar down there and stuff, and I mean
Speaker 5: it was it was just we We would just go
Speaker 5: in there and it was a place to go in
Speaker 5: and just be creative and working with and then watching
Speaker 5: him and Stanley together was just a double double situation,
Speaker 5: double dose of what you know, George did and it
Speaker 5: and it and it was was enhanced by Stanley's stuff.
Speaker 5: Stanley do some stuff, George would enhance it with his thing.
Speaker 2: I mean it was.
Speaker 5: It was a major, major creative, total creative atmosphere in there.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful, man. Wow.
Speaker 3: Could you what was the audition process like for Mickey
Speaker 3: Free and Delisa Davis once Jeffrey and Jody left, uh, challabar.
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: uh player cat and and he was working out of
Speaker 5: a studio masters, and so I would come there. I
Speaker 5: was working on something, and then we see each other,
Speaker 5: I think with these studio masters of Larbie a studio
Speaker 5: I can't remember, but we crossed each other across the path.
Speaker 5: Hey man, what was up?
Speaker 2: Hey man?
Speaker 5: What's up? And then keep on going right, and then
Speaker 5: we started talking and stuff. And Mickey is Mickey if
Speaker 5: he ever decided to put this guitar down and not
Speaker 5: do music anymore, he could be a stand up comedian
Speaker 5: for real. That that nigga had me cracking up the
Speaker 5: whole time. And so then that's when I talked to
Speaker 5: Leon because like I said, they were they were working
Speaker 5: on something. And then I said, well, why don't I
Speaker 5: bring you know, uh Mickey in, which changed the whole
Speaker 5: situation of the group, you know, because Mickey was more
Speaker 5: of this rock cat and I was just looking to
Speaker 5: do something to pass the time for two and a
Speaker 5: half years, you know, so you know, and we went
Speaker 5: into the whole you know, we went into the whole
Speaker 5: rock thing. You know. I always had my dressing room
Speaker 5: when Jeffrey was in the group. It was me and
Speaker 5: Jeffrey had a dressing room, right, we just 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: leather gloves on and the built can you know what
Speaker 5: I'm saying? And were ready to go out there and
Speaker 5: deal man, So like it changed the whole thing. Now
Speaker 5: with Deleisa, we Dick came up with this idea of
Speaker 5: involving a lot of the local different local radio stations
Speaker 5: across the country and do this contest contest to find
Speaker 5: the girl for Saloman, you know. And it involved the
Speaker 5: local radio stations and and all of them. They put
Speaker 5: together this thing. They had auditions Don Lewis. Don Lewis
Speaker 5: auditioned in New York. That's when I first met Don Lewis.
Speaker 2: I don't remember, I was I was all episode. I
Speaker 2: 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 audition,
Speaker 5: and 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 LA
Speaker 5: that's when she forgets she connected with the different world
Speaker 5: people are are, yeah, the different world people. But for
Speaker 5: years after I knew and you know, after I knew
Speaker 5: don for years, I can never really remember her name,
Speaker 5: but I call her fishnets, you know, so you know,
Speaker 5: but that was the process. You know. De Lisa was
Speaker 5: from Nashville. So when we went to Nashville, did the
Speaker 5: did the audis and there.
Speaker 3: So this this was nationwide's nationwide Yeah, oh wow, okay,
Speaker 3: Georganashville all all over the place.
Speaker 5: We're all over the place.
Speaker 3: By the way, did did Mickey ever share any of
Speaker 3: that basketball Charlie Murphy story with you at all?
Speaker 5: The day after he said, he told you after the
Speaker 5: day after it happened. Man, That's why when people called me,
Speaker 5: when people called me after Dave Chappelle did it, and
Speaker 5: years later when people called me and told me, man,
Speaker 5: you see that skit, the Charlie Murphy Hollywood stories and
Speaker 5: on Dave Chapelle. They did a thing.
Speaker 11: They talked about Mickey going up and going up to
Speaker 11: Princess House. I said, Man, Mickey called me the day
Speaker 11: after they the day after they did that, and so
Speaker 11: were up at We were up at Shortcats House man
Speaker 11: last night, and and Eddie Murphy and Charlie Murphy. Everybody
Speaker 11: came up and played basketball, he said. Prince Prince went
Speaker 11: out there in his heels and was dunking. He said, Man,
Speaker 11: anybody wants some pancakes?
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, he called me.
Speaker 5: He called me the day after a day after that
Speaker 5: went down.
Speaker 3: Wait, can I get this fronte because I'm gonna forget this.
Speaker 3: Also on the Look, you worked with the legendary David
Speaker 3: Hawk Wazinski formerly of Rufus.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, could you talk to like that? That's a cat
Speaker 3: I definitely want to interview as well. Liked you talk
Speaker 3: about the process of songwriting with him and working with him.
Speaker 5: It was wild Hawk was wild. His studio. It was
Speaker 5: called it was up in the Hills, off of a
Speaker 5: law off, the off, the one on off, the one
Speaker 5: on one. Uh, Laurel wasn't law can I can't remember?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 5: It was up in the Hills and the name of
Speaker 5: the studio was called Food in the Hill.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Called fool Hill, Okay.
Speaker 5: Pool in the Hills Studios.
Speaker 2: So it was like me him, Mickey, we had it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was just the whole writing process and would
Speaker 5: get serious then all of a sudden it would just
Speaker 5: go off to change somewhere else and we were just
Speaker 5: you know, we were just up there. We had we had,
Speaker 5: you know, interesting situation visitors up there in and out and.
Speaker 2: I as see what 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 we did.
Speaker 5: One of the songs we did was called my Girl loves.
Speaker 2: My Girl loves Me. That's my ship, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: Probably to you like this was like all right, I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna do this bid and then get out here
Speaker 3: and do my solo Jowin. But you know, for a whatever,
Speaker 3: a past the time record, at least in your words,
Speaker 3: like I the the Heartbreak record was actually kind of dope,
Speaker 3: and I do I do want to know the story. Okay,
Speaker 3: so I know the history of Dean Pittsford because I
Speaker 3: went to perform An arts high school. So Dean Pittsford,
Speaker 3: of course you know he's he's he's a fellow e
Speaker 3: gotter Bill. You should know this person. He wrote, I
Speaker 3: mean from Godspell, the Fame. He wrote like a lot
Speaker 3: of Broadway stuff. He won Matt Grammys and a Tony
Speaker 3: and Emmy. I know that him and Bill Wolford wrote
Speaker 3: uh about to say footloose? Well, they wrote that too.
Speaker 3: They wrote dancing in the sheets, sheets like.
Speaker 8: The streets to a child here, excuse me, mister Hewett.
Speaker 6: 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 I mean they're.
Speaker 2: Talking about getting it on and they talking about the sheets.
Speaker 6: Kids don't even hear that part. You just hear them.
Speaker 2: I was a kid and I heard that your friends.
Speaker 2: You know, Yes, I now grab your coat when we're
Speaker 2: going home, That's what he says.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm enlightened. As of today, I am enlightened.
Speaker 2: Yes, she thought I was dancing in the streets. But wait,
Speaker 2: can I can.
Speaker 3: I just ask though, yes, the song was a bona
Speaker 3: fide hit, but did anyone ever raise the question that
Speaker 3: it might be a tad bit derivative of nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: 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 the time. It was just it
Speaker 5: was just me and and Dean Pittford called and wanted
Speaker 5: me and Leon to come to the to the Paramount
Speaker 5: Studios and listen and look at this movie that he
Speaker 5: had and he had temporary music in it, you know,
Speaker 5: just stuff. And then when it came to the park
Speaker 5: where he had written you know, for dancing and sheets,
Speaker 5: he said, this is where I want, you know, shalamar
Speaker 5: thing to be. And so, like you know, we watched
Speaker 5: a movie, we talked, got blah blah blahlah, and Leon
Speaker 5: and Leone and I are walking back to the UH
Speaker 5: to the the parking lot and I said, well, what
Speaker 5: do you think you know? He said, well, I got
Speaker 5: a whole lot on my plate. I don't think that's
Speaker 5: gonna be a big movie, you know what, I'm saying
Speaker 5: it's it's like and I got I got a whole
Speaker 5: lot on my plate. I don't really, I'm not I'm
Speaker 5: not really gonna have time to do it. He said,
Speaker 5: well what do you think? I said, well, I don't
Speaker 5: think it's gonna be a big movie either, you know,
Speaker 5: but god, I ain't gonna throw Leon under the bus
Speaker 5: like that. It was me too, I said, I don't
Speaker 5: think it's going to be a big movie.
Speaker 3: You saw Footloose and you were just like, man, whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, okay, you.
Speaker 5: Know, because because it was it was just you know,
Speaker 5: this guy, this cat teaching white folks how to dance
Speaker 5: and all that. You know, It's like, you know, it's like, hey,
Speaker 5: you know, I don't think it's going to be that
Speaker 5: big of a movie. But I said, but being with
Speaker 5: the position that the group, which I was gonna have
Speaker 5: to keep on at that time, I knew Dick Griffy
Speaker 5: wasn't gonna allow me to get out of my contract,
Speaker 5: so I had to keep on with the group. I said,
Speaker 5: but given the position that the group is in at
Speaker 5: this time, I said, I think it would be a
Speaker 5: good even though I don't think it's gonna be a
Speaker 5: I don't think it's a great movie. They're gonna put
Speaker 5: a push behind it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good look, 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, shallow my name
Speaker 5: lives hoever, 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 there, you know? And so
Speaker 5: I go I go to and talk to Virgil Roberts
Speaker 5: at the at the record company. I went down to
Speaker 5: the record company. I said, man, Vergil, you've been checking
Speaker 5: the Dancing the Footloose soundtrack. Virgil goes in yeah, you
Speaker 5: know about how these these things really don't don't sell
Speaker 5: a lot.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not a sound.
Speaker 5: And that said I said, dude, it's platinum. Somebody told
Speaker 5: me it'slat Yeah, there's no way, no way, platinum. And
Speaker 5: then that's it took off from there. Man, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: But I was about to say, you guys, double dip,
Speaker 3: because isn't the only Grammy for Shallamar also for your
Speaker 3: participation on the Beverly Hills cop so yeah, for don't
Speaker 3: get Stopped in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2: So it was almost like eighty four was the year.
Speaker 5: 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 3: Well that well, the soundtrack one a Grammy, So I
Speaker 3: assume that someone gets that.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 7: I was gonna I was gonna ask you out man,
Speaker 7: what can you tell us about your marriage to near
Speaker 7: people's I used to always watch the Party Machine when
Speaker 7: I was a kid.
Speaker 2: Jesus I got.
Speaker 6: First, like so I felt like a little celebrity couple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the original jame b.
Speaker 5: I gotta say.
Speaker 2: Kay, no, no, no, no, no, never mind, keep going.
Speaker 2: That's a good story, right 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 said, man, there's this fine woman that
Speaker 5: comes on Fame. You know, I never I never waited
Speaker 5: for the credits or anything. I just wanted to look
Speaker 5: at her, you know what I'm saying. And then I
Speaker 5: keep it on Fame on the channel where Fame was
Speaker 5: for about you know, ten fifteen minutes. If she didn't
Speaker 5: 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 er own Gaspar called me and uh
Speaker 5: he said, he talked. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: yeah yeah yeah. Howard Howard, Howard Howard.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: He said, man, we just we just signed the girl
Speaker 5: from fame, you know, to a contract or a PolyGram.
Speaker 5: I want you to do a few songs on her.
Speaker 5: I wanted to a couple of two, three songs on her.
Speaker 5: I said, well, whi's the girl there's near people's. I said, well,
Speaker 5: which girl?
Speaker 2: You that?
Speaker 5: Same he said? He said, I sent you overnight a compilation,
Speaker 5: uh via a tape to you. And I said, okay, cool.
Speaker 5: Next morning the FedEx cons, they they get the tape.
Speaker 5: I put the tape in my VH just seeing and
Speaker 5: I said, ladies general near people And she comes walking
Speaker 5: out on stage. I pushed cars and I called, I'm in.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm on my way.
Speaker 5: Whatever you want me to do on there, you know.
Speaker 6: And soul Train was first.
Speaker 8: I said, I messed up that timeline in my kid
Speaker 8: here because I was like, oh, I thought soul Train
Speaker 8: was first. With soul Train was after the two of
Speaker 8: your hosts.
Speaker 2: And she was never on soul Train. He was never
Speaker 2: she was on Party Machine.
Speaker 3: Sorry but to our long but to our younger gen
Speaker 3: Z listeners, she's all she's the hot mom on Pretty
Speaker 3: Little Liars.
Speaker 2: So that's what that's what everyone knows her as, like, Yes.
Speaker 5: We worked on we worked on the album and really
Speaker 5: got you know, got got really close. So she's she's
Speaker 5: a 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 6: First response and be like, let's we just had lunch.
Speaker 3: No wait, I gotta say though, Damn, I didn't wait
Speaker 3: because I know we got to end this episode eventually sometime, however,
Speaker 3: I will.
Speaker 2: I got this. What is okay?
Speaker 3: This is always what I always wanted to know when
Speaker 3: an artist does their signature, like when they do the
Speaker 3: Token Gods song on their record.
Speaker 6: I E.
Speaker 2: Love that sort of thing. Where is are you at
Speaker 2: a place in your life?
Speaker 3: What it's sort of like because we we didn't even
Speaker 3: get into the personal comings and going through life in
Speaker 3: the turmoil whatever, like we're just on the creative and
Speaker 3: the things. But at that point, the fact the fact
Speaker 3: that say Men became such a signature song for you,
Speaker 3: m h, Like, where were.
Speaker 2: You in your life that that song.
Speaker 3: Made made its appearance and the way that you delivered it,
Speaker 3: like we really believed it. So were you at a
Speaker 3: transitional phase in your life where that song came right
Speaker 3: 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, pray prayer. I said, Lord, when
Speaker 5: I'm by myself, when I'm solo, when I'm when I'm
Speaker 5: responsible for what I say, I said, I promised that
Speaker 5: I will honor you on every solo project that I do,
Speaker 5: you know, and and I have. So say Man was
Speaker 5: the first, was on the Ey Committal Love album was
Speaker 5: the first solo and then on and on. But when
Speaker 5: I finally rolled my contract out, I had a lecture,
Speaker 5: you know, if you know the term electure, had first
Speaker 5: rights or refusal on everything that came off of Solar Right,
Speaker 5: So I had to give them. I had to. I
Speaker 5: had to go through them before I could go anywhere else,
Speaker 5: you know, as far as my solo situation was concerned.
Speaker 5: So you know, at the time, e lecture was like
Speaker 5: cold as ice. They didn't they had. All they had
Speaker 5: over there was the eagles and and and that whole thing,
Speaker 5: and and and so. Like I told my attorney, I said, okay,
Speaker 5: so they have to have first rights or refusal, and
Speaker 5: they in other words, they have to you know, decline
Speaker 5: the deal that we bring to them. You know, you
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying. So I said, if that's the case,
Speaker 5: why don't we just make this deal so ridiculous that
Speaker 5: they're gonna decline it.
Speaker 2: You did, so you.
Speaker 5: Put all kinds of stuff in there, bumps here.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: The money was like unheard of for the first time
Speaker 5: solo arts, even though I had the success with Shalamar,
Speaker 5: was crazy. And we took it to him, Bob Krasnow,
Speaker 5: who was head of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Bob says, he calls your bluff.
Speaker 5: He says, okay, what else.
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 5: So so, like, you know, okay, they accepted it. So
Speaker 5: it was a great deal monetarily, and the company was
Speaker 5: a great turnout to be a company, a great company,
Speaker 5: but it was almost like I just describe a Solar
Speaker 5: Electra like a twelve cylinder car and you're only running
Speaker 5: on six cylinders, you know what I'm saying. And because
Speaker 5: they did their job, they did their situation as far
Speaker 5: as the urban R and B situations concerned, but the
Speaker 5: pop department over there never came to the party. So
Speaker 5: you know, it was like it was a whole thing.
Speaker 5: But getting back to when I first went to the thing,
Speaker 5: I had the new record company and I had a
Speaker 5: new management company. So this was in nineteen eighty five
Speaker 5: when I first left the group, and so I had
Speaker 5: a meeting with the new record company. I had a
Speaker 5: meeting with an RCAT and a new record company had
Speaker 5: a meeting and with the new management company that I
Speaker 5: had hired, and I went in. I was excited about
Speaker 5: doing my first solo project. Shook everybody's hand, and I
Speaker 5: sat down and I said, first of all, before we
Speaker 5: get started in this meeting, I said, I want to
Speaker 5: say I want to do a song to the Lord
Speaker 5: on this album.
Speaker 2: It was like, that's how you started the.
Speaker 5: Meeting, That's how I started the 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: This is eighty five. This I don't know when Jesus
Speaker 5: Is Love came out, but.
Speaker 3: This, that was eighty But again it was a rare move,
Speaker 3: like open the door. You normalized it when you did it,
Speaker 3: then everyone started doing it.
Speaker 5: Or real but it wasn't. But at the time it
Speaker 5: was like, you know, I'm talking about putting you know,
Speaker 5: Denise would do a gospel album, then she come back
Speaker 5: and do an R and B album. I was talking
Speaker 5: about combining putting that on there. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And so like you know, this one cat starts talking, well,
Speaker 5: you know Howard, you don't we might get into we
Speaker 5: want to take your career in the sex symbol direction,
Speaker 5: might not be conducive to religious overtones, and this and
Speaker 5: that and that and this, and then my management companies,
Speaker 5: the cat from my management he started talking because I
Speaker 5: hadn't even talked to him about that yet, right, And
Speaker 5: so I'm sitting again, I said, I sat, I sat
Speaker 5: back and I listened. I listened 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?
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And so when they got done talking, I said, you
Speaker 5: know what, I hear you, and I understand you, and
Speaker 5: I can I can dig where you're coming from. I said,
Speaker 5: but maybe because because in my mind too, man, is
Speaker 5: that these people got to promote my record. I don't
Speaker 5: want to get anybody, you.
Speaker 2: Know, if you want to give them something that they're
Speaker 2: enthusiastic 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 from.
Speaker 5: This nineteen eighty five, I said, But let me just
Speaker 5: let me let me go back and let me rephrase
Speaker 5: what I said. I said, let me say that I'm
Speaker 5: going wanting to do a song.
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 5: that on that on Same Men. When we put it,
Speaker 5: when we put it together, man, it was like it
Speaker 5: was great. But I will say that it was nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty five around that time or so, and then I
Speaker 5: I was dating as a girl in Miami. Litt was.
Speaker 5: Her family was in Miami. So I remember we were
Speaker 5: going to spend Thanksgiving there with her family. She had
Speaker 5: moved to la and we were going to send spend Thanksgiving.
Speaker 5: So I was in the in the studio, you know,
Speaker 5: the whole day, and she had already flown down there,
Speaker 5: and I was gonna get on the Red Eye and
Speaker 5: meet her there, right. So I get on a plane
Speaker 5: and Monty and I had come up with the track,
Speaker 5: like a real rough track for SA Men, and I
Speaker 5: knew that's what I wanted to be, you know, the
Speaker 5: inspirational song. So I jump on the red Eye going
Speaker 5: to Miami and I get on the plane, I put
Speaker 5: my headphones on, I put the cassette in. It was
Speaker 5: on the cassette, you know, and so I was listening
Speaker 5: to about three or four songs that I still had
Speaker 5: to write melodies and lyrics to. And at the end
Speaker 5: of that cassette was a was like a real rough
Speaker 5: track of say Men, I mean one of the and
Speaker 5: it didn't even go all the way through it just
Speaker 5: you know, it's just a real rough track of Samen.
Speaker 5: And when it came on, all these lyrics started coming
Speaker 5: to me, and it's like, you know, it's time to
Speaker 5: say goodbye from now. You know, we'll have our second
Speaker 5: time around, second time around. You know we'll have our
Speaker 5: second time around. But before we go, there's something I
Speaker 5: got to say. Everything's not what it seems. There's a
Speaker 5: stronger force behind the scene. He's in our lives every day.
Speaker 5: He's right there when we call and him it's where
Speaker 5: And I'm writing and I'm writing, and there was this
Speaker 5: lady sitting next to me. And then when I got
Speaker 5: to the second I got to the second verse where
Speaker 5: it says talks about cattle on a thousand hills. My
Speaker 5: mom used to always tell me when I was a kid,
Speaker 5: she says, you're the King's kid. You're the King's kid,
Speaker 5: you know, and the king and he had you know,
Speaker 5: your God's child. This is what she was saying. And
Speaker 5: there's and she would always tell them there's golden cattle
Speaker 5: on a thousand hills, and that's yours. You know, that's
Speaker 5: yours because you're you're the King's kid, that's ours. You know,
Speaker 5: we're children of the God's God. And so when I
Speaker 5: started writing now, I said, you know, I know there's
Speaker 5: someone who don't believe. Sometimes it's very hard to see
Speaker 5: living those life every day. Some things don't go away,
Speaker 5: but be without is not his will. There's cattle on
Speaker 5: a thousand hills. Man, it hit me. I'm like writing
Speaker 5: it's cattle on a thousand hells.
Speaker 2: There it hit me.
Speaker 5: There, tears started coming down, and this lady sitting next
Speaker 5: to me, like, what the hell is happening? Oh, you know,
Speaker 5: can I can I move my seat or something like that.
Speaker 5: But by the time by time it touched down in
Speaker 5: h at Miami International Lyrically, 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 6: Like it's one of those songs where it just catch
Speaker 6: you no matter where you are, Like.
Speaker 5: It's an ultimate It's an ultimate craze song.
Speaker 6: How they go to a single. They didn't even want
Speaker 6: the gospel song.
Speaker 3: And then it became a single because they playing they
Speaker 3: were playing the album cut on black radio, right, they
Speaker 3: had to make.
Speaker 6: So that Black radio made it a single.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they played it. I mean, you know, Donnie Simpson
Speaker 5: ended in show, so he ended with a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of black radio uh shows across the across the country,
Speaker 5: you know, uh ended it with it. And and then
Speaker 5: I did it at one of Black Black Radio Exclusive
Speaker 5: b r E. Remember I was sitting Miller's things. I
Speaker 5: closed up the closed up the whole uh uh convention
Speaker 5: with that song.
Speaker 7: And so I remember from from like you did it
Speaker 7: also on the Robert Townsend part of the Grime 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 it and called and
Speaker 5: asked and asked for a meeting. So I went over
Speaker 5: to where he was doing some stuff and went into
Speaker 5: the office and stuff, and he says, man, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm getting ready to do my my uh my Partners
Speaker 5: the Crime, my you know, HBO special, and he said,
Speaker 5: I would love for you to do you say amen?
Speaker 5: I said, oh man, that's what's up. Okay, that's cool.
Speaker 5: I love to be honest. And then he says, I
Speaker 5: want to sing it with you. Oh like and my mind,
Speaker 5: you know, do you sing? I mean, I don't know
Speaker 5: if you 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 unfortunate, but like, you know, he looked
Speaker 5: at me and he said, hey, man, you know, this
Speaker 5: 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 oh forever,
Speaker 5: and never was out. Yeah, I've already been released. But
Speaker 5: once that, once Partners in Crime aired across the country,
Speaker 5: you know, record stores had to reorder I Commit to
Speaker 5: Love because everybody flowed, you know, flooded in, you know,
Speaker 5: looking for say amen, you know.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say it was it was was this
Speaker 3: the this is pre Sylvia Rome. So this is like
Speaker 3: the Bob Maryland era of Electriob Merton. Bob Merland always
Speaker 3: called Marland. Was he there at the time or is
Speaker 3: it now? Well Rock President was ahead, but Merlin, Bob
Speaker 3: wasn't there at the time, was he or did he
Speaker 3: come in like eighty eight eighty nine?
Speaker 5: Okay, I don't, I don't remember him, but.
Speaker 2: That I didn't. I mean, but afterwards, did they of
Speaker 2: course acknowledge that? Okay? You was he was on point
Speaker 2: with this.
Speaker 5: Then, you know, because Bob and I had had had
Speaker 5: created a routine of like whenever I would start, whenever
Speaker 5: I get ready to start an album, I would I
Speaker 5: would call it. If I was in the New York,
Speaker 5: I go have a meeting with him. If I was
Speaker 5: here and here's in New York. We we talk on
Speaker 5: the phone and just talk about and talk about the direction,
Speaker 5: talk about what I want to do, blah blah blah
Speaker 5: blah blah. And at the end of every after say man,
Speaker 5: at the end of every conversation, Bob say, well, I
Speaker 5: know you're gonna do another one of those gods songs, right,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna do another guy song.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be.
Speaker 5: Because, of course, after the success and the popularity is say, man,
Speaker 5: of course it was. It was everybody's idea. Then you know,
Speaker 5: wait they.
Speaker 2: Took credit for it.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah yeah, so wait before we wrap, I got one.
Speaker 2: Unless you had something I just wanted to say, man,
Speaker 2: show me, yes, thank you. I don't know.
Speaker 7: I don't know if you know, like how popular that is.
Speaker 7: Me and my wife we danced a step that is
Speaker 7: a very popular stepping song, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: But that's just I just a gorgeous song man, beautiful
Speaker 7: performance everything.
Speaker 2: What was the inspiration for that? And what was it
Speaker 2: like recording it?
Speaker 5: Don nettlesby and uh Terry Kochay. You know it was
Speaker 5: this writing partner, Terry kole Fay. It was actually coffee,
Speaker 5: he spelled it, but he wanted to co face. So
Speaker 5: that's cool. That's all good, you know. So they wrote
Speaker 5: this track. I forget how we got, I forget how
Speaker 5: we connected, but they got this track to me, man,
Speaker 5: and like and when when I heard this track, I
Speaker 5: just moved into this new crib and I didn't have
Speaker 5: any recording equipment up or anything. So I'm like, I
Speaker 5: got this track, and I was like, man, this track
Speaker 5: is amazing. It's an amazing, amazing track. And so I
Speaker 5: didn't have any recording equipment set up, so I had,
Speaker 5: but I had two boomboxes that recorded you did. So
Speaker 5: I laid down in the in the middle of my
Speaker 5: floor and up in my up in my bedroom, and
Speaker 5: I had like probably a bottle red wine, you know,
Speaker 5: and I put one box on one side, one box
Speaker 5: on this I put concess in and I started bouncing things,
Speaker 5: you know, from that, and I started coming up with
Speaker 5: with h you know, different scenarios, different things I wanted
Speaker 5: to think about things that romantic stuff that I wanted
Speaker 5: to do with my woman, for my woman and all
Speaker 5: that and like and then that hook came. And then
Speaker 5: the hook was just so money man. It was just
Speaker 5: it was you know, it was like you know, like
Speaker 5: you do some songs in it in it and and
Speaker 5: it's like fighting you pulling teeth to make just go
Speaker 5: here and they fit melody and you know, uh, praising
Speaker 5: life man, show me. It was like butter and it
Speaker 5: just came down and were like you to let me know,
Speaker 5: just to let this go, hell me show me, you know,
Speaker 5: it's like and then the video was like crazy.
Speaker 2: Man, I remember that video. Yeah, of course you know
Speaker 2: what was hated. Yeah we did, yeah, very much, so
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 8: So I just wanted to say, if I was USh
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 you see that in the
Speaker 8: crowd do you see people responding in a way that's
Speaker 8: like like most shows crazy.
Speaker 5: It's crazy. If I had a dollar for every time
Speaker 5: a cat came up to me, man, you helped me out, Man,
Speaker 5: i'd be I'd be a multi millionaire at this time.
Speaker 5: And and like I always say, you know, my thing
Speaker 5: is like, you know, some cats don't know what to say,
Speaker 5: you 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 I listen and
Speaker 5: I tell them, now I can get you to the bedroom.
Speaker 5: I can get you through the bedroom. Door, but you
Speaker 5: got the bedroom with you, right, So I like all
Speaker 5: the credit. And then when I do, when I do
Speaker 5: the shows, I mean, it's so it's so beautiful because
Speaker 5: you know, before BC, before COVID, anyway, I would spend
Speaker 5: most of my time in the audience rather than on
Speaker 5: stage because I like 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, they're there
Speaker 5: with their women and they're with the lady and their
Speaker 5: pointing come sing to her. Yeah, you know, because she
Speaker 5: ain't gone.
Speaker 2: Home with me? Right, I love it all Right?
Speaker 3: Well, I got to ask this one last question because
Speaker 3: you know, I've asked one too many souldiering questions. But
Speaker 3: I know that you took over the theme to the
Speaker 3: show in eighty seven with George Duke. What was what
Speaker 3: was the well, Like, what was the process? Like basically
Speaker 3: Don just asked you guys to do it? Or like,
Speaker 3: 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 cat'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 2: So I love you, you baby. On my mind, I
Speaker 2: 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 the lyrics,
Speaker 5: but but it was. That's the perfect But now with
Speaker 5: the Souldier 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,
Speaker 5: So what is.
Speaker 3: It, I guess in closing, what is it that you've
Speaker 3: what is it that you've learned that made you a
Speaker 3: wiser human being? Like it just in your your your
Speaker 3: your journey mm hmm to this point that that's brought
Speaker 3: you here to this day, that still has 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's most important as as an artist for me and
Speaker 5: as a man, as with your integrity, as far as
Speaker 5: as concerned, is to let your yes be yes, and
Speaker 5: your no byo 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 is it doesn't mean anything. It really doesn't mean
Speaker 5: because at the end of the day to day it's
Speaker 5: going to be about who this man, what you as
Speaker 5: a man is about what are you about? You know,
Speaker 5: you can do all the music and people say, what
Speaker 5: do you want? What do you want your music? Want
Speaker 5: people to remember about your music? I want to remember
Speaker 5: the integrity in my music that I stayed. I stayed
Speaker 5: in av I have people saying you should put rapper
Speaker 5: and you used to put a rap thing, you should
Speaker 5: do some talk about you know, sex and all this
Speaker 5: kind of stuff. Now that's not my lane. You know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying. My lane is like here and stay here,
Speaker 5: 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, man,
Speaker 5: it's like you know where I where I've come as
Speaker 5: far as where I am now, is that I can
Speaker 5: 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 3: Man, Well, thank you very much, brother Ewett, thank you
Speaker 3: for doing our show. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 5: Pleasure, zero my pleasure, sugar.
Speaker 2: Steve, are you are you gearing up to.
Speaker 5: Say knocked out over there a minute ago?
Speaker 2: Now that's just the weired talking. I'm serious. I'm on
Speaker 2: the scissor tonight. So you got a cold. I never
Speaker 2: went fully unconscious. But wait, Steve, you're sick. Oh.
Speaker 8: I told you tell people that you got to do
Speaker 8: disclaimers and stuff.
Speaker 6: You can't just put that out there.
Speaker 5: A good thing.
Speaker 8: We're on zoom, right, I said, But look they worked, Sieve,
Speaker 8: like three hours ago.
Speaker 7: I was gonna say, Howard man, like some years ago.
Speaker 7: This has been over a decade ago. I actually met you.
Speaker 2: I ran in you. It was real quick.
Speaker 7: It was an lax and if I'm not mistaken, I
Speaker 7: think it was it was lax. But you were just
Speaker 7: just as you are now, man, super cool. And I
Speaker 7: just walked up. I was like, yo, man, I'm a
Speaker 7: big fan and like you were just kind of low key,
Speaker 7: so I didn't want to blow your spot up, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean? Because I was like, all right,
Speaker 7: I don't want to make people notice. And then it's
Speaker 7: like thirty more people coming, so I just I was like, yo,
Speaker 7: I'm a fan.
Speaker 2: Brother. He was like, thank you, man, like.
Speaker 7: Super cool, and I started the tweet. I was like, yo,
Speaker 7: I just met how you and I thought, I was like,
Speaker 7: I don't know what was he doing out here, so
Speaker 7: let's me not I don't want to blow spot up
Speaker 7: or whatever, but sneaking, you know, right, But you were
Speaker 7: super cool, and I just I never forgot that man,
Speaker 7: and just where you were a class act and you
Speaker 7: still are.
Speaker 2: And I just thank you for the music and for
Speaker 2: all your con man for absolutely.
Speaker 5: I always say, man, we're all in this thing together.
Speaker 5: Ain't none of us getting out of this thing alive,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, So we might as well
Speaker 5: might as well do this together and be as as
Speaker 5: cordial and respectful and right, you know, as as possible. Unfortunately,
Speaker 5: some of my peers, you know, use their celebrity as
Speaker 5: an excuse to be rude to people. But you know,
Speaker 5: it's like, especially in this business, it's like, we're not athletes.
Speaker 7: 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 if in
Speaker 5: this business, if somebody hates you, they ain't gonna buy
Speaker 5: your records.
Speaker 6: Are customer service true?
Speaker 5: Truthactly?
Speaker 2: Well, we thank you for doing our show on behalf
Speaker 2: of Scissor Steve and unpaid Bill. Putting the kids to
Speaker 2: bed right now.
Speaker 3: Fontigelo and Laiya this quest love once again the immortal
Speaker 3: Howard Hewitt Quest Love Supreme and we will see you
Speaker 3: next go round.
Speaker 2: Thank you, yo, what's up?
Speaker 7: This is fante. Make sure you keep up with us
Speaker 7: on Instagram at QLs and let us know.
Speaker 2: What you think we should be next to sit down
Speaker 2: with us. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast, all right.
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